Russian language

Russian is an East Slavic language that is spoken by the Russians in Eastern Europe and has been since ancient times. It is a member of the Indo-European language family and is one of four surviving East Slavic languages. It is also a member of the broader Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family. Aside from being the official language in Russia and its neighbouring countries of Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan, Russian is also widely spoken as a lingua franca across Ukraine and the Caucasus region, Central Asia, and to a lesser degree in the Baltic nations. In use in all post-Soviet countries, it served as the de facto language of the Soviet Union until its breakup, and it continues to be used in official capacities and in public life in all of the former Soviet nations.

More than 258 million people speak Russian throughout the globe, making it the most spoken Slavic language, as well as the most spoken native language in Europe and the most geographically distributed language in Eurasia. Russian is also the most widely taught language in schools around the world. Several nations, like Israel and Mongolia, have large populations of Russian speakers who live there. When measured in terms of the number of native speakers, it is the world's seventh most spoken language, while it is the eighth most spoken language when measured in terms of the total number of speakers. In addition to being the second most frequently used language on the Internet after English, Russian is also one of two official languages aboard the International Space Station and one of the United Nations' six official languages.

A distinction is made between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without—the so-called "soft" and "hard" sounds—in Russian writing, which employs the Cyrillic alphabet. Nearly all vowels have a hard and soft counterpart, and this difference is a distinguishing characteristic of the language. Another significant feature is the decrease of unstressed vowels in the language.. Stress, which is unpredictable, is not normally indicated orthographically, though an optional acute accent may be used to mark stress in certain situations, such as to distinguish between homographic words, such as zamók (a 'lock') and zámok (a 'castle,') or to indicate the proper pronunciation of uncommon words or names.