Languages of Belarus

Languages of Belarus
Languages of Belarus
Official	Belarusian and Russian
Minority	Polish, Ukrainian, Yiddish, Trasianka
Foreign	English
Signed	Russian Sign Language
Keyboard layout	Belarusian keyboard;

The official languages of Belarus are Belarusian and Russian.

The pre-Slavic language of the area, as well as its geographic name was Sudovian and Sudavia, a Baltic language. Sudovian is believed to have gone extinct around the 17th century.

At present, Belarusian and Russian are considered the sole native languages of Belarus, as seen below.

The language situation in Belarus is characterized by a co-existence of several linguistic codes. The three most widespread codes are Belarusian, Russian and the so-called Trasianka, a mixed speech in which Belarusian and Russian elements and structures alternate arbitrarily.^[1]

^ Hentschel, G. (2014) Belarusian and Russian in the Mixed Speech of Belarus. In: Besters-Dilger, J. et al. (eds.): Congruence in Contact-Induced Language Change: Language Families, Typological Resemblance, and Perceived Similarity. Berlin/Boston, 93-121.

[Congruence-1] Hentschel, G. (2014) Belarusian and Russian in the Mixed Speech of Belarus. In: Besters-Dilger, J. et al. (eds.): Congruence in Contact-Induced Language Change: Language Families, Typological Resemblance, and Perceived Similarity. Berlin/Boston, 93-121.

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