Interesting facts about Belarus AND ITS language

The longest street in Belarus is Independence Avenue in Minsk (Prospect Nezalezhnastsi). This street has had over 10 different names throughout history and stretches about fifteen kilometers.

Belarus has its very own ghost! The Black Lady of Nesvizh is said to be the spirit of Barbara Radziwill, wife of Polish King Žygimont Augustus. The legend of the Black Lady has been around for over 450 years. It all started because royals back then couldn’t marry for love, only for political duty.

In 2015, Belarusian motifs hit the fashion scene in Paris. Valentino designers Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli drew inspiration from Marc Chagall’s paintings. Belarusian traditional patterns looked absolutely stunning on the runway.

Belarus was one of the first countries in Europe to print its own Bible back in 1517. The pioneer printer Francis Skorina began his work in Prague, printing 23 illustrated Bibles in Old Belarusian. He later moved to Vilna in the early 1520s and set up a publishing house. Skorina’s work stood out for its high-quality printing, unique illustrations, and distinctive fonts.

Some facts about the language you probably didn’t know

1. Belarusian belongs to the East Slavic languages. It is mainly used in the Republic of Belarus, where it is the official language. Also a small number of speakers live in Ukraine, Poland and the Czech Republic.
2. Belarusian language has three alphabets at once – Cyrillic, Latin and Arabic script. The first was used since the 14th century, the Latin alphabet came later, when the territory of modern Belarus was part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. As for the Arabic script, it appeared in the 16th century, thanks to the Lithuanian Tatars, who adopted the local dialect, but retained the usual Arabic letters.
3. It is believed that the process of separating Belarusian into an independent language began in the 14th century. It was when the West Russian literary and written language was formed, which today is called Old Belarusian. Until 1696 it was one of the official languages of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (along with Latin and Polish). Then, after the partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, West Russian was supplanted by Russian.
4. For a long time Belarusian existed solely as a language of the common people, surviving against constant pressure from Russian and Polish. In the 19th century it was actually recreated anew by the efforts of intellectuals. But it became possible to use it for publishing books and newspapers only after the 1905 revolution. Until then, Belarusian was not recognized by Russia as an independent language. It was considered only one of the dialects of Russian.
5. The Belarusian language has preserved a large number of words with Old Slavic roots. At the same time, it has a lot of borrowings from Polish and Russian, as well as German and the ubiquitous Latin.
6. The modern Belarusian language has two grammatical norms – the official orthography and the so-called Tarashkevitsa, also known as the classical spelling. The latter appeared in 1918 through the efforts of the political figure, linguist and translator B. A. Tarashkevich. The need arose in connection with the independence of Belarus, which resulted in the formation of the Belarusian People’s Republic. Tarashkevitsa was officially used until 1933, when the Belarusian language was reformed, which was unofficially called “naromovka”. Its distinctive feature was the forced introduction of some norms inherent in the Russian language.
7. One of the distinctive features of Belarusian is the letter Ўў (u short or “neskladowe”). Moreover, this letter has become a peculiar symbol of the language; in 2003, a monument to it was even erected in Polotsk. It is also willingly used as a logo by various media projects related to the Belarusian language.
8. There is also such a notion as “trasianka”, which is a rough mixture of Russian and Belarusian languages. The term emerged in the 80s of the last century, although such a linguistic mixture was first mentioned in the 30s. The word “trasyanka” comes from the name of low-quality hay, obtained by mixing dry grass with freshly cut grass. A similar phenomenon exists in neighboring Ukraine, where the haphazard mixing of Ukrainian and Russian is called “surzhik”.