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Southeast Asia
 Khmer
Mongolian
Turkic languages
Russian
Khmer
Khmer, or Cambodian, is the language of the Khmers. It belongs to the Monkhmer group of the Austro-Asiatic family of
languages. In Cambodia there are 2 main groups of dialects: northwestern (parts of Battambang and Siyemreap) and
southeastern (the rest of the country). The Khmer alphabet dates back to Pali writing. The first samples of Khmer
writing date back to the 7th century. The modern literary language is based on a mixed dialect of Phnom Penh. It
borrows many words from Sanskrit, Pali and French.
Mongolian
Mongolian is the language of the Mongols, the largest ethnic group of Mongolia, and of Inner Mongolia and various
groups living in various provinces of China. About 3 million people speak it. It emerged around the 14th and 16th
centuries. As a national language, Mongolian began to be formed after the Mongolian people's revolution of 1921 on
the basis of the khalkhas dialect.
Turkic languages
The Turkic languages, formerly known as Turkic-Tatar, Turkish and Turkish-Tatar, are the languages of many peoples
and nationalities of Russia and Turkey, as well as a certain part of the population of Iran, Afghanistan, Mongolia,
China, Bulgaria, Romania, Yugoslavia and Albania. Twenty-three Turkic languages spoken by 25 million people are
represented in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). The Turkic languages are the mother tongues of the native
populations of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kirghizstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Bashkiria, Tatarstan, Tuva, Chuvashia,
Yakutia, part of the population of Dagestan (Kumyks, Nogaites), Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachayevo-Cherkesskia (Balkarians,
Karachayevites, Nogaites), Stavropol Region (Nogaites, Trukhmens), Moldavia (Gagauzes), as well as Karaimov (Lithuania,
Ukraine), Urums (Donetsk region, Georgia), and Krymchaks. The Turkic language belongs to the Altai family of languages
alongside Mongolian, Tunguso-Manchu, Korean and Japanese.
The oldest memorials of Turkic writing (Yenisei-Orkhon alphabet), found mainly on gravestones in Northern Mongolia,
Kirgizia, in the Highlands of the Yenisei, in the valley of the Talas, and other places, belong to the 7-11th centuries.
There are ancient memorials to the Turkic language written in the Brakhmi and Sogdy alphabets (Sin-tszyan and Central
Asia). Turkic writing (in the Uiger and Arabic alphabets) later developed in the east—Kashgar, Central Asia, the territory
of the Golden Horde (including the Volga River Valley and southern Russian steppe) and in the west—in the state of the
Seljukids (Asia Minor), Azerbaijan, Turkey, in Mamluk Yegypt and other places. In the 1920s and 1930s Turkic-speaking
peoples of what is now the CIS began to use Latin, and since the late 1930s have been using a new alphabet based on
Russian letters. Turkey adopted the Latin alphabet in 1928.
About the Russian language
Russian
Is the language of the Russian nation and one of the most widely-used languages in the world. It is an official and
working language of the UN. More than 200 million people speak it. Russian belongs to the Eastern group of Slavic
languages.
It has very ancient origins. Around 1000 B.C., a proto-Slavic language emerged from a group of parent dialects of the
Indo-European family of languages. Three kindred groups eventually formed: eastern (the ancient Russian nationality),
western (which formed the basis of the Czechs, Slovaks, Luzhichans, Coastal Slavs) and southern (Bulgarians, Serbs,
Croats, Slovenians and Macedonians).
The Eastern Slavic (ancient Russian) language existed from the 7th through the 14th centuries. The Cyrillic alphabet
emerged from it in the 10th century. In the 14-16 centuries the southwestern variation of the literary language of the
eastern Slavs was the language of state affairs and the Orthodox Church in the Great Lithuanian and Moldavian Princedoms.
Feudal atomization led to linguistic atomization, and the Mongol-Tatar yoke (13th-15th centuries and the Polish-Lithuanian
conquest led in the 13th-14th centuries to the disintegration of the ancient Russian nationality. The unity of the ancient
Russian language also gradually disintegrated. Three centers of new ethno-linguistic unity emerged that struggled for their
Slavic distinctiveness: The northeastern (Great Russian), southern (Ukrainians) and western (Byelorussians). In the
14th-15th centuries from these associations emerged very similar but independent eastern Slavic languages: Russian,
Ukrainian and Byelorussian.
The Russian language in the era of Muscovite Russia (14th-17th centuries) had a complex history. Linguistic distinctions
continued to develop. Two main linguistic zones were formed: the Northern Great Russian (essentially everything north of
the Pskov - Tver - Moscow line and to the south of Nizhny Novgorod) and Southern Great Russian (to the south to Ukraine
and Byelorussia). Intermediate middle great Russian dialects emerged, among which the Moscow dialect began to play the
leading role. The written language remains richly colored. The language of state affairs was based on popular Russian
speech, but differed in some respects. Fictional literature was diverse in linguistic tools. From ancient times a large
role was played by oral folklore, which served all classes of people until the 16th-17th centuries.
In the 17th century, national bonds emerged and the foundation of the Russian nation was laid. A division of the civil
and Church Slavonic alphabet occurred in 1708. Secular writing became more common in the 18th and early 19th centuries,
while church literature was slowly relegated to insignificance and, finally, became the stuff of religiosity and its
language turned into church jargon. The French language began to exert significant influence on Russian vocabulary and
phraseology in the second half of the 18th century. The linguistic theory and practice of M.V. Lomonosov, the author of
the first detailed grammar book of the Russian language, played a large role. Lomonosov proposed categorizing the various
means of speech depending on the purpose of the literary works between high, middle and low styles. In the development and
formation of the Russian literary language, a large role was played by the Russian writers of the 19th and 20th centuries
A.S. Griboyedov, M.Yu. Lermontov, N.V. Gogol, I.S. Turgenev, F.M. Dostoyevsky, L.N. Tolstoy, M. Gorky, A.P. Chekhov and
others. Public and cultural figures as well as with scientists began to exert influence on the development of the literary
language and the formation of its functional styles.
Intensive growth in special terminology is observed in the modern Russian language, which is due first and foremost to
the needs of the scientific and technical revolution. Whereas in the early 18th century Russian borrowed much terminology
from German, and in the 19th century from French, in the mid 20th century it borrowed mainly from English (in its American
variant).
In the mid 20th century Russian began to be studied throughout the world.
All materials about languages are drawn up on the basis of dictionaries: The Large Soviet Encyclopedia,
the Literary Encyclopedia, Brokhaus and Yefron. You may send wishes, comments or proposals to us at the following
address: marketing@t-link.ru
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