Category: Places

“Where do you come from?” was a question I heard often during the nearly two years I spent living in Russia. “I’m from America,” I would always answer, but this reply rarely satisfied the innate “Russian curiosity” of the inquirer. “Yes,” they would say, “but where are your roots?” I would then explain that my ancestors came from various countries of Northern Europe. For most Russians, this was enough: “So you are a Northern European,” they would say knowingly, “now we can talk.”

Just as many Russians felt that they could not understand me as a person until they knew where I came from, we also cannot fully understand a language until we learn about its history and origin. I would like to examine the roots of the Russian language in order to gain a better understanding of this beautiful and complex system of communication. Much that seems confusing, arbitrary, or strange in the modern Russian language becomes clearer as we become familiar with the processes of change throughout the historical development of Russian.

In this paper I will give a brief overview of the origins of Russian as well as summarize some of the major areas of change in the history of the language. I will focus on the areas of the writing system, the phonological and phonetic systems, and historical reflexes in the modern lexicon. Although I will be able to give only a concise overview of some of the basic processes of change, I hope that this paper will offer a solid basis on which an interested reader may build in further study of Russian.