Editing East Slavic languages (section)

=== Vocabulary ===
The East Slavic territory exhibits a linguistic continuum with many transitional dialects. Between Belarusian and Ukrainian there is the [[West Polesian dialect|Polesian dialect]], which shares features from both languages. East Polesian is a transitional [[Variety (linguistics)|variety]] between Belarusian and Ukrainian on one hand, and between South Russian and Ukrainian on the other hand. At the same time, Belarusian and [[Southern Russian]] form a [[Dialect continuum|continuous area]], making it virtually impossible to draw a line between the two languages. [[Central Russian|Central]] or Middle Russian (with its Moscow sub-dialect), the transitional step between the North and the South, became a base for the Russian literary standard. [[Northern Russian]] with its predecessor, the [[Old Novgorod dialect]], has many original and archaic features.

Ruthenian, the ancestor of modern Belarusian and Ukrainian, was the official language of the [[Grand Duchy of Lithuania]] as "Chancery Slavonic"{{Citation needed|date=April 2025}} until the end of the 17th century when it was gradually replaced by the Polish language. It was also the native language of the [[Cossack Hetmanate]] until the end of the 18th century, when the Ukrainian state completely became part of the Russian Empire in 1764.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Указ об учреждении губерний и о росписании к ним городов |url=https://constitution.garant.ru/history/act1600-1918/2005/ |access-date=2024-01-15 |website=constitution.garant.ru}}</ref> The [[Constitution of Pylyp Orlyk]] from 1710 is one of the most important written sources of the Ruthenian language. Due to the influence of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth over many centuries, Belarusian and Ukrainian have been influenced in several respects by Polish, a [[Lechitic languages|Lechitic]] [[West Slavic languages|West Slavic]] language. As a result of the long Polish-Lithuanian rule, these languages had been less exposed to [[Church Slavonic]], featuring therefore less Church Slavonicisms than the modern Russian language, for example:
{| class="wikitable"
|+Comparison of the word "sweet"
!Ukrainian
!Belarusian
!Russian
|-
|солодкий (''solodkyj'')
|салодкі (''salodki'')
|сладкий (''sladkij'')
|}
Additionally, the original East Slavic phonetic form was kept in many words in Ukrainian and Belarusian, for example:
{| class="wikitable"
|+Comparison of the word "unit"
!Ukrainian
!Belarusian
!Russian
|-
|одиниця (''odynycia'')
|адзінка (''adzinka'')
|eдиница (''yedinica'')
|}
In general, Ukrainian and Belarusian are also closer to other Western European languages, especially to [[German language|German]] (via Polish). At the same time Russian was being heavily influenced by Church Slavonic (South Slavic language), but also by the [[Turkic languages|Turkic]] and [[Uralic languages|Uralic]] languages.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2011-02-14 |title=Turkic words in Russian |url=https://www.languagesoftheworld.info/historical-linguistics/turkic-words-in-russian.html |access-date=2024-01-15 |website=Languages Of The World |language=en-US}}</ref> For example:
{| class="wikitable"
|+Comparison of the word "to search"
!Ukrainian
!Belarusian
!Russian
|-
|шукати (''šukaty'')
|шукаць (''šukać'')
|искать (''iskat́'')
|-
| colspan="2" |Compare Polish "szukać" and [[Old Saxon|Old Low German]] "sōkian" (German "suchen")
|Compare Bulgarian "искам" (''iskam'') (with a meaning shift: "to want") and Serbo-Croatian "искати" (''iskati'')
|}
What's more, all three languages do also have [[False friend|false friends]], that sometimes can lead to (big) misunderstandings.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Database of False Friends in Slavic Languages |url=https://oesteuropastudier.dk/en/dictionaries/fauxamis |access-date=2024-01-16 |website=Danish Portal for East European Studies |language=en-gb}}</ref> For example, Ukrainian орати (''oraty'') — "to plow" and Russian орать (''orat́'') — "to scream", or Ukrainian помітити (''pomityty'') — "to notice" and Russian пометить (''pometit́'') — "to mark".