Countries where the Russian language is spoken

Russia's 160 ethnic groups speak some 100 languages. According to the 2002 census, 142.6 million people speak Russian, followed by Tatar with about 5 million and German with almost 3 million speakers. Russian is the only official state language, but the Constitution gives the individual republics the right to make their native language co-official next to Russian. Despite its wide dispersal, the Russian language is homogeneous throughout Russia. Russian is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia and the most widely spoken Slavic language. Russian belongs to the Indo-European language family and is one of the living members of the East Slavic languages. The others are Belarusian and Ukrainian (and possibly Rusyn).

Over a quarter of the world's scientific literature is published in Russian. Russian is also applied as a means of coding and storage of universal knowledge: 60–70% of all world information is published in the English and Russian languages. The language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations.

Work in groups of three or four.

 

 

Speech Practice

30. Make groups of three or four and prepare a multimedia presentation on the topic “The Russian Federation – the past and the present”.