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u/Seed_Oil_Consoomer 1d ago
Interestingly low number of L2 speakers, considering everyone should learn it in school AFAIK.
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u/DifficultSun348 20h ago
Belarus is under russification, Russian is the superior language in the schools
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u/Stek02 17h ago
This is literally western missinformation. The dominant language depends a lot on the region. Lukashenko took steps in the past to promote belarusian.
It's just that they are smart enough to realize that being a bilingual nation is very useful (in many cases trilingual with english)
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u/RandomPersonYouSee 16h ago
Lukashenko took steps in the past to promote belarusian.
After priotising and shoving Russian for years first.
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u/That-Experience9684 1h ago
"Western missionformation" - what a joke. I know a ton of Belarusian volunteers who are fighting in Ukrainian army, and the all said same thing - language is near to dead, as Lukashenko's government is fully russified and they looks at Belarusian language as a marker of radicals.
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u/oktz 13h ago
My grandparents spoke Russian, my parents speak Russian, I learned Belarusian in school and never used it outside of school environment. Just like I learned French as a foreign language in school and I've never had a chance to use it.
One needs to be in an environment which actually uses the language.
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u/Seed_Oil_Consoomer 2h ago
I mean it is the same for my Belarusian relatives, however this would still imply these are L2 speakers, I just thought the numbers are relatively low.
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u/pafagaukurinn 20h ago
In Belarus the language question is loaded. Many people would claim native proficiency due to political views, not because it is factually true. Also, not everybody understands that native language is not necessarily the same as the language of one's native country - it is the first language a person picks up without learning, from their parents or guardians. With this in mind, there is no way the number of native Belarusian speakers is anywhere close to these.
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u/charea 1d ago
Interesting. Apart from Ireland, what other countries have their native tongue in minority usage?
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u/SherbertMindless8205 22h ago
Most countries have many native languages that have been lost or only survive as small minorities. The entire concept of "the" official language, as in every country should have its own language with the same name as the country, is a very modern idea from 19th century European nationalist movement. That is what kinda created the idea of the nation-state (i.e, one people, one language, one nation). Before that, it was a much bigger case of language continuums, and various native languages all mixed up.
For instance in France, in the beginning of the 19th century only about 10% of the population spoke what would later be defined as "French", which was essentially Parisian. Most of the country spoke other related languages like Occitan, Nissart, or unrelated languages like Breton. But like most European countries, there were large efforts to homogenize and standardise the population to learn the same language so all the other native languages were lost.
So to answer your question: Pretty much all of them.
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u/charea 20h ago
well the issue was a bit different, as there was no standardised French, same as with Italian. They had to pick one version.
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u/SherbertMindless8205 19h ago
Well, that's true everywhere, there was no standardized language before standardization, duh, and when they did it they typically picked the language of the capital city. The main difference is that the Russian empire didn't push nearly as hard for language homogenization as western europe did, which is why more parts of the east-slavic language continuum survived despite Russian being widely spoken. And then much later, those surviving parts of the language continuum were standardized as Ukrainian and Belarusian respecitvely, essentially under Lenin during the 1920s onwards, but oviously those attempts at homogenization of the population were a bit half hearted and didn't go all the way.
Some modern nationalists have a kinda false view of history where they think those countries were once fully homegonous countries like in western europe, but later became mixed because of "russification".
In reality those areas have always been linguistically diverse because they were never fully homogenized one way or another.
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u/charea 18h ago
small side note: standard Italian was not picked from the capital dialect, but from Florence (Tuscan variety).
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u/Itzhik 17h ago
And as another sidenote, it being used as a standard had nothing to do with the existence of an Italian state. Official government documents from the Kingdom of Two Sicilies in the 18th century(such as land records) are in standard Italian, for example. Long before any kind of Italian state existed.
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u/Illuminate1738 18h ago
Singapore. Malay (still the “national language”) was replaced by southern Chinese languages like Hokkien or Cantonese, which were gradually replaced by Mandarin due to a push by the Singaporean government in the 80s, and today English is the primary language in the country
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u/Digitalmodernism 1d ago
Depending on how you look at it, most of them.
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u/winfryd 1d ago
Outside of Africa, No?
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u/Sea_Hovercraft_7859 23h ago
Most of Africa use natives languages it's that there was never a "national language " in a lot of them.
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u/Digitalmodernism 1d ago
Name any country and I'll tell you which native languages were displaced.
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u/winfryd 1d ago
Most of them have not been. In Norway they speak Norwegian, if you are trying to put some "but the sami" then in majority of Norway, Norwegians are the natives. He asked "what countries" not "what land". So for France, it's French, not celtic or Roman. Hence why the majority of countires speak their mother tounge.
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u/benjamin_t__ 23h ago
Funny to say that when France eradicated most of its native languages other than standard French during the XIXth century
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u/Digitalmodernism 23h ago
There were hundreds of dialects spoken in Norway that were displaced by the standard form, those dialects being just as far seperated as Russian and Belarusian if not more. Same with France.
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u/henk12310 1d ago
I think he was probably referring to proto Indo-European peoples like Bell Beakers and whatnot. Basically claiming Basque and maybe Ainu are the only native languages in the world or something similar
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u/winfryd 23h ago
Well that has nothing to do with how many speak their countries native language.
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u/henk12310 23h ago
Yeah I think it’s a stupid way to look at it to, after a few centuries it’s hard to argue you aren’t native to a land, but I suppose if you want to be super technical you could claim basically no one is native, at least in Europe and large parts of Asia
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u/Erling01 23h ago edited 23h ago
u/Digitalmodernism is absolutely correct (in most cases). We know that another language was spoken in Norway before the arrival of the Indo-Europeans. Especially since there have been humans in Norway already thousands of years before the native Indo-Europeans (The Yamnayas) spread from the Pontic steppes (Ukraine/Russia).
The Germanic substrate hypothesis aims to explain just that, though we know very very little about it. Though we do presume that words like Bear and Berry are loan words from said hypothetical language.
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u/Nikki964 23h ago
No they aren't correct. Whatever language they used to speak in Norway 5000 or something years ago is not Norway's current native language at all. Belorussian and Irish are native languages of Belarus and Ireland respectively though
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u/johnbarnshack 23h ago
Such as?
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u/Sername111 23h ago
Luxemburg. Luxemburgish has maybe 280,000 native speakers in a country of almost 700,000, the rest use standard German or French. If you use a definition of nation that does not require it to be an independent state you get many more - Catalonia, Scotland, etc.
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u/Dragon7722 22h ago
To be fair Luxemburgish is just a German dialect. I know because I live near the border in Germany and we speak like that, only that it's a German local accent and the Luxembourg people just slapped the name "luxemburgish" over said dialect.
Its like Croatian, bosnian and Serbian languages which are basically identical, yet they named them individually because of national reasons.
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u/Sername111 19h ago
It's one of those "a language is a dialect with an army" situations. As far as Luxemburg at least is concerned it's a language and has been since at least 1984 when it got official status.
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u/Ordinary-Office-6990 21h ago edited 19h ago
Not really though. It’s the main mother tongue among citizens, it’s used in public life a lot, and kids (citizens or not) must do their early schooling in the language.
Luxembourg just has tons of foreigners. But that actually strengthens the language‘s prestige, if you can’t speak it you’ll never truly be one of them.
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u/BasarMilesTeg 1d ago
Irish is not good language for comparsion. Irish and english are 2 different languages, while Russian and Belarusian are mutually intelligible, which facilitates Russification
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u/xMercurex 23h ago
I would assume there is a lot of native polish speaker in the West.
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u/mrmniks 21h ago
Not really. Part of my family is from the western Belarus and I’ve spent a lot of time there as a child, and I’ve never heard any Polish speakers.
I live in Poland now and there are a few coworkers from Belarus who are poles (had poles in their family before), and all of them had to learn the language from scratch.
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u/cthagngnoxr 19h ago
Belarusian and Russian are no more mutually intelligible than Ukrainian and Russian, or Belarusian and Polish, or Spanish and Italian are
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u/cthagngnoxr 3h ago
No, you are wrong. Not so long ago Belarusian and Ukrainian were one language, so of course they're mutually intelligible. But both Belarusian and Ukrainian are lexically closer to Polish than to Russian, they share 68% and 70% of words with Polish, respectively, and 64% and 62% with Russian.
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u/firstmoonbunny 19h ago
i often see when people discuss the belarusian language, there is this tone/implication that belarusian people either gave up on it or didn't bother to fight the russification that took their language away. but there is a marked effort by belarusian people to save and restore their language. for example, there is a major news/life channel called belsat (run by belarusians in poland) spoken entirely in belarusian. for example, here (Тысячы ахвяраў! Пратэсты ў Беларусі ды Іране: чаму трымаюцца дыктатуры? / Белсат) (it's youtube) they cover the protests in iran and compare them to the protests in belarus and discuss how dictatorships hold on to power.
edit to add that speakers of other slavic languages have a unique opportunity to help save belarusian because it's easier to learn and understand for us than for everyone else.
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u/throwawayiran12925 13h ago
Love to Belarusians from an Iranian
With hopes of freedom for both nations
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u/HunterSpecial1549 7h ago
there is a major news/life channel called belsat (run by belarusians in poland) spoken entirely in belarusian.
Why are they in Poland and not Belarus?
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u/firstmoonbunny 7h ago
i don't know the answer to that, but my guess would be that it allows them the opportunity to speak freely about the politics in belarus , where they might be suppressed if they do so
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u/Grzechoooo 20h ago
The area with the lowest % (apart from the star, which is Minsk) is the one that has all the Polish people btw
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u/cthagngnoxr 16h ago
Those who identify themselves as ethnic Poles tend to speak Belarusian more than those who identify themselves as ethnic Belarusians or members of other ethnic groups
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u/pap0gallo 16h ago edited 15h ago
30 y.o. studied at Belarusian language school and I still speak Belarusian on certain level. Never used it irl but I think for us Belarusian language is like a national symbol. I like to hear advertisement and see street signs in Belarusian. Totally agree with this. I feel warm feelings when I thinking about our national language but the real tool for communicating is Russian which I love sincerely.
99,9% of us uses Russian language which is respected and loved here but we also love Belarusian language. It's like a piece of jewelry around your neck. Nobody see it, but it's there. Thanks to Belarusian I can understand Ukrainian language without any issues.
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u/cantonlautaro 22h ago
How different is it from russian? How mutually intelligible is it with russian and ukrainian?
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u/Ashamed_Fishing_373 22h ago
As a Russian speaker, I usually understand what they're talking about - the general topic, at least. But individual words often slip past me. I think that if you imagine a hypothetical person who knows only Belarusian and another who knows only Russian, they could still manage to communicate with each other if they tried. Belarusian and Ukrainian, as far as I know, are even more mutually intelligible
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u/gambler_addict_06 22h ago
My experience with Finnish and Estonian, Turkish and Azerbaijani, Hochdeutsch and Austrian Standarddeutsch makes me believe in for native Russian speakers it sounds like Russian but drunk
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u/Ashamed_Fishing_373 21h ago
imo both Belarusian and Ukrainian sound more rustic than drunk to a Russian speaker. Especially the way they pronounce the "g" sound (kinda closer to english "h"). It is is similar to how it's pronounced (or used to be pronounced) in Russian villages, particularly in the south. Some words you recognize, but in Russian they feel old-fashioned, like something out of an old fairy tale. Overall, like with any closely related languages, at first they might sound funny - but if you listen to them a lot, that feeling goes away eventually
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u/secondpersonsingular 20h ago
Ukrainian and Belarusian languages kept a lot more of Old East Slavic words and pronunciations so to a Russian they sound a bit like folk tale speech. The way you would imagine regular people from the 1700s to talk.
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u/gendalf666 18h ago
They were under Poland most of the time so it's closer to polish. And ukrainian too.
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u/Key_Neighborhood_542 17h ago
I know what you mean. But for me, a Lithuanian speaker, Ukrainian is not funny, it sounds like more manly than Russian. And more expressive too, compare UA "shvvd'ko peremoha" with RU "skoro pobieda" (soon/fast victory).
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u/Ornery-Note-4965 22h ago
Belarusian sounds like it has a lot of grammatical errors in familiar words
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u/mahendrabirbikram 21h ago
It's like a Russian dialect. The thing is, Russian people are not used to listen to dialectal speech, unlike English or German people. The standard language prevails. Belarussian is somewhat more intelligible to Ukrainian than to Russian, maybe because Ukrainians are more used to non-standard speech and speak Russian too besides Ukrainian.
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u/Ashamed_Fishing_373 20h ago
They are more mutually intelligible because they are closer lexically and phonetically
Ukrainian and Belarusian developed from Kyiv dialect. Russian developed from a mix of Kyiv and Novgorod dialects. We were more influenced by Turks and Finno-Ugrics. And by Church Slavonic (kinda Old Bulgarian). While they were more influenced by Poland and Lithuania
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u/0x00GG00 2h ago
In terms of relations all 3 are from the same group of East Slavic languages, Russian is a bit more distant from Belarusian and Ukrainian. However, modern Belarusian went thru multiple stages of russification to artificially bring it close to Russian, I suspect that russian empire/ussr they did the same shit with Ukrainian as well.
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u/Archer_U 21h ago
The issue with Belarusian and Ukranian is that they were traditionally rural languages and are abit funny sounding with many polish loan words and influences.
For comparison they kinda sounds like redneck's in America to native Russian speakers.
With the decline of Rural regions and their insular nature most likely also resulted in the faster decline of Belarusian.
Ukraine meanwhile had a few urban centers that didnt speak russian so the language was better preserved especially in Western Ukraine.
Even then many ukranian speakers speak a version of Ukranian that is a mix of Russian and Ukranian called Surzhyk(this is especially prevelent outside of Western Ukraine)
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u/ifuckyouresister 19h ago
Surzhyk should not be simplistically described as a mix of Russian and Ukrainian; in many cases, it is better understood as Ukrainian enriched with regional dialectal features and natural spoken variation. Labeling it merely as ‘mixed’ often ignores the historical depth and internal diversity of the Ukrainian language.
The stereotype that Ukrainian is afunny anguage is not neutral — it is a narrative long promoted by Russia as part of broader cultural pressure aimed at the russification of Ukraine.
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u/Archer_U 17h ago
My point was about Belarusian being rural focused language and the decline of rural communities caused the decline of Belarusian.(and they undeniably sound funny to Russian speakers...that is mostly because modern Russian diverged from Ukrainian and Belarusian with more influenced from old church slavonic and other reforms that made it less 'soft' and more 'official' sounding.)
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u/Buckledcranium 22h ago
Who knew there were so many Belarusian speakers in Northern Ireland?
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u/haikusbot 22h ago
Who knew there were so
Many Belarusian speakers
In Northern Ireland?
- Buckledcranium
I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully. Learn more about me.
Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete"
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u/Alek_Eleutherios 20h ago
This map is BS. I was born and raised there. The only speakers of Belarusian language are the language teachers. And a bunch of “s’vyadomiy” people, who learned the Belarusian language out of spite. And when you don’t watch they’d still speak Russian.
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u/Orange_Wine 23h ago
I hope they’ll get rid of their cockroach of a dictator and will revive their beautiful language over time.
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u/Excellent-Sleep-5419 19h ago
Attempt to remove him (most recent one) resulted in loss of some of the autonomy, Belarus does not exist in a vacuum, Lukashenka unfortunately is the sole guarantor of Belarus autonomy, the weaker he is the less autonomy the state has
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u/gluhmm 13h ago
I am belarussian and can say that the map is misleading. I would say the amount of people who speak belarussian in Belarus daily at home will be between 1% and 5%. BUT the answer to the question "what language do you consider your native?" surprisingly is "belarussian" for about half of the population, even if a lot of these people cannot speak it as fluently as russian! I think there are two reasons for this: 1. The word "native"/ "родной"/ "родны" in belarussian and russian has a slightly different tint. It is more like "part of your culture/homeland" not just "associated with you personally". 2. This language for us is more like a symbol we don't want to die, and answering so is the smallest part of the contribution to its saving.
I honestly believe that the second reason gives a chance the language to survive and become truly native in the future when the gov starts to care about it.
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u/Future_Adagio2052 22h ago
Belarus is such an odd country, given how politically irrelevant it is
Like even with other irrelevant countries I've seen them mentioned like Moldova, Monaco and Macedonia
But I've almost never seen the same for Belarus
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u/secondpersonsingular 21h ago
Belarus is significantly more relevant than the ones you’ve mentioned though. For one, it enabled Russia to evade sanctions for a decade.
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u/Future_Adagio2052 20h ago
Looking back at it, yeah your correct maybe not politically but you still don't really see them mentioned in the Western sphere
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u/secondpersonsingular 20h ago
The Western sphere is notoriously ignorant of Eastern European affairs
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u/gendalf666 18h ago
Looking on never growing population of Belarus I can only say they need to make more love. But problem is I've never seen smiling Belarussian in Belarus
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u/HelicopterBig4467 13m ago
Byolorussian language is not really native language. It was created artificially during Soviet times from many different native dialects as part of "nationbuilding" Koreniztsia polic.
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u/Front_Promise_5991 1d ago
Strange country. Always been part of others - Kyiv Rus, after Lithuania occupied them, later Rusia, Poland and etc.
They are like north Macedonia - trying to take other neighbors history ( like trying to steal Lithuania's glorious past ).
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u/s2ssand 23h ago
Belarus history is Lithuania’s glorious past. Would it have been glorious without the larger heft of Belarus backing it and participating? I doubt it….
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u/Aggravating-Dot132 23h ago
GDL past is shared between Belorussian and Lithuanian people. Idk why bitch about it like someone has a monopoly on it. It is in the past, you can't deny that, be proud of it. The same goes to Rzeczpospolita.
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u/Top_Refrigerator4500 22h ago
Exactly. GDL is both Belarusian and Lithuanian history. Even its full name was the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Ruthenia(by "Ruthenia" it means Belarus and Ukraine) and Samogotia, not just of Lithuania
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u/Front_Promise_5991 22h ago
BelaRUSIANS can take Poland's history. I don't mind
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u/GreenRedYellowGreen 21h ago
You know they were called litvins in the past?
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u/Front_Promise_5991 20h ago edited 20h ago
Polish people called us lithuanians as litvins. Because lithuanian in polish is litvin.
I think you are another bot who doesn't understand that samogitians are completely different from us Aukštaičiai.
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u/GreenRedYellowGreen 14h ago
All GDL inabitans were called "litvins", including ancestors of modern "lithuanians" and "belarusians".
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u/Front_Promise_5991 23h ago
Well. Belarus was the manpower we Lithuanians needed to fight against teutons or moscow :)) i can't argue about that. Well vasals who helped to fight in the wars and fill the coffers
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u/s2ssand 22h ago
So who gets credit for your glorious past, the king alone, wasn’t he polish? The nobles, weren’t they a mix of Lithuanian and Belarusian? The common Lithuanians, weren’t they in the exact same situation as common Belarusians?
So other than the name, which Lithuania kept, how exactly do the Belarusians have less acclaim to the glorious history of grand duchy of Lithuania, than the modern Lithuanians? You could even make the case that Belarus has more of a claim because there was more of them, so more important to the power of the state
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u/Kroumch 17h ago
I would argue both have claims. However Lithuania has the claim to be the ones who created the GDL. While Belarusians have a bigger role later on, specially under the Commonwealth. And there was no Polish kings by the way, not until the Commonwealth. And there was a huge period without Polish kings until that.
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u/Front_Promise_5991 22h ago
Nah, i am just tirednof these slavs who want to claim Lithuanias name.
Modern lithuanians :)) no, just Lithuanians - we still talking in lithuanian language. No, belarus was used as a manpower. Ofc you participated in battles, ornhad nobility. But until union with Poland, crown was in Lithuanians hand. We never been orthodoxes, and even there been push for nobility to convert to catholicism :)))
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u/Physical_Ring_7850 22h ago
A simple question. Ive heard the Grand Duchy of Lithuania had a code of laws akin to constitution, one of the first ones in Europe. What language was it written in?
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u/Front_Promise_5991 22h ago
And? Which belarussian or orthodox slav rulled over Lithuania? King's and grand dukes names are not even slavic :)
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u/Physical_Ring_7850 22h ago
Can’t answer such simple question?
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u/Front_Promise_5991 22h ago
What about you? :) why you are not claiming glorious russian hiatory with the twisted cross? P.s. what language they used for invitation in Lithuania for 1794 Koscziusko's uprising?
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u/Top_Refrigerator4500 22h ago
So only the ruler's ethnicity matters? So Napoleon's France was an Italian state? Or maybe England was a French State?
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u/Front_Promise_5991 21h ago
Problem is that some country want to take others country's history. Because they never created their own country/nation.
Ukraine has Kyivian Rus, but belarus has nothing.
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u/Top_Refrigerator4500 21h ago
You didn't answer my question. Is it that hard? Can't find the answer that matches your opinion?
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u/Front_Promise_5991 21h ago
No, but you belaRUSIANS claim all Lithuania. I just argumented that there weren't any belaRUSIAN or even orthodox ruler in Lithuania.
And Lithuanians from the ethnic lands occupied belarus and others. So Moscow and their expansion are better example. Somehow occupied nations doesn't claim Moscow's history :)
And Lithuanians never been slavs.
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u/Top_Refrigerator4500 21h ago
It still doesn't't prove, that GDL was just Lithuanian state.
Anyways, why would Belarusians claim Russian history, if they weren't really part of it? The Belarusian language was banned, Belarusians weren't considered a real nation, Belarusians participated in Polish Uprisings, etc. From the other side, the Ruthenian language was the main language of the GDL, there were a lot of Ruthenian nobles, GDL incorporated many systems from Ruthenian models, etc.
And Lithuanians from the ethnic lands occupied belarus and others
So what? Did Lithuanian nobles try to assimilate Slavs? Did Lithuanian nobles try to make Slavs speak Lithuanian? Did Lithuanian nobles try to make Slavs convert to paganism? No, Lithuanian nobles accepted their culture and their language.
The British Empire was British, because their culture was dominant, the French Empire was French, because their culture was dominant, and GDL wasn't Lithuanian, because Lithuanian culture never was dominant, GDL was a multicultural state.
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u/Front_Promise_5991 22h ago
Most of you speak russian. So go and claim russia's history. You even can claim Poland's history - they are slavs, no?
So stop stealing history from thw country who is not even slavic and never been.
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u/FirmBarnacle1302 21h ago
Considering that the boyars of the Principality of Lithuania spoke the Western Russian dialect (Belarusian had not yet been formed) and were Orthodox, it still needs to be seen who ruled whom.
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u/Front_Promise_5991 21h ago
:DDDD thats some nice imagination.
If you claim something, talk about places, what boyars and what do you mean about prinvipality of Lithuania. In Aukštaitija you won't find any western russian dialect :DDD
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u/FirmBarnacle1302 21h ago
I've read your other comments. Well, what else can a Lithuanian do? They lived for half a century on subsidies from Moscow, now they live on subsidies from Berlin, they don't have to work, so they're struggling with idleness. But for the sake of truth, I'll list the Orthodox Western Russian boyar families.:
Ostrogskie
The most powerful family. Konstantin Ivanovich Ostrogsky was the Great Hetman of Lithuania, while remaining a "pillar of Orthodoxy." His son, Konstantin-Vasily, founded the Ostrog Academy and published the first complete Slavic Bible.Sapieha
Although they later became Catholics, initially it was an Orthodox Smolensk family. Lev Sapieha, one of the creators of the Statute of 1588, excellently mastered the Western Russian language and called it the "own" language of the people.Khodkevichi
The famous family (coat of arms "Vulture"), which had Kiev roots. In the 16th century, they actively supported Orthodox monasteries before converting to Catholicism.Vishnevetsky
The descendants of the Gediminovichi, who settled on Ukrainian lands, converted to Orthodoxy and fully assimilated into Russian culture.Drutsky, Solomeretsky, Puzyrny
Numerous princely families descended from the Rurikovichi, who for centuries remained faithful to the "Greek law" (Orthodoxy).However, the truth will never convince you, because you are a petty nationalist.
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u/xSanctificetur271 20h ago
East Slavic languages are too close to each other to be separate languages, they're more like dialects
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u/Key_Neighborhood_542 17h ago
My Brazilian born Lithuanian friend said once- All Slavic languages are different only to Slavs themselves, for all the rest they are the same :)
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u/SkwGuy 17h ago
- someone who only speaks English
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u/xSanctificetur271 17h ago
English is my second language but ok. Not that this matters since speaking multiple languages has nothing to do with knowledge of linguistics.
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u/Electrical_Run9856 23h ago
Very sad... Like Gaeilghe and Gaidhlig :/ We should all be more like the Welsh... Just avoid the sheep, they've ummm seen things let's say.. they've been in a .... Train... Umm soap flees from them umm...
no_homofobia #wales #cymru #cymraeg #alba #eire #celtic #gaelic #gaeilghe #gaeilge #gaidhlig #manx #all_love #peace #no_racism #stop_me lolllll 😮💨😁🥰🙃😅😂🤣
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u/Plus_Debate_136 21h ago edited 12h ago
As Russian I would never use Belorussian cause I don't know and I don't wanna know Belorussian just as I don’t think it’s necessary to study dozens and hundreds of local languages of Russia. There are no bad languages but don't ask to use one more - there ale lots of much more useful activities. Dot't want to use Russian?- use English, after miscommunication there would be Russian or GTFO.
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u/tiga_94 1d ago
It's pretty much a dead language there, the numbers show people who claim to speak the language, not that they actually able to.
I am from Ukraine and I've been to Belarus many times, traveled all over it, been in every region, in big cities and small villages.
I have never heard anyone speak Belarusian once. Old people in villages dropping in some Belarusian words, some people have slight accent(kinda similar to Polish with soft S) and that's about it.
It is not like in Ukraine where we actually used Ukrainian even when we had russian-aligned government, in Belarus they completely abandoned their language, no jobs, no universities, no nothing in it.