The Cyrillic alphabet (; also called azbuka, from the old name of the first two letters) is a family of alphabets, subsets of which are used by six Slavic national languages (Belarusian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, Serbian and Ukrainian) as well as non-Slavic (Kazakh, Uzbek, Kyrgyz and Tajik of the former Soviet Union, and Mongolian). It is also used by many other languages of Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Siberia and other languages in the past. Not all letters in the Cyrillic alphabet are used in every language that is written with it.

The alphabet has official status with many organisations. With the accession of Bulgaria to the European Union on 1 January 2007, Cyrillic became the third official alphabet of the EU.

This is a list of languages that have been written in the Cyrillic alphabet at one time or another. See also early Cyrillic alphabet.

Category: Image - :Cyrillic alphabet distribution map.png|thumb|right|350px|Distribution of the Cyrillic alphabet worldwide. The dark green shows the countries that use Cyrillic as the one main script; the lighter green those that use Cyrillic alongside another official script.

The Belarusian language, or Belorussian (?????????? ????, BGN/PCGN: byelaruskaya mova, Scientific: belaruskaja mova, ?acinka: bie?aruskaja mova) is the language of the Belarusian people and is spoken in Belarus and abroad, chiefly in Russia, Ukraine, and Poland.Also spoken in Azerbaijan, Canada, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, USA, Uzbekistan, per Ethnologue. Prior to Belarus gaining its independence from the Soviet Union in 1992, the language was called "Byelorussian" or "Belorussian" (in accordance with the ethnicity and country names: Byelorussians, Byelorussia, the latter being a transliteration from the Russian language.). It belongs to the group of the East Slavonic languages, and shares many grammatical and lexical features with other members of the group. Its predecessor was the Old Belarusian language (up to the 19th cent., conventionally).

In Belarus, the Belarusian language is declared as a "language spoken at home" by about 3,686,000 people (36.7% of the population)Of these, about 3,370,000 (41.3%) are Belarusians, and about 257,000 belong to other major nationalities (Russians, Poles, Ukrainians, Jews). as of 1999.Data from 1999 Belarusian general census In English. By less strict criteria, about 6,984,000 (85.6%) of Belarusians declare it their "mother tongue". Other sources put down the "population of the language" as 6,715,000 in Belarus and 9,081,102 in all countries.(Johnstone and Mandryk 2001) as cited on Ethnologue.In Russia, the Belarusian language is declared as a "familiar language" by about 316,000 inhabitants, among them, about 248,000 Belarusians, which comprise about 30.7% of Belarusians living in Russia (data from 2002 Russian general census In Russian). In Ukraine, the Belarusian language is declared as a "native language" by about 55,000 Belarusians, which comprise about 19.7% of Belarusians living in Ukraine (data from 2001 Ukrainian census In Ukrainian). In Poland, the Belarusian language is declared as a "language spoken at home" by about 40,000 inhabitants (data from 2002 Polish general census Table 34 (in Polish)).

The Belarusian language is the official language of Belarus, along with Russian.Section One of the Constitution, Webportal of the President of the Republic of Belarus , Published 1994, amended in 1996. Retrieved June 07, 2007.

Bulgarian (????????? ????, Category: Help - :IPA|IPA: ) is an Indo-European language, a member of the Slavic linguistic group.

Bulgarian demonstrates several linguistic innovations that set it apart from all other Slavic languages except Macedonian, such as the elimination of case declension, the development of a suffixed definite article (see Balkan linguistic union), the lack of a verb infinitive, and the retention and further development of the proto-Slavic verb system. Various verb forms exist to express unwitnessed, retold, and doubtful action. As of 2007 there are more than 12 million people around the world who speak Bulgarian fluently.

Macedonian (, ) is the official language of the Republic of Macedonia and is a part of the Eastern group of South Slavic languages. Macedonian is closely related to and shares a high degree of mutual intelligibility with the Bulgarian and Serbian languages.Language profile Macedonian, UCLA International Institute

The name of the Macedonian language is controversial in Greece and part of an ongoing dispute, while many linguists from Bulgaria consider the Slavic dialects spoken in the region of Macedonia as a part of the Bulgarian diasystem.

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Russian (, transliteration: '', ) is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages, and the largest native language in Europe. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of three (or, according to some authorities , four) living members of the East Slavic languages, the others being Belarusian and Ukrainian (and possibly Rusyn, often considered a dialect of Ukrainian). It is also spoken by the countries of the Russophone.

Written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century onwards. Today Russian is widely used outside Russia. It is applied as a means of coding and storage of universal knowledge ? 60?70% of all world information is published in English and Russian languages.Moscow State University, Russian Language Centre - Official website Over a quarter of the worlds scientific literature is published in Russian. Russian is also a necessary accessory of world communications systems (broadcasts, air- and space communication, etc). Due to the status of the Soviet Union as a superpower, Russian had great political importance in the 20th century. Hence, the language is one of the official languages of the United Nations.

Russian distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without, the so-called soft and hard sounds. This distinction is found between pairs of almost all consonants and is one of the most distinguishing features of the language. Another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels, which is somewhat similar to that of English. Stress, which is unpredictable, is not normally indicated orthographically though, according to the Institute of Russian Language of the Russian Academy of Sciences, an optional acute accent ('''') may, and sometimes should, be used to mark stress (such as to distinguish between otherwise identical words or to indicate the proper pronunciation of uncommon words or names).

Rusyn (; ) is an East Slavic language (along with Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian, with which it shares a common linguistic ancestry) that is spoken by the Rusyns. Opinions differ among linguists concerning whether Rusyn is a separate East Slavic language or a dialect of Ukrainian.RFE/RL on intolerance in Belarus and Ruthenians in Ukraine The political implications of the dispute add to the controversy.

Rusyn is spoken in the Transcarpathian Region of Ukraine, in northeastern Slovakia, southeastern Poland (where it is often called ?emkowski 'Lemko', from their characteristic word lem/??? 'only'), and Hungary (where the people and language are called Ruten). The Pannonian Rusyn language in Serbia is sometimes considered part of the Rusyn language group, although some linguists consider that language to be West Slavic. In Ukraine, Rusyn is usually considered a dialect of Ukrainian, as it is very close to the Ukrainian Hutsul dialect, but some speakers sometimes prefer to consider themselves distinct from Ukrainians.

Attempts to standardize the language suffer from its being divided among four countries, so that in each of these countries there has been devised a separate orthography (in each case with Cyrillic letters) and grammatical standard, based on different Rusyn dialects. The cultural centres of Carpatho-Rusyn are Pre?ov in Slovakia, Uzhhorod and Mukacheve in Ukraine, Krynica and Legnica in Poland, and Budapest in Hungary. Many very active Rusyns also live in Canada and the USA.

It is very difficult to count the speakers of Rusyn, but their number is sometimes estimated at almost a million, most of them in Ukraine and Slovakia. The first country to officially recognize Rusyn, more exactly Pannonian Rusyn, as an official language was former Yugoslavia. In 1995, Rusyn was recognized as a minority language in Slovakia, enjoying the status of official language in municipalities where more than 20% of the inhabitants speak Rusyn.

* The Rusyn language is divided as follows:

** Hutsul is spoken in the mountainous part of Suceava County and Maramures County in Romania and the extreme southern parts of the Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast of Ukraine (as well as in parts of the Chernivtsi and Transcarpathian Oblasts), and on the northern slopes of the Carpathian Mountains.

** Boyko is spoken on the northern side of the Carpathian Mountains in the Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk Oblasts of Ukraine. It can also be heard across the border in the Subcarpathian Voivodship of Poland

** Lemko is spoken outside Ukraine in the Pre?ov Region of Slovakia along the southern side of the Carpathian Mountains. It was formerly spoken on the northern side of the same mountains, in what is now southeastern Poland, prior to Operation Wis?a, but is being revived.

** Dolinian Rusyn or Subcarpathian Rusyn is spoken in the Transcarpathian Oblast of Ukraine.

** Pryashiv Rusyn is the Rusyn spoken in the Pre?ov Region (in Rusyn: Pryashiv/Pryashuv) of Slovakia, as well as by some émigré communities, primarily in the United States of America.

** Pannonian Rusyn is spoken in northwestern Serbia and eastern Croatia. Also called Ba?ka dialect, it is one of the official languages of the Serbian Autonomous Province of Vojvodina).

Boiko, Hutsul and Dolinian are identified (and for the same speakers) as Ukrainian dialects and not Rusyn for several speakers that they are identified themselves Ukrainians.

In the introduction to the book "Slavic languages," written in 1973, ten years before glasnost, Samuel Bernshtein writes about "western Ukrainians" and the "literary language" which they "until recently 1973" had.

Serbian (; ) is a South Slavic language, spoken chiefly in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia, and in the Serbian diaspora. Standard Serbian is based on Shtokavian dialect, like modern Croatian and Bosniak (which was formerly known as Serbo-Croatian), with which it is mutually intelligible, and was previously unified with under the standard known as Serbo-Croatian. It counts among official (and minority) languages of Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia, Romania, Republic of Macedonia and Hungary.

Two alphabets are used to write Serbian: a variation on the Cyrillic alphabet, devised by Vuk Karad?i?, and a variation on the Latin alphabet, devised by Ljudevit Gaj.

Serbian orthography is very consistent: approximation of the principle "one letter per sound". This principle is represented by Adelung's saying, "Write as you speak and read as it is written", the principle used by Vuk Stefanovi? Karad?i? when reforming the Cyrillic orthography of Serbian in the 19th century.

Ukrainian (in Ukrainian: ??????????? ?????, ukrayinska mova, ) is a language of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages. It is the official state language of Ukraine. Written Ukrainian uses a Cyrillic alphabet. The language shares some vocabulary with the languages of the neighboring Slavic nations, most notably with Polish, Slovak in the West and Belarusan, Russian in the North and the East.

The Ukrainian language traces its origins to the Old Slavic language of the early medieval state of Kievan Rus. In its earlier stages it was called Ruthenian. Ukrainian is a lineal descendant of the colloquial language used in Kievan Rus (10th?13th century).Ukrainian language, Encyclopædia Britannica

The language has persisted despite several periods of bans and/or discouragement throughout centuries as it has always maintained a sufficient base among the people of Ukraine, its folklore songs, itinerant musicians, and prominent authors.

Old East Slavic, also known as Old Russian () or Old Ruthenian, was a vernacular literary language used from the 10th to the 14th centuries by East Slavs in Kievan Rus' and states which formed after its collapse. Dialects of it were spoken, though not exclusively, roughly in the area today occupied by the European part of Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and several eastern voivodships of Poland.

As the language is part of the (pre-)national history of all East Slavs, in recent years it has been increasingly named as:

*Old Belarusian (Belarusian ??????????????? or ???????????????????? ????) instead of traditional supranational ???????????????? ???? or

*Old Ukrainian (Ukrainian ??????????????? or ???????????????? ????) (old Ukrainian Language) or ?????????????? ???? (old Kievan Language) rather than ???????????? ???? (Old Rus Language).

Category: Image - :Slavic europe.svg|thumb|300px|Countries with majority Slavic ethnicities and at least one Slavic national language

The Slavic peoples are an ethnic and linguistic branch of Indo-European peoples, living mainly in Europe. From the early 6th century they spread from their original homeland (most commonly thought to be in Eastern Europe) to inhabit most of eastern Central Europe, Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Geography and ethnic geography of the Balkans to 1500 Many settled later in SiberiaFiona Hill, Russia ? Coming In From the Cold?, The Globalist, 23 February 2004 and Central AsiaRobert Greenall, Russians left behind in Central Asia, BBC News, 23 November 2005. or emigrated to other parts of the world.Terry Kirby, 750,000 and rising: how Polish workers have built a home in Britain, The Independent, 11 February 2006.Poles in the United States, Catholic Encyclopedia . Today about one third of all Europeans are of Slavic descent.

Modern nations and ethnic groups called by the ethnonym "Slavs" are considerably genetically and culturally diverse and relations between them are varied, ranging from a sense of connection to feelings of mutual resentment. "Kundera emphasized that for a thousand years the Czechs never had any direct contact with Russia. In spite of their linguistic kinship, the Czechs and the Russians never shared a common world, neither a common history of common culture.(...) Joseph Conrad wrote that "nothing could be more alien to what is called in literary world "the Slavic spirit" than the Polish temperament with its chivalric devotion to moral constraints and its exaggerated respect for individual rights" History of Eastern Europe: Crisis and Change. Robert Bideleux. Routledge 1998.(accentuation added. . From its beginning, Poland drew its primary inspiration from Western Europe and developed a closer affinity with the French and Italians, for example, than with nearer Slavic neighbours of Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine heritage . This westward orientation, which in some ways has made Poland the easternmost outpost of Latinate and Catholic tradition, helps to explain the Poles tenacious sense of belonging to the "West" and their deeply rooted antagonism toward Russia as the representative of an essentially alien way of life .U.S. Library of Congress[http://countrystudies.us/poland/5.htm]accentuation added).

Slavic peoples are classified geographically into West Slavic (including Czechs, Kashubians, Moravians, Poles, Silesians, Slovaks and Sorbs), East Slavic (including Belarusians, Russians, Rusyns and Ukrainians), and South Slavic (including Bosniaks, Bulgarians, Croats, Macedonians, Montenegrins, Serbs and Slovenes). For a more comprehensive list, see Ethno-cultural subdivisions.

Genetically, however, a recent study[http://www.springerlink.com/content/c3ht013txp686v71/ Rebala K et al. (2007), Y-STR variation among Slavs: evidence for the Slavic homeland in the middle Dnieper basin'', Journal of Human Genetics, 52:406-14] of chromosome Y reveals only two groups of Slavic peoples, one encompassing all Western-Slavic, Eastern-Slavic, and two Southern-Slavic populations (Croats, Slovenes), and the other group encompassing all remaining Southern Slavs.