Old Russian language
From Wikinfo
The Old Russian language, also called the Old Ruthenian language was a language of the ancient Rus'. It should not be confused with the Church Slavonic and Old Church Slavonic languages. This Old Ruissian language is the predecessor to the the modern Ukrainian, Rusyn, and Belarusian languages. Together with the Old Church Slavonic language, it also contributes to the modern Russian language.
The Tale of Igor's Campaign is one of the few surviving literary works in this language.
Obviously, it is not possible to consider this language as a kind of a language norm in the modern sense. It is only natural to assume that with limited literacy, the actually spoken language consisted of a variety of dialects, and today we may speak definitely only of the languages of surviving manuscripts. Since at these times manuscripts were written in monasteries, a significant influence of Old Church Slavonic was inevitable.
Related topics
References
- Adapted from the Wikipedia article, "Old_Russian_language" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Russian_language, used under the GNU Free Documentation License
