East Slavic languages in the context of "Pereyaslavets"

The South Slavic languages are one of three branches of the Slavic languages. There are approximately 30 million speakers, mainly in the Balkans. These are separated geographically from speakers of the other two Slavic branches (West and East) by a belt of Austrian German, Hungarian and Romanian speakers.

The East Slavs are the most populous subgroup of the Slavs. They speak the East Slavic languages, and formed the majority of the population of the medieval state Kievan Rus', which they consider their cultural ancestor. Belarusians, Russians and Ukrainians are the existing East Slavic groups. Rusyns are sometimes considered a separate nation, though they are often considered a subgroup of Ukrainians.

Rusyns, also known as Carpatho-Rusyns, Carpatho-Russians, Ruthenians, or Rusnaks, are an East Slavic ethnic group from the Eastern Carpathians in Central and Eastern Europe. They speak Rusyn, an East Slavic language variety, treated variously as either a distinct language or a dialect of the Ukrainian language. As traditional adherents of Eastern Christianity, the majority of Rusyns are Eastern Catholics, though a minority of Rusyns practice Eastern Orthodoxy.

Rusyns primarily self-identify as a distinct ethnic group and are recognized as such in all countries where they exist, with the exception of Ukraine, which officially classifies Rusyns as a sub-group of Ukrainians. In Croatia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Serbia, and Slovakia, Rusyns have official minority status. Some Rusyns identify more closely with their country of residence (e.g. Polish, Slovak), while others self-identify as a branch of the Ukrainian people.

Ukrainian (українська мова, ukrainska mova, IPA: [ʊkrɐˈjinʲsʲkɐ ˈmɔwɐ]) is an East Slavic language, spoken primarily in Ukraine. It is the first (native) language of a large majority of Ukrainians.

Written Ukrainian uses the Ukrainian alphabet, a variant of the Cyrillic script. The standard language is studied by the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and Potebnia Institute of Linguistics. Comparisons are often made between Ukrainian and Russian, another East Slavic language, yet there is more mutual intelligibility with Belarusian, and a closer lexical distance to West Slavic Polish and South Slavic Bulgarian.

The Cossacks are a predominantly East Slavic, Eastern Christian people, originating from the Pontic–Caspian steppe of eastern Ukraine and southern Russia. Cossacks played an important role in defending the southern borders of Ukraine and Russia, countering the Crimean-Nogai raids, alongside economically developing steppe regions north of the Black Sea and around the Azov Sea. Historically, they were a semi-nomadic and semi-militarized people, who were allowed a great degree of self-governance in exchange for military service under the nominal suzerainty of various Eastern European states. Although numerous ethnic, linguistic and religious groups came together to form the Cossacks, most of them gradually coalesced and Slavicized, thereby adopting East Slavic culture, East Slavic languages and Eastern Orthodox Christianity.

The rulers of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and Russian Empire endowed Cossacks with certain special privileges in return for the military duty to serve in the irregular troops: Zaporozhian Cossacks were mostly infantry soldiers, using war wagons, while Don Cossacks were mostly cavalry soldiers. The various Cossack groups were organized along military lines, with large autonomous groups called hosts. Each host had a territory consisting of affiliated villages called stanitsas.

Belarusian (endonym: беларуская мова, romanized: bielaruskaja mova, pronounced [bʲɛlaˈruskaja ˈmɔva]) is an East Slavic language. It is one of the two official languages in Belarus, the other being Russian. It is also spoken in parts of Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland (where it is the official language in 5 bilingual municipalities), Ukraine, and the United States by the Belarusian diaspora.

Before Belarus gained independence in 1991, the language was known in English as Byelorussian or Belorussian, or alternatively as White Russian. Following independence, it became known as Belarusian, or alternatively as Belarusan.

Rusyn (/ˈruːsɪn/ ROO-sin; Carpathian Rusyn: русиньскый язык, romanized: rusîn'skyj jazyk; Pannonian Rusyn: руски язик, romanized: ruski jazik) is an East Slavic language spoken by Rusyns in parts of Central and Eastern Europe, and written in the Cyrillic script. The majority of speakers live in Carpathian Ruthenia, which includes Transcarpathia and parts of eastern Slovakia and south-eastern Poland. There is also a sizeable Pannonian Rusyn linguistic island in Vojvodina, Serbia, and a Rusyn diaspora worldwide. Under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, it is recognized as a protected minority language by Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Hungary, Romania, Poland (as Lemko), Serbia, and Slovakia.

The categorization of Rusyn as a language or dialect is a source of controversy. Czech, Slovak, and Hungarian, as well as American and some Polish and Serbian linguists treat it as a distinct language (with its own ISO 639-3 code), whereas other scholars (in Ukraine, Poland, Serbia, and Romania) treat it as a dialect of Ukrainian.