Middle Russian (; also Old Great Russian , or Old Russian ) is the Russian language of the 14thâÂÂ17th centuries, from the time of the division of Old Russian into the distinctive languages of Great Russian and West Russian (or Old Belarusian and Old Ukrainian), until the reforms of Peter the Great.
The Central Russian period in the history of the Russian language is further divided into two distinct subperiods: Early Middle Russian (14thâÂÂ15th centuries) and Late Middle Russian (16thâÂÂ17th centuries).
Various terms are used in scholarly literature, such as Middle Russian, Old Great Russian, and Old Russian (ÃÂÃÂõôýõÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂúøù, ÃÂÃÂðÃÂþòõûøúþÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂúøù, ÃÂÃÂðÃÂþÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂúøù). These terms are applied primarily to units of language (words) to determine their age or time of written recording.
In the history of the Russian language, three main periods are distinguished: Old Russian (Old East Slavic; ôÃÂõòýõÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂúøù), common to proper Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian languages (6th-14th centuries), Old Russian/Middle Russian (ÃÂÃÂðÃÂþÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂúøù; 14th-17th centuries) and the period of the national Russian language (from the middle of the 17th century).
During this period, phonetic, morphological and syntactic systems, close to the systems of the modern Russian language, begin to form; such linguistic changes occur as:
Among the dialects that developed in the future Great Russian territory in the second half of the 12th â first half of the 13th century (Novgorod, Pskov, , , and the of the upper and middle Oka and the Oka-Seym interfluve), Rostov-Suzdal became the leading one, primarily its Moscow dialects. From the second quarter of the 14th century, Moscow became the political and cultural center of the Great Russian lands, and in the 15th century, vast Russian lands, included in the Grand Principality of Moscow, were united under the rule of Moscow. Based primarily on Moscow dialects, as well as some linguistic elements from other Russian dialects (Ryazan, Novgorod, etc.), the norms of Moscow colloquial speech gradually developed by the 16th century. They combined northern Russian (the explosive consonant ó, the hard àin third-person verb endings, etc.) and southern Russian features (akanye, etc.). Moscow koine became exemplary, spreading to other Russian cities and exerting a strong influence on the Old Russian written language. The emergence of in the 15th and 16th centuries, which led to the publication of church and civil books in the , also contributed to the unification of the language. Many official documents and works from the 15th to 17th centuries were written in a language with a Muscovite colloquial basis (Afanasy Nikitin's A Journey Beyond the Three Seas, the works of Ivan IV the Terrible, The Tale of Peter and Fevronia of Murom, The Tale of the Capture of Pskov, satirical literature, etc.).
During the Old Russian period, the dialectal division of the Russian language changed; by the 17th century, two large dialectal groupings had formedâÂÂNorthern Russian and Southern Russian group of dialects, as well as the transitional Central Russian dialects between them.
In the 14thâÂÂ17th centuries, literary bilingualism gradually emerged, replacing diglossia: , continued to coexist with the Russian literary language proper, based on vernacular speech. Between these idioms, various transitional types emerged. Contradictory tendencies were observed in literary and linguistic processes: on the one hand, from the end of the 14th century, literature of various genres emerged, based on vernacular speech, accessible to broad strata of Russian society; on the other hand, under the influence of the so-called , the language of many works became increasingly archaic; the resulting bookish "weaving of words" increasingly diverged from the vernacular speech of the time.
The German philologist Heinrich Ludolf wrote: âÂÂBut just as no Russian can write or discuss scientific matters without using the Slavic language, so, conversely, no one can get by with the Slavic language alone in domestic and intimate conversations, because the names of most ordinary things used in everyday life are not found in the books from which the Slavic language is learned. So they say that one must speak Russian and write in Slavic.â Innovative in this sense was the âÂÂ,â written by Avvakum in âÂÂnatural Russian,â that is, in many ways, in the vernacular. This is clearly evident from a comparison of the following examples:
The 16th century saw the grammatical normalization of the Muscovite written language, which became the single, national language of the Russian Tsardom. Due to the Muscovite Tsardom's ambitions to become the Third Rome, Muscovite business language from the late 15th to early 16th centuries was deliberately archaized and regulated along the lines of literary Slavic-Russian (compare, for example, the prevalence of the pronoun forms ÃÂõñã, ÃÂõñã in the 16th century, compared to the prevalence of the vernacular forms ÃÂþñã, ÃÂþñã in the 15th century). In a high, literary, rhetorical style, artificial neologisms were formed based on archaic models, as were compound words (such asòõûøúþ÷ûþñÃÂÃÂòþ, ÷òõÃÂþþñÃÂð÷ÃÂÃÂòþ, òûðÃÂÃÂþôõÃÂöðòõÃÂ, öõýþÃÂÃÂõòÃÂÃÂòþ, and the like).
Church Slavonic orthography was codified in the grammars of Lavrentiy Zizaniy (1596) and Meletius Smotrytsky (1619). A century later, Vasily Trediakovsky, while still studying at the Slavic Greek Latin Academy, noted that Smotritsky's desire to base Russian grammar on formal Greek models contradicted the nature of Slavic speech. Then, in his 1648 edition, Maximus the Greek imbued Smotritsky's grammar with sacred significance, which a hundred years later required a rethinking. Before Trediakovsky, began doing this in his Grammar, written in the late 1740s, and Vasily Kirillovich mentions him, although without naming him, as "such a man who was once at the Academyâ¦".
The Moscow official language, virtually free of Church Slavonicisms, had reached a high level of development by the early 17th century. It was used not only in government and legal documents and contracts, but also in almost all correspondence between the Moscow government and the Moscow intelligentsia. Articles and books of a wide variety of content were written in it: legal codes, memoirs, economic, political, geographical, and historical works, medical books, and cookbooks.
The southwestern influence emanating from the PolishâÂÂLithuanian Commonwealth brought a flood of Europeanisms into Russian literary speech. In the 17th century, the influence of Latin, the international language of science and culture, grew (cf. Latinisms in 17th-century RussianâÂÂin terms of mathematics: òõÃÂÃÂøúðûÃÂýÃÂù, ýÃÂüõÃÂðÃÂøÃÂ, üÃÂûÃÂÃÂøÿûøúðÃÂøÃÂ, ÃÂøóÃÂÃÂð, ÿÃÂýúÃÂ; in geography: óûþñÃÂÃÂ, óÃÂðôÃÂàetc.; in astronomy: ôõúûøýðÃÂøÃÂ, üøýÃÂÃÂð etc.; in military affairs: ôøÃÂÃÂðýÃÂøÃÂ, ÃÂþÃÂÃÂõÃÂøÃÂ; in civil sciences: øýÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂúÃÂøÃÂ, ÃÂõýÃÂõýÃÂøÃÂ, ðÿõûûÃÂÃÂøÃÂ). The influence of Latin was also reflected in the syntactic system of RussianâÂÂin the construction of the book period. Polish also served as a supplier of European scientific, legal, administrative, technical, and secular words and concepts.