What is Old East Slavic and when was it spoken?
Old East Slavic is a Slavic language used in the 10th to 15th centuries across Kievan Rus'. Scholars debate whether this term or Old Russian better describes the tongue spoken during that period.
Questions about Old East Slavic
Short answers, pulled from the story.
Who proposed Common Russian as an alternative name for Old East Slavic?
Ukrainian-American linguist George Shevelov proposed Common Russian as a neutral term. He believed this name better reflected the hypothetical uniform language of early East Slavs before regional dialects emerged.
When did specific letters vanish or merge in Old East Slavic?
By the 13th century specific letters had vanished or merged into new sounds within the language. The soft sign and hard sign either became silent or combined with e and o respectively while nasal vowels disappeared by merging with other characters.
Which manuscripts contain key texts from the Old East Slavic period?
The Laurentian Codex of the 2nd of May 1377 contains one of the earliest surviving manuscripts of the Primary Chronicle. Another key text is The Tale of Igor's Campaign preserved in a fifteenth-century Pskov manuscript.
What were the main dialectal differences in Old East Slavic geography?
Major differences divided north-west areas around Velikiy Novgorod and Pskov versus central zones near Kyiv Suzdal Rostov and Moscow. By the 14th or 15th century these geographical divisions separated modern Belarus Russia and Ukraine rather than creating national languages.