Knowledge

Russian Language Day 2020 -History and Importance

The United Nations celebrates Russian Language Day on June 6, the birthday of the great Russian poet Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin as part of a program to promote and develop multilingualism and cultural diversity.

Alexander Pushkin was a Russian poet, dramatist and Romantic writer who is generally regarded as the most respected Russian author and founder of modern Russian literature.Critics consider many of his plays as masterpieces, including The Bronze Horseman and The Stone Guest, a tale about Don Juan ‘s collapse.

Multilingualism is of special importance to the United Nations, which is an important factor in harmonious communication between peoples. It also ensures the efficient and more active participation of all in the work cycle of the Company and greater productivity , better performance and greater engagement of the parties by fostering tolerance. Multilingualism must, for the sake of sharing and cooperation, be sustained and encouraged by various initiatives within the United Nations framework.

Russian is spoken by 260 million people worldwide, 137 million of whom are Russian. It is the official language and is a well-known regional language of Russia , Belarus, Kazakhstan , Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. Russian is also an important minority language in the Baltic and Central Asian countries and still used in the former Soviet countries as the Lingua Franca language.

Russian has strong resemblances to Belorussian and Ukrainian. With the adoption of Christianity, a new alphabet-the cyrillic alphabet-was created. In the 18th century Russian was standardized, and then modified after the Russian Revolution of 1917.

Astronauts have to learn Russian together with English and both languages is used in the ISS computer system.