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Learn how to speak Belarussian
Belarusian is an official
language of Belarus, along with Russian, and is spoken
abroad, mainly in Ukraine and Russia. Before Belarus gained
independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, the language was
known in English as Byelorussian or Belorussian. Following
independence, it also became known as Belarusian.
Belarusian is one of the East Slavic languages and shares
many grammatical and lexical features with other members of
the group. To some extent, Russian, Ukrainian, and
Belarusian are mutually intelligible. Its predecessor stage
is known as Ruthenian, in turn descended from Old East
Slavic (10th to 13th centuries).
In the first Belarus Census of 1999, the Belarusian language
was declared as a "language spoken at home" by about
3,686,000 Belarusian citizens (36.7% of the population).
About 6,984,000 (85.6%) of Belarusians declared it their
"mother tongue". Other sources put the "population of the
language" as 6,715,000 in Belarus and 9,081,102 worldwide.
According to a study done by the Belarusian government in
2009, 72% of Belarusians speak Russian at home, while
Belarusian is used by only 11.9% of Belarusians. 29.4% of
Belarusians can write, speak, and read Belarusian, while
52.5% can only read and speak it.
This foreign
language course was developed by groups commissioned by the
government. It is meant to be used as a crash course in
a foreign language for basic conversational ability by a
foreign traveler or diplomat. It is an introductory
course meant for beginners and includes basic conversational
language by native speakers.
This course
consists of a basic introduction to Belarussian, with text
and audio files.
There are
2 lessons in mp3 format, with multiple student texts in PDF
format totaling 648 pages. Adobe Reader is
required to view the PDF files, while the mp3 files can be
listened to by any audio player on your PC.
Total run
time of course: 1 hours, 03 minutes, 04 seconds.
A must have resource for any foreign traveler!
Notice:
Please note, this disk is only for use in your computer's
drive! It will NOT play in the DVD Player hooked up to
your TV or the CD player in your car!
This is a CD-ROM disk, so you need a CD-ROM drive on your PC
to play it.
This disk contains this
foreign language course in MP3 format. This is not for
use in your CD player, it is not for your DVD player, even
if they play MP3 disks. This disk is only formatted to
be opened in your computer. You have to insert this
disk in your PC, click on "My Computer" and click on the
disk to open the files. You can copy the MP3 files to
your PC, and then load them on to any MP3 player of your
choice. Please note: that if you try to
play this disk on anything other than your computer, it
won't work! |
