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Russian

The spoken form of Russian

In the Russian Federation, Russian is by far the largest language of all, spoken as a native language by approximately 80 per cent of the total population.

Besides Russian, a number of other languages are spoken in Russia, including specific dialects of other languages occasionally used, i.e. Plautdietsch (a form of Low German spoken in Siberia) or Yiddish. But others are individual languages of the diverse ethnic groups found in Russia: Ukrainian and Belorussian, Polish and Bulgarian (Slavic), Armenian (Armenian), Georgian (Georgian), Moldavian (Roman), Tajik (Iranian), German (Germanic), Lithuanian and Latvian (Baltic), Gipsy.

As many union republics of the former Soviet Union are now popularizing their local languages rather than Russian, Russian remains widely spoken and often used for intercommunication in these union republics.

The modern Russian is based on the dialect of Moscow, now used as the official language of the government and administration, and also used in business and education considerably.

Written Russian

Russian is written using the Cyrillic alphabet and used to write six Slavic languages (Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Serbian, Macedonian, and Bulgarian) and several other languages of Russia and the former Soviet Union, i.e. Tatar (a Turkic language) and Udmurt. If a company is thinking over doing business with Russia, it may be enough to use English only. Among other things, most people in Russia speak English due to the strong connection between Russia and the United States. However, business is always best conducted in the language of the target audience. For winning a broad audience, it is strongly recommended to communicate with the language of Moscow in business correspondence as it is the official language of the government and administration, and widely used in business and education. But the company which has a specific target already in mind may consider using a native speaker of that particular region.

Viewing the Cyrillic Font

Users often encounter problems relating to the Cyrillic font in viewing on the internet. It is important to set up the browser for sure before keeping the scrip readable on computer, otherwise messy codes other than Russian in appearance are likely to appear on the screen. This results from of the setup of most operating systems that has been provisioned to identify the Roman alphabet only. Regarding the solution to problem of this kind, it may be necessary to configure the computer settings or download software tailored for such function, where the first step is suggested to visit the website of provider directly.

For those working with windows, there is useful information at: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/using/itpro
/managing/regionalsup.asp.

For those working with Apple Mac, there is useful information at:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=60956

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