Belarus Languages

Belarus

After World War II, the Soviets attempted cultural assimilation through language controls. They changed Belarusian grammar to conform with Russian, and eliminated Polish words in the language. As of 1995, Belarusian and Russian are officially given equal status as the languages of Belarus. Russian is commonly spoken, is the preferred language of the media, and is the language of the genealogical sources. Belarusian is written in Cyrillic and is closely related to both Ukrainian and Russian.