Old East Slavic

Old East Slavic (traditionally also Old Russian) was a language (or a group of dialects) used by the East Slavs from the 7th or 8th century to the 13th or 14th century, until it diverged into the Russian and Ruthenian languages. Ruthenian eventually evolved into the Belarusian, Rusyn, and Ukrainian languages.

Terminology

The term Old East Slavic is used in reference to the common ancestor of the modern family of East Slavic languages. However, it is not universally applied. The language is also traditionally known as Old Russian; however, the term may be viewed as anachronistic. In English, the adjective Russian historically translates both русский (pertaining to modern Russia) and русьский (pertaining to medieval Rus'), which can conflate the common ancestor of all East Slavic languages with modern Russian. Because the initial stages of the language which it denotes predate the dialectal divisions marking the nascent distinction between modern East Slavic languages, a number of authors have proposed using Old East Slavic as a more appropriate and neutral term. While Old Russian is sometimes used for the written language in Russia up to the 18th century, linguists usually divide this span into two periods: the early common stage (often called Old East Slavic) and the later period after the split, known as Middle Russian.

Some scholars have also called the language Old Rus'ian or Old Rusan, Rusian, or simply Rus, although these are the least commonly used forms.

Ukrainian-American linguist George Shevelov used the term Common Russian or Common Eastern Slavic to refer to the hypothetical uniform language of the East Slavs.