Belarusian

The Belarusian language, or the Belarusan (byelaruskaya mova) is the language of the Belarusians and is spoken about 7.5 million people in Belarus. It is also spoken in Russia, Ukraine, and Poland. It is the official language of Belarus along with Russian.
Before Belarus gained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1992, Belarus was called in English as Byelorussian or Belorussian, the transliteration of its Russian name.

Belarusian is one of the East Slavic languages, and shares many grammatical and lexical features with other members of the group. The current Belarusian came from Old Belarusian (14th to 17th centuries) which descended from Old East Slavic (10th to 13th centuries).

The Belarusian alphabet is a form of the Cyrillic alphabet, which was first used for the Old Church Slavonic language. The modern Belarusian form was determined in 1918 and consists of thirty-two letters. In the past Belarusian has also been written in the Glagolitic script, Hebrew script, the Belarusian Latin alphabet, and the Belarusian Arabic alphabet. There are several systems of romanizing written Belarusian text.

Standardized Belarusian grammar in its modern form was adopted in 1959, with minor amendments in 1985. It was developed from the initial form set down by Branislaw Tarashkyevich in 1918.

The two main dialects of the Belarusian are the North-Eastern and the South-Western. There are also the transitional Middle Belarusian and the West Palyesian dialect groups.

The North-Eastern and the South-Western dialects are separated by the highly conventional imaginary line Ashmyany–Minsk–Babruysk–Homyel, with the area of the Middle Belarusian dialect group placed on and along this line. The West Palyesian dialect group is close to Ukrainian language in many aspects and is more distinct linguistically. It is separated by the conventional line Pruzhany–Ivatsevichy–Telekhany–Luninyets–Stolin.

Info: Wikipedia