The name Old Ruthenian language has been applied to different things.
- Old East Slavic language was the language of Kievan Rus', spoken from the 9th to 14th centuries. It was the ancestor of the East Slavic languages Belarusian, Russian, Rusyn, and Ukrainian.
- Ruthenian language was its descendant which was spoken in the historic Grand Duchy of Lithuania from the 15th to 18th centuries. It was the ancestor of modern Belarusian, Rusyn, and Ukrainian languages.
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture. Language is fossil poetry. As the limestone of the continent consists of infinite masses of the shells of animalcules, so language is made up of images or tropes, which now, in their secondary use, have long ceased to remind us of their poetic origin.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)