Indo-European · ISO 639-3 bel · be
Belarusian Language беларуская
Belarusian is an Indo-European language spoken by about 9.5 million people in 4 countries. It is an official language of Belarus. It is written in the Cyrillic and Latin scripts.
Where Belarusian is spoken
- Official language
- Regional official
- Spoken by 10%+
- 1–10%
- Smaller communities
Countries that speak Belarusian
About the Belarusian language
Belarusian (беларуская) is spoken by about 9.5 million people, which makes it the 128th most spoken language in the world — just behind Dari (9.6 million) and ahead of Umbundu (9.4 million). It belongs to the Indo-European language family and, more precisely, to the East Slavic group within the Balto-Slavic branch.
Where is Belarusian spoken?
Belarusian is used in 4 countries. The largest communities live in Belarus (2.5 million), Ukraine (295,992), Poland (224,728) and Russia (63,369).
Share of the population that speaks Belarusian: Belarus 26% (2.5 million), Ukraine 0.8% (295,992), Poland 0.6% (224,728) and Russia <0.1% (63,369).
Belarusian is an official language in 1 country: Belarus.
Writing system and status
Belarusian is written in the Cyrillic and Latin scripts. Glottolog classifies it as threatened, meaning fewer children learn it than in the past.
Its closest relatives in the same branch of the family are Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Czech, Bulgarian, Slovak and 2 more.
ISO codes: ISO 639-1 be, ISO 639-3 bel.
Frequently asked questions about Belarusian
How many people speak Belarusian?
Where is Belarusian spoken?
In which countries is Belarusian an official language?
What language family does Belarusian belong to?
What is Belarusian called in Belarusian?
Is Belarusian an endangered language?
Data: Languages of the World dataset (MIT) — ISO 639-3, Glottolog (CC BY 4.0), Unicode CLDR, Google LinguaMeta (CC BY 4.0) and Wikidata; country lists: samayo/country-json (MIT). Speaker numbers include first- and second-language speakers where sources report them.