Russian language:
Russian is an East Slavic language native to the Russians in Eastern Europe. It is an official language in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and is used widely throughout the Caucasus, Central Asia, and to some extent in the Baltic states. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages, one of the four living members of the East Slavic languages alongside and part of the giant Balto-Slavic branch. Russian is the largest native language in Europe and the most geographically widespread language in Eurasia. It is the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages, with over 258 million total speakers worldwide. It is the seventh most spoken language in the world by the number of native speakers and the eighth-most spoken language in the world by total number of speakers. Russian is written using the Cyrillic script; it distinguishes between consonant phonemes with secondary palatal articulation and those without soft and hard sounds. Almost every consonant has a hard or a soft counterpart, and the distinction is a prominent feature of the language.