Belarusian is an Eastern Slavonic language with about 7.5
million speakers in Belarus. It is closely related to Russian
and Ukrainian. Most Belarusians are bilingual in Belarusian and
Russian. The country now known as the Belarus was part of the
Grand Duchy of Lithuania from the mid 13th century until the end
of the 18th century. An archaic form of Belarusian known as "Old
Belarusian" was the offical language of the Grand Duchy and and
was initially written with the Cyrillic alphabet. Due to the
domination of the Greek Orthodox Church in the region, the
written form of Belarusian was heavily influenced by Church
Slavonic, the liturgical language of the Orthodox church. During
the 16th century a Reformation and Counter-Reformation led to
the purging of Church Slavonic elements from literary
Belarusian. It was also during this period that handwritten
Belarusian texts started to appear in the Latin alphabet
(Lacinka). The earliest known printed Belarusian text in the
Latin alphabet appeared in Witanie na Pierwsz