The grammar of the Belarusian language is mostly synthetic and partly analytic, and norms of the modern language were adopted in 1959. Belarusian orthography is mainly based on the Belarusian folk dialects of the Minsk-Vilnius region, such as they were at the beginning of the 20th century. Initially, Belarusian grammar was formalised by notable Belarusian linguist Branislaw Tarashkyevich and first printed in Vil'nya (1918). Historically, there had existed several other alternative Belarusian grammars. See also: Belarusian alphabet, Belarusian phonology, History of the Belarusian language.

Features

Grammatical system

The main means of representation of the grammatical meanings in the Belarusian language are: Methods of analytical construction are also present. E.g., the word "лесам", which is the instrumental of "лес" — forest, may grammatically mean:

Nouns

There are six cases in Belarusian: Historically, there also existed a vocative case (, BGN/PCGN: klichny), but it is used only sparingly in modern Belarusian, like Slovene, Slovak and the closely related Russian, generally in literature, and usually is not mentioned in textbooks. For nouns (, BGN/PCGN: nazowniki) there are several types of declension:

Pronouns

There are eight types of pronouns (, BGN/PCGN: zaymyenniki) in Belarusian: які (which), каторы (which), чый (whose), колькі (how much) той (that); такі, гэтакі (such, of this kind); столькі, гэтулькі (that much) Note: proper names and places' names are rendered in BGN/PCGN

Sources