Slavic languages | List, Definition, Origin, Map, Tree, History, & Number of Speakers (2024)

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Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov Director, Research Institute of World Culture, Moscow Lomonosov State University. Professor, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, and Professor, Program of Indo-European Studies, University...

Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov,

Wayles Browne Professor Emeritus of Linguistics, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. Co-author of A Handbook of Bosnian, Serbian, and Croatian and several volumes of Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics.

Wayles BrowneAll

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Last Updated: May 17, 2024•Article History

Slavic languages: distribution in Europe

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Also called:: Slavonic languages

Key People:: Roman Jakobson; Josef Dobrovský; August Leskien; Pavel Josef Šafařík; Nikolay Sergeyevich Trubetskoy

Related Topics:: Old Church Slavonic language; West Slavic languages; South Slavic languages; East Slavic languages; Proto-Slavic language

On the Web:: Internet Archive - Introduction to the Phonological History of the Slavic Languages (1991) (May 17, 2024)

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Slavic languages, group of Indo-European languages spoken in most of eastern Europe, much of the Balkans, parts of central Europe, and the northern part of Asia. The Slavic languages, spoken by some 315 million people at the turn of the 21st century, are most closely related to the languages of the Baltic group (Lithuanian, Latvian, and the now-extinct Old Prussian), but they share certain linguistic innovations with the other eastern Indo-European language groups (such as Indo-Iranian and Armenian) as well. From their homeland in east-central Europe (Poland or Ukraine), the Slavic languages have spread to the territory of the Balkans (Bulgarian; Macedonian; Slovene; and Serbian, Bosnian, Croatian, and Montenegrin [sometimes grouped together as Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian]), central Europe (Czech and Slovak), eastern Europe (Belarusian, Ukrainian, and Russian), and the northern parts of Asia (Russian). In addition, Russian is used as a second language by most inhabitants of the countries that were formerly part of the Soviet Union. Some of the Slavic languages have been used by writers of worldwide significance (e.g., Russian, Polish, and Czech), and the Church Slavonic language remains in use in the services in the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Languages of the family

The Slavic language group is classified into three branches: (1) the South Slavic branch, with its two subgroups Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian-Slovene and Bulgarian-Macedonian, (2) the West Slavic branch, with its three subgroups Czech-Slovak, Sorbian, and Lekhitic (Polish and related tongues), and (3) the East Slavic branch, comprising Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian.

In the spoken Slavic dialects (as opposed to the sharply differentiated literary languages), the linguistic frontiers are not always apparent. There are transitional dialects that connect the different languages, with the exception of the area where the South Slavs are separated from the other Slavs by the non-Slavic Romanians, Hungarians, and German-speaking Austrians. Even in the latter domain, some vestiges of the old dialectal continuity (between Slovene, Serbian, and Croatian on the one hand and Czech and Slovak on the other) can be traced; similar remnants of the old links are seen in comparing Bulgarian and Russian dialects.

Thus, it should be noted that the traditional family tree of the Slavic group with three separate branches is not to be taken as the real model of historical development. It would be more realistic to represent the historical development as a process in which tendencies to differentiate and to reintegrate the dialects have been continuously at work, bringing about a remarkable degree of uniformity throughout the Slavic area.

Still it would be an exaggeration to suppose that communication between any two Slavs is possible without any linguistic complications. The myriad differences between the dialects and languages in phonetics, grammar, and, above all, vocabulary may cause misunderstandings even in the simplest of conversations; and the difficulties are greater in the language of journalism, technical usage, and belles lettres, even in the case of closely connected languages. Thus, Russian zelënyj ‘green’ is recognizable to all Slavs, but krasnyj ‘red’ means ‘beautiful’ in the other languages. In Serbian and Croatian vrijedan means ‘hard-working,’ but Russian vrednyj means ‘harmful.’ Suknja is ‘skirt’ in Serbian and Croatian, ‘coat’ in Slovene. The month listopad is October in Croatian, November in Polish and Czech.

South Slavic

The Eastern subgroup: Bulgarian and Macedonian

In the early 21st century, Bulgarian was spoken by more than nine million people in Bulgaria and adjacent areas of other Balkan countries and Ukraine. There are two major groups of Bulgarian dialects: Eastern Bulgarian, which became the basis of the literary language in the middle of the 19th century, and Western Bulgarian, which influenced the literary language. Bulgarian texts prepared before the 16th century were written mostly in an archaic language that preserved some features of both Old Bulgarian or Old Church Slavonic (10th to 11th century) and Middle Bulgarian (beginning in the 12th century).

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Although the vocabulary and grammar of the early texts written in the Old Church Slavonic language include some Old Bulgarian features, the language was nevertheless based originally on a Macedonian dialect. Old Church Slavonic was the first Slavic language to be put down in written form. That was accomplished by Saints Cyril (Constantine) and Methodius, who translated the Bible into what later became known as Old Church Slavonic and who invented a Slavic alphabet (Glagolitic). In the early 21st century the modern Macedonian language was spoken by about two million people in the Balkan countries. It was the last major Slavic language to attain a standard literary form; during World War II its central dialects of Prilep and Veles were elevated to that status. The eastern Macedonian dialect is closer to Bulgarian, whereas the northern dialect shares some features with the Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian languages (BCMS). The western dialect, most distinct from Bulgarian and BCMS, was chosen by Yugoslav authorities in 1944 as the basis for the standard language.

The Western subgroup: Serbian, Croatian, and Slovene

The Western subgroup of South Slavic includes the dialects of Serbian and Croatian, among them those of the Prizren-Timok group, which are close to some North Macedonian and West Bulgarian dialects. The literary Serbian and Croatian languages were formed in the first half of the 19th century on the basis of the Shtokavian dialects that extend over the greater part of Bosnian, Serbian, Croatian, and Montenegrin territory. Those dialects are called Shtokavian because they use the form što (pronounced in English as shto) for the interrogative pronoun ‘what?’. They are distinguished from the Chakavian dialects of western Croatia, Istria, the coast of Dalmatia (where a literature in that dialect developed in the 15th century), and some islands in the Adriatic. In those areas ča (pronounced in English as cha) is the form for ‘what?’. A third main group of Croatian dialects, spoken in northwestern Croatia, uses kaj rather than što or ča and is therefore called Kajkavian. In all, some 20 million people used Croatian, Bosnian, or Serbian standard languages in the early 21st century.

In the early 21st century the Slovene language was spoken by more than 2.2 million people in Slovenia and in the adjacent areas of Italy and Austria. It has some features in common with the Kajkavian dialects of Croatia and includes many dialects with great variations between them. In Slovene (particularly its Western and Northwestern dialects), some traces can be found of old links with the West Slavic languages (Czech and Slovak).