Slavic Branch of the Indo-European Family

Introduction

Slavic Map Slavic languages are spoken by an estimated 276 million people mostly in Eastern Europe and Asia (Siberia). All Slavic languages are believed to have descended from a common ancestor called Proto-Slavic, which, in turn, is thought to have split off from Proto-Indo-European possibly as early as 2,000 B.C. Proto-Slavic was probably the common language of all Slavs as late as the 8th or 9th century A.D., but by the 10th century A.D. the various Slavic varieties had begun to emerge as separate languages.

Slavic languages are usually divided into three groups which, in turn, encompass smaller dialect groups. The table below shows the estimated number of speakers and where these languages are spoken. There are enough differences between these languages to make communication between them difficult and sometimes impossible.

South Slavic
Bulgarian	9 million	Bulgaria
Serbian	11.1 million	Serbia and Montenegro
Croatian	6.2 million	Croatia
Bosnian	4 million	Bosnia and Herzegovina
Slovenian	2 million	Slovenia
Macedonian	1.5 million	Macedonia
West Slavic
Czech	11.5 million	Czech Republic
Slovak	5 million	Slovakia
Polish	42.7 million	Poland
Sorbian	70,000	Germany
East Slavic
Belarusan	9 million	Belarus
Russian	145 million	Russia
Ukrainian	39.5 million	Ukraine

With the exception of Sorbian, all Slavic languages are national or official languages of the countries where they are predominantly spoken. In addition, many of them are working languages of countries Cyrill

where they don't have official status. This is particularly true of Russian which is no longer an official language but remains an important working language of the former Soviet republics. In addition, some countries have regional languages. For instance, Serbia recognizes Hungarian, Albanian, and Slovak as regional languages, and Russia which has 105 languages spoken on its territory, recognizes the regional status of dozens of different languages. Upper Sorbian is recognized in Germany as a minority language (Ethnologue).

Medieval Slavs

National or official languages	Country
Belarusan, Russian	Belarus
Bulgarian , Turkish	Bulgaria
Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian	Bosnia and Hercegovina
Croatian, Italian	Croatia
Czech	Czech Republic
Macedonian	Macedonia
Polish	Poland
Russian	Russia
Serbian	Serbia and Montenegro
Slovak	Slovakia
Slovenian, Hungarian, Italian	Slovenia
Ukrainian	Ukraine

Structure

Sound System

Slavic People

The sound systems of Slavic languages are characterized by both similarities and differences.

Similarities

All Slavic languages have a relatively large number of consonants and consonant clusters.
All Slavic language utilize to varying degrees the opposition between unpalatalized and palatalized consonants. Palatalization refers to production of consonants with the blade of the tongue raised toward the roof of the mouth (hard palate). Palatalized consonants are produced as if simultaneously pronouncing a particular consonant plus a [y] sound. The 'ny' of canyon in English approximates a palatalized [n '].

Differences

The position of stress varies from language to language.

Czech	initial syllable
Polish	next-to-last (penultimate) syllable
Russian, Bulgarian, Ukrainian, Belorusian, Serbo-Croatian	any syllable

Some languages devoice final consonants (e.g., Russian), whereas others do not (e.g., Ukrainian).
Polish has nasal vowels, whereas the other languages do not.

Grammar

All Slavic languages have highly developed inflectional systems.

Noun phrase

With the exception of Bulgarian and Macedonian, all nouns, adjectives, and pronouns are marked for number (singular, plural, and sometimes dual), gender (feminine, masculine, and neuter), and case ( (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, prepositional). The vocative case has almost disappeared in some languages (e.g., Russian).

Click here for a more detailed description of cases.
With the exception of Bulgarian and Macedonian, Slavic languages lack definite and indefinite articles. Definiteness/indefiniteness is expressed by demonstrative pronouns, word order, and intonation.

Verb phrase

Slavic verbs are quite complicated. They are marked for the following categories and agree with their subjects in person, number and gender (in some languages).
- two to three conjugations;
- three persons (first, second, third);
- two numbers (singular and plural);
- three tenses (present, past, future);
- two aspects (imperfective and perfective);
- four moods (indicative, imperative, conditional, hypothetical);
- three voices (active, middle, and passive).
Some languages use auxiliary verbs (e.g., Bulgarian), whereas other do not (e.g., Russian).
Slavic aspect is a very complex phenomenon that involves grammar, vocabulary, semantics, and pragmatics. Perfective verbs are formed by prefixation. The system is complex enough to have occupied generations of Slavic linguists and frustrated generations of learners of Slavic languages.

Word order
The neutral word order in Slavic languages is Subject-Verb-Object. However, other orders are also possible since inflectional endings make clear grammatical relations and roles of words in the sentence. Word order is primarily determined by topic (what the sentence is about, or old information) and comment (new information). Constituents with old information (topic) precede constituents with new information (comment). For instance, in Russian, Subject-Verb order Misha chitaet means "Misha is reading," while Verb-Subject order in Chitaet Misha means "It is Misha who is reading."

Vocabulary

The vocabulary of the Slavic languages is Indo-European in origin with a great deal of loanwords from Old Church Slavonic, Greek, Latin, French, German, English, and neighboring languages. The sources of borrowing vary somewhat from language to language, depending on history and geographical location, e.g., Balkan languages such as Bulgarian, Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, and Macedonian have a large number of Turkish words due to having been conquered by Ottoman Turks.

Below are some common words in 7 Slavic languages, representing the three different branches.

Writing

Knight

Writing
Some Slavic languages are written with the Latin , while others are written with the Cyrillic alphabet.

Latin alphabet	Czech, Croatian, Polish, Slovak, Slovenian, Sorbian
Cyrillic alphabet	Belorusan, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbian, Ukrainian

Brief history of the Cyrillic alphabet
In 861 AD, Prince Rostislav of the Slavic-speaking Moravians (located in present-day Czech Republic) sent a message to the Byzantine Emperor in Constantinople: "We don't understand Latin or Greek. Please send us someone to teach us in our language." The reason Rostislav appealed to the Byzantine Church is because it taught each nation in its own language, while the Church of Rome, at the time, used only Latin. The Emperor sent two Greek brothers, Cyril and Methodius, who knew both Slavic and Greek. The two brothers created two alphabets to translate the Bible and the liturgy. One of the alphabets, Glagolitic, soon fell into disuse and vanished. The other one came to be known as Cyrillic. It is based on the Greek alphabet with some letters borrowed from Coptic and Hebrew in cases when the Greek alphabet did not have letters to represent Slavic sounds. Today, the Cyrillic alphabet is used by over 200 million people, representing more than 100 languages.

We will further explore the Cyrillic alphabet in the context of the Slavic languages described on this website.

Brief history of Old Church Slavonic
Old Church Slavonic (also called Old Slavic, Old Church Slavic or Old Bulgarian) is the first literary and liturgical Slavic language developed by the 9th century missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius. It was based on Moravian, a southern variety of Bulgarian as it was spoken at the time. Cyril and Methodius used Old Church Slavonic for translating the Bible and other religious texts from Greek. Today, Old Church Slavonic remains the liturgical language of the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Resources

Click here to find out where Slavic languages are taught in the United States.
Click here to find out what teaching materials exist for the study of Slavic languages

Additional resources for the study of Slavic languages
Belarusian
Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian
Bulgarian
Czech
Macedonian
Polish
Russian
Slovenian
Ukrainian

Click on the name of the language to learn more about it on this website

Belarusian	Czech	Serbian
Bosnian	Macedonian	Slovak
Bulgarian	Polish	Slovenian
Croatian	Russian	Ukrainian