Slavic. What languages belong to the Slavic group?

The Slavic group of languages is a major branch of the Indo-European languages, since the Slavs are the largest group of people in Europe, united by a similar speech and culture. They are used by more than 400 million people.

General information

The Slavic language group is a branch of the Indo-European languages used in most countries of Eastern Europe, the Balkans, parts of Central Europe and northern Asia. It is most closely connected with the Baltic languages (Lithuanian, Latvian and extinct Old Prussian). Languages related to the Slavic group came from Central and Eastern Europe (Poland, Ukraine) and spread to the rest of the above-listed territories.

Some of them were used by authors of world significance (for example, Russian, Polish, Czech). And the Church Slavonic language is still used on services in the Orthodox Church.

Classification

There are three groups of Slavic languages: South Slavic, West Slavic and East Slavic branches.

In colloquial speech, unlike a clearly different literary one, linguistic boundaries are not always obvious. There are transitional dialects connecting different languages, except for the area where the southern Slavs are separated from other Slavs by Romanians, Hungarians and German-speaking Austrians. But even in these isolated areas there are some vestiges of the old dialect continuity (for example, the similarity of Russian and Bulgarian).

Therefore, it should be noted that the traditional classification in the form of three separate branches should not be considered as a true model of historical development. It is more correct to imagine it as a process in which differentiation and reintegration of dialects constantly took place, as a result of which the Slavic group of languages has an amazing homogeneity throughout the territory of its distribution. For centuries, the paths of different peoples crossed, and their cultures mingled.

Differences

But it would be an exaggeration to assume that communication between any two speakers of different Slavic languages is possible without any linguistic difficulties. A lot of differences in phonetics, grammar and vocabulary can cause misunderstanding even in a simple conversation, not to mention the difficulties in publicistic, technical and artistic speech. So, the Russian word "green" is recognizable for all Slavs, but "red" means "beautiful" in other languages. Suknja is a "skirt" in Serbo-Croatian, "coat" in Slovenian, a similar expression "cloth" - "dress" in Ukrainian.

Eastern group of Slavic languages

It includes Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian. The Russian language is native to almost 160 million people, including many residents of countries that were part of the former Soviet Union. Its main dialects are the northern, southern and transitional central group. Including it belongs to the Moscow dialect, which is based on the literary language. In total, around 260 million people speak Russian in the world.

In addition to the "great and mighty", the Eastern Slavic group of languages includes two more major languages.

• Ukrainian, which is divided into northern, south-western, southeastern and Carpathian dialects. The literary form is based on the Kiev-Poltava dialect. More than 37 million people speak Ukrainian in Ukraine and neighboring countries, and more than 350,000 people know this language in Canada and the United States. This is due to the presence of a large ethnic community of immigrants who left the country at the end of the XIX century. The Carpathian dialect, also called Carpathian, is sometimes seen as a separate language.
• Belarusian - it is spoken by about seven million people in Of Belarus. Its main dialects are: south-west, some features of which can be explained by proximity to Polish lands, and northern. Minsk dialect, which serves as the basis for the literary language, is on the border of these two groups.

West Slavic branch

It includes the Polish language and other Lechite (Kashubian and its extinct version - Slowinsky), Lusatian and Czechoslovak adverbs. This Slavic group of the language family is also quite common. More than 40 million people speak Polish not only in Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe (in particular, in the territory of Lithuania, the Czech Republic and Belarus), but also in France, the USA and Canada. It is also divided into several subgroups.

Polish dialects

The main ones are the northwestern, southeastern, Silesian and Mazowieckie. The Kashubian dialect is considered part of the Pomeranian languages, which, like the Polish, are Lechite. Its carriers live west of Gdansk and the coast of the Baltic Sea.

The extinct Slyovo dialect belonged to the northern group of Kashubian dialects, which differs from the southern one. Another unused language, belonging to the Lechite language, is the Polabian language spoken in the 17th and 18th centuries. Slavs who lived in the area of the Elbe River.

His close relative is a Serbian, who is still spoken by the inhabitants of Luzhitsa in East Germany. It has two literary languages: Upper Sorbian (used in Bautzen and the surrounding area) and Lower Sorbian (distributed in Cottbus).

Czechoslovak group of languages

It includes:

• Czech, spoken by about 12 million people in the Czech Republic. His dialects are Bohemian, Moravian and Silesian. Literary language was formed in the XVI century in Central Bohemia on the basis of Prague dialect.
• Slovak, it is used by about 6 million people, most are residents of Slovakia. Literary speech was formed on the basis of the adverb of Central Slovakia in the middle of the XIX century. Western Slovak dialects are similar to Moravian and differ from the central and eastern dialects, which have common features with Polish and Ukrainian languages.

The South Slavic Language Group

Among the three main, it is the smallest in terms of the number of speakers. But this is an interesting group of Slavic languages, the list of which, as well as their dialect, is very extensive.

They are classified as follows:

1. Eastern subgroup. It includes:

• The Bulgarian language is spoken by more than nine million people in Bulgaria and neighboring areas of other Balkan countries and Ukraine. There are two main groups of local dialects: eastern and western. The first became the basis of literary speech in the middle of the XIX century, the second had a significant impact on it.
• The Macedonian language - it is spoken by about two million people in the Balkan countries. This was the last major representative of the branch, which received a standard literary form, which occurred during the Second World War.

2. Western subgroup:

• Serbo-Croatian language - about 20 million people use it. The basis for the literary version was the Stockman dialect, which is spread over most of the Bosnian, Serbian, Croatian and Montenegrin territories.
• Slovene language - it is spoken by more than 2.2 million people in Slovenia and in the surrounding areas of Italy and Austria. It has some common features with the dialects of Croatia and includes many adverbs with great differences between them. In Slovene (in particular its western and northwestern dialects), traces of old ties with Western Slavic languages (Czech and Slovak) can be found.