The Slavic group of languages is a large branch of 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 group of languages is a branch of Indo-European languages used in most countries of Eastern Europe, the Balkans, parts of Central Europe and northern Asia. It is most closely associated with the Baltic languages (Lithuanian, Latvian and extinct Old Prussian). Languages belonging to the Slavic group originated from Central and Eastern Europe (Poland, Ukraine) and spread to the rest of the above territories.
Some of them were used by authors of world significance (for example, Russian, Polish, Czech). And the Church Slavonic language is still used in services in the Orthodox Church.
Classification
Three groups of Slavic languages are distinguished : South Slavic, West Slavic and East Slavic branches.
In colloquial speech, unlike clearly different literary, linguistic boundaries are not always obvious. There are transitional dialects connecting different languages, with the exception of 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 remnants of the old dialectic 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 real model of historical development. It is more correct to represent 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 a striking homogeneity throughout its distribution. For centuries, the paths of different peoples crossed, and their cultures mixed.
Differences
But still it would be an exaggeration to assume that communication between any two speakers of different Slavic languages is possible without any linguistic difficulties. Many differences in phonetics, grammar and vocabulary can cause confusion even in a simple conversation, not to mention the difficulties in journalistic, technical and artistic speech. So, the Russian word “green” is recognizable to all Slavs, but “red” means “beautiful” in other languages. Suknja is a “skirt” in Serbo-Croatian, a “coat” in Slovenian, a similar expression is “cloth” - “dress” in Ukrainian.
Eastern Slavic group
It includes Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian. Russian is the mother tongue of almost 160 million people, including many residents of the countries that were part of the former Soviet Union. Its main dialects are northern, southern and transitional central group. In particular, the Moscow dialect belongs to it, on which the literary language is based. All in all, about 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, southwestern, southeast 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, which is also called Carpatho-Russian, is sometimes regarded as a separate language.
- Belarusian - it is spoken by about seven million people in Belarus. Its main dialects are southwestern, some features of which can be explained by proximity to Polish lands, and northern. The Minsk dialect, which serves as the basis for the literary language, is located on the border of these two groups.
West Slavic branch
It includes the Polish language and other Lehitsky (Kashubian and its extinct version - Slovinsky), Luzick and Czechoslovak dialects. 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 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 northwestern, southeastern, Silesian and Mazovian. The Kashubian dialect is considered part of the Pomeranian languages, which, like Polish, are lehits. Its carriers live west of Gdansk and on the coast of the Baltic Sea.
The extinct Slovenian dialect belonged to the northern group of Kashubian dialects, which differs from the southern one. Another unused language related to Lehits is Polabsky, which was spoken in the 17-18 centuries. Slavs living in the area of the Elba River.
His close relative is Serboluzhitsky, which is still spoken by residents of Puddles in East Germany. It has two literary languages: Upper Luzhitsky (used in Bautzen and its environs) and Lower Luzhitsky (common in Cottbus).
Czechoslovak language group
It includes:
- Czech, spoken by about 12 million people in the Czech Republic. His dialects are Bohemian, Moravian and Silesian. The literary language was formed in the 16th century in Central Bohemia on the basis of the Prague dialect.
- Slovak, it is used by about 6 million people, most of them are residents of Slovakia. Literary speech was formed on the basis of the dialect of Central Slovakia in the middle of the XIX century. Western Slovak dialects are similar to Moravian and differ from central and eastern, which have common features with Polish and Ukrainian languages.
South Slavic group of languages
Among the three main ones, it is the smallest in the number of carriers of speech. But this is an interesting group of Slavic languages, the list of which, as well as their dialects is very extensive.
They are classified as follows:
1. Eastern subgroup. It includes:
- Bulgarian language - it is spoken by more than nine million people in Bulgaria and neighboring regions 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.
- Macedonian language - it is spoken by about two million people in the countries of the Balkan Peninsula. This was the last major representative of the branch, which received the standard literary form that happened 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 Shtokav dialect, which is spread over most of the Bosnian, Serbian, Croatian and Montenegrin territories.
- Slovenian 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 similarities with the dialects of Croatia and includes many dialects with large differences between them. In Slovenian (in particular, its western and northwestern dialects), traces of old ties with Western Slavic languages (Czech and Slovak) can be found.