Slavic languages

The Slavic languages (also called Slavonic languages), a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.

Branches

Scholars divide the Slavic languages into three main branches, some of which feature sub-branches:

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• East Slavic, including Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Rusyn.
• West Slavic, which further subdivide into:
• Czech in the Czech Republic and Slovak in Slovakia,
• Upper and Lower Sorbian in Germany,
• Lechitic languages: Polish, Pomeranian/Kashubian and Polabian.
• South Slavic, which further subdivide into:
• Western subgroup composed of Slovenian from Slovenia, Serbian (Serbia and Montenegro), Bosnian (Bosnia and Herzegovina) and Croatian (Croatia). Slavicists often group the latter three together as the Serbo-Croatian language.
• Eastern subgroup composed of Bulgarian in Bulgaria and adjacent areas; and of Macedonian from the Republic of Macedonia. (Some slavicists, especially those in Bulgaria and Greece, regard Macedonian as a "regional norm" of the Bulgarian language rather than as a separate language.)

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Map of Slavic languages in Europe

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The tripartite division of the Slavic languages does not take into account the spoken dialects of each language. Of these, certain so-called transitional dialects and hybrid dialects often bridge the gaps between different languages, showing similarities that do not stand out when comparing Slavic literary (i.e., standard) languages.

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Enough differences exist between the various Slavic dialects and languages to make communication between speakers of different Slavic languages difficult. Within the individual Slavic languages, dialects may vary to a lesser degree, as those of Russian, or to a much greater degree, as those of Slovenian. Modern mass media, however, has helped to minimize variation in all the Slavic languages. Note too that historical inter-Slav cultural currents, such as the influence of South Slavic Old Church Slavonic and of South Slavic scholars on Russian, have exercised some re-unifying influence.

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