The Slavic group of languages is a large branch of the Indo-European languages, since the Slavs are the largest group of people in Europe united by similar speech and culture. More than 400 million people use them.
General information
The Slavic group of languages 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 related to the B altic languages (Lithuanian, Latvian and the extinct Old Prussian). The 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 have been used by world-famous authors (eg Russian, Polish, Czech). And Church Slavonic is still used in services in the Orthodox Church.
Classification
There are three groups of Slavic languages: South Slavic, West Slavic and East Slavic branches.
In colloquial speech, inUnlike a clearly divergent literary one, linguistic boundaries are not always obvious. There are transitional dialects connecting different languages, with the exception of the area where the South 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 dialectal continuity (for example, the similarity of Russian and Bulgarian).
Therefore, it should be noted that the traditional classification in terms 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 the differentiation and reintegration of dialects constantly took place, as a result of which the Slavic group of languages \u200b\u200bhas a striking homogeneity throughout the entire territory of its distribution. For centuries, the paths of different peoples have crossed, and their cultures have 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 misunderstandings even in a simple conversation, not to mention the difficulties in journalistic, technical and artistic speech. Thus, the Russian word "green" is recognizable to all Slavs, but "red" means "beautiful" in other languages. Suknja is "skirt" in Serbo-Croatian, "coat" in Slovenian, similar expression "cloth" is "dress" in Ukrainian.
Eastern group of Slavic languages
It includes Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian. Russian is the native language of almost 160 million people, including many in the countries that were part of the former Soviet Union. Its main dialects are northern, southern and transitional central group. Including the Moscow dialect, on which the literary language is based, belongs to it. In total, 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 large languages.
- Ukrainian, which is divided into northern, southwestern, 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 the 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 19th century. The Carpathian dialect, also called Carpatho-Ruthenian, is sometimes treated as a separate language.
- Belarusian - about seven million people speak it 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 on the border of these two groups.
West Slavic branch
It includes Polish and other Lechitic languages (Kashubian and its extinct variant - Slovenian),Lusatian 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 the northwestern, southeastern, Silesian and Mazovian. The Kashubian dialect is considered part of the Pomeranian languages, which, like Polish, are Lechitic. Its speakers live west of Gdansk and on the coast of the B altic Sea.
The extinct Slovene dialect belonged to the northern group of Kashubian dialects, which is different from the southern one. Another unused Lechitic language is Polab, which was spoken in the 17th and 18th centuries. Slavs who lived in the area of the Elbe River.
Its close relative is Lusatian Serbo, which is still spoken by Lusatians in East Germany. It has two literary languages: Upper Sorbian (used in and around Bautzen) and Lower Sorbian (spoken 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 speechwas formed on the basis of the dialect of Central Slovakia in the middle of the 19th century. Western Slovak dialects are similar to Moravian and differ from the central and eastern ones, which share common features with Polish and Ukrainian.
South Slavic language group
Among the three main ones, she is the smallest in terms of the number of native speakers. 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. These include:
- Bulgarian 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 19th century, the second had a significant influence on it.
- Macedonian language - it is spoken by about two million people in the countries of the Balkan Peninsula. It was the last major member of the branch to receive standard literary form, which happened during World War II.
2. Western subgroup:
- Serbo-Croatian - about 20 million people use it. The basis for the literary version was the Shtokavian dialect, which is common in most of the Bosnian, Serbian, Croatian and Montenegrin territory.
- Slovenian - spoken by more than 2.2 millionpeople in Slovenia and in the surrounding areas of Italy and Austria. It shares some common features with Croatian dialects and includes many dialects with great differences between them. In Slovene (in particular its western and northwestern dialects), traces of old connections with the West Slavic languages (Czech and Slovak) can be found.
