This follows on from the previous articles. An article about the Indo-European language family and then one of the Latin sub-group of the Indo-European language family.
Related Articles :
1. Indo European language family
2. The Slavic language family
3. The Germanic language family
As we can see in the diagram above. The Proto-Indo-European (PIE) language fragmented in to different sub-groups which in turn then fragmented in to even more groups and sub-groups.
Balto-Slavic is one of the sub-families within the Proto-Indo-European language family and includes amongst its members, Lithuanian, which is said to be the Indo-European language ‘closest’ to PIE or which has conserved more grammatical features of PIE than any other language.
The divisions of the Slavic language family.
The Slavic language family is usually divided into
- East Slavic
- West Slavic
- South Slavic
As you might imagine this is to a degree based on geography, with Russian being the eastern-most Slavic language family, the south-Slavic tongues being those spoken in the south-east of Europe including the Balkans. However despite this division things are not as simple as that. For instance certain dialects of eastern Slovak and western Ukranian are perhaps closer to each other than their standard variants.
East Slavic.
A: The biggest Slavic language of them all, Russian. Written in Cyrillic.
B: Ukranian. Sometimes labelled ‘intermediate’ between Polish and Russian, Ukranian language and the Ukranian identity are entities in of themselves.
The modern independent Ukraine is seeking to spread usage of its language whilst in competition amongst its more widely-spoken counterpart, Russian, to the east. Between Ukranian and Russian there is Surzykh, which are said to be ‘intermediate’ between Ukranian and Russian.
C: Belarussian. This language is closely related to Ukranian which with it has a high degree of intelligibility. However like Ukraine and perhaps more so Russian is in heavy usage in that country as it enables wider communication with others.
The eastern Slavic languages are written in Cyrillic and many of its speakers are Orthodox, though there are Catholics in Western Ukraine.
West Slavic
A: Polish is the biggest of the west Slavic languages. It is written in Latin and Poles are Catholics. It has a degree of intelligibity with Czech and Slovak. Despite being a Slavic language there is no great similarity between Russian and Polish.
B: Czech, the language of Czechia and said to have a high level of mutual intelligbility with Slovak.
C: Slovak, the language of Slovakia.
South Slavic
A: Slovene. Spoken by people in Slovenia who are Catholics and thus use the Latin script. Unlike people in Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia and Montenegro, Slovene was always considered a separate language in the ex-Yugoslavia and not a form of ‘Serbo-Croatian’.
B: Croatian, written in Latin by Catholic Croats.
C: Bosnian, written in Latin by mainly Muslim Bosniaks who along with Pomaks and others are one of the few Slavs of Islamic faith. Modern Bosnian is distinguished from its close counterparts, Serbian and Croatian by the inclusion of vocabulary from Muslim languages such as Turkish, Arabic and Persian.
D: Serbian, written in Cyrillic as the Serbs are an Orthodox people. However it is also written in Latin script at times.
E: Montenegrin, as its name spoken in Montenegro.
There is debate as to whether Croatian, Bosnian, Serbian and Montenegrin are different languages or are merely one language which for political reasons and for nation-building purposes and the desire to forge a distinct identity are classified by some people within those states as being a different language.
They are however generally mutually intelligible, but there are dialects of Croatian for instance that would not be understood easily by some Serbs or in particular rural Serbs from eastern Serbia who speak a variant of the Torlakian sub-dialect of Serbian.
A perspective by one particular Bosnian on this issue, though others may differ from here is available in this video.
F: Bulgarian, language of Bulgaria written in Cyrillic by mainly Orthodox Bulgarians.
G: Macedonian, the official language of North Macedonia, extremely close to Bulgarian.
History of the Slavic language.
In terms of how Slavic developed it can be seen in the way expressed below:
Proto-Indo-European >> Balto-Slavic >> Proto-Slavic >> Common Slavic >> Modern Slavic languages.
Proto-Slavic is believed by some to have diverged from Balto-Slavic due to some language changes, south of the Pripyat river which mainly flows through Belarus.
Early common Slavic is believed to have existed around 300 to 600 CE eventually after 1,000 CE what was generally a unified language (almost certainly with different vernaculars spoken in the vast territory in which old Slavic was spoken) then started to split in to different forms.
However we know of the mutual intelligiblity of the various forms of Slavic in that period for example with the brothers Cyril and Methodius going from what is now the Balkans to central Europe to the kingdom of Great Moravia and being able to communicate with the ruler of that state and being commissioned to convert local Slavs there to Christianity they translated the bible in to ‘Old Church Slavonic’ in 863 CE.
Thus a work written by Slav-speakers from the Balkans for Slavs in central Europe was then used by Slavs in eastern Europe in the Kievan Rus.
The South Slavs were separated by the north Slavs (Russians, Poles etc) by the Hungarian-speaking Magyars and Latin-speaking Romanians and so there languages also developed differently, and so did the Western Slavs who were separated by religion and having different states and kingdoms from their distant cousins in the east.
This is a random example of some phrases in different Slavic languages and includes at least one language from the eastern, west and southern Slavic language sub-families.
Though there are some differences e.g in the Polish and Czech way of saying, “how are you?” e.g. there is no ‘kak’ or ‘kako’ as in Russian, Bosnian and Bulgarian, the ‘initial k’ may have disappeared with time in the western Slavic languages.
It is also useful to note that in Bulgarian, the common way of saying my name is ‘Kazvam se…{insert name}’ but there is also another way which exists which would be ‘moeto ime e’.
Let us now what you think in the comments section below!