Slavic Languages

Slavic Languages, subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages (see Indo-European Languages). Today the Slavic languages are spoken by around 429 million people (including second-language speakers) in Eastern and Central Europe, in most of the Balkan Peninsula, and in northern Asia. The Slavic languages share certain important traits with the Baltic languages, and some scholars place both language groups into a Balto-Slavic subfamily. The modern Slavic languages are divided into three branches:

East Slavic: Russian, or Great Russian; Ukrainian, also Little Russian or Ruthenian; and Belorussian or White Russian.

South Slavic: eastern group—Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Old Church Slavonic (extinct); western group—Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian, Romano-Serbian, and Slovenian.

West Slavic: Czech-Slovak group—Czech and Slovak; Lechitic group—Polish and Kashubian; Sorbian group—Upper and Lower Sorbian (Wendish).

Some modern Slavic languages (Czech, Slovak, Slovenian, and Polish) are written in the Latin alphabet, and their speakers are predominantly Roman Catholic. Other Slavic languages (Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian, Macedonian, and Bulgarian) use variations of the Cyrillic alphabet as a result of the influence of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian language is called Serbian when written by Serbs in the Cyrillic alphabet and Croatian when written by Croats in the Latin alphabet. Serbs are Eastern Orthodox and Croats are Roman Catholic. The invention of the Cyrillic alphabet, an adaptation of the Greek alphabet, is attributed traditionally to St Cyril, a Greek missionary. It is related to the Glagolithic alphabet created by SS Cyril and Methodius to translate the New Testament into the language of the Slavic peoples who, by the 9th century, had begun to embrace Christianity. The language written in this alphabet is known as Old Church Slavonic and is used as a liturgical language in various Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic churches today. For most of the middle ages Old Church Slavonic was the language of the ecclesiastical literature and of official and diplomatic documents.

For more information, see separate articles on many of the languages mentioned. See Slavic Peoples.

Selected statistical data from Ethnologue: Languages of the World, SIL International.