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Slavic languages

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The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic, spoken during the Early Middle Ages, which in turn is thought to have descended from the earlier Proto-Balto-Slavic language, linking the Slavic languages to the Baltic languages in a Balto-Slavic group within the Indo-European family.

The current geographical distribution of natively spoken Slavic languages includes the Balkans, Central and Eastern Europe, and all the way from Western Siberia to the Russian Far East. Furthermore, the diasporas of many Slavic peoples have established isolated minorities of speakers of their languages all over the world. The number of speakers of all Slavic languages together was estimated to be 315 million at the turn of the twenty-first century.Template:Sfn It is the largest and most diverse ethno-linguistic group in Europe.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

The Slavic languages are conventionally (that is, also on the basis of extralinguistic features, such as geography) divided into three subgroups: East, South, and West, which together constitute more than 20 languages. Of these, 10 have at least one million speakers and official status as the national languages of the countries in which they are predominantly spoken: Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian (of the East group), Polish, Czech and Slovak (of the West group), Bulgarian and Macedonian (eastern members of the South group), and Serbo-Croatian and Slovene (western members of the South group). In addition, Aleksandr Dulichenko recognizes a number of Slavic microlanguages: both isolated ethnolects and peripheral dialects of more well-established Slavic languages.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Page neededTemplate:Sfn

All Slavic languages have fusional morphology and, with a partial exception of Bulgarian and Macedonian, they have fully developed inflection-based conjugation and declension. In their relational synthesis Slavic languages distinguish between lexical and inflectional suffixes. In all cases, the lexical suffix precedes the inflectional in an agglutination mode. The fusional categorization of Slavic languages is based on grammatic inflectional suffixes alone.

Prefixes are also used, particularly for lexical modification of verbs. For example, the equivalent of English "came out" in Russian is "vyshel", where the prefix "vy-" means "out", the reduced root "-sh" means "come", and the suffix "-el" denotes past tense of masculine gender. The equivalent phrase for a feminine subject is "vyshla". The gender conjugation of verbs, as in the preceding example, is another feature of some Slavic languages rarely found in other language groups.

The well-developed fusional grammar allows Slavic languages to have a somewhat unusual feature of virtually free word order in a sentence clause, although subject–verb–object and adjective-before-noun is the preferred order in the neutral style of speech.<ref>Siewierska, Anna and Uhliřová, Ludmila. "An overview of word order in Slavic languages". 1 Constituent Order in the Languages of Europe, edited by Anna Siewierska, Berlin, New York: De Gruyter Mouton, 1998, pp. 105-150. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110812206.105</ref>

Modern Bulgarian differs from other Slavic languages, because it almost completely lost declension, it developed definite articles from demonstrative pronouns (similar to "the" from "this" in English), and it formed indicative and renarrative tenses for verbs.<ref>Golubović, J., Gooskens, C. (2015). "Mutual intelligibility between West and South Slavic languages" [Article]. Russian Linguistics, 39(3), 351-373. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11185-015-9150-9</ref>

BranchesEdit

File:Slavic languages tree.svg
Balto-Slavic language tree.Template:Citation needed
File:Slavic languages.png
Linguistic maps of Slavic languages

Since the interwar period, scholars have conventionally divided Slavic languages, on the basis of geographical and genealogical principle, and with the use of the extralinguistic feature of script, into three main branches, that is, East, South, and West (from the vantage of linguistic features alone, there are only two branches of the Slavic languages, namely North and South).Template:Sfn These three conventional branches feature some of the following sub-branches:

Template:Tree list

Template:Tree list/end

Some linguists speculate that a North Slavic branch has existed as well. The Old Novgorod dialect may have reflected some idiosyncrasies of this group.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Although the Slavic languages diverged from a common proto-language later than any other groups of the Indo-European language family, enough differences exist between the any two geographically distant Slavic languages to make spoken communication between such speakers cumbersome. As usually found within other language groups, mutual intelligibility between Slavic languages is better for geographically adjacent languages and in the written (rather than oral) form.<ref>Fesenmeier, L., Heinemann, S., & Vicario, F. (2014). "The mutual intelligibility of Slavic languages as a source of support for the revival of the Sorbian language" [Sprachminderheiten: gestern, heute, morgen- Minoranze linguistiche: ieri, oggi, domani]. In Language minorities: yesterday, today, tomorrow. Peter Lang. https://doi.org/10.3726/978-3-653-04817-9/11</ref> <ref>Fischer, A., Jágrová, K., Stenger, I., Avgustinova, T., Klakow, D., & Marti, R. (2016). Orthographic and morphological correspondences between related Slavic languages as a base for modeling of mutual intelligibility. 10th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation, LREC 2016.</ref> <ref>Fischer, A. K., Jagrova, K., Stenger, I., Avgustinova, T., Klakow, D., & Marti, R. (2016, 2016/05/01). LREC - Orthographic and Morphological Correspondences between Related Slavic Languages as a Base for Modeling of Mutual Intelligibility.</ref> <ref>Golubović, J. (2016). "Mutual intelligibility in the Slavic language area". Dissertation in Linguistics, 152. https://www.narcis.nl/publication/RecordID/oai%3Apure.rug.nl%3Apublications%2F19c19b5b-a43e-47bf-af6e-f68c0713342b; https://research.rug.nl/en/publications/mutual-intelligibility-in-the-slavic-language-area ; https://www.rug.nl/research/portal/files/31880568/Title_and_contents_.pdf ; https://lens.org/000-445-299-792-024</ref> <ref>Golubovic, J., & Gooskens, C. (2015). "Mutual intelligibility between West and South Slavic languages". Russian Linguistics, 39(3), 351-373. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11185-015-9150-9</ref> <ref>Kyjánek, L., & Haviger, J. (2019). "The Measurement of Mutual Intelligibility between West-Slavic Languages" [Article]. Journal of Quantitative Linguistics, 26(3), 205-230. https://doi.org/10.1080/09296174.2018.1464546</ref> <ref>Lindsay, R. (2014). "Mutual intelligibility of languages in the Slavic family". Academia. Stenger, I., Avgustinova, T., & Marti, R. (2017). "Levenshtein distance and word adaptation surprisal as methods of measuring mutual intelligibility in reading comprehension of Slavic languages". Computational Linguistics and Intellectual Technologies: International Conference ‘Dialogue 2017’ Proceedings, 16, 304-317. https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85021828413&partnerID=40&md5=c9a8557c3da885eb1be39898bfacf6e4 </ref> At the same time, recent studies of mutual intelligibility between Slavic languages revealed, that their traditional three-branch division does not withstand quantitative scrutiny.<ref>Golubović, J., Gooskens, C. (2015). "Mutual intelligibility between West and South Slavic languages" [Article]. Russian Linguistics, 39(3), 351-373. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11185-015-9150-9</ref> While the grouping of Czech, Slovak and Polish into West Slavic turned out to be appropriate, Western South Slavic Serbo-Croatian and Slovene were found to be closer to Czech and Slovak (West Slavic languages) than to Eastern South Slavic Bulgarian.

The traditional tripartite division of the Slavic languages does not take into account the spoken dialects of each language. Within the individual Slavic languages, dialects may vary to a lesser degree, as those of Russian, or to a much greater degree, like those of Slovene. In certain cases 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. For example, Slovak (West Slavic) and Ukrainian (East Slavic) are bridged by the Rusyn language spoken in Transcarpatian Ukraine and adjacent counties of Slovakia and Ukraine.Template:Sfn Similarly, the Croatian Kajkavian dialect is more similar to Slovene than to the standard Croatian language.Template:Citation needed

Modern Russian differs from other Slavic languages in an unusually high percentageTemplate:Citation needed<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> of words of non-Slavic origin, particularly of Dutch (e.g. for naval terms introduced during the reign of Peter I), French (for household and culinary terms during the reign of Catherine II) and German (for medical, scientific and military terminology in the mid-1800s).

Another difference between the East, South, and West Slavic branches is in the orthography of the standard languages: West Slavic languages (and Western South Slavic languages – Croatian and Slovene) are written in the Latin script, and have had more Western European influence due to their proximity and speakers being historically Roman Catholic, whereas the East Slavic and Eastern South Slavic languages are written in Cyrillic and, with Eastern Orthodox or Uniate faith, have had more Greek influence.Template:Sfn Two Slavic languages, Belarusian and Serbo-Croatian, are biscriptal, i.e. written in either alphabet either nowadays or in a recent past.

HistoryEdit

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Common roots and ancestryEdit

File:Balto-Slavic lng.png
Area of Balto-Slavic dialectic continuum (purple) with proposed material cultures correlating to speakers Balto-Slavic in Bronze Age (white). Red dots = archaic Slavic hydronyms

Slavic languages descend from Proto-Slavic, their immediate parent language, ultimately deriving from Proto-Indo-European, the ancestor language of all Indo-European languages, via a Proto-Balto-Slavic stage. During the Proto-Balto-Slavic period a number of exclusive isoglosses in phonology, morphology, lexis, and syntax developed, which makes Slavic and Baltic the closest related of all the Indo-European branches. The secession of the Balto-Slavic dialect ancestral to Proto-Slavic is estimated on archaeological and glottochronological criteria to have occurred sometime in the period 1500–1000 BCE.Template:Sfn

A minority of Baltists maintain the view that the Slavic group of languages differs so radically from the neighboring Baltic group (Lithuanian, Latvian, and the now-extinct Old Prussian), that they could not have shared a parent language after the breakup of the Proto-Indo-European continuum about five millennia ago. Substantial advances in Balto-Slavic accentology that occurred in the last three decades, however, make this view very hard to maintain nowadays, especially when one considers that there was most likely no "Proto-Baltic" language and that West Baltic and East Baltic differ from each other as much as each of them does from Proto-Slavic.Template:Sfn

File:Bascanska ploca.jpg
Baška tablet, 11th century, Krk, Croatia.

DifferentiationEdit

The Proto-Slavic language originated in the area of modern Ukraine and Belarus mostly overlapping with the northern part of Indoeuropean Urheimat, which is within the boundaries of modern Ukraine and Southern Federal District of Russia.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

The Proto-Slavic language existed until around AD 500. By the 7th century, it had broken apart into large dialectal zones.Template:Citation needed There are no reliable hypotheses about the nature of the subsequent breakups of West and South Slavic. East Slavic is generally thought to converge to one Old East Slavic language of Kievan Rus, which existed until at least the 12th century.

Linguistic differentiation was accelerated by the dispersion of the Slavic peoples over a large territory, which in Central Europe exceeded the current extent of Slavic-speaking majorities. Written documents of the 9th, 10th, and 11th centuries already display some local linguistic features. For example, the Freising manuscripts show a language that contains some phonetic and lexical elements peculiar to Slovene dialects (e.g. rhotacism, the word krilatec). The Freising manuscripts are the first Latin-script continuous text in a Slavic language.

The migration of Slavic speakers into the Balkans in the declining centuries of the Byzantine Empire expanded the area of Slavic speech, but the pre-existing writing (notably Greek) survived in this area. The arrival of the Hungarians in Pannonia in the 9th century interposed non-Slavic speakers between South and West Slavs. Frankish conquests completed the geographical separation between these two groups, also severing the connection between Slavs in Moravia and Lower Austria (Moravians) and those in present-day Styria, Carinthia, East Tyrol in Austria, and in the provinces of modern Slovenia, where the ancestors of the Slovenes settled during first colonization.

File:Slavic languages tree and map from Kushniarevich article.png
Map and tree of Slavic languages, according to Kassian and A. Dybo

In September 2015, Alexei Kassian and Anna Dybo published,Template:Sfn as a part of interdisciplinary study of Slavic ethnogenesis,Template:Sfn a lexicostatistical classification of Slavic languages. It was built using qualitative 110-word Swadesh lists that were compiled according to the standards of the Global Lexicostatistical Database projectTemplate:Sfn and processed using modern phylogenetic algorithms.

The resulting dated tree complies with the traditional expert views on the Slavic group structure. Kassian-Dybo's tree suggests that Proto-Slavic first diverged into three branches: Eastern, Western and Southern. The Proto-Slavic break-up is dated to around 100 A.D., which correlates with the archaeological assessment of Slavic population in the early 1st millennium A.D. being spread on a large territoryTemplate:Sfn and already not being monolithic.Template:Sfn Then, in the 5th and 6th centuries A.D., these three Slavic branches almost simultaneously divided into sub-branches, which corresponds to the fast spread of the Slavs through Eastern Europe and the Balkans during the second half of the 1st millennium A.D. (the so-called Slavicization of Europe).Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn

The Slovenian language was excluded from the analysis, as both Ljubljana koine and Literary Slovenian show mixed lexical features of Southern and Western Slavic languages (which could possibly indicate the Western Slavic origin of Slovenian, which for a long time was being influenced on the part of the neighboring Serbo-Croatian dialects),Template:Original research inline and the quality Swadesh lists were not yet collected for Slovenian dialects. Because of scarcity or unreliability of data, the study also did not cover the so-called Old Novgordian dialect, the Polabian language and some other Slavic lects.

The above Kassian-Dybo's research did not take into account the findings by Russian linguist Andrey Zaliznyak who stated that, until the 14th or 15th century, major language differences were not between the regions occupied by modern Belarus, Russia and Ukraine,Template:Sfn but rather between the north-west (around modern Velikiy Novgorod and Pskov) and the center (around modern Kyiv, Suzdal, Rostov, Moscow as well as Belarus) of the East Slavic territories.Template:Sfn The Old Novgorodian dialect of that time differed from the central East Slavic dialects as well as from all other Slavic languages much more than in later centuries.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn According to Zaliznyak, the Russian language developed as a convergence of that dialect and the central ones,Template:Sfn whereas Ukrainian and Belarusian were continuation of development of the central dialects of East Slavs.Template:Sfn

Also Russian linguist Sergey Nikolaev, analysing historical development of Slavic dialects' accent system, concluded that a number of other tribes in Kievan Rus came from different Slavic branches and spoke distant Slavic dialects.Template:SfnTemplate:Page needed

Zaliznyak and Nikolaev's points mean that there was a convergence stage before the divergence or simultaneously, which was not taken into consideration by Kassian-Dybo's research.

Ukrainian linguists (Stepan Smal-Stotsky, Ivan Ohienko, George Shevelov, Yevhen Tymchenko, Vsevolod Hantsov, Olena Kurylo) deny the existence of a common Old East Slavic language at any time in the past.Template:Sfn According to them, the dialects of East Slavic tribes evolved gradually from the common Proto-Slavic language without any intermediate stages.Template:Sfn

Linguistic historyEdit

{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} Template:See also

The following is a summary of the main changes from Proto-Indo-European (PIE) leading up to the Common Slavic (CS) period immediately following the Proto-Slavic language (PS).

  1. Satemisation:
    • PIE *ḱ, *ǵ, *ǵʰ → *ś, *ź, *źʰ (→ CS *s, *z, *z)
    • PIE *kʷ, *gʷ, *gʷʰ → *k, *g, *gʰ
  2. Ruki rule: Following *r, *u, *k or *i, PIE *s → *š (→ CS *x)
  3. Loss of voiced aspirates: PIE *bʰ, *dʰ, *gʰ → *b, *d, *g
  4. Merger of *o and *a: PIE *a/*o, *ā/*ō → PS *a, *ā (→ CS *o, *a)
  5. Law of open syllables: All closed syllables (syllables ending in a consonant) are eventually eliminated, in the following stages:
    1. Nasalization: With *N indicating either *n or *m not immediately followed by a vowel: PIE *aN, *eN, *iN, *oN, *uN → *ą, *ę, *į, *ǫ, *ų (→ CS *ǫ, *ę, *ę, *ǫ, *y). (NOTE: *ą *ę etc. indicates a nasalized vowel.)
    2. In a cluster of obstruent (stop or fricative) + another consonant, the obstruent is deleted unless the cluster can occur word-initially.
    3. (occurs later, see below) Monophthongization of diphthongs.
    4. (occurs much later, see below) Elimination of liquid diphthongs (e.g. *er, *ol when not followed immediately by a vowel).
  6. First palatalization: *k, *g, *x → CS *č, *ž, *š (pronounced Template:IPAblink, Template:IPAblink, Template:IPAblink respectively) before a front vocalic sound (*e, *ē, *i, *ī, *j).
  7. Iotation: Consonants are palatalized by an immediately following *j:
      • sj, *zj → CS *š, *ž
      • nj, *lj, *rj → CS *ň, *ľ, *ř (pronounced {{#invoke:IPA|main}} or similar)
      • tj, *dj → CS *ť, *ď (probably palatal stops, e.g. {{#invoke:IPA|main}}, but developing in different ways depending on the language)
      • bj, *pj, *mj, *wj → *bľ, *pľ, *mľ, *wľ (the lateral consonant *ľ is mostly lost later on in West Slavic)
  8. Vowel fronting: After *j or some other palatal sound, back vowels are fronted (*a, *ā, *u, *ū, *ai, *au → *e, *ē, *i, *ī, *ei, *eu). This leads to hard/soft alternations in noun and adjective declensions.
  9. Prothesis: Before a word-initial vowel, *j or *w is usually inserted.
  10. Monophthongization: *ai, *au, *ei, *eu, *ū → *ē, *ū, *ī, *jū, *ȳ {{#invoke:IPA|main}}
  11. Second palatalization: *k, *g, *x → CS *c {{#invoke:IPA|main}}, *dz, *ś before new *ē (from earlier *ai). *ś later splits into *š (West Slavic), *s (East/South Slavic).
  12. Progressive palatalization (or "third palatalization"): *k, *g, *x → CS *c, *dz, *ś after *i, *ī in certain circumstances.
  13. Vowel quality shifts: All pairs of long/short vowels become differentiated as well by vowel quality:
      • a, *ā → CS *o, *a
      • e, *ē → CS *e, *ě (originally a low-front sound {{#invoke:IPA|main}} but eventually raised to {{#invoke:IPA|main}} in most dialects, developing in divergent ways)
      • i, *u → CS *ь, *ъ (also written *ĭ, *ŭ; lax vowels as in the English words pit, put)
      • ī, *ū, *ȳ → CS *i, *u, *y
  14. Elimination of liquid diphthongs: Liquid diphthongs (sequences of vowel plus *l or *r, when not immediately followed by a vowel) are changed so that the syllable becomes open:
      • or, *ol, *er, *el → *ro, *lo, *re, *le in West Slavic.
      • or, *ol, *er, *el → *oro, *olo, *ere, *olo in East Slavic.
      • or, *ol, *er, *el → *rā, *lā, *re, *le in South Slavic.
    • Possibly, *ur, *ul, *ir, *il → syllabic *r, *l, *ř, *ľ (then develops in divergent ways).
  15. Development of phonemic tone and vowel length (independent of vowel quality): Complex developments (see History of accentual developments in Slavic languages).

FeaturesEdit

The Slavic languages are a relatively homogeneous family, compared with other families of Indo-European languages (e.g. Germanic, Romance, and Indo-Iranian). As late as the 10th century AD, the entire Slavic-speaking area still functioned as a single, dialectally differentiated language, termed Common Slavic. Compared with most other Indo-European languages, the Slavic languages are quite conservative, particularly in terms of morphology (the means of inflecting nouns and verbs to indicate grammatical differences). Most Slavic languages have a rich, fusional morphology that conserves much of the inflectional morphology of Proto-Indo-European.Template:Sfn The vocabulary of the Slavic languages is also of Indo-European origin. Many of its elements, which do not find exact matches in the ancient Indo-European languages, are associated with the Balto-Slavic community.Template:Sfn

ConsonantsEdit

The following table shows the inventory of consonants of Late Common Slavic:Template:Sfn

Consonants of Late Proto-Slavic
Labial Coronal Palatal Velar
Nasal Template:IPA link Template:IPA link Template:IPA link
Plosive Template:IPA link Template:IPA link Template:IPA link Template:IPA link Template:IPA link Template:IPA link Template:IPA link Template:IPA link
Affricate Template:IPA link Template:IPA link Template:IPA link
Fricative Template:IPA link Template:IPA link Template:IPA link, (Template:IPA link1) Template:IPA link Template:IPA link
Trill Template:IPA link Template:IPA link
Lateral Template:IPA link Template:IPA link
Approximant Template:IPA link Template:IPA link

1The sound {{#invoke:IPA|main}} did not occur in West Slavic, where it had developed to {{#invoke:IPA|main}}.

This inventory of sounds is quite similar to what is found in most modern Slavic languages. The extensive series of palatal consonants, along with the affricates *ts and *dz, developed through a series of palatalizations that happened during the Proto-Slavic period, from earlier sequences either of velar consonants followed by front vowels (e.g. *ke, *ki, *ge, *gi, *xe, and *xi), or of various consonants followed by *j (e.g. *tj, *dj, *sj, *zj, *rj, *lj, *kj, and *gj, where *j is the palatal approximant ({{#invoke:IPA|main}}, the sound of the English letter "y" in "yes" or "you").

The biggest change in this inventory results from a further general palatalization occurring near the end of the Common Slavic period, where all consonants became palatalized before front vowels. This produced a large number of new palatalized (or "soft") sounds, which formed pairs with the corresponding non-palatalized (or "hard") consonantsTemplate:Sfn and absorbed the existing palatalized sounds Template:IPA link. These sounds were best preserved in Russian but were lost to varying degrees in other languages (particularly Czech and Slovak). The following table shows the inventory of modern Russian:

Consonant phonemes of Russian
Labial Dental &
Alveolar 		Post-
alveolar/
Palatal 		Velar
hard soft hard soft hard soft hard soft
Nasal Template:IPA link Template:IPA link Template:IPA link Template:IPA link
Stop Template:IPA link   Template:IPA link Template:IPA link   Template:IPA link Template:IPA link   Template:IPA link Template:IPA link   Template:IPA link Template:IPA link   Template:IPA link Template:IPA link   Template:IPA link
Affricate Template:IPA link (Template:IPA link)   Template:IPA link
Fricative Template:IPA link   Template:IPA link Template:IPA link   Template:IPA link Template:IPA link   Template:IPA link Template:IPA link   Template:IPA link Template:IPA link   Template:IPA link Template:IPA link   Template:IPA link Template:IPA link     Template:IPA link  
Trill Template:IPA link Template:IPA link
Approximant Template:IPA link Template:IPA link   Template:IPA link

This general process of palatalization did not occur in Serbo-Croatian and Slovenian. As a result, the modern consonant inventory of these languages is nearly identical to the Late Common Slavic inventory.

Late Common Slavic tolerated relatively few consonant clusters. However, as a result of the loss of certain formerly present vowels (the weak yers), Template:Failed verification spanTemplate:Sfn

VowelsEdit

A typical vowel inventory is as follows:

Front Central Back
Close Template:IPA link Template:IPA link Template:IPA link
Mid Template:IPA link Template:IPA link
Open Template:IPA link

The sound Template:IPAblink occurs only in some languages (e.g. Russian and Belarusian), and even in these languages, it is often unclear whether it is its own phoneme or an allophone of /i/. Nonetheless, it is a quite prominent and noticeable characteristic of the languages in which it is present.

Common Slavic also had two nasal vowels: *ę Template:IPA link and *ǫ Template:IPA link. However, these are preserved only in modern Polish (along with a few lesser-known dialects and microlanguages; see Yus for more details).

Other phonemic vowels are found in certain languages (e.g. the schwa {{#invoke:IPA|main}} in Bulgarian and Slovenian, distinct high-mid and low-mid vowels in Slovenian, and the lax front vowel {{#invoke:IPA|main}} in Ukrainian).

Length, accent, and toneEdit

An area of great difference among Slavic languages is that of prosody (i.e. syllabic distinctions such as vowel length, accent, and tone). Common Slavic had a complex system of prosody, inherited with little change from Proto-Indo-European. This consisted of phonemic vowel length and a free, mobile pitch accent:

  • All vowels could occur either short or long, and this was phonemic (it could not automatically be predicted from other properties of the word).
  • There was (at most) a single accented syllable per word, distinguished by higher pitch (as in modern Japanese) rather than greater dynamic stress (as in English).
  • Vowels in accented syllables could be pronounced with either a rising or falling tone (i.e. there was pitch accent), and this was phonemic.
  • The accent was free in that it could occur on any syllable and was phonemic.
  • The accent was mobile in that its position could potentially vary among closely related words within a single paradigm (e.g. the accent might land on a different syllable between the nominative and genitive singular of a given word).
  • Even within a given inflectional class (e.g. masculine i-stem nouns), there were multiple accent patterns in which a given word could be inflected. For example, most nouns in a particular inflectional class could follow one of three possible patterns: Either there was a consistent accent on the root (pattern A), predominant accent on the ending (pattern B), or accent that moved between the root and ending (pattern C). In patterns B and C, the accent in different parts of the paradigm shifted not only in location but also type (rising vs. falling). Each inflectional class had its own version of patterns B and C, which might differ significantly from one inflectional class to another.

The modern languages vary greatly in the extent to which they preserve this system. On one extreme, Serbo-Croatian preserves the system nearly unchanged (even more so in the conservative Chakavian dialect); on the other, Macedonian has basically lost the system in its entirety. Between them are found numerous variations:

  • Slovenian preserves most of the system but has shortened all unaccented syllables and lengthened non-final accented syllables so that vowel length and accent position largely co-occur.
  • Russian and Bulgarian have eliminated distinctive vowel length and tone and converted the accent into a stress accent (as in English) but preserved its position. As a result, the complexity of the mobile accent and the multiple accent patterns still exists (particularly in Russian because it has preserved the Common Slavic noun inflections, while Bulgarian has lost them).
  • Czech and Slovak have preserved phonemic vowel length and converted the distinctive tone of accented syllables into length distinctions. The phonemic accent is otherwise lost, but the former accent patterns are echoed to some extent in corresponding patterns of vowel length/shortness in the root. Paradigms with mobile vowel length/shortness do exist but only in a limited fashion, usually only with the zero-ending forms (nom. sg., acc. sg., and/or gen. pl., depending on inflectional class) having a different length from the other forms. (Czech has a couple of other "mobile" patterns, but they are rare and can usually be substituted with one of the "normal" mobile patterns or a non-mobile pattern.)
  • Old Polish had a system very much like Czech. Modern Polish has lost vowel length, but some former short-long pairs have become distinguished by quality (e.g. Template:IPA link > {{#invoke:IPA|main}}), with the result that some words have vowel-quality changes that exactly mirror the mobile-length patterns in Czech and Slovak.

GrammarEdit

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Similarly, Slavic languages have extensive morphophonemic alternations in their derivational and inflectional morphology,Template:Sfn including between velar and postalveolar consonants, front and back vowels, and a vowel and no vowel.Template:Sfn

Selected cognatesEdit

{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} The following is a very brief selection of cognates in basic vocabulary across the Slavic language family, which may serve to give an idea of the sound changes involved. This is not a list of translations: cognates have a common origin, but their meaning may be shifted and loanwords may have replaced them.

Proto-Slavic Russian Ukrainian Belarusian Rusyn Polish Czech Slovak Slovene Serbo-Croatian Bulgarian Macedonian
lang}} (ear) lang}} (Template:Transliteration) lang}} (Template:Transliteration) lang}} (Template:Transliteration) lang}} (Template:Transliteration) lang}} lang}} lang}} lang}} lang}} / Template:Transliteration (Serbia only)
{{#invoke:Lang|lang}} / Template:Transliteration (Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia) 		lang}} (Template:Transliteration) lang}} (Template:Transliteration)
lang}} (fire) lang}} (Template:Transliteration) lang}} (Template:Transliteration) lang}} (Template:Transliteration) lang}} ({{#invoke:Lang|lang}}) lang}} lang}} lang}} lang}} lang}} / Template:Transliteration lang}} (Template:Transliteration) lang}}/{{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (Template:Transliteration/Template:Transliteration)
lang}} (fish) lang}} (Template:Transliteration) lang}} (Template:Transliteration) lang}} (Template:Transliteration) lang}} (Template:Transliteration) lang}} lang}} lang}} lang}} lang}} / Template:Transliteration lang}} (Template:Transliteration) lang}} (Template:Transliteration)
lang}} (nest) lang}} (Template:Transliteration) lang}} (Template:Transliteration) lang}} (Template:Transliteration) lang}} (Template:Transliteration) lang}} lang}} lang}} lang}} lang}} / Template:Transliteration (ek.)
{{#invoke:Lang|lang}} / Template:Transliteration (ijek.)
{{#invoke:Lang|lang}} / Template:Transliteration (ik.) 		lang}} (Template:Transliteration) lang}} (Template:Transliteration)
lang}} (eye) lang}} (Template:Transliteration) (dated, poetic or in set expressions)
modern: {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (Template:Transliteration) 		lang}} (Template:Transliteration) lang}} (Template:Transliteration) lang}} (Template:Transliteration) lang}} lang}} lang}} lang}} lang}} / Template:Transliteration lang}} (Template:Transliteration) lang}} (Template:Transliteration)
lang}} (head) lang}} (Template:Transliteration)
{{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (Template:Transliteration) "chapter or chief, leader, head" 		lang}} (Template:Transliteration) lang}} (Template:Transliteration) lang}} (Template:Transliteration) lang}} lang}} lang}} lang}} lang}} / Template:Transliteration lang}} (Template:Transliteration) lang}} (Template:Transliteration)
lang}} (hand) lang}} (Template:Transliteration) lang}} (Template:Transliteration) lang}} (Template:Transliteration) lang}} (Template:Transliteration) lang}} lang}} lang}} lang}} lang}} / Template:Transliteration lang}} (Template:Transliteration) lang}} (Template:Transliteration)
lang}} (night) lang}} (Template:Transliteration) lang}} (Template:Transliteration) lang}} (Template:Transliteration) lang}} (Template:Transliteration) lang}} lang}} lang}} lang}} lang}} / Template:Transliteration lang}} (Template:Transliteration) lang}} (Template:Transliteration)

Influence on neighboring languagesEdit

{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} Most languages of the former Soviet Union and of some neighbouring countries (for example, Mongolian) are significantly influenced by Russian, especially in vocabulary. The Romanian, Albanian, and Hungarian languages show the influence of the neighboring Slavic nations, especially in vocabulary pertaining to urban life, agriculture, and crafts and trade—the major cultural innovations at times of limited long-range cultural contact. In each one of these languages, Slavic lexical borrowings represent at least 15% of the total vocabulary. This is potentially because Slavic tribes crossed and partially settled the territories inhabited by ancient Illyrians and Vlachs on their way to the Balkans.Template:Sfn

Germanic languagesEdit

Template:Expand section Max Vasmer, a specialist in Slavic etymology, has claimed that there were no Slavic loans into Proto-Germanic. However, there are isolated Slavic loans (mostly recent) into other Germanic languages. For example, the word for "border" (in modern German {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, Dutch {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}) was borrowed from the Common Slavic {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}. There are, however, many cities and villages of Slavic origin in Eastern Germany, the largest of which are Berlin, Leipzig and Dresden. English derives quark (a kind of cheese and subatomic particle) from the German {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, which in turn is derived from the Slavic {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, which means "curd". Many German surnames, particularly in Eastern Germany and Austria, are Slavic in origin. The Nordic languages also have {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}/torv (market place) from Old Russian {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (Template:Transliteration) or Polish {{#invoke:Lang|lang}},Template:Sfn {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (hops),Template:Sfn {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}/reke/reje (shrimp, prawn),Template:Sfn and, via Middle Low German {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (interpreter) from Old Slavic {{#invoke:Lang|lang}},Template:Sfn and {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}/pram (barge) from West Slavonic {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}.Template:Sfn

Finno-Ugric languagesEdit

Finnic languages have many words in common with Slavic languages. According to Petri Kallio, this suggests Slavic words being borrowed into Finnic languages, as early as Proto-Finnic.Template:Sfn Many loanwords have acquired a Finnicized form, making it difficult to say whether such a word is natively Finnic or Slavic.Template:Sfn

Russian dialects have numerous borrowings from Finno-Ugric languages, particularly for forest terms and geographical names.<ref>Teush, O. À. (2019). "Borrowed names of forest and forest loci in the Russian dialects of the European North of Russia: Lexemes of Baltic-Finnish origin" [Article]. Bulletin of Ugric Studies, 9(2), 297-317. https://doi.org/10.30624/2220-4156-2019-9-2-297-317</ref><ref>Teush, O. А. (2019). "Borrowed names of forest and forest loci in the Russian dialects of European North of Russia: Lexemes of Sami and Volga-Finnish origin" [Article]. Bulletin of Ugric Studies, 9(3), 485-498. https://doi.org/10.30624/2220-4156-2019-9-3-485-49</ref> This is related to the expansion in 7th to the 11th centuries AD of Slavic people into the areas of Central Russia (near Moscow) previously populated by Finno-Ugric peoples,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and the resulting genetic, cultural and linguistic exchange.

OtherEdit

The Czech word {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} is now found in most languages worldwide, and the word pistol, probably also from Czech,Template:Sfn is found in many European languages.

A well-known Slavic word in almost all European languages is vodka, a borrowing from Russian {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (Template:Transliteration, Template:Lit), from common Slavic {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} ('water', cognate to the English word water) with the diminutive ending {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}.Template:SfnTemplate:Efn Owing to the medieval fur trade with Northern Russia, Pan-European loans from Russian include such familiar words as sable.Template:Efn The English word "vampire" was borrowed (perhaps via French {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}) from German {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, in turn derived from Serbo-Croatian {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (Template:Transliteration), continuing Proto-Slavic {{#invoke:Lang|lang}},Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Efn although Polish scholar K. Stachowski has argued that the origin of the word is early Slavic {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, going back to Turkic {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}.Template:Sfn

Several European languages, including English, have borrowed the word {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (meaning 'large, flat plain') directly from the former Yugoslav languages (i.e. Slovene and Serbo-Croatian). During the heyday of the USSR in the 20th century, many more Russian words became known worldwide: Template:Transliteration, Soviet, Template:Transliteration, Template:Transliteration, Template:Transliteration, Template:Transliteration, etc. Another borrowed Russian term is Template:Transliteration (Template:Lit).

Detailed listEdit

The following tree for the Slavic languages derives from the Ethnologue report for Slavic languages.Template:Sfn It includes the ISO 639-1 and ISO 639-3 codes where available.

File:Idioma ruso.PNG
Map of all areas where the Russian language is the language spoken by the majority of the population.
File:South Slavic dialect continuum.svg
South Slavic dialect continuum with major dialect groups
File:Zapadoslovanske.jpg
West Slavic dialect continuum with major dialect groups

East Slavic languages:

  • Belarusian: ISO 639-1 code: be; ISO 639-3 code: bel
  • Russian: ISO 639-1 code: ru; ISO 639-3 code: rus
  • Rusyn: ISO 639-3 code: rue
  • Ruthenian: ISO 639-3 code: rsk
  • Ukrainian: ISO 639-1 code: uk; ISO 639-3 code: ukr

South Slavic languages:

West Slavic languages:

Para- and supranational languages

See alsoEdit

NotesEdit

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CitationsEdit

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ReferencesEdit

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General referencesEdit

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External linksEdit

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