Slavic Languages

See also: Slavic

The Slavic languages are Indo-European Langues, Balto-Slavic group, that several linguists place in two separate groups: the Slavic Baltic Languages and languages. The Slavic languages form an important group of languages whose speakers are located mainly in Europe of the East, in the Balkans, in Russia and Central Asia.

Classification

The group of the Slavic languages breaks up into three families of languages: Western, southernmost and Eastern.

The tripartite division of the Slavic languages does not take account of the Dialecte S spoken in each language. Some of them, regarded as transitional dialects or, with the image of the Sourzhyk, hybrid idioms, often make the bridge between these languages by offering similarities which do not exist when the written languages are compared. There exists however sufficient differences between the many dialects and Slavic languages to make sometimes difficult the communication between the Slavic ones of different nationalities, without to make it impossible. Inside the same Slavic language, the dialects can vary relatively little, as in Russian, or much more, as in the Slovenien. The modern media however contributed to reduce the differences as a whole of the Slavic languages.

Distribution

  • Western Famille
    • Polish has 50 million speakers, primarily in Poland and in the south of the Lithuania, but also in Bielorussia, Western Ukraine, Czech Republic and Slovakia, like in emigration (Western Europe, North America).
    • Czech has 11 million speakers, primarily as a Czech Republic.
    • the Slovak one has 5,6 million speakers as Slovakia, with the the United States and as a Czech Republic.
    • the sorabe has 100.000 speakers with a statute protected in Germany and is divided into two distinct languages: bottom sorabe or lusacian, spoken in the Brandebourg and, less spread, the top sorabe, spoken in Saxony.
    • the kachoube (cachoube) has approximately 100.000 to 250.000 speakers, primarily in the north of Poland (where those speak also Polish) and with the Canada.
    • the slovince (old man-poméranien), now extinct, spoke itself in Poméranie.
    • the polabe, now extinct, spoke itself in certain areas about Germany and the Czech Republic (Valley of Elba).
  • southernmost Famille
    • the Slovenien has 2,2 million speakers, primarily in Slovenia, but also around Trieste in Italy and in the Carinthie in Austria.
    • the Serbo-croatian sub-group (croato-Serb) which comprises three official languages:
      • the Bosnian (or bosnien), spoken by 2,5 million speakers in Bosnia-Herzégovine;
      • Croatian, spoken by 5 million people in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzégovine;
      • the Serb one, spoken by 9 million inhabitants in Serbia and Bosnia-Herzégovine;
      • with the Montenegro, there is debate on the name to give to the national language, Montenegrin or Serb.
    • the Bulgarian sub-group and Macedonian (two mutually comprehensible languages ausbau, in fact of the modern Slavon):
      • the Bulgarian one has 9 million speakers, primarily in Bulgaria;
      • the Macedonian has 2 million speakers, primarily in République of Macedonia, but also in Greece and Bulgaria.
  • Eastern Famille
    • Russian has 220 million speakers, primarily in Russia, in Ukraine, in Bielorussia, in Kazakhstan and in the other old Soviet republics.
    • the Ukrainian has 41 million speakers, primarily in Ukraine, Poland and Slovakia, but also in Russia and in Canada.
    • the ruthene has 1.250.000 speakers, primarily in Ukraine, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Voïvodine (Serbia).
    • the Belorusse (or biélorussien) has 14 million speakers, primarily in Bielorussia and Poland.

History

The Slavic languages go down from a dialect of the Protoslave, resulting in its turn from a language which was also the ancestor of the Protobalte, the stock of the Baltic Langues. This relationship explains the similarities which exist between the two groups of languages that certain linguists place in the same group, the balto-Slavic languages, him even near to the protogermanique one. It is claimed that the language stock common to these two groups was spoken towards the 3000 av. J. - C. in the occupied territories today by Bielorussia and its surroundings. There exist at least 289 words common to these groups being able to come from this hypothetical language. The process of separation of people speaking the protoslave and the protobalte was carried out towards.

Other linguists maintain however that the group of Slavic languages differs from its neighbor, the group of Baltic languages, who includes/understands the Lituanien, the Latvian and the Vieux Prussian now extinct. The Baltic people lived in a vaster area around and in the south of the the Baltic. About the 5th century the Slavic people undertook a migration towards south-east, north and the west, being divided into three linguistic branches. These linguists explain that the similarities between the two groups are the effect of the Slavic migration and the proximity of these people. Before the 9th century, one supposes that the Slavic ones divided a whole an about identical language called the Slave commun run, but no writing before 860 can prove it. At that time, the prince Rastislav of Grande Moravie asked Cyrille and Méthode to create an alphabet to translate religious works in his language. Thus Alphabet was born the glagolitic , used to write in a language which one names the Slavon.

Towards the end of the 9th century, one decided to transcribe the glagolitique one with Greek characters, but as this alphabet proved to be insufficient to return all the sounds, one added there letters borrowed from the Hebrew alphabet. This alphabet accepted the Cyrillic name of , in the honor of Cyrille saint who made considerably advance the literature at the Slavic ones. During several centuries, in the southernmost territories, one used the slavon church like liturgical language . In the Western territories Slavic, one used the Latin alphabet as of the 11th century, which caused the disappearance of the slavon of church little time afterwards for this area whereas it was kept of use until the 18th century in the East.

The Sloveniens were the first to forsake the slavon for the vernacular one at the 16th century and the Serb ones followed the movement at the beginning of the 19th century. About 1850 the Serbo-croatian concept of or appeared croato-Serb being based on the great proximity between the Croatian , written in Latin alphabet by the Croatian roman catholics, and the Serbe that the orthodoxe Serbes wrote into Cyrillic. After the disappearance of the Yugoslavia, the conflicts between the Serb ones and the Croats to the regrouping these languages put an end, and although the differences are relatively tiny, one again distinguishes the Serb one, Croatian, and from now on the Bosnian (or bosnien) and even sometimes the Montenegrin (which is only one local denomination of the Serb one, more often writes nevertheless in Latin characters).

Linguistic characteristics

Writing

  • the Western Slavic languages are written by means of a Latin alphabet enriched by diacritic signs .
  • the southernmost Slavic languages are written is by means of a Cyrillic alphabet (Serb (possible use also of the Latin alphabet, from now on majority in Montenegro), Macedonian, Bulgarian) or of a Latin alphabet (Bosnian, Croatian, Serb, Slovenien).
  • the Eastern Slavic languages are written by means of a Cyrillic alphabet.
  • average a mnemotechnics (but simplified) is to think that the Slavic languages of the orthodoxe countries are normally written using a Cyrillic alphabet, the others using a Latin alphabet.

Grammar

Cases

The language used by all these people before their historical period, the Slavic commun run, still preserved the major part of the system of Indo-European Cas, although the Ablatif was amalgamated with the Génitif. In addition to the numbers Singulier S and Pluriel S, the slavon of church had a number duel, preserved today only in the Slovenien and the sorabe, even if residues of the nominal duel underline the substantives which follow the numbers two, three and four in Russian and Serbo-Croat and all the numbers into Bulgarian. The Slavic substantives and adjectives always have the kinds masculine, the female one and neutral, but the distinctions of the kinds are lost into Bulgarian and in the plural in Russian. The word order is relatively free into Slavic, contrary to French, for example, where generally the name in front of the verb is the subject and that which follows, the object.

Aspects

At the 18th century, the Slavic linguists realized that their language had a grammatical category much more richly exploited than in the other Indo-European languages: the verbal Aspect. The form of each verb is today classified either by the perfective Aspect, or by the imperfectif Aspect.

In the Slavic languages, the perfective/imperfectif aspect is built using Affixe S.

To compare with French, one can say that the verbs built with a perfective affix are felt by the Slavic ones as the expression of an action which must arrive in its term to be able to take place (like to be born : a literary movement can spend years to be born, if this movement stops in the course of birth, then it was not born). Contrary, the same verb affix to be imperfectif will be felt like the expression of an action which, whatever its duration, will not need to come to a end to take place (like to eat French : if one stops in the middle of the meal, one will nevertheless have eaten).

One could then believe that the aspectual difference between French and the Slavic one lies in the fact that the perfective one/imperfectif French depends on the selected verb ( to be born and to leave would be perfective, to eat would be imperfectif) whereas the Slavic one could modulate the aspect (and by there, the direction) of the verb thanks to a simple affixation. It of it is nothing: French can perfectiver or imperfectiver a verb using an adequate context ( to leave the house is perfective, to leave out of box is imperfectif) and the Slavic one can carry out the same operation using the Affixe S. the difference is thus not in the treatment of the aspects, but in the nature of their indices: contextual indices for French, morphological indices (affixes) for the Slavic one. It is a difference in size, since it modifies and organizes all the verbal Morphologie the Slavic one.

Times

From the six Indo-European times (present, future, imperfect, Aorist, Preterite and Pluperfect), the Slavic commun run preserved the present and the aorist. One replaced the imperfect one and the preterite old with new imperfect and the future Indo-European with the form of the time present of the perfective verb. The new perfective form underlines an aspect of the verbal action which did not take place before the moment of the statement and which the narrator expresses then taking place later, usually some share in the future. A periphrastic future found in Slavic Eastern and Western one express a future action without emphase. In the southernmost Slavic languages, the future can be formed only with the assistance of an auxiliary or a particle. The slavon of Church had an elaborate whole of verbal forms (up to 236 for a imperfectif verb). All except Serbo-Croat, the Macedonian and the Bulgarian one wasted times aorists and imperfect. In these languages, the perfect old one indicated a last action not having been seen by the narrator. One used the perfect form in the other Slavic languages to indicate a time other than the present, more often the past, but also in conjunction with an auxiliary form to indicate the conditional one (as in Russian and Czech) or even the future (as in Slovenien). Czech and Polish abolished the emphase and the tonality, the first having a nondistinctive emphase on the initial syllable and the last on the penultimate one.

See too

  • Linguistic

    • Dictionary of the languages
      • Languages by family

External bonds

  • Comparison of the Slavic names of month

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