Slavic languages

The Slavic or Slavonic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family, spoken mainly in eastern Europe and Siberia.

Classification

The usual classification is the following.

• East Slavic
  • Russian
  • Belarussian
  • Ukrainian
• West Slavic
  • Sorbian
  • Polish
  • Kashubian
  • Czech
  • Slovak
• South Slavic
  • Slovenian
  • Croatian (part of the Serbo-Croatian diasystem)
  • Bosnian (part of the Serbo-Croatian diasystem)
  • Serbian (part of the Serbo-Croatian diasystem)
  • Bulgarian
  • Macedonian (closely connected with Bulgarian; Old Church Slavonic is an archaic variety of Macedonian).

Relationships

They share some features especially with the Baltic languages. This is why these language families are sometimes considered as one big Indo-European subgroup known as Balto-Slavic, though the exact relationship between Baltic and Slavic languages remains uncertain. The similarities may also have resulted from the historical contact between the languages, not from a direct genetic relationship.

Written form

Slavic languages are written either in the Latin alphabet or in the Cyrillic alphabet. Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian and Macedonian use the Cyrillic script. Serbian and Belarussian are written in the Cyrillic or the Latin script, while other Slavic languages are written in the Latin script.