What Are Slavic Languages?
Здравствуйте! is “hello” in one of the most famous of Slavic languages, Russian. Although Russian is typically the first thing that comes to mind when people think of Slavic languages, there are many other languages that can fall under this umbrella. Some of the most widely spoken Slavic languages are: Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian to the east; Polish, Czech and Slovak to the west, and Slovenian, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, Macedonian and Bulgarian to the south. In all, there are 315 million speakers of Slavic languages in the world. Slavic languages have a rich linguistic history that is over 1,000 years old. Whether you want to become a Slavic language polyglot or you just want to learn more about this pretty amazing family of languages and what similar traits they have in common, read on!
Slavic Culture
“Slavs” is a term used for people who share the cultural and linguistic similarities that come with speaking Slavic languages. Unfortunately, not much is known about the origins of the Slavic people, and historians are still unable to agree on a common history before the 6th century CE. This is because Slavic people lived in fairly remote areas and did not have a written system of language. Linguists believe they had contact with Iranian and German speakers, because of some shared vocabulary. By the 9th century, Slavs had established a solid presence in the Balkans, as well as in central and eastern Europe. From there, their culture and language spread into the cultures that still speak Slavic languages today.
However, many of the people who speak Slavic languages today do not identify as Slavic. Which makes sense, considering the diverse cultures that exist among the countries that do speak a language categorized under “slavic languages.” In fact, many people who speak Slavic languages will identify culturally with their respective countries or with more segmented ethnic groups. Because being “Slavic” encompasses so many different cultures that have been progressing separately since as far back as the 9th century, many people do not identify with or use the label “Slavic” at all.
Traits of Slavic Languages
How similar are each slavic language to another?
The answer may surprise you. While they are all very close, and learning one Slavic language can make it easier to learn a few more, there are still major differences between the Slavic languages. For example, learning Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, or Montenegrin will make it much easier to pick up the other three. You would also have a good chance of understanding a bit of Slovenian. Moving along, you’ll get to Slovakian, which is somewhere between Czech and Croatian. Yet if you try putting a Russian and a Polish person in the same room, they don’t stand a good chance of understanding each other! Because the foundations of the Slavic languages are so old, the evolutions are steeped in geographical and cultural barriers that render some languages almost indistinguishable from one another, while leaving others more like distant cousins.
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But what linguistic traits do Slavic languages have in common?
1. Verb tenses usually come in pairs
One thing many features that Slavic languages have in common is that most of their verb tenses come in pairs. These pairs typically contain a perfective and and an imperfective. This basically means that one verb indicates a completed action while the other indicates an action still in progress. For example, the Russian verb dat means “to give”, while it’s pair, davat, means “to be in the process of giving”.
2. Syntax (Subject-Verb-Object)
Many Slavic languages follow a “subject-verb-object” structure, which can make Slavic languages a great choice for people who want to learn a Slavic language from the perspective of having English as a first language, as English also uses the same structure. This also makes it easy to get a basic grasp of grammar when learning a new Slavic language if you are already familiar with the grammar of another Slavic language.
3. Extensive use of prefixes and suffixes to derive new words
Many Slavic languages use prefixes and suffixes to create new words and to enrich the vocabulary. Many of these modifiers are similar between languages, making it a good tool for people trying to learn more than one Slavic language. They also make it easier to learn even one Slavic language, as the same suffixes and prefixes can be used for many different words to create something new. This linguistic habit makes it easy to build a larger vocabulary with just a few prefixes and suffixes.
4. Slavic languages have a substantial number of palatal and palatalized consonants, often forming pairs with related non-palatalized consonants.
Slavic languages are typically recognized by their hard consonant sounds. Many Slavic languages share hard stop sounds (which are linguistically called palatal sounds) and companion versions that are softer. This makes it easy to recognize a Slavic language when you hear it. This also makes it easy for people who already speak a Slavic language to pick up another Slavic accent easily.
5. Writing system
The writing system of Slavic languages mostly use either the Cyrillic script or Latin alphabets. Polish, Czech, Slovak, Slovenian and Croatian all use their own highly modified Latin alphabets. While Cyrillic is used in Belarusian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, Serbian, Bosnian, Montenegrin and Ukrainian.
So now that you know all about the many still significant ways in which Slavic languages are similar, it’s time to get out there and learn a Slavic language! If nothing else, learning and thinking about Slavic languages is a good exercise for us to reflect on shared roots and diverging branches. Identity after all, is a tracing back to what we have in common even as it is also about defending the formation of a unique identity out of a shared past. So how “Slavic” are you? ?
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