Slavic languages- a group of related languages ​​of the Indo-European family. Distributed throughout Europe and Asia. Total number speakers - more than 400 million people. They are distinguished by a high degree of closeness to each other, which is found in the structure of the word, the use of grammatical categories, sentence structure, semantics, a system of regular sound correspondences, and morphonological alternations. This closeness is explained by the unity of origin Slavic languages and their long and intensive contacts with each other at the level of literary languages ​​and dialects.

Long-term independent development Slavic peoples in different ethnic, geographical and historical-cultural conditions, their contacts with various ethnic groups led to the emergence of differences of a material, functional and typological nature.

Slavic languages ​​are usually divided into 3 groups according to the degree of their proximity to each other:

• East Slavic,
• South Slavic
• West Slavic.

The distribution of Slavic languages ​​within each group has its own characteristics. Each Slavic language includes a literary language with all its internal varieties and its own territorial dialects. Dialectal division and stylistic structure within each Slavic language are not the same.

Branches of Slavic languages:

In addition to these languages, languages ​​that are polyvalent, i.e., protruding (like all modern national literary languages) both in the function of written, artistic, business speech, and in the function of oral, everyday, colloquial and stage speech, the Slavs also have “small” literary, almost always brightly dialectally colored languages. These languages, with limited use, usually function alongside national literary languages ​​and serve either relatively small ethnic groups, or even individual literary genres. There are such languages ​​in Western Europe: in Spain, Italy, France and in German-speaking countries. The Slavs know the Rusyn language (in Yugoslavia), the Kajkavian and Chakavian languages ​​(in Yugoslavia and Austria), the Kashubian language (in Poland), the Lyash language (in Czechoslovakia), etc.

In the Middle Ages, the Polabian Slavs, who spoke the Polabian language, lived on a fairly vast territory in the Elbe River basin, called Laby in Slavic. This language is a severed branch from the Slavic language “tree” as a result of the forced Germanization of the population that spoke it. He disappeared in the 18th century. Nevertheless, separate records of Polabian words, texts, translations of prayers, etc. have reached us, from which it is possible to restore not only the language, but also the life of the disappeared Polabians. And at the International Congress of Slavists in Prague in 1968, the famous West German Slavist R. Olesh read a report in the Polish language, thus creating not only literary written (he read from typescript) and oral forms, but also scientific linguistic terminology. This indicates that almost every Slavic dialect (dialect) can, in principle, be the basis of a literary language. However, not only Slavic, but also another family of languages, as shown by numerous examples of newly written languages ​​in our country.

Methods for classifying Slavic languages

The first printed information about Slavic languages ​​was usually presented in a list, i.e. transfer. This is what the Czech J. Blagoslav did in his grammatical work on the Czech language in 1571 (published only in 1857), in which he notes Czech, then “Slovene” (probably Slovak), where he also included the language of the Croats, then follows Polish language; He also mentions the southern (possibly Church Slavonic), “Mazowieckian” (actually a Polish dialect), and “Moscow” (i.e. Russian). Y. Krizhanich, comparing in the 17th century. some Slavic languages, spoke about the closeness of some of them to each other, but did not dare to classify them. “List classifications” of Slavic languages, i.e. an attempt to distinguish them by enumeration and thereby distinguish them from other Indo-European languages ​​is also characteristic of the 18th century, although they are occasionally found in the 19th century. So, in 1787-1789. By decree of Empress Catherine, a two-volume book “Comparative dictionaries of all languages ​​and dialects” was published in St. Petersburg - an attempt to collect information about all the languages ​​\u200b\u200bof the world known by that time and provide parallel lists of words for them. It is important for us that among “all languages ​​and dialects” there were 13 listed here as a list of Slavic languages ​​(“adverbs”): the words there are given “1 - in Slavic, 2 - Slavic-Hungarian, 3 - Illyrian, 4 - Bohemian, 5 - Serbian, 6 - Vendian, 7 - Sorabski, 8 - Polabski, 9 - Kashubian, 10 - Polish, 11 - Little Russian, 12 - Suzdal" + 13 "in Russian"; “Slavic-Hungarian” is Slovak, “Wendski” is one of the Serbian Sorbian languages, “Suzdal” is social jargon! F. Miklosic in “Morphology of Slavic Languages” (1852) presents the languages ​​in this order: a) Old Church Slavonic, b) New Slavonic (Slovenian), c) Bulgarian, d) Serbian (and Croatian), e) Little Russian, or Ukrainian (and Belarusian ), f) Great Russian, g) Czech (and Slovak), h) Polish, i) Upper Sorbian, j) Lower Sorbian; but without Polabian and Kashubian.

Classification by J. Dobrovsky.

Attempts to classify Slavic languages ​​on a scientific basis refer to early XIX V. and are associated with the name of the founder of Slavic philology J. Dobrovsky. For the first time, Dobrovsky gave a list of Slavic languages ​​and dialects in 1791-1792. in the book “History of the Czech Language and Literature,” published in German. There has been no classification yet. He singled out the “full” Slavic language and listed its dialects, including Russian, “Polish with Silesian”, “Illyrian” with Bulgarian, “Rac-Serbian”, Bosnian, “Slavonian” (dialects of the historical region of Slavonia in Croatia), “Dalmatian and Dubrovnik”, Croatian with Kajkavian, with “Vindian” (Slovenian), “Czech with Moravian, Silesian and Slovakian”, Lusatian. In the second edition of this book (1818) and especially in his main work on the Old Church Slavonic language according to its dialects (“Institutiones linguae slavicae dialecti veteris”, 1822), Dobrovsky for the first time presents a scientific classification of Slavic languages, dividing them into two groups (each with 5 languages ):

• A (eastern): Russian, Church Slavonic (Slavica vetus), “Illyrian”, or Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian, or “Vindic” (“in Carniola, Styria and Carinthia”);
• B (Western): Slovak, Czech, “Vendic Upper Sorbian” (= Upper Sorbian) and “Vendic Lower Sorbian” (= Lower Sorbian), Polish.

J. Dobrovsky relied on 10 signs of phonetic, word-formation and lexical properties, cf.:

In the future, features 3 (l-epentheticum), 4 (combinations , ) and 6 (combinations , ) will be regularly used by researchers, right up to the present day, when comparing the three subgroups of Slavic languages. Other features will remain unclaimed, for example, the prefix roz-, which is also characteristic of East Slavic languages, in particular Ukrainian (rozum ‘um’). In addition, the classification lacks several languages ​​- Ukrainian, Kashubian, Bulgarian.

Views on classification after J. Dobrovsky.

Soon after Dobrovsky, the largest Slavist of the 19th century began to classify Slavic languages. P. Y. Safarik. In the book “History of Slavic Languages ​​and Literatures” (1826) and especially in the famous “Slavic Antiquities” (1837) and “Slavic Ethnography” (1842), he, following Dobrovsky, presented a two-component classification of “Slavic dialects”:

• 1) southeastern group: Russian, Bulgarian, “Illyrian” (Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian);
• 2) northwestern group: “Lechitic” (Polish, Kashubian), Czech (Czech, Moravian, Slovak), Polabian (+ Upper and Lower Sorbian).

Of Dobrovsky's 10 signs, Safarik used only two phonetic ones - No. 3 and No. 4, and considered the rest unimportant. But he added the following feature: the loss of [d] and [t] before [n] in the south-eastern and preservation - in the western ones, such as ϖ ν?τι - vadnouti ‘wither’. It is significant that the creator of the “family tree” hypothesis, A. Schleicher, applied it to the Slavic languages. Thus, outlining the development of the northeastern branch of the Indo-European languages ​​(1865), he proposed the following scheme for the differentiation of Slavic languages:

Here the western group is contrasted with the combined southern and eastern ones. Slovak, Kashubian, and Belarusian languages ​​are absent, but Ukrainian is reflected along with Great Russian. Two-component classifications suffered from large generalizations, omission of certain languages ​​and, in addition, were based on a minimum number of linguistic distinctive features. Let us present a summary table of the most important two-component classifications of Slavic languages ​​of the 19th century to see how far the three-component classification that replaced them has gone:

Reading the table above horizontally and vertically, it is not difficult to establish which languages ​​are reflected in a particular classification and how; A dash (sign -) can signal that the author did not know about the existence of a particular language or considered it an adverb (dialect) of a larger language, etc.

Three-component classification model and its disadvantages.

The two-component classification is being replaced by a three-component one. Doubts about the two-component classification proposed by J. Dobrovsky were expressed by A. Kh. Vostokov, pointing out that the Russian language, according to a number of its characteristics, occupies an independent position between the southern and western languages. We can say that the idea of ​​a three-component division of Slavic languages, later supported by M. A. Maksimovich (works of 1836, 1838, 1845), N. Nadezhdin (1836), the Czech F. Palatsky (1836), and others, goes back to Vostokov. Maksimovich developed Vostokov's thought, highlighting the western, southern (or Transdanubian) and eastern branches. Palatsky, focusing on the geographical principle, divided the Slavic languages ​​into southwestern (= south Slavic), northwestern (= West Slavic) and eastern Slavic. This classification model was strengthened throughout much of the 19th century. Played a special role in her approval I. I. Sreznevsky (1843).

Based on historical and ethnographic (common historical destinies separate groups Slavic peoples, common material and spiritual culture, etc.) and linguistic criteria, he proposed to distribute the Slavic “adverbs” as follows:

• 1) eastern dialects: Great Russian, Ukrainian;
• 2) southwestern dialects (= South Slavic): Old Church Slavonic, Bulgarian, Serbian and Croatian, “Khorutanian” (= Slovenian);
• 3) northwestern dialects (= West Slavic): Polish, Polabian, Lusatian, Czech and Slovak.

Classification by I. I. Sreznevsky is still in use today. True, some changes have been made to it, for example, in terms: instead of “adverbs” - languages; in the names of the subgroups - East Slavic, South Slavic and West Slavic, respectively; The East Slavic language includes the Belarusian language, and the West Slavic language includes Kashubian.

However, this classification is also subject to criticism. The fact is that the material of each Slavic language or dialect is quite diverse and does not always fit into the framework of classifications, which, as a rule, are based on taking into account only a few - usually phonetic - features, according to which languages ​​are included in one or another subgroup. Numerous linguistic features that bring together languages ​​traditionally classified as different subgroups remain outside the classification principles. Such signs are often simply not taken into account.

The isogloss method and its role in the classification of dialects and languages.

Only in the twentieth century. the procedure for identifying linguistic parallels using the isogloss method began to take shape. This method is formulated as establishing on a linguistic (dialectological) map the distribution lines of a particular linguistic phenomenon in order to determine the degree of proximity between dialects and dialects within individual languages ​​and between languages ​​- within individual linguistic subgroups or groups. The isogloss method, applied to linguistic material at all levels (i.e. phonetic, grammatical, lexical), allows one to more clearly determine the place and relationship of related languages ​​to each other, which can lead to a revision of some provisions of the traditional classification. O. N. Trubachev (1974) rightly wrote about this at one time, pointing out the insufficiency of the three-component classification, which poorly takes into account the original dialectal fragmentation of the Proto-Slavic language:

• “1) The West Slavic, East Slavic and South Slavic language groups were secondarily consolidated from components of very different linguistic origins,
• 2) the original Slavia was not a linguistic monolith, but its opposite, i.e.<…>a complex set of isoglosses"

According to some experts, within the East Slavic subgroup, Russian and Ukrainian are more distant from each other, while Belarusian occupies an intermediate position between them (there is, however, also an opinion about the great proximity of the Belarusian and Russian languages). Be that as it may, some features bring Belarusian closer to the Russian language (for example, akanye), others - with Ukrainian (for example, the presence of a long-past tense in both languages). It has long been noted that the Ukrainian language has a number of features that unite it with the South Slavic languages ​​(especially their western part), for example, inflection of verbs of the 1st line. pl. part of the present tense -mo: write-mo ‘we are writing’, pratsuie-mo ‘we are working’, etc. - Wed South Slavic Serbian-Croatian write-mo, for the sake of-mo, sloven. piše-mo, dela-mo, etc.

Methods based on phonetic and word-formation material

Attempts to establish, on the basis of certain signs, in which direction the development of the speech array took place after the collapse of the Proto-Slavic language, have not stopped to this day. The newest hypothesis on this issue belongs to the Belarusian Slavist F. D. Klimchuk (2007). He analyzes the phonetic development in modern Slavic languages ​​and dialects of a number of elements in ancient words selected specifically for these purposes - ten, black grouse, wild, quiet and smoke. Here's what these words look like phonetically:

In accordance with this, the Slavic dialect continuum is divided into two zones - northern and southern. To prove this, it is necessary to formulate the conditions and trace the form in which the identified phonetic elements were implemented in specific Slavic languages ​​and dialects. This is about

• a) implementation of consonants [d], [t], [z], [s], [n] before the etymological [e], [i];
• b) about the distinction between vowels [i] and y [ы] or their merging into one sound.

In the northern zone, the consonants [d], [t], [z], [s], [n] in the indicated position are soft, in southern zone- hard (i.e. velarized or non-velarized, often called semi-soft). The vowels [i] and y [ы] in the northern zone retained their quality; in the southern zone they merged into one sound. In the languages ​​of Proto-Slavic, Old Church Slavonic and book Old Russian of the early period, the vowels [i] and y [ы] differed from each other, representing two independent sounds. The consonants [d], [t], [z], [s], [n] before the etymological [e], [i] in these languages ​​were pronounced “semi-softly”. In other words, they were hard, but not velarized. The Proto-Slavic model of the implementation of consonants [d], [t], [z], [s], [n] before [e], [i] was preserved only in some regions and microregions of Slavia - in many dialects of the Carpathians and the upper reaches of the river. San, sometimes in Polesie, as well as in the northern and southern parts of Russia. In a significant part of the dialects of the Slavic languages ​​of the northern zone, the soft consonants [d], [t] changed into , respectively. This phenomenon is called tsekany-dzekanya.

Studying the distribution of more than 70 suffixes of nouns across the Slavic territory, as well as conducting a group analysis of geographical and ichthyological (names of fish and everything connected with them) vocabulary, A. S. Gerd and V. M. Mokienko (1974) identified on this basis four Slavic areas, opposed to each other:

• 1) Western-Eastern Slavic - South Slavic;
• 2) West-East Slavic + Slovenian - South Slavic (except Slovenian);
• 3) East Slavic - Western South Slavic;
• 4) North Slavic and Western South Slavic - East South Slavic (Bulgarian and Macedonian).

Quantitative method based on phonetic-morphological features.

In the 20th century another approach is being taken to studying the ways of the collapse of the Proto-Slavic language and establishing the degree of proximity of the Slavic languages ​​in relation to each other. This approach is called quantitative or statistical. The first to apply it to Slavic material was the Pole J. Chekanovsky in 1929. Based on the list provided to him by T. Ler-Splavinsky of several dozen phonetic and morphological features characteristic of various regions of Slavia, Chekanovsky compiled a special table indicating the presence/absence of such features in a particular language, after which, using special statistical techniques, it establishes an index of proximity between languages.

The Serbian Sorbian languages ​​occupy a central place in the area of ​​the West Slavic languages. The Polabian language is closer to Czech and Slovak than to Polish. Chekanovsky also comes to the conclusion that there were deep connections between the Lechitic languages ​​and Northern Great Russian dialects. Moreover, the author believes that the future East Slavic massif, under the influence of Avar raids, broke away from the northern one, which united both Western and Eastern Slavs.

Before the arrival of the Hungarians in the Pannonian Lowland (late 9th century), the Western and Southern Slavs formed a wide belt stretching from north to south (to the Balkans). The expansion of the Hungarians separated the Western and Southern Slavs. Traces of past connections in the form common features are noted in the language of Czechs and Slovaks, on the one hand, and in Slovenian dialects, on the other. And in the South Slavic massif itself, a division occurred into a western branch (Slovenian, Serbo-Croatian) and an eastern branch (Old Slavic, Bulgarian, and later Macedonian). Chekanovsky believed that his conclusions should shake the existing opinion about the straightforwardness of the division of the Proto-Slavic into three massifs.

Method of lexical-statistical modeling.

Qualitatively new turn marks the appearance in 1994 of A. F. Zhuravlev’s monograph “Lexico-statistical modeling of the system of Slavic linguistic kinship” (based on a doctoral dissertation defended in 1992). The author for the first time turns to Proto-Slavic lexical material, which is hundreds of times larger in quantity than the phonetic-morphological features traditionally used to determine linguistic kinship. There is a significant difference between these two categories of features: if phonetic-morphological features evolve primarily by replacing some elements with others, then the development of the dictionary occurs mainly through the accumulation (cumulation) of more and more new words. In addition, the author rightly considers vocabulary to be more stable over time than phonetics and morphology, and this refers to the vocabulary of its most ancient layer. Zhuravlev makes a complete selection from the first 15 issues of the “Etymological Dictionary of Slavic Languages” edited by O. N. Trubachev (up to the word * lokaсь 'puddle, pothole in the road') - a total of 7557 positions (headwords), while he avoids post-Slavic, book and some other categories of words that were absent in Proto-Slavic times. Interesting statistics of Proto-Slavic vocabulary preserved in the analyzed Slavic languages ​​and dialects were revealed:

It should be noted that the presented data was to a certain extent influenced by such factors as the completeness or incompleteness of the collected vocabulary for a particular language (as, for example, for Polabian - a disappeared language and known only from records and written monuments).

Taking into account the derived indices of genetic proximity, the Russian language, for example, is characterized by the following connections:

• a) within the East Slavic subgroup: northern and southern Great Russian dialects are lexically closer to Belarusian than to Ukrainian;
• b) outside the East Slavic subgroup, the statistical similarity of the Proto-Slavic lexical heritage of the Northern Great Russian dialect is closer to the Serbo-Croatian language,
• c) while the South Great Russian dialect is addressed to Polish,
• d) the Russian language as a whole at the level of Proto-Slavic vocabulary is closer to Polish
• e) and to Serbo-Croatian.

The difference between the results obtained by phonostatistical and lexical-statistical methods is found, for example, in the qualification of languages ​​with the highest degree of similarity: in the first case, at the language level, these are Czech and Slovak, and in the second, Serbo-Sorbian. Zhuravlev is inclined to believe that such a discrepancy is caused primarily by the difference in the supporting material - phonetics and vocabulary, and by the inconsistency and unequal pace of their historical development. At the same time, both approaches allow us to conclude that the West Slavic group as a whole demonstrates its inhomogeneity, i.e. heterogeneous character. In this regard, the idea is expressed that the practice of the initial division of Proto-Slavic into the western and eastern massifs and further into the eastern and southern or western and southern should give way to other, more complex and multidimensional relationships.

Traditional classification with some new data

As we see, the totality of some features divides the Slavic linguistic array in one direction, and the totality of others - in another. Moreover, within the designated zones themselves, linguistic and dialectal isoglosses can be distributed in different directions, depriving the subgroups (western, southern and eastern) of the known genetic classification of more or less clear boundaries, - on the contrary, outlining them either as intersecting with each other or as included in each other, then in the form of isolated situations that find themselves separated from the main array, etc. All this suggests that both the Proto-Slavic speech array and the arrays formed after its collapse were characterized by a constant quality - initial dialect fragmentation, the absence of clear boundaries between local speech arrays, their mobility, etc.

Considering the achievements of the isogloss method, quantitative analysis the proximity of languages ​​and dialects, as well as taking into account situations of linguistic continuity, etc., the traditional three-component classification of Slavic languages ​​can currently be schematically represented as follows:

East Slavic:

South Slavic:

West Slavic:

Thus, the problem of classifying Slavic languages ​​has not been completely resolved. It is believed that its solution will depend on the compilation of the Common Slavic Linguistic Atlas (OLA), the issue of which was raised at the First International Congress of Slavists in Prague in 1929. Since 1961, a Commission on OLA has been working under the International Committee of Slavists, which includes specialists on linguistic geography and dialectology of all Slavic and a number of non-Slavic countries. The material is collected in 850 Slavic (usually rural) locations, including some resettlement territories. For this purpose, a questionnaire was compiled, including 3,454 questions - on phonetics, grammar, vocabulary and word formation. The distribution of features is studied and they are plotted on a map (the principle applies: one feature - one map), while paying attention to isoglosses and their bundles, i.e. clusters.

Since 1965, Institute of Russian Language named after. V.V. Vinogradov RAS in Moscow regularly publishes collections of research and materials under the general title “Common Slavic Linguistic Atlas. Materials and Research,” and in 1988 the first issue of the atlas appeared, dedicated to the reflexes of Yat (* e) on modern Slavic territory. Words with reflexes of the indicated vowel are given in transcription. For the first time, it is possible to see, for example, a word and its transmission in transcription in all its phonetic subtleties on the vast territory inhabited by the modern Slavs.

As an example, let's take the Proto-Slavic word *celovekъ 'person' and see in what pronunciation forms it actually appears in different Slavic areas (the prime " means that the syllable following it is stressed): clovjek - clouk - clajk - c'lo"vek - c'lo"vik - šlo"vik - co"vek - c'ojek - cojak - cvek - coek - clov'ek - cala"v'ek - colo"v'ik - c'ila"v'ek - cuek - c'elo"v'ek - c'olo"v'ek - š'ila"v'ek - cu?ov'ek, etc., etc.

What does such a linguogeographical distribution of this word show? And the fact is that in reality the word undergoes serious phonetic changes in the process of historical development. What remains of the phonetic elements that made up the Proto-Slavic word *celovekъ? Only one element turned out to be stable - the final one - k, while the first element appears either in a hard or soft form, or generally turns into a whistling ([с], ) or a hissing ([ š ], [ š']) ; [e] is preserved somewhere, but somewhere it turns into [i], [o], [a] or disappears altogether. The fate of subsequent vowels and consonants is also tortuous. This method shows us how the same word really lives in different Slavic areas. From this we can draw a conclusion about how complex phonetic and other processes occur and how difficult it is for scientists to follow them and classify their results for specific purposes. Nevertheless, the now classic three-member genetic classification of Slavic languages ​​is still actively used by researchers.

SLAVIC LANGUAGES, a group of languages ​​belonging to the Indo-European family, spoken by more than 440 million people in Eastern Europe and Northern and Central Asia. The thirteen currently existing Slavic languages ​​are divided into three groups: 1) the East Slavic group includes Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian languages; 2) West Slavic includes Polish, Czech, Slovak, Kashubian (spoken in a small area in northern Poland) and two Lusatian (or Serbian) languages ​​- Upper Lusatian and Lower Lusatian, spoken in small areas in eastern Germany; 3) the South Slavic group includes: Serbo-Croatian (spoken in Yugoslavia, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina), Slovenian, Macedonian and Bulgarian. In addition, there are three dead languages ​​- Slovinian, which disappeared at the beginning of the 20th century, Polabian, which died out in the 18th century, as well as Old Church Slavonic - the language of the first Slavic translations Holy Scripture, which is based on one of the ancient South Slavic dialects and was used in worship in Slavic Orthodox Church, but has never been an everyday spoken language ( cm. OLD SLAVONIC LANGUAGE).

Modern Slavic languages ​​have many words in common with other Indo-European languages. Many Slavic words are similar to the corresponding English ones, for example: sister –sister,three – three,nose – nose,night – night and etc. In other cases, the common origin of the words is less obvious. Russian word see cognate with Latin videre, Russian word five cognate with German fünf, Latin quinque(cf. musical term quintet), Greek penta, which is present, for example, in a borrowed word pentagon(lit. "pentagon") .

An important role in the system of Slavic consonantism is played by palatalization - the approach of the flat middle part of the tongue to the palate when pronouncing a sound. Almost all consonants in Slavic languages ​​can be either hard (non-palatalized) or soft (palatalized). In the field of phonetics, there are also some significant differences between the Slavic languages. In Polish and Kashubian, for example, two nasal vowels have been preserved - ą And ERROR, disappeared in other Slavic languages. Slavic languages ​​vary greatly in stress. In Czech, Slovak and Sorbian the stress usually falls on the first syllable of a word; in Polish – to the penultimate; in Serbo-Croatian, any syllable except the last one can be stressed; in Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian, stress can fall on any syllable of a word.

All Slavic languages, except Bulgarian and Macedonian, have several types of declension of nouns and adjectives, which vary in six or seven cases, in number and in three genders. The presence of seven cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, locative or prepositional and vocative) indicates the archaic nature of the Slavic languages ​​and their closeness to the Indo-European language, which supposedly had eight cases. Important feature Slavic languages ​​is the category of verbal aspect: every verb refers to either the perfect or imperfect form and denotes, respectively, either a completed, or a continuing or repeating action.

The territory inhabited by Slavic tribes in Eastern Europe in the 5th–8th centuries. AD expanded rapidly, and by the 8th century. The common Slavic language spread from the north of Russia to the south of Greece and from the Elbe and the Adriatic Sea to the Volga. Up to the 8th or 9th century. it was basically common language, but gradually the differences between territorial dialects became more noticeable. By the 10th century. There were already predecessors to modern Slavic languages.

Non-Slavic Russia

When starting a conversation about Russian, or more precisely about the Russian language, we should first of all remember that Russia is a non-Slavic country.

The territories inhabited by ancient near-Slavic peoples include only Smolensk, Kursk, Bryansk - the territories of the ancient Krivichi, Slavicized by the Western Slavs of the Balts.

The remaining lands are Finnish, where no Slavs have ever lived: Chud, Muroma, Mordovians, Perm, Vyatichi and others.

The main toponyms of historical Muscovy themselves are all Finnish: Moscow, Murom, Ryazan (Erzya), Vologda, Kostroma, Suzdal, Tula, etc.

These territories were conquered over several centuries by Rurik colonists who sailed from Laba or Elbe, but the number of colonists who built Novgorod near Ladoga - as a continuation of the then existing Polabian Old Town - now Oldenburg - was extremely small in these parts.

In the rare fortress towns founded by the Obodrite-Rusyns and Normans: Danes and Swedes, a handful of colonial rulers lived with their retinue - the network of these fortress-colonies was called “Rus”.

And 90-95% of the region’s population were non-Slavic natives, subordinate to these more civilized occupiers.

The language of the colonies was Slavic Koine - that is, a language used for communication between peoples with different dialects and languages.

Gradually, over many centuries, the local native population adopted this koine; in the Novgorod land, as Academician Yanov writes, this process took at least 250 years - judging by the language birch bark letters, which from Sami gradually becomes an Indo-European, Slavic analytical language, with inflections added to the word, and only then normal Slavic synthetic.

By the way, Nestor writes about this in “The Tale of Bygone Years”: that the Ladoga Sami gradually learned the Slavic language of Rurik and after that began to be called “Slovenians” - that is, those who understand the word, as opposed to the “Germans”, dumb - that is, those who do not understand the language.

“The term “Slavs” has no relation to the term “Slovenians”, since it comes from the original “sklavens”.

The second after the Ladoga Sami began to adopt the Slavic Koine were the northern Finnish peoples - the Muroma, Ves or Vepsians, Chud, but for them the process took much longer, and among the more southern Finns directly from Mordovian Moscow and its surroundings, the adoption of the Slavic Koine dragged on until the time of Peter the Great, and some -where their original native languages ​​were preserved - like the Erzya language of Ryazan or the Finnish dialect of the Vyatichi.

The characteristic “Okanye” of the population of Central Russia today is mistakenly considered “Old Slavonic,” although this is a purely Finnish dialect, which precisely reflects the incompleteness of the Slavicization of the region.

“By the way, bast shoes are also a purely Finnish attribute: the Slavs never wore bast shoes, but only wore leather shoes, while all Finnish peoples wear bast shoes.”

During the Golden Horde, Muscovy for three centuries went to the ethnically related peoples of the Finno-Ugric peoples, who were gathered under their rule by the Horde kings.

During this period, the language of the region was greatly influenced by the Turkic language, as part of the generally enormous influence of Asia.

The book by Afanasy Nikitin, from the late 15th century, “On Walking Beyond Three Seas,” is indicative.

“In the name of Allah, the Gracious and Merciful and Jesus the Spirit of God. Allah is great..."

In the original:

“Bismillah Rahman Rahim. Isa Ruh Wallo. Allah Akbar. Allah kerim."

At that time, the religion common to Muscovy and the Horde was a hybrid of Islam and Arian Christianity; Jesus and Mohammed were equally revered, and the division of faith occurred in 1589, when Moscow accepted the Greek canon, and Kazan adopted pure Islam.

In medieval Muscovy, several languages ​​existed simultaneously.

Near-Slavic Koine is like the language of the princely nobility.

The native languages ​​are Finnish.

Turkic languages ​​as religious languages ​​during their stay in the Horde and after Ivan the Terrible seized power in the Horde until 1589.

And finally, the Bulgarian language - as a language Orthodox texts and religious cults.

This whole mixture ultimately became the basis for the current Russian language, which coincides in vocabulary only 30-40% with other Slavic languages, in which (including Belarusian and Ukrainian) this coincidence is disproportionately higher and amounts to 70-80%.

Today, Russian linguists basically reduce the origins of the modern Russian language to only two components: this is the national language of Russia, not at all Slavic, but Slavic-Finnish Koine with great Turkic and Mongolian influence - and Bulgarian Old Bulgarian, also known as “Church Slavonic”.

The third language of Russia can be called the modern literary Russian language, which is a completely artificial armchair invention, a kind of “Esperanto” based on the two source languages ​​indicated above; I am writing this article in Esperanto.

Is Russia Slavic?

There are three points that all Russian linguists strenuously hide, although, as people say, you can’t hide a bag in a bag.

1. Until the 18th century, the language of Muscovy was not considered Russian by anyone in the world, but was specifically called the language of the Muscovites, Muscovite.


2. Until this time, only the Ukrainian language was called the Russian language.


3. The language of Muscovy - the Muscovite language - was not recognized until that time by European linguists, including Slavic countries, even as a Slavic language, but belonged to the Finnish dialects.

Of course, today everything is not so: for the sake of imperial interests of conquering Slavic countries, Russia had a huge influence on its linguistic science, setting it the task of giving the Russian language “Slavic status”.

Moreover, if Germanic peoples lived to the west of Russia, then in exactly the same way it would prove that the Russian language is from the family Germanic languages: for such would be the order of the Empire.

And language reforms Russian language, begun by Lomonosov, were precisely aimed at emphasizing his weak Slavic features.

However, as the Polish Slavist Jerzy Leszczynski wrote about the Western Balts related to the Slavs 150 years ago, “the Prussian language has much more reason to be considered Slavic than Great Russian, which has much less in common with the Polish and other Slavic languages ​​than even the Western Baltic Prussian language."

Let me remind you that Russia began to be called “Russia” for the first time officially only under Peter I, who considered the previous name - Muscovy - dark and obscurantist.

Peter not only began to forcibly shave his beards, forbade all women of Muscovy to wear veils in the Asian style and banned harems, towers where women were kept locked up, but during his trips to Europe he demanded from cartographers that from now on on maps his country would be called not Muscovy or Muscovitia, as before, but by Russia.

And so that the Muscovites themselves would be considered Slavs for the first time in history, which was a general strategy to “cut a window to Europe” - coupled with Peter’s request to move the eastern border of Europe from the border between Muscovy and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania now to the Urals, thereby including geographically Muscovy for the first time in history into Europe.

Before this, Polish and Czech linguists and the creators of Slavic grammars clearly distinguished the Russian language - Ukrainian and Muscovite, and did not classify this Muscovite language itself as a member of the family of Slavic languages.

For the language of Muscovy was poor in Slavic vocabulary.

As Russian linguist I.S. writes. Ulukhanov in his work “Colloquial Speech” Ancient Rus'", "Russian Speech", No. 5, 1972, the circle of Slavicisms, regularly repeated in the living speech of the people of Muscovy, expanded very slowly.

Recordings of live oral speech made by foreigners in Muscovy in the 16th-17th centuries include only some Slavic words against the backdrop of the bulk of local Finnish and Turkic vocabulary.

In the “Parisian Dictionary of Muscovites” (1586) among TOTAL DICTIONARY we find the Muscovite people, as I.S. writes. Ulukhanov, only the words “lord” and “zlat”.

There are already more of them in the diary-dictionary of the Englishman Richard James 1618-1619 - 16 WHOLE WORDS : “good”, “blessing”, “scold”, “Sunday”, “resurrect”, “enemy”, “time”, “boat”, “weakness”, “cave”, “help”, “holiday”, “ prapor", "fragmentation", "sweet", "temple".

In the book “Grammar of the Muscovite language” by the German scientist and traveler W. Ludolph from 1696 SLAVIC WORDS 41!

Moreover, some with a huge Finnish “okan” in the prefixes - like “to reason.”

The rest of the oral vocabulary of Muscovites in these phrase books is Finnish and Turkic.

Linguists of that era had no reason to classify the Muscovite language as a “Slavic language”, since the Slavicisms themselves were not in oral speech, and it is the oral speech of the people that is the criterion here.

And therefore colloquial Muscovy was not considered either Slavic or even near-Russian: the peasants of Muscovy spoke their Finnish dialects.

A typical example: the Mordvin Ivan Susanin of the Kostroma district did not know Russian, and his relatives, submitting a petition to the queen, paid an interpreter for translation from Finnish Kostroma into the Russian “sovereign” language.

It’s funny that today absolutely Mordovian Kostroma is considered in Russia to be the “standard” of “Russianness” and “Slavism”; there is even a rock band that sings Mordovian songs from Kostroma in Russian, passing them off as supposedly “Slavic”, although two centuries ago no one I didn’t speak Slavic in Kostroma.

And the fact that the Moscow Church broadcast in the Bulgarian language, in which the state papers of Muscovy were written, did not mean anything, since all of Europe at that time spoke Latin in churches and conducted office work in Latin, and this had nothing to do with the fact What kind of peoples live here?

Let me remind you that after the Union of Lublin in 1569, when the Belarusians created with the Poles union state- Republic, in Polish - the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania retained Belarusian, that is, Rusyn, as its state language, and Poland introduced Latin as its state language.

But this does not mean at all that the national language of the Poles is Latin.

In the same way, Russian was not the popular language in Muscovy-Russia at that time - until Russian villages learned it.

Here is another example: today and from ancient times in the villages of the Smolensk, Kursk and Bryansk regions, which were once part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, they speak not Russian at all, but Belarusian.

They don’t speak literary Russian there, just as no one “okats” - reflecting the Finnish accent, as in the Ryazan or Moscow regions, but they speak completely the language spoken by the villagers of the Vitebsk or Minsk regions.

Any linguist should draw one conclusion: the Belarusian population lives in these Russian regions, because they speak the Belarusian language.

But for some reason this population is ethnically attributed to the “nearby” eastern neighbors, who at the time of Ludolf knew only 41 Slavic words there.

I.S. Ulukhanov writes that speaking about the existence of two languages ​​among the Muscovites - Slavic or Church Bulgarian and his own Muscovite, V. Ludolf reported in the “Grammar of the Muscovite Language”:

“The more learned someone wants to appear, the more he mixes Slavic expressions into his speech or in his writings, although some laugh at those who abuse the Slavic language in ordinary speech.”

Marvelous!

What is this “Slavic language” of Moscow, which people laugh at for using Slavic words instead of their own Finnish and Turkic words?

This did not happen in Belarus-VKL - here no one laughs at people who use Slavic words in their speech.

On the contrary, no one will understand someone who constructs phrases using Finnish or Turkic vocabulary instead of Slavic.

This “bilingualism” did not exist anywhere among the Slavs, except in Muscovy alone.

“By the way: The statutes of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania were written in the purest Slavic language - the state language in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Russia, a purely Slavic state, where the Litvins were the Slavs - the current Belarusians.”

This problem of “bilingualism” due to the lack of a folk Slavic basis in Russia has always haunted the creators of the literary Russian language - as the main problem of the Russian language in general.

It went through the “stages of development of the term”, being called first Muscovite, then Russian under Lomonosov - until 1795, then during the occupation by Russia in 1794, formally consolidated in 1795, Belarus and Western and Central Ukraine had to change it to the “Great Russian dialect of the Russian language "

This is exactly how the Russian language figured in the 1840s in the title of Dahl’s dictionary “Explanatory Dictionary of the Great Russian Dictionary of the Russian Language,” where the Russian language itself was generally understood as Belarusian, Ukrainian and Russian, although today all Russian linguists have unscientifically distorted the name of Dahl’s dictionary to “Explanatory Dictionary living Russian language,” although he never wrote a dictionary with that name.

In 1778, a brochure by the writer and linguist Fyodor Grigorievich Karin “Letter on the Transformers of the Russian Language” was published in Moscow.

He wrote: “The terrible difference between our language, throughout his work he calls it the “Moscow dialect,” and Slavic often prevents us from expressing ourselves in it with that freedom that alone enlivens eloquence and which is acquired nothing other than daily conversation. ... Just as a skillful gardener renews an old tree with a young graft, clearing the withered vines and thorns growing at its roots, so the great writers acted in transforming our language, which in itself was poor, and when counterfeited with the Slavic it has already become ugly.”

"Poor" and "ugly" - this, of course, is at odds with his future assessment as “great and powerful.”

The justification here is the fact that Pushkin was not yet born for the young green language just created by Lomonosov’s experiments.

Again, I draw your attention: this problem has never existed among Belarusians, Poles, Czechs, Bulgarians, Ukrainians, Serbs and other Slavs - where the language of the villagers organically becomes the language of the country and the people.

This is a purely Russian unique problem - how to combine the Finnish language of the villagers with the Slavic language of the state, for example, in Belarus it is absurd: to argue about the possible “dominance of Slavicisms in writing", implying, as in Russia, the dominance of the Bulgarian vocabulary, when the Belarusian vocabulary itself is the same completely Slavic vocabulary and the same Slavicisms - that is, there is no very subject for such a dispute, because the Slavicisms of the Bulgarian language cannot in any way “spoil” the already founded Only in Slavicisms is the Belarusian language - you can’t spoil butter with butter.

As a result, Russian linguists heroically break the “umbilical cord” of the centuries-old connection between the culture of Moscow and the Bulgarian language, which they unanimously find “alien,” “pretentious in Russian conditions,” “inhibiting the formation of the literary Russian language.”

And they reject the Bulgarian language, boldly falling into the fold of the popular language of the “Moscow dialect,” which consists of 60-70% non-Slavic vocabulary.

The great figures who are making this linguistic revolution in Russia are F.G. Karin in his work names Feofan Prokopovich, M.V. Lomonosov and A.P. Sumarokova.

So, at the very end of the 18th century, Russia refused to follow the Bulgarian language, which for centuries, like a rope, kept it in the Slavic field and converted it “to Slavism” - and began to consider itself linguistically free and sovereign, recognizing as its language not Bulgarian, but that the folk language of the Slavicized Finns, which by no means had, like Bulgarian, obvious Slavic features.

Alphabet

A general misconception: in Russia everyone believes that they write in “Cyrillic”, although no one in Russia writes in it.

They write in a completely different alphabet, very little related to the Cyrillic alphabet - this is the “civil alphabet” introduced by Peter I.

It is not a Cyrillic alphabet, since it was not created by Cyril and Methodius.

This is the imperial Russian alphabet, which Russia during the Tsarist and Soviet periods tried to spread among all its neighbors, even the Turks and Finns.

He is trying to do this today: not so long ago, the Duma banned Karelia and Tatarstan from returning to the Latin alphabet, calling it “separatist intrigues,” although it is the Latin alphabet that more successfully reflects the linguistic realities of the Finnish and Tatar languages.

In general, this looks completely absurd: it turns out that Cyril and Methodius created writing not for the Bulgarians and Czechs so that they could read Byzantine Bibles, but for the Tatars who profess Islam.

But why do Muslims need the Orthodox alphabet?

The second misconception is that the Cyrillic alphabet is considered a “Slavic alphabet”.

This is actually just a slightly modified Greek alphabet, and the Greeks are not Slavs.

And more than half of the Slavic peoples write in Latin, not Cyrillic.

Finally, this is the alphabet of Church Slavonic - that is, Bulgarian - books, this is the Bulgarian alphabet, and not at all our own Russian, Belarusian or Ukrainian.

Refer to religious Orthodox traditions This is simply ridiculous, because in the Middle Ages all of Catholic Europe used Latin in religion - is this a reason for all these countries to abandon their national languages ​​and return to Latin?

Of course not.

By the way, the Belarusian alphabet today should be Latin, not Cyrillic, more precisely: the alphabet of Peter I, since the Belarusian literary language over the centuries was formed as a language based on the Latin alphabet, and all the founders of Belarusian literature wrote in the Latin alphabet.

Let me remind you that after the Russian occupation of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in 1795, the tsar banned the Belarusian language by decree in 1839, in 1863 he banned religious literature already in the Ukrainian language, in 1876 - all types of literature in the Ukrainian language, except for fiction.

In Ukraine, the literary language was formed on the basis of the Cyrillic alphabet, but in Belarus - on the basis of the Latin alphabet, and in the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century, Belarusian periodicals were published in the Latin alphabet - “Bielarus”, “Bielaruskaja krynica”, “Nasza Niwa” and so on.

Slavic languages ​​are related languages ​​of the Indo-European family. More than 400 million people speak Slavic languages.

Slavic languages ​​are distinguished by the similarity of word structure, the use of grammatical categories, sentence structure, semantics (meaning), phonetics, and morphonological alternations. This closeness is explained by the unity of origin of the Slavic languages ​​and their contacts with each other.
Based on the degree of proximity to each other, Slavic languages ​​are divided into 3 groups: East Slavic, South Slavic and West Slavic.
Each Slavic language has its own literary language (a processed part of the national language with written norms; the language of all manifestations of culture) and its own territorial dialects, which are not the same within each Slavic language.

Origin and history of Slavic languages

Slavic languages ​​are closest to the Baltic languages. Both are part of the Indo-European family of languages. From the Indo-European proto-language, the Balto-Slavic proto-language first emerged, which later split into Proto-Baltic and Proto-Slavic. But not all scientists agree with this. They explain the special closeness of these proto-languages ​​by the long-term contact of the ancient Balts and Slavs, and deny the existence of the Balto-Slavic language.
But what is clear is that from one of the Indo-European dialects (Proto-Slavic) the Proto-Slavic language was formed, which is the ancestor of all modern Slavic languages.
The history of the Proto-Slavic language was long. For a long time the Proto-Slavic language developed as a single dialect. Dialectal variants arose later.
In the second half of the 1st millennium AD. e. Early Slavic states began to form in Southeast and Eastern Europe. Then the process of dividing the Proto-Slavic language into independent Slavic languages ​​began.

Slavic languages ​​have retained significant similarities with each other, but at the same time, each of them has unique features.

Eastern group of Slavic languages

Russian (250 million people)
Ukrainian (45 million people)
Belarusian (6.4 million people).
The writing of all East Slavic languages ​​is based on the Cyrillic alphabet.

Differences between East Slavic languages ​​and other Slavic languages:

reduction of vowels (akanye);
the presence of Church Slavonicisms in the vocabulary;
free dynamic stress.

Western group of Slavic languages

Polish (40 million people)
Slovak (5.2 million people)
Czech (9.5 million people)
The writing of all West Slavic languages ​​is based on the Latin alphabet.

Differences between West Slavic languages ​​and other Slavic languages:

IN Polish language– the presence of nasal vowels and two rows of sibilant consonants; fixed stress on the penultimate syllable. In Czech, the stress is fixed on the first syllable; presence of long and short vowels. The Slovak language has the same features as the Czech language.

Southern group of Slavic languages

Serbo-Croatian (21 million people)
Bulgarian (8.5 million people)
Macedonian (2 million people)
Slovenian (2.2 million people)
Written language: Bulgarian and Macedonian - Cyrillic, Serbo-Croatian - Cyrillic/Latin, Slovenian - Latin.

Differences between South Slavic languages ​​and other Slavic languages:

Serbo-Croatian has free musical stress. In the Bulgarian language there are no cases, a variety of verb forms and the absence of an infinitive (undefined form of the verb), free dynamic stress. Macedonian language - the same as in the Bulgarian language + fixed stress (no further than the third syllable from the end of the word). The Slovenian language has many dialects, the presence of a dual number, and free musical stress.

Writing of Slavic languages

By the creators Slavic writing there were brothers Cyril (Constantine the Philosopher) and Methodius. They translated liturgical texts from Greek into Slavic for the needs of Great Moravia.

Prayer in Old Church Slavonic
Great Moravia is a Slavic state that existed in 822-907. on the Middle Danube. At its best, it included the territories of modern Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Lesser Poland, part of Ukraine and the historical region of Silesia.
Great Moravia had a great influence on the cultural development of the entire Slavic world.

Great Moravia

The new literary language was based on the South Macedonian dialect, but in Great Moravia it acquired many local linguistic features. Later it was further developed in Bulgaria. A rich original and translated literature was created in this language (Old Church Slavonic) in Moravia, Bulgaria, Rus', and Serbia. There were two Slavic alphabets: Glagolitic and Cyrillic.

The most ancient Old Church Slavonic texts date back to the 10th century. Since the 11th century. More Slavic monuments have survived.
Modern Slavic languages ​​use alphabets based on Cyrillic and Latin. Glagolitic script is used in Catholic worship in Montenegro and several coastal areas in Croatia. In Bosnia, for some time, in parallel with the Cyrillic and Latin alphabet, the Arabic alphabet was also used (in 1463 Bosnia completely lost its independence and became part of Ottoman Empire as an administrative unit).

Slavic literary languages

Slavic literary languages ​​did not always have strict norms. Sometimes the literary language in Slavic countries was a foreign language (in Rus' - Old Church Slavonic, in the Czech Republic and Poland - Latin).
The Russian literary language had a complex evolution. It absorbed folk elements, elements of the Old Church Slavonic language, and was influenced by many European languages.
In the Czech Republic in the 18th century. dominated German. During the period of national revival in the Czech Republic, the language of the 16th century was artificially revived, which at that time was already far from the national language.
The Slovak literary language developed on the basis of the folk language. In Serbia until the 19th century. The Church Slavonic language was dominant. In the 18th century the process of bringing this language closer to the folk one began. As a result of the reform carried out by Vuk Karadzic in mid-19th c., a new literary language was created.
The Macedonian literary language was finally formed only in the middle of the 20th century.
But there are also a number of small Slavic literary languages ​​(microlanguages), which function along with national literary languages ​​in small ethnic groups. This is, for example, the Polesie microlanguage, Podlyashian in Belarus; Rusyn - in Ukraine; Wichsky - in Poland; Banat-Bulgarian microlanguage - in Bulgaria, etc.

Word structure, use of grammatical categories, sentence structure, system of regular sound correspondences, morphonological alternations. This closeness is explained both by the unity of origin of the Slavic languages ​​and by their long and intensive contacts at the level of literary languages ​​and dialects. There are, however, differences of a material, functional and typological nature, due to the long independent development Slavic tribes and nationalities in different ethnic, geographical and historical-cultural conditions, their contacts with related and unrelated ethnic groups.

Slavic languages, according to the degree of their proximity to each other, are usually divided into 3 groups: East Slavic (Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian languages), South Slavic (Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbo-Croatian and Slovenian languages) and Western Slavic (Czech, Slovak, Polish with a Kashubian dialect that has retained a certain genetic independence, Upper Sorbian and Lower Sorbian languages). Small local groups of Slavs with their own literary languages ​​are also known. Thus, Croats in Austria (Burgenland) have their own literary language based on the Chakavian dialect. Not all Slavic languages ​​have reached us. At the end of the 17th - beginning of the 18th centuries. The Polabian language disappeared. The distribution of Slavic languages ​​within each group has its own characteristics (see East Slavic languages, West Slavic languages, South Slavic languages). Each Slavic language includes a literary language with all its stylistic, genre and other varieties and its own territorial dialects. The ratios of all these elements in Slavic languages ​​are different. The Czech literary language has a more complex stylistic structure than Slovak, but the latter better preserves the features of the dialects. Sometimes dialects of one Slavic language differ from each other more than independent Slavic languages. For example, the morphology of the Shtokavian and Chakavian dialects of the Serbo-Croatian language differs much more deeply than the morphology of the Russian and Belarusian languages. The specific gravity of identical elements is often different. For example, the category of diminutive in the Czech language is expressed in more diverse and differentiated forms than in the Russian language.

Of the Indo-European languages, the Slavic languages ​​are closest to the Baltic languages. This proximity served as the basis for the theory of the “Balto-Slavic proto-language”, according to which the Balto-Slavic proto-language first emerged from the Indo-European proto-language, which later split into Proto-Baltic and Proto-Slavic. However, most modern scientists explain their special closeness by the long-term contact of the ancient Balts and Slavs. It has not been established in what territory the separation of the language continuum from Indo-European occurred. It can be assumed that it occurred to the south of those territories that, according to various theories, belong to the territory of the Slavic ancestral home. There are many such theories, but all of them do not localize the ancestral home where the Indo-European proto-language could have been located. On the basis of one of the Indo-European dialects (Proto-Slavic), the Proto-Slavic language was later formed, which is the ancestor of all modern Slavic languages. The history of the Proto-Slavic language was longer than the history of individual Slavic languages. For a long time it developed as a single dialect with an identical structure. Later, dialect variants arise. The process of transition of the Proto-Slavic language and its dialects into independent Slavic languages ​​was long and complex. It took place most actively in the second half of the first millennium AD, during the formation of the early Slavic feudal states in the territory of South-Eastern and Eastern Europe. During this period, the territory of Slavic settlements increased significantly. Areas of various geographical zones with different natural and climatic conditions were developed, the Slavs entered into relationships with peoples and tribes at different stages of cultural development. All this was reflected in the history of Slavic languages.

The Proto-Slavic language was preceded by a period of Proto-Slavic language, elements of which can be reconstructed with the help of ancient Indo-European languages. The Proto-Slavic language is mainly restored using data from Slavic languages ​​from various periods of their history. The history of the Proto-Slavic language is divided into three periods: the oldest - before the establishment of close Balto-Slavic linguistic contact, the period of Balto-Slavic community and the period of dialectical fragmentation and the beginning of the formation of independent Slavic languages.

The individuality and originality of the Proto-Slavic language began to take shape in the early period. It was then that a new system of vowel sonants was formed, consonantism was significantly simplified, the reduction stage became widespread in ablaut, and the root ceased to obey ancient restrictions. According to the fate of the Middle Palatals, the Proto-Slavic language is included in the satəm group (“sьrdьce”, “pisati”, “prositi”, cf. Latin “cor” - “cordis”, “pictus”, “precor”; “zьrno”, “znati”, “zima”, compare Latin “granum”, “cognosco”, “hiems”). However, this feature was implemented inconsistently: cf. Proto-Slavic “*kamy”, “*kosa”, “*gąsь”, “gordъ”, “bergъ”, etc. Significant deviations from the Indo-European type are represented by Proto-Slavic morphology. This primarily applies to the verb, to a lesser extent to the name. Most of the suffixes were already formed on Proto-Slavic soil. Proto-Slavic vocabulary is highly original; Already in the early period of its development, the Proto-Slavic language experienced a number of significant transformations in the field of lexical composition. Having preserved in most cases the old lexical Indo-European fund, it at the same time lost many old Indo-European lexemes (for example, some terms from the area social relations, nature, etc.). Many words were lost due to various kinds of prohibitions. For example, the name of oak was forbidden - the Indo-European “*perkuos”, from which the Latin “quercus”. The old Indo-European root has reached us only in the name of the pagan god Perun. In Slavic languages, the taboo “*dąbъ” was established, from which Russian “oak”, Polish “dąb”, Bulgarian “dab”, etc. The Indo-European name for the bear was lost. It is preserved only in the new scientific term “Arctic” (cf. Greek “αρκτος”). The Indo-European word in the Proto-Slavic language was replaced by the taboo compound “*medvědь” - “honey eater”. During the period of the Balto-Slavic community, the Slavs borrowed many words from the Balts. During this period, vowel sonants were lost in the Proto-Slavic language, in their place diphthong combinations appeared in the position before consonants and the sequence “vowel sonant before vowels” (“sъmрti”, but “umirati”), intonation (acute and circumflex) became relevant features. The most important processes of the Pre-Slavic period were the loss closed syllables and softening of consonants before the iota. In connection with the first process, all the ancient diphthong combinations into monophthongs, smooth syllabic, nasal vowels arose, a shift in the syllable division occurred, which in turn caused a simplification of consonant groups, the phenomenon of intersyllabic dissimilation. These ancient processes left their mark on all modern Slavic languages, which is reflected in many alternations: cf. Russian “reap - reap”, “take - take”, “name - yen”, Czech “žíti - žnu”, “vzíti - vezmu”, Serbo-Croatian “zheti - press”, “useti - uzmem”, “ime - names” . The softening of consonants before the iot is reflected in the form of alternations s/š, z/ž and others. All these processes had a strong impact on grammatical structure, to the system of inflections. In connection with the softening of the consonants before the iota, the process of the so-called first palatalization of vesterior palatals was experienced: [k] > [č], [g] > [ž], [x] > [š]. On this basis, even in the Proto-Slavic language, the alternations k/č, g/ž, x/š were formed, which had a great influence on nominal and verbal word formation. later, the so-called second and third palatalizations of the posterior palatal began to operate, as a result of which alternations of k/c, g/z, x/s arose. The name changed according to cases and numbers. Except the only one plural there was a dual number, which was later lost in almost all Slavic languages. There were nominal stems that performed the functions of definitions. In the late Proto-Slavic period, pronominal adjectives arose. The verb had the bases of the infinitive and the present tense. From the first, the infinitive, supine, aorist, imperfect, participles starting with “-l”, active participles of the past tense with “-vъ” and passive participles starting with “-n” were formed. From the foundations of the present tense the present tense was formed, imperative mood, present active participle. Later, in some Slavic languages, an imperfect began to form from this stem.

Even in the depths of the Proto-Slavic language, dialectical formations began to form. The most compact was the group of Proto-Slavic dialects, on the basis of which the East Slavic languages ​​later arose. There were three subgroups in the West Slavic group: Lechitic, Serbo-Sorbian and Czech-Slovak. The most dialectically differentiated was the South Slavic group.

The Proto-Slavic language functioned in the pre-state period of the history of the Slavs, when tribal social relations dominated. Significant changes occurred during the period of early feudalism. This was reflected in the further differentiation of Slavic languages. By the XII-XIII centuries. there was a loss of the super-short (reduced) vowels [ъ] and [ь] characteristic of the Proto-Slavic language. In some cases they disappeared, in others they became fully formed vowels. As a result, significant changes occurred in the phonetic and morphological structure of the Slavic languages. The Slavic languages ​​have experienced many common processes in the field of grammar and lexical composition.

Slavic languages ​​received literary treatment for the first time in the 60s. 9th century The creators of Slavic writing were the brothers Cyril (Constantine the Philosopher) and Methodius. They translated liturgical texts from Greek into Slavic for the needs of Great Moravia. The new literary language was based on the South Macedonian (Thessalonica) dialect, but in Great Moravia it acquired many local linguistic features. Later it was further developed in Bulgaria. In this language (usually called Old Church Slavonic) a wealth of original and translated literature was created in Moravia, Pannonia, Bulgaria, Rus', and Serbia. There were two Slavic alphabets: Glagolitic and Cyrillic. From the 9th century no Slavic texts have survived. The most ancient ones date back to the 10th century: the Dobrudzhan inscription 943, the inscription of Tsar Samuel 993, etc. From the 11th century. Many Slavic monuments have already been preserved. Slavic literary languages ​​of the era of feudalism, as a rule, did not have strict norms. Some important functions were performed by foreign languages ​​(in Rus' - the Old Church Slavonic language, in the Czech Republic and Poland - the Latin language). The unification of literary languages, the development of written and pronunciation norms, the expansion of the scope of use of the native language - all this characterizes the long period of formation of national Slavic languages. The Russian literary language has experienced centuries-long and complex evolution. It absorbed folk elements and elements of the Old Church Slavonic language, and was influenced by many European languages. It developed without interruption for a long time. The process of formation and history of a number of other literary Slavic languages ​​proceeded differently. In the Czech Republic in the 18th century. literary language, which reached in the XIV-XVI centuries. great perfection, has almost disappeared. The German language dominated in the cities. During the period of national revival, Czech “awakeners” artificially revived the language of the 16th century, which at that time was already far from the national language. The entire history of the Czech literary language of the 19th-20th centuries. reflects the interaction between the old book language and the spoken language. The development of the Slovak literary language proceeded differently. Not burdened by old book traditions, it is close to the folk language. In Serbia until the 19th century. The Church Slavonic language of the Russian version dominated. In the 18th century the process of bringing this language closer to the folk one began. As a result of the reform carried out by V. Karadzic in the middle of the 19th century, a new literary language was created. This new language began to serve not only the Serbs, but also the Croats, and therefore began to be called Serbo-Croatian or Croatian-Serbian. The Macedonian literary language was finally formed in the middle of the 20th century. Slavic literary languages ​​have developed and are developing in close communication with each other. Slavic studies deals with the study of Slavic languages.