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Interslavic (''Medžuslovjansky'' / ''Меджусловјанскы'') is a
pan-Slavic Pan-Slavism, a movement which crystallized in the mid-19th century, is the political ideology concerned with the advancement of integrity and unity for the Slavic people. Its main impact occurred in the Balkans, where non-Slavic empires had ruled ...
auxiliary language. Its purpose is to facilitate communication between speakers of various
Slavic languages 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 ...
, as well as to allow people who do not speak a Slavic language to communicate with Slavic speakers by being
mutually intelligible In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. It is sometimes used as a ...
with most, if not all, Slavic languages. For Slavs and non-Slavs, it can fulfil an educational role as well. Interslavic can be classified as a semi- constructed language. It is essentially a modern continuation of
Old Church Slavonic Old Church Slavonic or Old Slavonic () was the first Slavic literary language. Historians credit the 9th-century Byzantine missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius with standardizing the language and using it in translating the Bible and other ...
, but also draws on the various improvised language forms Slavs have been using for centuries to communicate with Slavs of other nationalities, for example in multi-Slavic environments and on the Internet, providing them with a scientific base. Thus, both grammar and vocabulary are based on the commonalities between the
Slavic languages 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 ...
, and non-Slavic elements are avoided. Its main focus lies on instant understandability rather than easy learning, a balance typical for naturalistic (as opposed to
schematic A schematic, or schematic diagram, is a designed representation of the elements of a system using abstract, graphic symbols rather than realistic pictures. A schematic usually omits all details that are not relevant to the key information the sc ...
) languages. The Interslavic project began in 2006 under the name Slovianski. In 2011, Slovianski underwent a thorough reform and merged with two other projects, with the result called "Interslavic", a name that was first proposed by the Czech Ignác Hošek in 1908.Л.П. Рупосова, ''История межславянского языка'', in: ''Вестник Московского государственного областного университета'' (Московский государственный областной университет, 2012 no. 1, p. 55. As with the languages of the Slavic language family, Interslavic is generally written using either
Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
or
Cyrillic , bg, кирилица , mk, кирилица , russian: кириллица , sr, ћирилица, uk, кирилиця , fam1 = Egyptian hieroglyphs , fam2 = Proto-Sinaitic , fam3 = Phoenician , fam4 = Gr ...
letters, or on rare occasions the
Glagolitic The Glagolitic script (, , ''glagolitsa'') is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. It is generally agreed to have been created in the 9th century by Saint Cyril, a monk from Thessalonica. He and his brother Saint Methodius were sent by the Byza ...
script.


History

Precursors of Interslavic have a long history and predate constructed languages like
Volapük Volapük (; , "Language of the World", or lit. "World Speak") is a constructed language created between 1879 and 1880 by Johann Martin Schleyer, a Catholic priest in Baden, Germany, who believed that God had told him in a dream to create an i ...
and
Esperanto Esperanto ( or ) is the world's most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Created by the Warsaw-based ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, it was intended to be a universal second language for international commun ...
by centuries: the oldest description, written by the Croatian priest
Juraj Križanić Juraj Križanić (c. 1618 – 12 September 1683), also known as Jurij Križanič or Yuriy Krizhanich (russian: Юрий Крижанич), was a Croatian Catholic missionary who is often regarded as the earliest recorded pan-Slavist. His ideal, o ...
, goes back to the years 1659–1666. The history of Pan-Slavic language projects is closely connected with
Pan-Slavism Pan-Slavism, a movement which crystallized in the mid-19th century, is the political ideology concerned with the advancement of integrity and unity for the Slavic people. Its main impact occurred in the Balkans, where non-Slavic empires had rule ...
, an ideology that endeavors cultural and political unification of all Slavs, based on the conception that all Slavic people are part of a single Slavic nation. Along with this belief came also the need for a Slavic umbrella language.
Old Church Slavonic Old Church Slavonic or Old Slavonic () was the first Slavic literary language. Historians credit the 9th-century Byzantine missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius with standardizing the language and using it in translating the Bible and other ...
had partly served this role in previous centuries, as an administrative language in a large part of the Slavic world, and it was still used on a large scale in Orthodox liturgy, where it played a role similar to
Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
in the West. A strong candidate for a more modern language is
Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries * Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and p ...
, the language of the largest (and during most of the 19th century the only) Slavic state and also mother tongue of more than half of the Slavs. However, the role of the Russian language as a lingua franca in Eastern Europe and the Balkans diminished after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In March 2006, the Slovianski project was started by a group of people from different countries, who felt the need for a simple and neutral Slavic language that the Slavs could understand without prior learning. The language they envisioned should be naturalistic and only consist of material existing in all or most Slavic languages, without any artificial additions.Bojana Barlovac
Creation of 'One Language for All Slavs' Underway
BalkanInsight, 18 February 2010.
Initially, Slovianski was being developed in two different variants: a naturalistic version known as Slovianski-N (initiated by Jan van Steenbergen and further developed by Igor Polyakov), and a more simplified version known as Slovianski-P (initiated by Ondrej Rečnik and further developed by Gabriel Svoboda). The difference was that Slovianski-N had six grammatical cases, while Slovianski-P—like
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...
, Bulgarian and Macedonian—used
preposition Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...
s instead. Apart from these two variants (N stands for ''naturalism'', P for '' pidgin'' or ''prosti'' "simple"), a schematic version, Slovianski-S, has been experimented with as well, but was abandoned in an early stage of the project. In 2009 it was decided that only the naturalistic version would be continued under the name Slovianski. Although Slovianski had three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter), six cases and full conjugation of verbs—features usually avoided in international auxiliary languages—a high level of simplification was achieved by means of simple, unambiguous endings and irregularity being kept to a minimum. Slovianski was mostly used in Internet traffic and in a news letter, ''Slovianska Gazeta''. In February and March 2010 there was much publicity about Slovianski after articles had been dedicated to it on the Polish internet portal '' Interia.pl'' and the Serbian newspaper '' Večernje Novosti''. Shortly thereafter, articles about Slovianski appeared in the Slovak newspaper ''
Pravda ''Pravda'' ( rus, Правда, p=ˈpravdə, a=Ru-правда.ogg, "Truth") is a Russian broadsheet newspaper, and was the official newspaper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, when it was one of the most influential papers in the c ...
'', on the news site of the Czech broadcasting station
ČT24 ČT24 (Czech pronunciation: ˈtʃeːteːˈdvatsɛtˈt͡ʃtɪr̝ɪ) is a 24-hour news channel in Czech, owned and operated by Czech Television. The channel was launched on 2 May 2005. ČT24 broadcasts from Prague, Czech Republic where their headqu ...
, in the Serbian blogosphere and the Serbian edition of ''
Reader's Digest ''Reader's Digest'' is an American general-interest family magazine, published ten times a year. Formerly based in Chappaqua, New York, it is now headquartered in midtown Manhattan. The magazine was founded in 1922 by DeWitt Wallace and his wi ...
'', as well as other newspapers and internet portals in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria and Ukraine. Slovianski has played a role in the development of other, related projects as well. Rozumio (2008) and Slovioski (2009) were both efforts to build a bridge between Slovianski and Slovio. Originally, Slovioski, developed by Polish-American Steeven Radzikowski, was merely intended to reform Slovio, but gradually it developed into a separate language. Like Slovianski, it was a collaborative project that existed in two variants: a "full" and a simplified version. In 2009 a new language was published, Neoslavonic ("Novoslovienskij", later "Novoslověnsky") by the Czech Vojtěch Merunka, based on Old Church Slavonic grammar but using part of Slovianski's vocabulary. In 2011, Slovianski, Slovioski and Novoslověnsky merged into one common project under the name Interslavic (''Medžuslovjanski''). Slovianski grammar and dictionary were expanded to include all options of Neoslavonic as well, turning it into a more flexible language based on prototypes rather than fixed rules. From that time Slovianski and Neoslavonic have no longer been developed as separate projects, even though their names are still frequently in use as synonyms or "dialects" of Interslavic. In the same year, the various simplified forms of Slovianski and Slovioski that were meant to meet the needs of beginners and non-Slavs, were reworked into a highly simplified form of Interslavic, Slovianto. Slovianto is intended to have stages of complexity: level 1 with plurals, tenses, and basic vocabulary; level 2 with grammatical gender and basic verb conjugation; and a to-be-done level 3 with noun declension. After the 2017 Conference on Interslavic Language (CISLa), the project of unifying the two standards of Interslavic has been commenced by Merunka and van Steenbergen, with a planned new, singular grammar and orthography. An early example of this endeavor is Merunka and van Steenbergen's joint publication on Slavic cultural diplomacy, released to coincide with the conference.


Community

The number of people who speak Interslavic is difficult to establish; the lack of demographic data is a common problem among constructed languages, so that estimates are always rough. In 2012, the Bulgarian author G. Iliev mentioned a number of "several hundreds" of Slovianski speakers.G. Iliev,
Short History of the Cyrillic Alphabet
' (Plovdiv, 2012), p. 67

/ref> In 2014, the language's Facebook page mentioned 4600 speakers. For comparison, 320,000 people claimed to speak Esperanto in the same year. Although these figures are notoriously unreliable, Amri Wandel considered them useful for calculating the number of Esperanto speakers worldwide, resulting in a number of 1,920,000 speakers.Amri Wandel, "How many people speak Esperanto? Or: Esperanto on the web", in: ''Interdisciplinary Description of Complex Systems'' 13(2) (2015), pp. 318–321. If applied on Interslavic, this method would give a number of 27,600 speakers. A more realistic figure is given in 2017 by Kocór e.a., who estimated the number of Interslavic speakers to be 2000.Kocór, p. 21. Interslavic has an active online community, including four
Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Mosk ...
groups with 16,280, 835, 330 and 120 members respectively by 4 April 2022 and an Internet forum with around 490 members. Apart from that there are groups on
VKontakte VK (short for its original name ''VKontakte''; russian: ВКонтакте, meaning ''InContact'') is a Russian online social media and social networking service based in Saint Petersburg. VK is available in multiple languages but it is predomin ...
(1810 members),
Discord Discord is a VoIP and instant messaging social platform. Users have the ability to communicate with voice calls, video calls, text messaging, media and files in private chats or as part of communities called "servers".The developer documenta ...
(3830 members) and
Telegram Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas p ...
(540 members). Of course, not every person who has joined a group or organization, or has registered in a language course, is automatically a speaker of the language, but on the other hand, not every speaker is automatically a member. Besides, membership figures have traditionally been used for calculations of Esperanto speakers as well, even though not every member could actually speak the language. The project has two online news portals, a peer-reviewed expert journal focusing on issues of Slavic peoples in the wider sociocultural context of current times and a
wiki A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the pub ...
united with a collection of texts and materials in Interslavic language somewhat similar to
Wikisource Wikisource is an online digital library of free-content textual sources on a wiki, operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikisource is the name of the project as a whole and the name for each instance of that project (each instance usually re ...
. Since 2016, Interslavic is used in the scientific journal ''Ethnoentomology'' for paper titles, abstracts and image captions. In June 2017 an international conference took place in the Czech town of Staré Město near
Uherské Hradiště Uherské Hradiště (; german: Ungarisch Hradisch, hu, Magyarhradis) is a town in the Zlín Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 24,000 inhabitants. The agglomeration with the two neighbouring towns of Staré Město and Kunovice has over ...
, which was dedicated to Interslavic. The presentations were either held in Interslavic or translated into Interslavic. A second conference took place in 2018. A third conference was planned in
Hodonín Hodonín (; german: Göding) is a town in the South Moravian Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 24,000 inhabitants. Administrative parts Hodonín is made up of only one administrative part. Geography Hodonín is located about southeast ...
in 2020, but was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Various experiments with Interslavic practical use are being made: short songs and films translations. In 2022 an Interslavic version of Jožin z bažin song appeared. In the same year a first social app in early development was translated into Interslavic. The translation served as a "prosthesis" for the lack of translations into Slavic languages. A volunteer group consisting of native speakers of all standard Slavic languages was established by one of the members of the Interslavic language Committee. Small Slavic languages and dialects like Rusyn or Upper Sorbian are also included. The group task is to improve the quality of the Interslavic language dictionary by intelligibility analysis.


Phonology

The
phonemes In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west ...
that were chosen for Interslavic were the most popular Slavic phonemes cross-linguistically.


Consonants

Consonants and vowels in brackets are "optional" and link directly to Old Church Slavonic.


Vowels


Alphabet

One of the main principles of Interslavic is that it can be written on any Slavic keyboard. Since the border between
Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
and
Cyrillic , bg, кирилица , mk, кирилица , russian: кириллица , sr, ћирилица, uk, кирилиця , fam1 = Egyptian hieroglyphs , fam2 = Proto-Sinaitic , fam3 = Phoenician , fam4 = Gr ...
runs through the middle of Slavic territory, Interslavic allows the use of both alphabets. Because of the differences between, for instance, the
Polish alphabet The Polish alphabet (Polish: ''alfabet polski'', ''abecadło'') is the script of the Polish language, the basis for the Polish system of orthography. It is based on the Latin alphabet but includes certain letters with diacritics: the ''kreska' ...
and other Slavic Latin alphabets, as well as between Serbian and other Cyrillic alphabets, orthographic variation is tolerated. Because Interslavic is not an ethnic language, there are no hard and fast rules regarding stress. The Latin and Cyrillic alphabets are as follows: (Pronunciation is approximate; the exact realization will depend on the accent of the speaker. For example, southern Slavs will typically substitute for ''y'' / ''ы'') Apart from the basic alphabet above, the Interslavic Latin alphabet has a set of optional letters as well. They differ from the standard orthography by carrying a
diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...
and are used to convey additional
etymological Etymology ()The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) – p. 633 "Etymology /ˌɛtɪˈmɒlədʒi/ the study of the class in words and the way their meanings have changed throughout time". is the study of the history of the form of words and ...
information and link directly to
Proto-Slavic Proto-Slavic (abbreviated PSl., PS.; also called Common Slavic or Common Slavonic) is the unattested, reconstructed proto-language of all Slavic languages. It represents Slavic speech approximately from the 2nd millennium B.C. through the 6th ...
and
Old Church Slavonic Old Church Slavonic or Old Slavonic () was the first Slavic literary language. Historians credit the 9th-century Byzantine missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius with standardizing the language and using it in translating the Bible and other ...
. Pronunciation may not be distinct from the regular alphabet. The consonants ľ, ń, ŕ, ť, ď, ś and ź are softened or palatalized counterparts of l, n, r, t, d, s and z. The latter may also be pronounced like their softened/palatalized equivalents before i, ě, ę and possibly before e. This pronunciation is not mandatory, though: they may as well be written and pronounced hard. Cyrillic equivalents of the etymological alphabet and
ligatures Ligature may refer to: * Ligature (medicine), a piece of suture used to shut off a blood vessel or other anatomical structure ** Ligature (orthodontic), used in dentistry * Ligature (music), an element of musical notation used especially in the me ...
can also be encountered in some Interslavic texts, though they are not part of any officially sanctioned spelling.


Morphology

Interslavic grammar is based on the greatest common denominator of that of the natural Slavic languages, and partly also a simplification thereof. It consists of elements that can be encountered in all or at least most of them.


Nouns

Interslavic is an
inflecting language Fusional languages or inflected languages are a type of synthetic language, distinguished from agglutinative languages by their tendency to use a single inflectional morpheme to denote multiple grammatical, syntactic, or semantic features. For e ...
.
Noun A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Living creatures (including people, alive, d ...
s can have three genders, two numbers (singular and plural), as well as six cases (
nominative In grammar, the nominative case ( abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or (in Latin and formal variants of Eng ...
,
accusative The accusative case ( abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: 'me,' 'him,' 'her,' 'us,' and ‘th ...
,
genitive In grammar, the genitive case ( abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can a ...
,
dative In grammar, the dative case ( abbreviated , or sometimes when it is a core argument) is a grammatical case used in some languages to indicate the recipient or beneficiary of an action, as in "Maria Jacobo potum dedit", Latin for "Maria gave Jacob ...
,
instrumental An instrumental is a recording normally without any vocals, although it might include some inarticulate vocals, such as shouted backup vocals in a big band setting. Through semantic widening, a broader sense of the word song may refer to instrum ...
and
locative In grammar, the locative case (abbreviated ) is a grammatical case which indicates a location. It corresponds vaguely to the English prepositions "in", "on", "at", and "by". The locative case belongs to the general local cases, together with the ...
). Since several Slavic languages also have a
vocative In grammar, the vocative case (abbreviated ) is a grammatical case which is used for a noun that identifies a person (animal, object, etc.) being addressed, or occasionally for the noun modifiers ( determiners, adjectives, participles, and n ...
, it is usually displayed in tables as well, even though strictly speaking the vocative is not a case. It occurs only in the singular of masculine and feminine nouns. (follow links in "advanced grammar for subpages on nouns, adjectives, etc.) There is no article. The complicated system of noun classes in Slavic has been reduced to four or five
declension In linguistics, declension (verb: ''to decline'') is the changing of the form of a word, generally to express its syntactic function in the sentence, by way of some inflection. Declensions may apply to nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, and ...
s: * masculine nouns (ending in a – usually hard – consonant): ''dom'' "house", ''mųž'' "man" * feminine nouns ending in -a: ''žena'' "woman", ''zemja'' "earth" * feminine nouns ending in a soft consonant: ''kosť'' "bone" * neuter nouns ending in -o or -e: ''slovo'' "word", ''morje'' "sea" * Old Church Slavonic also had a consonantal declension that in most Slavic languages merged into the remaining declensions. Some Interslavic projects and writers preserve this declension, which consists of nouns of all three genders, mostly neuters: ** neuter nouns of the group -mę/-men-: ''imę/imene'' "name" ** neuter nouns of the group -ę/-ęt- (children and young animals): ''telę/telęte'' "calf" ** neuter nouns of the group -o/-es-: ''nebo/nebese'' "sky" ** masculine nouns of the group -en-: ''kameń/kamene'' "stone" ** feminine nouns with the ending -ȯv: ''cŕkȯv/cŕkve'' "church" ** feminine nouns with the ending -i/-er-: ''mati/matere'' "mother"


Adjectives

Adjective In linguistics, an adjective ( abbreviated ) is a word that generally modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives were considered one of the ma ...
s are always regular. They agree with the noun they modify in gender, case and number, and are usually placed before it. In the column with the masculine forms, the first relates to animate nouns, the second to inanimate nouns. A distinction is made between hard and soft stems, for example: ''dobry'' "good" and ''svěži'' "fresh": Some writers do not distinguish between hard and soft adjectives. One can write ''dobrego'' instead of ''dobrogo'', ''svěžogo'' instead of ''svěžego''.


Comparison

The comparative is formed with the ending -(ěj)ši: ''slabši'' "weaker", ''pȯlnějši'' "fuller". The
superlative Comparison is a feature in the morphology or syntax of some languages whereby adjectives and adverbs are inflected to indicate the relative degree of the property they define exhibited by the word or phrase they modify or describe. In languages ...
is formed by adding the
prefix A prefix is an affix which is placed before the stem of a word. Adding it to the beginning of one word changes it into another word. For example, when the prefix ''un-'' is added to the word ''happy'', it creates the word ''unhappy''. Particula ...
naj- to the comparative: ''najslabši'' "weakest". Comparatives can also be formed with the adverbs ''bolje'' or ''vyše'' "more", superlatives with the adverbs ''najbolje'' or ''najvyše'' "most".


Adverbs

Hard adjectives can be turned into an adverb with the ending -o, soft adjectives with the ending -e: ''dobro'' "well", ''svěže'' "freshly". Comparatives and superlatives can be adverbialized with the ending -ěje: ''slaběje'' "weaker".


Pronouns

The
personal pronoun Personal pronouns are pronouns that are associated primarily with a particular grammatical person – first person (as ''I''), second person (as ''you''), or third person (as ''he'', ''she'', ''it'', ''they''). Personal pronouns may also take dif ...
s are: ja "I", ty "you, thou", on "he", ona "she", ono "it", my "we", vy "you" (pl.), oni "they". When a personal pronoun of the third person is preceded by a
preposition Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...
, n- is placed before it. Other pronouns are inflected as adjectives: * the
possessive pronoun A possessive or ktetic form (abbreviated or ; from la, possessivus; grc, κτητικός, translit=ktētikós) is a word or grammatical construction used to indicate a relationship of possession in a broad sense. This can include strict owne ...
s moj "my", tvoj "your, thy", naš "our", vaš "your" (pl.), svoj "my/your/his/her/our/their own", as well as čij "whose" * the
demonstrative pronoun Demonstratives (abbreviated ) are words, such as ''this'' and ''that'', used to indicate which entities are being referred to and to distinguish those entities from others. They are typically deictic; their meaning depending on a particular frame ...
s toj "this, that", tutoj "this" and tamtoj "that" * the
relative pronoun A relative pronoun is a pronoun that marks a relative clause. It serves the purpose of conjoining modifying information about an antecedent referent. An example is the word ''which'' in the sentence "This is the house which Jack built." Here the r ...
ktory "which" * the
interrogative pronoun An interrogative word or question word is a function word used to ask a question, such as ''what, which'', ''when'', ''where'', '' who, whom, whose'', ''why'', ''whether'' and ''how''. They are sometimes called wh-words, because in English most ...
s kto "who" and čto "what" * the
indefinite pronoun An indefinite pronoun is a pronoun which does not have a specific familiar referent. Indefinite pronouns are in contrast to definite pronouns. Indefinite pronouns can represent either count nouns or noncount nouns. They often have related form ...
s někto "somebody", něčto "something", nikto "nobody", ničto "nothing", ktokoli "whoever, anybody", čto-nebųď "whatever, anything", etc.


Numerals

The
cardinal number In mathematics, cardinal numbers, or cardinals for short, are a generalization of the natural numbers used to measure the cardinality (size) of sets. The cardinality of a finite set is a natural number: the number of elements in the set. Th ...
s 1–10 are: 1 – jedin/jedna/jedno, 2 – dva/dvě, 3 – tri, 4 – četyri, 5 – pęt́, 6 – šest́, 7 – sedm, 8 – osm, 9 – devęt́, 10 – desęt́. Higher numbers are formed by adding -nadsęť for the numbers 11–19, -desęt for the tens, -sto for the hundreds. Sometimes (but not always) the latter is inflected: ''dvasto/tristo/pęt́sto'' and ''dvěstě/trista/pęt́sȯt'' are both correct. The inflection of the cardinal numerals is shown in the following table. The numbers 5–99 are inflected either as nouns of the ''kosť'' type or as soft adjectives.
Ordinal number In set theory, an ordinal number, or ordinal, is a generalization of ordinal numerals (first, second, th, etc.) aimed to extend enumeration to infinite sets. A finite set can be enumerated by successively labeling each element with the least ...
s are formed by adding the adjective ending -y to the cardinal numbers, except in the case of ''pŕvy'' "first", ''drugy/vtory'' "second", ''tretji'' "third", ''četvŕty'' "fourth", ''stoty/sȯtny'' "hundredth", ''tysęčny'' "thousandth".
Fractions A fraction (from la, fractus, "broken") represents a part of a whole or, more generally, any number of equal parts. When spoken in everyday English, a fraction describes how many parts of a certain size there are, for example, one-half, eight ...
are formed by adding the
suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carry g ...
-ina to ordinal numbers: ''tretjina'' "(one) third", ''četvŕtina'' "quarter", etc. The only exception is ''pol'' (''polovina, polovica'') "half". Interslavic has other categories of numerals as well: * collective numerals: ''dvoje'' "pair, duo, duet", ''troje, četvero...'', etc. * multiplicative numerals: ''jediny'' "single", ''dvojny'' "double", ''trojny'', ''četverny...'', etc. * differential numerals: ''dvojaky'' "of two different kinds", ''trojaky, četveraky...'', enz.


Verbs


Aspect

Like all Slavic languages, Interslavic verbs have
grammatical aspect In linguistics, aspect is a grammatical category that expresses how an action, event, or state, as denoted by a verb, extends over time. Perfective aspect is used in referring to an event conceived as bounded and unitary, without reference to ...
. A
perfective The perfective aspect (abbreviated ), sometimes called the aoristic aspect, is a grammatical aspect that describes an action viewed as a simple whole; i.e., a unit without interior composition. The perfective aspect is distinguished from the im ...
verb indicates an action that has been or will be completed and therefore emphasizes the result of the action rather than its course. On the other hand, an
imperfective The imperfective (abbreviated or more ambiguously ) is a grammatical aspect used to describe ongoing, habitual, repeated, or similar semantic roles, whether that situation occurs in the past, present, or future. Although many languages have a gen ...
verb focuses on the course or duration of the action, and is also used for expressing habits and repeating patterns. Verbs without a prefix are usually imperfective. Most imperfective verbs have a perfective counterpart, which in most cases is formed by adding a prefix: * ''dělati ~ sdělati'' "to do" * ''čistiti ~ izčistiti'' "to clean" * ''pisati ~ napisati'' "to write" Because prefixes are also used to change the meaning of a verb, secondary imperfective forms based on perfective verbs with a prefix are needed as well. These verbs are formed regularly: * -ati becomes -yvati (e.g. ''zapisati ~ zapisyvati'' "to note, to register, to record", ''dokazati ~ dokazyvati'' "to prove") * -iti become -jati (e.g. ''napraviti ~ napravjati'' "to lead", ''pozvoliti ~ pozvaljati'' "to allow", ''oprostiti ~ oprašćati'' "to simplify") Some aspect pairs are irregular, for example ''nazvati ~ nazyvati'' "to name, to call", ''prijdti ~ prihoditi'' "to come", ''podjęti ~ podimati'' "to undertake".


Stems

The Slavic languages are notorious for their complicated conjugation patterns. To simplify these, Interslavic has a system of two conjugations and two verbal stems. In most cases, knowing the infinitive is enough to establish both stems: * the first stem is used for the infinitive, the
past tense The past tense is a grammatical tense whose function is to place an action or situation in the past. Examples of verbs in the past tense include the English verbs ''sang'', ''went'' and ''washed''. Most languages have a past tense, with some hav ...
, the conditional mood, the past passive participle and the
verbal noun A verbal noun or gerundial noun is a verb form that functions as a noun. An example of a verbal noun in English is 'sacking' as in the sentence "The sacking of the city was an epochal event" (''sacking'' is a noun formed from the verb ''sack''). ...
. It is formed by removing the ending -ti from the infinitive: ''dělati'' "to do" > ''děla-'', ''prositi'' "to require" > ''prosi-'', ''nesti'' "to carry" > ''nes-''. Verbs ending in -sti can also have their stem ending on t or d, f.ex. ''vesti > ved-'' "to lead", ''gnesti > gnet-'' "to crush". * the second stem is used for the
present tense The present tense (abbreviated or ) is a grammatical tense whose principal function is to locate a situation or event in the present time. The present tense is used for actions which are happening now. In order to explain and understand present t ...
, the imperative and the present active participle. In most cases both stems are identical, and in most of the remaining cases the second stem can be derived regularly from the first. In particular cases they have to be learned separately. In the present tense, a distinction is made between two conjugations: ** the first conjugation includes almost all verbs that do not have the ending -iti, as well as monosyllabic verbs on -iti: *** verbs on -ati have the stem -aj-: ''dělati'' "to do" > ''dělaj-'' *** verbs on -ovati have the stem -uj-: ''kovati'' "to forge" > ''kuj-'' *** verbs on -nųti have the stem -n-: ''tęgnųti'' "to pull, to draw" > ''tęgn-'' *** monosyllabic verbs have -j-: ''piti'' "to drink" > ''pij-'', ''čuti'' "to feel" > ''čuj-'' *** the second stem is identical to the first stem if the latter ends in a consonant: ''nesti'' "to carry" > ''nes-'', ''vesti'' "to lead" > ''ved-'' ** the second conjugation includes all polysyllabic verbs on -iti and most verbs on -ěti: ''prositi'' "to require" > ''pros-i-'', ''viděti'' "to see" > ''vid-i-'' There are also mixed and irregular verbs, i.e. verbs with a second stem that cannot be derived regularly from the first stem, for example: ''pisati'' "to write" > ''piš-'', ''spati'' "to sleep" > ''sp-i-'', ''zvati'' "to call" > ''zov-'', ''htěti'' "to want" > ''hoć-''. In these cases both stem have to be learned separately.


Conjugation

The various moods and tenses are formed by means of the following endings: * ''Present tense'': -ų, -eš, -e, -emo, -ete, -ųt (first conjugation); -jų, -iš, -i, -imo, -ite, -ęt (second conjugation) * ''Past tense – simple'' (as in Russian): m. -l, f. -la, n. -lo, pl. -li * ''Past tense – complex'' (as in South Slavic): ** ''Imperfect tense'': -h, -še, -še, -hmo, -ste, -hų ** ''Perfect tense'': m. -l, f. -la, n. -lo, pl. -li + the present tense of ''byti'' "to be" ** ''Pluperfect tense'': m. -l, f. -la, n. -lo, pl. -li + the imperfect tense of ''byti'' * ''Conditional'': m. -l, f. -la, n. -lo, pl. -li + the conditional of ''byti'' * ''Future tense'': the future tense of ''byti'' + the infinitive * ''Imperative'': -Ø, -mo, -te after j, or -i, -imo, -ite after another consonant. The forms with -l- in the past tense and the conditional are actually participles known as the ''L-participle''. The remaining participles are formed as follows: * ''Present active participle'': -ųći (first conjugation), -ęći (second conjugation) * ''Present passive participle'': -omy/-emy (first conjugation), -imy (second conjugation) * ''Past active participle'': -vši after a vowel, or -ši after a consonant * ''Past passive participle'': -ny after a vowel, -eny after a consonant. Monosyllabic verbs (except for those on -ati) have -ty. Verbs on -iti have the ending -jeny. The ''verbal noun'' is based on the past passive participle, replacing the ending -ny/-ty with -ńje/-.


Examples

Whenever the stem of a verbs of the second conjugation ends in s, z, t, d, st or zd, an ending starting -j causes the following mutations: * ''prositi'' "to require": ''pros-jų > prošų, pros-jeny > prošeny'' * ''voziti'' "to transport": ''voz-jų > vožų, voz-jeny > voženy'' * ''tratiti'' "to lose": ''trat-jų > traćų, trat-jeny > traćeny'' * ''slěditi'' "to follow": ''slěd-jų > slědžų, slěd-jeny > slědženy'' * ''čistiti'' "to clean": ''čist-jų > čišćų, čist-jeny > čišćeny'' * ''jezditi'' "to go (by transport)": ''jezd-jų > ježdžų, jezd-jeny > ježdženy''


Alternative forms

Because Interslavic is not a highly formalized language, a lot of variation occurs between various forms. Often used are the following alternative forms: * In the first conjugation, -aje- is often reduced to -a-: ''ty dělaš'', ''on děla'' etc. * Instead of the 1st person singular ending -(j)ų, the ending -(e)m is sometimes used as well: ''ja dělam'', ''ja hvalim'', ''ja nesem''. * Instead of -mo in the 1st person plural, -me can be used as well: ''my děla(je)me'', ''my hvalime''. * Instead of -hmo in the imperfect tense, -smo and the more archaic -hom can be used as well. * Instead of the conjugated forms of ''byti'' in the conditional (''byh, bys'' etc.), ''by'' is often used as a
particle In the physical sciences, a particle (or corpuscule in older texts) is a small localized object which can be described by several physical or chemical properties, such as volume, density, or mass. They vary greatly in size or quantity, from s ...
: ''ja by pisal(a)'', ''ty by pisal(a)'' etc. * Verbal nouns can have the ending -ije instead of -je: ''dělanije'', ''hvaljenije''.


Irregular verbs

A few verbs have an irregular conjugation: * byti "to be" has ''jesm, jesi, jest, jesmo, jeste, sųt'' in the present tense, ''běh, běše...'' in the imperfect tense, and ''bųdų, bųdeš...'' in the future * dati "to give", jěsti "to eat" and věděti "to know" have the following present tense: ''dam, daš, da, damo, date, dadųt''; ''jem, ješ...''; ''věm, věš...'' * idti "to go by foot, to walk" has an irregular L-participle: ''šel, šla, šlo, šli''.


Vocabulary

Words in Interslavic are based on comparison of the vocabulary of the modern Slavic languages. For this purpose, the latter are subdivided into six groups: *
Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries * Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and p ...
* Ukrainian and
Belarusian Belarusian may refer to: * Something of, or related to Belarus * Belarusians, people from Belarus, or of Belarusian descent * A citizen of Belarus, see Demographics of Belarus * Belarusian language * Belarusian culture * Belarusian cuisine * Byelor ...
*
Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Poles, people from Poland or of Polish descent * Polish chicken *Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin scree ...
*
Czech Czech may refer to: * Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe ** Czech language ** Czechs, the people of the area ** Czech culture ** Czech cuisine * One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus' Places * Czech ...
and Slovak * Slovene and Serbo-Croatian * Bulgarian and Macedonian These groups are treated equally. In some situations even smaller languages, like Cashubian, Rusyn and
Sorbian languages The Sorbian languages ( hsb, serbska rěč, dsb, serbska rěc) are the Upper Sorbian language and Lower Sorbian language, two closely related and partially mutually intelligible languages spoken by the Sorbs, a West Slavic ethno-cultural minor ...
are included. Interslavic vocabulary has been compiled in such way that words are understandable to a maximum number of Slavic speakers. The form in which a chosen word is adopted depends not only on its frequency in the modern Slavic languages, but also on the inner logic of Interslavic, as well as its form in
Proto-Slavic Proto-Slavic (abbreviated PSl., PS.; also called Common Slavic or Common Slavonic) is the unattested, reconstructed proto-language of all Slavic languages. It represents Slavic speech approximately from the 2nd millennium B.C. through the 6th ...
: to ensure coherence, a system of regular
derivation Derivation may refer to: Language * Morphological derivation, a word-formation process * Parse tree or concrete syntax tree, representing a string's syntax in formal grammars Law * Derivative work, in copyright law * Derivation proceeding, a pro ...
is applied.


Example text

Article 1 of the ''
Universal Declaration of Human Rights The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is an international document adopted by the United Nations General Assembly that enshrines the rights and freedoms of all human beings. Drafted by a UN committee chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, ...
'' in Interslavic written in
Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the o ...
: :''Vsi ljudi rodet se svobodni i ravni v dostojnosti i pravah. Oni sut obdarjeni razumom i svěstju i imajut postupati jedin k drugomu v duhu bratstva.'' Article 1 of the ''Universal Declaration of Human Rights'' in Interslavic written in Cyrillic script: :''Вси људи родет се свободни и равни в достојности и правах. Они сут обдарјени разумом и свєстју и имајут поступати једин к другому в духу братства.'' Article 1 of the ''Universal Declaration of Human Rights'' in English: :''All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.''


In popular culture

Interslavic is featured in Václav Marhoul's movie ''The Painted Bird'' (based on novel of the same title written by Polish-American writer Jerzy Kosiński), in which it plays the role of an unspecified Slavic language, making it the first movie to have it. Marhoul stated that he decided to use Interslavic (after searching on Google for "Slavic Esperanto") so that no Slavic nation would nationally identify with the villagers depicted as bad people in the movie. Several musicians and bands have recorded music in Interslavic, for example: the album ''Počva'' by the Czech pagan folk group ''Ďyvina'', the song ''Idemo v Karpaty'' by the Ukrainian reggae band ''The Vyo'', the song ''Masovo pogrebanje'' by the Croatian folk band ''Mito Matija'' and several albums recorded by the Polish YouTuber ''Melac''. The film ''The Painted Bird'' also contains a song in Interslavic, titled ''Dušo moja''.


See also

*
Pan-Slavic language A pan-Slavic language is a zonal auxiliary language for communication among the Slavic peoples. There are approximately 400 million speakers of the Slavic languages. In order to communicate with each other, speakers of different Slavic languages ...
* Zonal auxiliary language


References


Literature

* . ''Panslawische Variationen''. Brosch, Ciril i Fiedler, Sabine (ed.), Florilegium Interlinguisticum. Festschrift für Detlev Blanke zum 70. Geburtstag. Peter Lang Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften, Frankfurt am Main, 2011, , pp. 209–236. * . ''Pravigo de la slava interlingvistiko: slava reciprokeco kaj tutslava lingvo en la historio de Slavoj''. Grundlagenstudien aus Kybernetik und Geisteswissenschaft, no. 57:2, June 2016, Akademia Libroservo, ISSN 0723-4899, pp. 75–101. * . ''Zonal Constructed Language and Education Support of e-Democracy – The Interslavic Experience''. , E-Democracy – Privacy-Preserving, Secure, Intelligent E-Government Services. 7th International Conference, E-Democracy 2017, Athens, Greece, December 14–15, 2017, Proceedings (Communications in Computer and Information Science no. 792, Springer International Publishing, 2017, , 978-3-319-71117-1), pp. 15–30. * . ''The Interslavic Language: Way of Communication Among the Slavic Nations and Ethnic Groups.'' Journal of Ethnophilosophical Questions and Global Ethics 2.1 (2018): pp. 18–28. *
''Slavic constructed languages in the internet age''
Language Problems & Language Planning, vol. 40 no. 3 (January 2016), pp. 287–315. * . ''Wiederbelebung einer Utopie. Probleme und Perspektiven slavischer Plansprachen im Zeitalter des Internets''. Bamberger Beiträge zur Linguistik 6, Bamberg: Univ. of Bamberg Press, 2014, . * , ''Interslavic zonal constructed language: an introduction for English-speakers'' (Lukáš Lhoťan, 2018, ). * . ''Neoslavonic zonal constructed language''. České Budějovice, 2012, . * . ''Neoslavonic Language''. Grundlagenstudien aus Kybernetik und Geisteswissenschaft, no. 57:2, June 2016, Akademia Libroservo, ISSN 0723-4899, pp. 114–134. *
''История межславянского языка''
Вестник Московского государственного областного университета. Московский государственный областной университет, 2012 no. 1 (), pp. 51–56. * . ''Constructed Slavic languages in the 21st century''. Grundlagenstudien aus Kybernetik und Geisteswissenschaft, no. 57:2, June 2016, Akademia Libroservo, ISSN 0723-4899, pp. 102–113. * .
Język międzysłowiański jako lingua franca dla Europy Środkowej
'. Ilona Koutny, Ida Stria (eds.): Język / Komunikacja / Informacja nr XIII (2018). Poznań: Wydawnictwo Rys, 2018. , ISSN 1896-9585, pp. 47–61.


External links


Interslavic – official website

Interslavic language portal

Multilingual Interslavic dictionary

Interslavic news siteold server

Interslavic wikicollection of texts

Professional peer-reviewed journal in Interslavic language — SLOVJANI.info

CISLa – Conference on InterSlavic Language

Medžuslovjanska funkcija (Interslavic function) – organization website
{{Pan-Slavism Pan-Slavic languages Constructed languages 2006 introductions Constructed languages introduced in the 2000s