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The term North Slavic languages is used in two main senses: * for a number of proposed groupings or subdivisions of 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 ...
. However, "North Slavic" is not widely used in this sense, and has no agreed definition. Modern scholars usually divide the Slavic languages into West Slavic, East Slavic, and South Slavic. * for a number of
constructed language A constructed language (sometimes called a conlang) is a language whose phonology, grammar, and vocabulary, instead of having developed naturally, are consciously devised for some purpose, which may include being devised for a work of fiction ...
s that were created in the 20th and 21st century, and have been derived from existing Slavic languages.


Proposed subdivisions

Historically, the term "North Slav" has been used in academia since at least the first half of the 19th century. Since then the concept continued to see use in various publications. The following uses of the term "North Slavs" or "North Slavic" are found: * 'North Slavs', 'Northslavs' or 'North Hungarian Slavs' were used as synonyms for the combination of Slovaks and Rusyns living in the northern parts of the Kingdom of Hungary (1526–1867) within the
Austrian Empire The Austrian Empire (german: link=no, Kaiserthum Oesterreich, modern spelling , ) was a Central-Eastern European multinational great power from 1804 to 1867, created by proclamation out of the realms of the Habsburgs. During its existence ...
by several Slavic authors and politicians writing between 1848 and 1861. They imagined Slovaks and Rusyns to be one nation or ethnic group consisting of two equal tribes (although Moravčík 1861 regarded Rusyns as a subordinate tribe to the Slovak nation) that inhabited a shared ethno-territory (Slovakia and Subcarpathia/Transcarpathia) and was entitled to political representation in the Imperial Council of Austria. * 'North Slavs', 'Czechoslavs' and 'Slovaks' were used as synonyms for the combination of Czechs, Slovaks and ''Rusniaks/Rustines'' (Rusyns) by Ján Thomášek (1841). The ethno-territory that he imagined corresponds with that of the later
First Czechoslovak Republic The First Czechoslovak Republic ( cs, První československá republika, sk, Prvá česko-slovenská republika), often colloquially referred to as the First Republic ( cs, První republika, Slovak: ''Prvá republika''), was the first Czechoslo ...
(1918–1938). * As a synonym for the combination of Czechs, Slovaks, and Poles (nowadays more commonly known as 'West Slavs'). * As an extinct branch of Slavic. suggested that a separate, now extinct, branch of North Slavic languages once existed, different from both South, West, and East Slavic. The dialect formerly spoken in the vicinity of Novgorod (the
Old Novgorod dialect Old Novgorod dialect (russian: древненовгородский диалект, translit=drevnenovgorodskij dialekt; also translated as Old Novgorodian or Ancient Novgorod dialect) is a term introduced by Andrey Zaliznyak to describe the dia ...
) contains several
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 ...
archaisms that did not survive in any other Slavic language, and may be considered a remnant of an ancient North Slavic branch. Another candidate is Slovincian in the Lekhitic subgroup. А. Ф. Журавлев, "Лексико-статистическое моделирование системы славянского языкового родства", Moscow, 1994, p. 63. * An as alternative to or combination of the West Slavic and East Slavic languages into one group, due to the fact that the South Slavic dialects were geographically cut off by the Hungarian settlement of the
Pannonian plain The Pannonian Basin, or Carpathian Basin, is a large basin situated in south-east Central Europe. The geomorphological term Pannonian Plain is more widely used for roughly the same region though with a somewhat different sense, with only the ...
in the 9th century along with
Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...
and
Romania Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Moldova to the east, and ...
being geographical barriers, in addition to the
Black Sea The Black Sea is a marginal mediterranean sea of the Atlantic Ocean lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bounded by Bulgaria, Georgia, Rom ...
. Due to this geographical separation, the North Slavs and
South Slavs South Slavs are Slavic peoples who speak South Slavic languages and inhabit a contiguous region of Southeast Europe comprising the eastern Alps and the Balkan Peninsula. Geographically separated from the West Slavs and East Slavs by Austria, ...
developed independently of each other with noteworthy cultural differences; as such, various theorists claim that the language communities often grouped into West and East Slavic sub-branches share enough linguistic characteristics to be categorised together as North Slavs. North Slavonic peoples today include the Belarusians,
Czechs The Czechs ( cs, Češi, ; singular Czech, masculine: ''Čech'' , singular feminine: ''Češka'' ), or the Czech people (), are a West Slavic ethnic group and a nation native to the Czech Republic in Central Europe, who share a common ancestry, ...
,
Poles Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, who share a common history, culture, the Polish language and are identified with the country of Poland in C ...
,
Rusyns Rusyns (), also known as Carpatho-Rusyns (), or Rusnaks (), are an East Slavic ethnic group from the Eastern Carpathians in Central Europe. They speak Rusyn, an East Slavic language variety, treated variously as either a distinct langu ...
,
Russians , native_name_lang = ru , image = , caption = , population = , popplace = 118 million Russians in the Russian Federation (2002 '' Winkler Prins'' estimate) , region1 = , pop1 ...
, Slovaks,
Sorbs Sorbs ( hsb, Serbja, dsb, Serby, german: Sorben; also known as Lusatians, Lusatian Serbs and Wends) are a indigenous West Slavic ethnic group predominantly inhabiting the parts of Lusatia located in the German states of Saxony and Branden ...
, and
Ukrainians Ukrainians ( uk, Українці, Ukraintsi, ) are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Ukraine. They are the seventh-largest nation in Europe. The native language of the Ukrainians is Ukrainian. The majority of Ukrainians are Eastern Ort ...
.Ukrainian and Belarusian have both been hugely influenced by Polish in the past centuries due to their geographic and cultural proximity, as well as due to the Polonisation of the Ruthenian population of the
Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, formally known as the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and, after 1791, as the Commonwealth of Poland, was a bi- confederal state, sometimes called a federation, of Poland and Lithuania ru ...
.
:The greatest disparities within the Slavic language family are between South Slavic tongues and the rest of the Slavonic languages.
:Ukrainian and Belarusian have both been hugely influenced by Polish in the past centuries due to their geographic and cultural proximity, as well as some efforts at Polonising the Ruthenian population of the
Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, formally known as the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and, after 1791, as the Commonwealth of Poland, was a bi- confederal state, sometimes called a federation, of Poland and Lithuania ru ...
. Professor Michał Łesiów once said that "there are no two languages in the Slavic area that were as equally close to each other as Polish and Ruthenian". According to Kostiantyn Tyshchenko, Ukrainian shares 70% common vocabulary with Polish and 66% with Slovak, which puts them both ahead of Russian (at 62%) in their lexical proximity to Ukrainian. Furthermore, Tyschenko identified 82 grammatical and phonetic features of the Ukrainian tongue – Polish, Czech and Slovak share upwards of 20 of these characteristics with Ukrainian, whereas Russian apparently only 11. In contrast to other dialects of Slovak, Eastern dialects (sometimes called Slovjak) are less intelligible with Czech and more with Polish and Rusyn. Much overlap can be found between the Northwest and Northeast branches, as even some authors who use the West Slavic and East Slavic categories sometimes utilise the North Slav model instead where it is relevant. Tomasz Kamusella writes that where linguistic continua are considered to start and end is usually dictated by politics rather than linguistics, which is the case among North Slavonic nations too. Majority North Slavonic groups today include the Belarusians,
Czechs The Czechs ( cs, Češi, ; singular Czech, masculine: ''Čech'' , singular feminine: ''Češka'' ), or the Czech people (), are a West Slavic ethnic group and a nation native to the Czech Republic in Central Europe, who share a common ancestry, ...
,
Kashubians The Kashubians ( csb, Kaszëbi; pl, Kaszubi; german: Kaschuben), also known as Cassubians or Kashubs, are a Lechitic ( West Slavic) ethnic group native to the historical region of Pomerania, including its eastern part called Pomerelia, in nor ...
,
Poles Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, who share a common history, culture, the Polish language and are identified with the country of Poland in C ...
,
Silesians Silesians ( szl, Ślōnzŏki or Ślůnzoki; Silesian German: ''Schläsinger'' ''or'' ''Schläsier''; german: Schlesier; pl, Ślązacy; cz, Slezané) is a geographical term for the inhabitants of Silesia, a historical region in Central Euro ...
,
Rusyns Rusyns (), also known as Carpatho-Rusyns (), or Rusnaks (), are an East Slavic ethnic group from the Eastern Carpathians in Central Europe. They speak Rusyn, an East Slavic language variety, treated variously as either a distinct langu ...
,
Russians , native_name_lang = ru , image = , caption = , population = , popplace = 118 million Russians in the Russian Federation (2002 '' Winkler Prins'' estimate) , region1 = , pop1 ...
, Slovaks,
Sorbs Sorbs ( hsb, Serbja, dsb, Serby, german: Sorben; also known as Lusatians, Lusatian Serbs and Wends) are a indigenous West Slavic ethnic group predominantly inhabiting the parts of Lusatia located in the German states of Saxony and Branden ...
, and
Ukrainians Ukrainians ( uk, Українці, Ukraintsi, ) are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Ukraine. They are the seventh-largest nation in Europe. The native language of the Ukrainians is Ukrainian. The majority of Ukrainians are Eastern Ort ...
. The language areas of the North Slavs and South Slavs have been separated by a broad zones containing three other language communities, namely German, Hungarian, and Romanian. In terms of language, the greatest contrasts are evident between South Slavic tongues and the rest of the family. Moreover, there are many exceptions and whole dialects that break the division of East and West Slavic languages. According to this view, it makes more sense to divide the Slavs into two main linguistic groups: the North Slavs and the
South Slavs South Slavs are Slavic peoples who speak South Slavic languages and inhabit a contiguous region of Southeast Europe comprising the eastern Alps and the Balkan Peninsula. Geographically separated from the West Slavs and East Slavs by Austria, ...
, which can then be further categorised as the Northwest tongues (
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, ...
, Kashubian,
Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Poles Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, w ...
, Silesian, Slovak, and Sorbian) and the Northeast ones ( Belarusian,
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 peo ...
, Rusyn, and Ukrainian) – whereas the Southern branch is split into the widely accepted groups of the Southwest languages (
Serbo-Croatian Serbo-Croatian () – also called Serbo-Croat (), Serbo-Croat-Bosnian (SCB), Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian (BCS), and Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS) – is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia an ...
and Slovene) and the Southeast tongues ( Bulgarian and Macedonian). This model is argued as being more appropriate and linguistically accurate than the triple dissection of east, west and south. Geographer O.T. Ford also writes of the Slavs being "conventionally" divided into three sub-branches (West, East, South), but "in reality" divided only by geographic isolation into two bands that form two dialect continua: North and South – a view mirrored by linguist Tomasz Kamusella. Tracing back to the
Greek East and Latin West Greek East and Latin West are terms used to distinguish between the two parts of the Greco-Roman world and of Medieval Christendom, specifically the eastern regions where Greek was the ''lingua franca'' (Greece, Anatolia, the southern Balkans, the ...
split in Late Antiquity, there are cultural divisions within the North Slavonic language family with regard to writing systems and religions: the
West Slavic languages The West Slavic languages are a subdivision of the Slavic language group. They include Polish, Czech, Slovak, Kashubian, Upper Sorbian and Lower Sorbian. The languages have traditionally been spoken across a mostly continuous region encom ...
mostly use versions of the
Latin script The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern I ...
and have or historically had a Catholic-majority population, while the
East Slavic languages The East Slavic languages constitute one of three regional subgroups of the Slavic languages, distinct from the West and South Slavic languages. East Slavic languages are currently spoken natively throughout Eastern Europe, and eastwards to Siber ...
are usually written in the
Cyrillic script The Cyrillic script ( ), Slavonic script or the Slavic script, is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking co ...
and have or historically had an Orthodox-majority population. A similar east-west split exists for people speaking South Slavic languages in the Balkans, although the Latin script is spreading in countries where Serbo-Croatian is frequently spoken and the majority population is Orthodox, such as Montenegro. The North Slavic and South Slavic-speaking territories are thus both generally geographically divided between
Eastern Eastern may refer to: Transportation *China Eastern Airlines, a current Chinese airline based in Shanghai *Eastern Air, former name of Zambia Skyways *Eastern Air Lines, a defunct American airline that operated from 1926 to 1991 *Eastern Air Li ...
and
Western Christianity Western Christianity is one of two sub-divisions of Christianity ( Eastern Christianity being the other). Western Christianity is composed of the Latin Church and Western Protestantism, together with their offshoots such as the Old Catholic ...
, and the great majority of all Eastern Orthodox believers in the world are found in the eastern parts of both the North Slavic and South Slavic areas, while a minority are Eastern-rite Catholics. * The concept has also been utilised in the archaeological studies as well as that of the pre-Christian beliefs of Slavic peoples in the
Early Middle Ages The Early Middle Ages (or early medieval period), sometimes controversially referred to as the Dark Ages, is typically regarded by historians as lasting from the late 5th or early 6th century to the 10th century. They marked the start of the Mi ...
by scholars in the 2010s.


Constructed languages

"North Slavic" has been used as a name for several 20th- and 21st-century constructed languages forming a ''fictional'' North Slavic branch of 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 ...
. Their main inspiration is the lack of a North Slavic branch vis-à-vis the traditional West, East and South Slavic branches. Usually, they are part of a larger
alternative history Alternate history (also alternative history, althist, AH) is a genre of speculative fiction of stories in which one or more historical events occur and are resolved differently than in real life. As conjecture based upon historical fact, alte ...
scheme and may be based on elements from Old Novgorodian or North Russian dialects, historical pidgins like
Russenorsk Russenorsk (; russian: Руссено́рск, ; en, Russo-Norwegian) is an extinct dual-source "restricted pidgin" language formerly used in the Arctic, which combined elements of Russian and Norwegian. Russenorsk originated from Russian tr ...
or interference from non-Slavic languages such as the
Uralic languages The Uralic languages (; sometimes called Uralian languages ) form a language family of 38 languages spoken by approximately 25million people, predominantly in Northern Eurasia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian (w ...
, the Baltic languages or the
North Germanic languages The North Germanic languages make up one of the three branches of the Germanic languages—a sub-family of the Indo-European languages—along with the West Germanic languages and the extinct East Germanic languages. The language group is also ...
. The best-known examples of constructed North Slavic languages are: * Sevorian (''Sievrøsku'', 1992), the language of a fictional island in the Baltic Sea; * three Uralic-inspired languages from the alternative history project Ill Bethisad: ** Vozgian (''Vŭozgašchai'', 1996), ** Nassian (''Naŝica/Nasika'', 2001) and ** Skuodian (2002); and * Novegradian (''Новеградескей лизике'', 2006), a project embedded in a highly elaborated fictional context.
Also included in the group of fictional North Slavic languages are five interrelated language projects (Seversk, Slavëni, Slavisk, Lydnevi, Mrezian) created around 2001 by Libor Sztemon, although they lack a fictional background and an explanation what exactly qualifies them as North Slavic.Mannewitz, pp. 239-241.


See also

* South Germanic


References


Bibliography

* Comrie, Bernard; Corbett, Greville G.,
The Slavonic languages
' (London, 2003), pp. 75 & 114–120. * Danylenko, Andrii, 2006, "The 'Greek Accusative' vs. the 'New Slavic Accusative' in the Impersonal Environment: an Areal or Structural Discrepancy?", in: Andrii Danylenko, "Slavica et Islamica. Ukrainian in Context". München: Otto Sagner Verlag, 243-265. * Hult, Arne, "On the verbal morphology of the South Slavic languages (in comparison with the North Slavic languages, especially Russian", ''Papers from First Conference on Formal Approaches to South Slavic Languages''. Plovdiv October 1995. Dragvoll, University of Trondheim, Linguistics Department (= University of Trondheim. ''Working Papers in Linguistics'' 28), ss. 105-35. (23) * {{cite book, last1= Kamusella, last2=Nomachi, last3=Gibson, first1=Tomasz, first2=Motoki, first3=Catherine, date=2016, title=The Palgrave Handbook of Slavic Languages, Identities and Borders , url=https://books.google.com/books?id=01LeCwAAQBAJ , location= London, publisher=Palgrave Macmillan, isbn=9781137348395, pages=561 * Kortlandt, Frederik, "Early dialectal diversity in South Slavic II", in: ''Dutch Contributions to the Thirteenth International Congress of Slavists, Ljubljana: Linguistics'' (SSGL 30). Amsterdam – New York: Rodopi, 2003, 215-235

* Kortlandt, Frederik
''From Proto-Indo-European to Slavic''
* Timberlake, Alan, 1978, "On the History of the Velar Phonemes in North Slavic" n Russian with English synopsis In Henrik Birnbaum, ed., ''American Contributions to the Eighth International Congress of Slavists'', vol. 1, ''Linguistics and Poetics''. Columbus, OH: Slavica Publishers. * Tommola, Hannu, 2000, "On the Perfect in North Slavic."
Östen Dahl Östen Dahl (; born 4 November 1945 in Stockholm) is a Swedish linguist and professor best known for pioneering a marker-based approach to tense and aspect in linguistic typology. Dahl finished his PhD at the University of Gothenburg and subsequ ...
(ed.), ''Tense and Aspect in the Languages of Europe''. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 441-478. Slavic languages