Proto-Slavic language. Old Slavonic language. Modern Slavic languages

Common Slavic or Proto-Slavic the language spoken by the ancestors of the modern Slavic peoples, who lived on the territory of their ancestral homeland, was preserved in the first centuries AD. e. (at least until the middle of the first millennium), but the settlement of the Slavs on ever larger territories naturally led to the development of local dialects, some of which then underwent transformation into independent languages 46 .

Modern philological ideas about this language concern mainly its phonology and morphology; it is unlikely that anyone will undertake to compose a long coherent phrase on it, or even more so to try to “speak in Proto-Slavonic”. The fact is that the Proto-Slavic language was the language preliterate; there are no texts on it, and philologists deduce its word forms, features of its phonology and phonetics by the method of reconstruction. Philology students are introduced in detail to the principles of such a reconstruction, in particular, at the course of the Old Church Slavonic language. 47 . The course "Introduction to Slavic Philology", avoiding duplication of such information, nevertheless includes its necessary beginnings in a brief "introductory-reminder" form.

In the Proto-Slavic language, for example, a very peculiar system of verbal conjugation and declension of names developed, the individual disparate features of which are still preserved to some extent by modern Slavic languages. A complex system of childbirth (male, female, and even middle) corresponded to several declensions. Sonorant(“smooth”) consonants j, w, r, l, m, n in Proto-Slavic were able to form an independent syllable (without the participation of a vowel phoneme). In the process of historical evolution, the Proto-Slavic language has repeatedly experienced softening ( palatalization) consonants.

In the Proto-Slavic language, among the consonants, some were only hard, but then they softened, and *k, *g, *h before the front vowels turned into hissing k > h’, g > w’, x > w’ (under certain conditions, k, g, x subsequently also turned into soft whistling k > c', g > h', x > c').

In recent centuries, the Proto-Slavic language has experienced a process of transition from closed syllables to open ones. Among the vowels there were diphthongs. Diphthongic vowel combinations still exist in some other Indo-European languages. As a result of complex processes, they were lost, as a result of which the Old Slavonic and, from oi, ai - ѣ (yat), etc. turned out from the diphthong ei. Diphthongs later developed on a new basis in the Slovak and Czech languages.

Greek brothers Konstantin(monastic Cyril, c. 827-869) and Methodius(c. 815-885) were natives of Thessalonica (Thessaloniki) and knew the local South Slavic dialect well, which was, apparently, a dialect of the ancient Bulgarian language. The Old Slavonic language was originally based on it, preserved in many ancient texts of the end of the 1st millennium AD. e., written in "Glagolitic" and "Cyrillic". (Another name for it is Old Church Slavonic.) Constantine created the Slavic alphabet, using which the brothers translated the most important Christian sacred books into Old Slavonic. Due to the presence of writing and monuments, Old Slavonic, in contrast to Proto-Slavic, has been well studied by philologists.

Main Glagolitic monuments - Kyiv leaflets, Assemanian Gospel, Zograph Gospel, Sinai Psalter, Mary Gospel and others. The main Cyrillic monuments - Savvin's book, Suprasl manuscript, Hilandar leaflets and etc.

The Old Slavonic language is characterized by a complex system of verb forms that convey various shades of the past tense - aorist (past perfect), perfect (past indefinite), imperfect (past imperfect), pluperfect (long past).

It had reduced vowels ъ and ь, which were subsequently lost at the end of a word and in a weak position (for example, window from Art.-Slav. window, house from Art.-Slav. dom), and in a strong position they developed into “full-vowels” ( father from Art.-Slav. otts) 48 . A characteristic Old Slavonic feature was the nasal vowels [on] and [en] - displayed by the letters ѫ (“yus big”) and ѧ (“yus small”). The nasals were preserved, for example, in Polish, but in Russian [o n] moved to [y], and [en] - to [’a].

The fate of the Proto-Slavic vowels *o and *e in combination with sonorant consonants *r and *l was very interesting. If we conditionally designate all the other consonants with the letter t, then it turns out that among the southern Slavs, for example, in the same Old Slavonic language, the vowel lengthened with its subsequent interchange with the consonant *r, *l: *tort > *to:rt > tro: t > trat; *tolt > to:lt > tlo:t > tlat; *tert > te:rt > tre:t > trht; *telt > te:lt > tle:t > tlѣt (that is, the so-called disagreement of the type -ra-, -la-, -rѣ- has developed: city, head, gold, power, milk, environment, etc.). Among the Western Slavs, this corresponded to a disagreement like -ro-, -lo- (cf. Polish głowa, krowa). The Eastern Slavs, however, developed full agreement like -oro-, -olo-, -ere- (city, head, gold, parish, milk, middle, etc.): *tort > tort > tor°t > torot; *tårt > tert > ter e t > teret etc. (small letter in uppercase denotes a faint overtone that appeared initially).

Russian classical poetry actively used Old Slavonic synonyms (familiar to Russian readers through the Church Slavonic language) - for example, to give "height" to style.

There were seven cases in the Old Slavonic language. Usually, the endings of the nominative and accusative cases of the singular coincided in both animate and inanimate nouns (an exception was made to designate persons standing hierarchically high: prophet, prince, father, etc. - here the form of the accusative could coincide with the form of the genitive, as in modern Russian). The modern prepositional case, the sixth in a row, corresponded to the local one. By the way, as for the Old Slavonic words and their declension by cases, we will mention such interesting phenomena as the vocative case of nouns (seventh) lost by the Russian language - goro (from mountain), earth (from earth), synou (from son), etc. , as well as the dual number, also lost by the Slavic languages ​​​​(except for the language of the Lusatian Serbs). The Bulgarian and Macedonian languages ​​have generally lost the declension of nouns - in them, as in other languages ​​of the analytical system (like, for example, French), prepositions and word order indicate the contextual meanings of nouns (they also developed a characteristic postpositive definite article, written together after words - e.g. Bulgarian "book that from "book").

Personal pronouns ja, ty, my, wy, on, etc. are rarely used in Polish speech, although they are provided for by the language system. Instead of the second person pronoun wy, Poles usually use the word "pan" (in relation to a woman or girl pani), transforming the phrase accordingly - so that the address is made in the form of a third person, for example: co pan chce? (i.e. what do you want?)

A characteristic feature of the Slavic languages ​​is the verb form (imperfect and perfect), which makes it possible to compactly express the semantic nuances associated with an action that lasts or repeats, on the one hand, and is completed, on the other.

The Slavic languages ​​form a group that is part of the Indo-European language family. Slavic languages ​​are currently spoken by more than 400 million people. The languages ​​of the group under discussion fall, in turn, into West Slavic (Czech, Slovak, Polish, Kashubian, Serbo-Lusatian, which includes two dialects (Upper Lusatian and Lower Lusatian), and Polabian, which has been dead since the end of the 18th century), South Slavic (Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian 49 , Slovenian, Macedonian and dead since the beginning of the 20th century. Slovinsky) and East Slavic (Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian) 50 . As a result of a detailed comparative historical study of the Slavic languages, one of the greatest philologists of the 20th century. prince Nikolai Sergeevich Trubetskoy(1890-1938) wrote:

“We saw that in relation to the language, the Russian tribe occupies a completely exceptional position among the Slavs in terms of its historical significance” 51 .

This conclusion of Trubetskoy is based on the unique historical and cultural role of the Russian language, which he understands as follows: “Being a modernized and Russified form of the Church Slavonic language, the Russian literary language is the only direct successor to the common Slavic literary and linguistic tradition, which originates from the holy first teachers of the Slavic, i.e. e. from the end of the era of Proto-Slavic unity " 52 .

To substantiate the question of the "historical significance" of the "Russian tribe", it is, of course, necessary, in addition to the peculiarities of the language, to draw on the spiritual culture created by the Russian people. Since this is a huge complex problem, we restrict ourselves here to simply listing the main names: in science - Lomonosov, Lobachevsky, Mendeleev, Pavlov, Korolev; in literature - Pushkin, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Chekhov, Gorky, Bunin, Mayakovsky, Bulgakov, Sholokhov; in music - Glinka, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Scriabin, Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Sviridov; in painting and sculpture - Bryullov, Surikov, Repin, Vasnetsov, Valentin Serov, Kustodiev, Konenkov, etc.

A M.V. Lomonosov, in the "Dedication" prefaced by his "Russian Grammar", states:

“Charles the Fifth, the Roman emperor, used to say that it was decent to speak Spanish with God, French with friends, German with enemies, Italian with women. But if he were skilled in the Russian language, then, of course, he would add to that that it is decent for them to speak with all of them, for he would find in it the splendor of Spanish, the liveliness of French, the strength of German, the tenderness of Italian, moreover, richness and strength in images brevity of Greek and Latin" 53 .

As for the understanding of the Russian literary language as a "Russified form" of Church Slavonic, for the sake of objectivity, it is necessary to linger a little on this topic.

Two groups of concepts of the origin of the Russian literary language can be distinguished. Some concepts that go back partly to the academician Izmail Ivanovich Sreznevsky(1812-1880), part of the academician Alexey Alexandrovich Shakhmatov(1864-1920), one way or another, they see the Russified Old Church Slavonic in the Old Russian literary language. Others go back to the work of the academician Sergei Petrovich Obnorsky(1888-1962).

In the work of S.P. Obnorsky " "Russkaya Pravda" as a monument of the Russian literary language"says:

“An analysis of the language of Russkaya Pravda made it possible to clothe in flesh and blood the concept of this literary Russian language of the older period. Its essential features are the well-known artlessness of the structure, i.e., proximity to the colloquial element of speech,<...>the absence of traces of interaction with the Bulgarian, common - the Bulgarian-Byzantine culture ... " 54 .

The conclusion of the scientist is that the Russians already in the 10th century. it had its own literary language, independent of Old Slavonic, was revolutionary, and they immediately tried to challenge it, emphasizing that Russkaya Pravda was not a literary monument, but a work of “business content”. Then S.P. Obnorsky involved in the analysis "The Tale of Igor's Campaign", "Instruction" by Vladimir Monomakh, "The Prayer of Daniil the Sharpener" - that is, the artistically most important ancient Russian monuments.

Academician Obnorsky published the famous book " Essays on the history of the Russian literary language of the older period» 55 . In it, in particular, he wrote “about the Russian basis of our literary language, and, accordingly, about the later collision of the Church Slavonic language with it and the secondary nature of the process of penetration of Church Slavonic elements into it” 56 . Proceedings of S.P. Obnorsky were deservedly awarded the Stalin Prize (1947) and the Lenin Prize (1970, posthumously) - that is, the highest creative awards of the Soviet era.

The essence of the conclusions of academician Obnorsky is that the Russian literary language developed independently - that is, "the Russian literary language is Russian by nature, Church Slavonic elements are secondary in it" 57 .

Indeed, all the monuments listed above studied by Obnorsky - both the set of ancient legal norms "Russian Truth", and literary and artistic masterpieces - are typically Russian in terms of language.

(This does not negate the fact that, in parallel, in a number of genres, Russians wrote in Church Slavonic - for example, Metropolitan Hilarion's "Sermon on Law and Grace", the lives of the saints, church teachings, etc. And oral speech in Church Slavonic sounded - during church services.)

For comparison, one can point to, for example, the Polish language, the vocabulary of which tangibly reflected the results of centuries of pressure on it from Latin, explained by the fact that the direction of development of Polish culture has long been set by the Catholic Church. The Poles generally wrote in Latin for centuries, while the Orthodox Slavic peoples created literature in Church Slavonic 58 . But, on the other hand, it was Polish, as already mentioned, that retained the Proto-Slavic nasal vowels [en] and [o n] (in Polish they are denoted by the letters ę and ą: for example, księżyc - moon, month; dąb - oak). Separate Proto-Slavic features have been preserved by some other Slavic languages. So, in Czech to this day there are so-called smooth syllables, for example vlk - wolf. Bulgarian still uses such ancient verb tenses as aorist (past perfect), perfect (past indefinite) and imperfect (past imperfect); in Slovenian, the “long-past” (“pre-past”) verb tense pluperfect and such a special non-conjugated verb form (former in Old Church Slavonic) as supin (attainment mood) have been preserved.

The language of the Polabian Slavs (Polabyans), who lived along the western bank of the Laba (Elbe) River, disappeared by the middle of the 18th century. His small dictionary has been preserved, which also included separate phrases in a sloppy way. This text, invaluably useful for philologists, was compiled in the 18th century. literate Polabyanin Jan Parum Schulze, the former, apparently, not a simple peasant, but a village innkeeper. At about the same time, the German pastor H. Hennig, a native of the places of historical residence of the Polabyans, compiled an extensive German-Polabian dictionary.

The Polabian language, like Polish, retained nasal vowels. It had an aorist and an imperfect, as well as a dual number of nouns. It is very interesting that the stress in this West Slavic language was, judging by a number of data, different places. 59 .

The status of some Slavic languages ​​is still philologically debatable.

They consider themselves a separate independent people, for example, Rusyns, currently living in Ukraine, Serbia, Croatia and other regions 60 . In the conditions of the USSR, they stubbornly tried to classify them as Ukrainians, which caused constant protests in the Rusyn environment. Based on their self-name, Rusyns usually associate themselves with Russians (according to their folk etymology, Rusyns - " Rus sons"). The question of the degree of real proximity of the Rusyn language to Russian has not yet been clearly resolved. In medieval texts, “Rusyns” often refer to themselves as “Russians”.

In Poland, attempts were repeatedly made to prove that the Kashubian language is not an independent Slavic language, but only an dialect of the Polish language, that is, in other words, its dialect (thus, the Kashubians were denied the status of an independent Slavic people). Something similar can be found in Bulgaria in relation to the Macedonian language.

In Russia, before the October Revolution, philological science was dominated by the point of view according to which the Russian language is divided into three unique huge dialects - Great Russian (Moscow), Little Russian and Belarusian. Its presentation can be found, for example, in the works of such prominent linguists as A.A. Shakhmatov, acad. A.I. Sobolevsky, A.A. Potebnya, T.D. Florinsky and others.

Yes, academic Alexey Alexandrovich Shakhmatov(1864-1920) wrote: “The Russian language is a term used in two meanings. It denotes: 1) the totality of dialects of Great Russian, Belarusian and Little Russian; 2) the modern literary language of Russia, which in its foundation is one of the Great Russian dialects " 61 .

Looking ahead, one cannot fail to emphasize that at present the Ukrainian and Belarusian languages, which are qualitatively different from Russian, are already undoubted reality.

This is, in particular, the result of the fact that during the XX century. after the October Revolution, the artificial alienation of the Little Russians and Belarusians from the Russians and the Russian language was systematically ideologically provoked under the pretext of pursuing the so-called "Leninist" national policy, which consciously and consistently aroused local nationalist mindsets:

“Sometimes one has to hear talk that, they say, Ukrainization is being carried out too sharply, that the masses do not need it, that the peasantry seems to be well and the Russian language understands that the workers do not want to assimilate Ukrainian culture, because this alienates them from their Russian brothers” , - one of the party leaders of the 1920s frankly stated, then with pathos stating: “All such conversations - no matter how ultra-revolutionary and“ internationalist ”dresses they dress - the party in the person of its leaders and every individual reasonable party member - is considered a manifestation anti-worker and anti-revolutionary influence of bourgeois-NEP and intellectual sentiments on the working class ... But the will of the Soviet government is unshakable, and it knows how, as almost ten years of experience has shown, to carry through any business that is recognized as useful for the revolution, and overcome any resistance against their activities. So it will be with the national policy, which the vanguard of the proletariat, its spokesman and leader, the All-Union Communist Party, decided to put into practice. 62 .

M.V. Lomonosov in the 18th century. not unreasonably believed that before philologists it was not a separate Slavic language, but a “Little Russian dialect”, and “although this dialect is very similar to ours, however, its stress, pronunciation and endings of sayings have been canceled a lot from being close to the Poles and from long-term being under their rule, or, frankly, spoiled" 63 . The belief that the local dialect of the Little Russians is simply "Russian changed into a Polish model" was shared by other philologists.

N.S. Trubetskoy in the 20s of the XX century. continued to believe that the Ukrainian folk dialect is an offshoot of the Russian language (“There is no need to talk about the depth or antiquity of the differences between the three main Russian (East Slavic) dialects”). At the same time, a well-informed scientist noted the following curious fact:

“The corresponding folk languages ​​- Great Russian and Little Russian - are closely related and similar to each other. But those Ukrainian intellectuals who advocated the creation of an independent Ukrainian literary language did not want this natural resemblance to the Russian literary language. Therefore, they abandoned the only natural way to create their own literary language, completely broke not only with Russian, but also with the Church Slavonic literary and linguistic tradition and decided to create a literary language solely on the basis of the folk dialect, while in such a way that this language would be as less like into Russian.

“As expected,” N.S. writes further. Trubetskoy, this enterprise in this form turned out to be unfeasible: the dictionary of the folk language was insufficient to express all the shades of thought necessary for the literary language, and the syntactic structure of folk speech was too clumsy to satisfy at least the elementary requirements of literary style. But out of necessity, one had to join some already existing and well-finished literary and linguistic tradition. And since they did not want to adjoin the Russian literary and linguistic tradition for anything, it only remained to join the tradition of the Polish literary language. 64 . Wed also: “Indeed, the modern Ukrainian literary language ... is so full of Polonisms that it gives the impression of just a Polish language, slightly flavored with a Little Russian element and squeezed into a Little Russian grammatical system” 65 .

In the middle of the XIX century. Ukrainian writer Panteleimon Alexandrovich Kulish(1819-1897) invented a spelling system based on the phonetic principle, which has since been commonly called "kulishivka", to "help the people to enlightenment". She, for example, canceled the letters "s", "e", "b", but instead introduced "є" and "ї".

Later, in his declining years, P.A. Kulish tried to protest against the attempts of political intriguers to present this “phonetic spelling” of his “as a banner of our Russian discord”, even declaring that, as a rebuff to such attempts, from now on he would “print in etymological old-world spelling” (that is, in Russian. - Yu.M.).

After the October Revolution, the kulishivka was actively used to create the modern Ukrainian alphabet. 66 . For Belarusians, after the revolution, an alphabet was also invented based on a phonetic, rather than etymological principle (for example, Belarusians write “malako”, not milk,"naga", not leg etc.).

The vast majority of words are common to the Slavic languages, although their meaning now far from always coincides. For example, the Russian word palace in Polish corresponds to the word "pałac", "dworzec" in Polish is not a palace, but a "station"; rynek in Polish, not a market, but “square”, “beauty” in Polish “uroda” (compare with Russian “freak”). Such words are often referred to as "false friends of the translator".

Sharp differences between the Slavic languages ​​are related to stress. In Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian, as well as in Bulgarian, there is a different (free) stress: it can fall on any syllable, that is, there are words with stress on the first syllable, on the second, on the last, etc. Serbo-Croatian stress already has a restriction : it falls on any syllable except the last one. Fixed stress in Polish (on the penultimate syllable of a word), Macedonian (on the third syllable from the end of words), as well as in Czech and Slovak (on the first syllable). These differences entail considerable consequences (for example, in the field of versification).

And yet, the Slavs, as a rule, are able to maintain a conversation with each other, even without knowing each other's languages, which once again reminds both of the close linguistic proximity and ethnic kinship 67 . Even wishing to declare the inability to speak one or another Slavic language, the Slav involuntarily expresses himself understandably for the surrounding native speakers of this language. The Russian phrase “I can’t speak Russian” corresponds to the Bulgarian “Not speaking Bulgarian”, the Serbian “Ja we don’t speak Serbian”, the Polish “Nie muwię po polsku” (Not move in Polish), etc. Instead of the Russian “Come in!” the Bulgarian says “Get in!”, the Serb “Slobodno!”, the Pole “Proszę!” (usually with a specification of whom he “asks”: pana, pani, państwa). The speech of the Slavs is filled with such mutually recognizable, commonly understood words and expressions.

Just as a tree grows from a root, its trunk gradually grows stronger, rises to the sky and branches, the Slavic languages ​​\u200b\u200b"grew" from the Proto-Slavic language (see Proto-Slavic language), whose roots go deep to the Indo-European language (see Indo-European family of languages). This allegorical picture, as is known, served as the basis for the theory of the "family tree", which, in relation to the Slavic family of languages, can be accepted in general terms and even historically substantiated.

The Slavic language "tree" has three main branches: 1) East Slavic languages, 2) West Slavic languages, 3) South Slavic languages. These main branches-groups branch out in turn into smaller ones - so, the East Slavic branch has three main branches - Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian languages, and the Russian language branch, in turn, has two main branches - North Russian and South Russian dialects (see Adverbs of the Russian language ). If you pay attention to further branches of at least the South Russian dialect, you will see how branches-zones of Smolensk, Upper Dnieper, Upper Desninsk, Kursk-Oryol-sky, Ryazan, Bryansk-Zhizdrinsky, Tula, Yelets and Oskol dialects are distinguished in it, if you draw a picture of the allegorical "family tree" further, there are still branches with numerous leaves - the dialects of individual villages and settlements It would be possible to describe the Polish or Slovenian branches in the same way, explain which of them has more branches, which has fewer, but the principle description would remain the same.

Naturally, such a “tree” did not grow immediately, that it did not immediately branch out and grow so much that the trunk and its main branches are older than smaller branches and twigs. Yes, and it did not always grow comfortably and exactly some branches withered, some were chopped off. But more on that later. In the meantime, we note that the “branched” principle of classifying Slavic languages ​​and dialects presented by us applies to natural Slavic languages ​​and dialects, to the Slavic linguistic element outside of its written form, without a normative written form. And if the various branches of the living Slavic language "tree" - languages ​​​​and dialects - did not appear immediately, then the written, bookish, normalized, largely artificial language systems formed on their basis and in parallel with them did not immediately appear - literary languages ​​(see Literary language).

In the modern Slavic world, there are 12 national literary languages: three East Slavic - Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian, five West Slavic - Polish, Czech, Slovak, Upper Lusatian-Serbian and Lower Lusatian-Serbian, and four South Slavic - Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian, Bulgarian and Macedonian.

In addition to these languages, polyvalent languages, that is, speakers (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 dialect-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 also such languages ​​in Western Europe: in Spain, Italy, France and in German-speaking countries. The Slavs know the Ruthenian language (in Yugoslavia), the Kaikavian and Chakavian languages ​​(in Yugoslavia and Austria), the Kashubian language (in Poland), the Lyash language (in Czechoslovakia), etc.

On a rather vast territory in the basin of the Elbe River, in Slavic Laba, lived in the Middle Ages Polabian Slavs who spoke the Polabian language. 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 come down to us, from which it is possible to restore not only the language, but also the life of the disappeared Polabyans. And at the International Congress of Slavists in Prague in 1968, the famous West German Slavist R. Olesh read a report in the Polabian 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 numerous examples of the newly written languages ​​of our country show.

In the ninth century the works of the brothers Cyril and Methodius created the first Slavic literary language - Old Church Slavonic. It was based on the dialect of the Thessalonica Slavs, it was used to translate a number of church and other books from Greek, and later some original works were written. The Old Slavonic language first existed in the West Slavic environment - in Great Moravia (hence the number of moralisms inherent in it), and then spread among the southern Slavs, where book schools - Ohrid and Preslav - played a special role in its development. From the 10th century this language begins to exist and Eastern Slavs, where it was known under the name of the Slovenian language, and scientists call it the language of Church Slavonic or Old Slavonic. The Old Slavic language was an international, inter-Slavic book language until the 18th century. and had a great influence on the history and modern appearance of many Slavic languages, especially the Russian language. Old Slavonic monuments have come down to us with two writing systems - Glagolitic and Cyrillic (see. The emergence of writing among the Slavs).

Replenishment of the vocabulary with new words by creating them from the word-formation elements available in the language and by borrowing words from the languages ​​of other peoples is a natural phenomenon for all languages.

Russian language refers to Slavic group languages. Related to it are the living East Slavic languages ​​\u200b\u200b- Ukrainian and Belorussian; West Slavic - Polish, Kashubian, Czech, Slovak, Lusatian; South Slavic - Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian; dead West Slavic - Polabian and Pomeranian; South Slavic - Old Church Slavonic.

Long before our era, tribes of Slavs settled on the lands between the Dnieper and the Vistula, who developed their own common Slavic language. By the 5th - 6th centuries. among the Slavs, who by that time had significantly expanded their territory, three groups separated themselves: southern, western and eastern. This isolation of the Slavic tribes was accompanied by the division of the common Slavic language into independent languages. East Slavic (Old Russian) language is the language of a separate eastern group of Slavic tribes.

Settlement of Slavic tribes in the tenth century.

From the 7th century by the ninth century developed, and from the 9th century. until the second third of the 12th century. there was an East Slavic (Old Russian) state - Kievan Rus. The population of Kievan Rus communicated through close dialects of the East Slavic (Old Russian) language. In the XII - XIII centuries. Kievan Rus broke up into separate principalities. The East Slavic (Old Russian) language gave rise to three languages ​​- Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian. They separated already by the 14th century. On the northeastern outskirts of Kievan Rus in the XIV century. the state of Moscow Rus began to be created, the population of which spoke the emerging Russian language. In the era of the Muscovite state and in subsequent eras, the Russian language is the language of only one of the three East Slavic peoples.

Originally Russian words are divided into three groups: common Slavic, East Slavic (Old Russian) and proper Russian. For example, common Slavic words: beard, eyebrow, hip, head, lip, throat and etc.; East Slavic (Old Russian) words: gaff, enough, rope, blackberry and others. From the XIV century. actually Russian words began to appear in the Russian language ( alcove, get lost, militia and etc.). They were created on the basis of common Slavic, East Slavic (Old Russian) and borrowed words. For example, in the XVI century. the word was borrowed from the Polish language pharmacy. On the basis of this word, the adjective arose in Russian pharmacy(according to the rules of Russian word production). Actually Russian words make up a significant layer of the vocabulary of the modern Russian language.

Everyone who was born and raised in Russia knows the song about the dashing Don Cossack Stepan Timofeevich Razin, the leader of the popular uprising in the early 70s. 17th century

From behind the island to the rod,

To the expanse of the river wave

Painted ones come up

Stenki Razin Chelny.

The words in this song are ancient. Let's look into their history, and at the same time into the languages ​​of neighboring peoples.

Word Island in use since the 11th century; it has an attachment about- connected with the Indo-European root streu-, meaning "flow, leak, pour" (by the way, the same root is in the word jet). Wed: in Latvian strava and in Lithuanian srava, srove- current, flow; in german Strom- current, flow (strömen - flow, run, flow). Is there a connection between the island and the current? Of course have. After all, an island is a piece of land surrounded by water on all sides. Word Island appeared not only in Russian, it has relatives in other Slavic languages: island(Ukrainian), vostrau(Belarusian), Island(Bulgarian) island(Serbo-Croatian), island(Czech and Slovak), ostrow(Old Polish).

Word rod(a place in the river with the highest flow rate and depth) has been used since the 14th - 15th centuries; compare: haircut(Ukrainian), stridzhan(Belarusian).

Words arose in antiquity river and river(Indo-European basis meant "flow, stream"); compare: rika and rich(Ukrainian), cancer and cancer(Belarusian), river and river(Bulgarian), river and speeches(Serbo-Croatian), river and recen(Slovenian), Reka and ricni(Czech), rieka and riecny(Slovak), rzeka and rzeczny(Polish).

From the 11th century the word used in ancient Russian shuttle; its basis is also Indo-European, meaning "to rise, to rise above something"; hence the English hill(hill, hill) and German Holm(elevation, hill, river island). But really dude (pl. canoes) - that is, a boat, a boat - was perceived from a distance as something towering above the smooth surface of the water. Of course, the diminutive is also remembered shuttle - firstly, like a small boat, and secondly, like a part of a loom (elongated in shape, like a boat). Wed: choven and official(Ukrainian), choven and chounik(Belarusian), chlun(Bulgarian) Coln and Colnicek(Slovenian), clun and clunek(Czech), cln and clnok(Slovak), czolno(Polish).

Sailing ships (boats) on the river; shuttle of an automatic loom; space shuttle Clipper (Russia)

How do scientists determine which words are common Slavic, which are East Slavic (Old Russian), and which are actually Russian? To do this, they compare in all Slavic languages ​​the meaning and pronunciation of words denoting the same objects, phenomena, signs, actions. Common Slavic will be those words that will appear in all or most Slavic languages, and each of the three groups of Slavic languages ​​\u200b\u200bmust be represented (eastern, southern, western). If it turns out that words exist, for example, only in Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian and Slovene, then these words should be considered South Slavic; if only in Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian, then these are East Slavic (Old Russian) words. If there are words in only one of the languages, then these are already their own formations of one or another Slavic language, for example, Russian.

The first scientific etymological dictionary of the Russian language appeared at the end of the 19th century. And in the last century, the Etymological Dictionary of the Russian Language by A. G. Preobrazhensky and the Etymological Dictionary of the Russian Language by Max Fasmer, as well as several short etymological dictionaries, were published.

In one of his books, L. V. Uspensky made an interesting comparison of Russian and Bulgarian words.

“When our soldier entered into a conversation with a Bulgarian, they, smiling sweetly at each other, all the time tried to moderate the pace of the conversation.

“My dear man,” the Russian persuaded, “don’t speak so fast, speak more slowly!”

- Pray those, friend, do not say such a borzo, say funny!

SLAVIC LANGUAGES, a group of languages ​​belonging to the Indo-European family, spoken by more than 440 million people in Eastern Europe and North 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 (which is spoken in a small area in northern Poland) and two Lusatian (or Serb Lusatian) languages ​​​​- Upper Lusatian and Lower Lusatian, common 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 ​​- Slovene, which disappeared at the beginning of the 20th century, Polabsky, which became extinct in the 18th century, and Old Slavonic - the language of the first Slavic translations of the Holy Scriptures, which is based on one of the ancient South Slavic dialects and which was used in worship in the Slavic Orthodox Church, but was never the 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 and etc. In other cases, the common origin of the words is less clear. Russian word see related to Latin videre, Russian word five related to German funf, 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 nasalized (nasal) vowels have been preserved - ą and ERROR, disappeared in other Slavic languages. Slavic languages ​​differ greatly in stress. In Czech, Slovak and Sorbian, the stress usually falls on the first syllable of a word; in Polish - to the penultimate one; in Serbo-Croatian, any syllable can be stressed, except for the last one; in Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian, the 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 change in six or seven cases, in numbers and in three genders. The presence of seven cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, local or prepositional and vocative) testifies to the archaism of the Slavic languages ​​and their closeness to the Indo-European language, which supposedly had eight cases. An important feature of the Slavic languages ​​is the category of the verb aspect: every verb belongs either to the perfect or to the imperfect aspect and denotes, respectively, either a completed, or a lasting or repetitive action.

The habitat of the Slavic tribes in Eastern Europe in the 5th–8th centuries. AD expanded rapidly, and by the 8th c. 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 c. it was basically a single language, but gradually the differences between the territorial dialects became more noticeable. By the 10th c. there were already predecessors of modern Slavic languages.

The Slavic group of languages ​​is a large branch of the Indo-European languages, since the Slavs are the largest group of people in Europe united by similar speech and culture. They are used by more than 400 million people.

General information

The Slavic group of languages ​​is a branch of the Indo-European languages ​​used in most countries of Eastern Europe, the Balkans, parts of Central Europe and northern Asia. It is most closely related to the Baltic languages ​​(Lithuanian, Latvian and the extinct Old Prussian). The languages ​​belonging to the Slavic group originated from Central and Eastern Europe (Poland, Ukraine) and spread to the rest of the above territories.

Classification

There are three groups of South Slavic, West Slavic and East Slavic branches.

In contrast to the clearly divergent literary, linguistic boundaries are not always obvious. There are transitional dialects connecting different languages, with the exception of the area where the South Slavs are separated from other Slavs by Romanians, Hungarians and German-speaking Austrians. But even in these isolated areas there are some remnants of the old dialectal continuity (for example, the similarity of Russian and Bulgarian).

Therefore, it should be noted that the traditional classification in terms of three separate branches should not be considered as a true model of historical development. It is more correct to imagine it as a process in which differentiation and reintegration of dialects constantly took place, as a result of which the Slavic group of languages ​​\u200b\u200bhas a striking homogeneity throughout the entire territory of its distribution. For centuries, the paths of different peoples intersected, and their cultures mixed.

Differences

Still, it would be an exaggeration to assume that communication between any two speakers of different Slavic languages ​​is possible without any linguistic difficulties. Many differences in phonetics, grammar and vocabulary can cause misunderstandings even in a simple conversation, not to mention the difficulties in journalistic, technical and artistic speech. Thus, the Russian word "green" is recognizable to all Slavs, but "red" means "beautiful" in other languages. Suknja is “skirt” in Serbo-Croatian, “coat” in Slovene, the similar expression is “cloth” - “dress” in Ukrainian.

Eastern group of Slavic languages

It includes Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian. Russian is the native language of almost 160 million people, including many in the countries that were part of the former Soviet Union. Its main dialects are northern, southern and transitional central group. Including the Moscow dialect, on which the literary language is based, belongs to it. In total, about 260 million people speak Russian in the world.

In addition to the "great and mighty", the Eastern Slavic group of languages ​​includes two more large languages.

• Ukrainian, which is divided into northern, southwestern, southeastern and Carpathian dialects. The literary form is based on the Kiev-Poltava dialect. More than 37 million people speak Ukrainian in Ukraine and neighboring countries, and more than 350,000 people know the language in Canada and the United States. This is due to the presence of a large ethnic community of immigrants who left the country at the end of the 19th century. The Carpathian dialect, which is also called Carpatho-Russian, is sometimes treated as a separate language.
• Belarusian - it is spoken by about seven million people in Belarus. Its main dialects are southwestern, some features of which can be explained by proximity to the Polish lands, and northern. The Minsk dialect, which serves as the basis for the literary language, is located on the border of these two groups.

West Slavic branch

It includes the Polish language and other Lechitic (Kashubian and its extinct variant - Slovenian), Lusatian and Czechoslovak dialects. This Slavic group is also quite common. More than 40 million people speak Polish not only in Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe (in particular, in Lithuania, the Czech Republic and Belarus), but also in France, the USA and Canada. It is also divided into several subgroups.

Polish dialects

The main ones are the northwestern, southeastern, Silesian and Mazovian. The Kashubian dialect is considered part of the Pomeranian languages, which, like Polish, are Lechitic. Its speakers live west of Gdansk and on the coast of the Baltic Sea.

The extinct Slovene dialect belonged to the northern group of Kashubian dialects, which differs from the southern one. Another unused Lechitic language is Polab, which was spoken in the 17th and 18th centuries. Slavs living in the region of the Elbe River.

His is Serbal Lusatian, which is still spoken by the inhabitants of Lusatia in East Germany. It has two literary (used in and around Bautzen) and Lower Sorbian (common in Cottbus).

Czechoslovak language group

It includes:

• Czech, spoken by about 12 million people in the Czech Republic. His dialects are Bohemian, Moravian and Silesian. The literary language was formed in the 16th century in Central Bohemia on the basis of the Prague dialect.
• Slovak, it is used by about 6 million people, most of them are residents of Slovakia. Literary speech was formed on the basis of the dialect of Central Slovakia in the middle of the 19th century. Western Slovak dialects are similar to Moravian and differ from the central and eastern ones, which share common features with Polish and Ukrainian.

South Slavic group of languages

Among the three main ones, it is the smallest in terms of the number of native speakers. But this is an interesting group of Slavic languages, the list of which, as well as their dialects, is very extensive.

They are classified as follows:

1. Eastern subgroup. It includes:

2. Western subgroup:

• Serbo-Croatian - about 20 million people use it. The basis for the literary version was the Shtokavian dialect, which is common in most of the Bosnian, Serbian, Croatian and Montenegrin territory.
• Slovenian is spoken by more than 2.2 million people in Slovenia and the surrounding areas of Italy and Austria. It shares some common features with Croatian dialects and includes many dialects with great differences between them. In Slovene (in particular its western and northwestern dialects), traces of old connections with the West Slavic languages ​​(Czech and Slovak) can be found.