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Specialists - linguists and historians - are still arguing where the ancestral home of the Slavs was, that is, the territory on which they lived as a single people and from where they dispersed, forming separate peoples and languages. Some scientists place it between the Vistula and the middle course of the Dnieper, others - between the Vistula in the east and the Oder in the west. Now many experts believe that the ancestral home of the Slavs was in Pannonia, on the Middle Danube, from where they moved to the north and east. As one of the proofs that the Slavs were in Central Europe, they cite, for example, the lexical similarity between the Slavic languages and the languages of Western Europe. Compare the Latin and Russian words bostis - "guest", struere - "to build", fomus - "horn", paludes - "flood". The problem of the ancestral home of the Slavs is very complex, and its solution depends on the efforts of scientists of various specialties - historians, archaeologists, linguists, ethnographers, folklorists, anthropologists. Linguistics plays a special role in these searches. In the modern world, there are from 10 to 13 living Slavic languages, depending on what status is attributed to several of them, an independent language or dialect. Thus, the official Bulgarian studies do not recognize the Macedonian language as an independent language, considering it as a dialect of Bulgarian. Among the Slavic languages there are also dead ones, which no one speaks anymore. This was the first literary language of the Slavs. The Russians call it Old Slavonic, and the Bulgarians call it Old Bulgarian. It is based on the South Slavic dialects of old Macedonia. It was in this language in the IX century. the sacred texts were translated by Greek monks - the brothers Cyril and Methodius, who created the Slavic alphabet. Their mission to create a literary language for all Slavs became possible due to the fact that in those days Slavic speech was still relatively unified. The Old Church Slavonic language did not exist in the form of a living folk speech, it always remained the language of the Church, culture and writing. However, this is not the only dead Slavic language. In the West Slavic zone, in the north of modern Germany, numerous and powerful Slavic tribes once lived. Subsequently, they were almost completely absorbed by the Germanic ethnos. Their immediate relatives are probably the current Lusatians and Kashubians. The tribes that disappeared did not know writing. Only one of the dialects - Polabsky (the name is derived from the name of the Elbe River, Laba in Slavic) - has come down to us in small dictionaries and records of texts made at the end of the 17th - beginning of the 18th centuries. This is a valuable, albeit rather meager source of knowledge about the Slavic languages of the past. Among the Slavic languages, Russian is closest to Belarusian and Ukrainian. The three of them form the East Slavic subgroup. Russian is one of the largest languages in the world: it ranks fifth in terms of the number of speakers, behind only Chinese, English, Hindustani and Spanish. Ukrainian in this hierarchy is included in the first "twenty", that is, it also belongs to very large languages. In addition to the East Slavic subgroup, West Slavic and South Slavic are traditionally distinguished. However, if the East Slavic languages go back to their common ancestor - the Old Russian (“Proto-Eastern Slavonic”) language, then this cannot be said about the other two groups. In their origins there were no special Proto-Western and Proto-South Slavic languages. Although the languages of each of these subgroups have a number of features, some linguists tend to consider the subgroups themselves not as genetic, but primarily as geographical units. When the West Slavic and South Slavic subgroups were formed, along with the processes of divergence of languages (as linguists say, divergence), the processes of their convergence (convergence) played an important role. |
Slavic countries are states that have existed or still exist, with most of their population of Slavs (Slavic peoples). The Slavic countries of the world are those countries in which the Slavic population is about eighty to ninety percent.
What countries are Slavic?
Slavic countries of Europe:
But still, to the question “the population of which country belongs to the Slavic group?” The answer immediately suggests itself - Russia. The population of the Slavic countries today is about three hundred million people. But there are other countries in which Slavic peoples live (these are European states, North America, Asia) and speak Slavic languages.
The countries of the Slavic group can be divided into:
- West Slavic.
- East Slavic.
- South Slavic.
The languages in these countries originated from one common language (it is called Proto-Slavic), which once existed among the ancient Slavs. It was formed in the second half of the first millennium AD. It is not surprising that most of the words are consonant (for example, Russian and Ukrainian languages are very similar). There are also similarities in grammar, sentence structure, and phonetics. This is easy to explain if we take into account the duration of contacts between the inhabitants of the Slavic states. The lion's share in the structure of the Slavic languages is occupied by Russian. Its carriers are 250 million people.
Interestingly, the flags of the Slavic countries also have some similarities in color scheme, in the presence of longitudinal stripes. Does it have something to do with their common origin? More likely yes than no.
The countries where Slavic languages are spoken are not so numerous. Nevertheless, Slavic languages still exist and flourish. And it's been hundreds of years! This only means that the Slavic people are the most powerful, steadfast, unshakable. It is important that the Slavs do not lose the originality of their culture, respect for their ancestors, honor them and keep traditions.
Today there are many organizations (both in Russia and abroad) that revive and restore Slavic culture, Slavic holidays, even names for their children!
The first Slavs appeared in the second or third millennium BC. It goes without saying that the birth of this mighty people took place in the region of modern Russia and Europe. Over time, the tribes developed new territories, but still they could not (or did not want to) go far from their ancestral home. By the way, depending on the migration, the Slavs were divided into eastern, western, southern (each branch had its own name). They had differences in lifestyle, agriculture, some traditions. But still the Slavic "core" remained intact.
The emergence of statehood, war, and mixing with other ethnic groups played a big role in the life of the Slavic peoples. The emergence of separate Slavic states, on the one hand, greatly reduced the migration of the Slavs. But, on the other hand, from that moment on, their mixing with other nationalities also fell sharply. This allowed the Slavic gene pool to firmly gain a foothold on the world stage. This affected both the appearance (which is unique) and the genotype (hereditary traits).
Slavic countries during World War II
The Second World War brought great changes to the countries of the Slavic group. For example, in 1938 the Czechoslovak Republic lost its territorial unity. The Czech Republic ceased to be independent, and Slovakia became a German colony. The following year, the Commonwealth came to an end, and in 1940 the same thing happened with Yugoslavia. Bulgaria sided with the Nazis.
But there were also positive aspects. For example, the formation of anti-fascist trends and organizations. A common misfortune rallied the Slavic countries. They fought for independence, for peace, for freedom. Especially such movements gained popularity in Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia.
The Soviet Union played a key role in World War II. The citizens of the country selflessly fought against the Hitler regime, against the cruelty of the German soldiers, against the Nazis. The country has lost a huge number of its defenders.
Some Slavic countries during the Second World War were united by the All-Slavic Committee. The latter was created by the Soviet Union.
What is Pan-Slavism?
The concept of pan-Slavism is interesting. This is a direction that appeared in the Slavic states in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It was aimed at uniting all the Slavs of the world on the basis of their national, cultural, everyday, linguistic community. Pan-Slavism promoted the independence of the Slavs, praised their originality.
The colors of Pan-Slavism were white, blue and red (the same colors appear on many national flags). The emergence of such a direction as pan-Slavism began after the Napoleonic wars. Weakened and "tired", the countries supported each other in difficult times. But over time, Pan-Slavism began to be forgotten. But now there is again a tendency to return to the origins, to the ancestors, to the Slavic culture. Perhaps this will lead to the formation of the Neo-Pan-Slavist movement.
Slavic countries today
The twenty-first century is a time of some kind of discord in the relations of the Slavic countries. This is especially true for Russia, Ukraine, EU countries. The reasons here are more political and economic. But despite the discord, many residents of countries (from the Slavic group) remember that all the descendants of the Slavs are brothers. Therefore, none of them wants wars and conflicts, but only warm family relations, as our ancestors once had.
Subgroups
A number of researchers, in addition to the languages mentioned above, distinguish now extinct languages that in the past occupied an intermediate position between South Slavic and West Slavic (Pannonian Slavic), as well as between South Slavic and East Slavic languages (Dakoslavic).
Origin
The Slavic languages within the Indo-European family are closest to the Baltic languages. The similarity between the two groups served as the basis for the theory of " Balto-Slavic proto-language", according to which the Balto-Slavic proto-language first separated from the Indo-European proto-language, later splitting into Proto-Baltic and Proto-Slavic. However, many scientists explain their special closeness by the long contact of the ancient Balts and Slavs and deny the existence of the Balto-Slavic language.
It has not been established in which territory the separation of the Slavic language continuum from the Indo-European / Balto-Slavic took place. From one of the Indo-European dialects (Proto-Slavic), the Proto-Slavic language was formed, which is the ancestor of all modern Slavic languages. The history of the Proto-Slavic language was longer than the history of individual Slavic languages. For a long time it developed as a single dialect with an identical structure. Dialect variants arose later.
The process of transition of the Proto-Slavic language into independent languages took place most actively in the 2nd half of the 1st millennium AD, during the formation of the early Slavic states on the territory of South-Eastern and Eastern Europe. During this period, the territory of Slavic settlements increased significantly. Areas of various geographical zones with different natural and climatic conditions were mastered, the Slavs entered into relationships with the inhabitants of these territories, who stood at different stages of cultural development. All this was reflected in the history of the Slavic languages.
Separation time
Gray and Atkinson
Atkinson and Gray performed a statistical analysis of cognate words in 103 living and dead Indo-European languages (out of about 150 known) using a lexico-statistical database (created from Swadesh lists by Isidore Dayen) and additional information.
And the Slavic linguistic unity, according to the results of their research, broke up 1300 years ago, that is, around the 8th century AD. The Balto-Slavic linguistic unity broke up 3400 years ago, that is, around the 15th century BC.
The methods and results of Gray and Atkinson have been heavily criticized from various quarters.
Chang, Cathcart, Hall and Garrett
Kasyan, Dybo
In September 2015, A. S. Kasyan and A. V. Dybo, as part of an interdisciplinary study on Slavic ethnogenesis, published a lexico-statistical classification of Slavic languages, built on high-quality 110-word Swadesh lists, collected according to the Global Lexicostatistical Database project standard » and processed by modern phylogenetic algorithms.
The resulting dated tree is in agreement with the traditional Slavic point of view on the structure of the Slavic group. The tree suggests the first division of the Proto-Slavic language into three branches: eastern, western and southern. The moment of collapse is dated to ca. 100 AD e., this is consistent with the opinion of archaeologists that at the beginning of the 1st millennium AD. e. the Slavic population occupied a rather vast territory and was no longer monolithic. Further, in the V-VI centuries. n. e., three Slavic branches are almost synchronously divided into more fractional taxa, which corresponds to the rapid spread of the Slavs in Eastern Europe and the Balkans in the 2nd half of the 1st millennium AD. e. (Slavicization of Europe).
The Slovene language was excluded from the analysis, since Ljubljana Koine and Literary Slovene show a mixture of South Slavic and West Slavic lexical features (presumably this may indicate the original West Slavic attribution of the Slovene language, which has been influenced by neighboring Serbo-Croatian dialects for a long time), and qualitative Swadeshevic lists for Slovene dialects were not collected at that time. Due to the lack or unreliability of lexical data, the study did not cover the so-called. Old Novgorod dialect, Polab language and some other Slavic idioms.
History of development
In the early period of the development of the Slavic proto-language, a new system of vowel sonants developed, consonantism became much simpler, the stage of reduction became widespread in ablaut, and the root ceased to obey the ancient restrictions. The Proto-Slavic language is included in the satem group (sürdce, pisati, prositi, cf. lat. cor, - cordis, pictus, precor; zürno, znati, zima, cf. lat. granum, cognosco, hiems). However, this feature was not fully realized: cf. Praslav *kamy, *kosa. *gǫsь, *gordъ, *bergъ, etc. Proto-Slavic morphology represents significant deviations from the Indo-European type. This primarily applies to the verb, to a lesser extent - to the name.
Dialects began to form in the Proto-Slavic language. There were three groups of dialects: Eastern, Western and Southern. From them, the corresponding languages were then formed. The group of East Slavic dialects was the most compact. There were 3 subgroups in the West Slavic group: Lechitic, Lusatian Serb and Czech-Slovak. The South Slavic group was dialectally the most differentiated.
The Proto-Slavic language functioned in the pre-state period in the history of the Slavs, when the tribal social system dominated. Significant changes took place during the period of early feudalism. In the XII-XIII centuries, there was a further differentiation of the Slavic languages, there was a loss of the ultra-short (reduced) vowels ъ and ь characteristic of the Proto-Slavic language. In some cases they disappeared, in others they turned into full vowels. As a result, there have been significant changes in the phonetic and morphological structure of the Slavic languages, in their lexical composition.
Phonetics
In the field of phonetics, there are some significant differences between the Slavic languages.
In most Slavic languages, the opposition of vowels in longitude / brevity is lost, at the same time in Czech and Slovak languages (excluding North Moravian and East Slovak dialects), in the literary norms of the Shtokavian group (Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin), and also partly in Slovene these differences persist. In the Lechitic languages, Polish and Kashubian, nasal vowels are preserved, which are lost in other Slavic languages (nasal vowels were also characteristic of the phonetic system of the extinct Polabian language). For a long time, nasals were retained in the Bulgarian-Macedonian and Slovenian language areas (in the peripheral dialects of the respective languages, relics of nasalization are reflected in a number of words to this day).
Slavic languages are characterized by the presence of palatalization of consonants - 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 hard (non-palatalized) or soft (palatalized). Due to a number of depalatalization processes, the opposition of consonants in terms of hardness / softness in the languages of the Czech-Slovak group is significantly limited (in Czech, the opposition t - t', d - d', n - n', in Slovak - t - t', d - d', n - n', l - l', while in the West Slovak dialect due to assimilation t', d' and their subsequent hardening, as well as hardening l', as a rule, only one pair is presented n - n', in a number of Western Slovak dialects (Povazhsky, Trnavsky, Zagorsky) paired soft consonants are completely absent). The opposition of consonants in terms of hardness / softness did not develop in the Serbo-Croatian-Slovenian and Western Bulgarian-Macedonian language areas - from the old paired soft consonants, only n' (< *nj), l' (< *lj) have not undergone hardening (primarily in the Serbo-Croatian area).
Stress in Slavic languages is realized in different ways. In most Slavic languages (except Serbo-Croatian and Slovene), the polytonic Proto-Slavic stress has been replaced by a dynamic one. The free, mobile nature of the Proto-Slavic stress was preserved in the Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian and Bulgarian languages, as well as in the Torlak dialect and the northern dialect of the Kashubian language (the extinct Polabian language also had a mobile stress). In the Central Russian dialects (and, accordingly, in the Russian literary language), in the South Russian dialect, in the North Kashubian dialects, as well as in the Belarusian and Bulgarian languages, this type of stress caused the reduction of unstressed vowels. In a number of languages, primarily in West Slavic, a fixed stress has formed, assigned to a certain syllable of a word or bar group. The penultimate syllable is stressed in the Polish literary language and most of its dialects, in the Czech North Moravian and East Slovak dialects, in the southwestern dialects of the southern Kashubian dialect, and also in the Lemko dialect. The first syllable is stressed in the Czech and Slovak literary languages and most of their dialects, in the Lusatian languages, in the South Kashubian dialect, and also in some Goral dialects of the Lesser Polish dialect. In Macedonian, the stress is also fixed - it falls no further than the third syllable from the end of the word (accent group). In the Slovenian and Serbo-Croatian languages, the stress is polytonic, multi-local, the tonic characteristics and the distribution of stress in word forms are different in dialects. In the Central Kashubian dialect, the stress is different, but is assigned to a certain morpheme.
Writing
Slavic languages received their first literary processing in the 60s. ninth century. The creators of Slavic writing were the brothers Cyril (Konstantin the Philosopher) and Methodius. They translated liturgical texts from Greek into Slavonic for the needs of Great Moravia. At its core, the new literary language had a South Macedonian (Thessalonica) dialect, but in Great Moravia it adopted many local linguistic features. It was later developed further in Bulgaria. The richest original and translated literature in Moravia, Pannonia, Bulgaria, Russia, and Serbia was created in this language (usually called Old Church Slavonic). There were two Slavic alphabets: Glagolitic and Cyrillic. From IX century. Slavic texts have not been preserved. The most ancient date back to the 10th century: the Dobrudzhan inscription of 943, the inscription of Tsar Samuil of 993, the Varosh inscription of 996 and others. Starting from c. more Slavic monuments have been preserved.
Similarities and differences of Slavic languages
Due to historical reasons, the Slavic languages managed to maintain significant similarities with respect to each other. At the same time, almost each of them has a number of unique features.
| Eastern group | Western group | Southern group | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Russian | Ukrainian | Belorussian | Polish | Slovak | Czech | Serbo-Croatian | Bulgarian | Macedonian | Slovenian | |
| Number of carriers | 250 | 45 | 6,4 | 40 | 5,2 | 9,5 | 21 | 8,5 | 2 | 2,2 |
| Nearest | Belorussian | Ukrainian | Kashubian | Czech | Slovak | Serbo-Croatian | Macedonian | Bulgarian | Slovenian | |
| Writing | Cyrillic | Cyrillic | Cyrillic | Latin | Latin | Latin | Cyrillic / Latin | Cyrillic | Cyrillic | Latin |
| Differences from others Slavic languages |
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| Accent type | free dynamic |
free dynamic |
free dynamic |
fixed on penultimate |
fixed- noe on the lane |
fixed- noe on the lane |
free musical |
free dynamic |
fixed- third layer ha from the end of the word) |
free musical |
| Morphology: vocative form (case) |
No | there is | there is | there is | No | there is | there is | there is | there is | No |
Literary languages
In the era of feudalism, Slavic literary languages, as a rule, did not have strict norms. Sometimes the functions of the literary were performed by foreign languages (in Russia - the Old Slavonic language, in the Czech Republic and Poland - the Latin language).
The Russian literary language has gone through a centuries-old and complex evolution. He absorbed folk elements and elements of the Old Slavonic language, was influenced by many European languages.
Czech Republic in the 18th century literary language, which reached in the XIV-XVI centuries. great perfection, almost disappeared. The German language dominated in the cities. During the period of national revival in the Czech Republic, the language of the 16th century was artificially revived, which at that time was already far from the national language. History of the Czech literary language of the 19th - centuries. reflects the interaction of the old book language and colloquial. The Slovak literary language had a different history, it developed on the basis of the vernacular. in Serbia until the 19th century. Church Slavonic dominated. In the XVIII century. began the process of rapprochement of this language with the people. As a result of the reform carried out
Slavic languages are related languages of the Indo-European family. More than 400 million people speak Slavic languages.
Slavic languages are distinguished by the closeness of word structure, the use of grammatical categories, sentence structure, semantics (semantic meaning), phonetics, and morphonological alternations. This proximity is explained by the unity of the origin of the Slavic languages and their contacts with each other.
According to the degree of proximity to each other, the Slavic languages are divided into 3 groups: East Slavic, South Slavic and West Slavic.
Each Slavic language has its own literary language (a processed part of the common language with written norms; the language of all manifestations of culture) and its own territorial dialects, which are not the same within each Slavic language.
Origin and history of the Slavic languages
The Slavic languages are closest to the Baltic languages. Both are part of the Indo-European family of languages. From the Indo-European parent language, the Balto-Slavic parent language first emerged, which later split into Proto-Baltic and Proto-Slavic. But not all scientists agree with this. They explain the special closeness of these proto-languages by the long contact of the ancient Balts and Slavs, and deny the existence of the Balto-Slavic language.
But it is clear that from one of the Indo-European dialects (Proto-Slavic) the Proto-Slavic language was formed, which is the ancestor of all modern Slavic languages.
The history of the Proto-Slavic language was long. For a long time, the Proto-Slavic language developed as a single dialect. Dialect variants arose later.
In the second half of the 1st millennium AD. e. the early Slavic states began to form on the territory of South-Eastern and Eastern Europe. Then the process of division of the Proto-Slavic language into independent Slavic languages began.
The Slavic languages have retained significant similarities with each other, but at the same time, each of them has unique features.
Eastern group of Slavic languages
Russian (250 million people)
Ukrainian (45 million people)
Belarusian (6.4 million people).
The writing of all East Slavic languages is based on the Cyrillic alphabet.
Differences between East Slavic languages and other Slavic languages:
reduction of vowels (akanye);
the presence of Church Slavonicisms in the vocabulary;
free dynamic stress.
Western group of Slavic languages
Polish (40 million people)
Slovak (5.2 million people)
Czech (9.5 million people)
The writing of all West Slavic languages is based on the Latin alphabet.
Differences between West Slavic languages and other Slavic languages:
In Polish, the presence of nasal vowels and two rows of hissing consonants; fixed stress on the penultimate syllable. In Czech, fixed stress on the first syllable; the presence of long and short vowels. Slovak has the same features as Czech.
Southern group of Slavic languages
Serbo-Croatian (21 million people)
Bulgarian (8.5 million people)
Macedonian (2 million people)
Slovenian (2.2 million people)
Writing: Bulgarian and Macedonian - Cyrillic, Serbo-Croatian - Cyrillic / Latin, Slovenian - Latin.
Differences of South Slavic languages from other Slavic languages:
Serbo-Croatian has free musical stress. In the Bulgarian language - the absence of cases, the variety of verb forms and the absence of the infinitive (indefinite form of the verb), free dynamic stress. Macedonian language - the same as in Bulgarian + fixed stress (no further than the third syllable from the end of the word). The Slovenian language has many dialects, the presence of a dual number, free musical stress.
Writing of Slavic languages
The creators of Slavic writing were the brothers Cyril (Konstantin the Philosopher) and Methodius. They translated liturgical texts from Greek into Slavonic for the needs of Great Moravia.
Prayer in Old Church Slavonic
Great Moravia is a Slavic state that existed in 822-907. on the Middle Danube. In its best period, it included the territories of modern Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Lesser Poland, part of Ukraine and the historical region of Silesia.
Great Moravia had a great influence on the cultural development of the entire Slavic world.
Great Moravia
The new literary language was based on the South Macedonian dialect, but in Great Moravia it adopted many local linguistic features. Later it was further developed in Bulgaria. A rich original and translated literature was created in this language (Old Church Slavonic) in Moravia, Bulgaria, Russia, and Serbia. There were two Slavic alphabets: Glagolitic and Cyrillic.
The most ancient Old Slavonic texts date back to the 10th century. Starting from the XI century. more Slavic monuments have been preserved.
Modern Slavic languages use alphabets based on Cyrillic and Latin. The Glagolitic alphabet is used in Catholic worship in Montenegro and in several coastal areas in Croatia. In Bosnia, for some time, the Arabic alphabet was also used in parallel with the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets (in 1463, Bosnia completely lost its independence and became part of the Ottoman Empire as an administrative unit).
Slavic literary languages
Slavic literary languages did not always have strict norms. Sometimes the literary language in the Slavic countries was a foreign language (in Russia - Old Church Slavonic, in the Czech Republic and Poland - Latin).
The Russian literary language had a complex evolution. It absorbed folk elements, elements of the Old Slavonic language, and was influenced by many European languages.
Czech Republic in the 18th century dominated by the German language. During the period of national revival in the Czech Republic, the language of the 16th century was artificially revived, which at that time was already far from the national language.
The Slovak literary language developed on the basis of the vernacular. in Serbia until the 19th century. dominated by the Church Slavonic language. In the XVIII century. began the process of rapprochement of this language with the people. As a result of the reform carried out by Vuk Karadzic in the middle of the 19th century, a new literary language was created.
The Macedonian literary language was finally formed only in the middle of the 20th century.
But there are a number of small Slavic literary languages (microlanguages) that function along with the national literary languages in small ethnic groups. These are, for example, the Polissian microlanguage, the Podlachian in Belarus; Rusyn - in Ukraine; vichsky - in Poland; Banat-Bulgarian microlanguage - in Bulgaria, etc.
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 have seen 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 Aleksandrovich 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" and 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), in 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 among themselves, 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” (Do 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.
