The language group to which the ancestors of the Slavs belong. Why Russians don't understand Slavic languages

Non-Slavic Russia

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

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

The rest of the lands are Finnish, where no Slavs have ever lived: Chud, Murom, Mordovians, Perm, Vyatichi and others.

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

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

In the rare towns-fortresses founded by the encouraged Rusyns and Normans: Danes and Swedes, a handful of colonial rulers with a retinue lived - the network of these fortresses-colonies was called "Rus".

And 90-95% of the population of the region were non-Slavic natives who were subordinate to these more civilized invaders.

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

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

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

“The term “Slavs” has nothing to do with the term “Slovenes”, as it comes from the original “Sklaven”.

The second after the Ladoga Saami, the northern Finnish peoples began to adopt the Slavic koine - the Muroma, the whole or the Vepsians, Chud, but the process took them much longer, and for the more southern Finns of Mordovian Moscow and its surroundings, the adoption of the Slavic koine dragged on until the time of Peter the Great, and some - where their original native languages \u200b\u200bare preserved - like the language of the Erzya of Ryazan or the Finnish dialect of the Vyatichi.

The characteristic "okany" of the population Central Russia today it is mistakenly considered "Old Slavonic", although it is a purely Finnish dialect, which just reflects the incompleteness of the Slavicization of the region.

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

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

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

The book by Athanasius Nikitin, late 15th century, "On the journey beyond the three seas" is indicative.

“In the name of Allah the Gracious and Merciful and Jesus the Spirit of God. Allah is great…”

In the original:

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

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

Several languages existed simultaneously in medieval Muscovy.

Near-Slavic Koine - as the language of the princely nobility.

The vernacular languages of the natives are Finnish.

Turkic languages as religious during the period of stay in the Horde and after the seizure of power by Ivan the Terrible in the Horde until 1589.

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

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

Today, Russian linguists basically reduce the origins of the modern Russian language to only two components: it is the national language of Russia, by no means Slavic, but Slavic-Finnish Koine with a large Turkic and Mongolian influence - and Bulgarian Old Bulgarian, also known as "Church Slavonic".

As the third language of Russia, one can name the modern literary Russian language, which is a completely artificial armchair invention, a kind of “Esperanto” based on the two source languages mentioned above; I am writing this article in this Esperanto.

Is Russia a Slavic language?

There are three points that all Russian linguists are hard at work hiding, although, as people say, you cannot hide an awl in a bag.

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

Until that time, only the Ukrainian language was called the Russian language.

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

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

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

And the language reforms of the Russian language, begun by Lomonosov, were just aimed at emphasizing its weak Slavic features.

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

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

Peter not only began to forcibly shave beards, forbade the wearing of Asian-style veils by all women of Muscovy and forbade harems, towers where women were kept locked up, but on trips around Europe he sought from cartographers so that from now on on the maps his country was called not Muscovy or Muscovite, as before, but Russia.

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

Prior to this, Polish and Czech linguists and the creators of Slavic grammars clearly distinguished between the Russian language - Ukrainian and Muscovite, and this Muscovite language itself was not included in the family of Slavic languages.

For the language of Muscovy was poor in Slavic vocabulary.

As the Russian linguist I.S. Ulukhanov at work Colloquial speech Ancient Russia”, “Russian speech”, No. 5, 1972, the circle of Slavicisms, regularly repeated in the living speech of the people of Muscovy, expanded very slowly.

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

In the "Paris Dictionary of Muscovites" (1586) among TOTAL DICTIONARY we find the people of Muscovites, as I.S. Ulukhanov, only the words "lord" and "gold".

In the diary-dictionary of the Englishman Richard James 1618-1619 there are already more of them - TOTAL 16 WORDS : “good”, “bless”, “scold”, “Sunday”, “resurrect”, “enemy”, “time”, “boat”, “weakness”, “cave”, “help”, “holiday”, “ prapor”, “decomposition”, “sweet”, “temple”.

In the book "Grammar of the language of the Muscovites" by the German scientist and traveler V. Ludolph dated 1696 SLAVIC WORDS 41!

Moreover, some with a huge Finnish “okan” in prefixes - such as “discuss”.

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

The linguists of that era had no reason to attribute the language of the Muscovites to the "Slavic languages", since there were no Slavic words themselves in oral speech, and it is the oral speech of the people that is the criterion here.

That is why the spoken language of Muscovy was not considered either Slavic or even near-Russian: the peasants of Muscovy spoke their Finnish dialects.

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

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

And the fact that the Moscow Church broadcast in Bulgarian, in which the state papers of Muscovy were written, did not mean anything, since all of Europe then spoke Latin in churches and conducted office work in Latin, and this was in no way connected with the fact what kind of peoples live here.

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

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

In the same way, the Russian language was not then the national language in Muscovy-Russia - until the Russian villages learned it.

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

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

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

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

I.S. Ulukhanov writes that speaking about the existence of two languages among the Muscovites - Slavic or ecclesiastical Bulgarian and his own Muscovite, V. Ludolph reported in the "Grammar of the language of the Muscovites":

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

Marvelous!

What kind of “Slavic language” of Moscow is this, which is ridiculed for using Slavic words instead of their Finnish and Turkic words?

This was not the case in Belarus-ON - here no one laughs at people who use Slavic words in their speech.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He wrote: “The terrible difference between our language, everywhere in his work he calls it the “Moscow dialect”, and Slavonic often stops our ways of expressing ourselves in it with that liberty that alone enlivens eloquence and which is acquired by nothing more than daily conversation. ... As a skilled gardener renews an old tree with a young graft, cleansing the vines and thorns that have dried on it, growing at its roots, so the great writers acted in the transformation of our language, which in itself was poor, and forged to Slavic has already become ugly.

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

The justification here is the fact that Pushkin has not yet been born for the young green language, created just by Lomonosov's experiments.

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

This is a purely Russian unique problem - how to combine the Finnish language of the villagers with the Slavic language of the state, for example, in Belarus it is ridiculous: to argue about the possible "dominance of Slavicisms in written speech", meaning, as in Russia, the dominance of the Bulgarian vocabulary, when the Belarusian vocabulary itself is such but completely Slavic vocabulary and the same Slavicisms - that is, there is no very subject for such a dispute, because the Slavicisms of the Bulgarian language can in no way “spoil” an already based only on Slavicisms Belarusian language- Oil will not spoil the oil.

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

And they reject the Bulgarian language, boldly falling into the bosom of the folk language of the "Moscow dialect", which consists of 60-70% of non-Slavic vocabulary.

The great figures who make this linguistic revolution in Russia, F.G. Karin in his work calls Feofan Prokopovich, M.V. Lomonosov and A.P. Sumarokov.

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

Alphabet

A common misconception: in Russia, everyone thinks that they write in Cyrillic, although no one in Russia writes in it.

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

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

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

It tries to do this even today: not so long ago, the Duma forbade Karelia and Tatarstan to return to the Latin alphabet, calling it “separatist machinations,” although it is the Latin alphabet that more successfully reflects the linguistic realities of the Finns and Tatars.

In general, this looks like complete absurdity: it turns out that Cyril and Methodius did not create writing for the Bulgarians and Czechs at all so that they could read Byzantine bibles, but for Tatars who profess Islam.

But why do Muslims need the Orthodox alphabet?

The second misconception is that the Cyrillic alphabet is considered the "Slavic alphabet".

It's actually just a slightly modified Greek alphabet, and the Greeks are not Slavs.

Yes, more than half Slavic peoples write in Latin, not Cyrillic.

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

It is simply absurd to refer to religious Orthodox traditions here, because in the Middle Ages the whole of Catholic Europe used Latin in religion - is this the basis for all these countries to abandon their national languages and return to Latin?

Of course not.

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

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

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

Send your good work in the knowledge base is simple. Use the form below

Students, graduate students, young scientists who use the knowledge base in their studies and work will be very grateful to you.

Posted on http://www.allbest.ru/

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION

Federal State Autonomous Educational Institution of Higher Education

«CRIMEAN FEDERAL UNIVERSITY NAMED AFTER V.I. Vernadsky" (FGAOU VO "KFU named after V.I. Vernadsky")

TAVRICHESKA ACADEMY

Faculty of Slavic Philology and Journalism

on the topic: Modern Slavic languages

discipline: "Introduction to Slavic Philology"

Completed by: Bobrova Marina Sergeevna

Scientific adviser: Malyarchuk-Proshina Ulyana Olegovna

Simferopol - 2015

Introduction

1. Modern Slavic languages. General information

1.1 West Slavic group

1.2 South Slavic group

1.3 East Slavic group

2. West Slavic group of languages

2.1 Polish language

2.2 Czech language

2.3 Slovak language

2.4 Serbolussian language

2.5 Polab language

3. South Slavic group of languages

3.1 Serbo-Croatian

3.2 Slovenian language

3.3 Bulgarian language

3.4 Macedonian language

4. East Slavic group of languages0

4.1 Russian language

4.2 Ukrainian language

4.3 Belarusian language

Conclusion

Literature

Introduction

Slaviclanguageand- a group of related languages of the Indo-European family (see. Indo-European languages). Distributed throughout Europe and Asia. The total number of speakers is over 290 million people. They differ in a high degree of closeness to each other, which is found in the root word, affixes, word structure, the use of grammatical categories, sentence structure, semantics, the system of regular sound correspondences, and morphonological alternations. This proximity is explained both by the unity of the origin of the Slavic languages, and by their long and intensive contacts at the level of literary languages and dialects. There are, however, differences of a material, functional, and typological nature, due to the long-term independent development of Slavic tribes and nationalities in different ethnic, geographical, historical and cultural conditions, their contacts with kindred and unrelated ethnic groups.

According to the degree of their proximity to each other, Slavic languages are usually divided into 3 groups: East Slavic (Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian), South Slavic (Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbo-Croatian and Slovenian) and West Slavic (Czech, Slovak, Polish with a Kashubian dialect that has retained a certain genetic independence , Upper and Lower Lusatian). There are also small local groups of Slavs with their own literary languages. Not all Slavic languages have come down to us. At the end of the 17th - beginning of the 18th centuries. the Polish language disappeared. The distribution of Slavic languages within each group has its own characteristics (see East Slavic languages, West Slavic languages, South Slavic languages). Each Slavic language includes a literary language with all its stylistic, genre and other varieties and its own territorial dialects.

1 . Modern Slavic languages. Ogeneral information

1. 1 West Slavic group

The West Slavic group includes Polish, Kashubian, Czech, Slovak and Serbo-Lusatian languages (upper and lower). Polish is spoken by about 35 million people living in Poland, and about 2 million Poles abroad (including about 100 thousand in Czechoslovakia - in Teszyn Silesia and Orava). Kashubians live in Poland on the coast of the Vistula, mainly in the Sea and Kartuz regions. Their number reaches 200 thousand. On the territory of Czechoslovakia, closely related Czech and Slovak languages are represented: In the western regions, about 10 million. people use Czech, in the east, about 5 million speak Slovak. About 1 million people live outside of Czechoslovakia. Czechs and Slovaks.

The Serboluzhitsky language is spoken in the territory of western Germany along the upper reaches of the river. Spree. The Upper Lusatians are part of the state of Saxony; the Lower Lusatians live in Brandenburg. Lusatians are a national minority of the former GDR; before the Second World War there were about 180 thousand; Currently, their number is estimated at 150 thousand people.

Thus, about 50 million people use West Slavic languages, which is approximately 17% of the total number of Slavs and about 10% of the total population of Europe.

On the territory of eastern Germany, the West Slavic languages underwent German assimilation in the 12th-16th centuries and disappeared. The data of modern toponymy testify to the ancient Slavic population of Brandenburg, Mecklenburg, Saxony and some other areas. Back in the 18th century Slavic speech was preserved on the Elbe, in the Lyukhovsky district on the river. Etse. The language of the Polabian Slavs is being restored on the basis of individual words and local names found in Latin and German documents, small recordings of living speech made in the 17th-18th centuries, and small dictionaries of that time. In Slavic studies, it is called the "polabian language".

1.2 South Slavic group

The South Slavic group includes Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian, Bulgarian and Macedonian. They are distributed throughout most of the Balkan Peninsula. The southern Slavs are separated from the Eastern Slavs by the territory of Romania, from the Western Slavs by Hungary and Austria.

Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian and Macedonian languages are represented on the territory of Yugoslavia. The Slovenian language is spoken by about 1.5 million Slovenians living in Slovenia. 500 thousand Slovenes live outside of Yugoslavia. The Kajkavian dialect is a transitional language from Slovene to Serbo-Croatian.

Over 18 million people speak Serbo-Croatian, uniting Serbs and Croats, as well as Montenegrins and Bosniaks. They use a single literary Serbo-Croatian language. Serbo-Croatian is separated from Bulgarian by a wide belt of transitional and mixed dialects stretching from the mouth of the river. Timok through Pirot Vrane, up to Prizren.

Macedonian is spoken by people south of Skopje in Yugoslavia, Greece and Bulgaria. In the west, the territory of distribution of this language is limited by the Ohrid and Presnyansky lakes, in the east by the river. Struma. The total number of Macedonians is difficult to establish, but it hardly exceeds 1.5 million in total. The Macedonian language received literary processing only after the Second World War.

Bulgarian is spoken by about 9 million people living in Bulgaria. In addition to the Macedonians living in Greece, it should be noted that a hundred outside Bulgaria and Yugoslavia live: Slovenes in Trieste, Italy, Austria, Serbs and Croats (about 120 thousand) in Hungary and Romania, Bulgarians in Moldova and Ukraine. The total number of southern Slavs is about 31 million people.

1.3 East Slavic group

East Slavic languages are used as the main languages throughout the East European Plain north of the Black and Caspian Seas and the Caucasus Range, east of the Prut and Dniester rivers. Especially widespread was the Russian language, which is a means of interethnic communication for many Slavs (over 60 million).

2. West Slavic group of languages

2.1 Polish language

Poles use Latin script. To convey some sounds, diacritical marks are used for Latin letters and combinations of letters.

There are eight vowels in the literary language. Nasal vowels are not always pronounced the same, in some positions the nasal overtone is lost.

The territory of distribution of the Polish language is divided into five dialect groups: Greater Poland, Lesser Poland, Silesian, Mazovian and Kashubian. The most extensive territories are occupied by dialects of Greater Poland, Lesser Poland and Mavsoshya.

The division into dialects is based on two features of Polish phonetics: 1) mazurenia, 2) features of interword phonetics. Masuria dominates in Mavsosh, Lesser Poland and the northern part of Selesia.

The most significant features characterize the Kashubian dialect, which is distributed west of the lower Vistula. The number of speakers of this dialect reaches 200 thousand people. Some scientists believe that the Kashubian dialect should be regarded as an independent language and attributed to the West Slavic subgroup.

Dialect features:

1. Different from the Polish place of stress. In the southern part of the Kashubian region, the stress falls on the initial syllable; in the north, the stress is free and ubiquitous.

2. Pronunciation of solid s, dz.

3. Pronunciation of vowels i (y), and how ё.

4. The presence of a soft consonant before the group - ar-.

5. Loss of nasality after soft consonants and before all consonants except d, n, s, z, r, t.

6. Partial preservation of vowel differences in longitude and brevity.

2.2 Czech

The Czech script uses the Latin alphabet. For the transmission of Czech sounds, some changes and innovations have been made, based on the use of superscripts.

Czech spelling is dominated by the morphological principle, but there are a number of historical spellings.

The area of distribution of the Czech language is characterized by dialect diversity. The most important dialect groups are: Czech (Czech Republic and Western Moravia), Middle Moravian and Lyashskaya (Silesia and northeastern Moravia). This classification is based mainly on differences in the pronunciation of long vowels. Within the noted dialect groups, smaller dialect units are distinguished (in the Czech group, there are: Central Bohemian, North Bohemian, West Bohemian and North-East Czech dialects; dialect diversity is especially great in Moravia). It should be noted that many dialects of eastern Moravia are close to the Slovak language.

2 . 3 Slovak language

Distributed in the eastern regions of Czechoslovakia. It is closest to the Czech language, with which it has a common grammatical structure and a significant part of the main vocabulary (the names of natural phenomena, animals, plants, parts of the year and day, many household items, etc.) are identical.

The Slovak language consists of three dialects: Western Slovak, many of whose features are close to the neighboring Moravian dialects of the Czech language, Middle Slovak - the dialect basis of the modern literary language, East Slovak, some dialects of which testify to Polish or Ukrainian influence.

2. 4 Serbolussianto

The Lusatian Serbs are the descendants of the Western Slavs, who in the past occupied the territories between the Odra and the Elbe and were subjected to Germanization. They speak quite sharply different dialects from each other: Upper Lusatian and Lower Lusatian, in connection with which there are corresponding two literary languages. In addition, the presence of the Eastern Lusatian (muzhakovsky) dialect should be noted.

Writing in both Lusatian languages arose in the 16th century.

Lusatian graphics are Latin.

2.5 Polab language

From the language of the tribes that once occupied the territory between the Oder and the Elbe, only information about the language of the Drevlyane tribe, who lived on the left bank of the Elbe in the vicinity of Lüneburg (Hannovrer), has survived. The last speakers of the Polabian language died out at the end of the 18th century, and our information about it is based on records and dictionaries of that language made by German folk art lovers.

The entire region of the Polabian Slavs is usually divided into Velet, Obodrite and Drevlyan dialect groups, but there is no exact information about the first two.

3 . South Slavic group of languages

3.1 Serbo-Croatian

Serbo-Croatian is used by three nations - Serbs, Croats and Montenegrins, as well as Bosnians, residents of Bosnia and Herzegovina. At present, the differences between the Serbian and Croatian versions of the literary language are only in vocabulary and pronunciation. The graphic form of these variants differs; Serbs use the Cyrillic alphabet, which is derived from the Russian civil alphabet, while Croats use the Latin alphabet. Serbo-Croatian is characterized by considerable dialectal diversity. It is customary to distinguish three major dialects: Shtokavian, Chakavian and Kajkavian. These names were obtained by them from the relatively insignificant feature of the interrogative pronoun that The Shtokavian dialect occupies most of the territory of the Serbo-Croatian language. The Chakavian dialect currently occupies a relatively small territory of the Serbo-Croatian language: the coast of Dalmatia, the western part of Croatia, part of Istria and the coastal islands of Krk, Rab, Brac, Korcula and others. located in this region).

3.2 Slovenian language

The Slovenian literary language uses the Croatian script.

The territory of the Slovene language is distinguished by its extreme dialectal diversity. This is due to the fragmentation of the people and partly the nature of the relief. There are up to six dialect groups: 1) Khorutan (extreme northwest); 2) seaside (western Slovenia); 3) Vehnekrainskaya (to the northwest of Ljubljana in the valley of the Sava river); 4) Lower Krainsk (southeast of Ljubljana); 5) Styrian (in the northeast between Drava and Sava); 6) Pannonian (extreme northeast) with Zamursky (beyond the Mura River) dialect, which has a long literary tradition.

3. 3 Bulgarian language

Bulgarians use the Cyrillic alphabet, which goes back to the Russian civil alphabet. Bulgarian differs from the Russian alphabet in the absence of letters s and uh.

A characteristic feature that makes it possible to group the Bulgarian dialects is the pronunciation of the replacements of the old ? . All-Bulgarian dialects in this regard are divided into Western and Eastern. The border that separates these two dialects goes from the mouth of the river. Vit through Pleven, Tatar-Pasardzhik, Melnik to Thessalonica. There are also northeastern dialects.

3. 4 Macedonian language

The youngest and Slavic literary languages. Its development began in 1943, when, in the course of the liberation struggle against Hitlerism, a decision was made to turn Yugoslavia into a federal state on the basis of the national equality of all its peoples, including the Macedonians. The basis of the new literary language was the central dialects (Bitol, Prilep, Veles, Kichevo), where the influence of the Serbian and Bulgarian languages was relatively weaker. In 1945, a single orthography was adopted, which was brought closer to the graphics in 1946. The first school grammar was published.

In addition to the central one, there are also northern and southern dialects. Northern dialect extending north from Skopje and Kumanov, and also occupying the Dolni Polog, characterized by features close to the Serbian language. The southern dialect is diverse.

4. East Slavic group of languages

4.1 Russian language

Russians use graphics dating back to the Cyrillic alphabet. By order of Peter I (1672-1725), the Slayan alphabet was replaced by the so-called "civilian" one. The letters were given a more rounded and simple shape, convenient for both writing and printing; a number of unnecessary letters were excluded. The civil alphabet, with some changes, is used by all Slavic peoples who do not use the Latin alphabet. The leading principle of Russian spelling is morphological, although we often find elements of phonetic and traditional spelling.

The Russian language is divided into two main dialects - North Great Russian and South Great Russian, between which Middle Great Russian dialects stretch in a narrow strip from the gray-west to the south-east, forming a passage between the two dialects. Transitional dialects for the most part have a northern basis, on which later (after the 16th century) southern Russian features were layered.

The Northern Great Russian dialect is characterized by three main features that are common to all its dialects: okanie, distinction of vowels a and about not only under stress, but also in unstressed positions, with the presence G explosive and - t(solid) at the end of the 3rd person of the present tense of verbs. There are also clatters and clatters (no distinction c and h).

The South Great Russian dialect is characterized by akany, the presence of fricative g and -t "(soft) in the 3rd person of verbs. Yakan is characteristic.

4.2 Ukrainian language

Ukrainian graphics are basically the same as in Russian. The peculiarity of e is, first of all, the absence of letters e, b, s, e. For transmission yo in Ukrainian the combination is used yo and yo. In the meaning of separating solid b an apostrophe is used.

The territory of the Ukrainian language is divided into three dialects: northern (to the north of the line Sudzha - Sumy - Kanev - White church- Zhytormir - Vladimir-Volynsky), southwestern and southeastern (the border between them goes from Skvira through Uman, Ananiev to the lower reaches of the Dniester). The southeastern dialect formed the basis of the Ukrainian literary language. Its features basically coincide with the system of the literary language.

4.3 Belarusian language

The Belarusian alphabet differs from the Russian one in the following features: the vowel th always denoted by the letter i; letter b is absent and the separating value is conveyed by an apostrophe; an accent is used to convey a non-syllable y; missing letter sch, since there is no such sound in Belarusian, but there is a combination shh. The Belarusian spelling is based on the phonetic principle.

The territory of the Belarusian language is divided into two dialects: southwestern and northeastern. The approximate border between them goes along the Vilnos-Minsk-Rogachev-Gomel line. The principle of division is the character of akanya and some other phonetic features. The southwestern dialect is characterized primarily by non-dissimilative yak and yak. It should be noted that on the border with the Ukrainian language there is a wide band of transitional Ukrainian-Belarusian dialects.

Slavic language phonetic morphological

Conclusion

emergence Slavic writing in the second half of the ninth century. (863) was of great importance for the development of Slavic culture. A very perfect graphic system was created for one of the types of Slavic speech, work began on translating some parts of the Bible and creating other liturgical texts. Old Church Slavonic became the common language due to Western influence and the conversion to Catholicism. Therefore, the further use of the Old Church Slavonic language is associated primarily with the Slavic south and east. The use of Old Church Slavonic as a literary language led to the fact that this language was primarily subjected to grammatical processing.

The Proto-Slavic language has experienced a long history. It was during the period of the existence of the Proto-Slavic language that all the main characteristic features of the Slavic languages were formed. Among these phenomena, the main phonetic and morphological changes should be noted.

Literature

1. Kondrashov N.A. Slavic languages: Proc. Manual for students of philol. special, ped, in-comrade. - 3rd edition, remastered. and additional - M.: Enlightenment, 1986.

2. Linguistic Encyclopedic Dictionary, edited by V.N. Yartseva

3. Kuznetsov P. S. Essays on the morphology of the Proto-Slavic language. M., 1961.

4. Nachtigal R. Slavic languages. M., 1963

5. Meie A. Common Slavic language, trans. from French, Moscow, 1951.

6. Trubachev O.N. Ethnogenesis and culture ancient Slavs: linguistic research. M., 1991.

Hosted on Allbest.ru

...

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 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 moment. 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.

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

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

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

East Slavic
South Slavic
West Slavic.

The distribution of Slavic languages within each group has its own characteristics. Each Slavic language includes in its composition the literary language with all its internal varieties and its own territorial dialects. Dialect fragmentation and stylistic structure within each Slavic language is not the same.

Branches of Slavic languages:

East Slavic branch
- Belarusian (ISO 639-1: be; ISO 639-3: Bel)
- Old Russian † (ISO 639-1: - ; ISO 639-3: orv)
  - Old Novgorod dialect † (ISO 639-1: — ; ISO 639-3: —)
  - West Russian † (ISO 639-1: — ;ISO 639-3: —)
- Russian (ISO 639-1: en; ISO 639-3: rus)
- Ukrainian (ISO 639-1: UK; ISO 639-3: ukr)
  - Rusyn (ISO 639-1: - ; ISO 639-3: rue)

West Slavic branch
- Lechitic subgroup
  - Pomeranian (Pomeranian) languages
    - Kashubian (ISO 639-1: - ; ISO 639-3: csb)
      - Slovenian† (ISO 639-1: - ; ISO 639-3: -)
  - Polabian † (ISO 639-1: — ; ISO 639-3: pox)
  - Polish (ISO 639-1: pl; ISO 639-3: pol)
    - Silesian (ISO 639-1: - ; ISO 639-3: szl)
- Lusatian subgroup
  - Upper Lusatian (ISO 639-1: - ; ISO 639-3: hsb)
  - Lower Sorbian(ISO 639-1: - ; ISO 639-3: dsb)
- Czech-Slovak subgroup
  - Slovak (ISO 639-1: sk; ISO 639-3: slk)
  - Czech (ISO 639-1: cs; ISO 639-3: ces)
    - knaanite † (ISO 639-1: — ; ISO 639-3: czk)

South Slavic branch
- Eastern group
  - Bulgarian (ISO 639-1: bg; ISO 639-3: bul)
  - Macedonian (ISO 639-1: mk; ISO 639-3: mkd)
  - Old Church Slavonic † (ISO 639-1: cu; ISO 639-3: chu)
  - Church Slavonic (ISO 639-1: cu; ISO 639-3: chu)
- Western group
  - Serbo-Croatian group/Serbo-Croatian language (ISO 639-1: - ; ISO 639-3: hbs):
    - Bosnian (ISO 639-1: bs; ISO 639-3: boss)
    - Serbian (ISO 639-1: sr; ISO 639-3: srp)
      - Slavic Serbian † (ISO 639-1: — ;ISO 639-3: —)
    - Croatian (ISO 639-1: hr; ISO 639-3: hrv)
      - Kajkavian (ISO 639-3: kjv)
    - Montenegrin (ISO 639-1: — ;ISO 639-3: —)
  - Slovenian (ISO 639-1: sl; ISO 639-3: slv)

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 along with the 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.

Classification methods for Slavic languages

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

Classification by J. Dobrovsky.

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

A (Eastern): Russian, Church Slavonic (Slavica vetus), "Illyrian", or Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian, or "Vindian" ("in Krajina, Styria and Carinthia");
B (Western): Slovak, Czech, “Vendian Upper Sorbian” (= Upper Sorbian) and “Vendian Lower Sorbian” (= Lower Sorbian), Polish.

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

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

Views on classification after J. Dobrovsky.

Soon after Dobrovsky, the largest Slavist of the 19th century took up the classification of Slavic languages. P. Y. SHAFARIK. In the book "History of Slavic languages and literatures" (1826) and especially in the famous "Slavic antiquities" (1837) and "Slavic ethnography" (1842), he, following Dobrovsky, presented a two-component classification of "Slavic dialects":

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

Of the 10 signs of Dobrovsky, Shafarik used only two phonetic ones - No. 3 and No. 4, he considered the rest to be insignificant. On the other hand, he added such a sign: dropout [ d] and [t] before [ n] in the southeast and preservation - in western typeϖ ν?τι - vadnouti ‘wither’. It is significant that A. Schleicher, the creator of the “family tree” hypothesis, applied it to the Slavic languages as well. Thus, outlining the development of the northeastern branch of the Indo-European languages (1865), he proposed the following scheme for the differentiation of the Slavic languages:

Here the western group is opposed to the combined southern and eastern. There are no Slovak, Kashubian, Belarusian languages, but Ukrainian is reflected along with Great Russian. Two-component classifications suffered from large generalizations, the omission of certain languages, and, in addition, were based on a minimum number of linguistic distinguishing features. Here is a summary table of the most important two-component classifications of the Slavic languages of the 19th century to see how far the three-component classification that replaced them has gone:

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

The three-component classification model and its shortcomings.

The two-component classification is being replaced by a three-component one. Doubts about the two-component classification proposed by J. Dobrovsky were expressed by A. Kh. Vostokov, pointing out that the Russian language, in a number of its characteristics, occupies an independent position between the southern and western languages. It can be said that the idea of a three-component division of the Slavic languages goes back to Vostokov, which was later supported by M. A. Maksimovich (works of 1836, 1838, 1845), N. Nadezhdin (1836), the Czech F. Palatsky (1836) and others. Maksimovich developed Vostokov's idea, highlighting the western, southern (or transdanubian) and eastern branches. Palacki, emphasizing the geographical principle, divided the Slavic languages into southwestern (= South Slavic), northwestern (= West Slavic) and East Slavic. This classificatory model was reinforced throughout much of the 19th century. In its approval, a special role was played by I. I. Sreznevsky (1843).

Based on historical and ethnographic (common historical destinies of certain groups of Slavic peoples, common material and spiritual culture, etc.) and linguistic criteria, he proposed to distribute the Slavic "dialects" as follows:

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

Classification by I. I. Sreznevsky used up to the present. True, some changes have been made to it, for example, in terms: instead of "adverbs" - languages; in the names of subgroups - respectively East Slavic, South Slavic and West Slavic; Belarusian is included in East Slavic, and Kashubian is included in West Slavic.

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

Isogloss method and its role in the classification of dialects and languages.

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

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

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

Methods based on phonetic and word-formation material

Attempts, on the basis of some signs, to establish in which direction the development of the speech array took place after the collapse of the Proto-Slavic language, do not stop to this day. The latest hypothesis on this issue belongs to the Belarusian Slavist F.D. Klimchuk (2007). He analyzes the phonetic development in modern Slavic languages and dialects of a number of elements in the ancient words selected especially for these purposes - ten, black grouse, wild, quiet and smoke. Here is how these words look in phonetic transmission:

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

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

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

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

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

Quantitative method based on phonetic and morphological features.

In the twentieth century another approach to the study of the ways of the collapse of the Proto-Slavic language and the establishment of the degree of closeness of the Slavic languages in relation to each other is taking shape. This approach is called quantitative or statistical. The Pole J. Chekanovsky was the first to use it in relation to the Slavic material in 1929. Based on the list provided to him by T. Ler-Splavinsky of several dozen phonetic and morphological features characteristic of various regions of Slavia, Chekanovskiy compiles a special table indicating the presence ~ absence of such features in a particular language, after which, using special statistical techniques, it establishes an index of proximity between languages.

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

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

Method of lexical-statistical modeling.

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

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

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

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

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

Traditional classification, taking into account some of the latest data

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

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

East Slavic:

South Slavic:

West Slavic:

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

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

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

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

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 served, as is well known, as the basis for the theory of the "family tree", which, in relation to the Slavic family of languages, can be adopted in in general terms and even historically justified.

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 - dialects of individual villages and settlements It would be possible to describe the Polish or Slovenian branches in the same way, to explain which of them has more branches, which has less, but the principle of 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.

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 for translations from Greek a number of church and other books, 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 also begins to exist among the Eastern Slavs, where it was known under the name of the Slovene language, and scientists call it 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).