Slavic Languages: Discover the 3 Branches of the Slavic Language Family

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Nearly everyone living in Eastern Europe speaks a Slavic language, including people from countries that were once part of the Soviet Union. But what are the Slavic languages, and where do they fit in with the rest of the European dialects? Learn all about the Slavic language family and what languages they include today.

What is a Slavic language?

Slavic languages belong to the Indo-European language family. Linguists group them in the Baltic-Slavic branch of the Indo-European tree, along with Baltic languages Latvian and Lithuanian. 

All Slavic languages come from a Proto-Slavic ancestor language, which branched from an earlier Proto-Baltic-Slavic language. Ancient populations who spoke these languages likely lived around modern-day Lithuania and Greece, along the Adriatic Sea. 

As these languages developed around the sixth century C.E., Slavic languages separated from Baltic languages in their inflectional endings (Slavic words ended in vowels only, while Baltic languages didn’t) and split into different branches of the Slavic language family. Today, there are over 20 living Slavic languages spoken by nearly 400 million people across the world. 

Modern Slavic languages list

Scholars divide this language family into three branches: 

• East Slavic languages  (between western Poland and eastern Russian)
• West Slavic languages  (between eastern Germany and western Ukraine)
• South Slavic languages (between southern Romania and northern Greece)

The majority of Slavic languages are still spoken today, mainly in Eastern Europe. They range from a quarter of a billion speakers (Russian) to just over 7,000 speakers (Lower Sorbian), and include the extinct language Polabian.

*Population data from worlddata.info, ethnologue.com, and britannica.com

East Slavic languages

Nearly 75% of Slavic language speakers speak one of the four East Slavic languages, and most of them speak Russian. East Slavic languages are mainly spoken in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, and use Cyrillic script in their written form.

Russian

With over a quarter of a billion speakers in the world, Russian is the ninth most commonly spoken language today. As the common language of the 15 republics of the Soviet Union, it had a wide-reaching impact across Eastern Europe that continues today.

Ukrainian

The Ukrainian language has had a rebirth in the last century after being banned in Ukraine during the 18th and 19th centuries. Ukrainian continued to flourish through literature and regional dialects, however, leading to a standardized language form in the early 20th century. Despite political pressure to replace Ukrainian with Russian, 37 million people speak Ukrainian today.

Belarusian

Along with Russian, Belarusian is an official language of Belarus. It has Russian influences, including its use of the Cyrillic alphabet, and Polish loanwords from its proximity to Poland. Russian was often spoken in Belarus, especially during the era of the Soviet Union. After the fall of the U.S.S.R., Belarusian became prominent in the country once again, and today 7 million people speak the language.

Carpatho-Rusyn

Sometimes called Rusyn, Carpatho-Ukrainian, Rusnak, or Lemko (in Poland), Carpatho-Rusyn is another East Slavic language. Carpatho-Rusyn speakers live in regions spanning Poland, Serbia, Slovakia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Croatia. The language has strong Polish, Slovak, and Hungarian influences, though it still remains classified as an East Slavic language due to its connections to Russian and Ukrainian.

West Slavic languages

Unlike East Slavic languages, West Slavic languages use the Latin script in their writing. West Slavic writing systems were created by Catholic monks in these regions, who regularly used Latin in their reading and writing. Most West Slavic languages are living today except for Polabian, a language spoken in present-day Germany until the 18th century.

Polish

With 50 million speakers worldwide, Polish is the second most common Slavic language spoken today. Due to its location between Russia and West Europe, modern Polish has heavy influences from Russian, German, and Lithuanian. Polish is considered one of the more difficult Slavic languages for English speakers to learn because of its consonant clusters and distinctive pronunciation.

Czech

Czech is also considered a hard language for English speakers to learn, primarily because it includes few Western loanwords and a more complex grammatical structure. Today, there are around 10 million Czech speakers in the Czech Republic, as well as the countries where Czech is a minority language (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Austria, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia).

Slovak

Most of Slovak’s 5 million speakers live in Slovakia, where it’s the official language. Also known as Slovakian, Slovak is closely related to Czech and Polish, and has historical influences from Hungarian, German, Latin, and English. There are three main Slovak dialects—Eastern, Western, and Central—which are mutually intelligible, meaning speakers of these dialects can understand each other.

Silesian

Nearly half a million people speak Silesian, a language spoken in the Upper Silesian region of Poland and the Czech Republic. Some linguists consider Silesian to be a dialect of Polish, as its structure is very similar to the main Polish language and most Silesian speakers also speak Polish. However, Silesian also has strong influences from German and Czech, giving it distinct language traits of its own.

Kashubian

Like Silesian, Kashubian (sometimes called Cassubian) is often considered a Polish dialect. But to Polish speakers, Kashubian looks and sounds like a completely different language—and vice versa. Today, fewer than 100,000 people speak the ethnic-minority language in Kashubia, a region of Poland, 

Upper and Lower Sorbian

Just over 30,000 people speak these Sorbian dialects, also known as Lusatian. They primarily live in Lusatia, a region in eastern Germany, and most Sorbian speakers also speak German. Upper Sorbian has more speakers (25,000) than Lower Sorbian and is more similar to Czech, while Lower Sorbian shares more in common with Polish.

South Slavic languages

The South Slavic languages represent the cultures and dialects of the former country of Yugoslavia (Land of the South Slavs). After Yugoslavia broke into the nations of Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Serbia, and Montenegro in the 1990s, each region adopted its own South Slavic language.

South Slavic languages incorporate both Cyrillic and Latin elements into their alphabets, with some languages using a combination and others using one or the other. Today, more than 30 million people around the world speak one of the South Slavic languages, most of which were spoken in the former country of Yugoslavia

Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian/Montenegrin

Although Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, and Montenegrin are known as the four varieties of the Serbo-Croatian language (also characterized as BCMS), Around 20 million people speak one of these languages today. Their similar grammar systems and vocabularies make them mutually intelligible—but not exactly the same.

• Bosnian has Turkish and Arabic influences from its Islamic history in the Ottoman Empire, and it uses both Latin and Cyrillic alphabets.
• Serbian primarily uses the Cyrillic alphabet, but also incorporates Latin. It includes influences from other Slavic languages, particularly Russian.
• Croatian uses only the Latin alphabet, and it includes influences from the spread of Roman Catholicism 
• Montenegrin is similar to Serbian in that it uses both Cyrillic and Latin alphabets. Efforts to standardize Montenegrin began in the early 21st century, and continue today.

Most linguists agree that the differences between these four languages are more dialectical than foundational, similar to Australian English and American English. A speaker of one language can understand the majority of what a speaker of another language is saying. 

Bulgarian

Around 8 million people speak Bulgarian today. Most of them live in Bulgaria, the only South Slavic country that did not join Yugoslavia after World War I, and where Bulgaria is the national language. Bulgarian is the oldest recorded Slavic language, and like Serbian and Montenegrin, Bulgarian uses a Cyrillic alphabet and a Latin alphabet.

Slovenian

With nearly 50 dialects and over 2.1 million speakers, Slovenian (also known as Slovene) is a diverse language centered in Slovenia. The country declared its independence from Yugoslavia in 1991 and made Slovenian its national language soon after. Slovenian uses the Latin alphabet in its writing, and is closely related to the Serbo-Croatian varieties.

Macedonian

North Macedonia, the northern region of the area historically known as Macedonia, is at an interesting language crossroads. It reflects centuries of influences in the area, including rule by the Ottoman Empire, the influence of the Orthodox church, and Macedonia’s geographical division into Greece, Bulgaria, and Serbia after the Balkan Wars. 

The Serbian part of Macedonia became the present-day Republic of North Macedonia. Today, over 1 million people speak Macedonian, which primarily uses a Cyrillic alphabet (similar to Serbian).

Similarities between Slavic languages

Some Slavic languages, such as Bosnian and Serbian or Czech and Slovak, are so similar that speakers of one language can easily understand the other. But even across branches of the Slavic language tree, you can see the similarities.

Russian and Polish, the two most commonly spoken Slavic languages, belong to different language branches and use different alphabets. But when you compare them in the Latin alphabet, you can see similarities from their Proto-Slavic roots.

Russian and Polish may not be mutually intelligible, but learning Russian can help you learn Polish more efficiently (and vice versa). Understanding the connections between these Slavic languages takes a language learner to a language master—and one step closer to becoming a polyglot.

Are Slavic languages hard to learn?

Most Slavic languages are ranked as Category III on the language difficulty rankings, meaning they’ll take around 44 weeks (or 1,100 hours) to master. But with tools like Rosetta Stone’s Dynamic Immersion method that uses language immersion to help with mastery, as well as the TruAccent speech recognition engine to help you sound like a native speaker, learning Slavic languages like Polish and Russian can be a fun and fulfilling experience.