Slavic languages

From Citizendium, the Citizens' Compendium

The Slavic or Slavonic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family, spoken in eastern Europe and Siberia. They are closely connected with the Baltic languages in the Balto-Slavic group.

The usual classification is the following.

• East Slavic
  • Russian
  • Belarussian
  • Ukrainian
• West Slavic
  • Sorbian
  • Polish
  • Kashubian
  • Czech
  • Slovak
• South Slavic
  • Slovenian
  • Croatian (part of the Serbo-Croatian diasystem)
  • Bosnian (part of the Serbo-Croatian diasystem)
  • Serbian (part of the Serbo-Croatian diasystem)
  • Bulgarian
  • Macedonian (closely connected with Bulgarian; Old Church Slavonic is an archaic variety of Macedonian).

Slavic languages are written either in the Latin alphabet or in the Cyrillic alphabet. Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian and Macedonian use the Cyrillic script. Serbian and Belarussian use the Cyrillic or the Latin script. The other languages use the Latin script.