page_title: North Slavs
section_title: Languages
hierarchical_section_title: North Slavs / Languages
context_page_description: The North Slavs are a subgroup of Slavic peoples who speak the North Slavonic languages, a classification which is not universally accepted although it has been in use for several centuries. They separated from the common Slavic group in the 7th century CE, and established independent polities in Central and Eastern Europe by the 8th and 9th centuries.
  North Slavic peoples today include the Belarusians, Czechs, Kashubians, Poles, Silesians, Rusyns, Russians, Slovaks, Sorbs, and Ukrainians. They inhabit a contiguous area in Central and Eastern Europe stretching from the north of the Baltic Sea to the Sudetes and the Carpathian Mountains in the south; from the west in the Czech Republic to the east in the Russian Federation. There is also a significant share of North Slavic population in North Asia, and significant diaspora groups throughout the rest of the world.‹See TfM›
context_section_description: The North Slavonic tongues today are:
  Northwest branch
  Czech-Slovak
  Czech
  Slovak
  Lekhitic
  Polish
  Kashubian
  Silesian
  Sorbian
  Upper Sorbian
  Lower Sorbian
  Northeast branch
  Belarusian
  Russian
  Ukrainian
  Rusyn
  Much overlap can be found between the Northwest and Northeast branches. Ukrainian and Belarusian have both been hugely influenced by Polish in the past centuries due to their geographic and cultural proximity, as well as to the Polonization of the Ruthenian population of the Polish Commonwealth. 
  According to Kostiantyn Tyshchenko, Ukrainian shares 70% common vocabulary with Polish, 66% with Slovak, and 62% with Russian. Furthermore, Tyschenko identified 82 grammatical and phonetic features of the Ukrainian tongue – Polish, Czech and Slovak share upwards of 20 of these characteristics with Ukrainian, and 11 are shared with Russian.
  A number of now extinct tongues once existed within these groups, such as Slovincian in the Lekhitic subgroup or the Old Novgorod dialect within the Northeast section.
  In contrast to other dialects of Slovak, Eastern dialects (so-called Slovjak) are less intelligible with Czech and more with Polish and Rusyn.
caption: Balto-Slavic language tree