page_title: Slavic languages
section_title: Detailed list
hierarchical_section_title: Slavic languages / Detailed list
caption_attribution_description: English: Correction for Gradišće Croatian in Austria
context_page_description: The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavic peoples or their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic, spoken during the Early Middle Ages, which in turn is thought to have descended from the earlier Proto-Balto-Slavic language, linking the Slavic languages to the Baltic languages in a Balto-Slavic group within the Indo-European family.
  The Slavic languages are conventionally divided intro three subgroups: East, West, and South, which together constitute more than 20 languages. Of these, 10 have at least one million speakers and official status as the national languages of the countries in which they are predominantly spoken: Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian, Polish, Czech and Slovak and Bulgarian and Macedonian, and Serbo-Croatian and Slovene. In addition, Aleksandr Dulichenko recognizes a number of Slavic microlanguages: both isolated ethnolects and peripheral dialects of more well-established Slavic languages.
context_section_description: The following tree for the Slavic languages derives from the Ethnologue report for Slavic languages. It includes the ISO 639-1 and ISO 639-3 codes where available.
  East Slavic languages:
  Ruthenian section
  Belarusian: ISO 639-1 code: be; ISO 639-3 code: bel;
  Ukrainian: ISO 639-1 code: uk; ISO 639-3 code: ukr
  Rusyn : ISO 639-3 code: rue;
  Russian: ISO 639-1 code: ru; ISO 639-3 code: rus
  West Slavic languages:
  Sorbian section (also known as Wendish): ISO 639-3 code: wen
  Lower Sorbian (also known as Lusatian): ISO 639-3 code: dsb;
  Upper Sorbian: ISO 639-3 code: hsb
  Lechitic section
  Polish: ISO 639-1 code: pl; ISO 639-3 code: pol
  Silesian (see footnote above): ISO 639-3 code: szl
  Pomeranian
  Kashubian: ISO 639-2 code: csb;
  Slovincian (a language or a dialect of Kashubian)—extinct
  Polabian—extinct: ISO 639-3 code: pox
  Czech-Slovak section
  Czech: ISO 639-1 code: cs; ISO 639-3 ces
  Knaanic or Judeo Slavic—extinct: ISO 639-3 code: czk
  Slovak: ISO 639-1 code: sk; ISO 639-3 code: slk
  South Slavic languages:
  Western Section
  Serbo-Croatian
  Bosnian: ISO 639-1 code: bs; ISO 639-3 code: bos
  Croatian: ISO 639-1 code: hr; ISO 639-3 code: hrv
  Serbian: ISO 639-1 code: sr; ISO 639-3 code: srp
  Montenegrin: ISO 639-3 code: cnr
  Slovene: ISO 639-1 code: sl; ISO 639-3 code: slv
  Eastern Section
  Bulgarian: ISO 639-1 code: bg; ISO 639-3 code: bul
  Macedonian: ISO 639-1 code: mk; ISO 639-3 code: mkd
  Old Church Slavonic—extinct: ISO 639-1 code: cu; ISO 639-3 code: chu
  Para- and supranational languages
  Church Slavonic language, variations of Old Church Slavonic with significant replacement of the original vocabulary by forms from the Old East Slavic and other regional forms. The Bulgarian Orthodox Church, Russian Orthodox Church, Polish Orthodox Church, Macedonian Orthodox Church, Serbian Orthodox Church, and even some Roman Catholic Churches in Croatia continue to use Church Slavonic as a liturgical language. While not used in modern times, the text of a Church Slavonic Roman Rite Mass survives in Croatia and the Czech Republic, which is best known through Janáček's musical setting of it (the Glagolitic Mass).
  Interslavic language, a modernized and simplified form of Old Church Slavonic, largely based on material that the modern Slavic languages have in common. Its purpose is to facilitate communication between representatives of different Slavic nations and to allow people who do not know any Slavic language to communicate with Slavs. Because Old Church Slavonic had become too archaic and complex for everyday communication, Pan-Slavic language projects have been created from the 17th century onwards in order to provide the Slavs with a common literary language. Interslavic in its current form was standardized in 2011 after the merger of several older projects.
caption: Linguistic maps of Slavic languages
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