Talk:History of the Slavic languages

message: This article originated as Proto-Slavic. On Feb 15 2013 it was renamed to History of the Slavic languages and a new Proto-Slavic article created. On Nov 3 2013 it was split, with half the text extracted into History of Proto-Slavic. As a result, some of the discussion below is more relevant to one of the other two articles. Benwing (talk) 23:06, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: History of this page

message: If there was a Proto-Slavic language, then theoretically there was also a Proto-Slavic people. 
:There were people speaking a set of closely related dialects that, long after the fact, could be seen to have been the precursors of the Slavic group of languages.--Wetman 08:26, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Proto-Slavic people?

message: In the United States at least, 'Slavonic' is rarely encountered in the sense used here, referring only to the Old Church Slavonic version of the Bible, and much more rarely, as an adjective for 'Slavonia' (part of Croatia), or in musical titles, as with Dvorak's Slavonic Dances. British English uses the word more broadly, but even here, it's conforming to US usage. I suggest that 'Slavic' be used in all contexts except for the one I mentioned above.
:Slavic has my preference too (but then, who am I?)... --IJzeren Jan 07:57, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Slavic vs. Slavonic 

message: I have added some information on loanwords in Slavic. See the external links and the references for the source. --Grzegorj 13:35, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Are you sure *kupiti is from Latin, and not the common Germanic word *kaupan, (itself a borrowing from Latin caupo, tho) ?
The entire section is bullshit. I wish I had seen it earlier. Some people - especially Germans prior to and at the time of Hitler had an itch to assign Germanic or any other origin to every Slavic word. They just couldn't accept that the Slavs and Balts were the last branches to remain in the PIE Urheimat after all the rest had departed, hence, they preserved the largest portion of PIE vocabulary intact. Some comments per Vasmer:
*gatati 'to divine' - purely Slavic, numerous cognates in all IE branches (e.g., Lith. godóti, Norse gáta, Latin prehendō);
*divъ 'demon' - word not recorded in Slavic languages apart from a fringe interpretation of two places in Tale of Igor's Campaign; the same root as Lat. deus/divus, Greek διος, Lith. diẽvas - no need to guess about iranian origin;
 - This is incorect: дивъ is quite widely recorded, cf. Bulgarian самодива (samodiva) (also partly in Serbian, although it normally prefers самовила, samovila, which is also used in Bulgarian). 
66.65.15.134 07:45, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

text: Try again. Celtic I will agree on, but most Slavic tribes were in contact with Finno-Ugric tribes for a large part of their early history. It is also highly likely, for example, Finnish for half is "puoli-". 24.57.69.157 01:06, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Actually, if you read your history, you will find that Celts and Slavs were neighbors for a long time. -iopq 02:22, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

text: Most of these etymologies are sourced (Schenker's The Dawn of Slavic). Instead of commenting them out entirely, you must represent both sides as per NPOV. Deleting well-sourced academic content is not appreciated here, as you well know. Furthermore, using profanity (you seem to throw around the word "bull****" left and right) is not appropriate on Wikipedia. CRCulver 11:32, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

text: Do you even have Schenker's book? Then don't claim that this is unreferenced content. It's right there in the book, which is easily obtainable from any university library. I will take this to RfC if you do not cease. CRCulver 11:34, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There is a problem with the section: some words were added by later editors and I don't remember them in Schenker's book. I may get the book from the library myself. Also, many of these etymologies are probably disputed, and we should mention additional ideas regarding them, with citations of course. Alexander 007 19:04, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Loanwords 

message: I have added my translation from  Polish Wikipedia. --Grzegorj 18:04, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Phonology 

message: while i cannot speak for every word you contest, i can say that:
*gatati (or OCSl gadati "to guess, suppose"), is more than likely inherited rather than borrowed.  constrast with Old Persian cognate xšathra "dominion".  it is also worth noting that Latin prehendere is not a cognate with this word.
**OSl gadati "to guess, suppose"; akin to Alb gjej "to find", Eng get, Gk ktaomai "to acquire, get, procure; marry", ktēma "possession", OPers xšathra "dominion", MIr gataim "I steal", Welsh cyfoeth "wealth; realm", Lith godetis "to be eager"
**Latin prehendere "to take, seize", praeda "prey"; akin to Alb zë "to catch", Eng begin, OIr ro-geinn "to encircle, surround", Welsh genni "to delve, submerge oneself", Gk chandánein "to hold, contain"
*xata, or rather Ukrainian khata "kind of traditional house", is in fact Iranian, akin to Avestan kata "chamber", Farsi kad "house", and Ossetian xatän.  This word was also borrowed into Finno-Ugric, e.g., Finn kota "dwelling, tent, hut", Estonian koda "house", Mordvin kudo "house", and into Germanic, e.g., ON kot "hut" and Old English cott "cottage" (vs. native Goth heþjo "chamber").  The native Slavic words are instead OSl kotǐcǐ "chamber", Russ kotéc "fishweir"  The o-a difference is significant.
*bogǔ is hard to believe as originating from Iranian, considering Avestan baxshaiti "he has or gives a share" and Farsi bakhshîdan "to offer, share", where the -a- and the -x-/-kh-, not to mention the meaning, do not lend themselves to a borrowing.
I quite honestly don't have much faith in slavic etymology.
71.64.112.34 03:46, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: For bogǔ, see Gołąb, Zbigniew. The Origins of the Slavs: A Linguist's View (Columbus: Slavica, 1990), pp 74 & 103. Gołąb believes that it was inherited in Slavonic with the original pan-IE meaning, but then under the influence of a neighbouring Iranian population, the meaning shifted to match theirs. Since both the early Proto-Slavonic form (*bɔgɔs) and the Iranian form (Avesta bagō) were quite similar, it's easy to see how a shift in meaning in one language could occur. CRCulver 22:13, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

text: well, that's much more believable than a wholesale borrowing, especially considering related bogatu^ 'rich', whosse meaning is probably closer to the original meaning of bogu^.  Flibjib8 15:44, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  vasmer corrections 

message: If this article is supposed to detail how PIE changed into Proto-Slavic then we should have the sound changes in chronological order.  The current technique of listing the sounds in arbitrary order and detailing backwards how they came from PIE is barely functional to any understanding of the way Proto-Slavic developed.  Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 02:31, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It definitely does. Without the diachronical perspective, it's impossible to expand existing data or to add more, and it becomes misleading to the reader (e.g. there was no */ę/ by the time the first palatlization took  place..) This article should IMHO start were Proto-Balto-Slavic left, listing the phonemic inventory of Early Proto-Slavic (after the first patalization) and possibly major changes that happened from PIE times, and list all Common Slavic changes in chronological order, finishing the phonemic inventory of Late Proto-Slavic. Major changes like palatalizations and liquid metathesis are very fertile subjects to write on, and could be also redirected to separate article for extensive discussion (when did they happen, detailed differences in reflexes in various dialects, exceptions etc.).  And this is just the phonology, there is also the morphology.. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 11:40, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: My above comment was made when the article was in a much worse state.  I agree with what you've just said, though, and I trust that you have the skill to add proper detail.  Be sure to cite thoroughly, though.  — Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 15:17, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Chronological order

message: :I just did a major rewrite to address my concern detailed above.  I also changed the transcription from the "slavicist" one to what I suppose one might call an ad-hoc system combining Channon's palatals (š, ž, dz, č) with the vague "some people" transcription the short high vowels (ĭ, ŭ).  This system is a bit more intuitive for the average reader and is, I imagine, slightly less confusing than having two almost identical characters denoting different sounds.  Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 09:41, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  In books, yers are almost never "transliterated", but kept in Cyrillic signs. ĭ, ŭ transliteration is based on the assumption that those were pronounced like short vowels i, u. Article should follow the established standards in the field, and not some imaginary guidelines. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 08:12, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh, frowny face!  How can I convince you to accept this? — Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 08:17, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: rewrite

message: Why are Old High German examples given in the loanwords section? It doesn't seem probable these words were borrowed from OHG, since the Slavic words lack the High German consonant shifts, that had influenced OHG. 惑乱 分からん * \)/ (\ (< \) (2 /) /)/ * 09:16, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Loanwords, Old High German

message: just noticing the discussion up above about whether certain words are loanwords from Germanic or native Slavic -- one issue that people seem to have missed entirely is the Germanic Sound Shift.  Germanic-borrowed words will have it, native Slavic ones won't.  For example: 'moloko' must be borrowed from Germanic because of the /k/.  The PIE form looks like *melĝ- which gives e.g. Latin 'mulgere' "to milk" and Eng. "milk".  A native Slavic equivalent would have a /z/ or perhaps a /g/, but not a /k/.
As for 'kupiti', the Lat. word 'caupō' means "small trader" or "innkeeper" and is listed in my Amer. Heritage Dict. of IE Roots as being a Latin-only root of unknown origin, i.e. presumably not PIE, and the root shows up nowhere else in any other IE language.  There's no verb in Latin that uses this root and has the meaning of "buy"; the "buy" meaning was a Germanic innovation when 'caupō' was borrowed into early Germanic and a verb '*kaupjan' "buy" (Go. 'kaupjan', Mod. Germ. 'kaufen') was formed.  'kupiti' "buy" goes back to pre-PrSl. 'kaupītī' and has exactly the form and meaning of the Germanic word, including the preservation of the /j/ stem-forming element.  All of this taken together makes it very unlikely that 'kupiti' is a native Slavic word.
Similarly 'xlep' "bread" shows the Germanic Sound Shift in it. Benwing (talk) 06:07, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  about loanwords again 

message: A "competing" article which should be work'd in here (using  probably, it's clearly long enuff not to merge). I stuck it as a "See also" for now… --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 23:45, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Slavic liquid metathesis and pleophony]] 

message: Are there any consonant clusters with more than three consonants in Proto-Slavic? --84.61.151.145 (talk) 17:39, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Consonant clusters 

message: "Russian: *gwojzda → *gwězda → zvězda → [zʲvʲɪˈzda] ('star')"
I'm sorry, but in Russian the first [z] in the word "звезда" isn't palatalized (I mean Russian palatalization, [zʲ]), at least normally. What was the source of that transcription? It probably should be fixed, the word normally sounds as [zvʲɪˈzda].  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.84.243.135 (talk) 08:07, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: See Wikipedia talk:IPA for Russian#Cluster palatalization. — Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi] 12:16, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Zvezda 

message: I remember reading something not so long ago about the phonology of Old Church Slavonic, that said the vowel ŭ was unrounded, just as y was. The change u > ŭ would then be parallel to ū > y. I'm not sure if this is true, especially considering y went on to become i in many Slavic languages while ŭ often became o (i.e. it kept its rounding). I'm not sure if there are any cases of ŭ > i? CodeCat (talk) 14:40, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I remember reading that it was unrounded in Proto-Slavic, too.  According to the article, *ŭ became *ĭ after palatal consonants.  It also could have varied in rounding.  — Æµ§œš¹ [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 15:45, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
replies: text:  The Dutch Wikipedia states that it merged with ĭ and developed into e in strong position in West Slavic and several South Slavic dialects, while in East Slavic it became o in those positions. I don't know what examples there are of that (there should be plenty) but it does show that ŭ was somewhat ambiguous as to whether it was front/unrounded or back/rounded. Presumably the fronting/unrounding happened relatively late in Proto-Slavic, since ū from other languages is still consistently borrowed as y rather than u I believe. CodeCat (talk) 15:51, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

text: I came across some evidence for this: in OCS, when ŭ is next to j, it is lengthened to y, in the same way that ĭ lengthens to i next to j. The forms svętŭjĭ and svętyi (/svętyji/) both occur in OCS texts, alongside svętŭi and svęty. That clearly shows that ŭ and y had roughly the same manner of articulation. Presumably this was also true for Proto-Slavic. CodeCat (talk) 04:16, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: ŭ was not "usual" but tense before j. Btw, in Russian it's "sv'atój".--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 19:34, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

text: It depends on a particular dialect and period. In those dialects where strong ŭ>o it was obviously rounded as its roundness could not appear by itself. Where ŭ>e, a, ă, it lost its roundness very early.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 19:30, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Was ŭ a rounded vowel? 

message: I'm not entirely sure what sources there are for x, aside from the RUKI sound law. But I wonder if there are any examples of both RUKI and the progressive palatalisation occuring. Such a sequence would have happened in words originally ending in -isos > -išos (RUKI) > ? (progressive palatalisation) or -isā. What is the resulting consonant in this case? Is it x, s or š, and does it palatalise the following -ŭ to -ĭ in the same way that *otĭkos > *otĭcĭ (basically, are words for which this applies "hard" stems or "soft" stems? CodeCat (talk) 15:28, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Such words surely must exist.  The chart on palatalization indicates the results on /x/ for all three palatalizations, although I'm a bit skeptical of the claim that Central Slovak dialects uniquely show a distinct outcome of the second and third palatalizations for /x/.  Given that the number of words involved was probably small, there may well be effects of analogy involved.
BTW some researchers do seem to claim sources for x aside from the RUKI law, although I'm not sure what they are.  Initial x supposedly has "a number of sources", the most accepted of which is /ks/ (although that's still within RUKI). Benwing (talk) 00:46, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

text: I just saw a source that argued for *sk- as the source of initial x, largely based on the apparent fact that Slavic words with initial /sk-/ are supposedly rare, although etymologies for various words were proposed.  This isn't totally strange, since PIE *sḱ- produces ch- in Sanskrit and Proto-Germanic *sk- produces sc /ʃ/ in Old English.  But in the Sanskrit case there are obvious etymologies for a number of ch- words while most of the x- words have no clear etymologies at all, which makes me think they are loan words.  It's unfortunately the case that we have no written knowledge at all of most of the languages that preceded the IE langs in Europe in their journeys out from the Ukrainian steppes, yet clearly such langs must have existed, and probably the IE speakers absorbed lots of words from them in the several thousand years it typically took them to migrate. (Look at how many words Hungarian picked up, and from how many different sources -- in this case we can identify most of the sources because the migration occurred relatively late.)  Benwing (talk) 20:07, 21 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Effects of the palatalisations on x 

message: I suggest that we move the "Origin", "Historical Development" and "Dialectal Differentiation" sections from Proto-Slavic to History of the Slavic languages and either copying or moving the "Notation" section. Maybe also moving "Loanwords".
There are two ways to do this:
#Just move/copy the stuff.
#Given the fact that significantly more than 50% of the text of Proto-Slavic would be moving, move History of the Slavic languages out of the way, rename "Proto-Slavic" to "History of the Slavic languages" and then create a new "Proto-Slavic" article containing the intro, phonology and grammar sections. Finally move the text and list from the old "History of the Slavic languages" page to the new one.
Comments?
Benwing (talk) 22:22, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think the Origin section should be moved, because it is less technical and it also explains the division of the historical stages of Slavic. CodeCat (talk) 00:45, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  movement/renaming suggestions 

message: Section 6.7 "monophthongization and other changes":
* There's a footnote that is showing up in the middle of the text, rather than down in a (currently nonexistent) "Notes" section.
* Stuff on nasalization should probably be split into its own section. I don't know how to present the sound changes in a less nasty-looking way. Maybe in a footnote? (These examples all come from Derksen 2008)
Section 6?  There's a footnote concerning nasalization that cites Schenker claiming that iN gets denasalized. Schenker does indeed say that but he's wrong and should not be cited. He's confused because denasalization of iN/uN does occur in endings. Lots of counterexamples in roots. See text, also another is CS *mę̀ti "compress, crumple, scutch" < BS *minˀ-, cf. Lith. mìnti "trample, scutch". (What the hell does "scutch" mean anyway? Hmm, evidently "Dress (fibrous material, esp. retted flax) by beating it." Who knew?) Benwing (talk) 09:43, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  someone please edit 

message: This is copied from User:CodeCat's talk page.  It's a summary of the development of Slovenian tone from Late Common Slavic (LCS) tone.
The following is based on J.M.S. Priestley's article on Slovenian in "The Slavonic Languages" (ed. Comrie et al.), listing the Slovenian-specific accent changes, with the first and last ones added by me. All except #1 are assumed to follow the LCS tonal changes, which turn an original three accent system (short = short falling, acute = long rising, circumflex = long falling) into a four-accent system: viz. the shortening of the original acute, the retraction of the neoacute (which generates new long and short rising accents), and the lengthening of short falling into long falling (circumflex) in initial syllables before a final yer:
#The "neo-circumflex", where original acute vowels change into long circumflex in non-final syllables in certain morphological circumstances (e.g. before an internal weak yer, before long vowels in the stem, etc.). This occurred very early in Slovenian and Kajkavian, and is supposedly one of the main sources of evidence for long vowels in the syllable after the stress, since these get shortened early on in LCS. (OTOH, I thought length was supposed to be concomitant with quality early on. Possibly this refers specifically to final syllables, which had some unusual changes and developed phonemic length early on; and/or there were various other early accent/quantity changes in these sylables.)
#"Short falling vowels became long (falling)." (This means that original short vowels merged with original and secondary circumflex.)
#"Stress shifted from long falling non-final syllables one syllable to the right, producing new long falling syllables." (This is the so-called "progressive shift" -- original short and circumflex vowels move to the right, remaining as long circumflex.)
#"Stress shifted from short final syllables one syllable to the left onto preceding long vowels, producing new long rising vowels."  (This seems like another neoacute-type retraction. Note that final syllables due to progressive shift will never be retracted but they're long. Note also that all final syllables become short during Late CS, although in Kortlandt's theory certain of them later lengthen and trigger a neoacute retraction. So it's unclear exactly which stressed short final syllables are being referred to -- all those that were not due to the progressive shift, or perhaps in slightly more limited circumstances?)
#"Old neoacute and all short rising vowels in non-final syllables were lengthened". (This is actually listed in the Proto-Slavic section on accent -- the acute is relengthened in initial syllables of multisyllabic words, although this step here is slightly more general.)
#"Short rising vowels in final syllables become short falling".
#(only in some areas, including standard Slovene) "stress shifted from short final syllables one syllable to the left onto preceding short e o, producing new long rising low-mid vowels"
#(only in some areas, not usually in standard Slovene but sometimes as optional forms) "stress shifted from short final syllables one syllable to the left onto preceding short ǝ, producing new stressed shwa"
#All unstressed non-final syllables were shortened.
These changes are somewhat confusing, but if you work them through you can see that in all non-final syllables, stressed vowels become long. Combined with the last change, we get the actual Slovene prosodic system, where length and stress always co-occur except in words with final stress, which can have either short or long stressed syllables.
See also the following for the neocircumflex:
Benwing (talk) 12:15, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Slovenian tone 

message: Also from User:CodeCat's talk page.
Here's the masculine o stems, accent class c, from Arno Verweij, "Quantity Patterns of Substantives in Czech and Slovak":
 	Singular	Plural
N	vôzŭ    	vȍzi
G	vȍza    	vòzŭ = võzŭ
D	vȍzu    	vozòmŭ = vozõmŭ
A	vôzŭ    	vȍzy
I	vȍzŭmĭ  	vozý
L	vȍzẹ    	vozẹ́xŭ = vozẹ̃xŭ
I'm filling in the neoacutes here based on the following:
*short rising on a short syllable must be neoacute, because an original acute can only go on a long syllable
*long rising on a long syllable must be neoacute, because acutes were shortened. The case of vozý is weird; no neoacute retraction possible. Final syllables sometimes get lengthened or (usually) shortened in unexpected ways.
BTW, the indication ẹ apparently indicates e2, i.e. former PSl *ai.  Also, what looks like a dot above a letter can be assumed to be short rising.  Two dots are short falling, even when they seem to merge, as in vȍzŭmĭ (this can't be #vôzŭmĭ because (a) compensatory lengthening like this occurs only in monosyllables; (b) the circumflex is usually clearly drawn as such).
Benwing (talk) 09:57, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm noticing there isn't actually much about this paradigm that is mobile. The singular forms are all accented on the same syllable. Also, would this paradigm differ if, say, the root vowel were long (diphthong, nasal or original long vowel) or disyllabic? Presumably there wouldn't be a short falling accent then. So I imagine that paradigm C isn't just a single paradigm, but has different "expressions" so to say, depending on the root/stem structure. CodeCat (talk) 14:49, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Paradigms with accents 

message: If this is in the accusative plural case, like the form of "horse" seems to imply, then surely the adjective should also be in that case? So it would be *desęty koňę̇ in Proto-Slavic. CodeCat (talk) 04:20, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: If you wish (I was intending these to be separate words, not a phrase, but go ahead and change it). Benwing (talk) 20:51, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  "tenth horse" 

message: The sound in question occurs in the accusative plural, not singular. You'd probably want a jā-stem noun, which has the same sound in the genitive singular. Maybe zmija "snake" or zemlja "land" or duša "soul". Or just use "tenth" by itself in the appropriate case. Benwing (talk) 01:22, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  "tenth horse" doesn't quite work 

message: * The bulk of the article doesn't deal at all with the history of Slavic languages, but the history of Proto-Slavic (internal, and from PIE and PBSl. perspective). From an article titled History of the Slavic languages I'd primarily expect Proto-Slavic as a starting point, with developments to modern Slavic languages in phonology, grammar, lexicon, syntax and so on being summarized. I doubt that the article could be renamed to something appropriate considering the vastness of topics it covers, so the offending content should be extracted to other (perhaps new) articles, leaving the space for further editing because the article is already way too huge.
* Periodization of Proto-Slavic differs from one author to another, every sentence involving years must be sourced otherwise it's OR. I'd suggest refraining from terms such as MCS and PSl. (which is ambiguous) altogether and simply listing reconstructions in chains when describing accent shifts and sound changes. If necessary, simply use Early PSl. *x > .. > .. > .. > (L)CS *y everywhere.
* Everything from Kortlandt comes with a big question mark, because things such as "Van Wijk's law" are not generally accepted. A more balanced approach is needed with theories of other (Balto-)Slavists as well.
* Wiktionary uses different notation for Proto-Slavic segments, so wikilinking there could be problematic and/or introduce confusion. Perhaps they should harmonize? Is there a particular reason why there are no links to enwikt at all? --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 00:41, 28 September 2013 (UTC)
replies: text:  Thanks for creating that article! It looks very good. At some point you should probably extract the text on Slavic accent from here and History of Proto-Slavic, move it to that article, and integrate it, leaving summaries of some sort in place of the extracted text. You seem to understand this area a lot more than I do so you're the logical person to do it. The text I wrote and User:CodeCat contributed to is based on English sources (esp. Kortlandt, whose theories I realize aren't always well-accepted); unfortunately I can't read Croatian. Benwing (talk) 23:10, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Some comments on the article 

message: I split out the History of Proto-Slavic. Most of the introduction moved to that article; what's here is a condensed version. This was a fairly slash-and-burn type of approach; feel free to edit. Benwing (talk) 22:56, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Great! Now there is space to deal with morphological developments as well, on both articles. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 23:04, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article has been split 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: The whole article writes about the Serbo-Croatian language as one entity. This language existed only temporary, when Croatian and Serbian were brought under one roof. It wrongly writes about "modern Serbo-Croatian". Something like modern Serbo-Croatian does not exist. The wrongs in this article in regards to Serbo-Croatian go so far that one of the references, namely Matasović, Ranko (2008), Poredbenopovijesna gramatika hrvatskoga jezika, Zagreb: Matica hrvatska, ISBN 978-953-150-840-7, a book that writes about the Croatian language in Croatian, is said to be written in Sebo-Croatian instead of Croatian. See language of the book here: https://glottolog.org/resource/reference/id/87739 The book is written in Croatian.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Umno22 (talk • contribs) 11:23, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: A text in the Old East Slavic looks strongly archaic for a modern East Slav. A text in the Old Belarusian looks archaic for a modern Belarusian. These languages arguably “do not exist anymore”. Is a random text in 20th-century Serbo-Croatian archaic for a modern Serb or Croat or Bosniak or Monte-Crna-how-are-they-called? Incnis Mrsi (talk) 11:35, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

text: See Serbo-Croatian#Present sociolinguistic situation. — Æµ§œš¹ [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 15:22, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Serbo-Croatian does not exist anymore 

message: Sara Sarah
Amso. So s oananjps. Nzosnsown son nz
Amin mehboob
 S ok n. 
Sara Amin n
Amin. Am s in. So. 
Sm ok. Amin s ok. So. .SK. 
Amos. S ok. SK. 51.9.19.70 (talk) 12:17, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sara Sarah 

message: Hi hello 2A00:23C8:7206:6901:2026:251B:A73F:D4EF (talk) 17:07, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hi 

message: "For most comparative purposes, however, South Slavic does not function as a unit. Bulgarian and Macedonian, while quite similar to each other, are radically different from the other South Slavic languages in phonology and grammar. The phonology of Bulgarian and Macedonian is similar to East Slavic rather than their nearest Slavic neighbor Serbo-Croatian[citation needed] (suggesting an early East–West divide across the whole Slavic territory, before the incursion of Hungarian and Romanian speakers). In grammar, Bulgarian and Macedonian have developed distinctly from all other Slavic languages, eliminating nearly all case distinctions (strongly preserved elsewhere), but preserving and even strengthening the older Indo-European[citation needed] aspectual system consisting of synthetic aorist and imperfect tenses (largely eliminated elsewhere in favor of the new Slavic aspectual system)."
The problem with this unsourced section is that it conflates contrastive and historical-comparative analysis: most of the observations about the differences between Bulgarian-Madedonian and Serbo-Croatian-Slovene apply to the modern languages, but not to the time of the alleged (and undated) 'early East–West divide across the whole Slavic territory, before the incursion of Hungarian and Romanian speakers'. None of the indisputably ancient, Common Slavic sound changes splits all the Slavic languages along this line. The loss of case and, most likely, the development of the article in Bulgarian-Madedonian happened much later, and likewise the loss of the imperfect in other Slavic. The quantitative and accentual distinctions don't seem likely to have disappeared in all of East and South-East Slavic, since they influence the accentuation of the article in Bulgarian, and it hadn't developed before the split. The vowel reductions are also late and very different in East Slavic and South-East Slavic. Eastern Bulgarian reduction and (conservative) palatalisation are fairly different from the East Slavic ones and also shared much more with Russian than with the closest neighbour, Ukrainian.
79.100.144.23 (talk) 00:11, 6 August 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  South Slavic not functioning as a unit