Slavic languages, also called Slavonic languages, group of Indo-European languages spoken in most

of eastern Europe, much of the Balkans, parts of central Europe, and the northern part of Asia. The Slavic
languages, spoken by some 315 million people at the turn of the 21st century, are most closely related to
the languages of the Baltic group (Lithuanian, Latvian, and the now-extinct Old Prussian).

The Slavic languages are a group of languages that form the second most common language group in
Europe. The most common language group would be the Germanic languages.

To better understand the Slavic languages, here are three important facts about them:

1. There are three branches of Slavic languages

The Slavic languages can be divided into three different branches. The first branch is the East Slavic
branch, which includes Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian. The West Slavic branch is made up of
Czech, Slovak, Polish, and more. The third branch is the South Slavic branch, which is further
divided into Eastern and Western categories, where you can find Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbian,
Croatian, and Bosnian, among others. Some linguists believe that there may have been a North Slavic
branch at some point in time, but they aren’t sure yet. Most languages within the same branch have a
good level of mutual intelligibility.

2. All Slavic languages descended from the same language

The parent language for all of the Slavic languages is Proto-Slavic. It was spoken up to the 5th
century AD in the same areas you can know find Slavic languages spoken. There is no written record
of Proto-Slavic, which is common for proto languages. By around the 7th century AD, it started to
divide into different dialects that later became the different Slavic languages. Immigration of peoples
who spoke a language derived from Proto-Slavic created the different branches of the Slavic
languages.

3. The Slavic languages share more characteristics than many other language groups

Besides belonging to the same language group and sharing a common ancestor, the Slavic languages
have a lot more in common with each other than most other language families. They have more
mutual intelligibility and are generally more homogenous. This is probably due to the fact that they
were all just dialects of Common Slavic until the 10th century. Most of the Slavic languages also
have retained many of the morphological characteristics of Proto-Slavic, making the grammar very
similar from language to language. Many Slavic languages have consonant clusters, as well as very
few nasal vowel sounds.