Slavic languages

Introduction
Languages of the family
- South Slavic
  - The Eastern subgroup: Bulgarian and Macedonian
  - The Western subgroup: Serbian, Croatian, and Slovene
- West Slavic
  - Polish and other Lekhitic languages
  - Sorbian
  - Czech-Slovak
- East Slavic: Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian
Historical survey
- Proto-Balto-Slavic
  - Innovations
  - Hypothetical origins
  - The loss of reduced vowels
- The early development of the Slavic languages
- The emergence of the individual Slavic languages
- The modern Slavic languages
Linguistic characteristics
- Common features
- Phonological characteristics
  - Palatalization
  - Stress accents
- Grammatical characteristics
  - Cases
  - Noun forms
  - Verb tenses
  - Syntax
- Vocabulary
- Writing systems

References & Edit History Quick Facts & Related Topics

Images

Map of Europe showing the geographic distribution of Slavic languages, color-coded by language group: East Slavic (Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian), West Slavic (Polish, Kashubian, Czech, Slovak, Sorbian), and South Slavic (Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian, Slovene, Bulgarian, Macedonian). Striped areas indicate regions where bilingualism is common.

A family tree diagram showing the evolution of Slavic languages from Common Slavic, branching into West, South, and East Slavic groups, with further divisions into specific languages such as Polish, Czech, Russian, and Bulgarian.

Thematic map of Eurasia showing the approximate geographic distribution of Indo-European language families, each represented by a different color. Areas include Celtic in western Europe, Germanic in northern and central Europe, Romance in southwestern Europe, Slavic in eastern Europe and Russia, and Indo-Iranian languages in South Asia. Non-Indo-European language regions and areas of common bilingualism are also indicated.

At a Glance

Slavic languages summary

Quizzes

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Languages & Alphabets

Related Questions

How are Czech and Slovak related?
How are Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian related?
How are Shtokavian, Chakavian, and Kajkavian Croatian dialects different?
How are Slavic languages divided into East Slavic, West Slavic, and South Slavic branches?
How are new words formed in Russian, Czech, and other Slavic languages?
How can multiple prefixes change the meaning of a Bulgarian verb?
How closely related are Slavic languages to Baltic languages?
How did Peter the Great contribute to the Westernization of Russian?
How did Polish literary language change during the Renaissance?
How did Saints Cyril and Methodius help develop Old Church Slavonic?
How did Turkish influence the vocabularies of East Slavic and South Slavic languages?
How did the Russian Orthodox Church split affect Church Slavonic traditions?
How did the settlement of the Magyars in Hungary affect Slavic languages?
How did transitional dialects connect different Slavic languages?
How do the Slavic words for king show the former unity of the Slavic languages?
How do the meanings of similar words differ between Russian, Serbian, Croatian, Slovene, Polish, and Czech?
What grammatical features do most Slavic languages share?
When did Proto-Slavic begin developing as a separate linguistic group?
Where was the early homeland of Proto-Slavic likely located?
Which Baltic languages share important features with Slavic languages?
Which Slavic languages use the Cyrillic alphabet?
Which countries have Slavic languages as their main languages?
Which language family do Slavic languages belong to?
Which languages belong to the South Slavic branch?
Which rivers marked the territory where the Slavs lived before their expansion?
Which writing system was first used for Slavic languages?
Why did the Slavic languages split into different branches?
Why do Slavic languages make extensive use of prefixes and suffixes?
Why does Polish use letter combinations such as sz to represent Slavic sounds?
Why does the word listopad refer to different months in Croatian, Polish, and Czech?
Why is the three-branch family tree only a limited model of Slavic language history?
What are the Baltic languages?
Which countries primarily speak Baltic languages?
Are any Baltic languages endangered or extinct?
How did the Romance languages get their name?
Why are the Romance languages gendered?
What is the Russian language?
Who created the Russian language?
Why is Russian important for astronauts?

Geography & Travel Languages

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External Websites

Pressbooks at Michael Schwartz Library - Lithuanian Americans and Their Communities of Cleveland - Lithuanian and the Slavic Languages
Encyclopedia of Ukraine - Slavic languages
Omniglot - Slavic/Slavonic
Culture.Pl - How to Identify Any Slavic Language at a Glance

Britannica Websites

Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students.

Slavic languages - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)

Slavic languages

Also known as: Slavonic languages

Written by

Wayles Browne

Professor Emeritus of Linguistics, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. Co-author of A Handbook of Bosnian, Serbian, and Croatian and several volumes of Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics.

Wayles BrowneAll

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Britannica Editors

Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....

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Last updated

Oct. 17, 2026 •History

Slavic 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), but they share certain linguistic innovations with the other eastern Indo-European language groups (such as...

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