At Akorbi, we’re very passionate about languages. Among the many beautiful and intriguing groups of languages around the world are the Slavic languages. The Slavic (or Slavonic) languages are the Indo-European languages spoken by Slavic people. When people think of Slavic languages they typically think of Russian. This is just one of about 20 languages that are considered Slavic languages.
The regions where these languages are spoken are the Balkans, Eastern Europe, and Central Europe. Slavic languages in these areas are divided into three subgroups which are Eastern, Southern, and Western Slavic languages. We’ve written an Akorbi blog to explore these three different subgroups of the Slavic language. Read on to find out more!
Eastern Slavic Languages
These are the languages most people think of when they think of Slavic. Eastern Slavic languages include Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian. The people who speak these languages are located in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus mountains, and Northern Asia.
Something that all of these languages have in common is that they all use Cyrillic. This differentiates them from most of the other Slavic languages (other than Serbian) which use the Latin alphabet.
Southern Slavic Languages
Southern Slavic languages are the languages spoken in the Balkans. It is separated from the other two subgroups of Slavic languages by Germany, Hungary, and Romania. This subgroup can be further broken down into East and West. They are a part of a dialect continuum. Simply put, that means that these Eastern and Western varieties of the South Slavic languages are very similar to one another, however, the more geographically removed the languages are the more they differ. Neighboring countries have almost unintelligible differences between their languages, while distant countries may speak the same language in very different ways.
The Eastern languages are Old Church Slavonic, Macedonian, and Bulgarian. The Western languages are made up of Slovene, Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin.
Western Slavic Languages
Like with the Southern Slavic languages, Western Slavic languages are divided into subgroups based on how similar they are to one another. Some of the Western Slavic languages are Czech, Polish, Slovak, Kashubian. Upper and Lower Sorbian, Silesian.
Contact Akorbi Today!
At Akorbi, we’re very passionate about languages. We think that learning about new languages and cultures expands your horizons and opens up a multitude of opportunities. This is why we hire translators and interpreters at Akorbi that are fully fluent in both the culture and language that they are working with. If you find yourself in need of translation or interpretation services, make sure to contact Akorbi today!