Slavic languages, or Slavonic languages, Branch of the Indo-European language family spoken by more than 315 million people in central and eastern Europe and northern Asia. The Slavic family is usually divided into three subgroups: West Slavic (Polish, Slovak, Czech, and Sorbian), East Slavic (Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian), and South Slavic (Slovene; Serbian, Bosnian, Croatian, and sometimes Montenegrin [Serbo-Croatian]; Bulgarian; and Macedonian). Polish belongs to the Lekhitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, which also includes Kashubian—now spoken in western Poland by fewer than 150,000 people and regarded in Poland as a Polish dialect—and several now-extinct languages. A distinctive feature of this subgroup is its preservation of the Proto-Slavic nasal vowels. Another remnant language is Sorbian, spoken by 60,000–70,000 people in eastern Germany. Western Lekhitic and Sorbian are all that remains of what was once a much greater Slavic speech area in central Europe; that area was gradually Germanized from about the 9th century. Among Indo-European languages, Slavic is closest to the family of Baltic languages.
Slavic languages summary
Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian language summary
Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian language (BCMS), term of convenience that refers to the forms of speech employed by Serbs, Croats, Montenegrins, and Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims). The term is a successor to Serbo-Croatian language, which came into being in the 19th century and was supported by the politically unified Yugoslav kingdom (1918–41) and communist Yugoslavia (1945–91). With the breakup of Yugoslavia, the new countries that came into existence began establishing independent language-usage standards. Among linguists and authors outside the region, the term Serbo-Croatian language gave way to BCS (“Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian”) and then to BCMS; locally, those in Croatia refer to it as Croatian, in Serbia as Serbian, and so on. Vocabulary and pronunciation differences exist among the four but form no substantial barrier to communication. The Croats and Bosnians use the Latin alphabet; the Serbs and Montenegrins of present-day Serbia and Montenegro privilege Cyrillic. Much disagreement over BCMS revolves around the definition of the word language and differences between standard languages and local dialects.