About Slavic

The Slavic family includes many but not all languages of Central and Eastern Europe. Speakers of different languages, particularly within the same branch, may be able to partly or mostly understand sister languages, but significant grammatical and writing system differences are also present.

One of the earliest stages of Slavic, Old Church Slavonic, dates from around the 9th century, but it is not necessarily the same as Proto Slavic as once thought by linguists. The Slavic and Baltic family (Lithuanian and Latvian) were connected earlier in their histories, and both form a branch of Indo-European whose other branches include Germanic, Romance, Celtic, Albanian, Greek and other languages.

Slavic Family Links

Slavic Family

Old Church Slavonic

Modern Slavic Languages

See also individual language pages for additional information.