Talk:Slavic languages/Archive 1

"Modern developments"
The section is very simplistic and hence inaccurate, sometimes grossly. The linguistic processes were very controversial. Also, Warsaw Pact thingy is of dubious relevance, unless explained. mikka (t) 18:13, 26 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Yup. I'd support removing this section until someone can rewrite it.  —Michael Z. 2005-09-26 20:59 Z 
 * Agreed. I'll move it here for now. Zocky | picture popups 16:28, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

In the 19th century Pan-Slavism combined with nationalism to foster linguistic and literary expansion and revival: often under the aegis of the Russian tsars. The arrival of Communist regimes in the 20th century fostered the separate lingustic development of Ukrainian, Belarusian and Macedonian, for example, but the years from 1945 to 1990 saw the vast majority of Slavic speakers grouped in the institutions of the Warsaw Pact under Soviet Russian domination. The following trend to political independence and the break-up of the old unified polities (Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia) has encouraged a greater diversity of Slavic linguistic paths.
 * Modern developments

Description?
This article doesn't tell us anything about what Slavic languages are like, what are their common traits, etc. Zocky | picture popups 16:36, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Correction to the map needed - Belarusian language
The Podlasie Voivodship in Poland (capital - Białystok) is heavily populated by ethnic Belarusians. They are natural residents, not immigrants from Belarus. In some powiats, especially in Hajnówka, Belarusian is a predominant language. This should definitely be reflected on the map. Also, the rural population in Eastern Belarus and Russian territories, adjacent to Belarus, speaks neither Russian, nor Belarusian, but rather a mix of two languages called "trasianka". I think this should be shown too. Natural residents (especially rural) of Smolenk and Briansk regions of Russia are very close to Belarusians in terms of culture and dialects. These regions were incorporated into Russia in the early 1920-s, and many consider them to be Belarusian ethnic lands. On the official level, however, people from those regions are considered Russian. Juras14 3:11, 11 Dec 2005 (UTC)

"In some powiats, especially in Hajnówka, Belarusian is a predominant language" - I feel great sympathy for the Belarusian people, but that statement is simply not true. Most Belarusians in Poland are completly Polonised. --Barry Kent 02:18, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

What have I done to you, precisely
that you have to insult me twice?

Twice!

--VKokielov 07:10, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Jan Kochanowski predated Lomonosov by 300 years. So did Gundulic. So did Hus. --VKokielov 07:12, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Mea culpa, by two hundred. --VKokielov 07:13, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Mr Kokielov, please stop obliterating history with your sloppy and POVish edits which may be classified as original research. After 30,000+ edits in WP, I have been through hundreds edit conflicts with POV pushers using this project to propagate their fringe theories. And I don't recall a single instance when they did succeed. Therefore, please find something more useful to do than to glorify dwarf literatures at the expense of the Russian one which thrived in the 11th and 12th centuries, when we have not a line recorded in either Polish or Czech. --Ghirla -трёп- 14:06, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
 * What in hell's name is that, fringe theories, huh? Does your battle creed entail the removal of large portions of text written by others without any explanation or criticism?  That's just rude.  --VKokielov 14:58, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Polish literature
Please take a look at Polish literature. Holy Cross Sermons and Mikołaj Rej may be worth mentioning, both predate Kochanowski.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 17:15, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

POV statement
Modern mass media, however, has helped to minimize variation in all the Slavic languages. This generalisation is unsourced and out of touch of reality. Therer are virtually no Russian films or productions in Poland's mass media for example. Furthermore I don't see Poles using cyrillic. --Molobo 16:29, 15 May 2006 (UTC)


 * That claim is inaccurate. Mass media are intentionally used to increase the differences between Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian, and between Bulgarian and Macedonian. It's all politics... --Telex 16:40, 15 May 2006 (UTC)


 * That isn't really POV, it's just an unfounded statement. Just remove it until it is sourced. - Kuzain 16:26, 25 May 2006 (UTC)


 * What was meant, I think, is that modern mass media have increased standardisation of Slavic languages. That is, modern Slavian languages are not becoming more similar to each other but each of them is becoming more standardised.--Unoffensive text or character 16:22, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Disputed
Please note the considerable revisions we have undertaken to my original, slanted text. But neither was the purpose of the original text to attack the East Slavs. The purpose of the original text was to highlight how long it took the Slavic vernaculars in the East to become languages of literature and culture. Do you know that both the Serbs and the Bulgarians tried to introduce Slavonic as a secular language? This, a hundred and fifty years after Russia had shaken off that yoke. Now, I appreciate writings like Frol Skobeev and Protopop Avvakum, but they were sparse and usually written in an ugly mixture. Simeon Polotsky wrote poetry in Church Slavonic...now there's a story to tell. --VKokielov 14:56, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Let me repeat slowly and for the umpteenth time. "Slavic vernaculars in the East" became "languages of literature and culture" by the 12th century, when the Lay of Igor's Campaign was written. We don't have any record of Czech and Polish languages of the time. Therefore, your tenet that they were "culturally superior" does not hold water. I know little about Serban and Bulgarian and can't make any statements about them. As to your assertion that Avvakum's Life "is an ugly mixture" I consider this statement as a grave offence to any student of Russian literature or anyone who held the original text in his hands. No Russian language can be purer than his. I advise you to revise deficient and biased sources which you apparently consult for editing Wikipedia. Cheers, Ghirla -трёп- 15:07, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Originally posted by Ghirlandajo: Therefore, your tenet that they were "culturally superior" does not hold water. 
 * Huh?! Where did I say that they were culturally superior?! --VKokielov 15:11, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Your text implicated that their development was accelerated as compared to Russian which is clearly not the case. You presume that the Russian literature started with Lomonosov, which is a point of view offensive to any Russian. Cheers, Ghirla -трёп- 15:15, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Прочитайте внимательнее. The word vernacular means "spoken language".  And this is an article about language, not literature.  --VKokielov 15:24, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
 * If so, why you keep talking about Kochanewski, Dostoevsky, Chekhov and even the immensely obscure Leskov?? How did they advance the development of Slavic "vernacular"s? --Ghirla -трёп- 15:27, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

I'd strongly advised all parties to cite your sources. The article, as it stands, is virtually unreferenced, and for all that casual reader may know, 99% of this is complete fiction.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 17:11, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

There seems to be no question in the scholarship that OCS was the first Slavonic literary language. I'm removing the disputed tag from that sentence. CRCulver 02:52, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Oh, the disputed tag is for the map, not for the sentence it's right under. Nevermind. CRCulver 02:53, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Cyrillics in Wikipedia
A guideline on whether or not to italicize Cyrillics (and all scripts other than Latin) is being debated at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (text formatting). - - Evv 16:24, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

History of Slavic Languages, Origins
I am writing this as a casual reader (knowing almost nothing about language except for my traditional Latin & Spanish courses in high school) who wants to point out to whom ever has the knowledge that this article fails to explain (where needed) the origin and history of Slavic languages. I know that it's a harsh criticism but I can't help to just see "nerd speak" in the article and as a casual reader I'm turned off. Thanks/Sorry, JoeHenzi 09:14, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Have you tried reading... the history section? Maybe someone should update the simple Wikipedia article.-Iopq 14:50, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Evolution of literary languages


The imposition of Church Slavonic and Latin on Slavs was often at the expense of the vernacular. Says W.B. Lockwood, a prominent Indo-European linguist: "It [O.C.S] remained in use to modern times, but was more and more influenced by the living, evolving languages, so that one distinguishes Bulgarian, Serbian, and Russian varieties. The use of such media hampered the development of the local languages for literary purposes and when they do appear the first attempts are usually in an artificially mixed style." (148) Lockwood also notes that these languages have enriched themselves by drawing on Church Slavonic for the vocabulary of abstract concepts. Unlike Latin loans, Church Slavonic borrowings did not sound foreign to the Russian ear and were organically incorporated into everyday speech, since both Slavic languages were easily intelligible. As a result, Russian language acquired the stratum of high speech, which made other Slavic languages appear one-dimensional in comparison, Nikolai Trubetzkoy has observed.

Some of the earliest texts in Slavonic vernaculars include the Russkaya Pravda, an 11th-century legal code of Kievan Rus, and the 12th-century Tale of Igor's Campaign, the only surviving Slavonic epic. The Russian tsar Ivan the Terrible, his adversary Andrey Kurbsky, Polish Renaissance poet Jan Kochanowski and the Croatian Baroque writers of sixteenth century all wrote in their respective vernaculars (though Polish itself had drawn amply on Latin in the same way Russian would draw on Church Slavonic).

Although the Church Slavonic language hampered vernacular literatures, it nonetheless fostered Slavonic literary activity and abetted linguistic independence from external influences. The languages of the Catholic Slavs tottered precariously near extinction on many occasions. The earliest Polish is attested in the fourteenth century; before then, the language of administration was Latin. Czech was always in danger of giving way to German, and Czech's relatives Upper and Lower Sorbian, spoken only in Germany, have nearly succumbed just recently. Under German and Italian influence for many centuries, the Slovene language was a regional language spoken by peasants, and was brought to written standards only by the followers of the Reformation in the 16th century. The Serbo-Croatian vernacular literary tradition began with the Vinodol Codex in 1288 and continued through the Renaissance until the codifications of Serbo-Croatian in 1850, though much of the literature between 1300 and 1500 was written in much the same mixture of the vernacular and Church Slavonic as prevailed in Russia and elsewhere. The independence of Ragusa facilitated the continuity of the tradition.

More recent foreign influences follow the same general pattern in Slavic languages as elsewhere, and are governed by the political relationships of the Slavs. In the seventeenth century, bourgeois Russian (delovoi iazyk) absorbed German words through Polish. In the Petrovian era, close contacts with France invited countless loans and calques from French, a significant fraction of which not only survived, but replaced older Slavonic loans. Russian, in turn, influenced most literary Slavic languages by one means or another in the nineteenth century. Croatian writers borrowed Czech words liberally, whereas Czech writers, scrambling to revive their dying language, had in turn borrowed many words (cf. vzduch, air) from Russian. A more direct role for Russian came vis-a-vis Bulgarian, where Russian words were imported en-masse to replace Turkish and Greek loans, so that many Bulgarian words now carry a Russian phonetic footnote (i.e., have a phonetic structure unusual for the Bulgarian language or, indeed, the South Slavic languages in general).

I give up. I give up! --VKokielov 01:59, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Etymology of Vampire
Search for упырь *ǫруrь would become vampir only in Polish or Polabian since most other Slavic languages lost nasal vowels. -iopq 16:39, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Etymology of Quark
This page claims that Quark is from Slavic languages through German, but I've found multiple sources which say that the physicist who invented the word was quoting a nonsense word from an English novel (James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake")

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=quark&searchmode=none

http://www.takeourword.com/TOW111/page2.html

I think the tvorog claim, while interesting, is suspicious and should probably be removed until solid evidence controverting the two sources I just posted can be found. If no one responds within the next several days, I'll just remove that sentence. BryanC 05:08, 14 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Quark is a type of spread dairy product long popular in Central Europe. It is this which is said to come from Slavonic, not the name of the recently discovered subatomic particle. I take it you've never been to Germany. CRCulver 14:32, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Actually, I have been to Germany, and I'm not disputing that the German word Quark comes from a Slavonic root. Here's the relevant sentence from the article: "English derives quark from the German Quark, which in turn is derived from the Slavic tvarog, which means "curd"".  I believe this claim to be incorrect, since English does not derive the word quark from the German Quark.BryanC 21:01, 14 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Look at the OED. There are English authors who have used the word "quark" in English-language texts for the dairy spread. CRCulver 21:01, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
 * You're right, I didn't know of that secondary meaning for the word "quark". Perhaps we should make the text clearer, so as not to lead people into the misapprehension that the subatomic particle is named after curds. BryanC 22:52, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I changed the wording to make it clear that the subatomic particle was not named after the cheese. BryanC 03:07, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

redundant paragraph
The section "Separation of South and West Slavs" contains only the paragraph "The movement of Slavic-speakers into the Balkans in the declining centuries of the Byzantine empire..." The following section, "Differentiation of Slavic languages" ends with the exact same paragraph. I deleted it from "Differentiation of Slavic languages" last night because it is obviously redundant and does not meet wikipedia quality standards. It has been reverted, however (perhaps automatically). Please remedy this situation by either removing the offensive paragraph or drastically reforming its content and wording. 68.53.85.202 19:31, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Deleting of Slovio - to all Slavic users
I've sent this also on the talk page of the template "Slavic languages", because I know that many users follow my work (or watch that "article"), so they'll react (I hope so :) ). Recently, article Slovio is deleted. As I've seen, no Slavic user from en.wiki contributed on Articles_for_deletion/Slovio_%282nd_nomination%29, after the 2nd time was nominated for deletion. This should't happen. This is one blooper, that Wikipedia cannot allow to itself. Slovio is most known constructed Slavic language (am I wrong?), or put it this way, a constructed language with Slavic languages as its base. Please, gave your opinion here. If we collect enough votes, we can try to bring it back to life and end any further nominations for deletions. Kubura 07:50, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Just to avoid confusion and suspicions of bad faith: I nominated the article for deletion, because i couldn't find any assertion of notability.
 * If anyone can find convincing sources, i will also support re-creation of that article. It is enough to prove that it is known, it doesn't even have to be the most known. I just claim that it is not known anywhere except its own website, Wikipedia and a few blogs, which merely mention it, but don't actually write anything in it. If Wikipedia is the only thing that contributed to its "success", then it should be stopped, rather than perpetuated.
 * By the way, my mother tongue is Russian, so you can count me as more-or-less Slavic. :)
 * Thanks for understanding. --Amir E. Aharoni 09:53, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Don't worry, Amir, I believe you've done it in a good faith here. Otherwise, I wouldn't call the removal of Slovio as "blooper". Kubura 13:22, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Bosnian versus Serbian
It is strange that the western group of South Slavonic languages is said to include Croatian and Bosnian, while the eastern group includes Serbian. In fact Bosnian is rather closer to Serbian than to Croatian. It appears the author wanted to divide the languages by script since the western group has 'Bosnian (Latin script)'. If so, shouldn't 'Serbian (Latin script)' also be included? Is the division meaningful at all? Ed Avis 11:47, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree. I've read that Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian or Serbo-Croatian is defined as Western South Slavonic, while Bulgarian and Macedonian are Eastern South Slavonic. I think that whoever omitted Serbian from Western South Slavonic in this article is someone who wants to reinforce or add to the distance of Serbian from Croatian. Bosnian seems to fall in between, and it seems to me that it incorporates some tendencies considered to be predominantly "Croatian" and other tendencies that are considered predominantly "Serbian".

Serbian is definitely closer to Croatian and Bosnian than it is to Bulgarian, because standard Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian all derive from the same dialects used in Eastern Herzegovina.

The Serbian preference for using the Cyrillic alphabet (as is standard in Bulgarian and Macedonian) and the majority of Serbs being Orthodox Christians are hardly reasons to label the Serbian language as "Eastern". Vput 14:41, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Balto-Slavonic
I've removed a bit saying that similarities between Baltic and Slavonic can be explained by the Slavs living alongside the Baltic-speaking peoples after AD 600. That makes no sense, for if that were the case, only the East Slavonic languages would be similar to the Baltic languages, since the South Slavonic languages had already moved south around AD 500. Since all Slavonic languages, however, show similarities, one must assume that Proto-Slavic itself, the language spoken before the spread of the Slavs, had some kind of relationship with the Baltic languages. CRCulver 11:30, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
 * This is a highly contentious subject and your take on it is sensible; however, the Slavs in question who may or may not have had long-term geographic contact with the Balts are a much older group than what you're suggesting, i.e. the Balto-Slavic contact would have happened before the Slavic speakers fanned out and their speech began changing into the present-day subfamilies and language/dialect situations. Does that make sense to you? Dr. C.S. Lewis-Barrie, Ph.D. (talk) 22:14, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Deletion of references to Bosnian language
Can we cease doing this, please? Obviously Wikipedia has extensive information on the language, and all references to it should be included in this article, as equal to the rest of the Western South Slavic languages. Thanks! Nouanoua (talk) 02:35, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Map
The map conveys the impression that Slavic languages are spoken over large parts of East Germany. The problem is that historical information (the long-extinct Polabian language) is mixed with information on the contemporary status of Slavic languages. Polabian should be removed entirely from the map (or maybe just printed across northeast Germany in brackets) and the speech-area of the Sorbian languages are a lot smaller than shown on the map.--Unoffensive text or character 16:20, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

The representation of language usage throughout Ukraine seems a little too generous towards Ukrainian. Spoken Russian is very much commonplace in the greater Kiev region, which is a notable area, and is not as absent in other parts as the map would suggest. Perhaps a footnote could explain the map is useful for gaining a basic understanding but is not entirely representative of the complexities of reality. 66.33.219.14 (talk) 11:01, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Transnistria
Shouldn't Transnistria be included in Slavic-speaking states in the box near the bottom of the article? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.68.31.177 (talk) 23:30, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

If Transnistria is included, shouldn't Kosovo be included as well? Both are self-proclaimed republics, the former had three official languages, two of them being Slavic; the latter has two official languages, one of them being Slavic. — Hellerick (talk) 14:43, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Template:Slavic diachronic
There is an ongoning discussion on the talk page, in which User:Tat1642 and User:Hexagon1 are enforcing bizarre claims in the Slavic diachronical template. E.g. Interesting parties are invited to participate in the discussion of this preposterous proposals, as the Internet time of here signed is limited. --161.53.74.66 (talk) 10:58, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Church Slavonic "descended" from Old Church Slavonic
 * Macedonian language "branched" from Bulgarian in the 1950s
 * There is some Knaanic "language" that is not to be found any other other source but some book published by some Christian organization
 * Old Novogorod dialect "descended" from Old East Slavic, even though it's more archaic than it
 * OESl was not a language (supra-dialect) of Kievan Rus' in the period of 10th-14th century, but was spoken from the seventh century to the ninth century. User:Tat1642 apparently thinks that "Old Russian" and "Old East Slavic" are synonymous, even though Zaliznjak in the book he quotes consistently constrasts ON dialect to CSl. and OR "supra-dialect" (=OESl.), defining the terms before he uses them.
 * For the record, I didn't push these claims (some of them aren't even anything to do with me), I merely acted to enforce WP:OR policy. The user, User:Ivan Štambuk, has now been blocked for a WP:3RR violation but had attempted to avoid it by using an IP. His block has now been extended and the IP blocked. I would still greatly appreciate improvements from the knowledgeable editors here, so have a look at the template and join us in its discussion. +Hexagon1 (t) 13:40, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

independent state of the Macedonian speech-group
a couple of unexplained removals of the term "Macedonian" from a sentence by VMORO

Joy wrote: reverted again - Macedonian speech-group did indeed long lack the resources to establish an independent state, using it as an example in that sentence is perfectly valid

VMORO wrote: rvt again, there has been a solid Macedonian national consciousness since the beginning/middle of the 20th cent, unless you mean the interwar period, the sentence is not valid


 * I have no idea what you are talking about. I can fathom how the Macedonians who decided on the Bulgarian state had independence, but those who decided on the other states did not have it up until recently when the Republic of Macedonia became independent, and probably some still don't have it in northern Greece. And the phrase "Macedonian language" refers today to the language of those people, not the Bulgarian Macedonians which use the term "Bulgarian language". Do they not? --Joy &#91;shallot&#93;   12:21, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Now I don't understand what you are talking about:-)) The people who call themselves Macedonians now have had a Macedonian consciousness and national identity since the 1940s and probably to some extent (I can't really argue about that) in the interwar period. If these people used the name Bulgarians and Bulgarian language before that time (that's something i can argue about), then what was said in the article does not really apply to them as the Bulgarians had a well-developed medieval state, which was even at one point centered in Macedonia. VMORO


 * Ah, you have a point, I didn't look at it that way. While they were all Bulgarians, they could have had Bulgaria; when they became Macedonians, they could have R. Macedonia. This is a quirky exception... --Joy &#91;shallot&#93;   22:02, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Until the 20th century, certain speech-groups (such as speakers of Slovenian or of Macedonian) lacked the resources to establish their own distinctive independent nation-states.

In my opinion this phrase suggests that there was a separate Macedonian-speaking group before the 20th century, which is very dubious. Besides, this phrase is meant to give some EXAMPLES rather than to list all speech-groups which did not have their own nation-states. Hence, the dubious (if not wrong) example of Macedonian speakers is superfluous. The clear example of Slovene speakers is in my opinion enough. That is why I am removing "or of Macedonian". Boraczek 11:06, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Can anybody include evidences of the existence of Macedonian language before the 20th century when the territory of the present day Republic of Macedonia was appended to Jugoslavija? Otherwise I am going to correct the diagram showing Slavonic languages development. --SOMNIVM (talk) 00:18, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Kashubian and Polish
I don't think that Kashbian and Polish is closer then Polish and Czech! --212.144.61.43, 03:56, 11 Dec 2003

Great! Now that you've commented, how about you follow that up? Because that does not follow. If you even look at written Kashubian, it is very clear that Polish and Kashubian are more mutually intelligable than Polish and Czech, to the point where Polish linguists consider it a dialect. --Vegalabs 19:02, 12 May 2006 (UTC)


 * It is just like Russian and Ukrainian, I believe. Nobody would have thought these were different languages, if they were not spoken in different states. -- Ghirla -трёп-  14:43, 15 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, one method of establishing such things is to compare texts. Say the Lord's Prayer, in Polish, Kashubian, and Czech; you'll see by how far they differ (and you'll see that Kashubian differs far less from Polish than does Czech).


 * Another one: enumerating the differences between Kashubian and Polish. You will see however many of them, then it would be instructive to compare an indisputably Polish dialect with standard Polish (you'll see that even though there are few differences between K. and P., there are a few more of them than between, say, the Mazovian dialect and standard Polish. But at the same time you'll see that few of these differences (between K. and P.) are not shared by at least one dialect of Polish.)87.206.222.228 (talk) 20:38, 11 December 2008 (UTC) Wojciech Żełaniec

Map
New map slavic languages 2008.: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d5/Slawische_sprachen.png —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.15.188.48 (talk) 20:28, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

That map is a GARBAGE. You cannot distinguish "Croatian" from "Serbian" or "Serbian" from "Croatian" and "Bosnian", because they all are ONE and SAME language - Serbo-Croatian language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_South_Slavic_diasystem .That's a fact. All the rest is worthless nationalistic trash, which is not accepted by anyone normal in the world. Cheers.24.86.103.88 (talk) 06:47, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Evlekis / Macedonian uses Cyrillic
The user Evlekis spreads propaganda that Macedonian language uses Latin Alphabet. Everyone can read what the article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macedonian_language where it says: Writing system - 	Cyrillic (Macedonian variant). Please stop him to change the facts. From the other side, if you use transliteration in Latin, then use transliterations for all other Slavic Languages (Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian etc.) and not only for Macedonian. Also, in Macedonian there are two words for fire, both officially recognized: оган and огин. The word огон is also used in Macedonian but it's considered as a dialect form. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.28.98.203 (talk) 04:57, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
 * First of all, do not accuse me of spreading propaganda. I have a far greater inclination for the Cyrillic script where applicable; I consider it unfortunate that Montenegrin is placing it in second place after the Latinic script. At the same time, I do not dictate the facts. Across WP, there is generally a requirement for transliterations where possible to facilitate reading concerns. Imagine you are reading English language Wikipedia about variation in literary terms across the Arab countries with all examples given in Arabic only. Without knowledge of Arabic, the information will be of no use - you'd simply stare at the variations playing Spot The Difference. That said, the Roman alphabet does have a place in the Macedonian literary language. It is common throughout the country to find signs displaying both forms (eg. Железничка станица, Železnička stanica). Latinic does not have the same pride of place in Macedonian as in Serbian/Montenegrin but its function is more essential than in Russian/Ukrainian and Bulgarian. Evlekis (talk) 18:46, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Kokielov's version of the evolution of Slavic literatures
In general, the division in linguistic practice in Slavic countries is well-defined by the religious seam (Catholic/Orthodox) which ran between the eastern and western lands. In the West, where Latin was by decree and of necessity the language of worship, there was a clear separation between the people's language and the language of high culture. Literature developed slowly in the Western Slavic lands because of this domination, but when it did, it developed right away in the vernacular. At the dawn of nationalism during the Renaissance, the first modern literary works (usually poems) began to appear -- in Dubrovnik (Ivan Gundulić), in Dalmatia, in Poland (Jan Kochanowski), in Bohemia (Jan Hus). (Two hundred years earlier, Geofrey Chaucer with similar intentions wrote the first books in English under the overwhelming imposition of English French, or, as it is now called, Anglo-Norman).

Even though Russian writers (Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Chekhov) would enter the company of the best writers ever to live, the tradition of literature in the vernacular language in the East Slav countries was slower to develop. Although the first texts in East Slavic appeared some three hundred years before the Renaissance, these texts, including the prominent Slovo o polku Igoreve, were (with the prominent exception of the literarily unremarkable Afanasiy Nikitin's chronicle) all written in Church Slavic. In general, Orthodox Slavs were under the hand of many invaders: the Russians were under the Tatars until the sixteenth century, the Ukrainians and Belorussians under the Grand Duchy of Lithuania until the 1700s, and the Balkans were part of the Ottoman Empire until almost its fall in the twentieth century. The liturgical tradition, which used Church Slavonic as the primary language, quickly became a literary tradition. Church Slavonic was a rigidly codified literary language based on Old Church Slavonic, and by the sixteenth century was far removed from the vernacular. The first literature in (as nearly as possible) a spoken Russian language began to appear after the ascension of Peter the Great, espoused by grammarians like Lomonosov and finally brought to victory over the old tradition by Aleksandr Pushkin. It was Pushkin who laid the foundation for modern Russian literature, with his beautiful writing in the contemporary vernacular with only the most vital admixtures of bookish Church Slavonic. After Pushkin, on the shoulders of Leskov and Gogol, Russian literature grew rapidly in importance to gain upon and then outpace the Western Slavs.

At about the same time, the Serbs and the Bulgarians, suppressed under the Ottomans and in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, began to awaken with a national consciousness to the monumental task of reforming their languages. Both in Bulgaria and in Serbia, the Church resisted these attempts, fearing revolution and seeing language reform as an attempt of assimilation by the West. While Vuk Karadžić was fighting with the patriarch in Vojvodina for his attempts at ensuring a uniform literary and spoken language, inside Bulgaria the Church tried to establish firmly the Church Slavonic language as the literary language of the country.

The current state of many Slavic languages reveals foreign influence -- some of it executed by the literati (as the French words of Polish or the Russian words of Bulgarian), while some came from extensive bilingualism, such as the Turkish words in Bulgarian and Serbian, the German words in Slovenian, and the Polish words in Belarussian and Ukrainian.

Or the Ukrainian / Belorussian words in Polish. Do you guys really think that Polish minority with no literature language in its own language could influence the extensively literate Ruthenians? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.104.208.250 (talk) 18:53, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Czech-Slovak (extinct)
Czech-Slovak was never a language, it is a language group, hence it can't be extinct. It should be changed either to "Old-Czech", which would be in the same way as the rest of the list, or to "Czech-Slovak language group"Cimmerian praetor (talk) 22:54, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Presumably, Czech and Slovak have a common mother tongue. If this mother tongue isn't called "Czech-Slovak" what is it called (at least retrospectively)? — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]  23:38, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Well there was old-Slavonic (Proto-Slavic) spoken at the area (of current Czech Rep) before the old-Czech. Slovak evolved through old-Slovienne (together with Slovene), but the great cultural impact from 15th century on and especially use of the Czech language by the Slovak protestants gradually changed it to more similar to Czech rather than contemporary Slovene. So, we can speak about current Czech-Slovak language subgroup of West-Slavic branch, but not about Czech-Slovak common mother tongue, unless you talk about old-Slavoni/Proto-Slavic. But then you can make Czech-Russian or Polish-Bulgarian group, both would make same historical sense as Czech-Slovak.Cimmerian praetor (talk) 00:34, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Slavic languages by the number of speakers (as of 1997)
Mentioned image (table) also includes Baltic languages. Please change the title to Balto-Slavic languages by the number of speakers (as of 1997), I don't have necessary rights to edit it. Thank you. StasMalyga (talk) 14:55, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Difficult sentence
I have no clue at all what this sentence means:


 * "During the Proto-Balto-Slavic period developed a number of exclusive isoglosses in phonology, morphology, lexis and syntax with Baltic languages, which makes them the closest of all the Indo-European branches."

1) What developed a number of exclusive isoglosses with Baltic languages?

2) What does "them" refer to?

2) I gather an "isogloss" marks a language boundary, so how can developing one make any language close to any other?

86.179.118.44 (talk) 02:37, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
 * My edit should do the trick. Those who, like you, don't know what an isogloss is can click now on the wikilink. --JorisvS (talk) 18:51, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Bunjevac
I believe that what is listed here as Bunjevac should be removed, as it is widely regarded as a Serbian dialect, which is stated on its page as well. The best that can be said of its status as a language is that it is disputed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.89.51.227 (talk) 01:44, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Requested expansion: Grammatical case
Unless I'm just too decaffeinated and looked through it, there's surprisingly little content here about grammatical case in Slavic languages, which I understood to be a notable feature shared by members of this language family. Could someone who knows more about Slavic languages add some information about case? Thanks! — OwenBlacker (Talk) 17:32, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

"geographical distribution"
Could someone kindly rephrase this? The Slavic languages are divided by linguistic phylogeny, not geography. Also, Knaanic should fall under Czech-Slovak, as per its article (and LinguistList, which has it branching from Old Czech). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.242.48.18 (talk) 04:51, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Broadly speaking in the case of the Slavic languages both geographical and genealogical distribution coincide.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 12:38, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

German surnames of Slavic origin
The article names Austria and eastern Germany as hotspots of these. Another, and the most famous one actually, is the Ruhrgebiet due to Polish mass immigration in the late 19th and early 20th century. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.83.224.30 (talk) 13:19, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

status of Silesian
The standard authoritative references on the Slavic languages describe Silesian as a Polish dialect, so we need to include this by default. (See the sources I quoted.) I am aware that there are ongoing attempts to create a Silesian ausbau language. As a result, I inserted notes to this effect, including a detailed footnote. I'm also aware that the question of language vs. dialect in Europe is a minefield, due to the strong perceived associations between language and ethnicity, and the tangible political and economic benefits derived from achieving EU recognition of new minority languages. This can lead to situations where linguistic and political considerations diverge (cf. Mirandese in Portugal; oppositely, the Northern Italian varieties in Italy), sometimes extremely so (Bosnian, Serbian, Croatian, Montenegrin). This tends to lead to problems in Wikipedia, as interested parties (in this case, Poles, Silesians and to a lesser extent Czechs) will naturally marshal sources to support their viewpoints. The cardinal rule of Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth, i.e. we go by what the most reliable sources say, and in cases like this it's even more important to stick to this, as otherwise there's no NPOV way of resolving disagreements. Benwing (talk) 06:58, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Franek, regarding this, your edits have been reverted by Benwing, myself and Boraczek. That looks like a consensus for Benwing's version which is based on standard references. You are also essentially misrepresenting a source. If a standard reference calls Silesian a dialect then you can't change that to 'there's been some debate about whether it is a dialect' and keep the same source - that misleads the reader. You can use the terms "NPOV" and "OR" all you want but it seems users on this article agree that it's you who are not following the rules.

Lastly, telling others to 'discuss' when you are not discussing yourself does not appear to be good faithed. Volunteer Marek 19:38, 23 February 2013 (UTC)


 * This is your private opinion about Silesian. But, exist core rules of Wikipedia: Wikipedia:No original research and Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. Changes by user Benwing is typical original research, for example "However, because many Silesians consider themselves ethnically distinct from Poles, there is an ongoing movement to create a distinct Silesian ausbau language: i.e. a standardized literary form based on the spoken varieties, which would then allow a claim for separate language status to be made" and this is not Neutral point of view, for example: user Benwing removed information about Lach and also subscribes to one version - dialect. This version is more neutral. If there are two versions of the problem, should be show two version, without favoring one. Franek K. (talk) 19:47, 23 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Franek, it seems users on this article disagree with you and you seem to have a misunderstanding of what WP:OR and WP:NPOV mean. Benwing's version appears to be much better sourced and, importantly, doesn't misrepresent a source, unlike yours. Volunteer Marek
 * misrepresent a source? where? I used sources by user Benwing, I only have modified the content to NPOV and NOR version. Edit by user Benwing is typical original research (example above) and POV: if there are two versions of the problem, should be show two version, without favoring one. It's not me I wrote the basic principles of Wikipedia. Franek K. (talk) 20:07, 23 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Benwing's version says: Standard reference works on the Slavic languages describe Silesian as a dialect of Polish, rather than a separate language. Cambridge Language Surveys and Routledge Language Family Descriptions are indeed standard reference works.
 * Your version says: There has been some debate over whether Silesian is a separate language or a dialect of Polish and Czech. Many linguists consider Silesian a dialect of the Polish language or Old Polish
 * Basically you're changing "standard reference works" to "There has been some debate" and adding in the Czech and Old Polish. The question then is, does the CLS and RLFD state that:
 * 1. There has been some debate.
 * 2. Say anything about Silesian (not Lach) being a dialect of Czech
 * 3. Say anything about Silesian being a dialect of Old Polish.
 * Volunteer Marek 21:12, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
 * No, they do not. The one in "The Slavonic Languages" is interesting. First it says "The Polish linguistic territory has traditionally been divided into five major dialects areas, corresponding to the historical-geographic regions of Małopolska, Wielkopolska, Mazowsze, Śląsk (Silesia) and Kaszuby." It then says this excludes the "new mixed dialects" spoken in the west and in a northern section east of Gdansk, and then says that the "territories in the east lost to the Soviet Union in 1939 were generally not considered to represent a dialect area." Then one paragraph on diglossia between the local dialect and some standard (which might be an approximation to the standard), practiced by "most present-day dialect speakers". Then 3 paragraphs on differences among these 5 dialect areas, where the "northern Silesian dialects" and "southern Silesian dialects" each get one mention. The last two paragraphs are the most interesting:


 * 1) First is a paragraph that says "What most Polish linguists view as the Polish dialects of the Kaszuby area are often viewed outside Poland as dialects of a separate Cassubian language". (And this is the point of view adopted by the book as a whole, with an entire chapter on Cassubian, just like other languages each get their own chapter.) "The Polish view is motivated, among other things, by the apparent lack of a national identity among the Cassubians, who -- it is claimed -- view themselves rather as an ethnic group within the Polish nation. None the less, there have been recent attempts to create a literary standard for Cassubian." (This was written in 1993.)
 * 2) Second paragraph: "Other Polish dialects have occasionally been used for literary purposes (particularly those of Silesia and of the Podhale area in the southern mountains), but without any systematic efforts at standardization. The attempt (beginning in the 1930's) to create a literary language based on the Polish-Czech transitional dialects in the Ostrava area of Czechoslovakia -- the so-called 'literary laština' or 'Lekhian' -- has resulted in a literary idiolect used only by the poet Óndra Łysohorský."


 * So here's what it does say:


 * 1) Cassubian may be a separate language, and this may well be the consensus of outside linguists (i.e. those with a vested interest). This is in fact the consensus of the book, which creates a separate language-level chapter for Cassubian, which says of it that "its individuality is such that it is usually regarded by both laymen and linguists as an entity, separate from all other Polish dialects." (For example, Cassubian has a totally different vowel system from Polish, keeping distinct a large majority of the original short-long distinctions, and all of them as late as 1900. Northern Cassubian dialects also have phonemic stress, inherited from Common Slavic but lacking anywhere in Polish (or Czech). For these reasons, Cassubian is considered its own Lekhitic language, parallel with Polish.)
 * 2) Silesian is a dialect of Polish. (The is specifically stated in the last paragraph: "Other Polish dialects ... (particularly those of Silesia ...)".
 * 3) The Lach dialects are Polish-Czech transitional dialects.
 * 4) Standardization efforts (i.e. attempts to create an ausbau language) and/or use of a dialect for literary purposes has happened with both Cassubian and Silesian. Perhaps implicit in this is the idea that such standardization efforts are more likely to lead to a dialect being reclassified as a language. But this is nowhere stated explicitly, and on the contrary, the existence of Cassubian as a separate language was recognized by many, perhaps a majority, of linguists *before* such a standardization came about, based on the characteristics of the language itself (see comment above). The chaas  These last two paragraphs could be read to say that the existence of an well-developed ausbau language might change people's views (i.e. you could argue that this is the reason why these efforts are brought up), and in fact I imagine many linguists would be willing to change their views on dialect vs. language by the existence of an ausbau language, especially one that's in actual use, not just an artifact used by only a few, or even one (as in Łysohorský's idiolect).


 * Sussex and Cubberley likewise discuss the unsettled nature of Cassubian ("Kashubian" for them), which is "both less than a language and more than a dialect of standard Polish". Silesian, however, is explicitly placed among Polish dialects, and never referred to in any way. In fact, no mention at all is made to Silesian being otherwise than as a Polish dialect, or even as being more divergent than other dialects. The only interesting mention is the reflex of *r' as [r͡ʒ], "perhaps a transition to Czech ř". But there are such unique features mentioned in other dialects: e.g. almost all of West Slavic converts /n/ to [ŋ] before velars, but Mazovian doesn't, nor does East Slavic -- clearly suggesting a connection here, although not explicit. Meanwhile, in their discussion of Czech, Lach is considered a dialect, but is explicitly stated as being the farthest from standard Czech (along with Eastern Moravian). Numerous times, Lach peculiarities are compared with equivalent features in Polish, and once an even more explicit mention occurs: "Stress is initial as in standard Czech, except in Lach, which has penultimate stress, confirming its transitional role to Polish."


 * So in sum, the answer to all your questions is no. Benwing (talk) 10:26, 24 February 2013 (UTC)


 * I'm also looking through the various things like Polish language and Dialects of the Polish language and such and they mostly all reflect the POV that Silesian is at least probably a separate language. This unfortunately does not agree with the sources and appears to be the work of Silesian editors attempting to insert their own POV. In fact, the editor who added this POV into the Polish language article was a certain User:LUCPOL, who was subsequently blocked for "long-term disruptive editing and revert warring on Silesia-related pages".


 * Franek, you should know that I'm not Polish, not Cassubian, not Silesian, not Silesian German, not Czech, not Slovak, in fact not Slavic or German or even European of any sort. I am a linguist with an interest in the Slavic languages, that is all. My "belief" that Silesian is a dialect of Polish is based on nothing more than the fact that the sources I and other linguists consider authoritative say that. If similarly authoritative sources start coming out and saying the opposite, I'll gladly change my belief -- I don't have any personal stake in this other than to correctly report the sources. My concern about the Silesian-as-language stuff being added is that it appears to pretty badly misrepresent the consensus view of linguists, and tries to make claims that Silesian is as divergent from standard Polish as Cassubian (which it almost certainly is not), and that Silesian cannot be understood by most Poles (which seems doubtful given that many Poles report being able to understand Czech to some degree!), and more importantly, NONE OF THESE CLAIMS ARE PROPERLY SOURCED. Most aren't sourced at all, and the others are sourced to newspaper articles, papers written by non-linguists (who may very well have a vested interest, e.g. if they're German of Silesian origin), etc. If you can source these claims to high-quality, non-biased sources, preferably written by linguists, then I will be much more likely to accept them -- although even then you need to be careful with words like "most" or "some", which (as others have pointed out) can easily be used to misrepresent sources. Benwing (talk) 12:15, 24 February 2013 (UTC)


 * As an expert you should know, most sources about Silesian based on the old few sources from the germanisation/Kulturkampf and later, nazi era (Germany) and polonization and communist era (Czech Republic, Poland). Formerly exist few sources about the Silesian or Polish language, where Silesian was recognized as the dialect (all as 100% not-reliable, propaganda from the Poland or Czechia or Germany), later other linguists create new books based on this works. Linguists from the Poland, Czechia and Germany is not impartial and linguists from other countries never studied the Silesian language, they based their books on the Polish or/and Czech or/and Germany propaganda works. They never came to Silesia and never studied the Silesian language (from the basics) and also, often they only mention the Polish dialects mentioning among others, the Silesian and in most cases, they duplicate the same wrong informations.
 * Let us not forget, the Silesian language was prohibited in Poland between 1945 to 1990 (communist era), there was no chance for Silesian regionalism, Silesian nationality, Silesian language, Silesian separateness - Poland cancel the Silesian autonomy. Only since 1990's (fall of communism), Silesians fighting for their... situation of Silesian language, nationality and separateness changes from year to year.
 * Recently (2000's, 2010's), some linguists noticed irregularities about Silesian, Silesian can not be a dialect of contemporary "Polish language" because it is detached from the branches of the language in 1300's (detachment from the Poland). If anything, Silesian is a dialect or lect of Old Polish language (1136 to 1502). For comparison, further there is Middle Polish language (16th to 18th century) and from the 18th century, contemporary "Polish language". This can be seen with the naked eye, see:
 * Old Polish (1136 to 1502)
 * Middle Polish (16th to 18th century)
 * contemporary Polish (from the 18th century)
 * Silesian????? How is this possible? Silesia was independent duchy from 1332 (middle period of Old Polish), and later subordinate duchies to Czechia, later Habsburg Monarchy and Germany. Absolutely, Silesian can not be a dialect of contemporary Polish.
 * Assuming that the Silesian language comes from the Old Polish and not this is separate language, correctly should be:
 * Old Polish (1136 to 1502)
 * Middle Polish (16th to 18th century)
 * contemporary Polish (from the 18th century)
 * Silesian
 * Similar deceptions exist in the origin of Silesians, according to the Polish sources. According to the Polish and all international historic sources: from the 7th century, there are many independent Slavic tribes in the Central Europe, Silesian tribes as first (in 9th century) were attached to the Greater Moravia and later Duchy of Bohemia (now they both create Czech Republic), later (in 10th century) Silesia attached to the Poland, and later as independent duchy from 1336, later subordinate duchies to Czechia, later Habsburg Monarchy and Germany. Not until after 1945 (except small autonomy in 1920-1945) a large part of Silesia was incorporated into Poland (from Germany), the rest is in Czech Republic and Germany. However, most Polish sources considered Silesian tribes as part of the Polish tribes! and some international works also! This is complete balderdash, nonsense and propaganda, it is similar in the case of Silesian language. Poland for whole 1400-year-old history of Silesians, is only 300-year-old adventure. Initially there were a few propaganda books, in which Silesian tribes are treated as part of the Polish tribes, later other historians based new books on this Polish or/and Czech or/and Germany propaganda works (duplicate the same wrong informations) and the circle is closed. Franek K. (talk) 13:16, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

<-- Franek, your, very long statement, is a textbook example of original research (no sources provided) and it doesn't address the crux of the issue, which is this: Benwing's version accurately represents the sources. Yours misrepresent them, as pointed out above. Address the three points made above rather than posting long off-topic statements (see also WP:SOAPBOXING). Volunteer Marek 17:17, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I write it in the discussion, maybe is OR but this is discussion. I did not write this in article because this text has no sources. Besides, I wrote it for Benwing. Franek K. (talk) 16:28, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Volunteer Marek, User:Benwing add sources, in which writes about Silesian as dialect. Ok, but term of "Standard reference works" is POV. For you is standard, for Pope is not standard, for another user is standard, for me is not standard etc etc etc. And also, lacking sources that this is standard books. Second, the text of "However, because many Silesians consider themselves ethnically distinct from Poles, there is an ongoing movement to create a distinct Silesian ausbau language: i.e. a standardized literary form based on the spoken varieties, which would then allow a claim for separate language status to be made" is clear OR. This version is not acceptable to Wikipedia because break all three main rules of Wikipedia. Third, the discussion is stuck or no new responses is not synonym of restore his version. And also, your revert is blind revert: you undo any changes, also new change. Here it does not matter whether the discussion stand in place / there are no new responses. As long as your version breaks the core rules of Wikipedia, your version will be removed, according to the rules of Wikipedia. Franek K. (talk) 16:17, 28 February 2013 (UTC)


 * If you want to remove the sentence beginning with "However,..." that's fine. But the first sentence reflects the sources. I don't think you can really argue that these sources aren't standard. If you have some better phrasing in mind, please let us know. Volunteer Marek 18:11, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
 * No, the first sentence not reflects the sources because they are not standard references, this is POV term. And also, lacking sources that this is standard sources. Also, please do not write, quote "If you have some better phrasing in mind, please let us know" because it's you enter this content and this is text for you: "if you have some better phrasing in mind, please let us know". User which introduces or restores content can not break the principles of Wikipedia (including POV and nOR), and must add sources to its content. Franek K. (talk) 18:43, 28 February 2013 (UTC)


 * One more time (please see WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT, the basic problem is that you're changing the text to say something which is not supported by the sources (see detailed explanation above). This is a misrepresentation of a source, regardless of whether these are "standard reference" works or not. And yes, I do think that any reasonable person wouldn't contest the description of the Cambridge University Press publications as "standard reference" works. Volunteer Marek 20:03, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
 * What? One more time: term of "standard reference" to the Cambridge University Press is controversial and POV, why not other universities? why only universities? why not..., why only... See? This is favoring one of many universities and favoring one of many types of sources, this is the your basic problem. And also, if Cambridge University Press is "standard reference" for Silesian language or even any language, please source to this term. Understand, this term is POV and OR and for this term, there is no sources. Franek K. (talk) 20:47, 28 February 2013 (UTC)


 * I think you've just dipped into the WP:RANDY IN BOISE territory here. I really don't think many people will share your opinion that Cambridge University Press, or its publications cannot be considered standard references, or that relying on these sources is "favoring one of many universities". It's like saying that looking at Encyclopedia Britannica is 'favoring just one encyclopedia' and therefore it is not a "standard reference". If you have other candidates for "standard references" as they relate to this topic, by all means, please present them.
 * And just stop and think for a minute. By definition a "standard reference" is going to favor one or a couple particular publications. That's what makes it "standard". Volunteer Marek 22:12, 28 February 2013 (UTC)


 * And let me repeat myself one more time here. The question as to whether these sources can be considered "standard references" is secondary. The actual problem is that your current text misrepresents these sources, regardless of whether they are "standard references" or not. Your text claims that these sources state that there's a debate as to whether Silesian is a dialect or a language. These sources do not say this at all. They say it's a dialect. Volunteer Marek 22:18, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Again, Wikipedia is neutral, we as users of Wikipedia can not decide which university is more important than another as source ("standard references" or not "standard references"). According to you, the Cambridge University Press is major university of the world, in comparison with other universities? OK, but this is POV, you understand this finally? I fixed my version to the neutral version and this has been corrected by user JorisvS. This is NotPOV and has a sources. However, this version is worse for you, I know but... exist sources about Silesian as dialect of the Polish language? Yes. And only about this says in the article, without additional epithets, phrases, terms. This is completely NPOV (neutral) version and completely consistent with the sources. Franek K. (talk) 23:08, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Ok, I'm getting really sick of this. First, I'm having trouble understanding what it is you're saying. Second, no, your version is not neutral. Saying "there exist sources which say X" makes it seem like these are some kind of exceptional or rare sources. Which is bullshit. These are standard reference works, published by top universities, your opinion of Cambridge not withstanding. Likewise Benwing's text is supported by the MAJORITY of non-fringe sources, not just one or two.
 * Like has been pointed out to you above, I'm not the only one who disagrees with you (and I assume JorisvV is not agreeing with you either, just correcting your horrible grammar). But you seem completely unwilling to listen, are obfuscating, denying the obvious, engaging in a lot of IDIDNTHEARTHAT and trying to derail discussion. And you have a very clear agenda and are engaging in blatant advocacy and POV pushing, your claims of NPOV and no-OR not withstanding (anyone can claim NPOV - that doesn't mean their edits actually *are* NPOV). I do think it's time that the next step in the dispute resolution process is taken - presumably this would require filing an RfC (request for comment). Which is a pain, and a waste of time - which is how you managed to get your way on this (and other articles) in the first place - by just wearing other editors down till they gave up. Sigh, I'm almost at that point myself. Volunteer Marek 15:46, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

(outdented) Franek, I agree with Marek's comment about OR. You seem to have a very strong prior belief that Silesian is a separate language and are trying to justify this, rather than allowing the sources to speak for themselves. You appear to be confusing language with ethnicity -- whether or not Silesians descend from a "separate Slavic tribe" has no bearing on the language they currently speak, because people can and do change their native language over time. (In fact, it is extremely common for divergent dialects to get displaced by a more convergent language variant, and this may be repeated several times in history.) Also, you appear to misunderstand NPOV. NPOV means to follow the main sources, and represent minority viewpoints only to the extent that they are found in reliable sources. It does not mean that you should disregard authoritative sources in favor of minority viewpoints. The sentence beginning with "However" that you objected to was in fact an attempt to add a more Silesian viewpoint while still staying unbiased, i.e. an attempt to support you! Strict NPOV doesn't in fact require this sentence, because the sources don't mention it.

It would be useful for you to read the primary Wikipedia policy documents: WP:NPOV (neutral point of view), WP:OR (no original research), WP:V (verifiability, not truth), WP:RS (reliable sources). The concept of "verifiability, not truth" may be particularly relevant here, since it says explicitly that you cannot simply use the claim that the sources are "untrue" as support for a given viewpoint, and that "the truth" (as a particular editor might assert) is explicitly not what should go into Wikipedia, if it cannot be verified (i.e. reliable supporting sources cannot be found). You will also find it explicitly asserted that when reliable sources disagree, the more authoritative sources should be given precedence, rather than the other way around. In this case, that means that the claim that Silesian is a Polish dialect is what we put in the main chart.

I should add that it's actually quite strange for you to assert that Czechs, Poles and Germans are all biased, while somehow Silesians are not!

As for my removal of the info about Lach, this is because it's irrelevant and extraneous -- how the Lach dialects are classified has no bearing on how the Silesian dialects are classified because they aren't the same thing. If the sources consistently say that Silesian is a Polish dialect (which they do) while Lach is either a Czech dialect or a transitional Polish-Czech dialect (which they do), then that is what we say. As a point of comparison, the WIkipedia entries on Bosnian, Serbian, Croatian and Montegrin consistently say that all of these are sociolinguistic registers of Serbo-Croatian, despite the fact that none of the ethnicities in question like this statement very much (and all generally claim that their speech form is a separate language), because that is what the authoritative sources say -- for obvious reasons. Benwing (talk) 02:19, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Please do not lie about me.
 * I not appear to be confusing language with ethnicity. I wrote a separate section in my post to show you how many frauds about Silesian (both Silesian language and origin).
 * I not to assert that Czechs, Poles and Germans are all biased, while somehow Silesians are not!
 * You saying "As for my removal of the info about Lach, this is because it's irrelevant and extraneous -- how the Lach dialects are classified has no bearing on how the Silesian dialects are classified..." but this is your opinion, I have a different opinion. info about Lach is very important.
 * A very important issue: you listen only the opinions of linguists, they are not the only. Also important is the opinion of people using the language, the organizations of a given language, opinions by sociolinguist, opinions by linguist and other organizations etc.

Franek K. (talk) 17:57, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Franek, you really need to back off this article, since your edits have absolutely no support from anyone. Everyone who's commented here finds them problematic. And you're blatantly POV pushing.

Also, just as an aside, you put in Molas as one of the sociolinguists who supposedly support Silesian as a language. How does an article on Croatian relate to this? It looks like because Molas said something about Croatian, you think he has some position on Silesian. That's total OR. And aside from Kamusella (who's basically well known as an opinionated political advocate with very thin credentials), the rest of that claim is unsourced. Volunteer Marek 18:34, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Of course, according to you only a persons supported Silesian as dialect is ok, persons supported Silesian as language is bad, eg Kamusella. Ok. Franek K. (talk) 19:09, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Answer the question rather than attacking others. Volunteer Marek 19:14, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Molas has been removed. Your opinion about Kamusella and others, I prefer not to comment. You're blatantly POV pushing and your insolence has no limits. Franek K. (talk) 19:28, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I have made no comments about "others", only Kamusella. And like I said before you can claim "NPOV!" and make accusations against me all you want, but just because you put that stuff in an edit summary or on the talk page does not mean it's true. Actions speak louder than words and I think it's pretty obvious that you're here to push an agenda. Volunteer Marek 19:34, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
 * You are completely wrong. Opinions about Silesian between people are different, also between linguists (although I admit that the more linguists considered Silesian as a dialect - I do not hide this, however, not all linguists). Also important is the opinion of people using the language, the organizations of a given language, opinions by sociolinguist, opinions by linguist and other organizations, politicians etc. I not blatantly POV pushing because I not accept the version of only language, I accept the neutral version "language or dialect", but you're blatantly POV pushing, you pushing only dialect version. This is a big difference. Franek K. (talk) 19:54, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Is there any good information about how well Poles can understand (spoken) Silesian? --JorisvS (talk) 20:05, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't know if there are reliable sources about "how well Poles can understand (spoken) Silesian". Franek K. (talk) 20:20, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Well it's anecdotal but I have no problem understanding it. As Benwing pointed out above, most Poles can pretty easily understand spoken Czech (and Slovak) and Silesian is a transitional language/dialect between Polish and Czech so that means that yes, most Poles can easily understand Silesian. Volunteer Marek 20:31, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Or put it this way, I speak English and Polish about equally well (maybe English a bit better). I have a harder time understanding someone from the American South, than I do a person speaking Silesian. Volunteer Marek 20:32, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
 * About this, quote: "Benwing pointed out above, most Poles can pretty easily understand spoken Czech (and Slovak) and Silesian is a transitional language/dialect between Polish and Czech so that means that yes, most Poles can easily understand Silesian" - this is OR. I am a teacher of Polish language and history in a primary school, I can see how much trouble Poles have with the old version of the Polish language (Mickiewicz, Kochanowski etc). Silesian (if assume that it is a dialect of the Polish language), separated from the Old Polish language in the Middle Ages, and followed his own direction. It can be concluded that it is difficult for Poles. This is my OR. Furthermore, this is example of Silesian: article about Wikipedia on the Silesian Wikipedia. I as Pole, understand about 5% words and 10% of the content - I guessed what was going on (some can be guessed also when not understand Silesian, Polish, Czech language). I doubt that Volunteer Marek understood more. Franek K. (talk) 20:46, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Sure, that part's OR - this is the talk page. Though I don't think the part about Silesian being transitional between Polish and Czech is OR, that's pretty established. Anyway, kids in American schools have trouble with Shakespeare, Kerouac or even the current New York Times (not to say... Samuel Beckett or something). Literary authors don't necessarily use language that is easily understandable but rather language which is supposed to be aesthetic. So Mickiewicz (that's not "old version of the Polish language" either, just has some archaisms in it) or Kochanowski arent' good example. As far as the Silesian page you linked, I have no problem understanding it at all, as in I could sit here and recite the Polish version of the text on the spot without thinking too much about it. Volunteer  Marek 21:00, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
 * You must be unique :) But notice that the majority of Poles do not understand the Silesian words. Franek K. (talk) 21:14, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
 * What are you basing that claim on? Volunteer Marek 22:38, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, my experience is that people often tend to claim to understand something although they really understood only parts of it. Another problem could be distinguishing real mutual intelligibility from a kind of passive bilingualism, something that is illustrated by the situation in Scandinavia: Norwegians have far more experience communicating with speakers from various dialects and hence less difficulty understanding e.g. Swedish or even Danish. One assured way to lower real mutual intelligibility, though, is using an unrelated word for something. So, to get somewhere we could first try answering the question "how many cognates do Silesian and Polish share"? --JorisvS (talk) 22:00, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
 * There's a specific reason for why Silesian is understandable by Poles - it's a transitional language/dialect between Czech and Polish and those two languages are pretty close. Volunteer Marek 22:38, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Wrong question because all languages of West Slavic branch (Czech, Slovak, Polish, Silesian, Kashubian, Sorbian) has many common cognates, perhaps even all Slavic languages. Franek K. (talk) 22:17, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Not at all. The question is not "does it have many cognates?" (of course it does!), but "how many?". What is the percentage of cognates? Or, to phrase it differently: "What's the percentage of words that is non-cognate"? --JorisvS (talk) 22:43, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
 * There is not such data, so there are just guesswork. Franek K. (talk) 22:54, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Franek, please assume good faith. Accusing me of lying is absolutely not kosher. I also wish you would try harder to be objective. As I've said earlier, I have no ethnic or other emotional connection of any sort that would make me want inherently to say that Silesian is or is not a separate language. If the sources appear to say that Silesian is a separate language, then I'm totally fine with that. The sources do say this about Kashubian, for example, and hence my edits indicate this. The thing is, your edits strike me as clearly trying to push a particular viewpoint rather than remain neutral, and the more you do this, the less I'm inclined to view your edits favorably. Generally, I'm highly suspicious of any edits that appear to be POV pushing, and it's for this reason that I took the time to look up what the linguistic sources say about Silesian in the first place, and then go to the trouble of correcting your edits.

As for your most recent changes, many of them are not in the spirit of WP:NPOV, and I've tried to correct them for this reason.
 * You are trying to construct the viewpoint "Silesian is a separate language" out of "general sociolinguistic sources saying that the question of language vs. dialect should take into account the political views of the speakers" and "Silesian speakers say their speech is a separate language". This is a clear example of POV synthesis, which isn't allowed. You need actual sources saying that Silesian is a separate language, and they really should come from people who don't have a clear vested interest in this. I had not heard of Tomasz Kamusella but when I looked him up I see that (a) he's a Silesian, (b) most of his works appear to be on the specific issue of Silesian as a language, or related topics (hence it's not clear what his credentials are) and (c) he doesn't cite any linguistic arguments in favor of his viewpoint.
 * You've inserted a bunch of references that all stem from the same source. Ethnologue, Linguist List and SIL are all basing their data directly on ISO 639-3: In fact, SIL *is* the originator of the ISO 639-3 distinctions. Source padding like this makes me even *more* suspicious of the edits, since it makes you come across as a "POV warrior" and not someone interested in the Wikipedia spirit of neutrality.
 * Please stop editing the language tree to reflect your viewpoint that Silesian is a separate descendant of Old Polish. You're going against consensus here, and on top of this, this view has no support in the linguistic sources. Ethnologue does place Silesian as a separate Lechitic descendant, but this is the case simply because it's necessitated by ISO 639-3's decision, which is not as authoritative as the primary references in the field.
 * As for your claim about 500,000 Silesian speakers: Ethnologue lists 60,000. The Silesian orgs themselves claim only 173,200 Silesians. It's clear that numbers like this aren't very reliable in general because there isn't any clear abstand between Polish and Silesian. But more basically, this info isn't relevant. Either a speech form is or isn't a language. Kashubian may only have 2,000 speakers but that doesn't make it any less of a language, and American English has 300 million speakers but that doesn't make it any more of a language.

I'd like to add one thing. The addition of separate languages to ISO 639-3 is based simply on someone submitting an application asking for this, not based on trying to determine the consensus among the experts. ISO 639-3 always errs on the side of considering a speech form as a separate language if there's any doubt. In this case, the application, which is here:, was submitted by what appears to be a Silesian nationalist NGO (ZLNŚ, Union of People of Silesian Nationality) and it cites exactly two scholarly sources, both written by Tomasz Kamusella. What this leads me to believe is that (a) a lot of Silesians firmly believe their speech form is a separate language, (b) there's little scholarly support for this.

Finally, when comparing Silesian to standard Polish to determine the separate-language-ness, perhaps the most relevant question is whether Silesian is appreciably more divergent from standard Polish than the various other Polish dialects. It is primarily for this reason that Kashubian is considered a separate language, but it does not appear to me that Silesian satisfies this, although I can't speak from personal experience.

Benwing (talk) 09:54, 11 March 2013 (UTC)


 * You wrote, quote:
 * "I'm highly suspicious of any edits that appear to be POV pushing", I'm also. Your edits is typical POV pushing. You pushing only one version - a dialect, this is not neutral.
 * "You are trying to construct the viewpoint "Silesian is a separate language"" - another lie. My viewpoint is "Silesian is a separate language or a dialect". I wrote about it above (see previous posts).
 * (...) "Silesian speakers say their speech is a separate language", yes, their point of view is also important.
 * opinion of sociolinguistic is also very important, extralinguistic criteria to decide: users of speech or/and political decisions, not only linguistic sources. Sorry.
 * "Ethnologue, Linguist List and SIL are all basing their data directly on ISO 639-3" - nonsense. Maybe, ISO code is commonly used but only ISO code, not data. This is only your OR like my OR about first sources about Silesian, I quote myself: "Formerly exist few sources about the Silesian or Polish language, where Silesian was recognized as the dialect (all as 100% not-reliable, propaganda from the Poland or Czechia or Germany), later other linguists create new books based on this works" and "they duplicate the same wrong informations".
 * "As for your claim about 500,000 Silesian speakers: Ethnologue lists 60,000" because the data by Ethnologue are from the old census. Over 500,000 Silesian speakers is data from 2011 census.
 * "The Silesian orgs themselves claim only 173,200 Silesians", again, this is old data. According to census in 2011, there are 847,000 Silesians as nation (data only from Poland).
 * (...) "whether Silesian is appreciably more divergent from standard Polish than the various other Polish dialects. It is primarily for this reason that Kashubian is considered a separate language, but it does not appear to me that Silesian satisfies this, although I can't speak from personal experience" - yes, Silesian is appreciably more divergent from standard Polish than the various other Polish dialects and I speak it from personal experience.
 * Sum up: opinions about Silesian between people are different, also between linguists (although I admit that the more linguists considered Silesian as a dialect - I do not hide this, however, not all linguists). Also important is the opinion of people using the language, the organizations of a given language, opinions by sociolinguist, opinions by linguist and other organizations, politicians etc. At this stage, you can not decide that Silesian is a dialect or Silesian is a language; in the current situation neutral version is Silesian is a language or a dialect.
 * Franek K. (talk) 15:57, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Franek, you're seriously trying my patience. You completely ignored my warning about assuming good faith and again accused me of lying. You've also clearly ignored my requests to read the basic pillars of Wikipedia (verifiability, neutrality, no original research, reliable sources), because you're using your own versions of these concepts that contradict the actual definitions, and you've ignored the places where I've pointed out these contradictions. I've been trying very hard to work with you to find a neutral version that respects your concerns but it appears to me that you aren't really interested in that; rather, you simply want to keep edit-warring until you get your personal viewpoints inserted into the articles, and clearly have a strong vested interest in doing so, as you are evidently Silesian yourself. This kind of stuff unfortunately happens all over Wikipedia w.r.t. Eastern European languages. Take a look at WP:ARBMAC, WP:ARBMAC2, WP:ARBEE, WP:ARBAA2 to see the obscene amount of blocks, bans, sanctions and general wasted time dealing with battleground-mentality editors fighting over issues related to Greece vs. Macedonia, Bosnia vs. Croatia vs. Serbia, Armenia vs. Azerbaijan, Estonian post-WWII history, Polish WWII history, Dalmatia, Kosovo, etc. etc. etc. etc. In fact the entire topic of Eastern Europe (broadly construed!) is under discretionary sanctions (see WP:ARBEE). It's just a total clusterfuck. Please don't let the same thing happen here. Benwing (talk) 02:28, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Explain it, precisely:
 * First: I assume the good faith, but you, not. You still accuse me of POV pushing, but you pushing only one POV-version - a dialect. Please, read carefully your posts. Where is your "assume the good faith"?
 * Secondly, you wrote, quote: "again accused me of lying" but you still lie, for example: "You completely ignored my warning about assuming good faith", "You've also clearly ignored my requests to read the basic pillars of Wikipedia...", whole paragraph from "it appears to me that you aren't (...)... Silesian yourself". These are lies from your latest post but each of your post is the same, always write a lie about me. And also, you're breaking of Wikipedia:No personal attacks, please do not write about me.
 * Thirdly, you wrote, quote: "I've been trying very hard to work with you to find a neutral version" - I, also. I've been trying very hard to work with you to find a neutral version, I still trying.
 * Let me repeat once again: you pushing only one version - a dialect, this is not neutral, this is POV. No matter, whether you are a Silesian, Pole or American, opinions about Silesian between people are different, also between linguists (although I admit that the more linguists considered Silesian as a dialect - I do not hide this, however, not all linguists). Also important is the opinion of people using the language, the organizations of a given language, opinions by sociolinguist, opinions by linguist/other organizations, politicians etc. At this stage, you can not decide that Silesian is a dialect or Silesian is a language; in the current situation neutral version is Silesian is a language or a dialect. And again, my viewpoint is neutral - "Silesian is a separate language or a dialect". I not POV-pushing not neutral version of "Silesian is a (only) separate language". Remember this. Franek K. (talk) 17:16, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Benwing, congratulations, you made ​​a typical vandalism : you remove a opinion of linguistic organizations, political issue and few sources. It does not matter what the source is more important, other opinions is also important. General sociolinguist sources assume that whether something is a language or a dialect of the language, extralinguistic criteria to decide: users of speech or/and political decisions. My "assume good faith" for your edits, gone. You pushing only one POV-version - a dialect. If any source have a different opinion, you delete them. Franek K. (talk) 17:34, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

I must object to Benwing's claim that the Lach dialects have nothing to do with Silesian - of course they have, no matter whether you view Silesian as a dialect of Polish or not, if Lach is the transitional dialect between Czech and Polish, then the dialects that border this area to the east are the Silesian dialects! And I didn't have to take long to find a source which recognises this:. - filelakeshoe (t / c) 15:10, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, Lach dialects is part of Silesian but Benwing pushing only one POV-version - a dialect of Polish and Lach dialect as dialect of the Czech language (according to few sources), begins stir. So, Benwing will delete the data about Lach + sources, identifying it as not important and also opinions by linguistic organizations and political issue for Silesian, + sources, all data that may disqualify his madness of Silesian as a dialect of Polish. Franek K. (talk) 17:34, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
 * For the record, I wasn't saying "Lach dialects are Silesian" or "...Czech", what I am saying is "it's not as sodding simple as that". Anyone arguing that one view is right and the other is wrong is running into a brick wall. - filelakeshoe (t / c) 19:12, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, it's not as sodding simple as that but I just described the situation (edits) by Benwing. Data about Lach dialect, opinions by linguistic organizations, political issue for Silesian begins stir, so, Benwing will delete the data about Lach, opinions by linguistic organizations, political issue for Silesian + sources, all data that may disqualify his madness of Silesian as a dialect of Polish. Franek K. (talk) 19:35, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Once again, Franek, please assume good faith and stop with the personal attacks. In this case referring to any of my views as "madness" is simply not cool. One more of these and I'm going to file a report against you.
 * Filelakeshoe, I'm not saying "one view is right, one view is wrong", I'm saying that the authoritative sources clearly represent one view, therefore this is the view we should reflect by default. Franek doesn't lake that and in fact has a vested interest in the opposite view, so he's doing everything he can to push Wikipedia towards his preferred view. As for your view that the Lach dialects are part of the Silesian dialect group, you need sources for that, and you need much stronger sources to say that the Lach dialects are part of a putative "Silesian language". Your quoted sources don't say either of these things at all. Rather, they say explicitly that Lach dialects are Czech dialects, and that Polish Silesian is a Polish dialect. All they say is that there is "overlap" between Lach and Polish Silesian. Furthermore, you start out with the incorrect premise "Lach is the transitional dialect between Czech and Polish" when in reality it should read "Lach is a transitional dialect between Czech and Polish" -- although even that is somewhat debated.
 * Furthermore, what you "must object" to isn't actually what I said. I said that the issue of the Lach dialects and their relation to (Polish) Silesian has nothing to do with whether Silesian is a language or a dialect, and this is surely true. Hence, inserting info about the Lach dialects into a discussion of the status of Silesian isn't helpful and just adds unnecessary additional complication. Benwing (talk) 10:06, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Neutral and compromise version. I left your paragraph about Silesians and source - Kamusella (though I prefer to remove this), I remove info about ISO because it duplicates the data - there are whole section of Detailed list with ISO 639 codes for this data, added opinion by linguistic organisations and political issue + sources. Family tree of languages, according to linguistic organisations: West Slavic -> Lechitic -> Silesian. Franek K. (talk) 11:37, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
 * New edition, temporarily without a change in the tree of languages, added only opinion by linguistic organisations and political issue (about regional language) + sources. If this data will be removed, it automatically will be treated as vandalism and invite administrators to this problem. I understand, you have a different opinion about Silesian but data and sources is data and sources. Removing data and sources from Wikipedia because they have a different opinion (particularly in contentious issues, for example Slavic languages) is vandalism. Franek K. (talk) 13:07, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Requesting lifting of indefinite semiprotection
Please see: Requests for page protection. 84.203.43.181 (talk) 18:56, 7 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Probably the right thing to do, but what are you planning on changing? We're still having disputes with logged-in editors.  — kwami (talk) 19:01, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Personally, I have no immediate plans to change anything, I just happened to notice the long-standing semi-protection. Otherwise I'd have started with a requested edit.  (Glad to see you managed to find your way here, btw, despite having reverted my courtesy notification on your talk page with the somewhat mysterious edit summary "no such page".)  84.203.43.181 (talk) 19:08, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I followed the link, didn't see anything, so I came here.
 * There are a few other problems w Slavic, but mostly it's Serbo-Croatian, and those pages are still suffering chronic edit wars. We could try it and see how it goes.  — kwami (talk) 23:21, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

"Scrambling to revive their dying language"
I do not agree with the notion about "Czech writers, scrambling to revive their dying language". The situation of Czech was not the situation of a dying language. By the end of 18th century, nobility and burgers spoke predominantly German and French. Czech fell into a disuse in a higher social strata and Czech national revival was about restore prestige of the language among rich and educated elite. But still majority of inhabitants in Bohemia and Moravia spoke Czech. In that time, Czech was spoken by no less than 2 million speakers who transmitted this language to their children. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.176.255.56 (talk) 10:55, 19 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Its phrasing is a bit weird and unsourced, so I'll remove it. --JorisvS (talk) 13:06, 19 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Anyhow, what is meant is that the literary language was "dying", not the Czech "spoken by no less than 2 million speakers who", for their most part, were not alphabetized in their native language. Eklir (talk) 18:35, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Slavic languages
Are here any students or graduates with a degree in linguistics? Your help would be needed on Silesian language / Lechitic languages / West Slavic languages--Sobiepan (talk) 08:07, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Slavic languages ?
Serbo-Croatian is not language, it is group different languages. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.0.10.67 (talk) 13:48, 13 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Well, that's a matter of opinion apparently. Many linguists see Serbian and Croatian as dialects of the same language, however some other linguists think of these as different languages. This ambiguity is a result of the fact there is no clear dividing line between a language and a dialect. "There is no universally accepted criterion for distinguishing a language from a dialect. A number of rough measures exist, sometimes leading to contradictory results. The distinction is therefore subjective and depends on the user's frame of reference." according to Britannica. DaMatriX 15:17, 29 November 2014 (UTC)
 * There is no linguistic ambiguity for Serbian and Croatian: they're standardized varieties of one language, with the differences roughly being those between American and British English. There are those, however, who would try to blow up the differences to "prove" that they are different languages. Although there is no clear-cut dividing line, the differences have to be more substantial. --JorisvS (talk) 20:17, 29 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Yes, but the same is true for the continental Scandinavian languages and they ARE considered distinct. DaMatriX 14:02, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Not quite. Danish is more distinct, with mutual intelligibility distinctly impeded, as well as several "dialects" of Swedish. I am insufficiently familiar with standard Norwegian vs. standard Swedish to say how big the differences are, but mutual intelligibility is basically unimpeded, which suggest that they are, in fact, basically the same language. This also suggests that they have historically been considered distinct for the wrong reasons. Some speakers of Serbo-Croatian would have us follow such non-linguistic factors and consider their own speeches distinct (note that they tend to reinforce that by linguistic "comparisons" to "prove" that their speeches are sufficiently distinct, even though that does not hold up to scrutiny). --JorisvS (talk) 14:14, 30 November 2014 (UTC)


 * You convinced me :) So, one single Serbo-Croatian language it is! DaMatriX 20:00, 1 December 2014 (UTC)


 * For reasons of consistency, if Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin are lumped together, then so should Upper and Lower Sorbian, as well as Bulgarian and Macedonian. They are all mutually intelligible amongst themselves.

North Slavic languages
Why there is no such way for North Slavic languages?


 * What do you mean? &mdash;IJzeren Jan Uszkiełtu?  01:26, 26 November 2014 (UTC)


 * I can't say you made yourself clear my friend DaMatriX 20:01, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 15 March 2015
For example the Freising monuments show a language that contains some phonetic and lexical elements peculiar to Slovene dialects (e.g. rhotacism, the word krilatec). The Freising monuments are the first Latin-script continuous text in a Slavic language.

The words Freising monuments in the above example should be changed to Freising manuscripts. This is what the author(s) of the linked reference of this document identifies it as such.

--Fdmuchow (talk) 17:53, 15 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done -- Sam Sailor Talk! 21:06, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

pistole
Wiktionary give two versions, Czech and Italian.Xx236 (talk) 05:47, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 8 December 2015
There is an imprecise description in the Linguistic History paragraph, point 14. The liquids developed to *ro, *lo, *re, *le only in the Lechitic branch, in Czech and Slovak they developed to *ra *la *re *le similarly to South Slavic. (Polish gród, Czech hrad etc.) See for ex. the Wikipedia article Slavic liquid metathesis and pleophony. Please correct this point. Zaph1 (talk) 14:46, 8 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. sst✈(discuss) 04:27, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 30 January 2016
Please change the color of slovak in the map in the introduction because it is the same as the belarussian one and can create confusion.

187.234.211.207 (talk) 22:34, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: The file you want to change is at c:File:Slavic languages in colours.PNG. Bazj (talk) 20:20, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Sorbian and Rusyn
Hey all, were Sorbian (not Serbian!) and Rusyn deliberately excluded from the infobox at the start of the article? If there was no particular reason behind it, I'd like to add them in under West and East, respectively. Interlaker (talk) 14:42, 25 February 2016 (UTC)


 * I suggest you do so, Rusyn is recognized as an official minority language, and the Sorbian dialects are the subject of plenty of scholarship. μηδείς (talk) 01:56, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Typo in the introduction - a native English speaker needs to proofread this whole article.
originary from Eastern Europe

should be "originally" not "originary"

I would volunteer to proofread this whole article, but I can't even edit the intro.

There are numerous phrases which need to be cleaned up and the reference list made more robust.

I can be reached on Facebook Marti Masters in Finland (native American)
 * ✅ for the lead. --JorisvS (talk) 20:23, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 14 April 2016
Why Slavic languages is protected? It has been a long time for being protected so non-registered users do not have chances to edit the article. Can you please try to unprotect the article: Slavic languages? I would appreciated it. thank you

66.167.141.174 (talk) 08:38, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

If you want to suggest a change, please request this in the form "Please replace XXX with YYY" or "Please add ZZZ between PPP and QQQ". Please also cite reliable sources to back up your request, without which no information should be added to, or changed in, any article. - Arjayay (talk) 09:55, 14 April 2016 (UTC)
 * ❌ requests for reducing page protection must be made at WP:Requests for page protection

Map - USA?
What slavic language is a "recognized minority" language in the USA?!?! The USA doesn't even have any language legislation!!!!! --Kevlar (talk • contribs) 15:03, 22 March 2016 (UTC)
 * "Recognized minority" doesn't include only federal recognitions. Russian is a recognized minority in the state of New York according to election documents. - Alumnum (talk) 14:53, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I've found the source in the Russian language article: - Alumnum (talk) 14:59, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

I am actually more worried about the third category. What do they mean by "at least one Slavic language is spoken in this country"? I guess it would be hard to find a country where not even a few Slavic speakers can be found, so what's the criterion? Let me add that, for example, the Netherlands are gray on the map, while there are hundreds of thousands of Poles and Bulgarians living here. &mdash;IJzeren Jan Uszkiełtu?  16:43, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
 * The criterion I used was looking at each of the ten largest Slavic languages' infoboxes (which, I guess, are properly sourced) and finding out which countries are listed as having significant numbers of speakers. - Alumnum (talk) 17:58, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the explanation. Yet, I would strongly suggest you to redo the map without this entire third category. Those infoboxes are not exactly the most reliable source, and the question what numbers are significant seems to be entirely arbitrary. &mdash;IJzeren Jan Uszkiełtu?  20:10, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
 * So may we use a more objective inclusion criterion, like a number of speakers (let's say: at least ten thousand) or a percentage (let's say: at least one percent of the country's population)? - Alumnum (talk) 11:41, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Number of speakers would be a bad idea, because 10,000 in China is not exactly the same thing as 10,000 in Liechtenstein. One percent – I guess that could be a criterion, except that I don't know in how far those data are available at all. BTW, I noticed another error: Germany is coloured as category 3, but Upper and Lower Sorbian are both recognised regional (minority) languages there. &mdash;IJzeren Jan Uszkiełtu?  19:36, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
 * That's because I searched only about the ten largest Slavic languages, thus not including minor languages like Upper and Lower Sorbian (I have added this information yesterday on the image description). As for the unrecognized minorities, I'm going to find out more precise information about the 1%s. - Alumnum (talk) 12:08, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I've found data evidencing 1% of Slavic languages speakers in the following countries marked with "non-recognized minorities":


 * Canada: According to the 2006 census, Polish, Russian and Ukrainian together were spoken by 608,565 people, or approximately 1.92% of a population of 31,612,897 inhabitants.


 * Australia: According to the 2001 census, Serbian, Croatian, Polish and Russian together were spoken by 221,335 people, or approximately 1.18% of a population of 18,769,249 inhabitants.


 * Cyprus: According to the 2011 census, Russian and Bulgarian together were spoken by 39,372 people, or approximately 4.6% of 838,897 inhabitants.


 * Greece: There is a significant number of Macedonian speakers in northern Greece, but the data is considered difficult to ascertain. According to this and this, estimatives stand between 20,000 and 250,000 (there are more sources here). That would mean between 0.18% and 2.2% of Greece ~11,000,000 inhabitants population.


 * United Kingdom: According to the 2011 census, Polish was spoken by 546,000 people or approximately 1% of 63,181,775 inhabitants.

I've found no data for Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Chile, South Africa, New Zealand, Turkey, Portugal, France, Ireland and Sweden, so I'm going to remove these countries from the third category and leave them grey. Later I'll add these sources on the image. Now I will search for the oficially recognized minorities. Just give me a time. - Alumnum (talk) 13:48, 13 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Okay, now I have uploaded the map AND the description. I have added all the sources in the description, created a new category for countries where a Slavic language is co-official with a language from another family, and removed countries I couldn't find proper sources. I have also added a legend in the infobox informing that sources and further information can be found on the map's description. Any other concern? - Alumnum (talk) 12:13, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

autochtonous Balkan languages
In recent times the scholarly synthesis of linguistic, archaeological, genetic and anthropological data under the name of Paleolithic Continuity Theory treats the Southern Slavonic languages as autohtonous Balkan languages.

I find this information dubious. Could you please indicate the source of this information? Any reference? Boraczek 23:12, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * I received no answer, so I'm removing the quoted paragraph until some substantiation is presented. Boraczek 23:31, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Why didnt you add Bosnian language on the list of slavic languages????!!!! Adilovic1 (talk) 10:17, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

Error in "Branches" Section
It states that "Similarly, Polish shares transitional features with both western Ukrainian and Belarusian dialects.". That is a false statement. Ukrainian and Belarusian share transitional feature WITH POLISH, not Polish sharing transitional features with western Ukrainian and Belarusian. Polish is older than the Belarusian and Ukrainian tongue and as a result of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Poland had influence on Belarusian and Ukrainian, so tell me how Polish shares transitional features with them when Polish was a language that existed far before them? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.125.144.117 (talk) 07:42, 15 October 2016 (UTC)
 * You are understanding the word "share" to have a directionality, an asymmetry, that it doesn't have. It doesn't matter what order the sharers are listed in. Yes, if one is speaking of the owner of a thing sharing that thing with others ("John shared his cookies with his classmates"), then it's significant, but no primacy is being given to Denmark when we say "Denmark shares a border with Germany". Largoplazo (talk) 11:25, 15 October 2016 (UTC)
 * I just reread your observation and realized that, even when "share" is used with a directional connotation, the text as written does convey exactly what you claim it should. If the features belonged to Polish first, then it's thoroughly correct to say it has "shared" then with other languages that adopted them from Polish. Largoplazo (talk) 12:44, 15 October 2016 (UTC)

Please replace [Slavic dictionaries on Slavic Net] with [The Big Slavic Dictionary]
Hello, the External links contains this link: Slavic dictionaries on Slavic Net - but this is only serbian-english dictionary. I propose to replace this link with this link: [The Big Slavic Dictionary](https://slavic.world) - non-commercial Slavic words dictionary — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jurij17 (talk • contribs) 11:31, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
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Kajkavian language
Dear editor,

I would request an edit for "Detailed list", for "South Slavic languages" in the "Western Section" to include "Kajkavian language" since the language has been officially recognized by ISO and was given a code "ISO 639-3 code: kjv". The language was before considered a dialect of Serbo-Croatian, but that's completely incorrect since the language is only partially mutually intelligible with Serbo-Croatian and it has high mutual intelligibility with neighboring Slovene language. For further information, you can go to Wikipedia site for Kajkavian or visit http://www.zvirek.net/Kajkavskijezik/en/ where you can find everything about our language.

(Edit)

I'm not sure how to explain, but here is the link from Glottolog http://glottolog.org/resource/languoid/id/kajk1237 with the classification of Kajkavian in "Western South Slavic" languages. I think this is a reliable source to include Kajkavian on Wikipedia page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.52.159.112 (talk) 11:43, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

(Edit2)

I'm still waiting for changes to be made. If you need any further information, please leave a feedback. Awaiting your response.

Thank you for your consideration. 84.52.159.112 (talk) 02:02, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Red question icon with gradient background.svg Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate.      Spintendo       08:07, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

Add a section on Differentiation
I'd like to add the following section on the language tree, translated from the Russian version of the page, into the Differentiation section of the page:
 * Yes check.svg Done I've appended this section to the end of the Differentiation section. I am ignorant on this topic, so if there are objections or I missed something please feel free to ping me. Bradv 🍁  04:18, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

Kassian, A. Dybo
In September 2015, Alexei Kassian and Anna Dybo have published, as a part of interdisciplinary study of Slavic ethnogenesis, a lexicostatistical classification of Slavic languages. It was built using qualitative 110-word Swadesh lists that were compiled according to the standards of the Global Lexicostatistical Database project and processed using modern phylogenetic algorithms.

The resulting dated tree complies with the traditional expert views on the Slavic group structure. Kassian-Dybo’s tree suggests that Proto-Slavic first diverged into three branches: Eastern, Western and Southern. The Proto-Slavic break-up is dated back ca. 100 A.D., which correlates with the archaeological assessment of Slavic population in the early 1st millennium A.D. being spread on a large territory and already not being monolithic. Then, in the 5th and 6th centuries A.D., these three Slavic branches almost simultaneously sub-divided into more taxa, which corresponds to the fast spread of the Slavs through the Eastern Europe and Balkans at the second half of the 1 st millennium A.D. (the so-called Slavicization of Europe).

The Slovenian language was excluded from the analysis, as both Ljubljana koine and Literary Slovenian show mixed lexical features of Southern and Western Slavic languages (which could possibly indicate the Western Slavic origin of Slovenian, which for a long time was being influenced on the part of the neighboring Serbo-Croatian dialects), and the quality Swadesh lists were not yet collected for Slovenian dialects. Because of scarcity or unreliability of data, the study also did not cover the so-called Old Novgordian dialect, the Polabian language and some other Slavic lects.

195.9.215.138 (talk) 07:14, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

The best known Slavic word
"The best known Slavic word in almost all European languages is probably vodka" Probably??? Without any reference?

How about robot?

Robot is definitely more common worldwide.
 * I guess one could argue that most people don't realise robot is Slavonic, but everyone knows vodka is. Malick78 (talk) 10:30, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

Slavic vs. Slavonic
I would like to see comments on the uses of the words "slavic" vs. "slavonic". It seems to me that "slavic" has a much broader application, and that "slavonic" would correctly apply only in certain specific circumstances. Eclecticology


 * Comrie ("The Slavonic Languages", Routledge) states that Slavonic is the preferred term among scholars. Based on this, we should move the article to "Slavonic languages" and put a redirect at "Slavic languages". Any naysayers? (And if you protest, please explain how you are competent to stand against the experts in the field so we don't get accusations of anti-elitism). Crculver 03:02, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * You're going to get a lot of push-back from those who insist that WP page names must be the most popular usage, and not the most authoritative. Google search result counts will be held up as The Holy Word.  &mdash;Michael Z. 2005-01-24 06:23 Z 


 * You see both uses in scholarly work on the subject; the difference is, I think, primarily geographic. "Slavic" tends to be used by American Slavists, "Slavonic" by British and Australian Slavists.  But the meaning of the two terms is identical.  Any other Slavists out there care to support/dispute this?  --Neil


 * Although I am not a Slavist, I support the use of the word "slavonic". (And if you go deeper, it is more correct to write "slovenist" - from the self-name of the ancient Slavs)Noraskulk (talk) 18:25, 5 August 2020 (UTC).

Influence on neighboring languages
Links only to max Fasmer, a marginal nationalist. We need to fix it urgently. Noraskulk (talk) 18:50, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

Evolution
I propose first mention of vernacular in this article to be linkinked to explanation in appropriate arcticle as I show here. The term vernacular (and it's etymology etc.) is not known to everybody so to link it so seem appropriate. I can't do that myself because of page protection. --Marjan Tomki SI (talk) 04:54, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
 * You're right, done. PanSlav 19:38, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

notes on history
I only want to point, that:
 * 1) Slavic scientists usually use words like ,,peacefuly assimilated" instead of ,,conquered" :) Just like Balts do the same when speaking about Ugrofinns
 * 2) There is some wild theory that Slavs are those Balts, who left their homeland and where conquered by Huns etc. I've read that once in one, single article.
 * 3) Note about Slavs pledging allegiance to Emperor is irrevelant, since only small group of Slavs, (only from Western branch) did that, while expansion was done mainly by Eastern branch. I would suggest removing that sentence or putting more about other political entities which tried to overrun Slavic tribes plus info about states Slvs do.


 * 1) anyway HRE is anachronic, since the term started to be used in, IIRC some XIII century.

IIRC == If I Remember Correctly. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 150.254.31.xxx (talk • contribs) 14:17, 13 December 2001 (UTC)


 * What's "HRE"? Both of the words "conquered" and "peacefully" detract from the neutral point of view, though usually from opposite sides of an issue. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Eclecticology (talk • contribs) 12:14, 1 March 2002 (UTC)

under occupation
I've added a bit on the development of Eastern Slavic language under foreign rule in the Russian Federation, why was it removed? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.19.152.30 (talk • contribs) 06:09, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 24 November 2020
Spelling mistake, change: 'intro' to 'into'.

"The Slavic languages are conventionally (that is, also on the basis of extralinguistic features) divided intro three subgroups:"

Corrected: "The Slavic languages are conventionally (that is, also on the basis of extralinguistic features) divided into three subgroups:" 89.100.158.25 (talk) 12:59, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done. Jirka.h23 (talk) 13:10, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Removing picture
Removed the picture since it contained "serbo-croat" a language that no longer is accepted by either history or countries. The article needs to have an updated picture. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.209.175.110 (talk • contribs) 23:59, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Yes, this is completely true, but picture somehow re-appeared. So, I've marked it dubious. Readers are advised to check pages about Croatian language and Serbian language to see the origin of this so called "serbo-croat" language. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.131.68.35 (talk • contribs) 19:06, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
 * The Slavic languages.jpg image was long ago removed from the page. Jirka.h23 (talk) 13:23, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Rusyn and "Ruthenian languages"
, the position of Rusyn as a dialect of Ukrainian or a separate language from it is not clear-cut, as the following citations from Rusyn language shows:

There are several controversial theories about the nature of Rusyn as a language or dialect. Czech, Slovak, and Hungarian, as well as American and some Polish and Serbian linguists treat it as a distinct language (with its own ISO 639-3 code), whereas other scholars (especially in Ukraine but also Poland, Serbia, and Romania) treat it as a Southwestern dialect of Ukrainian.

So saying "the majority of scientific community regard it as dialect" is false. The very source you keep adding to justify listing Ukrainian and Rusyn next to each other, the Encylopedia Britannica, states Carpathian, also called Carpatho-Rusyn, has sometimes been considered a language apart. (see ).

Moreover, your addition of Ruthenian language as a super category from Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Rusyn is misleading - please show some evidence that linguistics consider all three "Ruthenian languages". Ruthenian is an extinct literary variety of East Slavic now claimed by both Belarusian and Ukrainian as their ancestor, but this does not make either of them "Ruthenian languages" unless reliable sources state that they are. This is not included in the Encyclopedia Britannica article you keep citing.--Ermenrich (talk) 12:49, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

The new map
I finally posted a version of the map according to the references and requests I got. If anything more needs to be done on it, and if it is possible to comply, I will gladly adapt it. However, I do hope it is better than the first version for everybody... Robin des Bois &#9816; ➳ &#9993; 00:13, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)


 * One more thing that I happened to notice... there should be areas with yellow stripes for Polish in western Ukraine. There are at least twice as many Poles in Ukraine than there are Slovaks in Vojvodina, so this seems worthy of rendering on the map. --Joy &#91;shallot&#93;   21:36, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * An additional point regarding the map: The city of Daugavpils in Latvia and its surroundings are predominantly Russian-speaking, and require at least striped graphics. Virtually all public business in the city is carried out in Russian, with the exception of the University and certain government departments. The city is unique in Latvia in having openly Russian street signs and advertisements. C Bartlett, 06 May 2006

newest map
Image talk:Slavic languages.jpg

The map contains numerous mistakes. Click the map for more info. Boraczek 10:23, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The map was corrected :-) Boraczek 14:49, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)

difference from Baltic

 * The Slavic group of languages is completely different from the neighboring Baltic group

They're not "completely different", as they're both IE, and probably in closer genetic relation to each other than to any other group of IO languages. --Taw

What does "completely different" mean? Difference in languages is often only a question of degrees. Eclecticology

There are two ways to explain the similarities between Slavic and Baltic languages: Some linguists claim that there was no Proto-Balto-Slavic language. They explain all the similarities in the second way. They point at some structural differences between Baltic and Slavic languages. On the other hand, numerous similarities between these two groups support the Proto-Balto-Slavic theory. Boraczek 11:36, 28 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * 1) the common ancestor, Proto-Balto-Slavic;
 * 2) coexistence of ancient Slavic and Baltic tribes in the same land (the geographic closeness made some common processes possible).


 * Who are those "some linguists"? -- Naive cynic 21:48, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Frankly, I can't remember who the most prominent supporters of that theory are. But I'll check it and let you know in a few days, OK? Boraczek 14:52, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Thank you. It will hopefully help to deweaselize the wording of the article somewhat. -- Naive cynic 02:31, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Well, the one who questioned the Proto-Balto-Slavic theory was Antoine Meillet. Since then, there is no consensus among linguists whether Proto-Balto-Slavic existed. Boraczek 09:09, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 11 November 2021
I would like for " :** Old Church Slavonic language " in the section "Branches" to be changed to " :** Old Church Slavonic " because it is already known that it is a language. None of the other entries have "language" appended to them, so why should the entry for Old Church Slavonic be any different? 98.179.127.59 (talk) 05:35, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
 * ✅ ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 11:54, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

Map of Slavic language distribution
Why is Ukraine not counted as a Slavic-speaking European country? 73.222.109.86 (talk) 02:31, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
 * In which map? In these two maps, it is: File:Slavic_europe.svg, File:Slavic_languages_tree_and_map_from_Kushniarevich_article.png. –Austronesier (talk) 09:36, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Kosovo
The map is displayed with a caption that claims that the colored countries are the ones in which a Slavic language is used as a national language.

According to national language, a national language is de facto or de jure connected to a country. Since the map displays Kosovo as a separate country, shouldn't it be colored in aswell, taking into account the fact that Serbian is one of the two official languages? ImStevan (talk) 04:09, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Belarusian
Belarusan is the name form used by ethnologue.com and its Summer Institute of Linguistics in its development of the "SIL" codes. It also has been accepted by the Rosetta Project at http://www.rosettaproject.org:8080/live/search/detailedlanguagerecord?ethnocode=RUW. Both of these organizations cross reference the other versions to "belarusan". — Preceding unsigned comment added by Eclecticology (talk • contribs) 16:31, 7 March 2002 (UTC)
 * I know SIL use it, and I normally attach great (but not exclusive) weight to their findings: on this occasion, though, they and the Rosetta folk are out on a limb, and in a tiny minority: the Engish form used in Belarus(i)an official (and most other) sources is Belarus(s)ian, with one "s" I think in the majority. But there's definitely an "i", unless you want to reject the way they and most others describe it. User:David Parker — Preceding undated comment added 16:44, 7 March 2002 (UTC)

Re: compromise - yes, please: but I don't feel at liberty to compromise the way speakers of the language choose (with the assent it seems of the overwhelming majority of non-speakers) to describe it. I'm all for including alternative renditions, but your suggestion crucially leaves the future article on the language as "Belorusan". Now I've a lot of respect for SIL and other experts in the field who may have their own spellings, but this is an international project, and I can't accept that a minority of western linguists should so dictate the name of a language, especially when their version is so at odds with related adjectival forms (Russian, Rusyn, Ruthene - nowhere do we have Rusa-/Russa-). User:David Parker — Preceding undated comment added 23:52, 7 March 2002 (UTC)


 * As a compromise, I've changed back to Belarusan in only one of the two places in the article where the name appears. After spending a couple hours googling on this, I'm no better off than when I started.  The most influential body on the net to use Belarusan is the US State Department, for what that's worth.  The English-B*** dictionary page, at http://ceti.pl/~hajduk/ to which many links eventually only makes matters worse by using both forms on its home page.  I've e-mailed them asking for an explanation.  As long as the experts have both versians on their page why can't Wikipedia.  At least we seem to agree on the other three points of contention in this single name.  It's "Be-" instead  of "Bie-" or "Bye-"; it's "Bela-" instead of "Belo-"; and it's a single "s".  Perhaps the whole matter should be revisited when there is clearer information. Eclecticology — Preceding undated comment added 00:05, 8 March 2002 (UTC)