Slavic microlanguages

Aegean Macedonian (македонски език от Егей), South Slavic, Greece

Aegean Macedonian is a variety of the Macedonian language spoken by Slavic Macedonians of Greece. For a long time these were considered Bulgarian, however there were many linguists whose opinion was that -

Aegean Macedonian dialects were different from Bulgarian. Those include Antoine Meillet, Blaže Koneski, and Victor Friedman. Their opinion was that:

Aegean Macedonian dialects are transitional to Bulgarian, as South Slavic languages form a dialect continuum. Here you can see the Slavic dialects of Greece. Pink is Macedonian, purple is Pomak Bulgarian which I will talk about later. The dialect of Serres is transitional.

Sample text in Aegean Macedonian:

Pomak Bulgarian (πομακική γλώσσα, помашки език, Pomakça)
South Slavic, Thrace region

Pomaks are Muslim Bulgarians native to the Thrace region, which is divided between Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey. Most Pomaks call their language Pomak, but many of them call it just Bulgarian.

Pomak belongs to the Smolyan subdialect of the Rup dialects of the Bulgarian language spoken at the very south of Bulgaria. You can see it here:

Pomak hasnt been codified yet, so its speakers use Cyrillic, Greek and Latin alphabets to write it. Greek Pomaks have showed most effort to codify their language using the Greek script. A few schools in Greece teach Pomak.

Here’s a sample text in Pomak in the Greek script:

Banat Bulgarian (Palćena balgarsćija jázić or Banátsća balgarsćija jázić), South Slavic, Serbia and Romania

Banat Bulgarians are Catholic Bulgarians who emigrated to the Banat region in the late 17th century. They were not catholicized by Austria-Hungary, but rather are-

descended from the Paulicians from Northern Bulgaria who fled after the failure of Chiprovtsi uprising. It is also a part of the Rup dialects like Pomak.
It isnt written in Cyrillic but rather uses a special variety of Gaj’s Latin alphabet. It was codified as early as 1866,

and is used widely on television and other media, which distinguishes it from other Bulgarian dialects. It has lots of Serbian, Romanian, Hungarian, and Ottoman Turkish loanwords.

Sample text in Banat Bulgarian:

Molise Croatian/Slavic (na-našu or na-našo), South Slavic, Italy

Molise Croats/Slavs are Slavs whose ancestors arrived from Dalmatia in the 15th&16th centuries while fleeing from the Ottoman Turks. When you ask them where their ancestors came from, they say “z one ban(d)e mora”

meaning “from the other side of the sea”. They consider themselves to be Slavic Italians, however some of them call themselves Zlavi or Šćavuni/Skjavuni (Slavs) and Harvati (Croats). They dont call their language Slavic or Croatian, but rather just “ours” (na našo, na našu)

Molise Slavic is Shtokavian of the Ikavian dialect, with some Chakavian influences.
It is important as their language is an example of Serbo-Croatian that has no influences from Ottoman Turkish. It only shows heavy influence from Italian.

Sample text in Molise Slavic:

Burgenland Croatian (gradišćanskohrvatski jezik), South Slavic, Austria

Croats arrived in Austria during the 15th&16th centuries running away from the Ottomans.

Burgenland Croatian is a variety of Chakavian. It is unknown where exactly they came from, but this is the theory:

The Burgenland Croats developed their own orthography during the counter-reformation, however, assimilation soon followed with the language being banned from use in churches and schools. Hungarians also implemented Magyarization later on. Burgenland Croats were persecuted during-

WW1 as well as by the Nazis in WW2 who tried to assimilate them into Germans/Austrians.

It is also important at it shows no Ottoman influences.

Nowadays it is used in publishing, TV, education and media.

Sample text in Burgenland Croatian:

(will continue after this tweet, Twitter wont let me add more tweets at a time)

Prekmurje Slovene (prekmurščina), South Slavic, Slovenia

Prekmurje Slovene developed from the language of the Carantanian Slavs who settled the area in the 9th century. Prekmurje has always been isolated from the rest of Slovenia, resulting in Prekmurje Slovene being quite-

different from other Slovene speeches. Prekmurje developed local written tradition under the influence of Protestantism and Lutheranism. Some Prekmurje words can be found in the 9th century Freising manuscripts, the first literary work in a Slavic language written in the Latin-

script, and also the oldest Slovene document overall.

It belong to the Pannonian group of dialects, which is shown in yellow on the map below. It is akin to Kajkavian dialects of Croatian, but mutual intelligibility is low.

Sample text in Prekmurje Slovene:

Resian (rozajanski jazek) South Slavic, Italy

Resian is one of the languages spoken by Slovenes in Italy. It is spoken in the region of Udine.

Because of its isolation, it is different from other Slovene dialects and it also has its written form. Many of its speakers consider it to be a separate language. However scholars believe it’s transitional between the Carinthian (red) and Littoral (blue) dialects of Slovene.

It has retained many archaisms lost in standard Slovene and most other Slovene dialects, such as the aorist and also the definite article, te for masculine nouns and ta for feminine, which only Macedonian, Bulgarian, and some Serbian dialects preserve.

Sample text in Resian:

Venetian Slovene, South Slavic, Italy
(This is the last Slovene one, I promise)

Venetian Slovenes live in a couple dozen of villages in the northern-eastern part of the Italian province of Udine. Unlike the Prekmurje dialect, the writingin the Venetian dialect was based on -

standard Slovene. There are about 9 thousand Venetian Slovenes in Italy and their dialect is printed in various periodicals.

Sample text in Venetian Slovene:

Ruthenian (русиньскый язык), East Slavic, Ukraine/Slovakia/Poland/Serbia

Classification of Ruthenian is quite problematic. Most Ukrainian linguists consider it Ukrainian, while most Serbian, Hungarian, American, Czech and Slovak linguists consider it a separate language.

Ruthenian spoken in Serbia and Croatia and Ruthenian spoken in other regions differ greatly in grammar, so sometimes they are distinguished as Carpatho-Rusyn and Pannonian Rusyn. There are a number of newspapers and media in Ruthenian.

Sample texts in Carpatho-Rusyn and Pannonian Rusyn:

Halshan (halšanski jazyk), East Slavic, Lithuania

Halshan is spoken by Belarusians of Lithuania. There’s about 50 thousand of them and they live in the south-eastern parts of the country. The language debates driven by the changes in the 1980s and 1990s involved the Society-

of Slavic-speaking Lithuanians led by Eduard Satkevičius, who proposed codifying standard languages of the Belarusian, Polish and Lithuanian dialects of south eastern Lithuania (namely Halshan, Vich, and Dzukian, see Vich below). It fell out of written use by 1992.

Sample text in Halshan:

West Polesian (заходышнополіська волода), East Slavic, Belarus/Ukraine/Poland

West Polesian is spoken by the Poleshuks. It is heavily influenced by the neighbouring languages, with about 50% of the language’s composition being only Polesian.

West Polesian is used in everyday speech, but there has been an effort to codify it. However it received no support and was largely unsuccessful. Those who supported the movement were accused of promoting Yotvingian separatism.

Sample text in West Polesian:

Vich (vičski janzyk), West Slavic, Lithuania

Vich is spoken by the Poles of Lithuania. It is estimated that about 200 thousand Poles live in Lithuania. Once again, Eduard Satkevičius wanted to replace standard Polish used by Poles in Lithuania with a standardised Vich dialect,

however publishing in Vich was largely discounted by 1992.

Sample text in Vich:

(once again had to break the thread because fucking Twitter)

Lach (laščina), West Slavic, Czech Republic

Lach is transitional between Czech and Polish, with Czech linguists claiming it as a Czech dialect and Polish linguists assigning Polish origin to Lach.

The writer Óndra Łysohorsky is the best known writer in a Lechian dialects and promoted the standardisation of the Lach speech. However he was accused of separatism and printing in Lach was banned. Nowadays most young people speak Czech and older generations speak Lach.

Sample text in Lach:

Kashubian (kaszëbsczi jãzëk), West Slavic, Poland

Kashubian is a West Slavic language akin to Polish and Silesian, belonging to the Lechitic languages. It is hypothesised that it evolved from the language of a Pomeranian Slavic tribe.

There is no standard form of Kashubian despite many efforts to make one. Kashubian has many Polish features, which points to the fact both Kashubian and Polish evolved in the same location. Even if it has no standard form, it is used in education, TV and other media.

Sample text in Kashubian:

Eastern Slovak (východniarčina), West Slavic, Slovakia

Eastern Slovakia differs from the rest of Slovakia in religion and speech. Written documents in Eastern Slovak dialects appear as early as the 18th century up until the 20th century.

These dialects are particular in that they’re more intelligible with the Eastern Slavic languages such as Rusyn and Ukrainian than they are with Polish and Czech. They also have a lot of Hungarian loanwords.

The standard Slovak language was based mainly Central Slovak dialects, which also contributed to Eastern dialects being seen as different. They have different phonology, morphology and vocabulary. Today, a few literary works are published in Slovak.

Sample text in Eastern Slovak:

Sorbian (serbšćina), West Slavic, Germany

Sorbian is spoken by the Sorbs, a Slavic ethnic group in Germany. They’re the descendants of the Slavic tribes who lived in Germany in the 5th and 6th centuries.

Sorbian is divided into two groups: Upper Sorbian (hornjoserbšćina) and Lower Sorbian (dolnoserbšćina). The two are separated geographically (see the map) but also linguistically. For example, Upper Sorbian retains 7 cases, while Lower Sorbian retains 6.

Both varieties have a high number of German loanwords. Sorbs were persecuted during WW2 and their territories were completely occupied by the Germans. Nazis tried to assimilate them and called them “Sorbian-speaking Germans”. Nevertheless Sorbian survived, but it continues to-

be spoken by a very small amount of people, mostly elderly, with the middle generation being bilingual and young people mainly speaking German.

Sample texts in Upper and Lower Sorbian:

That’s all! Sorry if I couldnt find maps and traditional clothing for all of them, the sources are very scarce! But I hope you enjoyed it :)