Language Family

Balto-Slavic

Eurasian Language Families

The Balto-Slavic languages form a branch of the Indo-European language family, traditionally comprising the Baltic and the Slavic languages. These languages share several linguistic traits not found in any other Indo-European branch, which points to a period of common development and shared origin before the two groups diverged.

Facts

Region

Northern Europe, Eastern Europe, Central Europe, Southeast Europe and Northern Asia 1

Speaker Count

322,000,000 1

Proto-Language Status

A Proto-Balto-Slavic language is reconstructed by the comparative method as a stage between Proto-Indo-European and the separate Baltic and Slavic branches. A minority of scholars still attribute the shared features to language contact rather than common descent, but a genetic Balto-Slavic branch is now the consensus view. 1

Balto-Slavic

1 entry

Region

Status

Speaker Count Band

Script Used

Period Start Year

Language Kind

Official Status

Latvian

Balto-Slavic

Connections

Ancestor Of

Baltic

Baltic (Lithuanian, Latvian and their extinct relatives) is one of the two branches of Balto-Slavic alongside Slavic.

Descends From

Indo-European

Balto-Slavic, grouping the Baltic and Slavic languages, is a primary branch of Indo-European under the mainstream Balto-Slavic hypothesis.

Includes

Bosnian

Source Wikipedia: Bosnian Language

Latvian

Source Wikipedia: Latvian Language

Macedonian

Source Wikipedia: Macedonian Language

Slovak

Source Wikipedia: Slovak Language

Slovenian

Source Slovene language (Wikipedia)

In the Other Atlases

Includes

Balts

Also in Divinity Atlas: included in this subject.

Church Slavonic

Also in Divinity Atlas: included in this subject.

Old Church Slavonic

Also in Divinity Atlas: included in this subject.

Proto-Indo-European

Also in Divinity Atlas: included in this subject.