SLAVONIC LANGUAGES. The Slavonic languages be long to the Eastern or Satem division of the Indo-European family, and are very closely connected with the Baltic group, which embraces Lithuanian, Lettish and the now extinct Old Prussian. The phonetic and morphological affinities between the two groups are so striking that many scholars have postulated a Balto-Slavonic unity on a par with that existing between Indian and Iranian. Although a unity of this character is now disputed, largely because of the differences in vocabulary, verbal structure and formative elements employed, the common innovations and general parallelism of development make it probable that the two ethnic groups lived in close contiguity and influenced each other long after they had become separated from their original neigh bours. Their contact probably persisted over a very long period, but a separation must have occurred centuries before the Chris tian era, each group thenceforward developing along its own lines. To-day the Slays and the Balts are again in partial contact, but the influence each exercises over the other is almost wholly on the side of the Slays, whose northern languages have affected the vocabulary of the Balts. Slavonic has considerably less in common with Teutonic, and the resemblances which may be observed in vocabulary are for the most part due to the adoption by Slavonic of Teutonic words which, with the objects of culture they denoted, became known to the less civilised Slays.
With one branch of the Iranians, the Sarmatians, the Slays remained in touch until after the Christian era and obtained from them some words, e.g., Bogii, cf. Persian Bags (god). The altera tion of an original s after i, u, r and k, which is common to Slavonic and Iranian, is on a different footing from loans of vocabulary: it is a sound law which can be traced also in Indian and Baltic, and so argues an early differentiation of I.E. rather than an independent, common development of Slavonic and Iranian.
After the Baltic group had ceased to be connected with the Slavonic, we must imagine a long period when Slavonic was a bundle of dialects, showing in embryo some of the peculiarities of the future languages, but on the whole so much alike that we may say that a form occurring in one dialect was also common to the others. This stage may be called Common Slavonic (C.S.).
Except for the few cases where Old Bulgarian (O.B.) has either definitely South Slavonic characteristics or peculiar characteristics of its own, as written down by Cyril it represents with great completeness Common Slavonic at the moment of its falling apart. In one respect, however, O.B. lends us no assistance for deter mining the pronunciation of a C.S. word: we have no direct means of ascertaining either the original word intonation or the sentence melody.
The period of time which elapsed until C.S. was formed out of I.E. is so long that great changes—the details of which can only be surmised—necessarily arose, but it is indicative of the absence of foreign cultural influences that there has not been any such discontinuity of linguistic tradition as has occurred in many other I.E. groups. The violent upheavals and ethnic amalgamations which have left so profound a mark on Teutonic, Italic and Greek, are lacking in Slavonic. The I.E. vocabulary continued to satisfy most needs of Slav speakers ; losses were made good by new words formed after the old models and with the help of the old methods of derivation the type of accentuation suffered no radical changes, and indeed all innovations were evolutionary rather than revolu tionary. The Slav languages, even to-day, conform closely to the primitive type and present an uncommonly archaic aspect. They have progressed far less and have remained far nearer to each other than the Romance or Teutonic languages. Such differences as separate French from Spanish or Rumanian are quite un known; with some preliminary practice a peasant from Slovakia, which of course enjoys the benefit of a central position in the Slavonic territory, is understood by a Slav from any other coun try.