Pan-Slavic language

A pan-Slavic language is a zonal constructed language for communication among Slavic people. Similarity of the Slavic languages has constantly inspired different people to create Pan-Slavic languages.

Creation of Pan-Slavic languages in the Middle Ages

Old Church Slavonic

Old Church Slavonic probably was the first literary Slavic language, created by the missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius. Some scholars believe that Old Church Slavonic was not exactly similar to any Slavic language of that time but was constructed. In any case, Cyril and Methodius created one or more writing systems which serve as a base for many contemporary Slavic languages -- Glagolitic or Cyrillic. Church Slavonic is used as a liturgical language to this day by some Orthodox and Greek-Catholic Churches of the Slavic peoples.

Common Slavonic Language

In Siberia in 1666, the Croat Juraj Križanić wrote Grammatično Iskazanije ob russkom jeziku (Грамматично исказание об русском езику - Grammatical book of the Russian Language). In this work he described in fact not the Russian language but a Common Slavonic language based on different Slavic languages, mostly on Russian, Serbian and Croatian.

Sample (Romanized, original in Cyrillic): "Iazika sowerszenost iest samo potrebno orudie k mudrosti, i iedwa ne stanowito iee zname. Czim kiu narod imaet izradney iazik, tim prigodnee i witwornee razprawlyaet remestwa i wsakije umitelyi i promisli. Obilie besedi i legota izgowora mnogo pomagaet na mudrich sowetow izobretenie i na wsakich mirnich i ratnich del leznee obwerszenie."

Creation of Pan-Slavic languages in 19th and 20th Centuries

Mežduslavjanski jezik

Mežduslavjanski jezik (Inter-Slavic language). Work on this language was carried out by a group of Czechoslovak linguists in 1954-1958. The head of the project was the Czech Jiří Karen aka Ladislav Podmele (1920-2000). The language used grammatical and lexical features of Slavic languages, primarily Russian and Czech, and may be viewed as a naturalistic planned language. Not to be confused with Mezhdunarodny Nauchny Yazyk, which is not a Pan-Slavic language at all.

Sample: "V meždunarodnich jezikach dlužno stvorit taki cennosti, ktori budu znacit veliki prinos v oblasti nauk, izučenija jezikov, techniki, umenij itd."

Neposlava

Neposlava (Непослава) was created by Vsevolohd Evgrafovich Cheshikhin (Всеволод Евграфович Чешихин) in 1915 in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. In 1913 he created a system to construct zonal languages based on Esperanto affixes which are used with national roots and called it Nepo. Then in 1915 he created a nepo-language based on the Slavic lexicon - Neposlava ("Slavic Nepo"). He also used this system to construct other "new Esperantoes" based on Latin-Romance and Germanic languages^[1][2].

Slava-Esperanto

Slava-Esperanto aka Slovina or Slavina (which may be translated as Slavic Esperanto) created by Josef Konečný in 1912 in Prague.

Sample: "Hej, Slované, naši lepo slovanó rěč máme, dokud naše věrne serce pro náš národ dame."

Universalis Lingua Slavica

Universalis Lingua Slavica - Universal Slavic language, also known as Vseslovanski jazyk ("All-Slavic language"), is an early example of a zonal constructed language for Slavs. It was created and published by the Slovak Ján Herkeľ in his works Elementa universalis linguae Slavicae and Zaklady vseslovanskeho jazyka in 1826.^[3][4]

Sample: "Za starego vieku byla jedna kralica, koja mala tri prelepije dievice: milicu, krasicu a mudricu; vse tri byle bogate, okrem bogatstva milica byla pokorna, krasica uctiva a mudrica umena." (In olden times there was a queen who had three very beautiful girls: Kindness, Beauty, and Wisdom; all three were rich, in addition to being rich Kindness was humble, Beauty was polite, and Wisdom was wise)

Creation of Pan-Slavic languages in recent (i.e. Internet) times

Slovio

See Slovio

Slovianski

See Slovianski

Novoslovienskij jazyk

See Novoslovienskij jazyk^[5]

References

1. ^ Dulichenko, A.D.. "ИЗ ИСТОРИИ ИНТЕРЛИНГВИСТИЧЕСКОЙ МЫСЛИ В РОССИИ (1900-1917)". http://miresperanto.narod.ru/esperantologio/dulichenko-istorija.htm. 
2. ^ Pei, Mario (1958). One Language for the World. pp. 137. ISBN 0819602183. http://books.google.com/books?id=6hV0zzsyxzUC&pg=PA137&lpg=PA137&dq=Neposlava&source=bl&ots=Eyy8N5UpU9&sig=_KhxFMWvAM4IbfSKb66tQiskIIo&hl=en&ei=wZTzS56BGor8tQP2wpn0Cw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CC4Q6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=Neposlava&f=false. 
3. ^ J. Herkel, Elementa universalis linguae Slavicae, Budae/Budapest, 1826, 164 pp.
4. ^ J. Herkel, Zaklady vseslovanskeho jazyka, Vienna, 1826.
5. ^ Vojtěch Merunka, Jazyk novoslovienskij (Prague 2010, ISBN 978-80-87313-51-0), pp. 15-16, 19-20. (Czech)

See also

• Pan-Slavism

External links

• List of constructed Slavic languages
• Slovianski
• Novoslovienskij
• http://www.medzuslovjanski.com