Proto-Slavic Language

Proto-Slavic Language

Proto-Slavic, also Common Slavic, is the common ancestor of the Slavic languages, spoken around the 5th to 8th centuries AD. As with most other proto-languages, no attested writings have been found; the language has been reconstructed by applying the comparative method to all the attested Slavic languages as well as other Indo-European languages. However, a late form of this language as spoken in the region of Greek Macedonia, known as Old Church Slavonic, is attested from the 9th century AD.

The name "Proto-Slavic", by the definition of a proto-language, is the latest reconstructable common ancestor of all Slavic languages. Technically speaking, Proto-Slavic is purely a linguistic abstraction and admits no dialectal differentiation, since this would imply that a form was not ancestral to all of its descendants. When referring to the historical common language of the Slavs, the term Common Slavic is used, which generally includes a later stage than Proto-Slavic proper (up to the 10th century CE) where the language was dialectally differentiated yet still evolving in a unified fashion. During this period, the Slavic-speaking area expanded massively; yet sound changes still usually propagated throughout the entire area, although not always uniformly.