North Slavic languages

[10][page needed] Moreover, there are many exceptions and whole dialects that break the division of East and West Slavic languages.

[20][page needed] According to this view, it makes more sense to divide the Slavs into two main linguistic groups: the North Slavs and the South Slavs, which can then be further categorised as the Northwest tongues (Czech, Kashubian, Polish, Silesian,[failed verification] Slovak, and Sorbian) and the Northeast ones (Belarusian, Russian, Rusyn,[failed verification] and Ukrainian)[17][page needed] – whereas the Southern branch is split into the widely accepted groups of the Southwest languages (Serbo-Croatian and Slovene) and the Southeast tongues (Bulgarian and Macedonian).

[21][page needed] This model is argued as being more appropriate and linguistically accurate than the triple dissection of east, west and south.

Ford also writes of the Slavs being "conventionally" divided into three sub-branches (West, East, South), but "in reality" divided only by geographic isolation into two bands that form two dialect continua: North and South[8] – a view mirrored by linguist Tomasz Kamusella.

[8] A similar east-west split exists for people speaking South Slavic languages in the Balkans, although the Latin script is spreading in countries where Serbo-Croatian is frequently spoken and the majority population is Orthodox, such as Montenegro.