Pan-Slavic language

In order to communicate with each other, speakers of different Slavic languages often resort to international lingua francas, primarily English or Russian.

Hence, early pan-Slavic language projects aimed at modernizing Old Church Slavonic and adapting it to the needs of everyday communication.

[citation needed] The first pan-Slavic grammar, Gramatíčno izkâzanje ob rúskom jezíku by the Croatian priest Juraj Križanić, was written in 1665.

According to an analysis of the Dutch Slavist Tom Ekman, 59% of the words used in Politika are of common Slavic descent, 10% come from Russian and Church Slavonic, 9% from Croatian and 2.5% from Polish.

In 1583 another Croatian priest, Šime Budinić, had translated the Summa Doctrinae Christanae by Petrus Canisius into Slovignsky,[4] in which he used both the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets.

[10] Other Pan-Slavic language projects were published in the same period by the Croatian Matija Ban,[11] the Slovenes Radoslav Razlag [sl] and Božidar Raič [sl],[12] as well as the Bulgarian Grigor Parlichev[13][non-primary source needed] – all based on the idea of combining Old Church Slavonic with elements from the modern South Slavic languages.

They deplored the fact that these dialects had diverged beyond mutual comprehensibility, and the Pan-Slavic language they envisioned was intended to reverse this process.

Many modern educated nations, for example the French, the Italians, the English and the Germans, have a higher number of more divergent dialects and subdialects than we Slavs, and yet they have one single literary language.

In 1907 the Czech dialectologist Ignác Hošek (1852–1919) published a grammar of Neuslavisch, a proposal for a common literary language for all Slavs within the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.

[17]: 214 [14]: 128–132, 137–143, 159 During the 1950s the Czech poet and former Esperantist Ladislav Podmele [eo] (1920–2000), also known under his pseudonym Jiří Karen, worked for several years with a team of prominent interlinguists on an elaborate project, Mežduslavjanski jezik ("Interslavic language").

[citation needed] Although Pan-Slavism has not played a role of any significance since the collapse of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, globalization and new media like the Internet have led to a renewed interest in a language that would be understandable for all Slavs alike.

Partly in response to the problems of Slovio, a more naturalistic and community-based project was started in 2006 under the name Slovianski by a group of people from different countries.

[30] Another project that saw the light in the same period was Novoslověnsky ("Neoslavonic") by the Czech Vojtěch Merunka, based on Old Church Slavonic grammar but using part of Slovianski's vocabulary.

[14]: 90 However, Nicolina Trunte argues that Church Slavonic, Polish or Czech were not used in the work at all, and that the language Budinić used was merely Shtokavian-Ijekavian with a number of hyper-Ijekavisms and Chakavisms.

[34] Sample: In Siberia in 1666, the Croat Juraj Križanić wrote Gramatíčno izkâzanje ob rúskom jezíku (Граматично исказанје об руском језику "Grammatical overview of the Russian Language").

[18] Kolkop had no political, pan-Slavic ambitions but felt frustrated by the fact that Slavs had to resort to German for their communication and believed that they would be helped with a simple, artificially created Slavic language, for which he took Esperanto as an example.

[18]: 5 The language was written in the Latin alphabet with a few unusual additions: ſ for š, з for ž, ч for č, y for j, j for ť, θ for ď and ι for ň.

[18]: 3 The Gospel of Matthew, 3:1–2:[18]: 15 Neposlava was an unpublished project, created by the Russian writer, publicist and music critic Vsevolod Yevgrafovich Cheshikhin (Всеволод Евграфович Чешихин) in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia.

[37][38] A fragment from the Lord's Prayer:[17]: 199 Mežduslavjanski jezik ("Interslavic language") was an elaborate project worked on during the years 1954–1958 in Czechoslovakia by a group of interlinguists, led by the poet Ladislav Podmele a.k.a.

They wrote a grammar (Kratka grammatika mežduslavjanskego jezika), an Esperanto–Interslavic word list, a dictionary, a course, a textbook and a few longer texts, practically none of which were ever published.

In spite of heavy marketing on the part of its creator, Slovio gained little support; it was heavily criticized for its artificial, un-Slavic character and the radical Slavic-nationalist views expressed by its users.

A passage on the origin of the Europeans (satirical example text and a translation):[23]: 4 To address the problems of Slovio, a community-based project called Slovianski was begun in 2006.

This was approached with a voting system to choose words for the lexicon and a grammar consisting of material existing in all or most Slavic languages, without any artificial additions.

The version of its principal author, Jan van Steenbergen, had three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter), six cases and full conjugation of verbs.

[43] Novoslovienskij ("Neoslavonic") was published in a 128-page book by the Czech pedagogue and programmer Vojtěch Merunka as a study of what Old Church Slavonic might look like today if it had not stopped developing in the Middle Ages.

As a result, Neoslavonic had a complex grammar characterized by various archaisms, for example: four types of past tense, dual, seven cases and the Cyrillic letter ѣ, but on the other hand, it contained few exceptions and a relatively small number of repetitive rules.

Example:[44] In 2011, Slovianski was renamed Medžuslovjanski ("Interslavic"), and its grammar and dictionary were revised to include all options of Neoslavonic and several older projects.