A pan-Slavic language is a zonal auxiliary language for communication among the Slavic peoples.
There are approximately 400 million speakers of the Slavic languages. In order to communicate with each other, speakers of different Slavic languages often resort to international lingua francas, primarily English or Russian. But since Slavic languages are closely related lexically and grammatically and are comparatively easier to learn when another Slavic language is already known, there have been numerous attempts to construct a more neutral auxiliary language that could act as a common language for slavophones. The earliest pan-Slavic linguistic efforts preceded academic knowledge and reconstruction of Proto-Slavic, which was likely spoken between 2nd century BCE and 6th century CE, from which all Slavic languages developed in following centuries.
History
The history of zonal Slavic languages is closely connected with Pan-Slavism, an ideology that endeavors cultural and political unification of all Slavs, based on the conception that all Slavic people are part of a single Slavic nation. Along with this belief came also the need for an umbrella Slavic language. The strongest candidate for that position among modern languages is Russian, the language of the largest Slavic state. This option enjoys most of its popularity in Russia itself, but has also been favoured by Pan-Slavists abroad, for example the Slovak Ľudovít Štúr.Л.П. Рупосова, История межславянского языка, in: Вестник Московского государственного областного университета (Московский государственный областной университет, 2012 no. 1, p. 55. Others have proposed that Old Church Slavonic would be a better and more neutral solution. In previous centuries, Old Church Slavonic had served as an administrative language across a large part of the Slavic world, and it is still used on a large scale in Eastern Orthodox liturgy, where it plays a role similar to Latin in the West. Old Church Slavonic has the additional advantage of being similar to the common ancestor of the Slavic languages, Proto-Slavic. However, it has several practical disadvantages as well: its grammar is complex, and its vocabulary is characterized by many words that have been lost from the modern languages, as well as an absence of words for modern concepts. Hence, early pan-Slavic language projects aimed at modernizing Old Church Slavonic and adapting it to the needs of everyday communication.
Early projects The first pan-Slavic grammar, Gramatíčno izkâzanje ob rúskom jezíku by the Croatian priest Juraj Križanić, was written in 1665.Juraj Križanić, Граматично изказанје об руском језику. Moscow, 1665. He referred to the language as Ruski jezik ("Russian language"), but in reality it was mostly based on a mixture of the Russian edition of Church Slavonic and his own Southern Chakavian dialect of Croatian. Križanić used it not only for this grammar, but also in other works, including the treatise Politika (1663–1666). 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.
Križanić was not the first who attempted writing in a language understandable to all Slavs. In 1583 another Croatian priest, Šime Budinić, had translated the Summa Doctrinae Christanae by Petrus Canisius into Slovignsky,Petrus Canisius, "Svmma navka christianskoga / sloxena castnim včitegliem Petrom Kanisiem; tvmacena iz latinskoga jazika v slovignsky, i vtisstena po zapoviedi presuetoga Otca Pape Gregoria Trinaestoga [...] Koie iz Vlasskoga, illi Latinskoga iazika, v Slouignsky Jazik protumačio iest pop Ssimvn Bvdineo Zadranin". Rome, 1583. in which he used both the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets.Hanna Orzechowska, Mieczysław Basaj, Instytut Słowianoznawstwa (Polska Akademia Nauk), Prekursorzy słowiańskiego jezykoznawstwa porównawczego, do końca XVIII wiek. Warsaw, 1987, p. 124.
After Križanić, numerous other efforts have been made to create an umbrella language for the speakers of Slavic languages. A notable example is Universalis Lingua Slavica by the Slovak attorney Ján Herkeľ (1786–1853), published in Latin in 1826.Ján Herkeľ, Elementa universalis linguae Slavicae e vivis dialectis eruta at sanis logicae principiis suffulta. Budapest, 1826, 164 pp. Unlike Križanić' project, this project was closer to the West Slavic languages.
During the second half of the 19th century Pan-Slavic language projects were mostly the domain of Slovenes and Croats. Among the numerous efforts at creating written standards for the South Slavic languages there were also efforts at establishing a common South Slavic language, Illyrian, that might also serve as a literary language for all Slavs in the future. Of special importance is the work of Matija Majar (1809–1892), a Slovenian Austroslavist who later converted to Pan-Slavism. In 1865 he published Uzajemni Pravopis Slavjanski ("Mutual Slavic Orthography").Matija Majar-Ziljski, Uzajemni Pravopis Slavjanski, to je: Uzajemna Slovnica ali Mluvnica Slavjanska. Prague, 1865. In this work, he postulated that the best way for Slavs to communicate with other Slavs was by taking their own language as a starting point and then modifying it in steps. First, he proposed changing the orthography of each individual language into a generic ("mutual") Pan-Slavic orthography, subsequently he described a grammar that was based on comparing five major Slavic languages of his days: Old Church Slavonic, Russian, Polish, Czech and Serbian. Apart from a book about the language itself, Majar also used it for a biography of Cyril and MethodiusMatija Majar Ziljski, Sveta brata Ciril i Metod, slavjanska apostola i osnovatelja slovstva slavjanskoga. Prague, 1864. and for a magazine he published in the years 1873–1875, Slavjan. A fragment in the language can still be seen on the altar of Majar's church in Görtschach.Robert Gary Minnich, "Collective identity formation and linguistic identities in the Austro-Italian Slovene border region", in: Dieter Stern & Christian Voss, Marginal Linguistic Identities: Studies in Slavic Contact and Borderland Varieties, p. 104. Other Pan-Slavic language projects were published in the same period by the Croatian Matija Ban,Matija Ban, "Osnova Sveslavjanskoga jezika", in: Dubrovnik. Cviet narodnog književstva. Svezak drugi. Zagreb, 1851, pp. 131–174. the Slovenes and ,Božidar Raič, "Vvod v slovnicų vseslavenskųjų", in: Radoslav Razlag red., Zora Jugoslavenska no. 2, Zagreb, 1853, pp. 23–44. as well as the Bulgarian Grigor ParlichevГ.П. [Григор Прличев], Кратка славянска грамматика. Constantinople, 1868. – all based on the idea of combining Old Church Slavonic with elements from the modern South Slavic languages.
All authors mentioned above were motivated by the belief that all Slavic languages were dialects of one single Slavic language rather than separate 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. Their long-term objective was that this language would replace the individual Slavic languages. Majar, for example, compared the Pan-Slavic language with standardized languages like Ancient Greek and several modern languages:
Consequently, these authors did not consider their projects constructed languages at all. In most cases they provided grammatical comparisons between the Slavic languages, sometimes but not always offering solutions they labelled as "Pan-Slavic". What their projects have in common that they neither have a rigidly prescriptive grammar, nor a separate vocabulary.
The twentieth century
In the early 20th century it had become clear that the divergence of the Slavic languages was irreversible and the concept of a Pan-Slavic literary language was no longer realistic. The Pan-Slavic dream had lost most of its power, and Pan-Slavists had to satisfy themselves with the formation of two multinational Slavic states, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. However, the need for a common language of communication for Slavs was still felt, and due to the influence of constructed languages like Esperanto, efforts were made to create a language that was no longer supposed to replace the individual Slavic languages, but to serve as an additional second language for pan-Slavic communication.
In the same period, the nexus of pan-Slavic activity shifted to the North, especially to the Czech lands. 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.Ignác Hošek, Grammatik der Neuslawischen Sprache. Kremsier, 1907. Five years later another Czech, Josef Konečný, published Slavina, a "Slavic Esperanto", which however had very little in common with Esperanto, but instead was mostly based on Czech.Josef Konečný, Mluvnička slovanského esperanta "Slavina". Jednotná spisovná slovanská dorozumívací rěč, jak pro obchod, tak průmysl. Prague, 1912. А. Д Дуличенко, Международные вспомогательные языки. Tallinn, 1990. Whereas these two projects were naturalistic, the same cannot be said about two other projects by Czech authors, Slovanština by Edmund KolkopEdmund Kolkop, Pokus o dorozumívací jazyk slovanský. Prague, 1912, 16 pp. and Slavski jezik by Bohumil Holý.B. Holý, Slavski jezik. Stručná mluvnice dorozumívacího i jednotícího jazyka všeslovanského. S pomocí spolupracovníků podává stenograf В. Holý. Nové Město nad Metují, 1920. Both projects, published in 1912 and 1920 respectively, show a clear tendency towards simplification, for example by eliminating grammatical gender and cases, and schematicism.
During the 1950s the Czech poet and former Esperantist (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"). Among other things, they wrote a grammar, an Esperanto–Interslavic word list, a dictionary, a course and a textbook. Although none of those were ever published, the project gained some attention of linguists from various countries.Věra Barandovská-Frank, "Panslawische Variationen", in: Cyril Brosch & Sabine Fiedler (eds.), Florilegium Interlinguisticum. Festschrift für Detlev Blanke zum 70. Geburtstag. Frankfurt am Main, 2011, pp. 220–223. Probably due to the political reality of those days, this language was primarily based on Russian.
The digital age
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. After the fall of the USSR, the role of the Russian language as a lingua franca in Eastern Europe and the Balkans diminished, also because many inhabitants of other countries in the region perceived it as the language of their former oppressor.Leonidas Donskis, "The Failed Lingua Franca of Eastern Europe?". In: New Eastern Europe 2 (VI), pp. 63–72. Older projects were largely forgotten, but as it became relatively easy for authors to publish their work, several new projects emerged, mostly in Slavic émigrée circles. Thus, during the first years of the 21st century projects appeared under names like Slovo, Glagolica, Proslava and Ruslavsk.Tilman Berger, "Vom Erfinden Slavischer Sprachen" , in: M. Okuka & U. Schweier, eds., Germano-Slavistische Beiträge. Festschrift für P. Rehder zum 65. Geburtstag. München, 2004, ). Most of them were incomplete and abandoned by their authors after a while.