Slavonic languages

Branch of the Indo-European language family spoken in central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and parts of northern Asia. The family comprises the southern group (Slovene, Serbo-Croat, Macedonian, and Bulgarian); the western group (Czech and Slovak, Sorbian in Germany, and Polish and its related dialects); and the eastern group (Russian, Ukrainian, and Belorussian).

There is such a high degree of uniformity among the Slavic languages that scholars speak of a ‘dialect continuum’ in which the users of one variety understand fairly well much of what is said in other varieties. Some Slavic languages, like Polish, are written in the Roman alphabet while others, like Russian, use the Cyrillic alphabet.