Slavic languages

The Slavic languages (also called Slavonic languages) are the Indo-European languages native to the Slavic peoples, originary from Eastern Europe. They are believed to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic spoken during the Early Middle Ages, which in turn would descend from the earlier Proto-Balto-Slavic language, connecting the Slavic languages to the Baltic languages as the Balto-Slavic group of the Indo-European family.

The Slavic languages are divided intro three subgroups: East, West and South, which together constitute more than twenty languages. Of these, ten have at least one million speakers and official status as the national languages of their countries: Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian (of the East group), Polish, Czech and Slovak (of the West group) and Slovene, Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian and Bulgarian (of the South group).

The current geographic distribution of natively spoken Slavic languages covers Eastern Europe, the Balkans, Eastern parts of Central Europe and all of the territory of Russia, which includes Northern and Central-North Asia. Furthermore, the diasporas of many Slavic peoples stablished isolated minorities of speakers of their languages all around the globe. According to sources, the number of speakers of all Slavic languages together is around 315 million.

Slavic speakers of Greek Macedonia

Slavic-speakers are a linguistic minority population in the northern Greek region of Macedonia, who are mostly concentrated in certain parts of the peripheries of West and Central Macedonia, adjacent to the territory of the Republic of Macedonia. The language called "Slavic" in the context of Greece is generally called "Macedonian" or "Macedonian Slavic" otherwise. Some members have formed their own emigrant communities in neighbouring countries, as well as further abroad.

Ethnic and linguistic affiliations

Members of this group have had a number of conflicting ethnic identifications.

Predominantly identified as Macedonian Bulgarians until the early 1940s, since the formation of a Macedonian nation state, many of the migrant population in the diaspora (Australia, United States and Canada) now feel a strong Macedonian identity and have followed the consolidation of the Macedonian ethnicity.

However, those who remain in Greece now mainly identify themselves as ethnic Greeks. The Macedonian region has a Greek majority which includes descendants of the Pontians, but it is ethnically diverse (including Albanians, Aromanians and Slavs).