What is Interslavic?

Interslavic (Medžuslovjansky, Меджусловјанскы) is a constructed language built from what the Slavic languages have in common. Its aim is simple: a text that speakers of Polish, Czech, Ukrainian, Serbian or Bulgarian can all read without having learned it.

How can you understand a language you never learned?

The Slavic languages grew from one ancestor, Proto-Slavic, and still share much of their vocabulary and grammar. Interslavic takes the words and forms that most of them have in common and spells them in a way every Slavic reader can decode. Where they differ, it generally takes the form that most of them share. The result looks familiar to a Pole as much as to a Bulgarian:

Who understands it?

Interslavic is meant for speakers of all the Slavic languages: Czech, Slovak, Polish, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Russian, Slovene, Croatian, Bosnian, Serbian, Macedonian and Bulgarian. How much someone understands depends on the word and on their language: some words are shared by all of them, others by only a few. That is why Slavij shows, for every word in the course, which of these 12 languages have the same word, and after each lesson, who would understand what you just learned.

It is also a gentle way into the Slavic languages for people who speak none of them: learn one language, and get a head start on all of them.

A short history

The idea is old. The Croatian priest Juraj Križanić described a common Slavic language as early as 1659–1666. Modern Interslavic began in 2006 as the Slovianski project. In 2011 it merged with related projects, among them Vojtěch Merunka’s Neoslavonic, under the name Interslavic (Medžuslovjansky), a name the Czech Ignác Hošek had first proposed in 1908. Since April 2024 Interslavic has its own ISO 639-3 language code, isv.

Latin and Cyrillic

The border between the Latin and the Cyrillic alphabet runs through the middle of the Slavic world, so Interslavic uses both, letter for letter: dobry denj is добры дењ, and Medžuslovjansky is Меджусловјанскы. In Slavij one switch changes every word in the app between the two, and your answers count in either script.

Standard and etymological spelling

The standard spelling uses letters that most Slavic keyboards already have. An optional etymological spelling adds letters such as ė, å, ę, ų and ȯ that show where a word comes from, linking it to Proto-Slavic and Old Church Slavonic: dobry denj becomes dobry dėnj, jabloko becomes jablȯko. Readers don’t need it, and Slavij accepts both.

How to learn Interslavic

1. Start from what you know. If you speak a Slavic language, you already understand much of Interslavic. Read first, and notice which words you recognise.
2. Learn a core of everyday words. Greetings, family, food, travel, numbers and shopping cover most first conversations.
3. Learn the regular endings. Interslavic has the genders and cases of the Slavic languages, but its endings are regular, with few exceptions.
4. Pick one script and one spelling to write in, and read both.
5. Practise a little every day. Short lessons and spaced repetition beat long sessions once a week.
6. Use it. Write to other learners: the Interslavic community is active online.

Slavij is built around these steps: you guess each new word from your own language before you learn it, practise it in four kinds of exercises and review it just before you would forget it.

Resources

• interslavic.fun: the community’s site, with an introduction to the language and how to learn it
• Interslavic Dictionary: the dictionary, with translations into most Slavic languages, English and German
• Interslavic on Wikipedia: history, grammar and alphabets
• r/interslavic: learners and speakers on Reddit