It is known that Russians, Bulgarians, Slovenes, Serbs, Poles, Ukrainians, Croats, Montenegrins can more or less understand each other when they speak their mother tongues. We, the speakers of the Serbian language, know that from our personal experience! However, understanding is not complete, there are significant differences among them, and as such, they make communication difficult. But a group of authors led by Professor Vojtech Merunk and linguist Jan van Stinberger came up with the idea to take advantage of the similarities of modern Slavic languages and create a new language! That is how the inter-Slavic language came into being!
There is an opinion among Russians and Slovaks that their languages are inter-Slavic, that is, that all Slavic peoples can understand them. Practice shows otherwise. Other Slavic peoples must learn Russian so they can fully understand it, just as Russians must learn Serbian, Czech and other Slavic languages in order to fully understand them. This problem is solved in a way by the modern inter-Slavic language!
The idea of creating a language that will be understood by all Slavic peoples is not new. It originally appeared in the 9th century with Cyril and Methodius, and that attempt was very successful. In the 17th century, the Croatian priest Juraj Križanić accepted this job, and in the 19th century it was the Slavic professor Marija Majar Ziljski, as well as many others after him. In the 21st century, this job pertained to a professor at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and a linguist with a group of authors! Merunka and Stinberger with their team managed to make the most successful version of the inter-Slavic language!
The inter-Slavic (All-Slavic, Slavic Esperanto) language was created with the aim of being understood by all Slavic peoples. Therefore, for the purposes of the origin of this language, mathematical calculations found similarities among the grammars, syntax and vocabulary of modern Slavic languages. About 20,000 words which are repeated, similar or have similar synonyms in all Slavic languages have been selected for the vocabulary of the inter-Slavic language. An example is the word script, which is pronounced the same or similarly in all Slavic languages, so it was chosen as such for inter-Slavic. This modern version of the Old Slavic language represents a kind of arithmetical mean of all Slavic languages!
Although this language currently has about 2,000 speakers, the number of people who can understand it exceeds hundreds of millions! Conceived as an auxiliary language, it can significantly facilitate communication between members of different Slavic peoples, especially if it is used in tourism, business, leadership, etc.
The inter-Slavic language ended up on film as well! In 2019, the film “Nabarvené ptáče” (The Painted Bird), a Czech Oscar nominee, was shot in the inter-Slovenian language. The reason was the director’s wish that no Slavic people stand out with their language because of the war theme of the film. How it sounds and whether speakers of different Slavic languages really understand it without learning, you can see in this video (video link).
And if you would like to get acquainted with the inter-Slavic language in more detail, you can visit its official website (website link). You can find translators and court interpreters for all Slavic, as well as other world and “lesser world” languages, in the translation agency “Aber and Mar”.
For all the necessary information feel free to contact us!
Sources:
Merunka, V. (2012). Neoslavonic zonal constructed language. České Budějovice https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlopfGDweTE
Official site of the inter-Slavic language:
http://interslavic-language.org/