The South Slavic languages comprise one of three branches of the Slavic languages. There are approximately 30 million speakers, mainly in the Balkans. These are separated geographically from speakers of the other two Slavic branches (West and East) by a belt of German, Hungarian and Romanian speakers. The first South Slavic language to be written (the first Slavic language) was the dialect spoken in Thessalonica, now called Old Church Slavonic, in the ninth century AD. It is retained as a liturgical language in some South Slavic Orthodox churches in the form of various local Church Slavonic traditions.
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Famous quotes containing the words south and/or languages:
“Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one. To be able to recognize a freak, you have to have some conception of the whole man, and in the South the general conception of man is still, in the main, theological.”
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—J.G. (James Graham)