Pannonian Slavic

Abstract

The entry describes the history and state of research on the problem of Pannonian Slavic, the variety or varieties of Slavic spoken in the Carpatho-Danubian basin prior to and after the arrival of the Magyars, speakers of Hungarian, in the 9th century CE. The issue is also discussed in connection with the brief period in which Slavic literacy had been introduced in the second half of the 9th century with the activity of Methodius under the patronage of Kocel, the ruler of the Slavs in Pannonia inferior. The Slavic speech community in the Carpatho-Danubian region yielded to language shift in favor of Hungarian, which, when completed in the following century or so, resulted in a clearer division between today’s West and South Slavic languages. In terms of method, Pannonian Slavic can be reconstructed indirectly through borrowings into Hungarian as well as through comparative analysis of the living “circum-Pannonian” varieties of Slavic, with studies focusing more on form in some cases and lexicon in others. The interpretation of the facts remains heterogeneous, with studies pointing to different solutions.Work on this article was supported under the auspices of the Foreign Visitors Fellowship Program, Fall 2022, from the Slavic-Eurasian Research Center, Hokkaido University, Japan. The work benefitted from discussions with hosts and audience members following the author's presentations "Montenegrin language: What is it and what is at stake?," Kyoto University, Oct. 2022, organized by Dr. Daiki Horiguchi and Prof. Tadashi Nakamura (both of Kyoto University), and Dr. Motoki Nomachi (SRC, Hokkaido); and “Orthographies for small Slavic languages with significant internal differentiation. Case studies of Prekmurje Slovene and Montenegrin.” University of the Ryukyus, Okinawa, organized by Dr. Nana Tohyama (University of the Ryukyus) and Dr. Motoki Nomachi, November 2022