Page:Three stories by Vítězslav Hálek (1886).pdf/16

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viii
Preface.

(c) White Russian spoken by three million people.

II. South Sclavonic is divided into

(a) Servian spoken by five million people.

(b) Croatian spoken by one million people.

(c) Carinthian-Slovenian spoken by one million people.

(d) Bulgarian spoken by seven million people.

III. Western Sclavonic is divided into

(1) Polish employed by about ten million people.

(2) Czech divided into

(a) Cesko-Moravian spoken by over four million people.

and

(b) Hungarian-Slovenian spoken by two million people.

(3) Lusatian-Servian divided into Upper and Lower, and spoken by 150,000 people in Saxony.

I will not weary the reader by going over in detail the relationship of these languages to one another; suffice it to say that the Czech or Bohemian is most closely related to the Upper Lusatian, the Croatian and the Little Russian dialects. The Bohemians, like most of the Catholic and Western Sclavonians, use the Latin characters, and thus their language forms a good introduction to the study of the rest.