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| | Elementary Russian |
 | | At that time Slavic tribes were scattered across lands as far north and west as the Elbe River (modern-day Germany), as far south and west as the Adriatic coast and central Greece, and as far east as the Volga River. |
 | | Over the centuries variants of the language spoken in each of these branches have developed into separate languages; the languages in turn have played an important part in forging separate ethnic identities among the Slavic peoples. |
 | | Today's Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarussian and their related ethnic groups are descendants of the Eastern Slavic language branch; Polish, Czech and Slovak are descendants of the Western Slavic language branch; and Slovene, Croatian, Serbian, Bulgarian, and Macedonian are descendants of the South Slavic language branch. |
| www.ku.edu /~elemruss/culture/104_culture_1.html (876 words) |
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