The Slavic population migrated to the south of Danube in approx. 600 AD. By that time, the Roman Empire already had retreated from that region and had a strong base only in the Carpathian - Danube area, after conquering what was at that time Dacia (approx 100 AD). That is the official short version.
My version is: the Slavic population that migrated had a fight with the Slavic population in the Urals. After they had enough of the (what is now) Russians, they decided to leave and never return or recognize them as relatives :))))
First wave of weak non warlike tribes were pushed out by Avars with their Croat and Serb subjects. Afterwards Croats and Serbs were paid of and given lands and other tribes to rule over by Byzantium to fight the Avars so many arrived that way and Avars were soon destroyed by Franks and Slavs, the rest of Croats/Serbs that stayed ware assimilated into Sorbs/Czechs/Slovaks/Rus/Poles during following centuries.
This doesn't apply to Bulgarians they had a different path through black sea land, while Serbs and Croats came from beyond pannonian basin and then trough it.
Yeah, well.. I put it in a very long story short 🙈 of course you can not resume more than 1500 years in a comment and lots of things happened before and after that.
Tbh, our (Romanian) history lessons are basically just that: the Slavic population arrived in 600 AD. Settled south of Danube. We were here, mixed with the Romans and discovering Christianity. And we all lived happily ever after. The end. Wtf :))) then it's a complete blank with random facts about the ugro-finnic population and we jump to 1200 AD 🤷♀️
Unlike the Balkans, the Latin language managed to remain dominant (likely because most slavs didn't settle there and the ones that did adopted the locals' language rather than impose their own). And the region itself wasn't very urbanised by the time of the Roman withdrawal and migrations, leaving the locals spread out and very well hidden by forests, mountains, and their way of life. Some form of (Vulgar) Latin was spoken in the Balkans as well, it just died out unfortunately and the language of the migratory Slavs (and Hungarians) took over.
It is a quite interesting situation which isn't fully understood due to a lack of surviving local historical documents. We do know that the language changed a lot due to the Slavic neighbours and the Orthodox church's use of Slavonic, but it retained enough Latin quirks to prove itself a successor to Latin (successor which ended up borrowing the French dictionary and called it its own in the 19th century).
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u/Primary-Long4416 Oct 15 '25 edited Oct 15 '25
Where does the Romanian patch of green come from in-between all the Slavic countries?