Croats = Catholic Serbs

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

Actually, Silesian and Ukrainian are also close to South Slavic languages as well.

No. Ukrainian is an East Slavic language, and things like Polish and Czech (both of which were spoken in Silesia, I'm not sure what 'Silesian' is supposed to be) are West Slavic.

Now. It is true that ALL Slavic languages are pretty conservative, and that large chunks of vocabulary, for instance, are recognizable across the language families. Red/beautiful (krazni/a), numbers (edin,dva,...), city (g{o}rad), white (bel) for example. But 'all slavic languages are close to South Slavic' would be a better usage than picking individual examples.

 

[kasumigenx]

No. Ukrainian is an East Slavic language, and things like Polish and Czech (both of which were spoken in Silesia, I'm not sure what 'Silesian' is supposed to be) are West Slavic.

Now. It is true that ALL Slavic languages are pretty conservative, and that large chunks of vocabulary, for instance, are recognizable across the language families. Red/beautiful (krazni/a), numbers (edin,dva,...), city (g{o}rad), white (bel) for example. But 'all slavic languages are close to South Slavic' would be a better usage than picking individual examples.

Actually, Polish, Pomeranian, Belarusian/Litvinian and Russian are very different from South Slavic languages and the other West and East Slavic languages are some what close to South Slavic, I think that is understandable since the West and East Slavic vernaculars that are very similar to South Slavic are found near the Carpathians where the South Slavs migrated from.

 

[Tomislav Addai]

IMHO Slovak, especially Central Slovak dialects are originally closer to South Slavic, and more closer to Chakavian.

However west Slovakia has a lot of intonation and phonology influence from Croats, who fled from Turks
I would say that Chakavian is result of Slavs arriving to a Romance substrate, while Shtokavians are more numerous Slavs arriving on top of halfly Romanized Illyrians.
Chakavian should have many Italian influence, and had not Turks come, it would have been the true Croat language.