High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! South Slavic languages comprise one of the three geographical groups of Slavic languages (besides West and East Slavic). There are around 30 million speakers of these languages, mainly in the Balkans. The South Slavic languages are further subdivided into Eastern and Western subgroups. German, Hungarian and Romanian generally form a belt which geographically separates speakers of South Slavic languages from their counterpart West and East Slavic language speakers. The first South Slavic language to be written was Old Church Slavonic in the 9th century, which was based on the local dialect in the Thessalonica region. It is retained as a liturgical language in some South Slavic Orthodox churches.