# All Slavic languages: Do they all sound the same?



## nederlandsk

Everyone says they do
I've only heard Russian and Slovenian
They sound alike


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## Jana337

nederlandsk said:
			
		

> Everyone says they do
> I've only heard Russian and Slovenian
> They sound alike


For natives, they obviously do not! 
For the uninitiated, they might. But Czech is less soft than the others, Russian vocals are less clear, Polish does not have long vowels etc. - all of these influence how the languages sound.

Jana


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## skye

nederlandsk said:
			
		

> Everyone says they do
> I've only heard Russian and Slovenian
> They sound alike


 
It's interesting that you wrote this. It reminds me of something, but as you can see it's rather long, so I won't blame you for not reading. -> I spend one semester in Germany about three years ago. My room-mate there was also Slovenian, but we both spoke dialects, so I didn't hear anyone who'd speak standard Slovenian for quite some time.

When we were returning home a young couple entered the train (this was in Slovenia already). I wasn't really listening to them, but I heard them talking and I started wondering what language they were talking in. It sounded like Russian. I thought that it's very unlikely that I'd meet a couple of Russians here. I realized they are probably Slovenians, but I just couldn't believe it - how could Slovenian sound so strange to me that I didn't even recognize it? My own mother tongue? They really were Slovenians and once I realized that the language didn't sound anything like Russian to me any more. It was very weird. It never happened again. 

I told this to my room-mate who was also going back with the same train and she said the same thing happened to her.



On the other hand, I can distinguish a lot of dialect varieties in my area (as most other people in my town also do) and I can tell you aproximately where someone's from.


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## papillon

I think all Slavic languages do have a fairly similar sound. I have found myself in a noisy train hearing a group of people speak (NY subway). I couldn't quite hear what they're saying but I thought that they were Russian. Nope, they were polish...

Another interesting point is the accent that we (Slavic speakers) have when speaking in a foreign language. We all (OK, most of us _sans_ special training) have this "East European" accent, particularly in English. To me, even Swedish people have a similar accent. Perhaps that's why Lena Olin sounded so natural in the Unbearable Lightness of Being (or maybe she's just a good actress!)


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## Thomas1

Jana337 said:
			
		

> For natives, they obviously do not!
> For the uninitiated, they might. But Czech is less soft than the others, Russian vocals are less clear, Polish does not have long vowels etc. - all of these influence how the languages sound.
> 
> Jana


They, certainly, do not all sound the same but to my ears there are some groups of them which include similar (if not the same) sounding Slavic languages, e.g. (you probably won't agree with me, Jana ) Czech and Slovak.


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## natasha2000

I think that what happened to skye and polaco have a little to do with being slavic speakers and Slavic languages...

I think this can happen to anyone who spends some time out of their country and does not listen or speak their own language for some time. I have already seen here in this forum some Englishmen telling the same thing. I myself, after spending almost a year in Spain and not saying nor jhearing almost none of Serbian, had a difficulties when I came back to Belgrade... At the airport, people were speaking Serbian, and it sounded me so wierd both to listen and to speak my own mother tongue...

As far as the initial question is concerned.... I suppose it is very possible that all Slavic languages sound to you same, if you have no idea how each particular language sounds. The same you can say , for example, all Asian languages... I have no idea how Japanese, Chinese or Korean, or Vitnamise, or any of Hindu languages sound... So, I am sure I would say the same - they all sound the same to me, but on the other hand, I am sure that any Japanese, Korean or Chinese would be shocked if they hear me what I say....

On the other hand, even though I don't speak all Roman languages (only Spanish), I am able to recognize each and everyone of them - Portugese, French,Italian, Catalan, Galician, etc...
Salut.
N.


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## Outsider

I have heard fragments of many Slavic languages in my life, but not enough to get an auditive image of most of them. I would, however, venture to say that Polish sounds distinctly different from Russian.


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## skye

natasha2000 said:
			
		

> As far as the initial question is concerned.... I suppose it is very possible that all Slavic languages sound to you same, if you have no idea how each particular language sounds. The same you can say , for example, all Asian languages... I have no idea how Japanese, Chinese or Korean, or Vitnamise, or any of Hindu languages sound... So, I am sure I would say the same - they all sound the same to me, but on the other hand, I am sure that any Japanese, Korean or Chinese would be shocked if they hear me what I say....
> N.


 
That sounds very reasonable, I agree with this. I guess this is why so many foreigners say that all Slavic languages are alike and that if you speak one you can communicate in all others as well.


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## natasha2000

skye said:
			
		

> That sounds very reasonable, I agree with this. I guess this is why so many foreigners say that all Slavic languages are alike and that *if you speak one you can communicate in all others as well*.


 
This absolutely is not the truth.

We cannot understand more each other than for example an Italian or Spaniard can understand without any problem some French or Romanian.

There are words that are similar, but in no way if you speak, for example, Russian, you can understand me, or a Bulgarian...


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## panjabigator

Many times the differences between related languages are exagerated for nationalistic regions, but from what I gather, this isnt the case with Slavic languages.  Is there any specific tone or sound that an untrained person (such as myself) can listen for so I can identify what language Im listening too?  I was watching the show 24, and they identified a community as being Ukrainian, and when the character spoke, I suspected either Russian or Ukrainian but I had no clue.  I did hear the word "niet" though...hehe


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## Bosta

To my ears Polish sounds very sibilant. Czech and Slovak sound very similar. Russian sounds very different to me because of the reduced vowels and the irregular stress patterns. I've heard Ukrainian and mistaken it for Russian for a moment.
My native language is English and I've heard people speaking Dutch in the distance and mistaken it for English- more because of the intonation I think.


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## janecito

Sounding similar phonetically and being related (etymology, grammar, vocabulary wise) are (or at least can be) two completely different things. There are languages that sound similar (of course, as long as your knowledge of both of them is close to zero) but don't even belong to the same language group.

So, which similarities are we looking for?

Of course, I (as a Slav) can say for myself that a Slavic language (that I have never learnt or encountered before) still sounds much more familiar to my ear than a Germanic languages (that I have also never learnt or encountered before) – let's say Upper Sorbian and Icelandic .


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## Suane

I think that when I hear something Slavic I can distinguish it, or perhaps say, from what region they are>>> like from the south, east or middle. Ukrainian and Russian sounds very alike to me, but when I'm listening to it longer, maybe I can distinguish some differences. Also when I hear someone speaking some of the south slavic languages-like Croatian, Slovenian...they will probably sound quite similar to my ear...don't know.

But it is always somewhat pleasant to hear a similar, slavic language, like on the airport...


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## janecito

Just one more thing: I'm currently living in Poland and it has happened to me (and not only once) that Polish people would approach me (when I was speaking Slovene) asking me: "What language are you speaking? Portuguese? Romansh?" Well, to say the least, I was shocked. Is my language really so unrecognisable as Slavic or are just speakers of certain Slavic languages less capable of recognizing languages within the language group to which their mother tongue belongs as well... Once there was one who actually guessed it and another one that thought it was Croatian – close enough.


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## Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!

janecito said:
			
		

> Well, to say the least, I was shocked. Is my language really so unrecognisable as Slavic or are just speakers of certain Slavic languages less capable of recognizing languages within the language group to which their mother tongue belongs as well...



From my experience, the sound of Slovene is very removed from what I'd expect from a Slavic language, and spoken Slovene is _much_ harder for me to understand than Croatian or Bulgarian.


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## Thomas F. O'Gara

To throw my two cents in, my experience is that...it depends to some extent on who is talking.

I speak and understand Russian quite well, and consequently I find that I can normally understand Ukranian when I hear it; I've never heard Belarussian, but my guess is that the same would probably apply.  I can also understand Polish if it is spoken clearly and precisely, as in the TV news, but not in other circumstances.  I can frequently understand Serbian, but for any other Slavic languages I can only grasp the occasional word.


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## Glitz

I think Slavic languages can sound distinctivley different. Around where I live there are now loads of Polish people, and hearing them speak it sounds like their sentences are made up from very short words that when put to me sound like whispers. The only understanding I can get of it is maybe every third word.
Though I think Romanian being a Romance language might be very hard for someone who doesn't speak a Slavic language to spot out. As I was listening to some Romanians speaking on the Bus the other day, and was puzzled becuase their accents sounds eastern european though the words where something completley different. It was only then I found they where Romanian.
Even listening to different English speakers can come as a challenge. Have your ever heard a Scottish or Irish person, with a really thick accent speak English? Becuase I have and even being very close to them it sounded like they where speaking a different language. It was only when I listened very carefully that I could understand them.
I think also that people from Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands, having learnt English are able to gain a very good authentic some what native sounding accent, that could easily fool people.


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## palomnik

For my part, I usually have little trouble telling them apart.

Polish and Ukranian tend to sound similar to me, though.


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## echo chamber

I can hardly distinguish Czech from Slovakian. The same goes with Russian and Ukrainian. From all Slavic languages, I find the Slovenian the easiest for recognizing.


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## Tolovaj_Mataj

Echo chamber, being a Macedonian, please tell us your secret how do you distinguish Slovene from others.


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## echo chamber

*Tolovaj_Mataj:*
good question! 

Well, as I previously said, Czech and Slovakian (even Polish sometimes!) sound very similar to me(probably because I have never been in a contact with these two languages, so that I could here and recognize the diference. (Russian, Ukrainian, or Belarusian too!)
I can clearly make a diference between Serbian and Croatian, for example, but it takes some time (it depends, if I don`t here some word which exists in the Croatian, but is not used in the Serbian, for example, it`s harder for me to distinguish them only by the intonation). OK, yes, Bulgarian is clear too, but there is something in the Slovenian, in the intonation(also, the lenght of the words), in the way of pronounciation, the words themselves, that makes the Slovenian a bit different. For me, of course, it is the case with all macedonians!  
OK, you got me, now even I don`t know how do I always distinguish it that quickly. Maybe it`s because, together with the Russian, I like it most from all Slavic languages


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## El Torero

> While I pretty much disagree with this, while I was visiting family in Poland I went to the Czech Republic for a day and my Polish cousins had no problem communicating with or understanding Czech...it was funny to see them talking in Polish and someone responding in Czech=)


I've been to Prague once and I was amazed to see that it was easier for me to communicate with the natives using Polish than English... Firstly the languages are similar, secondly, many inhabitants of the Czech Republic come from Poland, thirdly, people in public places - like shops or cafes often deal with foreign customers and eventually get to know some phrases they commonly use
BTW it was on the very same trip that I tried for several minutes to talk in English to a group of people in a queue, before I realised they were Polish... :]


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## skye

On the other hand, I've heard of Slovenians and Serbians and Bosnians talking in English to each other. Cause they didn't understand what the other person was saying. I'm not joking.


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## Ayazid

I guess that those Bosnians and Serbians understood each other well but they didn´t understand the Slovenians  By the way, it would be interesting to know how much Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian speakers understand Slovenians since the 2 languages seem to be very similar, but unfortunately it would be rather off-topic


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## skye

Ayazid said:


> I guess that those Bosnians and Serbians understood each other well but they didn´t understand the Slovenians


 
Yeah, that's what I meant. I guess I shouldn't be so economical with words. 

Btw, it depends a lot on individual speakers. I can understand quite a lot of Croatian (and Serbian), but not everything, and sometimes I miss a joke or two, but I get the gist. (I also watched quite a lot of Croatian tv growing up and had classes in the fifth grade). I know people who say they understand nothing or very little and can't communicate normally, so they prefer English.


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## MarX

nederlandsk said:


> Everyone says they do
> I've only heard Russian and Slovenian
> They sound alike


They definitely sound different to me.

Last Sunday I was at the beach and like half of the group were Czechs.
Their language didn't sound "Slavic" to me.
If I hadn't known, I'd have guessed that it was a Latin language, like Spanish or Italian.


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## Tagarela

Ahoj,



MarX said:


> Last Sunday I was at the beach and like half of the group were Czechs.
> Their language didn't sound "Slavic" to me.
> If I hadn't known, I'd have guessed that it was a Latin language, like Spanish or Italian.



O, Czech alike to Spanish or Italian? For me Czech is much more mm "hard", "dry", unless when it is sung.

Before I have started really learning Czech, when I had only listened to some things in Slavic language, I thought they were very common. One day in Corcovado, famous touristic place here in Rio, I heard a group of people speaking, I was sure it was slavic, but I could not say which language, then I asked them, it was Polish. 

Now,  Czech and Russian sounds much more different for my ears, Russian is more "soft" to me. I cannot say much about other languages, since I seldom hear them. But, I think that Slavic languages is something that many people seldom hear, so, it is going to be really hard to told one from another. But it may happen with other group, other day a Russian girl asked sent me a song she thought it was in Portuguese, but it was Spanish. 



Na shledanou.:


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## MarX

Tagarela said:


> Ahoj,
> 
> 
> 
> O, Czech alike to Spanish or Italian? For me Czech is much more mm "hard", "dry", unless when it is sung.
> 
> Before I have started really learning Czech, when I had only listened to some things in Slavic language, I thought they were very common. One day in Corcovado, famous touristic place here in Rio, I heard a group of people speaking, I was sure it was slavic, but I could not say which language, then I asked them, it was Polish.
> 
> Now,  Czech and Russian sounds much more different for my ears, Russian is more "soft" to me. I cannot say much about other languages, since I seldom hear them. But, I think that Slavic languages is something that many people seldom hear, so, it is going to be really hard to told one from another. But it may happen with other group, other day a Russian girl asked sent me a song she thought it was in Portuguese, but it was Spanish.
> 
> 
> 
> Na shledanou.:


I don't know what you mean with "soft", but I guess Czech sounded "Latin" to me because of its clear vowels, whereas Russian sounds like Portugal Portuguese, with its "weak" vowels, thus sounds "Slavic" to me.


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## Athaulf

panjabigator said:


> Caramba!  Aren't Serbian and Bosnian very similar...like Croatian and Serbian are?



The above post probably referred to B/C/S speakers talking to Slovenians. In such a situation, it is indeed easier to speak in English if both sides are fluent in it, especially if neither side has had much exposure to the language of the other. 

On the other hand, people from Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, and Montenegro talking to each other in English would be a scene of montypythonesque absurdity. I suppose totally uneducated people from different regions who speak only their village dialects might have serious problems in communication, but anyone who speaks any English is virtually guaranteed to have learned the standard language first.


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## sokol

I have a little bit experience hearing Slovenian, Serbian/Croatian and Russian and less of Czech, Slovakian and Polish.
They all sound rather different to my ears, but then this is typical if you know at least one Slavic language.
Slovenian is "softer" to my ears than Serbian/Croatian which sounds rather "hard" and very "precise" (staccato even) but with "melody", while Russian is even "softer" (at least if not spoken by a martial politician like Stalin who was Georgian in the first place anyway), especially if you listen to Russian songs.
Czech and, even more so, Polish come over "harder" to my ear, and both have quite a different prosody compared to Russian and the South Slavic languages.

Typical for all of them are some basics in phonetics (even if there are quite some differencies between Slavic languages, for example the ones with palatalization - like Russian - and the ones without - like Slovenian).


But for anyone not knowing any Slavic language the Slavic languages may indeed sound similar.


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## avok

Hi,

This thread is interesting to me because I have always wondered about the same thing.

To me, all Slavic languages sound similar too! Whenever I hear a native Slavic language speaker, I say "this must be an Eastern European language".

Of course, the situation must be different for someone who is able to speak a Slavic language fluently. They can grasp the differences between different Slavic languages.

However, no matter how similar they are, each "Latin language" sounds different. French and Italian, two similar languages, yet they sound very different, even people who dont speak French / Italian can distinguish these two languages. 

To me, "Russian" sounds so Slavic and I can _somehow_ guess that the speaker is Russian. Other than that, the other Slavic languages sound so similar.

Still, *to me*, the less Slavic sounding Slavic languages are South Slavic languages ex. Croatian, Bosnian...the most Slavic sounding languages are Russian, Polish etc. 

I guess, Belorussians and Ukranians prefer speaking Russian in their daily lives, so they sound as Slavic as Russians 

Also some non-Slavic languages sound Slavic to me!
Romanian, Lithuanian, Portuguese


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## scythosarmatian

Suane said:


> I think that when I hear something Slavic I can distinguish it, or perhaps say, from what region they are>>> like from the south, east or middle. Ukrainian and Russian sounds very alike to me, but when I'm listening to it longer, maybe I can distinguish some differences. Also when I hear someone speaking some of the south slavic languages-like Croatian, Slovenian...they will probably sound quite similar to my ear...don't know.
> 
> But it is always somewhat pleasant to hear a similar, slavic language, like on the airport...


 
The easiest way to differentiate between Russian and Ukrainian is to listen to the way the letter "g" is pronounced. In Ukrainian "g" is palatalized, like in Greek. However,  when Ukrainians speak Russian they still palatalize their "g"s...


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## Čeština2008

natasha2000 said:


> This absolutely is not the truth.
> 
> We cannot understand more each other than for example an Italian or Spaniard can understand without any problem some French or Romanian.
> 
> There are words that are similar, but in no way if you speak, for example, Russian, you can understand me, or a Bulgarian...



I think there is also a big difference between how the spoken language sounds, and how it sounds when it is read/written. Despite the fact that I have spoken and written/read Polish for over 35 years, I still find some Polish a little difficult to read at times, but do not feel the same way about Czech. I cannot speak Croatian, but I've attempted to read a few Croatian articles recently and have found the difficulty level to be similar to Czech. But could I understand most of what a Croat says, or have a 10-minute conversation with them? Clearly not. 

While I would argue that there is certainly some similarity in the way all members of a certain language group sound, and there may be some common (or, at least similar) vocabulary, all that this serves to do, in my opinion, is to make it _a little easier_ for speakers of other languages in the same group to communicate with each other. But by no means can anyone truly claim that all speakers of Slavic languages can communicate with each other, simply because they speak a related language!

One of the big myths I hear in the Polish community is that it is very easy for us to communicate with Czechs and Slovaks. On a very basic level, this is true - a Polish-only speaker probably won't go wrong when ordering coffees in a Czech cafe, or booking themselves into a hotel, for example. But beyond that... there are so many differences in grammar, vocabulary, word endings and pronunciation that it quickly becomes clear that Czech is a totally different language. Even Silesian, which some argue is "just a dialect of Polish" (I disagree though) sounds and is written quite differently to standard Polish, despite being spoken mainly within Poland! 

As an aside, my mother works as an interpreter and speaks English, Polish and Russian, and therefore manages to interpret for Poles, Russians, Ukrainians and the occasional Czech/Slovak. But because she has never studied Czech/Slovak, it is with the natives of those two countries that she has the most problems, and manages only with the aid of a dictionary and phrasebook. Whereas I can only speak English, Polish and Czech, so I can communicate with Poles, Czechs and Slovaks, but cannot understand a word of Russian and virtually no Ukrainian. Yet, strangely, I appear to be able to understand some Croatian (and once had a fairly lengthy conversation in Polish-Croatian during the early part of the third Balkan War - but that's another thread altogether, lol  )


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## pikabu

based on my experinces (well that are not so numerous) I would say that a Slovenian can (could?) communicate with Croate, Serb, Bosnian without many difficulties or big misunderstandings, and of other (slav) languages the mostly with Czech, then Slovak and after than Polish (for the Russian, Ukranian etc. I don't know). But I think that a Croate can ever more understand a Czech (than a Slovenian), that they are even closer. 

and for that Portugese sounding like slavic languages: the first time I heard it, I was convinced it was Romanian (because of the "soft" endings, with many [č], [š], [ž], ... ). the pronounciation was "slavic" to me, but the roots of the words sounded romanic.


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## Orreaga

After studying Czech for a few months with a tutor (not having studied another Slavic language), I was interested in listening to Czech songs, so went to look for songs to download from the internet. One that I downloaded ("Dokud se zpívá") turned out to be a version with verses alternating in Czech and Polish (the singer, Jaromír Nohavica, is Czech but also popular with Polish audiences). At first I didn't notice, I just thought it was all Czech with a lot of unfamiliar words, but then I noticed the distinctive Polish sound "ł" (similar to English "w") which doesn't exist in Czech.

I tried some Czech on a Polish woman I know, and she said, "I can't understand that language! It sounds like Polish people when they are drinking!"


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## Čeština2008

Orreaga said:


> I tried some Czech on a Polish woman I know, and she said, "I can't understand that language! It sounds like Polish people when they are drinking!"



lol!!! 

I think Czech sounds like a funny, ungrammatical form of Polish. I'm sure native Czech speakers may think something similar about Polish, though. 

Mind you, I wish I could stop pronouncing Czech words like _neplatným as _
nep*ł*atným... I wonder if other Polish speakers have the same problem with Czech, haha


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## Thomas1

Čeština2008 said:


> lol!!!
> 
> I think Czech sounds like a funny, ungrammatical form of Polish. I'm sure native Czech speakers may think something similar about Polish, though.


 It does sound funny to us indeed, there were some discussions on the forum about that, but I cannot find anything at the moment.



> Mind you, I wish I could stop pronouncing Czech words like _neplatným as _
> nep*ł*atným... I wonder if other Polish speakers have the same problem with Czech, haha


The problem unfortunatley exists when we try to speak other Slavic languages too:   Russian: Лайка/Laika.

Tom


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## Bartholomew2002

Hello.

I'm a native Serbian speaker from Belgrade and I've always been interested in one thing, which can unfortunately only be answered by non Serbian speakers.

I was just wondering how does Serbian language sound to foreigners? Which language could I most easily compare it to so that I can hear it from your point of listening, and how does it generally sound like: soft, sharp, etc. Are you usually going to like it when you first hear it or not?

Hope you can give me a short description of Serbian and quench my curiosity.



Thanks!


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## Athaulf

Bartholomew2002 said:


> I was just wondering how does Serbian language sound to foreigners? Which language could I most easily compare it to so that I can hear it from your point of listening, and how does it generally sound like: soft, sharp, etc. Are you usually going to like it when you first hear it or not?
> 
> Hope you can give me a short description of Serbian and quench my curiosity.



The problem with your question is that the answer depends on the native language of these foreigners and also on the other languages to which they have been exposed previously.


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## trance0

As mentioned before, it depends on your mother language. For me, I have no problems recognizing a Slavic language from another non-Slavic one. As for distinguishing different Slavic tongues from each other, I can usually recognize Croatian/Serbian, Macedonian/Bulgarian, Polish, Russian, Czech/Slovak, but I don`t think I`ve ever heard Belarussian or Ukrainian or Upper/Lower Lusatian Sorbian in a spoken form. I would probably be able to seperate Lusatian Sorbian from other Slavic languages if I listened to someone speak it for a while because it (Upper and Lower) Lusatian Sorbian have preserved the grammatical dual like Slovenian which is my mother tongue. As far as understanding goes, I believe I can safely say I understand Croatian/Serbian very well(differences between the two are minuscule, to me they seem more like a dialect of the same language rather then languages on their own), if I listen carefully, I can also make out a great deal of Macedonian and Bulgarian(both written and spoken form). But Slavic languages from other groups(the Eastern and the Western) are much harder for me to grasp. I can say one thing though: If I hear a text spoken and then have the opportunity to read that same text, I am sure I would understand at least the gist in any Slavic language(even East and West).


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## b_fly

Bartholomew2002 said:


> Hello.
> 
> I'm a native Serbian speaker from Belgrade and I've always been interested in one thing, which can unfortunately only be answered by non Serbian speakers.
> 
> I was just wondering how does Serbian language sound to foreigners? Which language could I most easily compare it to so that I can hear it from your point of listening, and how does it generally sound like: soft, sharp, etc. Are you usually going to like it when you first hear it or not?
> 
> Hope you can give me a short description of Serbian and quench my curiosity.
> 
> 
> 
> Thanks!


 
Of course. As native Croatian speaker, I can say that Serbian is very interesting language, I don't understand very much of it, but it sounds a little bit like Russian. 

I'm just kiding, I just wanted to say, that as Slavic language speaker, I feel the difference very much...


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## b_fly

Jana337 said:


> For natives, they obviously do not!
> For the uninitiated, they might. But Czech is less soft than the others, Russian vocals are less clear, Polish does not have long vowels etc. - all of these influence how the languages sound.
> 
> Jana


 
I noticed that every Slavic nation thinks of their language as less soft then the others.  I don't know why that's so, but for me Croatian is definitely less soft than the others , and Czech, Slovak, Polish are the most soft languages.
Is it just me - or Ukrainian is easier for us (Croats) to understand than Russian? Like it's vowels are more open, or something. I don't know, maybe i'm just imagining.I never heard Belarusian.
Slovenian for me sounds like German in some way, definetly not like Russian. 
Macedonian /Bulgarian also/ sounds like Croatian but more dynamic (if that's right expression).


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## trance0

I believe Slovenian definitely sounds harder than most other Slavic languages and in this respect it is probably closer to German than to Russian. However there are sounds in Slovene that sound softer and hard to pronounce for many non-native(even some other Slavic) speakers: like the "šč" consonant cluster(example: "ščegetavček" pronounced like "shchegetauchek"). Interestingly I once read in an article that to Germans Slovene sounds like a language almost without vowels, although I am not sure if that goes for all Germans or if it was meant to be  more of a joke.


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## sokol

trance0 said:


> I believe Slovenian definitely sounds harder than most other Slavic languages and in this respect it is probably closer to German than to Russian.


I have a rather different opinion about the sound of Slovene.

Yes, Slovene (to my ears) is definitely 'harder' than Russian: Russian sounds so 'soft' because of the palatalisation, also the melody of Russian is 'soft' to my ears (the whole Russian language is like a poem to me, that is if spoken 'normal', not Stalin-style, of course).

But Serbian/Croatian really sounds 'hard' to my ears, definitely much harder than Slovene, despite the fact in SC the tonal accent is much stronger pronounced than Slovene (at least, in standard SC).
To my ears Czech also is definitely harder than Slovene, Polish too. But this also may be due to the speakers of both languages that I had the chance using their mother tongue (the sample of Polish and Czech speakers I already heard in real life is very small while I had quite some hearing experience with Slovene and Croatian/Serbian).



trance0 said:


> Interestingly I once read in an article that to Germans Slovene sounds like a language almost without vowels, although I am not sure if that goes for all Germans or if it was meant to be  more of a joke.


I think the person who wrote this either had Croatian or Czech in mind and didn't know much about Slovenian at all - or was only joking about the Slovenian writing system. Because in Slovenian the shwa sound before the 'r' (in words like 'vrniti') is quite pronounced, more so than in some other Slavic languages; and the 'v' in 'vtis' too is a vowel, which many speakers who don't know much about Slovene don't realise.

No, Slovenian sounds quite 'vocalic' to speakers with German mother tongue - much more so some Slovenian dialects, of course, but standard language too.


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## Kanes

I think the branches are pretty much devided by their sounding. Eastern ones comprised by Russian, sound very soft, they have this accent I can spot everywhere when they speak English too. Western sounds very jumpy, with too much stress and polish has too mush sss... sounds

Can't speak of Bulgarian as it is my language, but for southern, Serbian sound as less consonated Bulgaian with some missing sounds. Plus that gammer...


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## sokol

Kanes said:


> I think the branches are pretty much devided by their sounding. Eastern ones comprised by Russian, sound very soft, they have this accent I can spot everywhere when they speak English too. Western sounds very jumpy, with too much stress and polish has too mush sss... sounds


This is my impression also.

Putin of course also has a strong Russian accent when speaking English - anyone may search for audio files, there's plenty on the www, but I shouldn't link to sites probably violating copyrights.
And yes, 'jumpy' is what I too have in mind when thinking of Western Slavic, and Polish really has a great many sibilants.

A Polish colleague of mine also told me that the Poles are used to speaking in a rather 'hard' manner (that is, not sounding polite at all - to Austrian ears it sounds as if they were quarreling with each other while this colleague said this is just 'normal talking' without any impoliteness attached to it; as this is my only source of course I can't be sure if this is an exception in Poland, or rather the rule).

Of Bulgarian however I know little. What I know of South Slavic languages (mainly Slovenian and Serbian/Croatian) sounds - to me - softer and more melodic than Western Slavic, and less so than Eastern Slavic. But this generalisation probably isn't shared by others, especially native speakers.


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## Athaulf

sokol said:


> Well, Putin certainly sounds softer in speech than Stalin - _very much _so (but then Stalin was a Georgian by nation, Russian wasn't his 'mother tongue' or at least not his only one).



As far as I know, Stalin's stereotypical Georgian inability to palatalize soft consonants has been a running joke in Russia for many decades. 



sokol said:


> But Serbian/Croatian really sounds 'hard' to my ears, definitely much harder than Slovene, despite the fact in SC the tonal accent is much stronger pronounced than Slovene (at least, in standard SC).



"Despite"? I would actually say it's in part _because_ of the tonal accents. I would describe the "melody" played by these tonal accents as quite heavy and rough.  

BCS dialects in which the tonal accents are most prominent nowadays (e.g. most of Bosnia, and especially Herzegovina and Montenegro) are perceived by people from other BCS-speaking areas as very hard and rough. In contrast, for example, Kajkavian dialects, and even standard Croatian as pronounced in traditionally Kajkavian areas, which lacks the official BCS tonal accents, sounds very soft and gentle to e.g. Bosnians.


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## sokol

Athaulf said:


> "Despite"? I would actually say it's in part _because_ of the tonal accents. I would describe the "melody" played by these tonal accents as quite heavy and rough.


Well yes, the 'short' one displayed in writing with two accents grave above the vowel certainly is heavy and rough  but I didn't quite realise - as you wrote - that in the dialects where the neoštokavian accent is most prominent still (e. g. Bosnia) the speech sounds harder to other BCS speakers.

There's a simple reason for this, my ears mainly were exposed mostly to northern and western Croatian speakers (i. e. not-quite-neoštokavian accents).
So I only perceived the 'double-short-accent' as hard (that is, this one was the only one I really could clearly differentiate from all the others - with my mother tongue lacking a similar tonal accent it is different for me to perceive it correctly, let alone produce it).

But it is very interesting for me to hear that the classical neoštokavian accent also is perceived as 'hard' by speakers who only produce a weaker form of this tonal accent.
A similar, if not quite the same, form of accent also exists in Slovenian, by the way, but with the accent also the vocal quality changes (péti and pêti both being long vowels, but the é being closed while the ê is open), therefore the different tone curve of both vowels (in 'classical' pronunciation; some dialects seem to be different) is not phonemical but only a phonetic feature (or so my teachers said).


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## lalakuku

As for Slovene, we have a saying "Each village has its voice" and in the countryside this is very much true even today. The villages are separated by numerous hills and in the past people did not travel much, so they developed their own local distinctive dialects which can be hard if not impossible to understand for other Slovenes, both in terms of vocabulary and pronunciation. It's stunning to hear what some 20km distance may mean in terms of pronunciation.  

As for Serbian - to me it sounds as if a person has a dumpling in his mouth while speaking, particularly for the faaat "L" sound  

I have taught English for ten years and I noted that the Slovenes have the least heavily accented English when they speak it, much less than the Serbs and the Croats, let alone Russians. We tend to be quite good at learning German, although I would never say Slovene sounds in any way like German. My English pronunciation is British and I'm very close to fooling even the Brits with it, heh   

Czech is to me the language of TV cartoons - because I watched lots of them when I was little.. I am fluent in Serbian and Croatian and may understand every 50th Russian word, but that's about it in terms of Slavic languages, I think. I cannot distinguish between Bulgarian, Polish, Slovak, Ukrainian.. Someone mentioned Hungarian - it is not a Slavic language, though they are nestled next to the Slavic countries.


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## Kanes

Has anyone heard Bulgarian? How it sounds to you? I've only heard the opinion of Americans about the sound which is not a good source. They said it's like Arabic.


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## sokol

lalakuku said:


> We tend to be quite good at learning German, although I would never say Slovene sounds in any way like German.



I agree with you fully and I really can't understand why some people think that Slovene sounds 'like German' - Slovene not even has a 'German-like' accentuation (or at least isn't the closest to German accentuation of all Slavic languages; Czech seems to be closer there, at least to my ears).

This can be easily observed in Carinthia where a Slovene minority lives in the German speaking Austrian 'Bundesland': German Carinthian dialect is _heavily _influenced by Slovene Carinthian dialect;**) German Carinthian even has voiced plosives which do not exist in any other Austrian dialects and further don't even exist in German standard language (not voiced like that - fully voiced plosives, not the occasional coarticulation-inflicted voicing, and certainly much more pronounced voicing*) than what occurs in standard language).

If you only know German standard language and you are exposed to both Carinthian Slovene dialect and Carinthian German dialect you might even think they both sound the same - and they both 'are not German'. 
Personally I already have had the experience of listening to Carinthian Slovene dialect and thinking that this is Carinthian German dialect - which I couldn't understand, until I realised that this really is Slovene (which I didn't understand either, I have learned Standard Slovene, the Carinthian Slovene dialect I only can understand when spoken very slowly, and then only to a degree).


*) Now to explain voicing of plosives would take rather long; so the very short version: in Standard German with 'voiced plosives' the voicing sets on (usually) only very short after the stop has been released = voice-onset-time VOT (after release) almost zero. In Austrian standard and dialect speech there don't even exist these 'German voiced' plosives - the VOT is significantly longer (voice onset quite some time after release) (while on the other hand there is no aspiration in Austrian speech except with 'k' - where in Germany aspiration of voiceless plosives is very pronounced).
Slavic - and certainly Slovene - voiced plosives however have a *negative *VOT: voicing already begins _before _the release of the stop; same is true for Romance languages.
And German Carinthian dialect speakers produce the same voiced stops as Slovene Carinthian speakers.

**) Might sound strange to you that the _minority _dialect influences the _majority _dialect; the explanation to that however is a very straightforward one: 150-200 years ago Slovene still *was *the majority dialect of Carinthia - they were the 'ruling' nation in the old crownland of Carinthia; the Slovenes only became minorised during the late 19th and early 20th century due to assimilation.


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## trance0

Well, I find this similarity between Slovene and German Carinthian dialects fascinating, especially because of the political situation there. Anyway, as for German I must say all dialects and especially southern ones are very difficult to understand for someone who only speaks Standard German.


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## sokol

trance0 said:


> Well, I find this similarity between Slovene and German Carinthian dialects fascinating, especially because of the political situation there.



Well for sure many Carinthians (of German Austrian mother tongue) do not like very much being reminded of this similarity, but this has changed quite some in the last decade or so, now many people there have a much more relaxed attitude towards the whole minority situation.
But let's not talk politics here, I guess our mods would not appreciate that. 

Carinthian (German) dialect is very easy to understand for other Austrians (Carinthian dialect structurally is not too different), but Carinthians very easily are picked out because of their completely different (Slavic) accentuation*) and because of their voiced plosives.

*) Well, more precisely it is not 'mainland Slovene' accentuation which prevails in German Carinthian dialects, of course, but the Carinthian Slovene one, or I guess with a mix of some German dialect accentuation elements too - a wild mix of sorts.


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## Grosvenor1

To me, Czech sounds rather like Polish with the nasal vowels removed and stress on the first syllable rather than the penultimate. Actual Czechs and Poles may well disagree, however. 

I heard a dental assistant on the phone last year in London, speaking first in a language I couldn't identify but which sounded Slavic, and then in Russian. I asked her about it. The first language was Bulgarian, her native language, and she was talking to a Russian friend on the phone when she spoke Russian.


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## Athaulf

sokol said:


> Well yes, the 'short' one displayed in writing with two accents grave above the vowel certainly is heavy and rough  but I didn't quite realise - as you wrote - that in the dialects where the neoštokavian accent is most prominent still (e. g. Bosnia) the speech sounds harder to other BCS speakers.



In fact, in this regard, there exists a paradoxical situation in Croatia nowadays. The official standard Croatian still theoretically mandates the four-accent Neoshtokavian pronunciation with phonemic post-accentual vowel lengths. However, nowadays  the pronunciation of the Zagreb dialect is increasingly becoming the _de facto_ standard of elegant, educated speech, at least in Northwestern Croatia -- and due to its Kajkavian substrate, this pronunciation is very different from the standard. These days, someone speaking with a perfect Neoshtokavian accent in Zagreb would probably be perceived as a recent newcomer from some area in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and his speech would more likely be perceived as rustic than officially correct and educated. Of course, the key characteristic of this speech as perceived by a typical person from Zagreb would be its hardness and roughness.


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## venenum

Well, I would not exactly say it is perceived as _elegant and educated_ - the correct tag would be: fashionable and urban speech. And yes, speaking with a standard, by-the-book pronunciation would mark you as a hillbilly in Zagreb, whether you used the pronunciation of some areas of Herzegovina (the closest to the prescribed standard, as I am told), or Slavonia and Baranja (a little bit corrupted, but still closely related to the standard accentuation system).


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## Mark-John

'Has anyone heard Bulgarian? How it sounds to you? I've only heard the opinion of Americans about the sound which is not a good source. They said it's like Arabic'

No way!  Having said that, Bulgarian people in the east are softening their vowels, so some of the words are sounding similar to Turkish, and Bulgarian language is borrowing several Turkish words and culture is influenced from the Middle East, especially in the style of music.  But apart from that, its absolutely 100 per cent untrue.  Maybe these Americans think that because Bulgaria borders on Turkey and they have this 'Arabic' view of Bulgarians.  If you go on U tube and listen to some Bulgarian songs you will see that the style may have similarities but not at all the words.


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## Mark-John

Bartholomew2002 said:


> Hello.
> 
> I'm a native Serbian speaker from Belgrade and I've always been interested in one thing, which can unfortunately only be answered by non Serbian speakers.
> 
> I was just wondering how does Serbian language sound to foreigners? Which language could I most easily compare it to so that I can hear it from your point of listening, and how does it generally sound like: soft, sharp, etc. Are you usually going to like it when you first hear it or not?
> 
> Hope you can give me a short description of Serbian and quench my curiosity.
> 
> 
> 
> Thanks!


 
For me when I learnt Serbian my impression is that it is 'firm but harsh'. In general I was surprised how easy it was to pick out individual words.  Generally I would say it has a sharpness/hardness to it but not in the same way as Polish which is a opposite type of what I'd call sharp.  As for whether I would like it I think for some people it lacks softness, I have heard this in Bulgaria where some people told me they thought Serbian had 'mnogo grubost'.  For me I was just relieved that the Serbian language had similarities to Bulgarian so I did'nt have to adjust too hard, not like in Russian where th pronouncation is totally different.  This image of harshness is not helped when there are artists like Ceca or especially Stoja who sound really harsh.


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## Darina

> As for whether I would like it I think for some people it lacks softness, I have heard this in Bulgaria where some people told me they thought Serbian had 'mnogo grubost'.


Those people who told you that the Serbian language had 'mnogo grubost' were probably from Eastern Bulgaria where the accent is very soft, like Russian. Western Bulgarian accent is hard and Serbian language is a bit harder. But not at all 'grub'.
I personally think that among all Slavic languages Serbian sounds best .


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## avok

Is Russian soft?? Hmmm I guess everyone has different perspective for softness and harshness. For me and for many other people in my country Russian is the ultimate Slavic language and known for its harsh sounds and extreme use of "zh" and "ch"/"sh" and syllables/words like "dobrsh" "dbrich"...These words dont mean anything but people just think of words /syllables like these and trilled r when they think of Russian. So for the people here it is totally harsh.


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## Kanes

About Serbian I don't think they ment it sounds hard, in this Bulgarian hs more grubost. By "mnogo grubost" I think they ment that it doesn't sound very refined to us, there is negative view on Serbian in general, partly because of the simpler grammer (us not getting cases too)

Avok, Russian and most slavic languages have those sounds but Russian pronounciation and general accent of the people are very soft. They palatize allot, like Turkish I guess but it sounds softer. Even when speaking English, you can aways recognise a Rusian by the soft accent and higher pitch.


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## Mišo

Jana337 said:


> For natives, they obviously do not!
> For the uninitiated, they might. But Czech is less soft than the others, Russian vocals are less clear, Polish does not have long vowels etc. - all of these influence how the languages sound.
> 
> Jana



Do you think, Czech is less soft than any of south slavic languages?


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## Darina

avok said:


> Is Russian soft?? Hmmm I guess everyone has different perspective for softness and harshness. For me and for many other people in my country Russian is the ultimate Slavic language and known for its harsh sounds and extreme use of "zh" and "ch"/"sh" and syllables/words like "dobrsh" "dbrich"...These words dont mean anything but people just think of words /syllables like these and trilled r when they think of Russian. So for the people here it is totally harsh.


 
Sorry! By "soft" I meant palatized.  Also pronouncing "e" like "je", reduced vocals, etc.


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## zoltan82

Thomas1 said:


> They, certainly, do not all sound the same but to my ears there are some groups of them which include similar (if not the same) sounding Slavic languages, e.g. (you probably won't agree with me, Jana ) Czech and Slovak.


 
They really do not all sound the same completely but you understand each other slavians do not you?
I think polish a little different, chech and slovak almost the same the south slavian almost the same but the same just little differences, ukrainian and russian perfectly understand each other. The truth is everybody like to have an own, unique language guys and differ from the other.
Is not it true?


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## Tagarela

Ahoj,

Recent news make me revive this thread. As most of you know, a famous jewlery shop was robbed in Paris. A Brazilian TV news when reporting what happened said something like that "_there aren't much informations about the thieves, but the people who were in the store said that they spoke an Eastern European language._" 
It sounded very "stereotyped" for me, I mean, because it is very unlikely that one says "a Western European language", since probably the person would say the name of the language. 
I know, of course, that perhaps this Eastern European language perhaps isn't a Slavic one, and also, there are Slavic speakers that don't consider themselves as Eastern but as Central Europe. 

Anyway, I just want to discuss if this feeling that Slavic languages sound the same is really because of a big lack of knowledge about Slavic languages by non-Slavic speakers or only somekind of historical prejudice like "o, they, the Slavs, are only some communists who speak Russian or a variation of it".

And please, don't misundertand me, I don't want to offense anyone - by the way, I'm very interested in Slavic language and related things. 

Na shledanou.:


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## DarkChild

^^Typical Western ignorants. Nothing new there.


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## trance0

DarkChild said:


> ^^Typical Western ignorants. Nothing new there.




I must say I agree. Although it is true, that almost all of East Europe`s inhabitants speak one of the Slavic languages.


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## TriglavNationalPark

zoltan82 said:


> the south slavian almost the same but the same just little differences



Not quite. Macedonian and Bulgarian are similar; Croatian, Bosnian, and Serbian are very similar (they were once known as Serbo-Croatian). Other than that, the South Slavic group is considerably more varied than the other two. Slovenian and Bulgarian, to take the two extremes, are worlds apart both lexically and grammatically. Even Slovenian and BCS are not considered mutually intelligible.

Yes, the Slavic languages are related somewhat more closely to each other than the Romance and the Germanic languages, but the differences are still fairly substantial.


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## Azori

I've seen Americans in some forums seriously questioning "What is an Eastern European look? My friends told me I look Eastern European." And answers: blue eyes, high cheekbones... Hmm...

So "Eastern European language" doesn't surprise me. It's a lack of knowledge in my opinion...


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## Nanon

Tagarela said:


> A Brazilian TV news when reporting what happened said something like that "_there aren't much informations about the thieves, but the people who were in the store said that they spoke an Eastern European language._"



I concur. This is gross ignorance. But the Brazilian TV report only quoted French sources. Sadly, most of French speakers hardly make any difference between Slavic languages. I was even asked a couple of times if Polish used the Cyrillic alphabet (!!)
It is also likely that the people who were in the store do not even remember that not all countries of Eastern Europe speak Slavic languages.


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## TriglavNationalPark

When Yugoslavia still existed, many people in the West thought that it had a single official language called "Yugoslavian". Some people, not just in "Western" Europe, still refer to the six countries from Slovenia to Macedonia as Yugoslavia and their citizens as "Yugoslavs".


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## WannaBeMe

It is very true that some West Europeans tendence even not to see Slavs as a part of Europe. In their schools , when they are talking about Europe they mean only Germany,West Roman Empire and England. For example, in schools in Germany nothing, but absolutely nothing of the history of Slavic people is not even beeing mentioned and that makes me sick. A german history professor asked me ones if Serbs and Albanians speek the same language becouse it sounds similar to him. Absurd! 
I am not saying that "ordinary" people should know such a thing becouse I dont think that a "East-Europian" would be able to distinguish Nors from Sweden or Islandic, but a professor should be able to do it! 
Even Greek culture is being placed behind. Nobody knows anything about orthodox even an ethic or religions techer not. 

Thus , I think that (non)education is the biggest provocative of (non)recognization of Slavic or anybody´s else language or culture. 

But one thing I hate more then nondistinguishing of Slavic languages is nondistinguishing Japanese from Chinese  .

Everything is ment without any atention to offence anybody and I excuse myself for bad English.


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## weatherleah02

As a native Russian speaker I can say that Western and South Slavic languages are near each other. Some of them are also near to Eastern, though. For example, Polish is more akin to Belarusian (Belarusian is East Slavic, that is). Czech and Croatian are quite akin to Ukrainian. Nearly-equal themselves are Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian. In Croatia, things went nicely when we tried speaking Russian with some inclusion of Ukrainian words here and there   Comparing to Germanic languages, the latter ones are very unlike each other. I'd say, English ≠ German ≠ Swedish ≠ Faroese, and in the same moment Russian ≈ Belarusian ≈ Polish ≈ Croatian.


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## vianie

A ridiculous thing relating to this topic was happened to me probably a year ago, when, sitting in a music pub, playfellow of mine suddenly interrupted our conversation: Listen, what an interesting Polish song! Awaring of this assessment, it took me some time to consider what _it_ actually was. What I found out that it was a hit-off rap from a Czech well-known singer and moderator.


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## Miacek

I have intermediate knowledge of Russian and have tried some other Slavonic languages too. The Western Slavonic languages sounded pretty unfamiliar for me, esp. Polish (can't say sure for Slovak, though). That's probably because of the specific nature of Polish phonology (seems sibilants are omnipresent there + some nasal vowels). Of the Southern Slavic languages, at least Serbo-Croatian and Bulgarian sound more like Russian and familiar for me (note that I'm Estonian, so the fact that these are richer in vowels may make them more sympathetic for my ear , Estonian having lots of vowels and relatively few consonants (sh/š, ch/tš and zh/ž occur in loan words, and e.g. in some people's pronunciation  the opposition between š/ž is not there)


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## juraj

I have also experience that I was not able to identify my mother tongue.  I spent few days with Germans and went back to Bratislava. I sat in bus and listened some boys talking. It sounded so strange. I was able to catch words, it was definitely slavic language. But WTF which language is so similiar? 

I can recognize west slavic languages
they had not east slavic accent
I understood too much for south slavic.
Once I realized, that it is my own language I was naturally able to understand everything


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## DenisBiH

juraj said:


> I have also experience that I was not able to identify my mother tongue.  I spent few days with Germans and went back to Bratislava. I sat in bus and listened some boys talking. It sounded so strange. I was able to catch words, it was definitely slavic language. But WTF which language is so similiar?
> 
> I can recognize west slavic languages
> they had not east slavic accent
> I understood too much for south slavic.
> Once I realized, that it is my own language I was naturally able to understand everything




Well, sometimes it takes me some time to register it's Bosnian that this or that passer-by is speaking in the center of Sarajevo, with the increase in foreign language speakers here (mostly Turkish, Italian, German, Albanian, Spanish, French, and of course English).

And once upon a time in Szeged, Hungary (just north of Serbia) it took me 20 minutes to realize which language some people sitting not 3m from me were speaking (or rather whispering) to each other (it turned out it was Romanian, but Serbian was in the game till the very end).


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## trosheniorasi

When I am not in a Slavic speaking country, I can definitely detect when a Slavic language is being spoken around me, even if they are mumbling and I can't tell what language it is. Considering that all non-Slavic languages sound vastly different from Slavic, they (Славянските езици) probably do sound the same to a non-native speaker.


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## LilianaB

Polish sounds harsh: as bees and snakes in one hive, I think Arthur  Miller said something like that, and he was not too far from the truth. I don't remember the exact words, but this was the sense. Russian is soft. I think it is the softest of all Slavic languages. Polish is definitely the harshest, because of the consonant clusters it uses. Pszczola, etc.

I don't think Belarusian id that similar to Polish: there are only some Polish words in Belarusian.


Czech and Slovak, do not sound the same. Czech has even a lot of different words, for somebody who speaks Polish, for example, hard to understand. They have a different rhythm, I think, too. People who speak Russian ordinarily do not understand Ukrainian, if the conversation is about something more serious. A lot of Ukrainian people understand Russian only because they had Russian in school for years. People who speak Polish understand Ukrainian better, than people who speak Russian. I would think Ukrainian is closer to Polish phonetically, as well.

#31. Avok, Ukrainian and Belarusian are Slavic languages, not they that just sound Slavic because people prefer to speak Russian at home. Baltic languages do not sound Slavic at all: they have a totally different rhythm and so does Romanian, which is a Romance language.


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## jadeite_85

To an untrained ear they sound the same. For a person that speak a Slavic language as his/her mother tongue they sound different (from a pronounciation/accent point of view). I think also a person that learned a Slavic language as his second, third tongue can have a more trained ear.
 An American, that I knew, couldn't understand the difference between French, Spanish and Italian, they all sounded the same for him. A Georgian asked me, while watching a video on computer, if the language spoken was Italian, while it occured it was Greek.
Before I started to study Japanese, I couldn't differentiate it from Chinese. These two languages sound completely different for a trained ear.

I can differentiate Russian, Ukrainian, Czech, Polish, Bulgarian and BCS. But I can't differentiate Czech from Slovak, Bulgarian from Macedonian, Ukrainian from Belorussian and Serbian from Croatian. I've barely listened to Slovak, Macedonian and Belorussian. So I have a lack of exposure.

Spoken Bulgarian and Ukrainian sound harsh, while in songs they are very musical IMO. Especially Ukrainian sounds very good to my ear in songs. And I've heard other persons saying this. 
BCS too is a language that sounds good in songs. It is melodic even when spoken (due to pitch accent), but it is somehow harsh. A language can be hard, but can sound melodical/musical. However this is somehow a subjective perception.

How does Slovene sound to you? IMO it is not very musical, but due to the fact that I'm a native speaker I can't really tell.


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## b_fly

_*Melodiousness and harshness IMO *
_
I agree that there's a difference between languages in songs and in speech. Like you've said: spoken Bulgarian or especially Ukrainian are harsher than those in songs. When it comes to Slovene, I would say the opposite is true: Slovene can in songs, from time to time, sound a little bit clumsy and archaic, but in speech it sounds amazing.

Melodiousness of languages in songs: 
1. Polish 
2. Czech
3. Slovak
*4. **Slovene
*5. Macedonian 
6. Bulgarian 
7. BCS (if we make comparison between Belgrade, Sarajevo and Zagreb accent, then in order: Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian)
8. Ukrainian
9. Belarus
10. Russian

Melodiousness of languages in speech:
1. Polish 
*2. Slovene
*3. Czech
4. Slovak
5. BCS (in order: Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian)
6. Macedonian 
7. Bulgarian 
8. Russian
9. Belarus
10. Ukrainian

When I've first heard Slovene (in not very good music), it sounded to me as very old, clumsy language and reminded me (for some reason) of German. But when I've started listening to more and more Slovenian music, I was starting to get impressed by melodiousness. Soon I discovered spoken Slovene language, and I was totally into that famous _swallowing vowels_. It sounded like cooler version of my mother tongue - BCS, it sounded more like South-Slavic language for teenagers. 

Now, when I know it very well, I consider it to be, alongside Polish and Macedonian - the most beautiful Slavic language. Many people consider Polish to be Slavic French, while I would add that Macedonian and BCS sound like Slavic Italian (less poetic than French, but more melodic than Spanish), Russian is more like Slavic Spanish (harsh, quick, easy to learn), while Slovene is Slavic Portuguese. Long, weird accents, amazing, exotic sounds, somehow dividable from all other languages in the group.


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## Enchy

The thing is (with Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, Macedonian and Slovenian) we all used to be one country and the official language used to be 'Serbo-Croatian'. That's why a lot of Slovanians and Macedonians, especially the older generations understand and speak Serbian. Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian are almost the same, there are just some different words and in Serbia we speak 'jekavski' they speak 'ijekavski'. Croatians cannot read or understand our cyrillic writing. Macedonian and Slovenian are different, Macedonian is understandable but the grammar is entirely different while Slovenian...I don't understand anything. 

For the other Slavic languages, no we don't understand each other, it's very different and we can't tell which is which.


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