# Slavic languages similarities



## xxatti

Ok, I was reading the mutual intelligibility thread (wont let me post link) and wanted to try and get a concensus (or line-up) as to which Slavic languages are the most closely related to each other. Now I know they have the separations of east, west, and south when it comes to these language groupings… But it seems as though people tend to place Ukrainian and Belarusian (which are supposedly grouped the same as Russian) farther away from Russian, and Bulgarian much closer to Russian. I would’ve thought it would be the opposite. I also get the impression that Belarusian is closer to Polish than it is to Russian. Perhaps someone could explain or clarify this for me?

These are the languages in question that I would like grouped/ordered in their relation to closeness.

Serbian
Belarusian
Ukrainian
Bulgarian
Czech
Polish
Slovak
Russian
Macedonian
Croatian


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## Maja

Well I will try: 
Serbian & Croatian  (even disputed by some if they are two separate languages, see "Serbian/Croatian: One language?"  thread), then Macedonian (smt between Serbian  & Bulgarian), Bulgarian then Russian. 
Ukrainian and  Belarusian.
Czech & Slovak  (obviously ), then Polish; 
Of course, I might be wrong as I don't speak any language from the  "second" and "third" group!
Hope this helps, but wait to see what the others  will say.
Pozdrav!


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## Jana337

To me, Slovak is obviously the most familiar, but I often wonder whether it wouldn't be considered closer to Polish if Czechs and Slovaks hadn't lived in one state.
Polish comes second.

I find the East Slavic group much easier to understand than the South one, but I took a Russian class long ago (my brother who has been never exposed to Russian would be probably more comfortable with the South branch). Within the East group, Russian is much easier than the rest, but that's probably just because of the class I took. Bulgarian is easier than the other South Slavic languages; I'd even say that I can understand it better than Belarusian and Ukrainian, which would corroborate your claim.

Some practice works like a charm.  I can easily follow all Slavic discussions, much better than one year ago, before we had this forum. It's not like I could always chip in, but having to read the threads has substantially improved my understanding.

Jana


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## Marijka

I study Slavic Languages& Literatures, so it is much easier for me to understand all Slavic languages, but I have problem with South Slavic group ( though I've learned Old-Church-Slavonic).
For West & East Slavic groups I've tried to "draw" a diagram, hope it's clear 

........................*Belarussian*
...........*.Polish*  <         ........*l*......*.*..*>* *Russian*
* Czech <*.....*l*........*Ukrainian*
............*Slovak <*

Czech is similar to Polish and Slovak. Ukrainian and Belarussian are something between Polish and Russian, but Ukrainian and Slovak vocabulary and pronounciation are alike in many ways.
But it is just my personal classification.


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## xxatti

Marijka said:
			
		

> I study Slavic Languages& Literatures, so it is much easier for me to understand all Slavic languages, but I have problem with South Slavic group ( though I've learned Old-Church-Slavonic).
> For West & East Slavic groups I've tried to "draw" a diagram, hope it's clear
> 
> ........................*Belarussian*
> ...........*.Polish* < ........*l*......*.*..*>* *Russian*
> *Czech <*.....*l*........*Ukrainian*
> ............*Slovak <*
> 
> Czech is similar to Polish and Slovak. Ukrainian and Belarussian are something between Polish and Russian, but Ukrainian and Slovak vocabulary and pronounciation are alike in many ways.
> But it is just my personal classification.


 
Well that seems to be the general concensus on the east and west groups. But the question is where do the languages from the south group fit in? Are they closer to the Czech side or the Russian side... or somewhere in between? And from what I've been reading, the gap between Russian and Ukranian/Belarusian seems to be much larger than the gap between Czech/Polish or even Belarusian/Polish and Ukrainian/Slovak. This is what Im trying to get an understanding on.


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## übermönch

I'd say the southern languages are closer to the eastern group, mainly because the old bulgarian was the basis of the lithurgical language of all slavic orthodox christians and thus had an influence on their first languages. Ukrainian is hard to classify since it doesn't really exist as a single language. The ukrainian spoken in eastern ukraine is the same as the southern dialects of russian, the ukrainian spoken in the western part is almost the same as slovak. 
I would say that Russian vocabulary differs stronger from white rusian then polish, simply because Russian has a lot borrowings from turkic, ugric, dutch, french and german; while white russian rather borrowed words from lithunian and polish. The white rusian grammar however resembles almost entirely the russian - thus both Russians and Poles understand White Rusian to a comparable degree.


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## Jana337

Discussion about Ukrainian moved here.

Jana


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## Anatoli

xxatti said:
			
		

> Well that seems to be the general concensus on the east and west groups. But the question is where do the languages from the south group fit in? Are they closer to the Czech side or the Russian side... or somewhere in between? And from what I've been reading, the gap between Russian and Ukranian/Belarusian seems to be much larger than the gap between Czech/Polish or even Belarusian/Polish and Ukrainian/Slovak. This is what Im trying to get an understanding on.



The gap between Russian vs Ukrainian vs Belarusian is artificial and is not so large. There's too much heat and Ukrainians forgot they were together with Russia for hundreds of years, fought the same wars side by side with Russians. Standard Ukrainian is intelligible to Russian but needs some getting used to as any other language, all depends on exposure, speed of the speaker's talking and the topic (easy, complicated).

Belarusian is way easier to understand than Polish, let alone Czech for a Russian speaker. It's probably the closest to Russian, followed by Ukrainian.

If Czechs never heard Slovak language they would have to do the same. I am Russian linguist, learned to some extent and was exposed to a few Slavic languages.

The hardest to understand for me are Czech and Slovenian. They seem the furthest from Russian. Having said this, I would need a couple of months to be able to understand and if I put some effort, I would be able to communicate in a few months in either of them.

Each Slavic language is different from another,they are not dialects but languages, Serbian and Croatian are really one language or used to be. Macedonian and Bulgarian are also very close.


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## Etcetera

For me, it's rather easy to understand Polish - as I'm currently learning this language. 
Then comes Ukrainian, which I can understand, too, but it seems to me to be much closer to Polish (remember that Ukraine used to be a part of Rzeczpospolita). My Polish friend who is learning Russian and is used to Ukrainian (some of her acquiatances are Ukrainians) says that it's easier for a Polish to understand a Ukrainian than a Russian.
I also studied Serbian for a year or so, but Polish still seems to have more features in common with Russian.


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## xxatti

So in terms of proximity to Russian, Im guessing it’s safe to say that the closest language would be Belarusian, then Ukrainian. Therefore, we could say that Marijka’s graph is quite accurate, with Belarusian being a bit closer to Russian than Ukrainian? 


........................*Belarussian*
...........*.**Polish* < ........*l*......*.*..*>* *Russian*
*Czech <*.....*l*........*Ukrainian*
............*Slovak <*

And what about Macedonian and Bulgarian? Are they off in a totally different direction, or are they close to one of the languages in the graph? If the languages from the south are closer to the east group, then would they be closer to the Russian side or the Belarusian/Ukrainian side?


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## Etcetera

Ukrainian seems to me to be closer to Russian than Belarusian. It's only my opinion, of course.
Bulgarian and Russian are somehow rather close. And they both use Cyrillic. But it's easier for me to understand Czech than Bulgarian.


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## übermönch

Bulgarian is certainly very close to Russian, in regards on vocabulary closer then ukrainian and byelorusian, the grammar is, however, very different, but comprehensible thank to it's relative simplicity. As I mentioned before, the reason is that for a long time the only written language in Russia was a variant of old Bulgarian, called Church Slavonic, and it's still the language of the russian orthodox church. Bulgarian also, just like Russian, has some ugric and turkic vocabulary since they actually migrated from Volga and also had close contact to seljuk Turks. I think written Bulgarian is easier to understand to a Russian then written (western ) Ukrainian, spoken Bulgarian, however, is alot harder due to different accents. The word for "language" is, for example the same in bulgarian and russian, the ukrainian word however differs.

EDIT:
Bulgarian:
http://bg.wikipedia.org/
White Rusian:
http://be.wikipedia.org/
Ukrainian:
http://uk.wikipedia.org/


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## xxatti

Etcetera said:
			
		

> Ukrainian seems to me to be closer to Russian than Belarusian. It's only my opinion, of course.
> Bulgarian and Russian are somehow rather close. And they both use Cyrillic. But it's easier for me to understand Czech than Bulgarian.


But could this be because you're currently learning and have good knowledge of Polish? For a Russian speaker that has no knowledge of the western group, I get the feeling that Czech is quite difficult to understand. 

And doesnt Serbian also use the Cyrillic alphabet? Would that mean it's also closer to Russian? But I know having the same alphabet doesnt mean much because English and French have the same alphabet (just with accents) and they are very different from one another.


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## übermönch

xxatti said:
			
		

> But could this be because you're currently learning and have good knowledge of Polish? For a Russian speaker that has no knowledge of the western group, I get the feeling that Czech is quite difficult to understand.
> 
> And doesnt Serbian also use the Cyrillic alphabet? Would that mean it's also closer to Russian? But I know having the same alphabet doesnt mean much because English and French have the same alphabet (just with accents) and they are very different from one another.


 Serbian differs much stronger from Russian than Bulgarian. The cyrillic writing doesn't change much. Croatian is similar to serbian without using cyrillic. For me it's as hard to understand as Czech, maybe a little easier, but only a little. I get around 20-30%

EDIT: So, let's say Serbian's like high German vs. English, and Bulgarian like Dutch vs. English.


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## Etcetera

Serbian use Cyrillic (_the_ Cyrillic? I'm not sure about using an article here!). Croatian prefer Western alphabet. That's the major difference between them, it seems. 
As to the question of whether or not is Serbian closer to Russian... Well, I was sure that Serbian is *very* close to Russian right until I took some Serbian classses (it was about 5 or 6 years ago). Amusingly enough, only a year before that I made a report at school about Slavic languages, and from what I'd read in various books, I somehow decided that Serbian is the closest to Russian from all Western- and South-Slavic languages! But when it came to vocabulary, to grammar - oh! In fact, Russian and Serbian grammars have rather little in common. Compare those two sentences, for example (they both are translations of the same, very simple phrase - I'm Milan's mother):
- Ja сам Миланова мама/Ja sam Milanova mama. - in Serbian
- Я мама Милана/Ya mama Milana. - in Russian
See the difference? 
Natasha can say much more on Serbian. I took those classes too long ago...


> But could this be because you're currently learning and have good knowledge of Polish? For a Russian speaker that has no knowledge of the western group, I get the feeling that Czech is quite difficult to understand.


It could be so - and I've pointed out that I'm not speaking for all Russians. But at the same time, every Russian can catch at least the main idea of a text in Polish, Czekh, any other Slavic language. They're closer than, say, Germanic languages.


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## Anatoli

It's all matter of exposure as it seems, Polish can't be closer to Russian than Ukrainian, that's for sure! Classification in Eastern, Western and Southern makes sense. You really need to know how to map Polish sounds to Russian - 

Polish
 porządek  (pozhondek)
  rzeka  (zheka)
  przyszedl  (pshyshet)

Ukrainian:
порядок (same spelling in Russian)
река (same spelling in Russian)
прийшов (Russian: пришёл)


As for the simlarity of Bulgarian (more than say Serbian) to Russian, it's not the simlarity, they are borrowings:
a whole of group of words was borrowed when Orthodox church was introduced in Russia:
глава (cf. голова)
врата (cf. ворота)
град (*град*остроитель, пре*град*а, Петро*град*) (cf: город)
враг (Ukrainian: ворог)

Although, there are quite a few words in Ukrainian and Belarusian borrowed from Polish, there are even more words similar to Russian in both Ukrainian and Belarusian.

Polish is quite different in pronunciation to any other Slavic language that it has nasal sounds like in French (letters "ą" [ong] and "ę" [eng]), "rz", which is pronounced as either "zh" or "sh" is quite specific, usually can be mapped to Russian or Belarusian soft (palatalised) R', in Ukrainian it's not palatalised but it's still the R sound.
Polish has a steady word stress on the penultimate syllable.

Czech and Slovak have both accent on the first syllable of a word and have long vowels - unique to these two languages compared to other Slavic ones. The Czech letter "ř"  can be mapped to  Polish "rz", also makes it harder to understand. Slovak is lightly easier because it doesn't use ř and the vocabulary is a bit closer to Eastern Slavic languages.

When I had to take a test in Ukrainian, I started reading books and magazines and Ukrainian with hardly any previous exposure. I didn't use any dictionary, I was able to guess a lot of words by their context, there is more similarity than dissimilarity. I doubt a Russian could read a Polish or Czech book without actually learning it first. So, in my opinion Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian are very close, which also made it easier for the  Ukrainian government to Ukrainise official institutions in Ukraine (not meaning to start a new debate!). There are attempts to distantiate Ukrainian further from Russian, which is possible because there are dialects and different versions of the same word, standard Ukraianian differs significantly from western Ukrainian, so if more words are chosen to replace the usual words, then Ukrainian may become different and will become closer to Polish.


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## xxatti

übermönch said:
			
		

> Serbian differs much stronger from Russian than Bulgarian. The cyrillic writing doesn't change much. Croatian is similar to serbian without using cyrillic. For me it's as hard to understand as Czech, maybe a little easier, but only a little. I get around 20-30%
> 
> EDIT: So, let's say Serbian's like high German vs. English, and Bulgarian like Dutch vs. English.


 
So could we say that Belarusian/Ukrainian and Russian are like Spanish vs. Catalan?


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## Maja

Etcetera said:
			
		

> Serbian use Cyrillic (_the_ Cyrillic? I'm not sure about using an article here!). Croatian prefer Western alphabet. That's the major difference between them, it seems.


No, in Serbia we use both Cyrillic and Latinic alphabets. Although I prefer Cyrillic myself, Latinic is more in use when it comes to road signs, license plates, some official documents... a lot of newspapers and magazines are printed in Latinic, then computers and mobile phone manus, movie subtitles... 
Croats, however, only use Latinic (but all generations who went to school prior to the 90's and the country split-up, HAD to learn Cyrillic in school - it was obligatory). 



			
				Etcetera said:
			
		

> - Я сам Миланова мама/Ja sam Milanova mama. - in Serbian
> - Я мама Милана/Ya mama Milana. - in Russian


A little correction: *JA* сам Миланова мама. We don't have letter Я. 

I think that Russian is close to Serbian, but then again I was studying it in school and maybe I just assume that it is so since I understand it.
But I think that Bulgarian is smt between Serbian and Russian. The common ground to Serbian, Russian and Bulgarian is Church Slavic, still in use in our Orthodox Churches that influenced our modern languages. 




			
				Anatoli said:
			
		

> As for the simlarity of Bulgarian (more than say Serbian) to Russian, it's not the simlarity, they are borrowings:
> a whole of group of words was borrowed when Orthodox church was introduced in Russia:
> глава (cf. голова)
> врата (cf. ворота)
> град (*град*остроитель, пре*град*а, Петро*град*) (cf: город)
> враг (Ukrainian: ворог)



As to глава (head), врата (door), град (city/town), враг (devil), we use them in Serbian as well. I didn't know they are borrowings from Bulgarian?!!! Can you elaborate that? 

 Pzdrv!


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## Etcetera

Maja, thank you for your corrections!
Indeed, I remember seeing on TV road signs written in Latinic. 
Well, I used to consider Serbian to be closer to Russian, not Bulgarian! But since you all vote for Bulgarian... Maybe I used to think so because I took several Serbian classes but have never learned any Bulgarian?


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## übermönch

Maja said:
			
		

> As to глава (head), врата (door), град (city/town), враг (devil), we use them in Serbian as well. I didn't know they are borrowings from Bulgarian?!!! Can you elaborate that?
> 
> Pzdrv!


I'm not sure those are borrowings from Bulgarian. At least 'Grad' and similar words are present is all slavic languages. I'd rather call po*zdr*avlen'ye, *zdr*avstvovat', pomojenye, merzost as certain examples of borrowings from church slavonic to modern Russian.  Corresponding words wouldn't be so hard to find in Serbian since those are just the ones not present in Croatian.


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## cyanista

xxatti said:
			
		

> So could we say that Belarusian/Ukrainian and Russian are like Spanish vs. Catalan?



The analogy is not bad, in each case it's national language versus world language. But Belarusian is losing this uneven battle not being supported by the goverment nor by strong tradition.


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## Aldin

Similarites in South-Slavic languages:

BHS is very similiar to Macedonian and then to Bulgarian.There are similarities with Slovenian as well but for most BHS speaker it's very hard to understand Slovenians.BHS,Macedonian and Bulgarian share a great amount of orientalisms(words from Arabic,Perisian and Turkish),while in Slovenian there is a great amount of germanisms.I'd say that Slovenian is more similiar to Western group than to Southern group.The phonetics of Slovenian and BHS are almost the same(Slovenian lacks Ć and Đ)

And about Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian:
It is definitly the same language,if you call a dog Mimmy,Lilly,Fuffy or something like that,the dog will still be a dog,his name is not important,the content is.
BHS just use different synonims.
Bosnian-Lubenica/Paradajz
Serbian-Bostan/Paradajz
Croatian-Lubenica/Rajčica(Poma in Dalmatia)


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## Maja

Etcetera said:
			
		

> Maja, thank you for your corrections!
> Indeed, I remember seeing on TV road signs written in Latinic.
> Well, I used to consider Serbian to be closer to Russian, not Bulgarian! But since you all vote for Bulgarian... Maybe I used to think so because I took several Serbian classes but have never learned any Bulgarian?


 
Well, I think that it  depends on how you look at it. For instance, Bulgarians  use "й, я, ю, щ" like Russians (Serbs don't), and a lot of their  vocabulary is similar (as far as I know). On the other hand, Serbs  used all 6 cases (+ 1) that Russians have, but Bulgarians only have  2. See "All Slavic Languages  Dictionary" thread in "Multilingual Glossaries"!
Serbian and Bulgarian are also similar, which is to be  expected since we are neighboring countries and we influence each other's  languages. I have some Bulgarian friends who say that when I speak Serbian, they  recognize some archaic expressions which their grandparents use (like "RAT" -war  etc.). And when I hear Bulgarian, it sounds to me like south-eastern Serbian  dialect (around the town of Vranje or Dimitrovgrad which is on the very border  with Bulgaria).
This is a matter of subjective opinion and our  impressions based on our previous knowledge of languages. 
We should ask some  real expert on the subject . 



			
				Aldin said:
			
		

> BHS just use different synonims.
> Bosnian-Lubenica/Paradajz
> Serbian-Bostan/Paradajz
> Croatian-Lubenica/Rajčica(Poma in Dalmatia)


 We call it "lubenica" (watermelon) as well !

 Puno pozdrava iz Beograda


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## Anatoli

Maja said:
			
		

> As to глава (head), врата (door), град (city/town), враг (devil), we use them in Serbian as well. I didn't know they are borrowings from Bulgarian?!!! Can you elaborate that?
> 
> Pzdrv!


 I thought I explained clearly. They are borrowings into Russian from Bulgarian, not the other way around.
Serbian and Bulgarian are languages of the same group, no surprise many words are the same - very similar.


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## Aldin

I don't know,my cousins from Kragujevac called it bostan,we never use that word in bosnia for that.


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## Maja

Anatoli said:
			
		

> I thought I explained clearly. They are borrowings into Russian from Bulgarian, not the other way around.



Any proof???

Pzdrv!


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## Maja

Aldin said:
			
		

> I don't know,my cousins from Kragujevac called it bostan,we never use that word in bosnia for that.



Yeah, you are right, there is  such a word and people use it, especially those that live in the country. But I,  for instance, never used in my life... Maybe to say "obrao je  bostan" , but I can't imagine myself using that saying either when there are so many good slang expressions like "ugasio je" .

Veliki pozdrav!!!


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## Anatoli

Maja said:
			
		

> Any proof???
> 
> Pzdrv!


Why do you need the proof? What is your point? My point was to say that some people say that Bulgarian is closer to Russian than Ukrainian.

It's a common knowledge in Russia that Russian has a layer of southern Slavic words - usually called "старославянский" or "церковнославянский язык"

There is heaps of info on the web, I can't post links because I haven't reached the limit of 30 posts.

Now I have the right to post links, here's one article, use google if you need more:
http://www.rusword.org/articler/view.php?i=i3


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## xxatti

Anatoli said:
			
		

> Why do you need the proof? What is your point? My point was to say that some people say that Bulgarian is closer to Russian than Ukrainian.


Just when I thought I had things all figured out on the Russian side . I guess there really is no concensus, it just depends on who you ask .


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## xxatti

According to this article, it is Bulgarian which has borrowed words from Russian (amongst other languages).

http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/society/A0809396.html


....After the Bulgarians achieved independence in 1878, a modern literary language based on the vernacular came into its own. Modern Bulgarian, which is generally said to date from the 16th cent., borrowed many words from Greek and Turkish during the period of Turkish domination; more recently it has borrowed words from Russian, French, and German..... 

See S. B. Bernshtein, _Short Grammatical Sketch of the Bulgarian Language_ (tr. 1952); H. I. Aronson, _Bulgarian Inflectional Morphophonology_ (1968); C. Rudin, _Aspects of Bulgarian Syntax_ (1986).


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## cyanista

xxatti said:
			
		

> According to this article, it is Bulgarian which has borrowed words from Russian (amongst other languages).
> 
> http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/society/A0809396.html
> 
> 
> *Modern Bulgarian*, which is generally said to date from the 16th cent., borrowed many words from Greek and Turkish during the period of Turkish domination; *more recently* it has borrowed words from Russian, French, and German.....


You cite a passage about_ modern_ Bulgarian; Anatoli was speaking about _Old_ Bulgarian. According to the article you've found,


> Old Bulgarian is an alternate name for the literary and liturgical language of the 9th to 11th cent. A.D. that is usually called Old Church Slavonic.


 Russian borrowed numerous words from Old Church Slavonic/Old Bulgarian that was indeed a South Slavic language.

@Anatoli: There's no need to get angry when people ask about proof or additional information. We usually expect participants of a discussion to provide those, otherwise it's just "my word vs yours".


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## xxatti

Ok, but when we start talking about old and modern forms of languages... the modern forms can be very different from the old forms. So while the old Bulgarian may have been very close to Russian at the time, modern Bulgarian may very well be quite different from the current Russian language (I dont know, Im just stating the possibility). 

We got into a discussion of what was borrowed from what, but I dont think that necesarily always correlate to strong language similarities in the present/modern language forms.


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## Etcetera

That's true! Modern Russian is very different from the language of, say, XI century. Everything has changes since then - spelling, grammar, let alone the very way of expressing ideas. So, it's rather naive to look for _strong _similarities.


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## Anatoli

cyanista said:
			
		

> @Anatoli: There's no need to get angry when people ask about proof or additional information. We usually expect participants of a discussion to provide those, otherwise it's just "my word vs yours".



I wasn't not angry, I only didn't contradict Maja's posts, so I wasn't sure what I needed to prove. Sorry, I didn't mean to upset anyone, it wasn't very polite but "any proof?" is not a polite question either.


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## Maja

Anatoli said:
			
		

> I wasn't not angry, I only didn't contradict Maja's posts, so I wasn't sure what I needed to prove. Sorry, I didn't mean to upset anyone, it wasn't very polite but "any proof?" is not a polite question either.


 I was actually joking a little and put a  to indicate so!!!!!!! 



			
				Anatoli said:
			
		

> My point was to say that some people say that Bulgarian is closer to Russian than Ukrainian.


 I was talking about the origin of words like grad, glava etc. (read my post again). You are CLAIMING that they are borrowings from Bulgarian, but since we use them in Serbian and probable a lot of other Slavic languages as well, I just asked for some reference (like this or that dictionary). Otherwise it is just speculation. Know what I mean? 
My opinion is that one cannot tell for sure when it comes to words that are spread out through all Slavic languages. The most probable scenario is that they actually belong to the old Slavic language we all used before we "split" into eastern, western and southern group (not counting, of course, new words like those of Communism era etc.). 

 Pozdrav!


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## Etcetera

Maja said:
			
		

> My opinion is that one cannot tell for sure when it comes to the words that are spread out through all Slavic languages. The most probable scenario is that they actually belong to the old Slavic language we all used before we "split" into eastern, western and southern group (not counting, of course, new words like those of Communism era etc.).


I totally agree. Moreover, that's what all my books on comparative linguistics say about Slavic languages.


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## GoranBcn

Anatoli said:
			
		

> Czech and Slovak have both accent on the first syllable of a word and have long vowels - *unique to these two languages compared to other Slavic ones*.


In Croatian/Serbian/Bosnian there are also short and long vowels and, apart from that, there is also a pitch accent (tonal accent) that doesn't exist in other slavic languages except Slovenian.

There are four accents:

* - long rising
- short rising
- long falling
- short falling*

Apart from these there is also "*long unstressed accent".*

Some examples:

gore (hills)
gore (worse)
gore (upthere)
gore (they burn)

There is a different accent in each of these words.


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## Anatoli

How are long vowels marked in these languages if these markings exist? What about tones?


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## GoranBcn

Neither long vowels nor tones are marked, so you have to deduce the meaning of a word from the context.


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## българин

Поздрави, Pozdravi to all the slavic language forum persons! 
I thought I'd add some things in here, hopefuly clarify some things. At least, for my opinion and observations (after all, I am a navite of a Slavic language speaking country). I think someone mentioned the groups of slavic languages, and that's pretty much correct. The languages in each group are close to each other than the other groups, however one must consider the written part also. For example, it is a bit challenging at first to understand spoken Russian, but when I read it, it's a whole different story. Here's the deal, I'm going to say my opinion mostly on south-slavic languages since I know that best. Serbian and Croatian are pretty close in terms of vocabulary, if not the same, with some minor pronunciation twists. But from what I understand, there are minor differences in grammar and word order, but nothing too overwhelming so as to cause miscommunication. Bulgarian and the Serbo-Croatian languages have a lot of vocabulary in common dealing with vernacular speech. I mean to say that the vocabulary is similar dealing with everyday life situations, for example; shopping, sports, weather, various daily activities, and just basic conversation. However, when you switch to scholarly vocabulary, there are quite a bit of similarities with Russian. There are a couple of reasons for this. 
After Bulgaria freed itself from the Ottoman Empire, the language underwent major changes. A more modern Bulgarian literary language emerged which reduced a large number of Turkish loan words, replacing them with Russian and some Church Slavonic words. This change was mostly within the scholarly vocabulary of the language. However, some of the more vernacular usage of vocabulary loan words from Turkish remained the same because obviously of its more frequent use than the literary language. For example, the Turkish words "tavan," "bair," "budala," "chekmedzhe," "chanta," "chiflik" are still in use in Bulgarian. The words mean ceiling, steep hill, stupid person, drawer, bag, and small farm. You can see these words are just everyday words used in everyday situations. Whereas words such as "opravdanie," "predstavlenie," "uchrezhdenie," "sutrudnichestvo," "sudurzhanie" are more scholarly and most likely borrowed from Russian (although they might be also used in other slavic languages). They translate to justification, representation, institution, cooperation, contents. They were less frequently used in everyday speech (when these changes occured) than the previous group, and therefore more easily replaced. When the communists took over in the latter part of the 20th century, even more Russian words were introduced (especially militarily speaking) due to the fact that the two countries were very close allies. But that's a different story.... 
I'm not sure, but I think Serbian must have gone under some similar changes in their language after they freed themsleves from Ottoman rule, but correct me if I'm wrong. 
I have quite a bit of Serbian friends and I can undestand them with little problem, partly because I'm used to the language and can easily adapt to their vocabulary. However, I beleive it would take me a lot longer to, say achieve the same level of communication with my Czech speaking friend.


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## Maja

Anatoli said:
			
		

> How are long vowels marked in these languages if these markings exist? What about tones?


  As Goran said, they are not marked, except in dictionaries, and when emphasizing the difference in meaning between two exactly the same words when they are next to each other, like:
_On neće *da d*__*a*__ kuću._ (He doesn't want to give up the  house.)
*1st da* - conj.  to
*2nd d**a* - present, 3rd. person sing. of the verb "dati" - to  give
_Ja *sam s*__*a*__*m*._ (I am alone.)
*1st sam *- I am; present,  1st. person sing. of the auxiliary verb "jesam" - to  be
*2nd s**a**m *-  alone (m.)
etc.

 The markings  are: 
*- kratkosilazni* (short falling)-  two lines above stressed vowel, slightly leaning to the  left;
*-  kratkouzlazni *(short rising) - one line,  slightly leaning to the left;
*-  dugoslilazni* (long falling)- one arch  line;
-* dugouzlazni* (long  rising)- one line, slightly leaning to the  right;
and
*-**dugi neakcentovani slog* (long unstressed accent) - one flat line.

I've provided some examples but they were not displayed, probable because there is no Benson 2 font. Sorry!  
Hope this helps anyways


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## GoranBcn

Ćao Majo, 

Thanks for your additional information. I've found these examples with accent marks. 


*The Long Rising Accent*

The long rising (dugoulazni akcenat or dugoulazni naglasak) can be on any syllable of a word but the last one. It is pronounced like the main English stress, and it's marked as: ´.

 Examples: gláva, rúka, báka...
 
*The Short Rising Accent*

The short rising (kratkoulazni akcenat or kratkoulazni naglasak) can be on every syllable of a word but the last one. It is pronounced like the English secondary stress, and it's marked as: `

 Examples: žèna, vòda, màgla...

*The Long Falling Accent*

The long falling (dugosilazni akcenat or dugosilazni naglasak ) can be only on the first syllable of a word. It is long, but the voice falls by the end of the stressed vowel. It's marked as: ^

 Examples: mâjka, sêko, bâko...

*The Short Falling Accent*

The short falling (kratkosilazni akcenat or kratkosilazni naglasak ) can be only on the first syllable of a word. It is the shortest of all accents, and it's pronounced with a short "explosion" on the stressed syllable, which falls by the end of the stressed vowel. It's marked as: ¨

 Examples: vëče, pëkar, vödu...


*After-Accent Longness*

The after-accent longness (poslijeakcentska dužina) isn't an accent, but a vowel which has an after-accent longness is a little bit stressed. This sub-accent can be found only after the main accent, and it can be anywhere in the word, including the last syllable. Some words needn't have the after-accent longness. The after-accent longness is marked as: ˉ

 Example: sīnōva...​ 
Regards,

Goran


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## natasha2000

Aldin said:
			
		

> I don't know,my cousins from Kragujevac called it bostan,we never use that word in bosnia for that.


 
The word _bostan_ is usually used in the country, and not only for watermelon, but for the whole family of these kind of fruits which include watermelon AND melon. Bostan is also used more for the garden where the melons and watermelons are grown. People from the country can say "Let's eat some _bostan_", or "This year, _bostan_ is excellent", meaning that all melons and watermelons grew well, but when they put the watermelon on the table, they will always say "We eat _lubenica_" or "The _lubenica_ from yesterday was so sweet" and not _bostan_. Lubenica is very common and used word for watermelon by Serbs, wherever they are.

hope I cleared up a little bit.

BTW: If Croats, Serbs and Bosnians use different words for watermelon and tomato, this does not mean they speak different languages. Spanish speaking South Americans have different word for a bus for example (and there are many more, for example fruits and vegetables) in almost every country, so practically in Spanish, there are some at least 10 words for "BUS", and they still think they all speak one language.

PS: My cousins from Sarajevo use word bostan. They are perfectly familiar with this word.


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## tarik_ze

Just to add something about "bostan". It is one of soooo many words in South Slavic languages that come from Turkish (and/or Arabic). Originally it means orchard or garden but it also means both melon and watermelon.


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## българин

We use the word "bostan" in Bulgaria for a field, but more like a field for growing vegetables (something like a big garden). The accent falls on "a" when the word is pronounced. And yes, it is a Turkish word.


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## Igor S.Rossine Gleb

Thank you Anatoli. I am a grandson o Russians and always wanted to know how close were Russian and Ukranian languages. From your experience it seems that both languages are similar than Portuguese and Spanish (an educated speaker of one language can understant and talk to the ohter language speaker in a slow pace). Anyway, viewing far from here a think it is a pitty to make both languages Ukranian and Russian  further apart. Here, we that speak Portuguese and are half of the inhabitants of South America feel compeled to speak Spanish to enlarge our market.


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## beclija

tarik_ze said:


> Just to add something about "bostan". It is one of soooo many words in South Slavic languages that come from Turkish (and/or Arabic). Originally it means orchard or garden but it also means both melon and watermelon.



So is it actually related to bašta/bašća? That would be closer to the Bulgarian meaning anyway.

Znači li da je istog porijekla/podriijetla kao i "bašta"? Bilo bi to u svakom slučaju bliže značenju u bugarskom.


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## beclija

Maja said:


> Any proof???
> 
> Pzdrv!



As far as I know the Proto-Slavic words were something like *galva, *gard. After that came different sound changes in the different branches. These regular changes would let you expect "glava" and "grad" in South Slavic, "golova" and "gorod" in East Slavic, and "gl~owa" etc. in Polish. The point is that in Russian, for a lot of words, there are two variants: The expected "golova" and the "South Slavic" "glava". It only makes sense if we assume that the latter are borrowings from Church Slavonic (=Old Bulgarian). This does not mean that in Serbian they must be borrowings from Bulgarian, because in Serbian "glava" is precisely what we expect.

One example which I have heard is that "vlast" means "dominion" in an abstract sense, while "volost" is something like the belongings of a Bojar. Very logical once we assume that (South Slavic) Church Slavonic was the "high" language and Russian the "pučki" (~folk) language. Correct me if I am wrong.

Koliko ja znam, protoslavenski/protoslovenski riječi su bili nešto poput *galva, *gard. Tek su se poslije dogodile glasovne promjene u različitim jezicima. Te promjene bi redovno vodile ka ruskim "golova" i "gorod", južnoslavenskim/slovenskim "glava" i "grad" a poljskim "gl~owa" itd. Poenta je u tome što na ruskom postoje i "glava" pored (očekivanog) "golova". Nema smisla dok se ne pretpostavlja da je ono prvo posuđenica iz crkvenoslavenskog (iliti starobugarskog). To naravno ne znači da je na srpskom posuđenica, jer je "glava" upravo to što se za srpki očekuje.

Sjećam se jednog dobrog primjera: "власт" (s mekim znakom kojeg nemam na tastaturi/tipkovnici) znači vlast u apstraktnom smislu, dok je "волост" imanje jednog Bojara. Logično kad se zna da je ruski vjekovima/stoljećima bio tek pučki jezik, dok je kao "viši" jezik služio crkvenoslavenski. Ispravite me ako se pogrešno sjećam.


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## !netko!

Maja said:


> Well I will try:
> Serbian & Croatian (even disputed by some if they are two separate languages, see "Serbian/Croatian: One language?" thread), then Macedonian (smt between Serbian & Bulgarian), Bulgarian then Russian.
> Ukrainian and Belarusian.
> Czech & Slovak (obviously ), then Polish;
> Of course, I might be wrong as I don't speak any language from the "second" and "third" group!
> Hope this helps, but wait to see what the others will say.
> Pozdrav!


 
I tend to understand Slovak much better than Russian. Have you been exposed to Slovak? 

Anyway, I think Serbs might understand Russian a bit better than Croatians because a lot of words in Serbian are borrowed from Russian, as opposed to very few in Croatian (most words of foreign origin in Croatian are Italian, German or Hungarian) ...


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## beclija

Remember that also, when people tried to "slavicize" (can you say that in English?) their vocabulary, Croatians turned to Czech and Serbs to Russian for examples. I think I said before that I find it amazing how much Slovak I undersand. In spoken form, I even understand Slovak better than Russian, although I've made some attempts to "officially" learn the latter and not the former


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## Grosvenor1

When I went to Prague I was struck by how much Czech was like Polish. I have only heard Slovak once, in a television documentary. On the whole I find all Slavic languages remarkably similar to each other. Perhaps Slovenian is more different from the others, and grammatically Bulgarian and perhaps Macedonian are further removed.  

As regards Belorussian and Ukrainian, on the printed page they look rather like forms of Russian that have acquired Polish vocabulary. Spoken Belorussian, more than Ukrainian, sounds like Russian to me, but listening carefully it is possible to detect sounds you would not get in Russian.


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## Blacklack

Anatoli said:


> It's all matter of exposure as it seems, Polish can't be closer to Russian than Ukrainian, that's for sure! Classification in Eastern, Western and Southern makes sense. You really need to know how to map Polish sounds to Russian -
> 
> Polish
> porządek  (pozhondek)
> rzeka  (zheka)
> przyszedl  (pshyshet)
> 
> Ukrainian:
> порядок (same spelling in Russian)
> река (same spelling in Russian)
> прийшов (Russian: пришёл)


Ukrainian word _порядок_ doesn't have the same spelling as the Russian one because both o's are kept as such and not turned into a's. It can be pronounced as "pory*a*dok" as well.
There's no such word as _река_ ("river" in Russian). It's _ріка_ (rik*a*).
And note that _прийшов_ has smth a bit like English "w" at the end.


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## Viperski

xxatti said:


> Ok, I was reading the mutual intelligibility thread (wont let me post link) and wanted to try and get a concensus (or line-up) as to which Slavic languages are the most closely related to each other. Now I know they have the separations of east, west, and south when it comes to these language groupings… But it seems as though people tend to place Ukrainian and Belarusian (which are supposedly grouped the same as Russian) farther away from Russian, and Bulgarian much closer to Russian. I would’ve thought it would be the opposite. I also get the impression that Belarusian is closer to Polish than it is to Russian. Perhaps someone could explain or clarify this for me?
> 
> These are the languages in question that I would like grouped/ordered in their relation to closeness.
> 
> Serbian
> Belarusian
> Ukrainian
> Bulgarian
> Czech
> Polish
> Slovak
> Russian
> Macedonian
> Croatian


 
For sure all Slavic groups spoked one common languages till V-VI century. Some liguists state that even lasted till IX century. 
Check and Polish were probably the same till X-XI century.


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## DenisBiH

Po onome što sam ja čitao ovdje i drugdje, standardni slovački i srednjeslovački dijalekti bi se mogli uzeti za neku vrstu prelaza prema južnoslavenskim jezicima, iako je sama fizička karika koja ih je spajala, panonski slavenski, zamijenjen mađarskim. Možda se sjećaš ovog mog posta, poglavito obrati pažnju na drugi citat.


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## Orlin

DenisBiH said:


> Po onome što sam ja čitao ovdje i drugdje, standardni slovački i srednjeslovački dijalekti bi se mogli uzeti za neku vrstu prelaza prema južnoslavenskim jezicima, iako je sama fizička karika koja ih je spajala, panonski slavenski, zamijenjen mađarskim. Možda se sjećaš ovog mog posta, poglavito obrati pažnju na drugi citat.


Možda je takva veza sačuvana i zbog toga što su Slovaci i južni Sloveni relativno dugo bili u jednoj državi (Habsburgskoj imperiji) i uz to do početka 20. veka.


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## DenisBiH

Orlin said:


> Možda je takva veza sačuvana i zbog toga što su Slovaci i južni Sloveni relativno dugo bili u jednoj državi (Habsburgskoj imperiji) i uz to do početka 20. veka.




A i prije Habsburga i Slovaci i dio južnih Slavena su bili u državnoj zajednici sa Mađarima.  Tako da umnogome nisu ni bili politički razdvojeni dolaskom Mađara u Panoniju, sve do 20. stoljeća.

Možda se doduše prekid političkog jedinstva desio u vrijeme osmanske vlasti u Mađarskoj (ne sjećam se tačno da li je sjeverna granica carstva tada ulazila na područje slovačkih zemalja).


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## TriglavNationalPark

DenisBiH said:


> Po onome što sam ja čitao ovdje i drugdje, standardni slovački i srednjeslovački dijalekti bi se mogli uzeti za neku vrstu prelaza prema južnoslavenskim jezicima, iako je sama fizička karika koja ih je spajala, panonski slavenski, zamijenjen mađarskim. Možda se sjećaš ovog mog posta, poglavito obrati pažnju na drugi citat.


 
Also, some northern Slovenian (Carinthian) dialects are considered transitional to the West Slavic subgroup.

These transitional features include:

1.) Completely preserved *dl*/*tl* clusters (standard Slovenian has preserved only some, while BCS lost almost all of them)

2.) The prefix *vy- *(instead of *iz-* in standard Slovenian)

3.) The *-e* adjective ending for all neuter nouns (*dobre mleko* instead of *dobro mleko *in standard Slovenian).


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## DenisBiH

TriglavNationalPark said:


> 2.) The prefix *vy- *(instead of *iz-* in standard Slovenian)




How is -y- pronounced in vy-?


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## Orlin

DenisBiH said:


> How is -y- pronounced in vy-?


Ako se ne varam, kao BCS -i-: u češkom i slovačkom slova _i_ i _y_ se izgovaraju jednako kao BCS _i_.


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## nonik

Yes, Vi and Vy is saying in the same way. 
You wont feel difference betwen byl(jsem) and bil(ubil-kill), except you say it in context, than everybody knows. 
I think that i-y was invented to avoid homonym pair of words, but i am not sure.


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## Orlin

nonik said:


> I think that i-y was invented to avoid homonym pair of words, but i am not sure.


I disagree - as far as I know, these letters had different sounds but the distinction was lost long ago.


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## DenisBiH

Guys, thanks for the info about Czech and Slovak, but actually I was asking TriglavNationalPark about how it's pronounced in Carinthian Slovenian. 

Btw, since we're talking about mutual intelligibility and dialect continua, here are some examples of an ubercool  Slavic (micro)language, or rather a dialect of Croatian that seems to have its own literary standard: gradišćanskohrvatski or Burgenland Croatian. The _where_: eastern Austria, western Hungary, southwestern Slovakia and southeastern Czech republic. The _when_: since the times of Ottoman invasions until modern day.


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## ilocas2

nonik said:


> Yes, Vi and Vy is saying in the same way.
> You wont feel difference betwen byl(jsem) and bil(ubil-kill), except you say it in context, than everybody knows.
> I think that i-y was invented to avoid homonym pair of words, but i am not sure.



I must correct it. "Ubil" means "beat to death", "killed" is "zabil". Sorry for off-topic.


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## Orlin

DenisBiH said:


> Btw, since we're talking about mutual intelligibility and dialect continua, here are some examples of an ubercool  Slavic (micro)language, or rather a dialect of Croatian that seems to have its own literary standard: gradišćanskohrvatski or Burgenland Croatian. The _where_: eastern Austria, western Hungary, southwestern Slovakia and southeastern Czech republic. The _when_: since the times of Ottoman invasions until modern day.


Zanimljivo! Ja nisam dovoljno stručni u hrvatskom, ali mi ovaj gradišćanskohrvatski deluje kao mešavina sva 3 "glavna" hrvatska dijalekta - čakavski, kajkavski i štokavski.


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## TriglavNationalPark

DenisBiH said:


> How is -y- pronounced in vy-?


 
That's a really good question. Unfortunately, I don't know the answer and I couldn't find much information in the books that I have. Sources dealing with Slovenian dialects invariably spell this prefix *vy-* (rather than *vi-*), but I don't know they're just using historic ortography or if the sound is still different from an ordinary *i*.


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## TriglavNationalPark

DenisBiH said:


> Btw, since we're talking about mutual intelligibility and dialect continua, here are some examples of an ubercool  Slavic (micro)language, or rather a dialect of Croatian that seems to have its own literary standard: gradišćanskohrvatski or Burgenland Croatian. The _where_: eastern Austria, western Hungary, southwestern Slovakia and southeastern Czech republic. The _when_: since the times of Ottoman invasions until modern day.


 
Another intresting Slavic dialect is *Resian*, spoken in Italy's Resia Valley. It's considered a dialect of Slovenian, but it's not intelligible to speakers of standard Slovenian. Because it's spoken in a remote valley seperated from Slovenia by high mountains, it had little contact with other Slovenian dialects.

It's characterized by a number of preserved archaic features, including the aorist, and numerous Romance borrowings. It also has its own orthography.

The first article on this page is in Resian:

http://www.novimatajur.it/main.php?page_id=articolo&id=1117

Some Resians consider themselves Slovenes, while others do not.


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## DenisBiH

Thanks for the info. From what I can gather Resia is a part of Beneška Slovenija / Slavia Veneta?


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## TriglavNationalPark

DenisBiH said:


> Thanks for the info. From what I can gather Resia is a part of Beneška Slovenija / Slavia Veneta?


 
Yes, but it's a distinct dialect with its own orthography. Elsewhere in Beneška Slovenija, standard Slovenian is used for written communication and the dialects, even with their unique features, tend to be more mutually intelligible with standard Slovenian.


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## sokol

TriglavNationalPark said:


> Yes, but it's a distinct dialect with its own orthography. Elsewhere in Beneška Slovenija, standard Slovenian is used for written communication and the dialects, even with their unique features, tend to be more mutually intelligible with standard Slovenian.


Well, I'd say "sort of" mutually inelligible. 
I tried to read Resian texts once and I must say that it was very hard work for me; of course it would have been easier if I were a native speaker, but still - the dialect's quite exotic, I'm sure you agree. 

Beneška dialects, even though difficult enough too, are much closer to mainland Slovene dialects.



DenisBiH said:


> Guys, thanks for the info about Czech and Slovak, but actually I was asking TriglavNationalPark about how it's pronounced in Carinthian Slovenian.


I don't know either but I think that Carinthian /vy-/ is just /vi-/.
Those dialects which have it have some ties to Western Slavic (also nasals, by the way) - as, by the way, also has Resian. 



DenisBiH said:


> ... here are some examples of an ubercool  Slavic (micro)language, or rather a dialect of Croatian that seems to have its own literary standard: gradišćanskohrvatski or Burgenland Croatian. The _where_: eastern Austria, western Hungary, southwestern Slovakia and southeastern Czech republic. The _when_: since the times of Ottoman invasions until modern day.


Burgenland Croatian _indeed_ has its own standard language; originally this by the way was more distant from "Croatian" Croatian - there have been waves of "Croatisation", but overall the Burgenland minority decided to keep to their own. It is indeed a mix of all three main Croatian dialect groups - all three groups are present in Austria; however, čakavian influence dominates, as the majority of Croatian settlers came from this region (they settled there, and also in parts of Lower Austria by the way, after devastations due to wars centuries ago).
Besides influence of all three dialect groups there's then also, of course, Austrian influence. So this is indeed an interesting Slavic variety.


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## DzB

българин said:


> Поздрави, Pozdravi to all the slavic language forum persons!
> I thought I'd add some things in here, hopefuly clarify some things. At least, for my opinion and observations (after all, I am a navite of a Slavic language speaking country). I think someone mentioned the groups of slavic languages, and that's pretty much correct. The languages in each group are close to each other than the other groups, however one must consider the written part also. For example, it is a bit challenging at first to understand spoken Russian, but when I read it, it's a whole different story. Here's the deal, I'm going to say my opinion mostly on south-slavic languages since I know that best. Serbian and Croatian are pretty close in terms of vocabulary, if not the same, with some minor pronunciation twists. But from what I understand, there are minor differences in grammar and word order, but nothing too overwhelming so as to cause miscommunication. Bulgarian and the Serbo-Croatian languages have a lot of vocabulary in common dealing with vernacular speech. I mean to say that the vocabulary is similar dealing with everyday life situations, for example; shopping, sports, weather, various daily activities, and just basic conversation. However, when you switch to scholarly vocabulary, there are quite a bit of similarities with Russian. There are a couple of reasons for this.
> After Bulgaria freed itself from the Ottoman Empire, the language underwent major changes. A more modern Bulgarian literary language emerged which reduced a large number of Turkish loan words, replacing them with Russian and some Church Slavonic words. This change was mostly within the scholarly vocabulary of the language. However, some of the more vernacular usage of vocabulary loan words from Turkish remained the same because obviously of its more frequent use than the literary language. For example, the Turkish words "tavan," "bair," "budala," "chekmedzhe," "chanta," "chiflik" are still in use in Bulgarian. The words mean ceiling, steep hill, stupid person, drawer, bag, and small farm. You can see these words are just everyday words used in everyday situations. Whereas words such as "opravdanie," "predstavlenie," "uchrezhdenie," "sutrudnichestvo," "sudurzhanie" are more scholarly and most likely borrowed from Russian (although they might be also used in other slavic languages). They translate to justification, representation, institution, cooperation, contents. They were less frequently used in everyday speech (when these changes occured) than the previous group, and therefore more easily replaced. When the communists took over in the latter part of the 20th century, even more Russian words were introduced (especially militarily speaking) due to the fact that the two countries were very close allies. But that's a different story....
> I'm not sure, but I think Serbian must have gone under some similar changes in their language after they freed themsleves from Ottoman rule, but correct me if I'm wrong.
> I have quite a bit of Serbian friends and I can undestand them with little problem, partly because I'm used to the language and can easily adapt to their vocabulary. However, I beleive it would take me a lot longer to, say achieve the same level of communication with my Czech speaking friend.



Since I am native Serbocroatian and Czech speaker, I can give you some ideas about similarities. 
I understand the best Slovak. The second best is Macedonian, followed by Bulgarian. Now comes a tricky part. I understand better Polish than Ukrainian but I struggle with it. I understand Russian the least, although I find some words that are from Czech and some that are from Serbocroatian. Czechs understand Poles much better than former Yugoslavians. Serbocroatian is very close to Slovak and less to Czech. 
I think that just Serbocroatian speakers can understand equal percent of Ukrainian, Czech and Polish. Russian is further apart.


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## swintok

Anatoli said:


> The gap between Russian vs Ukrainian vs Belarusian is artificial and is not so large. There's too much heat and Ukrainians forgot they were together with Russia for hundreds of years, fought the same wars side by side with Russians.



Of course what you meant to say was that the gap between Russian vs Ukrainian vs Belarusian is artifical and not very large today because of centuries of official russification that only ended in the 1990s, the supression of education in the vernacular, and the imposition in the 1930s as part of a Russian chauvanist political agenda of grammars and dictionaries developed by the bolshevik authorities designed specifically to bring the offending languages closer to Russian and to minimise the differences that existed between them (for example, they removed an entire letter from the Ukrainian alphabet!). The fact that the Ukrainian- and Belarusan- speakers are now in the process of undoing some of these imposed changes is, therefore, somewhat understandable.

I agree with the rest of your post, however.


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## ahvalj

swintok said:


> Of course what you meant to say was that the gap between Russian vs Ukrainian vs Belarusian is artifical and not very large today because of centuries of official russification that only ended in the 1990s, the supression of education in the vernacular, and the imposition in the 1930s as part of a Russian chauvanist political agenda of grammars and dictionaries developed by the bolshevik authorities designed specifically to bring the offending languages closer to Russian and to minimise the differences that existed between them (for example, they removed an entire letter from the Ukrainian alphabet!). The fact that the Ukrainian- and Belarusan- speakers are now in the process of undoing some of these imposed changes is, therefore, somewhat understandable.


Look, such skeletons in the closets can be found for many languages. Estonia: the Southern Estonian. Latvia: Latgalian. Lithuania: Samogitian. Germany: Plattdüütsch. Netherlands: Frisian. France: Occitanian. Britain: Scots. Most countries that faced undesirable linguistic diversity carried out a policy of eliminating at least the closest idioms. That was the next step after eliminating dialects to create a national language. Russia with its policy towards Belarusian and Ukrainian was no exception.

There is one more aspect. Neither Belarusian, nor Ukrainian in their modern literary forms are descendants of Ruthenian. That literary language had died, so both nations had to create their literary languages anew. Imposing Russian in the 18th and 19th centuries meant, in fact, providing an already existing literary medium vs. a perspective to create a new one, and I am sure this was perceived as such by a large part of the Russian administration and the educated people in what is now Ukraine and Belarus (I would say it is largely perceived as such until now, especially in Belarus).


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## learnerr

Etcetera said:


> It could be so - and I've pointed out that I'm not speaking for all Russians. But at the same time, every Russian can catch at least the main idea of a text in Polish, Czekh, any other Slavic language. They're closer than, say, Germanic languages.


That depends on the specific Russian, too, – not only do people have different experiences with various languages, but what is important is that they have different cognitive habits, different traits of cognition. For me, the only Slavic language where I can get the general idea quickly is Bulgarian: no Ukranian or Belarussian, and certainly no Czech or Polish. What helps, I think, is that the words are easier to recognise, both because of the similarity in the word stock and because of the similarity of script and probably pronunciation. When pronunciation changes a little bit, I find myself in a loss: with oral Ukranian I not only don't get the general idea sufficiently well, but don't have even the slightest idea what they are talking about, the same with Belarussian. Other people may have other bottlenecks.


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## ahvalj

I would say, from a Russian's perspective, Bulgarian is a mixed bag: its cultural vocabulary is similar to Russian, but the everyday words are mostly unrecognizable. Ukrainian is very fun when you get used to it: its developers ,-) have intentionally changed the maximum possible amount of abstract words to look different from the Russian (resp. Church Slavonic) ones, but did it with a good taste and charm, so it is often a real pleasure to observe their work, with all those «розповсюдити» vs. «распространить»...


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## volat

ahvalj said:


> There is one more aspect. Neither Belarusian, nor Ukrainian in their modern literary forms are descendants of Ruthenian. That literary language had died, so both nations had to create their literary languages anew. Imposing Russian in the 18th and 19th centuries meant, in fact, providing an already existing literary medium vs. a perspective to create a new one, and I am sure this was perceived as such by a large part of the Russian administration and the educated people in what is now Ukraine and Belarus (I would say it is largely perceived as such until now, especially in Belarus).


Really? You try to say that Belarusian and Ukrainian are the artificial languages created on the basis of Russian? (And than why don't you mention more then two hundred years of Polish influence in RP?)
But when I open and read a text of the Third Statute of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (1588) which was written in Old Belarusian (Ruthenian) I have to disagree with you)


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## ahvalj

volat said:


> Really? You try to say that Belarusian and Ukrainian are the artificial languages created on the basis of Russian? (And than why don't you mention more then two hundred years of Polish influence in RP?)
> But when I open and read a text of the Third Statute of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (1588) which was written in Old Belarusian (Ruthenian) I have to disagree with you)


I meant quite the opposite. Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruthenian_language) states: "_n both parts of the Commonwealth inhabited by Eastern Slavs, Ruthenian remained a lingua franca, and in both parts it *was gradually replaced by Polish as a language of literature, religious polemic, and official documents* […]
With the beginning of romanticism at the turn of the 19th century, literary Belarusian and literary Ukrainian appeared, *descendant from the popular spoken dialects and little-influenced by literary Ruthenian*".

Both Ruthenian in the late Middle Ages and literary Ukrainian and Belarusian in the recent times were not created on the basis of Russian: in contrast, the codifiers of all the three languages preferred to use the Church Slavonic/Russian cultural vocabulary as a point of repulsion, introducing new words to avoid similarities. Here you can find examples of such words: http://churchby.info/bel/272/ . As the author states before the list, «амаль кожнае царкоўнаславянскае слова ўспрымаецца сёньня як расейскае».

That the Ruthenian/Ukrainian/Belarusian cultural vocabularies represent innovations, can be seen when comparing them to the early Old East Slavic documents. Let's check, e. g., one of the most vernacular documents of the Kievan Rus times «Поучение Владимира Мономаха» (http://litopys.org.ua/oldukr/pouch.htm), «один з найвидатніших творів давньоукраїнської літератури»: one can easily see that the cultural vocabulary characteristic of the latter Ruthenian/Ukrainian/Belarusian is hardly present there._


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## ahvalj

To clarify my words about the literary Ukrainian and Belarusian. As far as I understand the situation, when the Russian Empire acquired most Belarusian and Ukrainian lands in the end of the 18th century, the educated classes there did not use either Ruthenian (which already was dead), or literary Ukrainian/Belarusian (which still were to be created/codified), they mostly used Polish, and eradicating Polish on these lands was the main purpose of the Russian administration. By the way, the famous prohibition after the Uprising to print Lithuanian literature with Latin letters (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/Auksa_altorius_cirillics.jpg) had the same purpose: to alienate new generations of Lithuanians from Poles.

As to Ukrainians and Belarusians, they were regarded as ethnographic groups of the Russian nation and thus their speech was meant to be leveled through schools as any other dialectal variety. There was a radio program on this topic (http://echo.msk.ru/programs/netak/48841/) several years ago. In particular, the guest said there «[и] если бы, вот, успехи императорского правительства по созданию значительного количества школ увенчались успехом, то никаких белорусов уже где-нибудь в 20-м году у нас бы и не было». Indeed, comparing the present situation with the linguistic map of 1914 (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ologicheskaia_Karta_1914_goda.jpeg?uselang=ru) shows that this process of replacement of the local speech with the Russian one was pretty successful. 

It is arguably safe to assume that it was the Soviet policy towards promoting national languages that Ukrainian and especially Belarusian have preserved at all: without the WWI and the revolution, the schools, universities, and the army would have simply eliminated Belarusian and most of Ukrainian as they did with the proper Russian dialects.


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## atzucac1714

Few weeks a go a was wondering wich slav language to learn...I have traveled to Czech Republic twice and around many places in Slovakia...I know just a bit Poland as well. I like the sounding of Czech pretty much and though Slovak is quite similar I thought Slovak is a bit more exotic due to it's closeness to Ukraine...
On the other hand i knew learning Russian would be the most practical language from all the slavic languages due to the big amount of speakers not just in Russia but throught all slav countries..But I know as well that it's not..lets say a "very friendly language" to speak in many of these countries because the many years of repression in communist times. So at the end after thinking a lot I decided that the best language to learn and to have an open door to understand and learn Russian,Belarussian, Polish, Slovak and Czech would be Ukrainian due to it's geographical situation (li a pillow) among these countries.

On the other hand, as a Catalan I see Ukrainian (and Polish) with sympathy because I know that Ukrainian was banned at some periods of it's history by the Russian governments who were suspecful about the learning of Ukrainian because they thought this would bring an awakening of their national identity...Just the same that has happened in Catalonia with Catalan language and the pressure and imposition of French /in the north of our country) and Spanish/Castilian in the rest..

Do you think I made the right decision learning Ukrainian?


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## DarkChild

It's a big language, many people speak it. I don't know how much it helps with understanding other languages, especially Polish. They say they are very similar but I still fail to see that.


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## Apollodoros

atzucac1714 said:


> Do you think I made the right decision learning Ukrainian?



I think it depends a lot on where you intend to travel. You named you were in Czech rep., Slovakia and Poland and languages of these countries are West Slavic languages which are closer to each other than any of them is to Ukrainian.

Without any emotional push for my language, I suggest you consider Slovak as it is attestedly quite well comprehensible to other Slavic language speakers (see this forum for rankings: http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=90698) especially for how Slovak is rated by Polish and South Slavic speakers, also note position of Ukrainian)

The main advantages of Slovak, despite the number of speakers in my opinion would be:
-clear pronunciation of vocals + accent always on the first syllable
-no phonemes that would not be present in other Slavic languages
-lesser occurence of sibilants and palatalization, which both make understanding more difficult
-relatively more simple declension and conjugations while preserving the case system and all main verb forms


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## atzucac1714

Yes,actually I like Slovakian a lot and is the language I am a bit more familiar from all the above mentioned...I heard that theory as well from other fellows that Slovakian has also strong connections with south slavic languages as Croatian-Serbian, and I wonder why since there is no border between Slovakia and these countries, with Hungary(the magyars) in the middle.

Perhaps because the long and old emigrations of Slovakians to Voivodina?

I think a good idea could be start learning at the same time Ukrainian and Slovak...When I was in Slovakia the farther east I went was Spissky Hrad by Levocha and I failed to go to Kosice-Presov and further east to Uzhhorod (Old Ruthenia)..I was curios about Uzhhorod area because I knew that region belonged to Czechoslovakia first and then to Slovakia at sometime..And I was wondering if the culture and language there was still alive and with strong connections with Slovakia..But the slovakians I talked to told me in Ukraine "things" where kind of strange to travel for a westener..I asked to the local Slovakians and also to Prage citizens what they knew about "Ruthenia" and the "Ruthenians" but I think they did not know what I was talking about they would answer instead something like "Russians", and then I would reply: 

-Not Russians Ruthenians! But they didn´t understand...later on I found out one day that perhaps they were saying "Russyns" which I think it means "Ruthenians" like "Lemkos"...I know there is also "Russyns" or Ruthenians inside Slovakia by Presov area..And I'm curios to learn about their culture...I know in Slovakia they are recognized as a minority ethnic group..but in the other hand in Ukraine they are not and the Ukrainians consider then just a "subgroup" of the Ukrainian people.. On the other hand it seems the Ruthenes of Zakarpattia have lost this feeling of  being a separate group, and most of them define themselves as "Ukrainians".

d'jakujem!


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## Apollodoros

atzucac1714 said:


> I wonder why since there is no border between Slovakia and these countries, with Hungary(the magyars) in the middle.
> 
> Perhaps because the long and old emigrations of Slovakians to Voivodina?



Before the Hungarians came in the late 9th century, there was a continuous Slavic population in Pannonia so the predecessors of future Slovaks and future South Slavic speakers were connected. The South Slavic features are most frequent in Central Slovak dialects which are also the base for the standard language. Slovak emigrations to Voivodina started in 17th century when the Ottoman Empire was defeated and they did not further influence the evolution of Slovak in the old homeland. Actually they kept mostly some very old features from the time they left until now due to loss of contact with the main Slovak population.



atzucac1714 said:


> I know there is also "Russyns" or Ruthenians inside Slovakia by Presov area..And I'm curios to learn about their culture...I know in Slovakia they are recognized as a minority ethnic group..but in the other hand in Ukraine they are not and the Ukrainians consider then just a "subgroup" of the Ukrainian people.. On the other hand it seems the Ruthenes of Zakarpattia have lost this feeling of  being a separate group, and most of them define themselves as "Ukrainians".



Russyns (Ruthenians, Carpathian Russians) were well established in the old Kingdom of Hungary and Austrian Empire (Galicia) until 1918 then in Czechoslovakia and also in WWII Hungary. Things changed during the communism and Soviet influence, Soviets did treat all inhabitants of Ukraine speaking Ukrainian/Ruthenian as Ukrainians and so did the government of the socialist Czechoslovakia until 1989. During these times the Greek-Catholic eastern rite church in union with Rome was banned and all possessions were transfered to Orthodox Church. I believe the assets question was settled only after 1989 (if). Nowadays some people in Slovakia declare themselves Russyns (mainly Greek-Catholics)  and others Ukrainian (mainly Orthodox I think).


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## Christo Tamarin

When we assess the distance between some Slavic languages, we have to consider the geographic position first and then we have to take into account the enormous influence coming from Constantinople during the centuries. Thus, Bulgarian and Russian are geographically closer than Serbian and Russian (there are some suitable isoglosses for that), but the constantinipolitan influence onto Bulgarian was much greater. Actually, the constantinipolitan influence made Bulgarian/Macedonian a very different language than the rest of the Slavic world. Bulgarian/Macedonian is a Balkansprachbund member.

Also, there are special connection between Russian and Bulgarian. OldSlavonic is a result of the constantinipolitan influence, OldSlavonic is actually old Bulgarian. First, OldSlavonic was brought to Kievan Russia and became the lithurgical language there. Later, Moskovia was converted to Christianity and to Slavophony at the same time primarily by priests which mixed EastSlavic and OldSlavonic. Thus, actually, the modern "Moskovian" Russian has inherited both EastSlavic and OldSlavonic (the latter being SouthSlavic). And finally, Bulgarians russified their language in the 19th century (Macedonians did not rissify; instead, they serbified their language in the 20th century and this is the main difference between Bulgarian and Macedonian.


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## paolinno DI San Cuore

Можда ће сутра бити леп дан. 
Mozda ce sjutra biti ljep dan.
Možda će sutra bit krasan dan. 

Све је исто. 
It's the sime.


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## amazingenough

well, Ukrainian is the closest to Russian - i can get around 80% of usual Ukrainian verbal flow despite the fact i have never been taught Ukrainian; a bit further stays Bielorussian. Then i would put Bulgarian, then Polish and Serbian. I don`t know much about Czech and the rest of Balcan languages though.


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## superdrap

The important thing to understand about Ukrainian (and Bielorussian, I  assume - but cannot be sure) is that it hasn't been developed since  1930s. This is due to USSR language policy of enforcing Russian (with a  short remission in 1950-60s) and current political division which makes  impossible to establish any policy at all. So, for the last 80 years at  least there has been no established way of appending language with modern  terms etc. Thus, any new word usually appeared in Russian, then migrated  to Ukrainian. It still happens because Russian-speaking community is way broader. 90% of modern words are just borrowed. 

_[Great example is "traffic jam" which is called "probka" (of course, it  is actually in Cyrillic alphabet) in Russian. "Probka" originally meant  "bottle cork". In Ukrainian original word for "bottle cork" is "korok"  (sounds familiar, huh). But a lot of Ukrainian people would still use  "probka" for "traffic jam" because they first heard this word in Russian  and because of that "korok" sounds a bit weird for a jam even though it  is absolutely natural for a bottle cork. As there are no modern  dictionaries and modern language experts which can create those  dictionaries nobody can actually tell which word is correct.]
_
I  envy Czech people who introduced a strict set of rules to direct word  creation in 19th century when they decided to promote their language  against dominant German.
_
[Another example. There's a computer  science (CS) term "debug" which means "locating bugs, i.e. errors, in  program code". The Russian word exists, it is "otladka". I studied CS for  2 years in high school and then for 6 more years in a university yet  not a single person knew an appropriate Ukrainian term - there wasn't  any CS school books and foreign book translations at the time: why spend  money if everyone understands Russian.

But there were  Ukrainian-speaking people and they needed a word. Some would go for  using English word in their otherwise Ukrainian sentences - a common  practice in CS, anyway. Others would use "vidladka" which is a Russian  word with Ukrainian prefix. The problem is - it cannot be a Ukrainian  word because its suffix is absolutely Russian. This is a typical example  of filling the language vacuum with incorrectly borrowed words.

A  few years after my graduation I met a then-student who told me the  right word. It was too long but sounded Ukrainian at last -  "znevadzhennia": essentially an English meaning translated to Ukrainian  with adhering to classical word creation rules of the Ukrainian language.]_

This  all leads to a funny situation. When Russian people listen to casual  Ukrainian and try to understand it (most Russian people don't try: my  granddad has been living in Ukraine for 60ys now and he still doesn't  understand it, he can read though) they will succeed because most of the  words we use are modern terms. But when a Ukrainian person would speak  about some traditional things like animals, plants, traditional jobs or  food - i.e. things that had existed before USSR came to picture - the  people from Russia wouldn't usually understand a thing and would tell  that we switched to "western Ukrainian". Which isn't the case.

It's  just that Ukrainian language prior-1930 was significantly different  from Russian (like Slovak vs Polish) but since then it has developed as  part of Russian.

Another important thing is that Ukrainian is  much more strict when spoken. This is typical in most languages. You  should pronounce the sounds properly regardless of whether they are  stressed or not. This is not true in Russian where unstressed vowels are  changed (usually, you are free to a certain degree on how you pronounce  such vowels). A lot of Russian-speaking people cannot grasp that when  speaking Ukrainian; the notable example is Yulia Tymoshenko, our  incarcerated former Prime Minister whose native language was Russian.

As to mutual intelligibility:
1)  I cannot say about Russian because I never seen a person who speaks  Ukrainian but doesn't know Russian (as it was taught in every school till 1995 at least  plus most of the books, papers, TV shows etc are still in Russian). As I  said, most Russians would never condescend to try and understand  Ukrainian.
2) I can read Bielorussian papers with ease but find it  hard to understand Bilorussian by ear. All words sound familiar but they  hardly connect in my head.
3) South Slavic languages are absolutely  incomprehensible for us, we tried both Ukrainian and Russian in Croatia  but were forced to use German. Even written Croatian wasn't very helpful  and lead mostly to fun with the words like "pozor" (stands for  "attention" but sounds like "shame" in Russian) and "zrakoplov" (stands  for "airplane" but "sraka" is "ass" in Ukrainian).
4) Of the West  Slavic Czech is too weird and quite hard for us to catch, it's true vice  versa. Polish is simpler but still is not that familiar for many as one  might expect. They say that people in Western Ukraine can do better  with Polish but my opinion is that this is due to more frequent contacts  with Polish speakers. Personally, I was more successful in understanding Spanish TV channels than Polish ones.
5) Slovak is somehow much more comprehensible  for Ukrainian speakers and v/v. I've seen some situations when our people tried  to say something in Russian to a Slovak. He would just gasp. Then I  talked to him in Ukrainian and we were able to communicate. So Ukrainian  and Slovak are probably like German and Dutch. I would go as far as to say that traditional Ukrainian might be closer to Slovak than to Russian.
6) As to spelling, I find it easier to read Polish than Slovak. I suppose this  is because Slovak was affected by Czech to a degree and Czech is quite  special due to their strict language policy.


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## swintok

superdrap said:


> As to mutual intelligibility:
> 1) I cannot say about Russian because I never seen a person who speaks Ukrainian but doesn't know Russian (as it was taught in every school till 1995 at least plus most of the books, papers, TV shows etc are still in Russian).



This point is very important when talking about Ukrainian and Russian similarity and mutual comprehensibility. The issue is coloured by the fact that almost all Ukrainian speakers in Ukraine can also at least understand Russian not primarily because of the similarity between the languages, but because of the history and environment. 

There are, however, several tens of thousands of Ukrainian speakers living in various countries who have never had any exposure to Russian and find it completely incomprehensible. The classic example is the simple Russian phrase _Посмотри мне в глаза_ ("Look me in the eyes"), which is completely unintelligible to a Ukrainian speaker who does not know Russian. The fact that most of these communities trace their roots to Western Ukraine and still speak a version of one of the western Ukrainian dialects further removes them from Russian but makes it easier for them to understand Slovak and Polish. 

At the risk of wandering a bit off topic here, my wife grew up speaking Ukrainian at home and is as fluent in the language as possible without having lived in a completely Ukrainian-speaking environment. When we first moved to Kyiv, she would have a very difficult time convincing people (in her fluent, albeit accented Ukrainian) that she was incapable of understanding them when they spoke to her in Russian. For them it was completely inconceivable that someone could speak Ukrainian and not be able to understand Russian. They thought that either a) she was mentally deficient somehow, or b) that she was some rabid Ukrainian nationalist that refused to understand them when they spoke Russian.


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## ahvalj

How uniform is the spoken Ukrainian? Do all these words for "some traditional things like animals, plants, traditional jobs or food" exist across the entire Ukrainian language area? I don't mean dialects, but a standard language if such one exists outside the linguistic departments of Ukrainian universities. When listening to the Ukrainian speakers on this radio (http://www.rferl.org/howtolisten/UK/ondemand.html) I always have an impression that west and east Ukrainian speakers have quite different vocabularies, not to mention the very perceptible phonetic differences.


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## Leonhard

Bulgarian and Russian are both native to me. Having said this, I must say that I can understand almost everything in Serbo-Croatian with the exception of a word or two here and there. (Since I come from Pirin Macedonia in Bulgaria, I consider "official Macedonian" as just a serbified version of my own dialect, so comprehension here is a 100%. By saying that I don't mean to offend anyone from FYROM.) As far as the rest, i.e. Ukrainian, Belorussian, Czech, Slovak, and Polish - my understanding is very limited. I could probably understand about 35% of Ukrainian if it is spoken slowly, Polish - just isolated words and some partial sentences at best. I've never been exposed to Belorussian, Czech or Slovak, so I can't provide any figures about those. I'm guessing though, that my understanding of Czech and Slovak would probably be no different from my comprehension of Polish, i.e. nearly null. (However, I must point out that my mother - a native speaker of Russian - understand Polish well. So, go figure! )


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## superdrap

ahvalj said:


> How uniform is the spoken Ukrainian? Do all these words for "some traditional things like animals, plants, traditional jobs or food" exist across the entire Ukrainian language area? I don't mean dialects, but a standard language if such one exists outside the linguistic departments of Ukrainian universities. When listening to the Ukrainian speakers on this radio (...) I always have an impression that west and east Ukrainian speakers have quite different vocabularies, not to mention the very perceptible phonetic differences.



The words do exist as does language itself. But most people in Eastern Ukraine have never studied Ukrainian at school so they just don't know those words and use Russian words instead when they speak Ukrainian. This is true for other regions too, I studied Ukrainian at school but apart from Ukrainian grammar and literature lessons all other subjects were mostly in Russian. This creates a very limited vocabulary and leads to a language mix called "surjik" (суржик) spoken by a lot of people, mostly from rural areas in Central and Eastern Ukraine. Those rural areas had been Ukrainian speaking in old times but with Russian-speaking TV and education switched to "surjik".

The pronounciation in the West is different indeed, you can distinguish easily. But the words are more or less the same if person is a native speaker with good vocabulary. 
Ukrainian emigrants in Canada/US usually speak a different dialect (probably a closer look into the language of 1900-20s).
This radio is quite allright; its more or less everyday Ukrainian with no signs of emigrant dialect signs.


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## amazingenough

ahvalj i think you are right. Even inside Russia we still can hear some unknown for general public local words and expressions (for example, in Kuban region) particularly related to the forementioned topics - animals, guns, agriculture, weather and so forth. It doesn`t mean that in a Kuban or Volga or Novgorod village people speak "their own" language.

In my opinion, the problem of Ukrainian language is that Ukraine itself was and is pretty unstable and multicultural place through the history - Germans, Jews, Polacks, Slovaks, Hungarians, Russians and so on lived and live there during centuries even without mentioning different local ethnic and social groups with their own dialects/languages and cultures. 

For example, Ruthenians who hadn`t identified themselves as Ukrainians untill a very short time ago and some of them still don`t. Many Ruthenians who emigrated to the USA about 80-100 years ago identified themselves as just Ruthenians, not as Ukranians in course of the American census or filling in papers on arrival. They typically had Russian surnames, came from Ukraine`s territory telling they are not Russians nor Ukrainians but Ruthenians. It`s very interesting.

All of them, for sure, influenced the modern Ukrainian language. And what superdrap is trying to do is just to represent modern Ukrainian words borrowed from Polish/Slovak as "true" Ukrainian and words with the same borrowed status but from Russian as "less" or "not" Ukrainian at all whereas the truth as usual lays in the middle and consists of the fact that over very long time there hasn`t been such a state as Ukraine within stable borders, nor a soiid uniformed Ukrainian language and this issue was pointed out by ahvalj too. So, I don`t like superdrap`s politically biased approach full of inferiority complex.


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## amazingenough

I would like to show this song - you can find it on youtube under this caption: *SLAVIC SONG FROM CROATIA: Svarica - Sveslavenski povratak*

SLOVAK
V kameňoch je zapísané,
a v krvi našich otcov podpísané.
Zaspievané skrz vietor a dážď,
po veky tajomne bolo snívané.

SERBIAN
Огњем је у ноћи запламтело
и песмом вука светом пренело.
Муњом сјајном небом разгласило,
да никада није то нестало.

POLISH
Teraz powracamy, ognie rozpalamy,
wielkich przodków wysławiamy.
Teraz powracamy, ofiary składamy,
ponownie swych Bogów wychwalamy

SLOVENIAN
Da se vračamo, srečni pojemo,
se pri starem izviru napajamo.
Da se vračamo, Mater prosimo,
da nikoli več ne odidemo.

CROATIAN
U stijenama je zapisano
I krvlju djedova potpisano
Vjetrovima, daždom otpjevano
Vjekovima tajno dosanjano.

Ognjem je u noći zaplamtjelo
I pjesmom vuka svijetom prenijelo
Munjom sjajnom nebom razglasilo
Da nikada nije sve to nestalo.

Da se vraćamo, vatre palimo
I svoje slavne pretke štujemo.
Da se vraćamo, žrtve dajemo
Opet bogove stare hvalimo. 

Da se vraćamo, sretni pjevamo
Na izvoru se starom pojimo.
Da se vraćamo, Majku molimo
Da nikada više ne odemo.

Being a Russian who has never learned any of these languages i perfectly understood this song! Whereas i wouldn`t be able to say what language it is - i mean every couplet. I will give Russian translation without pretending being 100% exact, just from my understanding:

SLOVAK (=>RUS)
Na *kam*nyah *zapis*ano,
*I krovju nashih otcov podpisan*o,
Spety *scvoz veter i dojd*`,
*Vek*ovie *tajn*ye *sny*.

SERBIAN (=>RUS)
*Ogn*em v *noch*i vs*pla*menelo,
Y *pesn*ya volka *svet*om *prinesl*as`,
Molnia v *neb*e razrazilas`,
Chto *nikogda* *ne* bylo

POLISH
Teper` *povorach*ivaem obratno, *razpali*m *ogn*i
*Velik*ih *predk*ov po*slavi*m,
Teper` *povorach*ivaem obratno, dary *sl*ojim
*I ponovo*y *svoih bogov poslavi*m

SLOVENIAN (=>RUS)
My vos*vracha*emsya, radostno *poem*,
Kogda staryi istochnick *napolnyaem*.
My voz*vracha*emsya, Mat` *prosim*
Chto by *nikogda* nas ne obidela

CROATIAN (=>RUS)
*V* skalah *zapisan*o,
*I krovju dedov podpisan*o
*Vetr*om i* dojd*em s*pety*
*Vek*ovie *tajn*ye *sn*y

*Ogn*em *v noch*i zapolyhalo,
*I pesn*ju volka *svet*om *prinesl*o,
Molnia bleskom v *neb*e razrazilas`,
Chto *nikogda* ne bylo

My voz*vracha*emsya, kostry *palim*
*I svoih slavnih predkov chtem*
My voz*vracha*emsya, *zrtv*y *dajem*
*Opyat` bogov staryh hvalim*

My vos*vracha*emsya, radostno *poem*,
Kogda staryi istochnick *napolnyaem.*
My voz*vracha*emsya, Mat` *molim*
Chto by *nikogda* ot nas ne uhodila

*This color* is used to show common or easily understandable roots/parts. I repeat, i have NEVER been taught any of these languages and i wouldn`t be able to determine what language it is. So, draw a conclusion.


----------



## superdrap

amazingenough,

I was mostly talking not about existing words but about the process of appending the language with new words. And I'm talking about this because I speak Ukrainian and feel this vacuum of missing terms for many things. And this is not because there are Russian-borrowed words in the place, there's none at all, people just use either Russian or English (the two other languages they speak) words because they don't have a Ukrainian one.

And especially I'm talking about the basic lack of understanding of typical Ukrainian language features: when the word is not directly borrowed (like "computer") but adopted with traditional pre/suffixes etc. Because in most cases you cannot just borrow a word, it has to be integrated. Those typical features are never taught at school here and thus actual adoption gets very controversial [imagine, that someone uses "controversesque" or smth like it, it just violates English word creation process yet such violation is typical to hear in Ukraine].

As to my prefering Polish local words to Russian, I would say - no. The basic dialect for Ukrainian is rooted to Poltava region which was a Russian territory every since 1667 till 1991. And you would be surprised how close Ukrainian is both in classical Ukrainian literature of authors from Eastern (like Kotliarevsky) and Western Ukraine (say, Franko). No controversy on words etc. Are they Polish (and should be deemed true according to you) or Russian (and false according to you)? - Neither. They are Ukrainian.

And what I meant is that those words are often unknown to people who have been exposed mostly to Russian. When they see a berry or a flower, they just don't know its name in Ukrainian. They know its Russian name though, they will use it and that is what we call "surjik". Even worse, they will "ukrainize" it, which will make it sound absolutely ugly. If you ask them, they will tell you that they just don't know the word.

[An interesting feature about this is Ukrainian Russian. Russian hasn't been taught at most schools since 2000, yet a majority of people here in Kiev speak Russian. But they are exposed to Ukrainian in school and university, so when they start to speak and write in Russian they use a lot of specific Ukrainian expressions which don't make any sense in Russian (Russian expressions are absolutely different). They will "russify" them on the fly though. This doesn't sound as ugly as "surjik" because the frequency of those expressions is much lower but still it is very unpleasant.

amazingenough, should you hear such things I promise that you would understand my point about Russian word/expression adoption.]

When I go to Western Ukraine and meet people in rural areas I sometimes find it hard to understand them because they use either local or Polish/Slovak/Hungarian/Romanian-borrowed words INSTEAD OF Ukrainian words (that I know to be Ukrainian). I will never choose those words into my vocabulary and name them "true" Ukrainian. On the other side, when I meet native speakers with perfect Ukrainian (and they mostly come from Western Ukraine, I must admit) that use some word in place where I would usually just stick to Russian word or avoid using it at all because I didn't know the right one, I add that word to my vocabulary. Not because it comes from Western Ukraine but because it just fills the gap.

_[Example. There's a popular word in modern Russian - "vkusniashka" (a tasty thing, usually some sweets or cake). It is based on the root - "vkus" (taste). The Ukrainian word for "taste" is "smak". It is neither Polish, nor Russian. Just plain Ukrainian. Everyone uses "smak". But sometimes we need to name that tasty thing on the plate and we would just gasp and use a Russian word. Which is completely wrong because you cannot borrow a foreign word when the native root is already there in your language. Besides the suffix is wrong. When I visited Lviv (a prominent city in Western Ukraine) last time I came across the word "*smak*olyk" used for this purpose. Bingo! It was exactly what I needed and I instantly added that word into my vocabulary. Not because I liked its Polish roots (I'm not sure they are Polish) but because there was a gap and there came a correctly built Ukrainian word filling that gap. Whichever roots it has.]_

It is true that there wasn't a stable Ukrainian state until 1991 but this is not true about the language. Ukrainian literary language was more or less formed in the late 19th century and accepted by the whole Ukrainian-speaking community. And this is typical. For example, Czechs didn't have their state from Middle Ages till the end of WW1. Yet Czech language was developed and codified in the first half of XIX century. The difference is that Czech were able to maintain this process post WW1 whereas Ukrainians stopped in the 1930s.


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## TriglavNationalPark

Leonhard said:


> Bulgarian and Russian are both native to me. Having said this, I must say that I can understand almost everything in Serbo-Croatian with the exception of a word or two here and there. (Since I come from Pirin Macedonia in Bulgaria, I consider "official Macedonian" as just a serbified version of my own dialect, so comprehension here is a 100%. By saying that I don't mean to offend anyone from FYROM.) As far as the rest, i.e. Ukrainian, Belorussian, Czech, Slovak, and Polish - my understanding is very limited. I could probably understand about 35% of Ukrainian if it is spoken slowly, Polish - just isolated words and some partial sentences at best. I've never been exposed to Belorussian, Czech or Slovak, so I can't provide any figures about those. I'm guessing though, that my understanding of Czech and Slovak would probably be no different from my comprehension of Polish, i.e. nearly null. (However, I must point out that my mother - a native speaker of Russian - understand Polish well. So, go figure! )



What about Slovenian? I suspect it's more challenging to a Bulgarian speaker than BCS, but is it as difficult to understand as the others?


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## ahvalj

The situation described by superdrap for the Ukrainian is even more pronounced in Belarusian. The modern codifiers of that language try to get rid of the numerous Russianisms on the lexical and phraseological levels and do so by trying to revive the word-formation patterns of the Old Ruthenian and earlier literary Belarusian, replacing the entire nests of words with Russian prefixes and suffixes. Examples can be found e. g. here: http://churchby.info/bel/272/ or here http://paciupa.livejournal.com or in some posts here http://by-mova.livejournal.com . I only wonder how it is intended to enter the speech of adult Belarusians since it requires (a) a total switching from the language they speak now, since instead of calquing it requires learning most things anew and (b) the absence of a group of people whose living language could serve an example for the rest of the speakers. To date, Paciupa and other's attempts, while interesting, painfully resemble the process of creation of the Orwellian newspeak.


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## amazingenough

superdrap "smak" is not Ukrainian word at all  It came from German *Geschmack *through Polish* Smak - *that is what i am talking about, isn`t it? You naively tend to believe that borrowed from Polish/German/Slovak words sound more "Ukrainian" than ones borrowed from Russian. And it leads you to the weird conclusion that in the Western Ukraine people speak "more correct" Ukrainian just because they have fewer words borrowed from Russian. It is ridiculous, isn`t it? By the way, we have the same word "smak" along with our *vkus *but with slightly different (more intensive) meaning - smak/smachnyi means "really tasty, enjoyable" and is widely used.


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## ahvalj

Well, to be honest, the root kus- itself is a Gothic borrowing (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_7IkEzr9hyJUHF6NlNpRTJtbHc/edit?usp=sharing page 135 for *kusiti), or at least is influenced by the Gothic form (like *melko or sytъ: the expected inherited Slavic forms would have been *gusiti, *melzo and *satъ, Russian *вгусить, *молозо and *сатый).


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## amazingenough

ahvalj said:


> Well, to be honest, the root kus- itself is a Gothic borrowing (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_7IkEzr9hyJUHF6NlNpRTJtbHc/edit?usp=sharing page 135 for *kusiti), or at least is influenced by the Gothic form (like *melko or sytъ: the expected inherited Slavic forms would have been *gusiti, *melzo and *satъ, Russian *вгусить, *молозо and *сатый).



well, if we want to go so far and dig so deeply, we can read there that this word probably has ancient indo-european roots from "jus" back to several thousand years ago whereas we are talking about more or less modern epoch when modern languages were formed.


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## superdrap

amazingenough,

You still don't get it.

The word might have Slavic, Germanic or Turk roots (I would say it's incorrect to trace words to exact languages, all linguists tend to trace them to language families). That doesn't matter. When it gets into the language and is used widely it becomes a word in this language.

I used the example above for a reason. "Smak" might have Germanic roots and "vkus" to be more Slavic (or Gothic, if it matters). We might argue how it got into Ukrainian and you would probably say that from German via Polish whereas most Ukrainian linguists would root it to Viking influence during Rus times as it is "smak" in both Swedish and Norwegian (and they might be right as the word is so uniform in Ukrainian whereas Polish influence is more or less localized and most "polonisms" are not accepted into literary Ukrainian).

But there's a consensus about this word in Ukrainian, everyone regardless of region and political views uses it and its adjectives like "smachno". This is when I say about the word that it is plain Ukrainian. I will not try to claim that we invented it (which would be ridiculous, 90% of the words are borrowed one way or another). Important thing is uniform acceptance. There's no "vkus" related words in Ukrainian though. And because of that, derivatives should use the same root - that is a rule of word creation. This is why "vkusniashka" sounds wrong. This is why "smakolyk" sounds right. Because the former uses a (probably) Slavic root but foreign to Ukrainian, the latter uses a Germanic root but already accepted in the language.

You still try to prove something that is not true about my inclination to Western Ukrainian way of speaking and lead to political discussions. It is not the case. There's a literary Ukrainian and we speak it (or try to) and we don't need to purify it from Russian influence (and any other). But it is a language of 1930 and we need to enrich it with modern words and this is the problem that stands in front of us now.


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## bibax

The Czech noun *vkus* (adj. vkusný) looks pretty Czech. Now I have found that the word vkus was borrowed from Russian in 1817 (Prvotiny) by František Palacký in order to replace the "ugly" word *šmak*.

Das ist Geschmackssache! = To je věc *vkusu*! = Это дело *вкуса*!


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## ahvalj

Since we now have a person interested in the Ukrainian lexicography I would like to reiterate my complaints about the fate of the old literary vocabulary in Ukrainian (and Belarusian). If we look at any text from the Kievan Rus times (http://izbornyk.org.ua/oldukr2/oldukr2.htm) we will see the Church Slavonic cultural vocabulary (with «въкусити» and not «смаковати») that is mostly alive up to these days in Russian but largely replaced in Ukrainian and Belarusian after the Mongol invasion — some of these later words were new, but very many were borrowed from Polish. I don't understand the mechanisms and the driving forces of it: the orthodox texts were the same, the monastic tradition was, well, not interrupted, so why did the descendants of Kievans of the 10–12th centuries change so dramatically their cultural lexicon in the following centuries?


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## Miralasa

Church Slavonic vocabulary is completely foreign to Old Russian. The native Russian words preserved in Ukrainian and Belorussian were evicted from the language when the literature norm based on foreign OCS words was formed.


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## Leonhard

Hmmm... a most interesting question, Triglav. I've never been exposed to Slovenian, be it written or spoken, but when I read your post I went online and just looked at some random wikipedia articles in Slovenian and - yes! - it is definitely much more challenging than BCS, no doubt about that. The orthography of Czech and Polish - with which I'm not well acquainted (especially Polish) - is what makes understanding these languages even more difficult, because for example when I hear Polish being spoken I can understand it way better than when I just see it written. (I've never heard Czech being spoken, so I don't know if the same would hold true for Czech.) Slovenian letters on the other hand look almost exactly the same (correct me if I'm wrong) as the latin version of the BCS alphabet. That makes reading a Slovenian text much, much easier for me if compared to reading one written in Czech for example. As far as understanding is concerned, I really cannot pass a 100% definitive judgment on that matter. Some sentences were easier to understand in Slovenian, while others more so in Czech. Polish was by far the hardest to understand, but I think that was perhaps so because of the orthography of the language. And yet, if I absolutely had to say which was easiest to understand, I would have to say Slovenian. Its "aura" just "felt" more familiar, i.e. Balkan!


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## TriglavNationalPark

Thanks, Leonhard. It's always interesting to see posts about the intelligibility of Slovenian from other South Slavic speakers who haven't had much exposure to the language. 



Leonhard said:


> Slovenian letters on the other hand look almost exactly the same (correct me if I'm wrong) as the latin version of the BCS alphabet.



You're right; the Slovenian alphabet is based closely on Ljudevit Gaj's BCS alphabet (but with five fewer letters; in fact, Slovenian has the fewest letters of any Slavic language).


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## ahvalj

Miralasa said:


> Church Slavonic vocabulary is completely foreign to Old Russian. The native Russian words preserved in Ukrainian and Belorussian were evicted from the language when the literature norm based on foreign OCS words was formed.


I have read this so many times, but this obviously is an ad hoc explanation.

First of all, we have no attested texts of the Old East Slavic vernacular except for the Novgorod birch bark letters, so we have absolutely no idea how the actual speech looked like in that period in the rest of the East Slavic territory and hence have no tools to evaluate how close or far it was lexically from the cultural lexicon of the preserved texts.

Then, there is such thing as cultural tradition. When we look at the texts at that site we find a voluminous vocabulary that has more or less successfully survived to these days in modern Russian. Plus, as you can see, it was used in Kievan times during at least three centuries. So, ten generations of educated people in the church and administration were successfully using this vocabulary, which may have been imported from a then still closely related language at the time of christianization of Rus in the 9th century but was a part, or better, was *the* educated speech for the next centuries in the Kievan period and for the next ten centuries in the North. My question is why it happened so that the already existing lexicon was abandoned in what later became the Ukrainian and Belarusian languages. What should happen with, say, the Italian, Spanish and Portuguese languages for them to lose the bulk of their Latin borrowings and start to create much of the abstract words anew?


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## Awwal12

amazingenough said:


> Even inside Russia we still can hear some  unknown for general public local words and expressions (for example, in  Kuban region)


The dialect native to the Kuban region is, technically, Ukrainian, not  Russian (even despite the local majority identifies itself as ethnic  Russians). And it's the same thing with the Russian part of historical  Sloboda Ukraine. There is no real dialect continuum between Russian and  Ukrainian, so it's pretty easy to sort out the dialects (unlike with  Russian and Belarusian, where any "border" can be only a convention). 


Miralasa said:


> Church Slavonic vocabulary is completely  foreign to Old Russian. The native Russian words preserved in Ukrainian  and Belorussian were evicted from the language when the literature norm  based on foreign OCS words was formed.


If you mean Old Russian of X-XI centuries, that is pretty much incorrect, even despite many differences. The spoken Russian dialects of the mentioned period and Old Church Slavonic still could be called the same language. On the other hand, the difference between Old Russian and Old Church Slavonic is lesser than between any of them on the one hand and Russian or Ukrainian on the other hand (the Russian variety of Church Slavonic has also evolved considerably, but it's another matter).


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## ahvalj

That's not quite true. As I had written, there are no texts reflecting the spoken Old East Slavic preserved to these days, except for the Novgorod birch bark letters. The latter, surprisingly, have turned out to reflect a language that was much more deviant than anybody could have expected before these discoveries. There is absolutely no garantee that the speech in some other parts of the East Slavic continuum was any closer to the written texts. In particular, Nikolayev points out that the accentology of the future Moscow dialect is so peculiar (the stress was shifted from non-acute vowels to the right to both short and long vowels, unlike the rest of the Slavic dialects) that this dialect must have been separated from the others for a quite long period. So, we simply don't know how close or remote was the vernacular East Slavic in its different areas from the attested written language. This, however, is a separate question since the knowledge of the cultural vocabulary is anyway acquired through education, so in the absence of corresponding abstract terms in the everyday speech a disciple just learnt the existing Church Slavonic words, like speakers of German dialects in the 19th century learnt the standard language.


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## Awwal12

ahvalj said:


> That's not quite true. As I had written, there are no texts reflecting the spoken Old East Slavic preserved to these days, except for the Novgorod birch bark letters. The latter, surprisingly, have turned out to reflect a language that was much more deviant than anybody could have expected before these discoveries.


And that's exactly the point, in my opinion. By the X century, the difference between "ancient Russian dialects" should have been comparable to the difference between any of them and Old Church Slavonic. The rest is the eternal "language or dialect" matter.

P.S.: And "the totally alien vocabulary" is still kind of huge exxageration. We speak about Slavic languages of X-XI centuries, not English and Russian.


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## ahvalj

There is one more moment. The bulk of this cultural vocabulary was created anew for the translations from Greek, so these words were as unfamiliar to a Thessaloniki layman as they were to his Kievan or Novgorodian counterparts. Plus, let's not forget that the original target of Cyril and Methodius mission was Moravia, so their Thessaloniki-based translation was assumed to be suitable for who we call now West Slavic speakers. I don't think that the East Slavic was any farther from Fyromian ,-) at that time.


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## jasio

Leonhard said:


> The orthography of Czech and Polish - with which I'm not well acquainted (especially Polish) - is what makes understanding these languages even more difficult, because for example when I hear Polish being spoken I can understand it way better than when I just see it written.



Wikipedia says that Slovenian abeceda (alphabet) was based on croatian, which in turn is based on czech husitic alphabet, so Czech shouldn't cause many problems for you. On the other hand, Polish alfabet is completely different with respect to Polish phones, although in many cases there are easy transcryption rules, like 'cz' = 'č', 'dż' = 'dž', 'ń' = 'nj', 'ż' = 'ž', 'sz' = 'š', etc. 



Leonhard said:


> Polish was by far the hardest to understand, but I think that was perhaps so because of the orthography of the language.



It may be caused by a number of loanwords in Polish as well. I've found an information somewhere that there are just a few hundred Slavic words in Polish, and majority of words (at least used by educated population) is in fact of Latin, German, or French origin, and recently - English. Some people even say that Polish is a germanic version of Latin with Slavic grammar. 

Czech BTW also has strong German influence, so Slovak sounds more Slavic (and is easier to understand) for me.


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## ilocas2

DzB said:


> Since I am native Serbocroatian and Czech speaker, I can give you some ideas about similarities.
> I understand the best Slovak. The second best is Macedonian, followed by Bulgarian. Now comes a tricky part. I understand better Polish than Ukrainian but I struggle with it. I understand Russian the least, although I find some words that are from Czech and some that are from Serbocroatian. Czechs understand Poles much better than former Yugoslavians. Serbocroatian is very close to Slovak and less to Czech.
> I think that just Serbocroatian speakers can understand equal percent of Ukrainian, Czech and Polish. Russian is further apart.



How do you understand Slovenian?


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## Wildfire-KRR

I'm a native Russian speaker and I didn't learn any other Slavic languages, although during my childhood I had some exposure to Ukrainian and surzhyk (a mix between Russian and Ukrainian languages).
I find Belarussian the closest language to Russian. The next one is Ukrainian of course. I understand about 75-90% of these languages which means the intelligibility level is limited but in most cases it's high enough to understand these languages without using dictionaries (unknown words can often be understood out of context).
 And here comes an interesting part - similarity to *non-east Slavic languages (NESL)*.

1) Bulgarian
  IMO this language is the easiest one (among West Slavic and South Slavic languages) to understand to Russian speakers but the level of understanding varies greatly depending on the topic you read / discuss.
It's very easy to read official and scientific texts.
Example:

From Bulgarian Wikipedia:
885 г. - Във Великоморавия умира и е погребан свети Методий.
1199 г. - Във Франция при обсадата на крепостта Шалуз загива английският крал Ричард Лъвското сърце.

 Russian translation:
  885 г. - В Великой Моравии умер и похоронен (погребён) святой Мефодий.
1199 г. - Во Франции при осаде крепости Шалуз погиб английский король Ричард Львиное сердце.

But when it comes to other topics, the level of understanding falls greatly.

Bible:
Тогава казва: Ще се върна в къщата си, откъдето съм излязъл. И като дойде, намира я празна, пометена и подредена. 
Тогава отива и взема със себе си седем други духа, по-зли от него, и като влязат, живеят там; и последното състояние на онзи човек става по-лошо от първото. Също така ще бъде и с това нечестиво поколение.

same in Russian (I counldn't translate it and just copied it from the Russian Bible instead):
Тогда говорит: возвращусь в дом мой, откуда я вышел. И, придя, находит его незанятым, выметенным и убранным; 
Тогда идет и берет с собою семь других духов, злейших себя, и, войдя, живут там; и бывает для человека того последнее хуже первого. Так будет и с этим злым родом.

- Well, some phrases are still possible to understand, but getting the main idea can be tricky especially for those who aren't used to Bulgarian grammar.
 Spoken Bulgarian is even more difficult to understand mostly b/c of different stress and I would say it's almost as hard to understand as other non-east Slavic languages.

*Overall level of understanding: 40%-90% for written language, 20%-40% for spoken language.*

2) Polish
 Many Russians find this language very hard to understand but it seems like they are just a bit lazy to sort out Polish rz's/sz's/cz's/ch's. If you get used to it, Polish apparently becomes one of the easiest NESL languages to understand but similarity level is still low compared to ESL; I'd say it's about 40%.
Unlike Bulgarian, there doesn't seem to be a vast disproportion between formal/scientific and informal texts.

 And again, things get worse when you try to understand spoken language. Some ppl find Polish speech a bit blurred and rz's/sz's mess the things up.

*Overall level of understanding: 30%-55% for written language, 15%-25% for spoken language.*

3) Slovak
 This language is often considered a "central" Slavic language (i.e. it's fairly comprehensible for an average Slavic speaker whatever country he/she lives in).
I think this is the case but since Russian language is distant from NESL (it's "separated" from WSL by Ukrainian and most SSL by Bulgarian) it's hard for Russian speakers to understand Slovak.
IMO this language is well balanced (it's nearly equally easy to understand written/spoken language on formal/informal topics). And their speech is clear. So the main obstacle is difference in vocabulary.

*Overall level of understanding: 25%-40% for written language, 20%-30% for spoken language.*

4) Czech
This language is very similar to Slovak, but I find it way harder to understand, dunno why.

*Overall level of understanding: 15%-25% for written language, 10%-25% for spoken language.*

5) BCS
Probably more difficult than Polish/Slovak in terms of grammar and a bit easier in case you read formal texts.

*Overall level of understanding: 20%-45% for written language, 15%-30% for spoken language.*

6) Slovenian
It's the most difficult Slavic language to me to understand. I often don't even manage to understand what they are talking about unless I hear international words.

*Overall level of understanding: 10%-20% for written language, 5%-15% for spoken language.*

   I consider my ability to understand Slavic languages average compared to other Russians as some Russians don't even understand Ukrainian and simple Bulgarian texts while others can even understand Slovenian and claim "70-75%" level of understanding Czech/Slovak.


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## EdnoMomche

I am interested if Bulgarians can write if they undestand BCMS or Russian better?


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## DarkChild

EdnoMomche said:


> I am interested if Bulgarians can write if they undestand BCMS or Russian better?



It depends on who you ask. Westerner or Easterner, young or old, how much exposure they've had to each. I think for a person that hasn't heard either language before, BCS would be more understandable (still with difficulties, though). With Russian, the vast vocabulary similarity is the reason for intelligibility, but often words are pronounced differently and for those who don't know the patterns, then they might not recognize the words.

I think for spoken BSC, for written - Russian.

But again, I'm speaking for myself only.


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## DarkChild

Wildfire-KRR said:


> 1) Bulgarian
> IMO this language is the easiest one (among West Slavic and South Slavic languages) to understand to Russian speakers but the level of understanding varies greatly depending on the topic you read / discuss.
> It's very easy to read official and scientific texts.
> Example:
> 
> From Bulgarian Wikipedia:
> 885 г. - Във Великоморавия умира и е погребан свети Методий.
> 1199 г. - Във Франция при обсадата на крепостта Шалуз загива английският крал Ричард Лъвското сърце.
> 
> Russian translation:
> 885 г. - В Великой Моравии умер и похоронен (погребён) святой Мефодий.
> 1199 г. - Во Франции при осаде крепости Шалуз погиб английский король Ричард Львиное сердце.
> 
> But when it comes to other topics, the level of understanding falls greatly.
> 
> Bible:
> Тогава казва: Ще се върна в къщата си, откъдето съм излязъл. И като дойде, намира я празна, пометена и подредена.
> Тогава отива и взема със себе си седем други духа, по-зли от него, и като влязат, живеят там; и последното състояние на онзи човек става по-лошо от първото. Също така ще бъде и с това нечестиво поколение.
> 
> same in Russian (I counldn't translate it and just copied it from the Russian Bible instead):
> Тогда говорит: возвращусь в дом мой, откуда я вышел. И, придя, находит его незанятым, выметенным и убранным;
> Тогда идет и берет с собою семь других духов, злейших себя, и, войдя, живут там; и бывает для человека того последнее хуже первого. Так будет и с этим злым родом.
> 
> - Well, some phrases are still possible to understand, but getting the main idea can be tricky especially for those who aren't used to Bulgarian grammar.
> Spoken Bulgarian is even more difficult to understand mostly b/c of different stress and I would say it's almost as hard to understand as other non-east Slavic languages.
> 
> *Overall level of understanding: 40%-90% for written language, 20%-40% for spoken language.*



This is an interesting observation. I had read in another forum a BCS speaker said the same thing but reverse. He could understand regular topics but not scientific or more formal ones.


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## ilocas2

I'm interested whether speakers of Upper Sorbian understand better Czech than Slovak. Since everybody write in all threads that they understand better Slovak than Czech.


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## vianie

ilocas, I know several Polish native speakers in England who understand Czech better than Slovak. Words spoken in Czech are less equivocal for them, regardless if they do understand the meanings. They all have been in sufficient concact with both languages.


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## Alexandrov

Hello everyone!

Im from Bulgaria. So, ill give you my opinion.
First of all there are 2 groups of bulgarian speakers. Eastern and western. They sound very different. Western accents sound more like BCS or Macedonian and eastern accents sound more like Russian. Its annoying for westerns to hear eastern accent and probably the same thing for easterns. Im from sofia so my accent is western. For me there are places in Bulgaria (in the east) where i have some issues with understanding native speakers like for example Shumen or Dobrich in eastern Bulgaria. Sometimes if i hear in the background a speach from this part of Bulgaria, i can even firstable decide its russian. But lets talk about other slavic languages and their relation with Bulgarian. A huge factor - Russian influence! And also the historical factor - Old church slavonic. Durring the ottoman empire and after it there was a big russian influence over the language (ass well as french and english) Then comes the communistic regime, also huge influence. Now there are so much common words in the both languages.

1) So for me the most related language to bulgarian is russian. Especialy written russian - i can understand between 70 and 90%. Spoken russian.. well, in the beginning it may be about 50% but when you get used to it you begin to understand even more. I watch some russian series (Кухня, Интерны) In the beginning w/o subtitles i could get only the main idea, but now 1 year later i could understand almost everything.

2)Second place for me BCS. Written - ~60%, spoken ~ 50%
Vocabulary - There are lots of common words, most of them for an ''every day conversation''. So if i read a forum i could understand way more then for ex. if im reading an article or a book.
Spoken - those languages are spoken really fast and the sound really "strong'', especially with those combinations of "r" or "L" between constans sounds (vrlo, brdo,krvav) Also the L sound is different, its more like the czech and slovak ones. Also the emphasis of the words is almost always on the first syllable like vòda, glàva. In bulgarian there isnt such a rule and the emphasis can be in many different parts of the words like vodà glavà.

3) Slovak, Polish, Ukrainian. Every slavic language except russian and BCS is really hard to understand for a bulgarian speaker. However, those languages i understand about 30-40% written and 20-30% spoken. I really like slovak and polish rap btw 

4)Slovenian, Czech. At all - sound typical slavic to me, but nothing else. I could undersand some individual words, but nothing more than that.

After all i would say that in my opinion russian and BCS are the closest languages to bulgarian, maybe russian a bit more than BCS.

Oow, and also heres a really interesting fact - In western Bulgaria we have 2 L sounds, one of them L before ''i'' and ''e'' (Pleven, aleya, limon). In the other cases we have an L sound which is like the polish *Ł *Ex. - p*łato, słavyanski, fiłm, słuh, shkoła* etc. Its pronounced like the english W in "with" So those words are pronounced like that - pwato, swavyanski, fiwm, swuh, shkowa.


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