# Czech/Slovak: Mutual Intelligibility



## Azori

Moderator note:

Split from here. The topic of this split-off is *mutual intelligibility between Czech and Slovak.*


Orlin said:


> A Nizozemi je češki?


Yes, Nizozemí is češki (did you use a Czech dictionary?), however, this word cannot be Slovak because Slovak has no neuter nouns ending with a long í, in Slovak it would have to be Nizozemie, with an -ie diphtong, compare SK územie vs CZ území (area), prízemie - přízemí (first floor) etc.


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## Orlin

lior neith said:


> Yes, Nizozemí is češki (did you use a Czech dictionary?), however, this word cannot be Slovak because Slovak has no neuter nouns ending with a long í, in Slovak it would have to be Nizozemie, with an -ie diphtong, compare SK územie vs CZ území (area), prízemie - přízemí (first floor) etc.


I simply guessed because I know very little about Czech and Slovak.


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## Azori

Orlin said:


> I simply guessed because I know very little about Czech and Slovak.


And what were you thinking? That Slovak and Czech have identical vocabulary?


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## nonik

čeština je dialekt slovenštiny a naopak, a zároveň jsou to dva samostatné jazyky.
co chceš k tomu dodat více


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## JamyangNorbu

I think the best description of the situation is that while passive bilingualism is common amongst older Czechs, and amongst Slovaks of all age groups due to Czech language media saturation, they are actually two distinct languages that are not mutually intelligible without a lot of exposure.


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## DenisBiH

JamyangNorbu said:


> I think the best description of the situation is that while passive bilingualism is common amongst older Czechs, and amongst Slovaks of all age groups due to Czech language media saturation, they are actually two distinct languages that are not mutually intelligible without a lot of exposure.




Your source for this is?


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## JamyangNorbu

DenisBiH said:


> Your source for this is?



I apologize, but I'm not sure which portion you are asking for sources for.  The state of passive bilingualism is well documented in the Czech and Slovak linguistic literature.  For example,



> Můžeme mluvit bez výhrad o tom, že mluvčí slovenštiny a češtiny jsou bilingvní – uplatňují ve svém životě schopnost užívat dva jazyky – ačkoli mluví a píšou jen v jednom a ve druhém zpravidla diskurz (tj. mluvené a psané texty) neprodukují, ale je jen přijímají.
> 
> _(I apparently can't post URLs due to my lack of posts, but I can send the link via PM if you would like.  It is an article by a sociolinguistics faculty member at Charles University in Prague)_



As to the claim that mutual intelligibility is declining, most of my knowledge of this phenomena is anecdotal, or from personal experience. My wife is a Slovenka, and whenever traveling throughout the Czech and Slovak republics we witness this often.  Older Czechs and Slovaks speak to each other in their own language, and the other responds back in theirs.  With younger Czechs this was not possible unless they had more Slovak acquaintances.  We even witness this with a young (30's) Bohemian/Moravian expat couple we are friends with here in the US.  Moravian is ostensibly closer to Slovak on the dialect continuum, yet the Bohemian partner had to translate to their Moravian partner (and still often does) for the first 2 years they knew my wife.  

All the best.


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## ilocas2

JamyangNorbu said:


> As to the claim that mutual intelligibility is declining, most of my knowledge of this phenomena is anecdotal, or from personal experience. My wife is a Slovenka, and whenever traveling throughout the Czech and Slovak republics we witness this often.  Older Czechs and Slovaks speak to each other in their own language, and the other responds back in theirs.  With younger Czechs this was not possible unless they had more Slovak acquaintances.  We even witness this with a young (30's) Bohemian/Moravian expat couple we are friends with here in the US.  Moravian is ostensibly closer to Slovak on the dialect continuum, yet the Bohemian partner had to translate to their Moravian partner (and still often does) for the first 2 years they knew my wife.
> 
> All the best.



I'm sorry but this is just nonsense. To imagine, how a Czech communicates with a Slovak in English, is just laughable. I think that I have enough personal experiences for this statement. Sometimes you don't understand every single word, yes this happens, but overall the mutual intelligibility doesn't fall under 90 % even when people speak fast. Mostly you don't understand 3 words in 10 minutes or something like that.

And on internet discussions, Youtube etc., Slovak language is everywhere, so you learn the different words quickly, even if you don't watch TV or listen radio.


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## nonik

This is based on the deep lexicostatistical test made by Zhuravlev (*) from the etymological dictionary of slavic languages in 15 books (ed. O.N. Trubachev, Moscow 1974).
There is a complex formul...a how to compute statistical distance of languages:

G(A,B) = SUM i is from 2 to n ((n + 2 - i) * V(A,B)i) / H(A) / H(B), where

A,B are tested languages,
n is total number of tested languages
G(A,B) is congruence of these two languages
H(A), H(B) is inherited dictionary from common root of these two languages
V(A,B)i is isoglossa

In this formula, the higher value has isoglossa limited to only two languages and the lower number has isoglossa, which is common for more languages.

The highest number of profimity is between upper and lower lusatian sorbian: 1.93,
Bulgarian-Slavomacedonian has 1.73,
Czech-Slovak has 1.36,
Bielorusian-Russian has 1.27,
Ukrainian-Russian has 1.20 (but ukrainians learn Russian as well) and
Polish-Bulgarian has only 0.93 etc.

If languages have proximity at least 1.1, they can be assigned into one group, but this approach goes intoa lot of such similar solutions.

For mutual understanding of ordinary people You need to have at least 1.2.
Old Slavonic has value 1.15 (to Polish) or better (1.27 to Czech, for example) to modern slavic languages


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## nonik

My nephew and niece were exposed to Slovak language just one week on the wacations in Rhodos.
They have never before were exposed to slovak language.
In hotel komplex, the animators were young people from slovak, who speak just slovak and didnt speak czech.
My nephew and niece (12 and 7), they did not have problem with understanding, yes they were suprised by the sound of slovak language.


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## JamyangNorbu

ilocas2 said:


> I'm sorry but this is just nonsense. To imagine, how a Czech communicates with a Slovak in English, is just laughable.



I never said that the Czechs and Slovaks in question speak English to each other.  I said the wife ended up translating quite a bit to the husband.  Ie, verbs and a good number of nouns are different, so Czech equivalents had to be given.  You are adding something that was not in my initial statement, implicitly, or explicitly.



> Sometimes you don't understand every single word, yes this happens, but overall the mutual intelligibility doesn't fall under 90 % even when people speak fast. Mostly you don't understand 3 words in 10 minutes or something like that.



I don't believe this is such a small number for most people, and I don't think everyone is on the internet watching and reading things in Slovak all the time.


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## nonik

Could you tell us, from exactly what part of former czechoslovakia are those two, that they dont understand each other???


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## Ayazid

JamyangNorbu said:


> As to the claim that mutual intelligibility is declining, most of my knowledge of this phenomena is anecdotal, or from personal experience. My wife is a Slovenka, and whenever traveling throughout the Czech and Slovak republics we witness this often.  Older Czechs and Slovaks speak to each other in their own language, and the other responds back in theirs.  With younger Czechs this was not possible unless they had more Slovak acquaintances.  We even witness this with a young (30's) Bohemian/Moravian expat couple we are friends with here in the US.  Moravian is ostensibly closer to Slovak on the dialect continuum, yet the Bohemian partner had to translate to their Moravian partner (and still often does) for the first 2 years they knew my wife.
> 
> All the best.



What you are saying quite strange, since I am a young Czech person and I have never had any problem to understand (standard) Slovak in my life, except a few words, mostly related to traditional life in the countryside etc. However, some dialects might be tricky (especially the Eastern ones), but it seems to me that most young Slovaks don't use them anyway. And yes, sometimes you can hear young Czech people claiming that they do not understand Slovak perfectly, but I have never witnessed any case of serious communication problems between Slovaks and Czechs. It's rather laziness or a superficial impression. For example once, I was talking with a Czech guy, who told me that he doesn't understand Slovak well. The we listened to a video in Slovak and suddenly he had never problem to understand it whatsoever.


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## JamyangNorbu

nonik said:


> Could you tell us, from exactly what part of former czechoslovakia are those two, that they dont understand each other???



My wife is from Central Slovakia, near Banská Bystrica and Zvolen.  She understands Czech, from growing up during the end days of Czechoslovakia, and reading most literature in Czech, watching Czech films, Czech overdubs of English and other foreign films.

The couple is mixed.  She is from Prague, he is from Olomouc.

I am not saying that there is no mutual comprehension.  I am saying there are two languages, and that the distance in understanding is increasing, particularly on the Czech side, because the media saturation of Czech into Slovak is mostly one way.


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## nonik

JamyangNorbu said:


> My wife is from Central Slovakia, near Banská Bystrica and Zvolen. She understands Czech, from growing up during the end days of Czechoslovakia, and reading most literature in Czech, watching Czech films, Czech overdubs of English and other foreign films.
> 
> The couple is mixed. She is from Prague, he is from Olomouc.
> 
> I am not saying that there is no mutual comprehension. I am saying there are two languages, and that the distance in understanding is increasing, particularly on the Czech side, because the media saturation of Czech into Slovak is mostly one way.


 
 Prague, Olomouc, Zvolen, Banská Bystrica...........well, well, well, then I dont see any reason why they have problem with understanding, especially after two years. 

Of course we were exposed to slovak language in TV during Czechoslovakia time and slovak were exposed to czech language.
Of course there exist some slovak words which are not understand in czech or opposit way. But these few words are not reason to be not understand, even by person who were never exposed slovak or czech.

My nephew and niece , never exposed slovak language before, didnt have problem in understanding standard slovak language whey they heard it. Yes, I have to admit, they didnt understand  a few specific words, but after I explained them these few words, there wasnt any problem after.

Maybe if somebody speak some special dialect from slovakia, he can have problem to be understand in czech.


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## nonik

nonik said:


> Prague, Olomouc, Zvolen, Banská Bystrica...........well, well, well, then I dont see any reason why they have problem with understanding.
> Of course we were exposed to slovak language in TV during Czechoslovakia time and slovak were exposed to czech language.
> Of course there exist some slovak words which are not understand in czech or opposit way. But these few words are not reason to be not understood, even by person who were never exposed to slovak or czech.
> 
> My nephew and niece , never exposed to slovak language before, didnt have problem in understanding standard slovak language when they heard it. Yes, I have to admit, they didnt understand a few specific words, but after I explained them these few words, there wasnt any problem after.
> 
> Maybe if somebody speak some special dialect from slovakia, he can have problem to be understand in czech.


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## Ayazid

JamyangNorbu said:


> My wife is from Central Slovakia, near Banská Bystrica and Zvolen.  She understands Czech, from growing up during the end days of Czechoslovakia, and reading most literature in Czech, watching Czech films, Czech overdubs of English and other foreign films.



That's certainly a nice way of developing language skills, but I do not think that Czechs and Slovaks need such an intense exposure to understand each other's languages. Most of the grammar and vocabulary is identical or very similar and the phonetics are not very different. For other Slavs the difference might be cardinal, but not for us.


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## ilocas2

JamyangNorbu said:


> I don't believe this is such a small number for most people, and I don't think everyone is on the internet watching and reading things in Slovak all the time.



No, they are not on the internet watching and reading things all the time, but it's just sufficient to see or hear an unknown Slovak word once or twice and it's remembered for the rest of life, really. It's much easier than with other languages, I can't explain it.


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## nonik

It's much easier than with other languages, I can't explain it.....................................................................................................................yes, and few special slovak words, which ordinary czech people dont know, are on the other way very good in communication and understanding with other slavs languages.


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## JamyangNorbu

nonik said:


> It's much easier than with other languages, I can't explain it.....................................................................................................................



I'm not going to attempt to refute your personal experiences with mutual intelligibility.  I have had different experiences which make me think that it is not as easy for everyone as it has been for yourself and ilocas2.



> yes, and few special slovak words, which ordinary czech people dont know, are on the other way very good in communication and understanding with other slavs languages.



This certainly seems to be true.  Lower register words in Slovak seem to be more pan-Slavic.


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## Ayazid

JamyangNorbu said:


> I'm not going to attempt to refute your personal experiences with mutual intelligibility.  I have had different experiences which make me think that it is not as easy for everyone as it has been for yourself and ilocas2.



Well, one thing is to say that not all Czechs understand Slovak easily (which I find doubtful) and something quite different is to state that Czech and Slovak:



> are actually two distinct languages that are not  mutually intelligible without a lot of exposure.


I don't think that even some kids growing up in Northern Bohemia without any contact with Slovaks would find Slovak language to be unintelligible, maybe only if they had to deal with a 90 years old toothless villager from Eastern Slovakia


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## JamyangNorbu

Actually, that is saying the same thing.

There are enough common vocabulary differences that I don't believe that without repeated exposure, one will understand.  Compare the common names for body parts, names of the months, etc.  These are things that come up in conversation regularly, but have many different words.


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## nonik

I'm not going to attempt to refute your personal experiences with mutual intelligibility. I have had different experiences which make me think that it is not as easy for everyone as it has been for yourself and ilocas2................................................................................Let it be, I belive you, people can have different experiences.


This certainly seems to be true. Lower register words in Slovak seem to be more pan-Slavic. ...............................................maybe, I am not expert, some people from poland or former yugoslavia said to me, that they understand slovak muche more better than czech. 
and about the written slavs language, I read somewhere, that if some schollars did not destroy old writting system evolved from OS (old slavonic) time, there would be much more better understanding betwen them.
Because wriitting acording phonetics destroyed morphologic root of word, and thus the word is becoming nonunderstandable for others slavs .


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## Ayazid

JamyangNorbu said:


> Actually, that is saying the same thing.




It doesn't, at least for me. I find Slovak easily understandable without a lot of exposure, Polish rather difficult, but highly intelligible after some time of exposure and learning the differences, Bulgarian almost completely unintelligible and needing a serious study to really understand it and Lithuanian is all Greek to me  No surprise, since it reflects how closely related these languages are to my own.


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## Ayazid

JamyangNorbu said:


> There are enough common vocabulary differences that I don't believe that without repeated exposure, one will understand.  Compare the common names for body parts, names of the months, etc.  These are things that come up in conversation regularly, but have many different words.



The common names for body parts are mostly identical or very similar and the names of the months are different, but people acquainted with the international names of the months will understand them even in the case of those who don't, it still can't make a whole sentence unintelligible, just to cause occasional misunderstandings.


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## JamyangNorbu

Which common body parts do you think are similar?


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## nonik

Compare the common names for body parts, names of the months, etc. These are things that come up in conversation regularly, but have many different words.

..................eh, you should choose something better than body parts or months))

body parts are not so differrent except few words, and about months, you could always say....first months, second months a everybody will understand.

PS....slovak name of month before adopting them from latin language was almost identical to czech, except 2 of them, i think.


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## nonik

Which common body parts do you think are similar? ................guys, you should writte which are not identical, it is better way.


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## JamyangNorbu

záda - chrbát
játra - pečeň 
jícen - pažerák 
játra - pečeň
chrbát - záda
kyčel - bedro
etc


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## Ayazid

JamyangNorbu said:


> Which common body parts do you think are similar?



Well, I supposed that you are fluent in both Czech and Slovak, but actually as far as I know they are all similar, except _pery_ and _chrbát_ (related to the Czech _hřbet_, by the way) which are _rty_ and _záda_ in Czech. Certainly not something what would make a conversion incomprehensible.


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## Ayazid

JamyangNorbu said:


> záda - chrbát
> játra - pečeň
> jícen - pažerák
> játra - pečeň
> chrbát - záda
> kyčel - bedro
> etc



Ok, there are more of them, but unless the people were talking about anatomy it wouldn't cause them serious troubles in understanding each other.

hlava - hlava
nohy - nohy
ruce - ruky
prsty - prsty
oči - oči
krk - krk
tvář - tvár

Some more common ones


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## nonik

just tell me how many times you need to talk about you anatomy unless you are 75 old))


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## JamyangNorbu

Ayazid said:


> Ok, there are more of them, but unless the people were talking about anatomy it wouldn't cause them serious troubles in understanding each other.



So not being able to talk a sore back from work, or bitch about a liver hurting from drinking too much means you can have a conversation easily?

The English equivalents of the words listed above are common enough  that anyone with a basic education would use them regularly to describe any minor physical distress they are experiencing.


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## JamyangNorbu

nonik said:


> just tell me how many times you need to talk about you anatomy unless you are 75 old))



Keep sitting at the computer for a few years, and then tell me you won't be griping about back pain 

Anyway, none of those are specialist terms in Slovak.  Most Slovak anatomical terms are derived from Latin.


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## nonik

So not being able to talk a sore back from work, or bitch about a liver hurting from drinking too much means you can have a conversation easily?

....................................eh, you can say it easily in diferent way, if you are not dumb.


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## nonik

Latin was only common language betwen nations lived in Ungarian kingdom, maybe that is way slovak months are adopted from latin.


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## JamyangNorbu

The point is, you shouldn't have to avoid using common terms like "môj chrbát"/"my back"  if they are so easily understood.  This is lower register vocabulary, not specialist higher register in any way.

There are many other terms in the lower register that are totally different: pork meat->  bravčové mäso / vepřové maso,  potato -> zemiak  / brambor, and so on.

If you know these words, it means you have been exposed to them.


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## nonik

the words like CHRBAT, PECEN, OBLICKA, POCUVAJ, HITRO etc. can be easily explained by the others common words which are shared in both languages.
If somebody is not able do that, well than I have to say, that He or She is not have a piece of brain in the head.


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## Ayazid

JamyangNorbu said:


> So not being able to talk a sore back from work, or bitch about a liver hurting from drinking too much means you can have a conversation easily?



Well, who forces you to talk about such unpleasant things with anybody after all?  And yes, it is perfectly possible for the average Czech person to talk with the average Slovak person about a variety of topics and understand each other very well, except a few words here and there, which might be easily explained or are clear from the context, just like the ones you mentioned.


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## nonik

I didnt know meaning of some words from slovak language even untill my 30, but when I meet slovak person, and he used those words, and I ask him, what does that menas, he would able very easilly to do that by different way.
And as from my experiences, this is able even for poland,russian and serbo-chroatians.


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## Ayazid

JamyangNorbu said:


> The point is, you shouldn't have to avoid using common terms like "môj chrbát"/"my back"  if they are so easily understood.  This is lower register vocabulary, not specialist higher register in any way.
> 
> There are many other terms in the lower register that are totally different: pork meat->  bravčové mäso / vepřové maso,  potato -> zemiak  / brambor, and so on.
> 
> If you know these words, it means you have been exposed to them.



I do not avoid using terms like "moje záda", when I talk with Slovaks and even if I met some who wouldn't know what it means, I could explain to them the meaning very easily, trust me 

The same thing for these other words, you can just say "maso z prasat", when asked what's the meaning of "vepřové maso". Again, not an unsurmountable problem. It still doesn't justify your premise that "Czech and Slovak are mutually unintelligible without a lot of exposure."


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## Ayazid

nonik said:


> I didnt know meaning of some words from slovak language even untill my 30, but when I meet slovak person, and he used those words, and I ask him, what does that menas, he would able very easilly to do that by different way.
> And as from my experiences, this is able even for poland,russian and serbo-chroatians.



I am sure that until now I don't know many Slovak words, so I wonder why I have always been able to communicate with them so well


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## JamyangNorbu

nonik said:


> And as from my experiences, this is able even for poland,russian and serbo-chroatians.





Ayazid said:


> The same thing for these other words, you can just say "maso z prasat", when asked what's the meaning of "vepřové maso". Again, not an unsurmountable problem. It still doesn't justify your premise that "Czech and Slovak are mutually unintelligible without a lot of exposure."



These statement also don't contradict the statement, because you could use the same types of statements with Serbs and Poles.


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## nonik

slovak....zemiaky
czech....brambory....but also zemáky (slightly archaic, connected to zem-ground), even moravian krumple, which is understand even so far in serbo-chroatians.


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## JamyangNorbu

Ayazid said:


> I am sure that until now I don't know many Slovak words, so I wonder why I have always been able to communicate with them so well



Maybe because they are so familiar with Czech. (devil)


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## Ayazid

JamyangNorbu said:


> These statement also don't contradict the statement, because you could use the same types of statements with Serbs and Poles.



The lexical, grammatical and fonetical differences between each of these languages and Czech are *considerably* greater than those which exist between Czech and Slovak, what are you trying to prove here?


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## ilocas2

To JamyangNorbu:

Why are you trying to prove that Czech and Slovak are not mutually intelligibile, when it's utterly obvious that they are? You can't change personal experiences of people.


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## nonik

Maybe because they are so familiar with Czech. (devil) 

I dont think so, but because according of zurajevski research, which i posted before, betwen slovak-czech is 1,36 point of similarity, and in mutual understandibility for ordinary person you need just 1,2.


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## JamyangNorbu

Ayazid said:


> The lexical, grammatical and fonetical differences between each of these languages and Czech are *considerably* greater than those which exist between Czech and Slovak, what are you trying to prove here?



There are quite a few differences grammatically between Czech and Slovak.  Case endings for nouns obviously vary.  Despite this, I am not saying that Slovak and Czech are not closer to each than the South Slavic languages.  They obviously went through some similar phonetic shifts from common Slavic, despite several pronounced differences as well.

I am saying that your reasoning given above, that you can just say "maso z prasat" is not a good indicator of mutual intelligibility because you can do the same with these other two languages.  Your example was poor.  That is all.


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## JamyangNorbu

nonik said:


> "Maybe because they are so familiar with Czech. (devil) "
> 
> I dont think so,



That was a snarky joke. I hoped this board had the devil smiley which would have made that clear.



> but because according of zurajevski research, which i posted before, betwen slovak-czech is 1,36 point of similarity, and in mutual understandibility for ordinary person you need just 1,2.



There are different opinions amongst linguists on this issue.  So I will leave it at that.


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## Ayazid

JamyangNorbu said:


> There are quite a few differences grammatically between Czech and Slovak.  Case endings for nouns obviously vary.  Despite this, I am not saying that Slovak and Czech are not closer to each than the South Slavic languages.  They obviously went through some similar phonetic shifts from common Slavic, despite several pronounced differences as well.
> 
> I am saying that your reasoning given above, that you can just say "maso z prasat" is not a good indicator of mutual intelligibility because you can do the same with these other two languages.  Your example was poor.  That is all.



And yet, despite those differences Czech and Slovak are still much much closer to each other than each of them is to any other Slavic language and they also do not pose a big problem for their mutual intelligibility. And I am still not sure what was poor about my example. I can explain to a Slovak person unknown Czech words by simple resorting to the huge common vocabulary. With a Pole or Serb it would be much more difficult, the lexical and other differences are much greater!


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## JamyangNorbu

ilocas2 said:


> To JamyangNorbu:
> 
> Why are you trying to prove that Czech and Slovak are not mutually intelligibile, when it's utterly obvious that they are? You can't change personal experiences of people.



Spanish and Italian speakers can do much the same as what was mentioned above.

You also can't change my personal experience, or the experience of others.  There are other Czech forums (I can't post URLs here because of post limitations) where Czechs admit to translating Slovak for other Czechs, and vice versa with Slovaks.  I have met Czechs, educated ones, who can't follow a lot of what is being said in Slovak.  You guys say 90% understanding as if it means you understand the nuanced details of topics of conversations.  I doubt for one that it is 90%, and even if it was, 10% is a lot of meaning to miss without having to slow down and speak in definitions rather than words for common objects.

Anyway, I don't see this conversation continuing along any productive lines, and (my snarky joke aside) don't wish to offend anyone.  So I will sign off on this one.


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## nonik

There are different opinions amongst linguists on this issue. So I will leave it at that.....................................Yes, and don´t you think that is very strange that english speaking person are trying to convinced us, that there is not mutual inteligibillity?


so just compare ordinary text.
slovak sentence first, czech goes under.

Krajský súd v Prešove vydal na menovanú príkaz na dodanie do výkonu 
Krajský soud v Prešově vydal na jmenovanou příkaz na vydání do výkonu

trestu odňatia slobody pre spolupáchateľstvo obzvlášť závažného zločinu
trestu odnětí svobody pro spolupachatelství obvzlášt závažného zločinu

 lúpeže.
loupeže

V mieste svojho bydliska sa nezdržiava a jej pobyt sa doposiaľ nepodarilo
V místě svého bydliště se nezdržuje a její pobyt se doposud nepodarilo

 etc., almost identhical.


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## DenisBiH

nonik said:


> Yes, and don´t you think that is very strange that english speaking person are trying to convinced us, that there is not mutual inteligibillity?




I do find that odd. Unless a Czech here comes forth saying they don't really understand Slovak, all native speakers here have claimed the opposite of what JamyangNorbu is saying and I find this insistence on proving native speakers wrong puzzling.


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## Ayazid

JamyangNorbu said:


> Spanish and Italian speakers can do much the same as what was mentioned above.
> 
> You also can't change my personal experience, or the experience of others.  There are other Czech forums (I can't post URLs here because of post limitations) where Czechs admit to translating Slovak for other Czechs, and vice versa with Slovaks.  I have met Czechs, educated ones, who can't follow a lot of what is being said in Slovak.  You guys say 90% understanding as if it means you understand the nuanced details of topics of conversations.  I doubt for one that it is 90%, and even if it was, 10% is a lot of meaning to miss without having to slow down and speak in definitions rather than words for common objects.
> 
> Anyway, I don't see this conversation continuing along any productive lines, and (my snarky joke aside) don't wish to offend anyone.  So I will sign off on this one.



The theme of the allegedly diminishing mutual intelligibility between Czech and Slovak has been discussed vividly in the last 10-15 years here in the Czech republic. I also met young Czechs who claimed that they don't understand Slovak well. The thing is that I have never witnessed a case of Slovaks and Czechs not understanding each other in my life and I live in the Czech republic and meet Slovaks on daily basis. It sounds more like an anecdote than a real issue. Even the youngest generations of Czechs who didn't grow up in Czechoslovakia communicate with young Slovaks easily, both on the internet and in real life. You can see examples of this everywhere.

And if you want to continue this discussion along any productive lines (it doesn't belong to this thread, by the way), we can achieve that easily by analyzing everyday normal Slovak texts or samples of conversations and comparing them with their translations into Czech vs another Slavic language


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## ilocas2

JamyangNorbu said:


> Spanish and Italian speakers can do much the same as what was mentioned above.
> 
> You also can't change my personal experience, or the experience of others.  There are other Czech forums (I can't post URLs here because of post limitations) where Czechs admit to translating Slovak for other Czechs, and vice versa with Slovaks.  I have met Czechs, educated ones, who can't follow a lot of what is being said in Slovak.  You guys say 90% understanding as if it means you understand the nuanced details of topics of conversations.  I doubt for one that it is 90%, and even if it was, 10% is a lot of meaning to miss without having to slow down and speak in definitions rather than words for common objects.
> 
> Anyway, I don't see this conversation continuing along any productive lines, and (my snarky joke aside) don't wish to offend anyone.  So I will sign off on this one.



I meaned 90 % in most extreme cases when spoken very fast with unusual frequency of different words.


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## werrr

I dare to say that:


Lexical differences between Czech and Slovak are smaller than lexical differences within English.
Most of the different words are just used in slightly different context or formed in comprehensible way from mutually-known word stems.
Morphological and phonetical differences are clearly distinctive but without detriment on comprehensibility.
Syntactical differences are almost non-existent.
Mutual intelligibility of Czech and Slovak is increasing (!) in time due to the decline of dialects on both sides.
It's easier to master both Czech and Slovak on the level of native speaker than to master the complete vocabulary of any of the languages.
A Czech with only basic exposure to Slovak is, due to the bigger variability of Czech, more likely to encounter an uknown word in Czech than an uknown word in Slovak.


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## JamyangNorbu

DenisBiH said:


> I do find that odd. Unless a Czech here comes forth saying they don't really understand Slovak, all native speakers here have claimed the opposite of what JamyangNorbu is saying and I find this insistence on proving native speakers wrong puzzling.



This is a discussion forum if I understand correctly.  Therefore I am discussing a topic of interest to me.  I don't see what my native language has to do with anything.  If I told you as a native speaker of English that a variation on some common verb conjugations found where I currently live, "It weren't me.", was standard English I would hope you would disagree with me and attempt to prove me wrong, no matter how many people from Western Massachusetts came online insisting this was standard.

On the other hand, looking back the blame for the disagreement lies with me.  I was not as precise in my initial phrasing as I should have been.  I thought something was clear from the context that was not.

In the initial post that you commented on I should have included the phrase "mutually intelligible to that degree":



> I think the best description of the situation is that while passive bilingualism is common amongst older Czechs, and amongst Slovaks of all age groups due to Czech language media saturation, they are actually two distinct languages that are not mutually intelligible to that degree (i.e. passive bilingualism) without a lot of exposure.



There is of course a degree of mutual intelligibility.  Of course that degree of mutual intelligibility is higher than with other Slavic languages.  However, passive bilingualism can be seen in older peoples of both languages (and some younger folk too).  This bilingualism is more than being able to provide definitions for unfamiliar terms and get the gist of a conversation.  It is the case that people can ask a question in Slovak, including terms that differ from Czech, and there is no need for explanation.  The Czech just replies in Czech.  

We see this all the time in communication between my wife and the Czech woman from the Czech/Moravian couple we know.  It is extremely rare that the two of them need to stop and define terms.  I can only think of it happening once actually.  For the husband, the stopping to explain the term, or give a czech equivalent was very frequent initially, becoming less and less frequent as time goes on.

When dealing with younger folks in the Czech Republic my wife often has to make the jump to active bilingualism, speaking Czech, or at the least substituting Czech words for common Slovak ones when dealing with younger Czechs.  

If after reading the above clarifications my line of argumentation is clearer, as well as my snarky joke.  If, in light of these clarifications, people still want to say that I am making this up, or that people who don't understand must be stupid or without a brain, then I don't know what to say.

I have been out of the forum loop for a while and forgot some best practices.  It is important to be precise, especially when people are communicating in multiple languages.  I apologize for my lack of precision leading to misunderstanding, and any acrimony that may have arisen.


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## DenisBiH

In my opinion your native language and your level of proficiency in Czech and Slovak is very important when discussing mutual intelligibility. We weren't discussing what is standard or not so your parallel with English is not really relevant. Imagine me telling you something about mutual intelligibility of English dialects that you as a native speaker know to be false from your own experience?  

Far be it that someone is trying to make a fool out of you, or saying that you are inventing things. But you also have to realize we don't know you that well as we know the Czech members who have posted here. Now, if we were to talk to your wife and have her explain what exactly is it that is creating these communication problems that would for me be a different thing. 

Your newly improved quote still seems to differ wildly from what the local Czechs are saying. I would allow for the possibility that our dear Czech colleagues here may not be fully representative of the whole Czech nation, their wide knowledge, proficiency in English etc. indicating a high probability of above than average education. Perhaps a Czech person from some remote part of the Czech Republic with only a high-school diploma etc. might have a different perspective on Czech-Slovak mutual intelligibility, who knows. But the thing is we only have your secondary evidence compared to four native speakers now. I am inclined to trust them more on this issue for the moment until we get a Czech native speaker claiming the opposite. It is meant as no disrespect to you, of course, and you seem to me to be an educated person who I would like to see posting around here in the future. 

Now let me ask you this - this stopping to translate for the Czech husband - are you absolutely sure this was translating the *language* and not explaining the particular *context*?

As for your experience in the Czech Republic, again, was this young Czechs not being able to understand or your wife using Czech words to avoid potential other, non-linguistic issues? When I'm in Croatia I often use some Croatian words instead of Bosnian ones where there is a difference, not necessarily because they couldn't understand me, but as a way of showing respect and avoiding potentially touching post-breakup language sensibilities. And even in the BCS case there are words frequent in one country that may not be understood by some people in the other; even those, as you say, low-register words. I am not sure if all Croats, especially younger ones, would know what is _vazduh_ (air) or _šargarepa_ (carrot) or _pasulj_ (beans).


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## ilocas2

werrr said:


> A Czech with only basic exposure to Slovak is, due to the bigger variability of Czech, more likely to encounter an uknown word in Czech than an uknown word in Slovak.



I think it's exaggeration. I just opened a Slovak book and found in 3 minutes 5 unknown words. They are probably not very frequent in normal life, but anyway.


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## Azori

On the Czech-Slovak mutual intelligibility:

http://www.cvvm.cas.cz/upl/nase_spolecnost/100092se_The Czechs and the Slovak language.pdf

http://www.sloboda.cz/marian/publikace/CDS_en.pdf


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## vianie

nonik said:


> PS....slovak name of month before adopting them from latin language was almost identical to czech, except 2 of them, i think.



original names for Slavic months



werrr said:


> A Czech with only basic exposure to Slovak is, due to the bigger variability of Czech, more likely to encounter an uknown word in Czech than an uknown word in Slovak.



Czech is verbally the richest european language. Today's Czech phraseology is estimated at one million words. In comparison, English has 500,000 words, German 185,000 words and French fewer than 100,000 words.


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## ilocas2

vianie said:


> Czech is verbally the richest european language. Today's Czech phraseology is estimated at one million words. In comparison, English has 500,000 words, German 185,000 words and French fewer than 100,000 words.



I don't know if it's true or how it can be measured, but I think that the whole article wasn't meant completely seriously or rather the author meant it as metaphor or something like that. In any case those are opinions of this author and everyone has right to publicate his ideas, because there exists freedom of speech. I just want to say that this opinion about number of words is not some official point of view which is taught in Czech schools in lessons of Czech language or opinion shared by mayority of population.


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## vianie

Another insight into Czech(o)-Slovak  language contact:

http://sites.google.com/site/priepu...Slovak+language+contact.pdf&scope=search-site


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## jezevci

I think there is an important issue here of the _level_ of mutual intelligibility. I have met young Czechs from Prague who claim to have "problems" understanding Slovak. Some will even claim to "not really" understand it, but I would chalk this up to exaggeration. This does not mean the languages are not mutually intelligible. Indeed, it would not be difficult to find examples within a single country/language where this is true due to regional pronunciation. I can safely say that even those claiming to not really understand do understand quite enough, and are just unused to having to try a little harder and perhaps put off by it. It is this effect, I think, that leads some Slovaks to start using Czech at the first sign of communication problems.

In terms of the original anecdote, what I feel to be relevant missing pieces of information about the speaker who was having problems with Slovak, since I got the impression the conversation was taking place in the US, are:
How old is the person in question?
How old were they when they left the Czech Republic?
And how long have they been in the US?

I do know foreigners who have learned one language or the other who are not able to understand the other. One American girl I know speaks Czech fairly well but is absolutely at a loss to understand Slovak and a friend's sister was recently telling me about a girl in Slovakia she met, a foreigner who had learned Slovak, who was baffled by Czech. But this does not contradict the main point. It is not hard to imagine a foreigner living in the US unable to decipher a Scottish person (considering that even native speakers have problems ).


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## vianie

"The ethno-signigicative, culturological, psychological and sociolinguistic aspects of the relations between two nations and their languages": http://www.sav.sk/journals/hum/full/hum297e.pdf .


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## Azori

JamyangNorbu said:


> The state of passive bilingualism is well documented in the Czech and Slovak linguistic literature.  For example,
> 
> Můžeme mluvit bez výhrad o tom, že mluvčí slovenštiny a češtiny jsou bilingvní – uplatňují ve svém životě schopnost užívat dva jazyky – ačkoli mluví a píšou jen v jednom a ve druhém zpravidla diskurz (tj. mluvené a psané texty) neprodukují, ale je jen přijímají.
> 
> _(I apparently can't post URLs due to my lack of posts, but I can send the link via PM if you would like. It is an article by a sociolinguistics faculty member at Charles University in Prague)_


Here's the link: http://www.sloboda.cz/marian/publikace/CDS_opravene.pdf It's a Czech version of the article I posted above earlier. And this is the quoted part in the English version:


> One can speak without doubt about speakers of Slovak and Czech as bilinguals: they apply their ability to use two languages in their everyday lives, even though they speak and write in only one of the languages and do not produce, but only receive, the discourse (i.e. spoken and written texts) in the other language.


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## vianie

http://www.sloboda.cz/marian/publikace/sloboda_def.pdf


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## romismak

Czech-Slovak are very similar languages and mutually intelligible. Maybe some young Czechs could have some problems, but after few minutes of conversations it must be ok, because our languages are very similar. I am talking about standard languages not some dialects from other corners of republics, that might be problem even for the speaker of same language- in Slovakia especially. BTW Czech language is for Slovaks much easier than Slovak language for Czechs. It is so, because almost all Slovaks are passive billinguall. We didn´t even realize it, but czech language is in Slovakia everywhere. In TV- both czech TV´s are watched and Slovak TV are broadcasting in czech language some films, series, many czech people are in Slovak shows speaking czech of course and so on. Then we have books in czechs, czech internet pages and everything is really popular and used in Slovakia. So normal adults in Slovakia should understand 99.9% of czech- they could be some special words that we don´t know what they mean, but not in normal conversation. And also kids are passive billingual, because TV channel for kids- Jetix, or Disney or don´t know the name is in czech language for both countries, so especially kids from young age are listening many hours per day to czech language.


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## Azori

In the Czech Republic it is quite common to dub Slovak films/series into Czech. I wonder, is it because Czechs could really find it so difficult to understand Slovak that simply a translated version is better for them or is it just inappropriate to broadcast something in Slovak on Czech TV stations? I think most people in Slovakia aren't against Czech on Slovak TV stations.


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## Encolpius

Azori said:


> In the Czech Republic it is quite common to dub Slovak films/series into Czech. I wonder, is it because Czechs could really find it so difficult to understand Slovak that simply a translated version is better for them or is it just inappropriate to broadcast something in Slovak on Czech TV stations? I think most people in Slovakia aren't against Czech on Slovak TV stations.



I dare to say it's matter of money. If Slovakia were as rich as Switzerland, I think all the Czech films (there would be a lot fewer) would be dubbed right away...


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## Azori

Encolpius said:


> I dare to say it's matter of money. If Slovakia were as rich as Switzerland, I think all the Czech films (there would be a lot fewer) would be dubbed right away...


If I'm not mistaken, there is a law (valid since 1st January 2008) that says that all new foreign films / TV series may be broadcast only with Slovak dubbing or with Slovak subtitles. But I think this applies only to things broadcast on TV, not to DVDs or cinemas. I hardly watch TV these days, so I don't really care.


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## Encolpius

Azori said:


> If I'm not mistaken, there is a law (valid since 1st January 2008) that says that all new foreign films / TV series may be broadcast only with Slovak dubbing or with Slovak subtitles. But I think this applies only to things broadcast on TV, not to DVDs or cinemas. I hardly watch TV these days, so I don't really care.



I can imagine. I know a list of "bad" words in Slovak which are evidently Czech. I don't know if Slovaks really use them....but the Czech TV might be the origin of that influence. I watch Slovak channels sometimes as well and I think only the two national TV channels can afford to meet those regulations. I'll Czech if there are any Czech-language programmes broadcast on the national TV channels....


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## Azori

Encolpius said:


> I know a list of "bad" words in Slovak which are evidently Czech.


Not all of those words seem to be incorrect or inappropriate in Slovak. According to these dictionaries some are perfectly acceptable.


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## pastet89

nonik said:


> This is based on the deep lexicostatistical test made by Zhuravlev (*) from the etymological dictionary of slavic languages in 15 books (ed. O.N. Trubachev, Moscow 1974).
> There is a complex formul...a how to compute statistical distance of languages:
> 
> G(A,B) = SUM i is from 2 to n ((n + 2 - i) * V(A,B)i) / H(A) / H(B), where
> 
> A,B are tested languages,
> n is total number of tested languages
> G(A,B) is congruence of these two languages
> H(A), H(B) is inherited dictionary from common root of these two languages
> V(A,B)i is isoglossa
> 
> In this formula, the higher value has isoglossa limited to only two languages and the lower number has isoglossa, which is common for more languages.
> 
> The highest number of profimity is between upper and lower lusatian sorbian: 1.93,
> Bulgarian-Slavomacedonian has 1.73,
> Czech-Slovak has 1.36,
> Bielorusian-Russian has 1.27,
> Ukrainian-Russian has 1.20 (but ukrainians learn Russian as well) and
> Polish-Bulgarian has only 0.93 etc.
> 
> If languages have proximity at least 1.1, they can be assigned into one group, but this approach goes intoa lot of such similar solutions.
> 
> For mutual understanding of ordinary people You need to have at least 1.2.
> Old Slavonic has value 1.15 (to Polish) or better (1.27 to Czech, for example) to modern slavic languages



Not sure how exactly this coeff. is derived and if "Slavomacedonian" equals "Macedonian". However, I have a very good idea how similar are Czech and Slovak and how similar are Bulgarian (my native language) and Macedonian.

Without any doubt I can say that the difference between Bulgarian and Macedonian is literally few times bigger (to be more precise, 2-4 times) than between Czech and Slovak. I have looked into other MI studies and I am more inclined to agree with results such as (even asymetriacal) 80% MI between Bulgarian and Macedonian and 90+% between CZ/SK for both directions (~95% for Slovaks understanding Czech).

Bulgarian and Macedonian might have been more intelligible in the past, but nowadays there are too much Serbian words in Macedonian. Simple conversations can be done relatively easy (while Macedonians tend to understand significantly less), however, serious stuff such as watching a movie is impossible.

As opposed to that, I witnessed how in Bratislava 30% of the movies in the cinema were in Czech (including a dubbed one), I see that Czech Slovak Got talant is currently being emitted as a mixed show in both languages and I was told that in Czech Republic you can even write your thesis at the university in Slovak. All these things are unimaginable between Bulgarian and Macedonian. Even if the bigger part of the vocabulary will be understood, the missing part is too big to keep the fluency which occurs between CZ/SK.

It's actually very easy to verify that without looking into any studies and stats. Just take two random texts (better, literature as tech and administrative vocabulary is usually shared common lexic), and compare their translations in both pairs. The results are so obvious that there is no need even to discuss them.

P.S. The reason why other Slavs tends to understand better Slovak IMO is because of the clear pronunciation and the confusing Czech ř which comes unexpected unless you are a Pole. With regard to the written form, I doubt Czech to be statistically less intelligible for other Slavs.


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