# Mutual Intelligibility in Europe



## SpideriK90

Having becoming quite proficient at Romantic based languages; Particularly Italian and Spanish, as I find French and Portuguese to be tougher, I'm starting to feel the need for discovering another European language.


After studying these, especially understanding Spanish first and moving on to the rest, I realized that a large majority of the romantic language possess the same grammar rules and/or similar vocabulary, so I decided to research 'Mutual Intelligibility".


I spent hours analyzing the differences between Norwegian, Swedish and Danish; Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, Macedonian, Bulgarian and Slovanian.... Ukrainian, Belorussian, and Russian... Czech, Slovakian, and Polish... Austrian, Swiss-German, Frisian, and Standard German... and I realized that in the future, nearly 100% of Scandinavians will be able to speak/understand English fluently, understanding that the rate as of today is 85-90%.


Understanding this, I have an interest in studying and hopefully one day becoming fluent in a Romantic language(Italian and Spanish), a Germanic language (Standard German that I am studying now), and a Slavic language; as that would encompass most of Europe.


My questions are:


Which Slavic language would be easiest to learn from understanding English and other Romantic languages, if any?
Which language do you feel is the most important for the future of eastern Europe, besides English, in a business sense?(I would appreciate some Slavic peoples responses particularly)
Finally, Understanding that there is a degree of Mutual Intelligibility amongst all the Slavic Languages(East, West, and South), What is the one language that is closest to them all that would help me understand other Slavs, as well as hopefully help other Slavs understand me?


P.S- I apologize ahead of time if this thread is placed incorrectly as it is my first post


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## Arath

I think that the easiest Slavic language to learn if one speaks English and a Romance language is undoubtedly Bulgarian. It doesn't have grammatical cases, it has a definite article and a tense system very similar to that of a Romance language or that of English. Bulgarian actually is something like a language with Romance grammar and Slavic vocabulary. A downside is that it is written in the Cyrillic alphabet. If one knows Bulgarian, one can understand a great deal of Russian (and vice versa).

I don't think that any Slavic language, besides Russian, is or has ever been taught in all countries where a Slavic language is spoken. So if you want to be widely understood, go with Russian. I can speak only for my own country, where if you speak Russian, you can get by to a certain degree, although the younger generation generally don't study Russian at school. I don't know how much a knowledge of Russian can help you in the other Slavic countries, though.

It is important to note that if you learn a Slavic language that is written in the Latin script, then you automatically won't be able to understand the written form of the ones written in the Cyrillic script.


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## osemnais

The most important language not only for business is by no doubt English


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## nonik

Which language do you feel is the most important for the future of eastern Europe, besides English, in a business sense?.......................Russian


What is the one language that is closest to them all that would help me understand other Slavs, as well as hopefully help other Slavs understand me?..................maybe Slovak (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovak_language


Which Slavic language would be easiest to learn from understanding English and other Romantic languages, if any?................maybe Bulgarian


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## SpideriK90

It might be a pain to learn because I don't fully have a grasp on Cyrillic, but how does Bulgarian compare to Russian in simplicity? Bulgarian won't help much in business but I feel Russian is close to Polish and close enough to Serb-Croat where they would be able to understand me, but how much easier is Bulgarian really than Russian?


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## kloie

I don't think learning serbo-croatian will allow you to understand polish,but i do think if you learn ukranian you can understand some polish. just my 2 cents.


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## Kartof

Bulgarian would be A LOT easier to learn than Russian considering your linguistic background.  You're overestimating the mutual intelligibility of slavic languages, however.  Knowing Russian/Bulgarian/Polish won't help you much with understanding other Slavic languages to the point where you can have an actual functional conversation and certainly not with delving into the world of business.  If you know Russian, you get to focus on Russian business.  You won't be able to start a business in Poland using only Russian unless you're catering only to Russian customers in Poland.  Slavic languages are all separate languages, for the most part.  It's like as if you assumed that knowing French would automatically make you a shoe-in for the Brazilian world of business.


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## nonik

Learning one slavic language will you help  learning much more easily another slavic language.
About the mutual intelligibillity, there is 1200 words universaly understandable in all the slavic languages + another 600 words understandable just betwen their branches.
But dont expect that you will be automatically perfectly understood with, for example, knowledge of Russian in the Serbian country. It depends on a lot of circumstances.


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## yael*

SpideriK90 said:


> Having becoming quite proficient at Romantic based languages; Particularly Italian and Spanish, as I find French and Portuguese to be tougher, I'm starting to feel the need for discovering another European language.



They might sound romantic, but they are are called Romanic (or Neo-Latin or Romance) languages.


> ... and I realized that in the future, nearly 100% of Scandinavians will be able to speak/understand English fluently, understanding that the rate as of today is 85-90%.


What will change in the future? That more of them will study English? But that has nothing to do with intelligibility. If the understanding rate is 85-90% (which I doubt) today, it will be more or less the same tomorrow. 


> My questions are:
> 
> Which Slavic language would be easiest to learn from understanding English and other Romantic languages, if any?



From understanding - none. Some grammatical rules can be recycled, so to say... but, as far as vocabulary, you will be able to understand only the internationalisms and some germanism if you recognize the original word (the pronunciation can differ a lot and the spelling as well).


> Which language do you feel is the most important for the future of eastern Europe, besides English, in a business sense?(I would appreciate some Slavic peoples responses particularly)



For the future? Only English, like anywhere else in the world. 
Maybe German... it used to be imoprtant in the past, but it's not used that much anymore


> Finally, Understanding that there is a degree of Mutual Intelligibility amongst all the Slavic Languages(East, West, and South), What is the one language that is closest to them all that would help me understand other Slavs, as well as hopefully help other Slavs understand me?



If you speak Russian, they will understand you for sure in Ukraine, Bielarus and still in some other former Soviet Union States (because they used to study Russian before), as well as people from other Eastern countries who went to school in the previous system, i.e. before 1990 ca. 
As far as the other Slavic language speakers are concerned, I agree with nonik - the understanding rate will depend a lot on circumstances. For instance, I have never studied Russian and I'd say I can understand the written Russian maybe up to 60%, if the topic is somehow related to my work or to my interests, that percentage may increase, if it's slang I'd be lost (in translation)... And, in fact, with the spoken Russian the rate drops to 40% or even less...


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## SpideriK90

One question, Will many in Poland and/or the Czech Republic and/or Serbia/Croatia understand spoken Russian? What %'s would you estimate?


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## BezierCurve

Depends to what degree of understanding you mean. As for Poland... Most of the Poles born after ca. 1975 have not been taught Russian at all. That'd be some serious part of the population. On the other hand people who studied Russian at school can probably remember only few words, let alone grammatical rules. So yes, you could exchange a "Hello" with them, but not much beyond that.

If that helps you, I've noticed that in converstions between Slavs (at least abroad) they (or we) tend to either stick to their own language or use English where the assumed intelligibility fails, and that's just too often. 

So, as a few people already noted, English would be the lingua franca you're looking for, especially in business and technology. If you're still keen on learning a Slavic language you might consider other things, say, literature, movies, songs or whatever you'll find interesting enough to spend a few hours a week on.


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## yael*

I gave you already a rough estimate for the intelligibility between BCS and Russian, but again, there are so many influencing factors to be taken into account. Still, if I were you, I would start from Russian.


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## VelikiMag

I would like to say few things here. First, none of the questions from your first post have a simple answer. No Slavic language is easy to learn. They are all significantly harder than Romanic languages. Even for us, learning another Slavic language from the different group can be quite a challenge. Now, I'm not saying this to discourage you, but I want to point out that it is very important to know exactly why you are learning a specific language. Cause if you don't have a clear goal in front of you, then you will give up on first obstacle (and there will be so many of them). Remember that the most difficult language in the world is the one which you are studying at the moment. And if you are studying it just because you have a wish to know one language more, it won't get you too far. You'll have to do better than that. The most important Slavic language is the one spoken in its respected country. So you usually choose to learn the language of a country where you plan to live or which you plan to visit. If that is not the case, then I guess it makes no difference which one you will choose. But still, there should be some linkage between you and that language, whether you have friends who speak it, you like something about it, culture, history, music, sport, anything... It's not that you can make a big mistake, all Slavic languages are beautiful in their own way, but like I said, you must know exactly why you are studying that particular one.
One other thing which is very important, and nobody mentioned it so far, is resources! If you are planning to learn a language from your home, not all languages have enough resources which you can easily get. Whether it is e-books, printed editions or online tutors. You should also take into account the number of native speakers of a language which you will learn. For example, Russian language has more native speakers than all other Slavic languages together. If you add to that number those who speak it as a second language, then you get probably more than 300 million speakers. In addition, there is more material available on internet than you will ever need. So I suppose that Russian would be a good choice for the start. While Cyrillic may look complex, in reality it is easier than people think, so I wouldn't be worried about that. It just takes a little practice.
As they told you already, knowing one Slavic language helps a lot in learning another. So if we agreed that Russian should be the first because of its resources, later on you may learn another one language from the two remaining groups. You don't have to master them, but knowing basics would be just fine. Personally, I would advise you to take Serbo-Croatian (now called BCMS) from the South Slavic group. It is spoken in 4 countries and total number of speakers is significant. And finally, there is a West Slavic group, but others can advise you on this better than I can.


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## Orlin

I think it's best to learn 3 Slavic languages, 1 from each major group, to be able to understand all Slavic languages. Because the south group is the most divergent, you should learn one of those that are geographically and linguistically central within the group: Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin or Serbian. The linguistic differences within the other 2 groups aren't so big, but in the eastern group Russian is the best choice due to some important non-linguistic reasons, and I don't think it's important which West Slavic language you should choose.


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## nonik

If you will considere all the sugestion written hear, you suppose to learn at least five new leanguages.
Good luck with that


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## Orlin

nonik said:


> If you will considere all the sugestion written hear, you suppose to learn at least five new leanguages.
> Good luck with that


No, only *3* is enough!


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## SpideriK90

5 languages, hehe . What's nice is that, as I understand it, if I were to learn Russian, than Polish and Serb-croat would be easier, much like if someone learns Spanish, learning would be Portuguese and Italian are easier.


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## Sobakus

What I'd like to add is that learning the Cyrillic script is the easiest thing about any Slavic language using it, so don't let it be something that influences your choice.


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## nonik

yap, start with Russian is good choice.


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## SpideriK90

Yes, I've noticed that. Theres only 20 or 21 different letters and they arn't that different from the latin alphabet(like chinese or arabic persay). One last question. What is the Mutual Intelligibility between Polish and Russia? considering I am part polish and it is one of that fastest growing european economies, I have interest.


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## Duya

Not a direct answer, but: have you perused our other and lengthy thread on mutual intelligibility of Slavic languages?


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## xpictianoc

> Russian language has more native speakers than all other Slavic languages together.


It's not a true, Polish language for example is a native for more than 55million people on whole world. If you add Ukrainian and BSC sistem then you will get more than 130-140millons. 
Which of Slavic languages is the most usefull? It's a hard question. As you have been told, for economic reason English is the best choice and non of Slavic languages can't be an Eastern Lingua franca. Maybe is you think about former Soviet Empire, but if we talk about South-central Europe you won'tbenefit from knowing Russian. 
I have never leart Russian but becouse I can speak BSC and a bit Bulgarian I can understand pretty much of written Russian. 
Which of Slavic languages are the easiest one? It depends... In my opinion it's BSC. BSC grammar is quite easy and regular and it's written in Latin scrypt. 
It seems to me that Slovak is the most intelligible language for Slavs.


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## yael*

xpictianoc said:


> Which of Slavic languages are the easiest one? It depends... In my opinion it's BSC. BSC grammar is quite easy and regular and it's written in Latin scrypt.



Are sure about that? 
I think that BSC grammar is quite difficult. The easiest, IMHO, are Bulgarian and Macedonian.
BSC is biscriptal. Latin script should be enough for Croatian and Bosnian, but if you want to study Serbian and Montenegrin, you cannot bypass Cyrillic. But, as somebody wrote before me, is not a big obstacle.


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## DenisBiH

Since we're giving suggestions. I'd start with a short course of Slovak and then move on to an in-depth study of a Slavic language of choice based on actual needs and/or preferences.


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## xpictianoc

Believe me, I know some guys living in Belgade who still don't know Cyrillic  For me Bulgarian and Macedonian grammar is a horror! In Bulgarian you have long and short articles, 9 tenses (in Polish we use only 3 like in BSC  - aorist is rarely used) and more comlicated than in Polish or BSC perfect and imperfect mode. 
Declesion ins BSC is not a  big deal  If you go to Niš or Vranje you will see that BSC can be still understanda ble even when you mix the cases (small digression: when I was in Vranje I noticed that local inhabitants use acussatice as a locative "Ja sam u školu"). 
Conjugation in all Slavic languages is almost the same, for us it's a piece of cake


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## yael*

xpictianoc said:


> Believe me, I know some guys living in Belgade who still don't know Cyrillic


But, I guess it's start to be quite challenging... For instance, for some reasons I can't understand and accept, they have changed the street name plates and now they are in Cyrillic only. So much for Serbian hospitality...  



> For me Bulgarian and Macedonian grammar is a horror! In Bulgarian you have long and short articles, 9 tenses (in Polish we use only 3 like in BSC  - aorist is rarely used) and more comlicated than in Polish or BSC perfect and imperfect mode.


I can't judge, never tried to learn either of them. I can understand Macedonian almost to 100%, but I can't reproduce it. And, it may sound strange, but when I hear them talking, I really miss the declension... 


> Declesion ins BSC is not a  big deal  If you go to Niš or Vranje you will see that BSC can be still understanda ble even when you mix the cases (small digression: when I was in Vranje I noticed that local inhabitants use acussatice as a locative "Ja sam u školu").


I believe that Vranje and Leskovac have four cases in all. More you move southwards, shorter the declension becomes... it's logical... getting closer to Macedonian.


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## Azori

DenisBiH said:


> Since we're giving suggestions. I'd start with a short course of Slovak and then move on to an in-depth study of a Slavic language of choice based on actual needs and/or preferences.


I don't think that taking a short course of Slovak is a good idea. Surely, some basic knowledge of Slovak could be of some use in Slovakia and also to some extent in the Czech Republic, but it won't help much in Poland (even natives would have problems) and trying to get by with only Slovak in places like Russia or Ukraine might be rather difficult. Thus, instead of taking a short course of Slovak one could as well take a short course of Czech (since it has an advantage of having more native speakers) and then move on to an in-depth study of a Slavic language of choice based on actual needs or preferences (or just stay with Czech - it's quite an important language these days).


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## LilianaB

I think Czech is a difficult language, perhaps as difficult as other Slavic languages, yet it is less comprehensible to people who speak Polish and Russian, for example than Slovak.I think Slovak is quite comprehensible to people who speak Polish. Russian is comprehensible to people who speak Belorussian, Bulgarian and Serbian, perhaps.


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## Azori

In my opinion, for native Slovak speakers Slavic languages outside the West Slavic group aren't reasonably intelligible for making attempts to communicate. I don't see how a short course of Slovak, even if in conjunction with a study of some other Slavic language could be sufficient for communication with all Slavic speakers (the above suggestion to study Slovak was probably meant only as some shallow introduction to Slavic languages - if that's the case, then I think that for this purpose any Slavic language will do).


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## inter1908

Slovak is pretty easy to understand, yes. For me it's easier than Czech, but either way if someone wants to communicate with me using any of these two languages, I ask them to slow down at least 30% and pronounce everything clearly. Otherwise it makes no sense. I talked to some people from Belarus and Ukraine, and it was very hard to communicate.


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## LilianaB

Ukraine has about $45 million of inhabitants. About 70% percent declare that they speak Ukrainian. It might be less, however, some may say it just for patriotic reasons. At least 30% speak Russian only. We are left with about 30 million who speak Ukrainian and $55 of Polish speakers. How did you come up with 55 million of people who speak Polish? Reply to 22


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## LilianaB

There is a universal Slavic language -- Slovio. It is like Esperanto, based on Old Church Slavonic, if am not wrong. You can find a lot of information about it on the Internet.


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## xpictianoc

Ok, maybe 55mln it's an exaggeration, but 45-50mln could be quite close to truth. Only in Poland there are 37mln speakers of Polish, in USA there could be more than 5mln people for whom Polish is secound language, I don't know for how many Polish is a secound one. In Germany, UK, Ireland, France, Belarusia, Ukraine, Lithuania you can find a big number of people for whom Polish is first or secound language. 
According to polish wikipedia 47mln people can speak Ukrainian http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Język_ukraiński
According to ukrainian wiki Ukrainian is mother-tongue for 37mln and a secound language for a 15mln (to sum up these numbers you can get around 50mln).


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## nonik

LilianaB said:


> There is a universal Slavic language -- Slovio. It is like Esperanto, based on Old Church Slavonic, if am not wrong. You can find a lot of information about it on the Internet.



Slovio is based on slavic word-roots + esperanto endings  etc. it is not based on Old Church Slavonic.
On the Old Church Slavonic is based another language. The rest I sent you in private mail.


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## vianie

Yeh, for evincible reasons, Slovak's really an uncertified esperanto of Slavic languages.

http://www.saske.sk/cas/archiv/2-2005/studia_krupa_ondrejovic.html



> Slovak coupled with Czech belongs to the Czecho-Slovak branch of Western Slavic languages​​, but in the vocabulary and another levels, Slovak has even some elements and developmental parallels in common with Polish, Southern and Eastern Slavic languages​​. So when we hear to talk about Slovak somewhere as about the Slavic languages Esperanto​​, about its central nature, let us know that is not a myth or a legend. This has been confirmed by significant foreign Slavists often, for example Jernej Kopitar, Kopečný, Francis, Charles, Horálek, Mario Pei and many others, but, perhaps more importantly, it is been confirmed by the previous and current growing knowledge and understanding of the Slavic languages​​.


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## trosheniorasi

Polish and Russian are not mutually intelligible, at least not more so than English and Dutch. As said above, the Slavic languages are divided into three groups; Western, Eastern, and Southern. The Eastern and Southern have some reasonable degree of mutual intelligibility with each other, but not with the Western.  If you learn Polish you will be able to understand Czech and Slovak (maybe Ukrainian and Belorussian) to some degree, but that's about it. If you learn Russian you will be able to understand Ukrainian and Belorussian easily and Bulgarian, Macedonian and Serbo-Croatian to a decent degree.


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## LilianaB

I think if somebody speaks Polish or Slovak and Russian well, the person will understand most Slavic languages, I mean probably about 80% of what they say in those languages. I know Polish and Russian at a native level and I understand most Slavic languages, at about 80% at least. The language that sometimes gives me problems is Czech, because they use some unusual words that I would not have expected in certain contexts.


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## trosheniorasi

I think that the Western Slavic languages are the only ones which are not mutually intelligible (to a reasonable degree) with all the rest,  Knowing any western and a southern or eastern should be enough to understand all Slavs to a pretty good degree. To me Czech sounds like gibberish , but it is definitely easier to understand than Polish, as it has way more common vocabulary with Bulgarian.


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## aum34

SpideriK90 said:


> Having becoming quite proficient at Romantic based languages; Particularly Italian and Spanish, as I find French and Portuguese to be tougher, I'm starting to feel the need for discovering another European language.
> 
> 
> After studying these, especially understanding Spanish first and moving on to the rest, I realized that a large majority of the romantic language possess the same grammar rules and/or similar vocabulary, so I decided to research 'Mutual Intelligibility".



What I have realised it is that mutual intelligibility it is different if you are learning a language as your mother tongue or as a second language.  For example, Portuguese and Spanish vocabulary and grammar are very close, but I'd say that Old Spanish is almost a dialect of Portuguese or Portuguese was a dialect of Spanish, so to say (I know they never have been). Phonetics are very different, but if you listen carefully, it is understandable. Specially, Portuguese from Brazil. I can watch Brazilian tv and understand 90-95%.  I would say that at the level of vocabulary and grammar, both language are really really close.

When you are a native speaker and raised in a cultural atmosphere in a specific languages, your level of mutual intelligibility with languages of the same branch (let's say, Romance language) it is far superior than learning it as a second language. For example, in my case, in the secondary school I had to read books and texts in old Spanish. And in old Spanish there are a lot of words shared with other latin languages that are used now: Tornar (similar to tornare in Italian, tourner in French,...), arribar (arrivare -it-, arriver,... still in some dialects keep being used ), placer (piacere in Italian), etc... 

Or for example with Italians, they can understand "IR" to go in Spanish because IRE was in old Italian. Those are cultural knowledge which require an holistic approach which normally, it is not taught while learning a second language.


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