# All Slavic languages: Easy and difficult ones



## Suane

What do you think in general, what language is for you the easiest one to study? Or what languages are common in your country to study? And according to your opinion what slavic language is relatively the easiest one to understant for all slavic nations without previous studying? And what slavic language is the easiest one and the hardest one to study for non-slavic people or which one is the most frequently studied? Which slavic language (other than yours) do you like the best?

In my city we use to study english and maybe some german and french.
On the internet site slavism.com I found that according to the author Slovak language is quite easy to understand for the other slavic nations because Slovakia is in the middle. I don't know if this is true, because I don't use to meet other slavic persons- what do you think about that?
I like Russian language, although I don't have so much time to study it.
I also like Czech language in some books translations-especially in adventure books or also adventure movies (I like Czech dubbing of Lord of the rings) 
I'm sorry but I never heard so much Bulgarian, Serbian and other languages to determine whether I like it or not.

Jana, is this appropiate topic or I messed it up again?


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## Jana337

Suane said:
			
		

> Jana, is this *an* appropriate topic or *did* I messed it up again?


 No, that's fine. But you might benefit from reading our old threads about the similarities between Slavic languages. 

Jana


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## Jana337

A suggestion: We could evaluate the understanding of our respective languages using the welcome thread. 

As far as I know, (almost) everyone translated from English.

Any takers?

Jana


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## MindStorm

Wow! I can read all that! Amazing! (not all,of course, but the main things I can track all right)

My recipe: godlike russian and a little bit of czech. That really helps.
So study russian an czech. =))

there might be problems with speech understanding, but for reading purposes it'll be fine. Russian is the most eastern of those languages, and czech is the most western. Interpolate, and you'll have all slavics in a pocket ))


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## Bartold

W Polsce kiedyś uczyliśmy się dużo rosyjskiego. Przypuszczam, że wiecie dlaczego.  Od 1989 roku rosyjski stracił wiele ze swojej popularności. W zamian zaczęliśmy się uczyć angielskiego i niemieckiego. Potem francuskiego, hiszpańskiego i włoskeigo. Znam paru ludzi uczących się szwedzkiego, holenderskiego, portugalskiego... i jedną koleżankę, która kocha czeski...

A czeski. uważam, że jest najbardziej podobny do Polskiego. Jednak czasami brzmi zabawnie. Wiemy, że dla Czechów polski jest również zabawny...

Myślę, że uczenie się podobnego języka jest dosyć trudne, ponieważ robi się dużo błędów, ponieważ się myśli, że coś powinno być podobne... a często nie jest...

Trudno uczyłoby mi się rosyjskiego, ukraińskeigo, serbskiego lub bułgarskiego z powodu innego alfabetu... ale wydaje mi się, że nie jest to niemożliwe...

Za najtrudniejsze do uczenia się uważamy węgierski, francuski i fiński... Przykro mi...


 #&@#&@#&@#&@#&@#&@#&@#&@#&@#&@#&@#&@#&@#&@#&@

In Poland we used to learn Russian a lot. I suppose you know why.  From 1989 it lost a lot of it's popularity. Instead we started to learn English and German. Later French, Spanish and Italian became also popular. I know some people learning Swedish, Dutch, Portuguese... and one friend who loves Czech...

And Czech I think is the most similar to Polish. However it sometimes sounds funny. We know that Polish is also funny for the Czech...

I think learning similar languages is quite difficult because you make a lot of mistakes because you think that something should be similar... and often it isn't...

I would find difficult learning Russian, Ukrainain, Serbian or Bulgarian because of the different alphabet... but I don't think it is impossible...

We find Hungarian, French and Finnish the most difficult to learn... I'm sorry...


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## Jagoda

I think for Poles Spanish and Italian are rather easy when you look at pronunciation...

Although I believe that Hungarian and Finnish are hard to learn since they are complex languages, throwing them into the same bag as French is awkward to me - it doesn't belong to the same family of languages as the other two and I don't agree that it's that hard to learn.


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## Bartold

Cześć Jagoda!

Jeżeli urodziłaś się w Kanadzie, to francuskiego pewnie uczyłaś się od dziecka... Prawda? Ja chodziłem na lektorat z francuskiego i sama prowadząca powiedziała, że wybraliśmy sobie najtrudniejszy po węgierskim i fiskim język. Moim zdaniem francuski ma skomplikowaną pisownię i gramatykę... O wiele bardziej skomplikowaną niż angielski czy niemiecki...

If you were born in Canada, you have learnt French since you were a child, haven't you? I attended a course of French and it was the teacher who said we had chosen the most difficult language apart from Hungarian and Finnish. I personally think French spelling and grammar is complicated... much more complicated that English and German ones...


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## Jagoda

Actually, I was born in Poland and it remains my dominant language, English coming after and French becoming significant only in secondary school. However, coming back to the topic of which languages are easy to learn for Poles, in my opinion it is those that have similar phonology / phonetics, such as Spanish and Italian, although these do pose a problem when you look at gender agreement, which basically has to be memorised and interiorised. I can't say about Chech or other Slavic languages, as I haven't studied any. Yet I won't agree that French spelling or grammar is harder than English - just look at all the different tenses in English, there are way more than in French. As well, English spelling is rather hard for a non-native and sometimes looks nothing on paper as the way it sounds.


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## natasha2000

hi, everyone,

In my opinion, I think if you choose any Indo-European language, there is no hard or easy language. At least I don't see these things in this way. Rhe motivation is what is important... And the more languages you know, the easier will be to learn another one, since all Indo-European languages have the same gramatical basis that comes from latin. Yes, Roman languages have much more influence of Latin, but all the other languages have more or less the same gramatical structure and principles. Finnish and Hungarian do not belong to Indo-European languages, therefore, have different gramatical structure and therefore are more difficult to learn. 

On the other hand, when I think better, if I had to learn any Slavic language, I think I would have a serious problem. Why? 
Because I assume they are as complex as Serbian as far as the grammar is concerned, and yet in vocabulary more or less similar, which I find as another difficulty and not advantage, because, as Bartold said, it can seem similar and at the end it results it is not. I am sure I would have a lot of problems with "false friends". 

On the other hand, I found very helpful my knowledge of English when I started to learn Spanish, especially in learning tenses, since they are used more or less the same way. 

I guess, at the beginning, it seems very difficult, no matter what language is in question... But with enough motivation and time, it becomes easier and easier as the time passes...


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## robertino

I wouldn't say that "all Indo-European languages have the same gramatical basis that comes from latin" as Latin comes from Indo-european... maybe you wanted to say that "all indo-european languages have the same grammatical basis as they come from the same mother language (which is indo-european).."
I might be wrong..
Cheers!


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## Juri

Suane said:


> according to your opinion what slavic language is relatively the easiest one to understant for all slavic nations without previous studying? And what slavic language is the easiest one and the hardest one to study for non-slavic people or which one is the most frequently studied?
> 
> I'm Italian native, knowing German first,I had to learn Slovenian, and can translate in S.-Croatian too. The Italians  better learn S-Crotian, because it's more vocalic, like the Italian.
> About Slavic languages, I must say that the one I can undestand better is just Slovak, better than Czech or Polish.I listened with partecipation and angry to the Bratislava Radio during the Sovjet invasion!
> Russian , I can understand 30% of the speech, but70% in reading.


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## robertino

I think the most studied are, in order: Russian, Polish, Czech. Some friends said Czech is the most difficult in morphology. Personally, I don't like how it sounds, it has.. well, it sounds boring to me! While a girl speaking Polish or russian... oh she's absolutely sexy!
My personal opinion, if one decides to study a slavic language, the best choice is Russian. Second, Polish.
I also think that if one knows one slavic language enough well, it's a pity not to study a second one. And one should chose, as a second language, ones that belongs to a different family: in such a way one has for a single meaning sometimes 2 different words, and it comes easier to understand a third language. What I mean is: I enjoyed a play in Croatian and I understood more than my polish native speaker friend did, because I can speak at an upper-intermediate level both Polish and Russian.
Do you agree?
Robi


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## Maja

Suane said:
			
		

> What do you think in general, what language is for you the easiest one to study?


I don't thing there is such a thing as "easy" language. But, if I have to pick one, from those I have studied, I have to say that Spanish was not so terribly difficult (after a while...)


			
				Suane said:
			
		

> Or what languages are common in your country to study?


In Belgrade, we usually learn English as the first foreign language from the 3rd grade of primary school. Then we get the second foreign language in the 5th grade and we study both of them till university (I am speaking about gymnasiums and not specialized secondary schools as they usually have just one).  The second foreign  language taught in schools is Russian or French and in some schools  German. 
Then at the Uni, people have obligatory foreign language course, but the choice of language is optional and it is usually connected to the field of studies (like business English at the Economy Faculty, engineering, medicine etc.). 
Apart from that, I think that Italian and Spanish are rather popular in language schools.


			
				Suane said:
			
		

> And according to your opinion what slavic language is relatively the easiest one to understant for all slavic nations without previous studying?


 I think they are all equally hard. Maybe those within groups (south, east, west) are more similar to each other (but we already had a thread on that as Jana said).


			
				Suane said:
			
		

> And what slavic language is the easiest one and the hardest one to study  for non-slavic people


No idea, really.


			
				Suane said:
			
		

> ...which one is the most frequently studied?


 Definitely Russian.


			
				Suane said:
			
		

> Which slavic language (other than yours) do you like the best?


 I like Russian  language.


			
				Suane said:
			
		

> I'm sorry but I never heard so much Bulgarian, Serbian and other languages to determine whether I like it or not.


 When you hear Serbian, you will love it for sure.


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## Teblin

Hi, I'm 25 and from England. I learned German in school for 5 years and French for 1 year.

I find German is the easiest to learn but I have forgot alot of what I have learned because I haven't been using it.

I have been learning Polish for nearly a year. I find Polish difficult to learn but it's fun because I get to practise it because I work with Polish people.

I also work with 2 Czech and can see the similarities and differences between Czech and Polish.


Czesc, Mam 25 lat i jestem Anglik. Ja ucze niemiecki sie 5 lat i francuski sie 1 lat w skola.

Niemiecki jest mi latwy ale nie pamietam duzo slowa bo ja nie mowie niemiecki w anglii.

ja Ucze polski sie 1 lat. Polski jest mi trudy ale to zabawa bo ja moge mowic z polski ludzie w mojej pracy w anglii.

przepraszam nie mam polski klawiatura.

Graham


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## Oletta

Teblin said:


> Hi im 25 and from England. I learned german in school for 5 years and french for 1 year.
> 
> I find german is the easiest to learn but i have forgot alot of what i have learned because i havent been using it.
> 
> I have been learning polish for nearly a year. I find polish difficult to learn but its fun because i get to practise it because i work with polish people.
> 
> I also work with 2 czech and can see the similarities and differences between czech and polish.
> 
> 
> Czesc, Mam 25 lat i jestem Anglikiem. Ja uczę się niemieckiego  5 lat i rok francuskiego w szkole.
> 
> Niemiecki jest dla mnie łatwy ale nie pamiętam dużo słów, bo nie mowię po niemiecku w Anglii.
> 
> Uczę się polskiego 1 rok. Polski jest dla mnie trudy, ale to zabawa, bo mogę mowić z Polakami w pracy w Anglii.
> 
> Przepraszam, ale nie mam polskiej klawiatury.
> 
> Graham



Good work Graham! Anyway I corrected you as I also like to be corrected when I study languages... it helps...

Generally I think Slavonic languages are difficult to study because of the declensions, conjugations, cases and numerous exceptions. For me the easiest Slavonic language is Slovak, and I think Slovak is closer to Polish than Czech. Czech is the second easy one... Obviously, the written language might bring problems, but as it comes to spoken no doubt it's quite well. Russian is more difficult but also within the linguistic scope of a Pole. Serbian, Croatian and Slovenian are complex, but still I can communicate with Croatians, Serbs and Slovenian, it is harder than in Russian, though it is possible to understand one each other without studying the languages. I have also had no bigger problems with understanding Ukrainian.

For those who don't know the Russian characters (the Cyrillic alphabet), Russian might be difficult even in Poland. Fortunately there are still schools where Russian is taught, and its popularity is gradually growing.


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## ayupshiplad

On a (hopefully relevant) sidenote, I think Russian is easier to learn if you know German. I recently just started learning Russian at school (which is very rare in the UK) and I find I can recognise or understand a lot more words than other people because they sound like German.


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## jana.bo99

Hello Suane,

I have never studied any Slavic language outside of my country, but can understand Czech if I listen very well (I had three very good friends in Prague). Somebody said that Czech is more similar to Croatian and Slovak to Slovenian.
The same is with Bulgarian people: my ears must be very clear and listen very, very well and then I can understand (not all!).

About difficulty: for me, Polish is most difficult Slavic language.

jana.bo99


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## Oletta

jana.bo99 said:


> About difficulty: for me, Polish is most difficult Slavic language.
> jana.bo99



Hello Jana,

You are right, since Polish presumably IS the most difficult Slavic language... I have read something about it somewhere...


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