Not only are these Slavic languages very similar to Russian in written form, but they are also around 70% mutually intelligible. Belarusian is, in a sense, in between other slavic languages. Serbia is large and you should also ask Serbians in other regions. A professor of Slavic Linguistics at a university in Bulgaria reviewed the paper and felt that the percentages were accurate. Hence, Russians understand the colloquial Ukrainian spoken in the countryside pretty well, but they understand the modern standard heard on TV much less. Polish has 22% intelligibility of Silesian, 12% of Czech, 6% of Russian, and 5% of Bulgarian. It has also been described as a transitional dialect between Polish and Slovak. Slovenian: 20% Similar things are also valid for Ukraine and Belarus, both of which were parts of the Soviet Union, where Russian was the dominant official language. I confess to not being a linguist, and therefore didnt see past the problematic sentence They understand almost nothing. Re: Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian Mutual Intelligibility. The only (still rather minor) problem that I had with this text was the part Nared s osnovnata, izpolzovana v Balgarija (Together with the basic norm used in Bulgaria), because I could not understand Nared s osnovnata. Only Croatians try so hard to press differences. Of course, the interviews are subtitled in Macedonian, but even an untrained ear and eye can see how similar these languages are. a person with Virgin ears from any where in the Czech republic and west and central Slovakia will understand each other fairly well. Northern (Istrian and Kvarner) akavian is closer to kajkavian and Slovene then Southern akavian is ( I understand 95%+ n). What is the basis on which your Serbian friend said that? Russian has a decent intelligibility with Bulgarian, possibly on the order of 50%, but Bulgarian intelligibility of Russian seems lower. Nice article, but I think there is a difference between spoken mutual intelligibility and different languages. A western Slovak can even understand most of Ruthenians hen they are speaking. I simply didnt know what for example word iskati (to seek) means when I first watched that movie, I was 14, I understand it from the context like I can understand Macedonian. akavian is full of romanisms, kajkavian of germanisms and tokavian of turkish and other orientalisms. I guess this would not have worked for Macedonian and Slovene in the Yugoslav army. Are Polish and Ukrainian mutually intelligible? Spanish and Catalan have a lexical similarity of 85%. Briefly put, mutual intelligibility is when speakers of one language can understand a related language to some degree. It has been massively updated with a lot of new research from controlled scientific intelligibility studies. Russian, the native language of 160 million people, including many . Nevertheless, the ISO has recently accepted a proposal from the Kajkavian Renaissance Association to list the Kajkavian literary language written from the 1500s-1900 as a recognized language with an ISO code of kjv. Macedonian syntax and lexics are more similar to Serbian, even though structures of the language such as articles (no declensions) function as in Bulgarian. In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. Yes and if you could more than one listener, it would be great. I tested this on my wife by showing her news clips on Youtube. These 4 main Polish dialects are: Greater Polish, which is spoken in the west of the country. There can be various reasons for this. Go back to your kennel. It is not true that Shtokavian which I speak is not mutually intelligible with Torlakian of southern Serbia. (Download). Molise Croatian is not intelligible with Standard Croatian. JohnUK. Polish: 5% Its a nasty drug, and I hear its addicting. Most people in the region speak Russian with a few Ukrainian words. but they are often mutually intelligible. Some Poles say they find Silesian harder to understand than Belorussian or Slovak, which implies intelligibility of 20-25%. As far as grammars are concerned (declension and conjugation), they are so similar that there is almost no effort in understanding that this noun is, for example, in dative plural, and that verb is imperfective past. I got that figure from a Serb. I also have no problems understanding standard Croatian or the Kajkavian and Cakavian Croatian dialects and Bosnian and Montenegrin to me are the same language and completely understandable. If speakers of one language have more exposure to its related language, theyre likely to pick up more of that language. For true MI testing, we want virgin ears, and it has to be both ways. This is not necessarily correct in terms of vocabulary, but you will find a lot in common in the grammatical rules . However, it appears to be a separate language, as Lach is not even intelligible within itself. It all adds up, man. The old Dniestrian/Galician speech is largely confined to rural areas. The syntax is though very very similar! I am afraid you are not right because if you take Serbian dialects till Nis, then they are very mutually intelligible with Macedonian! But, as the goal of the OP was to debunk the myth that says every slavic speaker can understand each other, he is quite right on that. BULGARIAN: Balgarskijat ezik e naj-rannijat pismeno dokumentiran slavjanski ezik. If we consider that syntax/lexics is the heart of language, than Serbian and Macedonian are the same language. Czech has 94% intelligibility of Slovak, 12% of Polish, and 5% of Russian and Bulgarian. Actually the way it is spoken sometimes sounds more like Slovak to me than Czech or polish does, however past really basic speech it is pretty hard to understand. The intelligibility of Polish and Russian is very low, on the order of 5-10%. There is one factor they dont know about the internet. Feb 22, 2020. Accent is on last or penultimate syllable. Is there any particular method to determine this? We also participate in other affiliate advertising programs for products and services we believe in. That being said, the line between a language and a dialect is often blurred. The thesis that Bulgarian and Macedonian are the same language is not real in the practice. Personally, I must admit that Serbs from areas above Nis (cf. but what if person is from island and speaks heavy akavian and tokavian speaker is real tokavian like from Slavonia (North Eastern Croatia). Bosnian and Montenegrin are also just dialects of Serbian language. Thank you very much for this. | Animals | Slavic Languages Comparison The Best Online German Learning Resources Ukrainian phrases Ukrainian Phrasebook And Dictionary Paperback Lonely Planet: The world's leading travel guide publisher. How is it possible if they speak the same language? Sorry I can`t give you percentage. Im of the Yugoslav variety by rearing, and a Serb by select bits of culture, by most of my native language and by all of where my tax money goes. The Mutually Intelligible Languages of 8 Popular World Languages 1. A prima example of this is Russian where the 5% intelligibility could be pretty accurate in the case of a regular communication, because Russians have a very strong intonation, and they simply dont pronounce vowels properly. Was he from Belgrade or Novi Sad or Nis? His level of understanding might be 90%, or 82%, 85%. Northern Germanic languages spoken in Scandinavia form a dialect continuum where two furthermost dialects have almost no mutual intelligibility. Probably, ja u da radim for Bosnians and Croatians sounds very Serbian. And yes, comprehension has suffered since Czechoslovakia broke up, due to lack of exposure. Lach is a Czech-Polish transitional lect with a close relationship with Cieszyn Silesian. (. In my experience, its quite easy. Zona Zamfirova is the movie in a Serbian dialect, but I dont understand it as same as I dont understand Macedonian or even more so, that is more like Bulgarian with the hard vowels. Eastern Slovak has ~80% intelligibility of Rusyn. Linguistic distance is the name for the concept of calculating a measurement for how different languages are from one another. In addition, Bin Laden is a suspect in other terrorist attacks throughout the world. It is not a failure. According to a paper on Mutual Intelligibility of Languages in the Slavic Family (link in comments): Native Belarusian speakers can understand 80% of spoken Ukrainian and 80% of written . This debate occurred only in Croatian linguistic circles, and the public knows nothing about it (Jembrigh 2014). This term is similar to linguistic distance in that it can reflect how similar or different languages are. theres a macedonian TV program called Vo Centar, hosted by a macedoanian journalist who goes around the Balkans and interviews prominent names in politics etc. Cheers brothers and sisters! The key problem of Bulgarian is the different gramar the lack of declination and the use of postpositive articles. The real reason that Slavs cant even understand each other: not enough vowels in their tongues! Far Northeastern Slovak (Saris Slovak) near the Polish border is close to Polish and Ukrainian. I grew up as a Ukrainian speaker in North America. Also there have been some czecho-slovak shows in TV lately like Czecho-Slovak Idol or Talent with judges and competitors from both countries and I have never heard of anyone who would complain about not understanding. Id like to know about written mutual intelligibility, because, about spoken mutual intelligibility, there are people from portugal that cannot understand brazilians and vice-versa, though they speak the same language. Generally, when foreigners say speakers of a certain language speak too fast, speakers of that language can hear that fast speech just fine. In other words, Ukrainian speakers can often understand Russian, while Russian speaker doesn't understand Ukrainian, especially Russian speakers from outside Ukraine. Your email address will not be published. London Times, 25 September 2006 That word have special meaning and I think that Serbian needs that word, but if I tell that word seriously while I speak, everybody will laugh at me. Therefore . While the two share a similar grammar system and some vocabulary words, . And the same problem emerges in other situations. Hence the figures are averages taken from statements by native speakers of the languages in question. Huchon, Mireille, Histoire de la langue franaise, pages 214 and 223. It is true that Czech is more urban and less folk and many Slovaks study in Czech republic. Get 70% off + 10 languages + 14 day free trial. In addition, the Slobozhan dialects of Ukrainian and Russian such as (Slobozhan Ukrainian and Slobozhan Russian) spoken in Kantemirov (Voronezhskaya Oblast, Russia), and Kuban Russian or Balachka spoken in the Kuban area right over the eastern border of Ukraine are very close to each other. Pobrzajte in Serbian means (pourite) but I understand it because brzo means fast and prefix po also exists in Serbian, and the imperative form is the same. Also akavian has some elements of its own. It uses shtokavian dialect but simultaniously italianized vocabulary,and it is very hard to be understood while speaking to a common Croatian speaker.Would that also be considered a separate language? Cieszyn Silesian speakers strongly reject the notion that they speak the same language as Upper Silesians. I just didnt realize that when you talked about learning the other language you were actually referring to the errors inherent in doing a non-virgin ears MI study, and not conflating language learning with mutual intelligibility. Foreign languages arent always as foreign as youd expect. Ukrainian 15 % spoken, 25 % written I think (as a native Serbian speaker from south eastern Belgrade) the main difference between Serbian and Macedonian is that Macedonian doesnt have cases and have definite articles as well. That information is in error. Around 80% comprehension, it gets hard to talk about complex or technical things. So if you believe the fantastic conspiracy theory that 19 hijackers some have been discovered to be still alive were able to hijack 4 commercial planes for hours uninterrupted armed only with boxcutters and crash them into US largest and with the Pentagon most well guarded which has its own missile defence and radar system buildings on US? In fact, some say the intelligibility between the two is near zero. I thought this is Croatia! Intelligibility between languages can be asymmetric, with speakers of one understanding more of the other than speakers of the other understanding the first. Its grammar is close to that of Russian. People who live in border regions have an advantage of speaking two languages and can easily comprehand other ones as well. . It has many Hungarian words, archaic Slavic words and words of an unknown origin (at least to me). However, in terms of vocabulary Ukrainian is closer to Polish, from which it has borrowed a large number of words. The dialects of Ukrainian do not differ extensively from one another and are all mutually intelligible. 2023 Enux Education Limited. Ukrainian pronounces the "o" as "o" whereas Russians pronounce it typically as an "a." The Ukrainian "" and "" have different pronunciations compared to their Russian equivalents, "" and "". Serbo-Croatian and Bulgarian have 10-15% oral intelligibility, however, there are Bulgarian dialects that are transitional with Torlak Serbian. In brief, there is some mutual intelligibility, enough to have a simple conversation of the 'me Tarzan - you Jane' type, speakin. NATO EU. Intelligibility may be 85%. What language is closest to Polish? Also, danes and swedes have a hard time understanding each other, but they can read the others language quite well. Silesian or Upper Silesian is also a separate language spoken in Poland, often thought to be halfway between Polish and Czech. Like a shits to o. I can only speak from my personal experience (business trips to Czech Republic - Ostrava, Praha, Mlad Boleslav, Mikulov ). It is no surprise that Ukrainian (and to a smaller extent) Belarusian have tons of Polish words, and are therefore more lexically similar to Polish than to Russian. I am a native Macedonian and I totally dont agree with you. I think that nowadays people from Ni also dont understand that Serbian enough. Macedonian and Bulgarian are fairly similar but they are not close to being fully mutually intelligible. Im The Lizard King, I Can Do Anything! For example we chakavians use a lot of words used in Polish, Ukrainian, Slovak etc but in standard Croatian those words are described as archaisms and instead words used in tokavian come from Turkish. uses the Cyrlic script, and a Banat norm, which uses the Latin script. Russian has 85% intelligibility of Rusyn, 74% of oral Belorussian and 85% of written Belorussian, 60% of Balachka, 50% of oral Ukrainian and 85% of written Ukrainian, 36% of oral Bulgarian and 80% of written Bulgarian, 38% of Polish, 30% of Slovak and oral Montenegrin and 50% of written Montenegrin, 12% of oral Serbo-Croatian, 25% of written Serbo-Croatian, and 10% of Czech. In Czech rep. Slovaks dont have to pass any language exams (the other foreigner do have to). General. 5%? With Lonely Planet's Ukrainian Phrasebook, let no barriers . True MI testing does try to find virgin ears that have heard little of the other language and speak little or none of it. Its historical development consists of four main periods. But then it is difficult. Furthermore, there is a dialect continuum between Kajkavian and Chakavian as there is between Kajkavian and Slovenian, and lects with a dialect continuum between them are always separate languages. Russian. And if you're perhaps a polyglot or linguaphile looking for a new challenge, then maybe learning a bit of Mandarin, Urdu, or even Persian might just be up your alley! In essence, such kinds of bilingualism also improve understanding of other, unrelated Slavic languages, since two Slavic languages fill in the comprehension gaps. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. However, there are dialects in between Ukrainian and Russian such as the Eastern Polissian and Slobozhan dialects of Ukrainian that are intelligible with both languages. Czech and Slovak are simply dialects of this one tongue. Bulgarian has 80% intelligibility of Macedonian, 41% of Russian, and 5% of Polish and Czech. Many Turkic languages are mutually intelligible to a higher or lower degree, but thorough empirical research is needed to establish the exact levels and patterns of mutual intelligibility between the languages of this linguistic family. Although Chakavian is clearly a separate language from Shtokavian Croatian, in Croatia it is said that there is only one Croatian language, and that is Shtokavian Croatian. Also, the question is: -did this Serb speak other Slavic languages? [4], Some linguists use mutual intelligibility as a primary criterion for determining whether two speech varieties represent the same or different languages. FluentU is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. He said if he was there for about a week he could understand probably everything. I would like to add an interesting fact Slovenian has very harsh dialects due to the historic separation of different regions. The two languages are not mutually intelligible, and there are significant differences in grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. Torlakians are often said to speak Bulgarian, but this is not exactly the case. Russian is partially mutually intelligible with Ukrainian, Rusyn and Belarusian. PS More than half of Slovenian seems to be closely related to Kaikavian and Chakavian Croatian (and probably Old Shtokavian which is almost extinct). Slovak somewhat more than Polish, but still very little. In writing, however, Scots language looks similar to English (albeit with some spelling variations). I can understand about 50% 75% of Bulgarian and Macedonian enough to get buy and carry on a conversation. For me, Serbian and Macedonian are as different as Serbian and Slovene, they sounds somehow the same, but I dont understand them correctly. Have every heard of Dubrovnik dialect? You can pick up the gist of thats being said in any sentence. There are some words that we don't understand, but in general, these languages are much closer to each other than the pairs Russian-Ukrainian and Russian-Belarusian. Personally Im a Taoist in relation to 9/11, the middle way, you know? Serbs/Croats used to live in the south Poland and they moved south to the current location. Serbs until recently where still self titled Yugoslavs. Serbian is a macrolanguage made up to two languages: Shtokavian Serbian and Torlak or Gorlak Serbian. This is simply reality in Serbia today. . Both me and her had a much easier time following the Rusyn dialects than standard Ukrainian (although they were by no means completely comprehensible). Hag_Boulder 9 mo. Intelligibility in the Slavic languages of the Balkans is much exaggerated. Grammar, on the other hand, is a different matter altogether. Score: 4.1/5 (74 votes) . Intelligibility data for Saris Slovak and Ukrainian is not known. Understanding the connection between mutually intelligible languages, can make it easier to learn an additional language. The historical development is characterized by four main periods. Still others (for example, Voegelin and Voegelin 1977) recognize just two main dialect groups: Eastern and Western Ukrainian. The results: I have the hardest time to understand anything of Bulgarian, it sounds really fast and choppy but similar to Russian sometimes. Regarding Polish and Russian there are many words with opposite meaning. People observing conversation between Cieszyn Silesian and Upper Silesian report that they have a hard time understanding each other. Even the basic words are almost the same. KajkavianCroatian, spoken in northwest Croatia and similar to Slovenian, is not intelligible with Standard Croatian. For example, the spirantisation of Slavic /g/ to /h/ is an areal feature shared by the Czech-Slovak group with both Ukrainian and Sorbian (but not with Polish). My take on it is right here. Slovak is closely related to Czech, to the point of mutual intelligibility to a very high degree, as well as Polish.Like other Slavic languages, Slovak is a fusional language with a complex system of morphology and relatively flexible word order.

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