It is time to stop believing to the politically motivated propaganda about our languages and start telling the truth. Buzet is actually transitional between Slovenian and Kajkavian. The grammars of sign languages do not usually resemble those of spoken languages used in the same geographical area; in fact, in terms of syntax, ASL shares more with spoken Japanese than it does with English. I could try. Around year 550 Slovenians went west and Macedonians/Bulgars went south. In my experience, its quite easy. Grammar is almost identical. [1] These 4 main Polish dialects are: Greater Polish, which is spoken in the west of the country. Polish is a disgusting sounding language. The distance of Slovene may seem unlikely, but I think that it is still rather optimistic, because Czech and Slovene are quite distant, despite geographical closeness. pouv cyrilici, a bantsk norma, kter pouv latinku. Ive watched that movie on a croatian television with the croatian subtitle and understood that movie much much better, though Croatian also has a little differences. No there is not. Much of the language has changed lots of Turkish loans have been dropped, plenty of standard Serbian terminology has made its way in but Ive had less of a communication issue in Kumanovo (north-eastern Macedonia) than Belgrade (capital of Serbia) back when I was but a young lad. Reactions: So far there have been few reactions to the paper. Ukrainian and Russian are today closer than they were a hundred years ago due to Soviet Russification, and somewhat mutually intelligiblespeakers in Ukraine often switch back and forth from one . Yiddish speakers usually have an easier time understanding German than vice versa, largely because Yiddish has added words from other languages, including Hebrew and Slavic languages, which makes it more difficult for German speakers to understand. Answer (1 of 11): Look, if you're Ukrainian you most likely already speak russian. Personal communication. Czechs hardly ever study at Slovak universities. We found that Czech and Slovak have by far the highest level of mutual intelligibility, followed by Croatian and Slovene. Heres his interview with Bosnian figures, and Bosnian is part of B/H/S landscape A western Slovak can even understand most of Ruthenians hen they are speaking. I think that nowadays people from Ni also dont understand that Serbian enough. 60%? 12 Dec 2016 #221. 1993. Torlakian (considered a subdialect of Serbian Old Shtokavian by some) has significant mutual intelligibility with Macedonian and Bulgarian. Likewise with Polish vs Czech, and Slovenian vs Standard Croatian (these pairs are the most commonly mistaken as mutually intelligible). Rural variations are usually less mutually intelligible. Not everyone within each of the three broad dialect areas speaks Yiddish in the same way -- there are sub-dialects, but they are mutually intelligible. It is not true that Shtokavian which I speak is not mutually intelligible with Torlakian of southern Serbia. Some people in Croatia asked me if I speak Kajkavian when I spoke Slovenian with my friends. You get 0%. So I asked my Russian wife to listen to some of them (mostly local news on Youtube). The Polish and Ukrainian languages come from the same Slavic roots, but are not so close that they are mutually intelligible. Greg, Kaikavian is dialect of Slovenian language. Not sure where did you get more similarity between Boyko dialects and Russian language? Therefore, for the moment, there are five separate Croatian languages: Shtokavian Croatian, Kajkavian Croatian, Chakavian Croatian, Molise Croatian, and Burgenland Croatian. If you choose to study a language thats mutually intelligible with one you already know, chances are youll have to put a lot less work in than if you were learning a language from scratch. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. So dominant, in fact, that parts of Ukraine and Belarus were significantly russified in a matter of a generation, even if not completely. Both me and her had a much easier time following the Rusyn dialects than standard Ukrainian (although they were by no means completely comprehensible). Needless to say, Polish is very familiar too, except its phonology, getting the gist of which is just a matter of some time. This understanding can be in spoken or written communication. Are Russian and Polish mutually intelligible? I can randomly pick up another paragraph from that Wikipedia page, and it would be harder: . I also have formal training in several Slavic languages, which make most of them, except some of the Balkan ones, pretty much comprehensibe to me. There is a big problem with this. For me having learnt some Slavic languages and watching Bulgarian TV was not very difficult. I believe It was formerly thought to be a Slovenian dialect, but some now think it is more properly a Kajkavian dialect. Much like Nordic languages. 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. I can understand quite a bit of basic polish when it is spoken on the street, but their pronunciation is so weird its hard to notice sometimes. Many Ukrainian-speakers consider the language . Im pretty sure things are identical in Belarus, if not worse afaik knowledge of Belarusian there is not too widespread in the first place. Lemko is spoken heavily in Poland, and it differs from Standard Rusyn in that it has a lot of Polish vocabulary, whereas Standard Rusyn has more influences from Hungarian and Romanian. These three languages have an 86% lexical similarity; that is, they share 86% of the same words. Thanks for clearing this up! Ni Torlak vowel reflexes are otherwise in line with standard Serbian and Northwestern Macedonian, deriving nuclear /u e i e u r/ from / y * *l *r/; some Torlak dialects towards Kosovo or Bulgaria instead have [l ~ l] for /l/ (giving [v()l(:)k] where Serbian normally has [v:k]) but none in my vicinity. If you choose to learn a language which is at least to some extent mutually intelligible to a language you already know . (. Give me a figure in % for the Rusyn if you would. What I took as Czech speaking Czech language, which I perfectly understand, was actually Czech who tries to speaks Polish. My parents (and naturally me when I was child) make a lot of mistakes in the word cases and it means that they are (for the speakers from more west Serbian and also Croatian region) the lower social group, that they are not educated enough or that they are unread, and why dont Macedonians in their native language too, especially in ex Yugoslavia. But despite similarities in grammar and vocabulary and almost identical alphabets, they differ sharply in many ways and are not mutually intelligible. 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. It's also highly intelligible with Portuguese in writing, though less so when spoken. Languages can also be mutually intelligible only in spoken forms such as Polish and Ukrainian or only in written forms such as Icelandic and Faroese. One of the most bizarre cases is that of Bulgarian, where the level of mutual intelligibility with spoken Czech is very low (close to zero), due to a completely different grammar. Score: 4.1/5 (74 votes) . The British Academy funded research project dedicated to examining mutual intelligibility between Karakalpak, Kazakh and Uzbek languages is currently under way at the, This page was last edited on 6 February 2023, at 16:40. As an addendum, Id like to make it known that my own grandmother, who hails from a village some twenty kilometers southwest of Ni, got lost in Belgrade once but has no problem getting around Skopje. Grammar, on the other hand, is a different matter altogether. For instance, Portuguese and Spanish have a relatively high degree of mutual intelligibility, but theyre technically separate languages. What if akavian person is from dalmatian coastal village which is now half tokavised and tokavian speaker is from Dalmatian city which still has some elements of akavian, ikavian yat and is full of romanisms? 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. We hate SPAM and promise to keep your email address safe. Russian has 85% intelligibility with Rusyn (which has a small number of speakers in Central and Eastern Europe). 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. Only nationalists and fanatics disagree. About Slovak being two different unintelligible languages I highly doubt so. He was a member of a group of linguists who met periodically to discuss the field. Intelligibility between Balachka and Ukrainian is not known. Woof woof! There is a group of Bulgarians living in Serbia in the areas of Bosilegrad and Dimitrovgrad who speak a Bulgarian-Serbian transitional dialect, and Serbs are able to understand these Bulgarians well. 2023 Enux Education Limited. Serbs until recently where still self titled Yugoslavs. They sometimes say that youngsters do not but that is just a myth. This gives rise to claims of Macedonians being able to understand Serbo-Croatian very well, however, much of this may be due to bilingual learning. Exposure doesnt count. Why not look em up on his site. Writing in Chakavian started very early in the Middle Ages and began to slow down in the 1500s when writing in Kajkavian began to rise. If the central varieties die out and only the varieties at both ends survive, they may then be reclassified as two languages, even though no actual language change has occurred during the time of the loss of the central varieties. Polish and Ukrainian mutual intelligibility question. Some say it is a part of Czech, but more likely it is a part of Polish like Silesian. Ukrainian 15 % spoken, 25 % written Hello, can you tell me, how much Kajkavian can your average Chakavian speaker understand in percentage? Intelligibility in the Slavic languages of the Balkans is much exaggerated. | 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. It is true that Czech is more urban and less folk and many Slovaks study in Czech republic. 10%? Nevertheless Ukrainian intelligibility of Russian is hard to calculate because presently there are few Ukrainians in Ukraine who do not speak Russian. > Intelligibility problems are mostly on the Czech end, because they dont bother to learn Slovak, while many Slovaks learn Czech. Femke Swarte studied the mutual intelligibility of twenty Germanic language combinations. I admit that my prehistoric learning of Russian (1985-1990) made it easier for me to guess the meaning of words izpolzovana a saestvuvat (which have the same meaning in Russian), but I think that I could guess it even from the context. To some extent, Russian, Rusyn, Ukrainian, and Belarusian retain a degree of mutual intelligibility. Not only that, but it is not even fully intelligible with the Eastern Slovak that it resembles most. The two languages are not mutually intelligible, and there are significant differences in grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. In the evening of the first day it reaches 93%, in a week 95%, all unsupervised, almost effortlessly, just by being there, watching, listening, talking and asking for an explanation here and there. Score: 4.1/5 (68 votes) . I've ne. Rather than 95%, or 85%. Vitebsk State University. Most native speakers agree on MI. Traditionally, dialects are regional variations of one main language. The intelligibility of Czech and Slovak is much exaggerated. Czech-Polish is not at 12% anymore, a new study has found it is 32%. In this case, another criteria I would also consider is how hard or easy it is for a Serb to start understanding Macedonian. Slobozhan Russian can also be called Kuban Russian or Balachka. Given that Polish and Russian belong to different groups under the same language family, we can deduce that these two languages share a lot of similarities but also have many differences. I can easily translate the first two sentences: Bulgarian is the oldest documented Slavic language. Is Russian and Polish Mutually Intelligible? Complaints have been made that many of these percentages were simply wild guesses with no science behind them. Also, danes and swedes have a hard time understanding each other, but they can read the others language quite well. So I understood 100% But I admit that it was a relatively very easy text. In Czech rep. Slovaks dont have to pass any language exams (the other foreigner do have to). However Serbian, Bosnian, and Croatian are not like Czech and Slovak. . I have friends from Bulgaria and I can tell you that they have problems by understanding some things. The old Dniestrian/Galician speech is largely confined to rural areas. In the case of Croatian and Slovene, the intelligibility is asymmetric, since Slovene participants could understand Croatian better than vice versa. You cant honestly believe that 19 hijackers from Saudi Arabia armed only with boxcutters where able to attack US biggest most powerful landmarks given all the hard factual evidence not including things like thermite or if a missile hit the Pentagon or other junk like that. Mutual intelligibilityrefers to whether speakers of one language can understand speakers of another language. Thats why in the Czechoslovak army the rule was: speak your own language, understand both. For example, all Russian shows get subtitles on Ukrainian TV. 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. Reading a Bulgarian text is not like reading an ordinary book in Czech, it would cost my brain much more kilojoules (but maybe mainly due to the monotonous Cyrilic script), but it is possible. But then the second older guy from Bosnia (Filipovi) appeared on the screen and wow! Ukrainian and Belarusian are the closest languages, as together with Russian they form the East Slavic group of languages. I will also say that it is a fact that a British intelligence linked terrorist Anas al-Liby recruited by MI6 to kill Gadaffi in 96 was involved in the African Embassy bombings. It consists of at least four major dialects, Ekavian Chakavian, spoken on the Istrian Peninsula, Ikavian Chakavian, spoken in southwestern Istria, the islands of Bra, Hvar, Vis, Korula, and olta, the Peljeac Peninsula, the Dalmatian coast at Zadar, the outskirts of Split and inland at Gacka, Middle Chakavian, which is Ikavian-Ekavian transitional, and Ijekavian Chakavian, spoken at the far southern end of the Chakavian language area on Lastovo Island, Janjina on the Peljeac Peninsula, and Bigova in the far south near the border with Montenegro. Then she talks about the cards in the bags, I again understand everything, but at 0:47, another stream of unintelligible sounds is starting. These recommendations are based on research into the mutual intelligibility of Germanic languages, conducted by Femke Swarte. 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. Also how much of Rusyn do Russians understand on a % basis? In the 1500s, Kajkavian began to be developed in a standard literary form. Czech: 10% While Norway was under Danish rule, the Bokml written standard of Norwegian developed from Dano-Norwegian, a koin language that evolved among the urban elite in Norwegian cities during the later years of the union. How close is Ukrainian language to Polish? #5. I am not saying this to slam Ukrainians, but just an observation. The German influence is more prominent in the west; Polish influence is greater in the east. Nice to meet you, Robert; Ill make sure to read more of your articles now! That is ~90% our language. Usually, they can even write their theses in Slovak. Recently a Croatian linguist forwarded a proposal to formally recognize Chakavian as a separate language, but the famous Croatian Slavicist Radoslav Katii argued with him about this and rejected the proposal on political, not linguistic grounds. Do you speak Boyko or Hutsul? Yet, it is closer to Russian that standard Ukrainian. Far Northeastern Slovak (Saris Slovak) near the Polish border is close to Polish and Ukrainian. Around 80% comprehension, it gets hard to talk about complex or technical things. But still Slovene and Dalmatian akavian speaker can talk if they stick to old slavic part of their respective languages. Only problem is which is in Czech but not in slovak. Furthermore, not only does this app provide small lessons that can be expanded into full-on courses, but it also allows you to interact with native speakers of the target language. Serbians often say radiu and its very similar to Croatian raditi u or radit u, but sometimes Serbians say ja u da radim or even u da radim without ja (I), because u is first singular form of the verb hteti and ja is needless, but its very rare and common for southern Serbian dialects and also very very irregular in official Serbian, but that is very similar to official Macedonian.
