A Slovenian person that has never lived in the east of the country understands only about 60 70 % of the dialect (Prekmurski dialect). The Bulgarian language is the earliest written record Slavic language. Russian, Polish, Czech, and Ukrainian materials are available. My gues. Finally, I think the Ukrainians' mentality if more Polish, while the Russian mentality is more fourteenth century Mongol. The historical development is characterized by four main periods. 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. An inherent pure inherent intelligibility test would involve a a speaker of Slavic lect A listening to a tape or video of a speaker of Slavic Lect A. 7. It has many Hungarian words, archaic Slavic words and words of an unknown origin (at least to me). When I visited Bulgaria I tried to communicate in Serbian language with the Bulgars. The Mutually Intelligible Languages of 8 Popular World Languages, What You Should Know About Mutually Intelligible Languages, The 11 Best Language Learning Apps of 2023, How to Say Thank You in 35 Different Languages Around the Globe, The Penny Pinchers Guide to Learning Any Language for Free, The Top 8 What Language Should I Learn Online Quizzes, The 6 Best Sources of Language Learning Videos on the Internet. 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. Since then, Slovak has been disappearing from the Czech Republic, so the younger people dont understand Slovak so well. Balgarskijat ezik e pluricentrien ezik ima njakolko kniovni normi. FluentU brings a language to life with real-world videos. This term is similar to linguistic distance in that it can reflect how similar or different languages are. . In the army, fairly precise understanding of the meaning of the commands is required and it worked, without any formal language training. There are also some TV shows that show Czech and Slovak contestants untranslated (like in Sweden where Norwegian comics perform untranslated), and most people seem to understand these shows. In fact, I would probably have a hard time to understand a Czech speaking with such an intonation. Here are the estimates about inteligebility with other Slavic languages from a person thats fluent in Slovenian and Serbo-Croatian: Ukrainian, and Belarusian. In the present study we tested the level of mutual intelligibility between three West Slavic (Czech, Slovak and Polish) and three South Slavic languages (Croatian, Slovene and Bulgarian). The intelligibility of Polish and Russian is very low, on the order of 5-10%. Intelligibility testing between East and West Slovak would seem to be in order. Toj e oficialnijat ezik na Republika Balgarija i edin iz 23-te oficialni ezika na Evropejskija sajuz. 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. I thought this is Croatia! It is best seen as a Ukrainian dialect spoken in Russia specifically, it is markedly similar to the Poltavian dialect of Ukrainian spoken in Poltava in Central Ukraine. For example, British Sign Language (BSL) and American Sign Language (ASL) are quite different and mutually unintelligible, even though the hearing people of the United Kingdom and the United States share the same spoken language. Perhaps you would care to explain why the FBI has NOT charged Osama Bin Ladin with 9/11 but with the African Embassy bombings. Jen. In writing, however, Scots language looks similar to English (albeit with some spelling variations). What is the most mutually intelligible Slavic language? Macedonian: 50-60 % Youre welcome Robert, for a non-slavic speaker, you have a pretty good grasp of these linguistic niceties. Download: Sorry I can`t give you percentage. Other then that difference is in grammar and accent. Western Slovak speakers say Eastern Slovak sounds idiotic and ridiculous, and some words are different, but other than that, they can basically understand it. 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. As a result, I, who spoke fluent Ukrainian when I moved from Ukraine 18 years ago, have problems following modern speech on TV. The Rusyn language is composed of 50% Slovak roots and 50% Ukrainian roots, so some difficult intelligibility with Ukrainian might be expected. "A New Methodology for Romance Classification". https://www.academia.edu/4080349/Mutual_Intelligibility_of_Languages_in_the_Slavic_Family In terms of pronunciation, Ukrainian or Southeastern Yiddish can be considered to occupy an intermediate position between Northeastern and Central Yiddish. Although most words are in fact different, they are largely similar, being cognates, which makes both languages mutually intelligible to a significant extent; . Yes and if you could more than one listener, it would be great. Intelligibility is more than 90% = dialect, less than 90% = language. Even the basic words are almost the same. Polish is the most incomprehensible Slavic language for other Slavs, both spoken and written. 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. I've ne. Nevertheless, Bulgarian-Russian intelligibility seems much exaggerated. That movie doesnt have subtitle in Serbia but I think its a big mistake. Rusyn ~ Ukrainian . [1] Advanced speakers of a second language typically aim for intelligibility, especially in situations where they work in their second language and the necessity of being understood is high. Being fluent in Slovenian and Serbo-Croatian gives you access to understanding more of other Slavic languages. Macedonain and Serbo-Croatian being 25% inteligible is simply not true. We speak them too. Do you speak Boyko or Hutsul? Greg, Kaikavian is dialect of Slovenian language. Ukrainian is a lineal descendant of the colloquial language used in Kievan Rus (10th-13th century). Also akavian has some elements of its own. cheers When you find out it is a separate language, you ask for %, and they often tell you! Although even if they stuck to Polish/Ukrainian, they'd probably still understand each other. In contrast, Filipovi is talking slowly, and although some words have a different stress than in Czech, I can identify them pretty well and hence listening to this guy is basically like reading a written text in Serbo-Croatian. http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/wanted_terrorists/usama-bin-laden/view All Rights Reserved. But reading a Bulgarian text is surprisingly easy, because the phonology and vocabulary are very similar. Polish is not intelligible with Kashubian, a language related to Polish spoken in the north of Poland. Frequency of exposure is one of the main causes of this. December 2014. But being that they are Slavic with the same or similar grammar and structure you pick up different slavic languages and their style very quick. A professor of Slavic Linguistics at a university in Bulgaria reviewed the paper and felt that the percentages were accurate. Hello Mr Lindsay, According to former Pakistani President Musharraf Omar Sheikh who wired $100,000 to Mohammed Atta was recruited during the 90s by British intelligence. akavski has considerably more italian influence, due to many of the people there speaking italian (vicinity to italy) and the presence of istriot language and the former presence of dalmatian language. In contrast, there is often significant intelligibility between different Scandinavian languages, but as each of them has its own standard form, they are classified as separate languages. BULGARIAN: Balgarskijat ezik e naj-rannijat pismeno dokumentiran slavjanski ezik. From the 1500s to 1900, a large corpus of Kajkavian literature was written. Traditionally, dialects are regional variations of one main language. Often the two languages are genetically related, and they are likely to be similar to each other in grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, or other features. If I had to name a Slavic language worst for intelligibility, it would absolutely and positively have to be Bulgarian its phonetics are completely foreign (to the extent that sometimes in the back of my mind I think that it sounds barbarian and Turkish), as is its grammar (the vocabulary, however, is not, being probably 90% similar to Russian, making written Bulgarian pretty easy). Croatian-Shtokavian is only a dialect of Serbian language. Every major language has some dialects Also both sides are able to use standard Slovak. Not sure where did you get more similarity between Boyko dialects and Russian language? I have to really focus and try hard to understand them but with patience I can get buy. . 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. Macedonian and Bulgarian are fairly similar but they are not close to being fully mutually intelligible. My family comes from Kaikavian (50%), Chakavian (25%) and Shtokavian (25%) areas, but at home, especially last years, we prefer to use only Kaikavian-Chakavian. 8. Are Russian and Polish mutually intelligible? In essence, such kinds of bilingualism also improve understanding of other, unrelated Slavic languages, since two Slavic languages fill in the comprehension gaps. The grammar in both languages is similar, but, predictably, there are a few differences: While Ukrainian includes the past continuous tense, there are only three tenses in Russian (past, present and future). 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. Kajkavian is fairly uniform across its speech area, whereas Chakavian is more diverse (Jembrigh 2014). 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. Answer (1 of 4): Yes. The real reason that Slavs cant even understand each other: not enough vowels in their tongues! I would like to know if anyone could confirm that you could indeed . The Czech law even states that Slovak language can be used in schools and in official documents. While discussing mutual intelligibility, the author often calls upon bilingual learning; for example, Czech and Slovak are considered highly intelligible because of the strong cross-cultural overlap. Sign languages are independent of spoken languages and follow their own paths of development. It is not true that Shtokavian which I speak is not mutually intelligible with Torlakian of southern Serbia. non-Shtokavian dialects: Kajkavian, Chakavian and Torlakian) diverge more significantly from all four normative varieties. Nared s osnovnata, izpolzovana v Balgarija, saestvuvat oe makedonska norma, kojato sao izpolzva kirilica, i banatska norma, kojata izpolzva latinica. It is true that Western Slovak dialects can understand Czech well, but Central Slovak, Eastern Slovak and Extraslovakian Slovak dialects cannot. Spanish is most mutually intelligible with Galician. The German influence is more prominent in the west; Polish influence is greater in the east. It is often said that Ukrainian and Russian are intelligible with each other or even that they are the same language (a view perpetuated by Russian nationalists). And, as it was already sad, all Slovaks understand czeh better than czech slovaks thanks to hostory and politics. When Kievan Rus' fell to the Mongols in the 13th century, the formerly united states became split, and what were once very closely-related dialects began to . As a native of Ni, I can say that the Serbo-CroatianMacedonian figures might be roughly on-point. It is not really either Bulgarian or Serbo-Croatian, but instead it is best said that they are speaking a mixed Bulgarian-Serbo-Croatian language. Test only Serbs who know almost no English (they exist in older generation). Not true about Czech / Slovak inteligibility. I can understand about 50% 75% of Bulgarian and Macedonian enough to get buy and carry on a conversation. It shows that Macedonians indeed grew up to certain extent as bilingual Macedonian-Serbian. the use of the accusative is nearly identical in Ni Torlak and Kumanovo Macedonian (cannot say the same for standard Macedonian as it has no accusative to begin with) and is, in general, more of an oblique case than anything else (Jim Morrison). Not only that, but it is not even fully intelligible with the Eastern Slovak that it resembles most. No, you cannot. Written intelligibility is often very different from oral intelligibility in that in a number of cases, it tends to be higher, often much higher, than oral intelligibility. 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. > Intelligibility problems are mostly on the Czech end, because they dont bother to learn Slovak, while many Slovaks learn Czech. 12 Dec 2016 #221. Czech completely and utterly incomprehensible. These 4 main Polish dialects are: Greater Polish, which is spoken in the west of the country. I confess to not being a linguist, and therefore didnt see past the problematic sentence 1993. . Re: Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian Mutual Intelligibility. Answer (1 of 16): I'm neither Polish nor Ukrainian but I know Polish to a good level and basic Ukrainian; I can comment on the understandability of Ukrainian for Poles. Im Slovenian, my mother tongue is Slovenian, however I have also learnt Serbo-Croatian from a very early age. What Are Mutually Intelligible Languages? Contents1 Can Slovenians understand Croatian?2 What languages are mutually intelligible with Croatian?3 What is the closest language to Slovenian?4 Which two . between Ni Torlak and Macedonian than between either of those two and Serbian In addition, Balachka language associations believe it is a separate language. People observing conversation between Cieszyn Silesian and Upper Silesian report that they have a hard time understanding each other. I would say that Macedonian is about 25% intelligible to a Serbian speaker that was never exposed to Macedonian. http://ifaq.wap.org/society/voweldeployment.html. Page 183 section 481. Older people who rembember federation understand everything. It is an official language of the Bulgarian republic and one of 23 official languages of the European Union. But akavian being archaic it has old slavic package. Paul McGrane. There are numerous intelligibility tests out there that work very well, or you can just ask native speakers to give you a %, and most of the honest ones will tell you; in fact, they will often differentiate between oh that is our language, they speak the same language as us, for dialects and then no, that is not our language, that is different, and they do not speak our language for separate languages. Now onto the discussion. Far Northeastern Slovak (Saris Slovak) near the Polish border is close to Polish and Ukrainian. The unintelligibility is only due to the manner of speaking and not because of lexical and/or grammatical differences. 0%? Torlakians are often said to speak Bulgarian, but this is not exactly the case. 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. Exposure doesnt count. Glad to hear you are steering clear of it. 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. most speakers of one language find it relatively easy to achieve some degree of understanding in the related language(s). As an example, in the case of a linear dialect continuum that shades gradually between varieties, where speakers near the center can understand the varieties at both ends with relative ease, but speakers at one end have difficulty understanding the speakers at the other end, the entire chain is often considered a single language. How close is Ukrainian language to Polish? This is a Chakavian-Slovenian transitional lect that is hard to categorize, but it is usually considered to be a Slovenian dialect. The differences to me are like New England English versus English in the deep South versus Australian. In some respects, all Slavic languages have a lot in common. Having lived in Moscow and being married to a Russian, I now speak Russian well enough to be mistaken for a Russian-speaking tourist from Poland or Lithuania when in Moscow. This list focuses on common languages widely thought to be at least partially and mutually intelligible. Is Ukrainian more like . Required fields are marked *. Also, I can only understand a small bit of Russian, and Ukrainian is even more far off for me(the pronunciation is easier but understanding is harder) and I can understand quite a bit of bulgarian(especially when written). How many English speakers know Serbo-Croatian? Maltese. Femke Swarte studied the mutual intelligibility of twenty Germanic language combinations. However, the Ser-Drama-Lagadin-Nevrokop dialect in northeastern Greece and southern Bulgaria and the Maleevo-Pirin dialect in eastern Macedonia and western Bulgaria are transitional between Bulgarian and Macedonian. Is Ukrainian closer to Russian or Polish? It is true that Czech is more urban and less folk and many Slovaks study in Czech republic. Czech 20 % spoken, 40 % written It is time to stop believing to the politically motivated propaganda about our languages and start telling the truth. I think the OP exagerated a bit. Speaking of myself, after calculating everything, I can understand to specific degree Slovene, somewhat Slovak/Russian, Serbo-Croatian std without problems and also Macedonians. They are native Kajkavian speakers and this is another proof that Kajkavian is actually Slovenian. For instance, akavian Croatian is not intelligible with Standard Croatian. Yes of course. For instance, West Palesian is a transitional Belarussian dialect to Ukrainian. Serbs until recently where still self titled Yugoslavs. I can understand anyone who speaks English, even those who speak it as foreigners might say too fast. 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. Slobozhan Ukrainian speakers in this region find it easier to understand their Russian neighbors than the Upper DnistrianUkrainian spoken in the far west in the countryside around Lviv. Eastern Slovak may have 72% intelligibility of Ukrainian. Czechs see Slovaks as country bumpkins backwards and folksy but optimistic, outgoing and friendly. 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. In fact, many Macedonians are switching away from the Macedonian language towards Serbo-Croatian. 5. The Torlakian spoken in the southeast is different. However, Russian is only 74% mutually intelligible with spoken Belarusian and 50% mutually intelligible with spoken Ukrainian. People from Lviv and larger cities and towns in western Ukraine have a slight clipped accent but they speak standard Ukrainian. I put it to Google translator and I got this: Ukrainians and Belarusians understand each other's languages with no problem. Pretty accurate I think. However, the Torlak Serbians can understand Macedonian well, as this is a Serbo-Croatian dialect transitional to both languages. Mi priamo Hrvatski jezik in neotokavian. 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. So I understand Kajkavians and Slovenes except for a germanic package. Both me and her had a much easier time following the Rusyn dialects than standard Ukrainian (although they were by no means completely comprehensible). Bulharsk jazyk je plurocentrick jazyk m nkolik kninch norem. Therefore I would go with 25%. Serbo-Croatian dialects in relation to Slovene, Macedonian, and Bulgarian: The non-standard vernacular dialects of Serbo-Croatian (i.e. Ukrainian and Belarusian are pretty much mutually intelligible (source: I am a poet in Belarusian, I go to poetry festivals in Belarus quite often and there are no interpreters for the Ukrainian poets invited to international events). 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. Russian has 85% intelligibility with Rusyn (which has a small number of speakers in Central and Eastern Europe). However, many groups of languages are partly mutually intelligible, i.e. Its mainly in the weird Bulgarian grammar! The results show that in most cases, a division between West and South Slavic languages does exist and that West . Heres his interview with Bosnian figures, and Bosnian is part of B/H/S landscape If youve studied one language, you may very well understand some of anotheror have a much easier time learning it. She doesn't speak any Polish so it's going to be an interesting challenge. Some do in fact argue that Ukrainian shouldn't be considered as an East-Slavic language at all, being that it has more in common with West-Slavic languages such as Polish, Czech and Slovak than it . Lesser Polish, which can be heard in the south and southeast. America paid us to hand over al-Qaeda suspects 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. This is because colloquial Ukrainian is closer to the Ukrainian spoken in the Soviet era which had huge Russian influence. Serbo-Croatian has variable intelligibility of Macedonian, averaging ~55%, while Nis Serbians have ~90% intelligibility with Macedonian. Robert Lindsay, Independent Journalist: l Talk about Things You're Not Supposed to Talk About. But then the second older guy from Bosnia (Filipovi) appeared on the screen and wow! Ja u da radim is more common to Serbian speakers but ja u raditi is officially more correct. With this, off I go to sleep. Another similar example would be varieties of Arabic, which additionally share a single prestige variety in Modern Standard Arabic. As soon as one gets even a very moderate amount of exposure, comprehension improves, even between such geographically distant languages as Polish and Serbian I remember staying in Montenegro and a Pole buying bread and a Montenegrin could still communicate with each other speaking at a slow-enough pace. I will also send you a copy so you can look over the Serbo-Croatian part and tell me if there are any errors. In the case of Croatian and Slovene, the intelligibility is asymmetric, since Slovene participants could understand Croatian better than vice versa. For example, all Russian shows get subtitles on Ukrainian TV. So I tried with my native Slovenian language and I was surprised how well Bulgars understand Slovenian language. Silesian itself appears to be a macrolanguage as it is more than one language since as Opole Silesian speakers cannot understand Katowice Silesian, so Opole Silesian and Katowice Silesian are two different languages. 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. It was formerly thought to be a Slovenian dialect, but some now think it is more properly a Kajkavian dialect. There are some dialects around Buzet that seem to be the remains of old Kajkavian-Chakavian transitional dialects (Jembrigh 2014). Russian 20 % spoken, 30 % written And Shtokavian is dialect of Serbian language. [2] As a consequence, spoken mutual intelligibility is not reciprocal. Polish: 5% 25/01/23 | StarsInsider. And when islanders respond back in akavian they are puzzled: What? Accent is on last or penultimate syllable. There is much nonsense said about the mutual intelligibility of the various languages in the Slavic family. Most people in the region speak Russian with a few Ukrainian words. You can pick out the common words like Voda (water), Hleb (bread), zima (cold) and so forth but it is tough to get the jist of what they are saying with out more immersion. Its a nasty drug, and I hear its addicting. Generally, when foreigners say speakers of a certain language speak too fast, speakers of that language can hear that fast speech just fine. 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? I once had a conversation with a young woman from the Czech Republic. My guest from Ukraine will have to guess 6 animals that I'll describe to her in Polish. Speakers of the Torlak dialect (any Torlak dialect) understand Serbo-Croation, Macedonian and Bulgarian with no problem, and can comprehand Slovenian as much as 80-90% within a few weeks of exposure. They exist, but not in such a degree to render them unintelligible. For me personally, Serbian is very interesting, because it sounds like Macedonian, but a bit different because of the declensions. Huchon, Mireille, Histoire de la langue franaise, pages 214 and 223. I myself who have learned some Macedonian, pick up much more words from spoken Serbo-Croatian than spoken Bulgarian. Russian. Im a speaker of Torlakian Serbian characteristically closer to Macedonian than Standard Serbian, having three (nom/acc/voc) cases and using a fusional instead of an analytic past tense and, with regards to a certain comment made two years ago on here, can, without issue, understand Zona Zamfirova, a movie about life in Ottoman Ni, without any subtitles. 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. After all, you can look at the study that I listed above and check the results of the written translation task (translation of 50 individual words), which illustrates the similarity of lexicons: Czechs best understand Slovak words (96,52%), then Polish (64,29%), then Bulgarian (57,00%), Croatian (55,38%) and Slovene (49,73%). For the south slavic speakers, it is a commonism, almost a joke, for a Serb and a Croat to argue---in a mutually intelligible language---that . 0%. Thank you very much for this. but the two languages are more different than some people think. This implies that some of the high intelligibility between Slovak and Polish may be due to bilingual learning on the part of Slovaks. by Christine Ro. From a grammatical and morphological perspective, Ukrainian is closer to Russian: they both have East Slavic roots. Could you please explain what you mean by language and intelligibility and hopefully remedy this failure of the original text? However, it appears to be a separate language, as Lach is not even intelligible within itself. Ja u da radim is a form more related to Macedonian and south eastern dialects of Serbo-Croatian. I have no problems understanding the Torlakian dialect. I would be able to translate what he says! Lach is a Czech-Polish transitional lect with a close relationship with Cieszyn Silesian. This debate occurred only in Croatian linguistic circles, and the public knows nothing about it (Jembrigh 2014). Many Ukrainian-speakers consider the language . This is heartening, although Kajkavian as an existing spoken lect also needs to be recognized as a living language instead of a dialect of Croatian, whatever that word means. wovel a shifts to o not shits hahhaha sorry. Usama Bin Laden is wanted in connection with the August 7, 1998, bombings of the United States Embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya. Istorieskoto mu razvitie se charakterizira s etiri glavni perioda. Is Ukrainian mutually intelligible with Polish? Balgarski is balgarskijat, grupa is grupata, oficialni is oficijalnijat etc. Chakavian actually has a written heritage, but it was mostly written down long ago. Portuguese has varying degrees of mutual intelligibility with Spanish, Galician, French and Italian.