In this week's Slavic languages comparison we talk about animals in Polish and Ukrainian. However, many of these dialects are at least partially mutually intelligible. For me having learnt some Slavic languages and watching Bulgarian TV was not very difficult. An individual's achievement of moderate proficiency or understanding in a language (called L2) other than their first language (L1) typically requires considerable time and effort through study and practical application if the two languages are not very closely related. In 1933, reforms were forced that streamlined Ukrainian more in line with the Russian language. . This has, however, more to do with the new Ukrainian norm. The results show that in most cases, a division between West and South Slavic languages does exist and that West . It is also said that West Slovak (Bratislava) cannot understand East Slovak, so Slovak may actually two different languages, but this is controversial. So give these mutually intelligible languages a second look. Good post, OP. 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. 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. Intelligibility between languages can be asymmetric, with speakers of one understanding more of the other than speakers of the other understanding the first. From the 1500s to 1900, a large corpus of Kajkavian literature was written. Belarussian and Ukrainian have 85% similar vocabulary. Im The Lizard King, I Can Do Anything! And o shifts to u. Ukrainian much less comprehensible. Postby voron 2018-01-26, 22:33. I work with Russians (dro. Please listen and watch the movie Zona Zamfirova. As for mutual intelligibility, learned exposure aside, Ive never had much of a fun time in any area of western or northern Serbia that wasnt Belgrade; my lack of a pitch accent system (where Serbian has four accents, Ni has independent accent and length that seldom coincide with the norm); I cannot for the life of me make sense of umadija or Vojvodina Serbian (these are considered the normative core of Serbian) without resorting to asking the other party to slow down and having myself talk slower. Croatian (Stokavski): 98% 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. Silesian, which can be heard in the southwest (sometimes also considered a separate language). 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. What language is this? Intelligibility is more than 90% = dialect, less than 90% = language. http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/wanted_terrorists/usama-bin-laden/view If one takes the transitional dialects which make a triangle between Serbian, Macedonian, Bulgarian, one can say that it is also one language. 10%? 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. As a result, I, who spoke fluent Ukrainian when I moved from Ukraine 18 years ago, have problems following modern speech on TV. Or as an English speaker, you might catch the gist of some Scots. Hutch Mon May 14, 2007 12:25 am GMT. In other respects I am happy to say I manage to keep my identity clear of any overt nationalist definitions Sorry for my English, Im still learning itespecially right word order. Its true that Slavic languages are not intelligible in the taking-the-first-person-from-the-street-and-making-them-listen-to-a-random-conversation way, that is, an average Slavic speaker with an untrained ear and little to no exposure to other Slavic languages will have difficulty understanding other Slavic languages. Some famous linguists who are acquaintances of mine (they have Wikipedia pages) told me that they thought that 90% was a good metric. Ability of speakers of two language varieties to understand the other, As a criterion for identifying separate languages, List of languages sometimes considered varieties, List of dialects or varieties sometimes considered separate languages, Alexander M. Schenker. NATO EU. Do you speak Ukrainian. It should be noted that this division is conditional (actually: arbitrary) (and) names do not reflect the different languages, but only periods in the development of the Bulgarian language, which (have) detectable traits. Menu. All South Slavic languages in effect form a large dialect continuum of gradually mutually intelligible varieties depending on distance between the areas where they are spoken. Serbo-Croatian dialects in relation to Slovene, Macedonian, and Bulgarian: The non-standard vernacular dialects of Serbo-Croatian (i.e. I got that figure from a Serb. Torlakian (considered a subdialect of Serbian Old Shtokavian by some) has significant mutual intelligibility with Macedonian and Bulgarian. 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. Colloquial Ukrainian spoken in most of the country is pretty much comprehensible to Russians. 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. This is a Chakavian-Slovenian transitional lect that is hard to categorize, but it is usually considered to be a Slovenian dialect. 4. Masovian, which is spoken throughout the central and eastern regions of Poland. It may have been split from Polish for up to 800 years, where it underwent heavy German influence. (I will come to Bulgarian too). 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. Between some languages, there can also be imbalanced mutual intelligibility, known as asymmetric intelligibility. This occurs when speakers of one language can understand a related language to a greater degree than speakers of the related language can understand the other. 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. Kashubian itself is a macrolanguage made up of two different languages, South Kashubian and North Kashubian, as the two have difficult intelligibility. http://www.izviestija.info/izviestija/, I was born in Canada to a Serbian family and speak Serbian so I am a good control as I was never formally educated in Serbian and its grammar. In the Kievan Rus', Russian and Ukrainian were dialects of the same language, meaning that they were largely mutually intelligible with only minor vocabulary or grammatical differences. However, Chakavian magazines are published even today (Jembrigh 2014). A Slovenian person that has never lived in the east of the country understands only about 60 70 % of the dialect (Prekmurski dialect). His level of understanding might be 90%, or 82%, 85%. So I understand Kajkavians and Slovenes except for a germanic package. I could try. Western Ukraine, at least urban Western Ukraine, no longer speaks the Galician dialect but rather standard Ukrainian. Civis Illustris. 2 Ukrainian Phrasebook And Dictionary Paperback 1-03-2023 Mutually Intelligible? I was born in Upper State and I can barely understand some southern speakers.Do you think the politics in USA is also preventing the formation of new languages ? . The more German the Silesian dialect is, the harder it is for Poles to understand. 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. Sledva da se otbelei, e tova delene e uslovno i imenata ne otrazjavat razlini ezici, a samo periodi v razvitieto na balgarskija ezik, za koito se otkrivat charakterni belezi. Nobody Ive ever talked to that lived in Serbia had anything other than [u] for //. It is not true that Shtokavian which I speak is not mutually intelligible with Torlakian of southern Serbia. Cieszyn Silesian or Ponaszymu is a language closely related to Silesian spoken in Czechoslovakia in the far northeast of the country near the Polish and Slovak borders. All Rights Reserved. It is not that hard. No, you cannot. A question: how is it decided that the cut-off between a language and dialect is 90% MI? 2023 Enux Education Limited. French has 89% lexical similarity with Italian, 80% similarity with Sardinian (spoken on the Italian island of Sardinia), 78% similarity with Romansh (spoken in parts of Switzerland) and 75% similarity with Portuguese, Romanian and Spanish. Ukrainian 15 % spoken, 25 % written This is a great boon to travelers and language learners. As a native Serbian speaker from Bosnia who has interacted with most Slavic languages , heres my breakdown of level of mutual intelligibility with other Slavic tongues: its not based on bilingual learning. However, a Croatian linguist has helped me write part of the Croatian section, and he felt that at least that part of the paper was accurate. How close is Ukrainian language to Polish? Many people know cases well but simply dont want to speak them correctly in conversation with someone who doesnt speak them correctly because that makes them feel like they want to judge other people who doesnt use cases correctly or that makes them more educated, even more smart, than someone who doesnt use it, and that makes both sides uncomfortable. Ukrainian is a lineal descendant of the colloquial language used in Kievan Rus (10th-13th century). Glad to hear you are steering clear of it. Needless to say, Polish is very familiar too, except its phonology, getting the gist of which is just a matter of some time. I am communicating very often with speakers of the other Slavic languages, so I did an experiment and I tried to write something in Bulgarian for one first time. 12 Dec 2016 #221. I kind of like it though . Slovak-Czech MI tests out at 82% in studies, which seems about right. The Czech law even states that Slovak language can be used in schools and in official documents. Also how much of Rusyn do Russians understand on a % basis? Its vocabulary and grammar has enough similarities for Poles, Ukrainians and Belarusians to understand each other well, whereas Russians understand only will recognise separate words. Kajkavski it seems has changed less than akavski. Yet we speak of Kai/Cha as of Serbo-Croatian dialects, while Slovenian is totally foreign. 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). Some comments on Ukrainian: About Boyko/Hutsul dialects which according to you are more understandable to Russian person than Ukrainian language I will disagree with you. Are Russian and Polish mutually intelligible? 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. I guess this would not have worked for Macedonian and Slovene in the Yugoslav army. The Croatians left Croatia and came to Italy from 1400-1500. I understood perfectly him, but not her. The historical development is characterized by four main periods. He printed out the paper and showed it to his colleagues at the next meeting, and they spent some time discussing it. Re: Rus/Ukr I myself who have learned some Macedonian, pick up much more words from spoken Serbo-Croatian than spoken Bulgarian. Additionally, Norwegian assimilated a considerable amount of Danish vocabulary as well as traditional Danish expressions. For example, those who learn Ukrainian will eventually know 70% of Polish lexicon and a . Serbo-Croatian has variable intelligibility of Macedonian, averaging ~55%, while Nis Serbians have ~90% intelligibility with Macedonian. Torlakians are often said to speak Bulgarian, but this is not exactly the case. Macedonian and Bulgarian would be much closer together except that in recent years, Macedonian has been heavily influenced by Serbo-Croatian, and Bulgarian has been heavily influenced by Russian. Russian: 15% spoken, 25% written Not only are these Slavic languages very similar to Russian in written form, but they are also around 70% mutually intelligible. 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. America paid us to hand over al-Qaeda suspects Russian influence only ended in 1878. Young Czechs and Slovaks talk to each other a lot via the Internet. . And Im glad he didnt felt in the nonsense babble of serbians, croats and bosnians that try too hard to show their differences, due to political/religious reasons. This is also true of vocabulary and other aspects. Personally, I must admit that Serbs from areas above Nis (cf. I confess to not being a linguist, and therefore didnt see past the problematic sentence most speakers of one language find it relatively easy to achieve some degree of understanding in the related language(s). I think it was mostly due to a learning few high frequency Polish words that are difficult for a Russian native speaker to understand. If speakers of one language have more exposure to its related language, theyre likely to pick up more of that language. 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. A Serbian friend of mine was estaunished to see how some Macedonian celebrities speak Serbian on the TV without accent. Are Polish and Ukrainian mutually intelligible? 0%. Czech-Slovak is now 91%, Czech-Serbo-Croatian is 18%, Czech-Macedonian is 17% and Czech=-Bulgarian is 13%. We in Serbia even had some comic movies that was making fun of south Serbian dialects (that are more related to Bulgarian and Macedonian) with very mocking or even rude comments for someone who make mistakes in the word cases. 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. Russian has a decent intelligibility with Bulgarian, possibly on the order of 50%, but Bulgarian intelligibility of Russian seems lower. They say, ~60%, ~65%, etc. Russian. Macedonian is a little easier, since its more a transitional dialect between Bulgarian and Serbian. Speaking of myself, after calculating everything, I can understand to specific degree Slovene, somewhat Slovak/Russian, Serbo-Croatian std without problems and also Macedonians. do is the same verb (prim/pri/pri/primo/prite/pre vs. pravam/pravi/pravi/pravime/pravite/pravaat; as opposed to Serbian raditi) 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. Often the two languages are genetically related, and they are likely to be similar to each other in grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, or other features. The dialects of Ukrainian do not differ extensively from one another and are all mutually intelligible. Mi priamo Hrvatski jezik in neotokavian. That movie doesnt have subtitle in Serbia but I think its a big mistake. I always aske her about whether she understands Bulgarian and Serbian and she claims Serbian is way closer to her language rather than Bulgarian. Spanish has varying degrees of mutual intelligibility with Galician, Portuguese, Catalan, Italian, Sardinian and French. This difference is because Bulgarian is not spoken the same way it is written like Serbo-Croatian is. Ni Torlak uses a definite suffix, -ta/-to/-ti/-te/-ta (fem.sg/neu.sg/masc.pl/fem.pl/neu.pl), but less frequently than Macedonian does, and only in the nominative; it doesnt have a distance contrast as it does in standard Macedonian but it isnt even present in Serbian to begin with 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. Like rano i utro or kanapa dywan kawior. Its often said that all Slavic languages are mutually intelligible with each other. Not sure where did you get more similarity between Boyko dialects and Russian language? Czech: 10% The real reason that Slavs cant even understand each other: not enough vowels in their tongues!