Belarusian is closer to Polish and Ukrainian than Russian. If I tell them few sentences (phrases) in Boyko dialect, then Russians wont be able to understand at all. Yes and if you could more than one listener, it would be great. Like rano i utro or kanapa dywan kawior. The Rusyn language is composed of 50% Slovak roots and 50% Ukrainian roots, so some difficult intelligibility with Ukrainian might be expected. Also after studying Ethnologue for a very long time, I noticed that they tended to use 90% as a cutoff for language versus dialect most but not all of the time. Mutual intelligibility mostly applies to the educated, standardized forms of these languages, not to the various sub-standard dialects. Also, the question is: -did this Serb speak other Slavic languages? If we follow this line of reasoning, it would be correct to conclude that English is highly intelligible to Serbian speakers because most Serbs speak English. Much like Nordic languages. More properly, their speech is best seen as closer to Macedonian than to Bulgarian or Serbo-Croatian. Are Slovenian and Croatian mutually intelligible? - 2023 Kajkavian is fairly uniform across its speech area, whereas Chakavian is more diverse (Jembrigh 2014). As a native of Ni, I can say that the Serbo-CroatianMacedonian figures might be roughly on-point. Russian only has 60% intelligibility of Balachka. It features phonemic vowel length that came about as a coalescence of a vowel with a following /v/ (usually one /v x j/ in Serbian, the distribution is opaque and unpredictable) or the contraction of the sequence /ij/ into /i:/ this feature is shared with plenty of Macedonian dialects, as far as I remember but has traditional, harder Serbian alveopalatals and palatals, having [t d t d] for Macedonian [t d c() ()] (treating these as allophones as they seem to be the same four phonemes). On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. For example, the varieties of Chinese are often considered a single language even though there is usually no mutual intelligibility between geographically separated varieties. Kajkavian is a dialect of Slovenian language. Russian, the native language of 160 million people, including many . These are 33 brand new symbols that you'd have . Although different writing systems are used, there are many similarities in the grammar used, such as Russian, Polish, and Ukrainian. 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. But then the second older guy from Bosnia (Filipovi) appeared on the screen and wow! The long war over the Ukrainian language - The Boston Globe Older people who rembember federation understand everything. My mother is a native Croatian speaker and she told me that serbian and croatian have very good intelligibility but however the grammar is very different.Comparing those two languages would be like comparing czech and slovakian. Map; Russia's Periphery* Baltic States. Kajkavian has 82% intelligibility of Chakavian. Also, danes and swedes have a hard time understanding each other, but they can read the others language quite well. Interesting when one considers that Ukrainians do not even consider Rusyn a real language. Ikavian Chakavian has two branches Southwestern Istrian and Southern Chakavian. In Czech rep. Slovaks dont have to pass any language exams (the other foreigner do have to). Nevertheless, Bulgarian-Russian intelligibility seems much exaggerated. 8. adrian. Russian has low intelligibility with Czech and Slovak, maybe 30%. 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. 0%. So you are a speaker of Southern Chakavian, right? If you're russian you understand the meaning of what other is saying to a degree of around 80%. Serbian is a macrolanguage made up to two languages: Shtokavian Serbian and Torlak or Gorlak Serbian. So I asked my Russian wife to listen to some of them (mostly local news on Youtube). Personal communication. We speak in our own, or we speak locally. Grammar is almost identical. . Here are the estimates about inteligebility with other Slavic languages from a person thats fluent in Slovenian and Serbo-Croatian: I would hazzard to say that Polish and Czech languages are at minimum 50% Intelligible and comprehensible between Poles and Czechs (when spoken with normal pace ) and at least 60-70% . Likewise with Polish vs Czech, and Slovenian vs Standard Croatian (these pairs are the most commonly mistaken as mutually intelligible). 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. 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. 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. Less than 90% mutual intelligibility = separate languages. I would be able to translate what he says! In 1933, reforms were forced that streamlined Ukrainian more in line with the Russian language. Just search for alternative Croatian or kaikavian lessons and you will find me, along witht he contact information. Macedonain and Serbo-Croatian being 25% inteligible is simply not true. Russian is partially mutually intelligible with Ukrainian, Rusyn and Belarusian. Scientific intelligibility studies of Czech and Slovak have shown ~82% quite high but still low enough for them to be closely related separate languages and not dialects of one language. Intelligibility data for Saris Slovak and Ukrainian is not known. What Are Mutually Intelligible Languages? A Slovenian person that has never lived in the east of the country understands only about 60 70 % of the dialect (Prekmurski dialect). Very interesting. http://ifaq.wap.org/society/voweldeployment.html. The claim for separate languages is based more on politics than on linguistic science. I will tell you also this: I cannot understand that much of kajkavski nor akavski, but I can understand more akavski than I can kajkavski. How much Slovene can your average Chakavian speaker understand? Robert Lindsay. She introduces her and her two friends from the Czech republic and Spain, Because she speaks very clearly and slowly, I understand everything between 0:25-0:32, but then she starts a fast flood of words and between 0:32-0:36 I basically hear only s. Polish lacks full intelligibility of Silesian, although this is controversial (see below). Get 70% off + 10 languages + 14 day free trial. In this week's Slavic languages comparison, we talk about animals in Polish and Ukrainian. Most of the Ukrainian speakers who do not speak Russian are in Canada at the moment. True MI testing does try to find virgin ears that have heard little of the other language and speak little or none of it. Because of all of this, tokavian speaker has a hard time understanding fast talking akavian speakers. Because they use different alphabets, German and Yiddish are only mutually intelligible when spoken. 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. This is simply reality in Serbia today. All Rights Reserved. Slovenian while it sounds slavic to me is not intelligible at all save for a few words here and there. Czech and Slovak are simply dialects of this one tongue. Crazy! Russian 20 % spoken, 30 % written Russian has high intelligibility of Belarussian, on the order of 75%. In fact, I cannot often identify any words at all. Im pretty sure things are identical in Belarus, if not worse afaik knowledge of Belarusian there is not too widespread in the first place. Many Ukrainian-speakers consider the language . According to Ethnologue, there are more than 7,000 languages in the world, with some being more difficult to learn than others. I can only speak from my personal experience (business trips to Czech Republic - Ostrava, Praha, Mlad Boleslav, Mikulov ). 4. Post 1991, g has returned. Hello Mr Lindsay, Usually, they can even write their theses in Slovak. Russian is also 85% mutually intelligible with Belarusian and Ukrainian in writing. Bulharsk jazyk je plurocentrick jazyk m nkolik kninch norem. As a native Russian speaker, I noticed that my understanding of Polish went from 20% to 70% in a matter of hours when watching a film in Polish with subtitles. Feb 22, 2020. Polish and Russian: are they similar or very different languages? However, Russian is only 74% mutually intelligible with spoken Belarusian and 50% mutually intelligible with spoken Ukrainian. Do you speak Ukrainian. 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. For me having learnt some Slavic languages and watching Bulgarian TV was not very difficult. possession is indicated most frequently using dative pronouns, unlike Serbians tendency to use possessive pronouns in greater frequency Its often said that Czechs and Poles can understand each other, but this is not so. The differences to me are like New England English versus English in the deep South versus Australian. Are Russian and Polish mutually intelligible? I see your point, and I agree: there must be a difference in method when determining linguistic intelligibility based on different populations. 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. Pannonian Rusyn is actually a part of Slovak, and Rusyn proper is really a part of Ukrainian. 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 Paul McGrane. (Jim Morrison). The intelligibility of Belarussian with both Ukrainian and Russian is a source of controversy. akavian differs from the other nearby Slavic lects spoken in the country due to the presence of many Italian words. Czech completely and utterly incomprehensible. In other cases, I had to rely on the context. That information is in error. I always aske her about whether she understands Bulgarian and Serbian and she claims Serbian is way closer to her language rather than Bulgarian. 5 (2): 135146. - Wikipedia 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. Polish Ukrainian Mutually Intelligible? Languages Comparison However, Bulgarians claim to be able to understand Serbo-Croatian better than the other way around. Saris Slovak has 85% intelligibility of Polish. Often the two languages are genetically related, and they are likely to be similar to each other in grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, or other features. Silesian, which can be heard in the southwest (sometimes also considered a separate language). A more updated version of this paper with working hyperlinks can be found on Academia.edu here. This list focuses on common languages widely thought to be at least partially and mutually intelligible. I got that figure from a Serb. Vedle hlavn, pouvan v Bulharsku, existuje jet makedonsk norma, kter tak (?) Croatian language doesnt exists. Have every heard of Dubrovnik dialect? Required fields are marked *. Robert Lindsay, Independent Journalist: l Talk about Things You're Not Supposed to Talk About. Western Ukraine, at least urban Western Ukraine, no longer speaks the Galician dialect but rather standard Ukrainian. I have friends from Bulgaria and I can tell you that they have problems by understanding some things. Was he from Belgrade or Novi Sad or Nis? Nevertheless, most Bulgarians over the age of 30-35 understand Russian well since studying Russian was mandatory under Communism. So I understand Kajkavians and Slovenes except for a germanic package. I think Robert has done articles on 9/11 conspiracy theories and their level of crediblity, yeah. 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. Both me and her had a much easier time following the Rusyn dialects than standard Ukrainian (although they were by no means completely comprehensible). Its predecessor stage is known in Western academia as Ruthenian (14th to 17th centuries), in turn descended from what is referred to in modern linguistics as Old East Slavic (10th to 13th centuries). Russia Invades Ukraine pt XII | TideFans.com Or when I heard the word pobrzajte (hurry up (plural)) it was very interesting to me. Nice article, but I think there is a difference between spoken mutual intelligibility and different languages. The problem is that most linguists are not interested in scientific intelligibility testing of language pairs. In the case of transparently cognate languages officially recognized as distinct such as Spanish and Italian, mutual intelligibility is in principle and in practice not binary (simply yes or no), but occurs in varying degrees, subject to numerous variables specific to individual speakers in the context of the communication. Ukranian: 20% Mitja Slane on Twitter: "@NOELreports How do they speak? Ukrainian is Same question, how much Chakavian can your average Shtokavian speaker understand in percentage? I do hope that you understand the point. wovel a shifts to o not shits hahhaha sorry. It has a very high degree of mutual intelligibility with Galician (spoken in Northwestern Spain), which is a language thats sort of a cross between Portuguese and Spanish. There is much nonsense said about the mutual intelligibility of the various languages in the Slavic family. plenty of prepositions are used in a similar, if not identical, manner; to name an example, na is used in both Macedonian and Ni Torlak as a replacement for the Serbian genitive, in addition to its standard use as on(to) Ukrainians and Belarusians understand each other's languages with no problem. There are distinct regional variations of Arabic. 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 . A Serbian native speaker felt that the percentages for South Slavic seemed to be accurate. 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. It was probably in the same ballpark as Polish for me. Finally, I think the Ukrainians' mentality if more Polish, while the Russian mentality is more fourteenth century Mongol. 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. Slovenian speakers find it hard to understand most of the other Yugoslav lects except for Kajkavian Croatian. In this week's Slavic languages comparison we talk about animals in Polish and Ukrainian. Are Ukrainians and Belarusians mutually intelligible? - Quora [5][6] In a similar vein, some claim that mutual intelligibility is, ideally at least, the primary criterion separating languages from dialects.[7]. I think that this article is full of dubious numbers, but this is not necessarily the authors fault. 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 . In terms 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. Toj e oficialnijat ezik na Republika Balgarija i edin iz 23-te oficialni ezika na Evropejskija sajuz. Slovenians, Macedonians and Bulgars used to be one nation called Sklaveni and they were living in the south Hungary. I also understand more of other Slavic languages then neotokavian speakers do. Other Western Slovak speakers (Bratislava) say that Eastern Slovak (Kosice) is hard to understand. This implies that some of the high intelligibility between Slovak and Polish may be due to bilingual learning on the part of Slovaks. 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. The higher the linguistic distance, the lower the mutual intelligibility. 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. 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. Czechs claim only 10-15% intelligibility of Polish. The intelligibility of Polish and Russian is very low, on the order of 5-10%. I will also send you a copy so you can look over the Serbo-Croatian part and tell me if there are any errors. How many English speakers know Serbo-Croatian? So, i've been interested about how much Polish speakers can understand Ukrainian without learning the language, but, most results i found said it's not really mutually intelligible, despite sharing alot or some words. It is not that hard. For majority of the Shtokavian speakers thats just another language: different grammar, vocabulary, pronunciations, even sounds (Kai has at least 9 vowels while Shto Croatian only 5 for example). Nice to meet you, Robert; Ill make sure to read more of your articles now! The key problem of Bulgarian is the different gramar the lack of declination and the use of postpositive articles. Is Bulgarian Similar to Russian? A Side-by-Side Comparison Is there any way you could give me percentage figures for these observations of your wifes? Re: Rus/Ukr However, in terms of vocabulary Ukrainian is closer to Polish, from which it has borrowed a large number of words. Then she talks about the cards in the bags, I again understand everything, but at 0:47, another stream of unintelligible sounds is starting. Russians, they usually need some adaptation time (and of course they need to be willing to try -- which is not always the case, since many Russians are monolingual and . Good post, OP. What Languages Are Mutually Intelligible With Serbian? My gues. This term is similar to linguistic distance in that it can reflect how similar or different languages are. Slovenian: 20% BULGARIAN (transferred to the Latin script): algarskijat ezik e indoevropejski ezik ot grupata na junoslavjanskite ezici. 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. 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. Apart lack of understandability there are phrases that could be ill understood with famous Polish I am looking for the broom They have more in common than you might think! There can be various reasons for this. PS More than half of Slovenian seems to be closely related to Kaikavian and Chakavian Croatian (and probably Old Shtokavian which is almost extinct). Is Ukrainian mutually intelligible with Polish? Mutual intelligibility is highly subjective. Now onto the discussion. The dialects of Ukrainian do not differ extensively from one another and are all mutually intelligible. There is just a little problem to understand east Slovaks for Czechs from naywhere. Can a Russian speaker understand Polish? Although even if they stuck to Polish/Ukrainian, they'd probably still understand each other. Clearly it WAS the Illuminati at workI guess the planes were flown by shapeshifting lizards, toooh, come to think of it, isnt George Bush Junior a lizard, too! Italian is partially mutually intelligible with French, Catalan, Sardinian, Spanish, Ladin and Romanian. 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 "". With Lonely Planet's Ukrainian Phrasebook, let no barriers . There is much nonsense floating around about Serbo-Croatian or Shtokavian. What Are Mutually Intelligible Languages? However, Balachka is dying out and is now spoken only by a few old people. Most Macedonians already are able to speak Serbo-Croatian well. I must admit that knowing English, German and French also helped me since Polish readily uses borrowings from these languages where Russian prefers Slavic words. Young czechs and slovaks communicate on internet on daily basis and they understand each other just perfectly. Even the basic words are almost the same. 2. Slovak students do not have to pass a language test at Czech universities. Some comments on Ukrainian: Amazon and the Amazon logo are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc, or its affiliates. I can easily translate the first two sentences: Bulgarian is the oldest documented Slavic language. But other results that included Czech and Bulgarian were very poor. Jeff Lindsay estimates that Russian has 85% intelligibility with Rusyn (which has a small number of speakers in Central and Eastern Europe). Czech-Slovak languages - Wikipedia