The two languages are not mutually intelligible, and there are significant differences in grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. I would like to add an interesting fact Slovenian has very harsh dialects due to the historic separation of different regions. The results show that in most cases, a division between West and South Slavic languages does exist and that West . Personally, I must admit that Serbs from areas above Nis (cf. The Macedonian spoken near the Serbian border is heavily influenced by Serbo-Croatian and is quite a bit different from the Macedonian spoken towards the center of Macedonia. Polish and Ukrainian mutual intelligibility question. Polish ~ Kashubian . Spoken Bulgarian is very difficult to understand for other Slavs due to phonology and unique syllable stress. 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). adrian. The higher the linguistic distance, the lower the mutual intelligibility. The biggest Slavic language by far is Russian, which has 154 million native speakers and over 258 million speakers in total. How many English speakers know Serbo-Croatian? Despite a lot of commonality between the dialects, the differences between them are significant. My gues. Map; Russia's Periphery* Baltic States. In this case, too, however, while mutual intelligibility between speakers of the distant remnant languages may be greatly constrained, it is likely not at the zero level of completely unrelated languages. The Answer, and Examples for 8 World Languages. Sorry for my English, Im still learning itespecially right word order. Intelligibility is more than 90% = dialect, less than 90% = language. Regarding Polish and Russian there are many words with opposite meaning. The problem is that most linguists are not interested in scientific intelligibility testing of language pairs. Ukrainian and Belarusian are the closest languages, as together with Russian they form the East Slavic group of languages. Torlak Serbian is spoken in the south and southwest of Serbia and is transitional to Macedonian. Ukrainians needs to make small preparation to become able for listening comprehension of Polish. However, in recent years, there has also been quite a bit of bilingual learning. a person with Virgin ears from any where in the Czech republic and west and central Slovakia will understand each other fairly well. People who live in border regions have an advantage of speaking two languages and can easily comprehand other ones as well. Ja u da radim is more common to Serbian speakers but ja u raditi is officially more correct. Czechs claim only 10-15% intelligibility of Polish. Yet we speak of Kai/Cha as of Serbo-Croatian dialects, while Slovenian is totally foreign. There is as much Czech literature and media as Slovak literature and media in Slovakia, and many Slovaks study at Czech universities. It depends which dialect. "A New Methodology for Romance Classification". It may have been split from Polish for up to 800 years, where it underwent heavy German influence. Slovenians, Macedonians and Bulgars used to be one nation called Sklaveni and they were living in the south Hungary. Polish is a disgusting sounding language. We speak them too. 5. KajkavianCroatian, spoken in northwest Croatia and similar to Slovenian, is not intelligible with Standard Croatian. Not true about Czech / Slovak inteligibility. But when you see it, you are shocked that you can read it. I got that figure from a Serb. Ukrainian and Russian only have 60% lexical similarity. General Musharraf says that Sheikh, who orchestrated the abduction, was recruited by MI6 while he was studying at the London School of Economics and sent to the Balkans to take part in jihad operations there. 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. Interesting article The Chinese language, on the other hand, is comprised of a number of dialects that arent always mutually intelligible. BULGARIAN: Balgarskijat ezik e naj-rannijat pismeno dokumentiran slavjanski ezik. From the 1500s to 1900, a large corpus of Kajkavian literature was written. Serbo-Croatian intelligibility of Slovenian is 25-30%. I've ne. There are new scientific figures for Czech-Slovak, Czech-Serbo-Croatian and Czech-Bulgarian. Intelligibility data for Saris Slovak and Ukrainian is not known. For example, the varieties of Chinese are often considered a single language even though there is usually no mutual intelligibility between geographically separated varieties. However, many groups of languages are partly mutually intelligible, i.e. The Mutually Intelligible Languages of 8 Popular World Languages 1. French has a reasonable degree of lexical similarity with Italian,Sardinian, Romansh, Portuguese, Romanian and Spanish, making it partially mutually intelligible with these languages. You cannot simply separate the articles from the words during a regular conversation. The languages really split about 1,000 years ago, but written Slovak was based on written Czech, and there was a lot of interlingual communication. 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. Usually, they can even write their theses in Slovak. Most native speakers agree on MI. 1. Usually, theyre at least partially mutually intelligible with the main language they stem from. Northern Germanic languages spoken in Scandinavia form a dialect continuum where two furthermost dialects have almost no mutual intelligibility. (j/k) 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. I can easily translate the first two sentences: Bulgarian is the oldest documented Slavic language. She didnt have any problem following. Lets say a young Czech goes to Slovakia without prior exposure to Slovak. Belarusian is, in a sense, in between other slavic languages. Sets of similar languages are the result of shared origin, so knowing a little more about mutual intelligibility can help you understand their origin. 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. How can you mesure intelligibility by using one single person. Like rano i utro or kanapa dywan kawior. Macedonian I can understand better, and Im going to say that my comprehension of it used to lie somewhere between 90 and 95%, and Im going to cite 98% for my present knowledge theres a lot of technical vocabulary that takes a while to grasp, and a few words that I cant make sense of no matter how hard I try, but most of the differences are more marginal than between standard Serbian and Macedonian: The Russian language in the Ukraine has been declining recently mostly because since independence, the authorities have striven to make the new Ukrainian as far away from Russian as possible by adopting the Kharkiv Standard adopted in 1927 and jettisoning the 1932 Standard which brought Ukrainian more in line with Russian. Is there an agreed-upon standard? Can a Russian speaker understand Polish? 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. Therefore . What sort of Slav nation are you a part of my friend? This is a Chakavian-Slovenian transitional lect that is hard to categorize, but it is usually considered to be a Slovenian dialect. But despite similarities in grammar and vocabulary and almost identical alphabets, they differ sharply in many ways and are not mutually intelligible. Croatian-Shtokavian is only a dialect of Serbian language. The overall lexical similarity between Spanish and Portuguese is estimated to be 89%. Some reports say there is difficult intelligibility between Ekavian Chakavian in the north and Ikavian Chakavian in the far south, but speakers of Labin Ekavian in the far north say they can understand the Southeastern Istrian speech of the southern islands very well (Jembrigh 2014). Because of all of this, tokavian speaker has a hard time understanding fast talking akavian speakers. However, leaving aside Kajkavian speakers, Croatians have poor intelligibility of Slovenian. Toj e oficialnijat ezik na Republika Balgarija i edin iz 23-te oficialni ezika na Evropejskija sajuz. 1996 . This comment is fantastic! The claim for separate languages is based more on politics than on linguistic science. Its historical development consists of four main periods. But then it is difficult. Because mutual intelligibility comes in varying degrees, its hard to determine how much overlap there needs to be for something to be classified as such. . I have read a book from Fraenkel/Kramer I believe or something similar, which said (according to some empiry) that Macedonians were easily switching to Serbian in comparison to Slovenes who stuck to their language in the time of Yugoslavia. This is a political point, of course. In other respects I am happy to say I manage to keep my identity clear of any overt nationalist definitions At least not in general if so, it might depend on the school. Nevertheless, most Bulgarians over the age of 30-35 understand Russian well since studying Russian was mandatory under Communism. 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. It is rather controversial outside Linguistics, as you run into nationalists and other fools who emotionally distort things. In writing, German is also somewhat mutually intelligible with Dutch. 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. If, for example, one language is related to another but has simplified its grammar, the speakers of the original language may understand the simplified language, but less vice versa. Speaking of myself, after calculating everything, I can understand to specific degree Slovene, somewhat Slovak/Russian, Serbo-Croatian std without problems and also Macedonians. Thanks for clearing this up! Personal communication. But akavian being archaic it has old slavic package. But still Slovene and Dalmatian akavian speaker can talk if they stick to old slavic part of their respective languages. Linguistic distance is the relative degree of difference between languages or dialects. Chakavian and Kajkavian have high, but not full mutual intelligibility. So give these mutually intelligible languages a second look. Yes and if you could more than one listener, it would be great. About the mistakes This implies that some of the high intelligibility between Slovak and Polish may be due to bilingual learning on the part of Slovaks. 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. 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. The post-1991 reforms of the Ukrainian language were not an introduction of Polish or Western Ukrainian as some Russian nationalists (and non-nationalists, who believe them) claim, but rather a return to a standard adopted in Kharkiv in 1927. In my opinion Czech and Slovak mutual intelligibility is not heavily exaggerated but actually very underrated(or some opposite word of exagerated, sorry for my poor english). [2], Sign languages are not universal and are usually not mutually intelligible,[3] although there are also similarities among different sign languages. Congratulations on a brilliant article! I am a native Spanish speaker but my girlfriend is Macedonian. In other cases, I had to rely on the context. If I tell them few sentences (phrases) in Boyko dialect, then Russians wont be able to understand at all. Russian, the native language of 160 million people, including many . Accent is on last or penultimate syllable. Also cyrillic in Macedonian is almost as same as Serbian, but many Croats dont know or dont want to know cyrillic, and that makes Macedonian more different to them than to Serbs. He estimated that Belarusian and Ukrainian were at least 80% mutually intelligible, accents and dialect aside, and that Russian was far . 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. You are wrong about Slovenian and Croatian languages. With Lonely Planet's Ukrainian Phrasebook, let no barriers . Lach is a Czech-Polish transitional lect with a close relationship with Cieszyn Silesian. Russian is partially mutually intelligible with Ukrainian, Rusyn and Belarusian. Now onto the discussion. 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. In Ukrainian, one might say "I am waiting for you" ; however, there is no need for a conjunction in . 5 (2): 135146. I do hope that you understand the point. Sign languages are independent of spoken languages and follow their own paths of development. Another similar example would be varieties of Arabic, which additionally share a single prestige variety in Modern Standard Arabic. Im gonna estimate 40% for Bulgarian, cant really say what the difference between written and spoken Bulgarian would be for me. Much of the claimed intelligibility between Czech and Slovak was simply bilingual learning. Kajkavian has 82% intelligibility of Chakavian. 4. . Belarussian is nonetheless a separate language from both Ukrainian and Russian. 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. Is Ukrainian closer to Russian or Polish? Additionally, Norwegian assimilated a considerable amount of Danish vocabulary as well as traditional Danish expressions. In the case of Croatian and Slovene, the intelligibility is asymmetric, since Slovene participants could understand Croatian better than vice versa. In fact, many Macedonians are switching away from the Macedonian language towards Serbo-Croatian. Due to no prior exposure to Russian, I could not understand that language, other than a few words and expressions here and there. 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. The German influence is more prominent in the west; Polish influence is greater in the east. This debate occurred only in Croatian linguistic circles, and the public knows nothing about it (Jembrigh 2014). Or they will say, Well, that is about 70% our language. If it is a dialect, they will say, That is really still our language. A number of native speakers of various Slavic lects were interviewed about mutual intelligibility, language/dialect confusion, the state of their language, its history and so on. . uses the Cyrlic script, and a Banat norm, which uses the Latin script. Russian is also 85% mutually intelligible with Belarusian and Ukrainian in writing. [2], Because of the difficulty of imposing boundaries on a continuum, various counts of the Romance languages are given; in The Linguasphere register of the worlds languages and speech communities David Dalby lists 23 based on mutual intelligibility:[13]. Pretty accurate I think. Slobozhan Russian is very close to Ukrainian, closer to Ukrainian than it is to Russian, and Slobozhan Ukrainian is very close to Russian, closer to Russian than to Ukrainian. I always aske her about whether she understands Bulgarian and Serbian and she claims Serbian is way closer to her language rather than Bulgarian. 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. There is one factor they dont know about the internet. In this week's Slavic languages comparison, we talk about animals in Polish and Ukrainian. Russian on the other hand uses the Cyrillic alphabet. Mutual Intelligibility among the Slavic Languages by Robert Lindsay The mutual intelligibility (MI) of the languages of the Slavic family is an interesting topic because many are mutually intelligible to one degree or another. What language is this? Chakavian has 82% intelligibility of Kajkavian. . German is partially mutually intelligible with Yiddish and Dutch. Dont let the past politics fool you. This is not necessarily correct in terms of vocabulary, but you will find a lot in common in the grammatical rules . There is just a little problem to understand east Slovaks for Czechs from naywhere. But in the case of written Russian, you could elevate this number up to 70-80% quite easily. 1993. They sometimes say that youngsters do not but that is just a myth. This understanding can be in spoken or written communication. some things in this article are heavily exaggerated. Since the breakup, young Czechs and Slovaks understand each other worse since they have less contact with each other. Slovenians have a very hard time understanding Poles and Czechs and vice versa. I can only speak from my personal experience (business trips to Czech Republic - Ostrava, Praha, Mlad Boleslav, Mikulov ). However, the Torlak Serbians can understand Macedonian well, as this is a Serbo-Croatian dialect transitional to both languages. https://www.academia.edu/4080349/Mutual_Intelligibility_of_Languages_in_the_Slavic_Family Your email address will not be published. Yes, there are some words, which has Ukraine origins, but trust me that its not so hard to understand. NATO EU. If you're a foreign student, studying russian, it's unlikely you'd be able to understand Ukrainian at all. You would be amazed at how good peoples estimates of this sort of thing are though. 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. The Russian language doesn't have a sound for " ." Ukrainian is a mostly phonetic language. 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. Tunisian Arabic is also considered mutually intelligible with Maltese, particularly with regards to idiomatic expressions. Some say that West Palesian is actually a separate language, but the majority of Belarussian linguists say it is a dialect of Belarussian (Mezentseva 2014). Spanish is also partially mutually intelligible with Italian, Sardinian and French, with respective lexical similarities of 82%, 76% and 75%. Russia Invades Ukraine pt XII. Polish has 22% intelligibility of Silesian, 12% of Czech, 6% of Russian, and 5% of Bulgarian. Slovenian speakers find it hard to understand most of the other Yugoslav lects except for Kajkavian Croatian. & relat.)) The more German the Silesian dialect is, the harder it is for Poles to understand. It is true that Czech is more urban and less folk and many Slovaks study in Czech republic. Are Russian and Polish mutually intelligible? However, the Croatian macrolanguage has strange lects that Standard Croatian (tokavian) cannot understand. 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. 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. Upper Dnistrian is influenced by German and Polish. Vitebsk State University. One more thing is that Serbian has, for example, two versions of the future case, with da (that) and verb in some person form, 1st in this case: ja u da radim (I will work) and ja u raditi where raditi (to work) is an infinitive. When I was first exposed to spoken BCS, the most significant issue was their prosody, because the vocabulary and the grammar presented very little difficulty for me as a Ukrainian/Russian bilingual. Or as an English speaker, you might catch the gist of some Scots. In fact, some say the intelligibility between the two is near zero. A primary challenge to these positions is that speakers of closely related languages can often communicate with each other effectively if they choose to do so. To deal with the conflict in cases such as Arabic, Chinese and German, the term Dachsprache (a sociolinguistic "umbrella language") is sometimes seen: Chinese and German are languages in the sociolinguistic sense even though speakers of some varieties cannot understand each other without recourse to a standard or prestige form. And yes, comprehension has suffered since Czechoslovakia broke up, due to lack of exposure. Intelligibility between Balachka and Ukrainian is not known. Western Ukraine, at least urban Western Ukraine, no longer speaks the Galician dialect but rather standard Ukrainian. Serbs until recently where still self titled Yugoslavs. Many Silesian speakers now speak a watered down version of Silesian which is more properly seen as a Polish dialect with some Silesian words. In addition, the two groups have different cultural norms and values. Every major language has some dialects Also both sides are able to use standard Slovak. 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 . But despite similarities in grammar and vocabulary and almost identical alphabets, they differ sharply in many ways and are not mutually intelligible. I am not saying this to slam Ukrainians, but just an observation. If you speak Russian, it will be easier for you to understand other Slavic languages, which include Ukrainian, Belorussian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Bulgarian, Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, and Slovene. I see your point, and I agree: there must be a difference in method when determining linguistic intelligibility based on different populations. 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. A Slovenian person that has never lived in the east of the country understands only about 60 70 % of the dialect (Prekmurski dialect). Macedonian side, the situation is more complicated (i will explain later). Maybe its a lack of vocabulary, but I havent heard that word from someone personally yet.
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