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"Easy" Slavic Language? | ||
Tags: Easiness | Slavic Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| XRomaXAntiguaX Newbie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5902 days ago 11 posts - 11 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Russian | Message 1 of 44 28 September 2008 at 9:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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What would be an "easy" slavic language to learn? By easy I mean "not THAT complicated" noun declension, or are there any that don't have any noun declensions at all? Edited by XRomaXAntiguaX on 28 September 2008 at 11:13pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Alkeides Senior Member Bhutan Joined 6146 days ago 636 posts - 644 votes  | Message 2 of 44 28 September 2008 at 11:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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Bulgarian and Macedonian have no declensions AFAIK. On the other hand I've heard that their verbal aspect system is fairly complex.
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| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7154 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 3 of 44 29 September 2008 at 9:23am | IP Logged | ||
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Well, almost none. There are traces of the old declensional patterns when using some pronouns in Bulgarian and Macedonian.
Using verbs in those languages is a different story indeed. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6437 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 5 of 44 29 September 2008 at 12:36pm | IP Logged | ||
Polish is tricky (5 noun genders, 3 of which are for various masculines, and aspect), but I'd say Russian is harder. Russian seems to use affixes more, and its stress-based vowel reduction combined with very mobile stress is something happily lacking in Polish. I don't think there's such a thing as an 'easy' first Slavic language. The ones that (mainly) eliminate noun declension have their own complications. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6270 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 6 of 44 29 September 2008 at 2:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have heard that Bulgarian and Macedonian do not have the complex declensions of other Slav languages but as has been noted above, they have other difficulties (I have only studied Russian and Polish so I don't know for certain about B and M).
I don't think there is an "easy" Slavic language, unless your L1 happens to be another Slavonic language, in which case you will have advantages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| skeeterses Senior Member United States angelfire.com/games5Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6616 days ago 302 posts - 356 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: Korean, Spanish | Message 7 of 44 29 September 2008 at 7:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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A better question might be which Slavic language to learn. If you learn Russian, you'll have an easier time finding
someone to practice speaking with. I haven't read any of Barry Farber's books but I heard that Russian was one of his first languages and that helped him learn some other Slavic languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6437 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 8 of 44 30 September 2008 at 2:35am | IP Logged | ||
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Probably the 'easiest' first Slavic language would be Russian: not because it's grammatically the most easy, or the easiest to pronounce, but because it's the largest. As skeeterses says, there are more people to practice with - and, beyond that, there are far more resources for learning Russian (and quite a lot more content in Russian, both original and translated) than you'll find for other Slavic languages. It's also relatively homogeneous, with relatively minor dialects, unlike BCS or Polish.
Finding Bulgarian audiobooks is like pulling teeth. I have no idea how many tens or hundreds of thousands of audiobooks Russian has, but it's a lot. Large bookstores outside of Russia generally don't have books in any Slavic language - but when they do, Russian is the most common by far, in my experience. Etc. Similarly, I'm not familiar with any equivalent of the "Princeton Russian" course for other Slavic languages; people seem to find it quite good. There's also a Michel Thomas course for Russian (though it has some serious flaws, such as the instructor telling the students their pronunciation is correct when they stress the wrong syllable); to the best of my knowledge, this is the only Slavic language MT covers. Finally, it's the most useful; it's more likely a random speaker of a Slavic language will be able to understand Russian (even if it's not their native language) than another specific Slavic language, though this is far from guaranteed. That said, I prefer Polish. 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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