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Czech & Russian - similarities? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| arkady Bilingual Diglot Groupie United States rightconditi Joined 5398 days ago 54 posts - 61 votes  Speaks: English*, Russian* Studies: German | Message 9 of 13 10 March 2010 at 4:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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That is a fascinating comparison Delodephius. As a native Russian speaker I was always frustrated by my inability to understand any other slavic language. Mind you the frustration was especially exacerbated because the sounds are very inviting and create a sense of understanding while in reality no such understanding exists. Edited by arkady on 10 March 2010 at 4:00pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Delodephius Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Yugoslavia Joined 5401 days ago 342 posts - 501 votes Speaks: Slovak*, Serbo-Croatian*, EnglishC1, Czech Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 10 of 13 11 March 2010 at 4:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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I had a totally different experience. Maybe because I'm a bilingual Slavic speaker or maybe because of the Slavic languages I speak are more "open" to other Slavic languages. My problem with other Slavic languages has always been false friends and different syntax. For example Russian doesn't use the verb 'to be' so often or at all in most cases and sometimes I can't understand the meaning of a Russian sentence simply because the lack of this one word. It is almost as a topic marker in my native language. :-)
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| arkady Bilingual Diglot Groupie United States rightconditi Joined 5398 days ago 54 posts - 61 votes Speaks: English*, Russian* Studies: German | Message 11 of 13 12 March 2010 at 8:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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What you are saying makes perfect sense, I had a Ukranian friend in college and he told me I should tune into some Ukranian news broadcasts. I was reluctant and told him I really don't understand the language, but he assured me I would have no problem and maintained that they are similar enough. His primarily language was Russian, but I believe he spoke Ukranian reasonably well.
Anyway, I followed his advice and realized that I understood nothing. Hell, I couldn't even extract the general meaning of the sentence let alone the topic. He was completely and utterly puzzled by my lack of understanding, he felt there should have been no problem. So I am either stupid or Russians do not understand other Slavic languages, while other Slavic languages understand Russian. It simply has to be or I am just stupid ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Delodephius Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Yugoslavia Joined 5401 days ago 342 posts - 501 votes Speaks: Slovak*, Serbo-Croatian*, EnglishC1, Czech Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 12 of 13 12 March 2010 at 10:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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Russian language has this one "problem" we other Slavs see and that is the "swallowing" of vowels. Russian is full of semi-vowels, only the accented vowel is clearly pronounced. Imagine how Russian would sound if you pronounced every vowel as if it was under accent. It would sound like every other Slavic language.
Grammar is not such a big deal. Macedonian and Bulgarian don't have cases but they have little problem understanding other Slavic languages. I personally don't understand spoken Russian, at least not if it is spoken at a regular pace. If you would speak slowly I would understand you without a problem. I for example can't follow Czech radio speakers because it is too fast for me. Maybe it is my dialect (which is spoken quite slowly, lazily). But I understand written Czech 99%. So I think you are no more stupid than the rest of us. Understanding a related language to your own also requires a great deal of understanding and openness to differences. At least I know people who tried listening to a related language and just after few sentences gave up, but once I noted to them the differences and explained to them why the two languages are different they realized they actually understand the language; at first they were simply blinded by their lingua-centrism I guess. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| anole Diglot Newbie Czech Republic Joined 5369 days ago 10 posts - 14 votes Speaks: Czech*, English Studies: French, Latin | Message 13 of 13 12 March 2010 at 11:52pm | IP Logged | ||
You're right... these languages are very similar, I speak Czech and it's a piece of cake to understand Russian, although it's written really differently. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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