|
 |
What is the Easiest Slavic Language? | ||
Tags: Easiness | Slavic Languages | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5054 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes  Speaks: Russian* | Message 25 of 40 26 June 2011 at 12:22am | IP Logged | |||||
Palatalization is developed very deeply in Russian."с", "р", "т", "д" are just palatalized without changing the sound itself (like Polish "s" - "sh"), "к", "г", "х" can also be palatalized. There are much more soft consonants in real Russian speech. They can appear in all the positions including word final. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cabaire Senior Member Germany Joined 5597 days ago 725 posts - 1352 votes | Message 26 of 40 26 June 2011 at 1:29am | IP Logged | |||||
I have never thought of it that a minimal pair like мат (profanity) and мать (mother) would be phonotactically impossible in Polish. You would need something like ṕ, ĺ, i.d. accented consonants in the way of ń or ź to convery such pronunciations in word final positions, because you lack a soft sign. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5054 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 27 of 40 26 June 2011 at 1:55am | IP Logged | |||||
|
From wikipedia Polish Phonology:
"There exist also some phonological descriptions of Polish which distinguish between "hard" labials m /m/, b /b/, p /p/, w /v/, f /f/ and "soft" labials m(i) /mʲ/, b(i) /bʲ/, p(i) /pʲ/, w(i) /vʲ/, f(i) /fʲ/. This softness (palatalization) is hardly heard before /i/ and absent in the syllable coda (unlike in Russian)." "r" can be palatalized in Russian Soft "s" in Polish is like "щ", "z" - "жь", "t" - "ч", "d" - "джь"" In Russian consonants are usually palatalized before "e", which results in big amount of palatalized consonants in Russian. Edited by Марк on 26 June 2011 at 2:03am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| FokkerTISM Newbie Australia Joined 4514 days ago 5 posts - 5 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Macedonian | Message 28 of 40 26 September 2012 at 10:55am | IP Logged | |||||
|
If you know at least one Romance language, then Bulgarian or Macedonian would be easy. Serbian is the South Slavic language most similar to Russian, so if you want to learn Russian but find it too hard, learn Serbian then progress to Russian when you feel ready.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4666 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 29 of 40 26 September 2012 at 5:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
Macedonian and SerboCroatian are the easiest.
Serbocroatian has 7 cases, but one is non case (nominative), two cases are the same, and vocative is not used much, this leaves you with Nominative + 4 non Nominative forms. let's say the female name: Marina Nominative (subject)/Vocative: Marina (Marina je tu = Marina's here) Genitive: Marine (Bojim se Marine = I'm scared of Marina) Dative/Locative: Marini (Kupujem jagode Marini = I'm buying some strawberries to/for Marina) Accusative: Marinu (Ne volim Marinu = I don't love Marina) Instrumental: Marinom (S Marinom = With Marina) You can forget about the pitch accent. It's used mostly in Bosnia, Croatian newscasters are no longer required to master it. That's why SerboCroatian does not have the singing sound to it, common in Norwegian and Swedish (only in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and parts of Dalmatia, people still have the pitch accent, with raising and falling syllables, and singing qualities, in standard Croatian, the pitch accent is seen as informal and rural and it is avoided). In the 8th grade, we got a new teacher of Croatian (from Bosnia), and she gave as an accent test, since we all failed it, she didn't give us grades for this test, in Northern and Western Croatia, there is no pitch accent, only the dynamic accent (similar to English), and after 1990ies, this no-pitch accent has been more and more prevalent, because it's characteristic of speech of richer parts of Croatia. --- Even though it shares many characteristics with older dialects of Croatian, Slovenian must be one of the most difficult Slavic languages. I can understand both Slovenian and Macedonian with ease, but Slovenian requires much more concentration. Macedonian is said to be the most Romance of all Slavic languages, its vowels are clear and open, there are not many consonant clusters, the grammar is not difficult... --- You can also try Slovak, it's easier than Czech, mainly because the spoken language and the formal written language are pretty close (in Czech there's diglossia, the spoken language differs from the written language). As for Polish , it has much more consonantal clusters and the spelling is weird. Plus the nasalized vowels. Edited by Medulin on 26 September 2012 at 5:36pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4620 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 30 of 40 26 September 2012 at 5:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'm not really a fan of learning a bridging language before the target language. In my opinion, if you want to learn Russian you should go ahead and learn Russian. If you find it too difficult then you need to evaluate your learning strategy and/or question whether you are putting enough effort in. If the learning techniques are in need of an overhaul, then switching to another language will just lead to experiencing frustration in another language. If you aren't passionate about this language in the first place, then that can bring on disillusionment. English speakers tend to regard Slavic tongues as "difficult" because of the cases, a feature that English is very light on. Yet there must be parts of the English language that Slavic people find difficult to grasp...but many do successfully learn English. This whole "hardest language in the world" line of thinking is a dangerous road to go down. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4666 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 31 of 40 26 September 2012 at 5:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
I've heard some English speakers speaking decent Croatian.
All English speakers speaking Russian sounded very unRussian to my ear :( Russian is difficult even for speakers of Slavic languages. The pronunciation is very difficult, and there are many false friends ( for example PRAVDA means THE TRUTH in Russian, but THE JUSTICE in Croatian) Edited by Medulin on 26 September 2012 at 5:39pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5054 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 32 of 40 26 September 2012 at 6:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
Better: спички, курить, курица. Say any of these words to a Yugoslav... the reaction will be unpredictable. 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
