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Shared Vocabulary in Slavic Languages?

 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room Post Reply
34 messages over 5 pages: 1 24 5  Next >>
liddytime
Pentaglot
Senior Member
United States
mainlymagyar.wordpre
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Speaks: English*, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Galician
Studies: Hungarian, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Norwegian, Persian, Arabic (Written)

 
 Message 17 of 34
23 July 2012 at 2:18am | IP Logged 
Thanks Chung! That table is a big help. That is along the lines of what I was looking for.

a3 wrote:
I had a few months ago a few lectures in Russian. I had read parts of books and internet articles
before, but never dealt with spoken language. At first it was hardly understandable, but after 30 mins or so, I was
understanding most of it. And I always thought the mutual intelligibility was a myth. (This is turning into mutual
intelligibility thread anyway.)
   

Very interesting. How did you get by with the case endings? Did your ear get used to them after a while? This is
somewhat inspiring to me because I was hoping to tackle Bulgarian at some point. It is nice to know my Russian
will give me a least a little "discount" towards Bulgarian.

a3 wrote:
I think he's talking about the vowel reduction. Traditionally, a half of the Bulgarian dialects at most
have any reduction, namely the eastern ones. The more further east you go, the strong the reduction becomes.
However the trend is the vowel reduction to spread westwards.

Still, odds are a speaker from a western part of the country will pronounce clear and unreduced vowels. The
transition between vowel reduction areas and the ones without any is smooth, there is no border.


Which would you say is considered more "standard" Bulgarian; the Western or the Eastern variety?

(I know... this thread has veered off course into the " mutual intelligibility" realm... but that's OK, I had a feeling it
might!)
2 persons have voted this message useful



Einarr
Tetraglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
einarrslanguagelog.w
Joined 4618 days ago

118 posts - 269 votes 
Speaks: English, Bulgarian*, French, Russian
Studies: Swedish

 
 Message 18 of 34
23 July 2012 at 9:00am | IP Logged 
liddytime wrote:


a3 wrote:
I think he's talking about the vowel reduction. Traditionally, a half of the Bulgarian dialects at most
have any reduction, namely the eastern ones. The more further east you go, the strong the reduction becomes.
However the trend is the vowel reduction to spread westwards.

Still, odds are a speaker from a western part of the country will pronounce clear and unreduced vowels. The
transition between vowel reduction areas and the ones without any is smooth, there is no border.


Which would you say is considered more "standard" Bulgarian; the Western or the Eastern variety?

(I know... this thread has veered off course into the " mutual intelligibility" realm... but that's OK, I had a feeling it
might!)


Bulgaria certainly isn't like Norway language - wise. Meaning that we do have quite a lot accents for such a small country as well, yet, you will(almost) never hear an accent different than the standard one on the news for instance. By saying the standard one, I refer to the one spoken in Sofia, and mostly in Western Bulgaria.

Now that many people from other cities massively migrate to Sofia, chances are that you'll be hearing enough of every other accent of the country. For instance, at work, most of my colleagues aren't from Western Bulgaria, therefore quite a lot of accents are present. I must admit that some are even, well let's say fancy even for me, considering that I'm a person that likes observing and digging into different accents.

Now, if a foreigner wants to learn Bulgarian, they will most likely, be taught the Western accent. Yet if they want to experiment with other accents, the vast majority will probably like to visit Plovdiv, Varna, Rousse and Smolian. I think that even the non-trained ear will notice the difference (most overwhelmingly in Rousse). Bear in mind that there's a part of Western Bulgaria, where the town of Tran is positioned, where they speak Bulgarian, that is very difficult to understand by the natives as well, so if you're a "language extremist" :), you might fancy paying a visit there.
   
In conclusion, if I have to generalize, the Western accent sounds way harder, while the Easter you go the sound of the language would normally sound softer.
2 persons have voted this message useful



prz_
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Poland
last.fm/user/prz_rul
Joined 4864 days ago

890 posts - 1190 votes 
Speaks: Polish*, English, Bulgarian, Croatian
Studies: Slovenian, Macedonian, Persian, Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian, Dutch, Swedish, German, Italian, Armenian, Kurdish

 
 Message 19 of 34
23 July 2012 at 9:37am | IP Logged 
@a3 - Don't you exaggerate this? Well, you're Bulgarian, so maybe you're right, but am I
wrong thinking that the one only one really important reduction is това --> тува?
Btw., I wish I heard Bulgarian from Romania with its specific pronunciation and word
formation :)
2 persons have voted this message useful



a3
Triglot
Senior Member
Bulgaria
Joined 5261 days ago

273 posts - 370 votes 
Speaks: Bulgarian*, English, Russian
Studies: Portuguese, German, Italian, Spanish, Norwegian, Finnish

 
 Message 20 of 34
23 July 2012 at 11:13am | IP Logged 
liddytime wrote:
Thanks Chung! That table is a big help. That is along the lines of what I was looking for.

a3 wrote:
I had a few months ago a few lectures in Russian. I had read parts of books and internet articles
before, but never dealt with spoken language. At first it was hardly understandable, but after 30 mins or so, I was
understanding most of it. And I always thought the mutual intelligibility was a myth. (This is turning into mutual
intelligibility thread anyway.)
   

Very interesting. How did you get by with the case endings? Did your ear get used to them after a while? This is
somewhat inspiring to me because I was hoping to tackle Bulgarian at some point. It is nice to know my Russian
will give me a least a little "discount" towards Bulgarian.

a3 wrote:
I think he's talking about the vowel reduction. Traditionally, a half of the Bulgarian dialects at most
have any reduction, namely the eastern ones. The more further east you go, the strong the reduction becomes.
However the trend is the vowel reduction to spread westwards.

Still, odds are a speaker from a western part of the country will pronounce clear and unreduced vowels. The
transition between vowel reduction areas and the ones without any is smooth, there is no border.


Which would you say is considered more "standard" Bulgarian; the Western or the Eastern variety?

(I know... this thread has veered off course into the " mutual intelligibility" realm... but that's OK, I had a feeling it
might!)

You don't really need case endings to get the meaning when you have a lot of words linked in a meaningful text. Just see by yourself:
Quote:
How did you get by the case endings? Did your ear get used them after a while? This is
somewhat inspiring me because I was hoping to tackle Bulgarian some point. It is nice to know my Russian
will give me a least a little "discount" towards Bulgarian.
This example isn't a perfect analogue, since English relies less on prepositions than Russian on endings (as far as I know), but still you get the idea. In fact the accent was a bigger problem.

I'd have to disagree with Einarr - in my opinion the unoficial norm is to speak with a somewhat moderate vowel reduction, but that's may be because I'm from central Bulgaria, when we speak with moderate to strong reduction and I'm used to hear it when used. In the cases when I listen to radio and TV, again I hear at least some reduction, depending on the speaker.

Quote:
@a3 - Don't you exaggerate this? Well, you're Bulgarian, so maybe you're right, but am I
wrong thinking that the one only one really important reduction is това --> тува?
Btw., I wish I heard Bulgarian from Romania with its specific pronunciation and word
formation :)

That's may be because you have listened to somebody who used reduction only in this word. Depending on who are you listening to, there may be no reduction at all, a very strong reduction, or anything in between.

Here you can find some TV shows in the Banat dialect, as well as the newspaper Náša glás. Be aware though, this dialect is somewhat difficult even to me as a native speaker to understand.
3 persons have voted this message useful



prz_
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Poland
last.fm/user/prz_rul
Joined 4864 days ago

890 posts - 1190 votes 
Speaks: Polish*, English, Bulgarian, Croatian
Studies: Slovenian, Macedonian, Persian, Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian, Dutch, Swedish, German, Italian, Armenian, Kurdish

 
 Message 21 of 34
23 July 2012 at 2:57pm | IP Logged 
А3, благодаря. И не мислях само за тази дума, но за всичките редукции с о --> у
(for others to feel comfortable: A3, thank you. And I haven't thought only about this
word, but about every reductions of o into u)
2 persons have voted this message useful



Kartof
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5071 days ago

391 posts - 550 votes 
Speaks: English*, Bulgarian*, Spanish
Studies: Danish

 
 Message 22 of 34
27 July 2012 at 8:34pm | IP Logged 
The most important reductions are the "a" to "ъ" and the "o" to "y" reductions, both of
which are pretty much mandatory in the common language. The "e" to "и" reduction is only
common in Eastern dialects, but that's well over half the territory of Bulgaria and at
least half the population so I'd consider that important too. I speak an Eastern dialect
and I rarely notice when someone reduces or doesn't reduce their vowels; the yat boundary
is much more noticeable in differentiating dialects along regional lines.
1 person has voted this message useful



prz_
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Poland
last.fm/user/prz_rul
Joined 4864 days ago

890 posts - 1190 votes 
Speaks: Polish*, English, Bulgarian, Croatian
Studies: Slovenian, Macedonian, Persian, Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian, Dutch, Swedish, German, Italian, Armenian, Kurdish

 
 Message 23 of 34
28 July 2012 at 4:01pm | IP Logged 
Kartof wrote:
"a" to "ъ"

Oh, right, but it's already so natural for me that I forget about it :D
2 persons have voted this message useful



Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6602 days ago

9753 posts - 15779 votes 
4 sounds
Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
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 Message 24 of 34
28 July 2012 at 5:44pm | IP Logged 
I used to think the Bulgarian name for the country is pronounced Blgarija with a syllabic L :DDD

Edited by Serpent on 28 July 2012 at 5:46pm



1 person has voted this message useful



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