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Mutual Intelligibility in Slavic Language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Delodephius Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Yugoslavia Joined 5394 days ago 342 posts - 501 votes  Speaks: Slovak*, Serbo-Croatian*, EnglishC1, Czech Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 49 of 63 27 March 2010 at 11:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
This is only true in written form. Maybe when the orthography was written in some dialects it was true also in spoken language, but I speak a very archaic form of Slovak and we have plenty of words which have two long syllables side by side. This is also true for proper spoken Slovak in Slovakia. I can't think of any examples at the moment, but I was thinking of making a list earlier and just ask people how would they pronounce it, to see if it was just my dialect or is it true for the Slovak language in general. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| VN Newbie Yugoslavia Joined 5239 days ago 9 posts - 14 votes Speaks: Serbian* | Message 50 of 63 18 July 2010 at 11:34am | IP Logged | |||||
In Serbian you can also say like in Croatian Могу јести стакло а да ме не боли Могу јести стакло и не боли ме In this case, there is no difference between Croatian and Serbian 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| aabram Pentaglot Senior Member Estonia Joined 5524 days ago 138 posts - 263 votes Speaks: Estonian*, English, Spanish, Russian, Finnish Studies: Mandarin, French | Message 51 of 63 07 August 2010 at 8:23am | IP Logged | |||||
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Interesting topic. I'd just like to add anecdotal evidence for mutual intelligibility.
Yesterday I picked up Slovak book from second hand bookstore. It was a small miracle in itself, considering that 99% second hand books foreign language books around here are either in English, German, Russian, Swedish or Finnish. Or Esperanto, for some inexplicable reason (yep, there were, for example, Moomin stories in Esperanto on sale). Anyway, that Slovak book is Figliar Pedro, Španielske rozprávky, some 280 page serious hardcover. I've had no previous exposure to slavic languages other than Russian which I read freely. I've kind of sniffed a little Czech back in days but I don't remember actively anything apart from words manželka (one of the cutest words ever devised) and mluvit. I browsed through the book in store and caught few words and phrases here and there that I could guess: zvieratá, odplata, kráľ, "ale neboj sa, nič sa ti nestane". It didn't seem that legible though. I still bought it, since it was mere 3€. At home I delved right into it and discovered to my delight that I can more or less follow the storyline. There was somebody who was obviously poor, had three daughters and a son, went into forest, run into lord of the forest and meadows (pán lesov a lúk), got caught, promised to bring his oldest daughter next day to service in return for stealing firewood, went home, was sad, etc. All this without actually knowing a thing about Slovak. I still miss some important details which leave holes in the picture, but it's a blast. It's like giant reverse crossword puzzle where the words are already there and I have to derive definition by cross-referencing them with all my knowledge. Great, great fun. 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| floydak Tetraglot Groupie Slovakia Joined 4845 days ago 60 posts - 85 votes Speaks: Slovak*, English, German, Spanish Studies: French | Message 52 of 63 12 August 2011 at 9:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Well, as a native slovak speaker I also might be able to contribute with something.
However I think, that Czech and Polish grammar are closer than Polish and Slovak grammar, some my polish friends told me they were better able to understand to spoken slovak than to spoken czech. But this also strongly depends on the region you are living in. Of course if you are living closer to the Czech border you would better understand czech language. Even if one might consider Slovak as a "bridge" language, it's not a magical thing like someone already mentioned. I'm not able to understand to spoken russian. Yeah, some words.. I recently came back from croatia. I could understand maybe.. 50%. But probably better than russian understanding. Anyway, written language is a bit easier to understand. I could catch the main polish ideas if spoken propper and slowly. It would be much easier to understand to the very same written text. I'm studying in Czech Republic, and it's true, that I'm speaking always slovak there. I could also write my diploma and bachelor thesis in my native language. I'm not sure about number of tenses in my language. I always thought it would be three. This plusquamperfekt (I know from German language) I'm not sure about it. When we were analysing sentences in my basic school, there were always only three options : past, present, future. However from time to time I use some construction like "Keby som to bol býval vedel" but it has the same meaning like "Keby som to býval vedel" even "Keby som to vedel" and even! "Keby som to bol vedel". Speaking to me you could use all these 4 sentences and I would consider them as equivalent however there might be some subtle grammar diferencies. Of course another truth is that I would be able to learn russian far more quicker than an English or German native. So there is some gain to virtualy all slavic languages being a slavic native. Well there are some disadvantages like I'm struggling for example with Spanish subjuntivo which does not exist in slavic languages or English "present perfect". Another thing is vocative. This case have languages like czech. I never was learned it in school but to some degree it exists in slovak language. At least in words "Pán" and "Šéf". Normally in slovak you use Nominative in situations you would use vocative in czech. But I think 2 words I mentioned are exceptions. You should use "Pane" and "Šéfe" like in czech language. well i hope this post can help to some people interested in slavic languages. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5000 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 53 of 63 16 August 2011 at 10:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It's a good post, floydak.
Actually, if the mentioned construction in slovak is called plusquamperfect than czech does have this option as well, even though it is nearly extinct among normal people."Kdybych to byl býval věděl, nebyl bych tam šel" or something like that. It is possible and it can be found in some old books but these days people usually say "Kdybych to věděl, nešel bych tam". I was taught about this "pluquamperfect" at school years ago, but it was not clasified as a separate tense (even though it seems it could be one). To the mutual inteligibility. It depends on many things, exposure being the most important. Another is the language and dialect of the speaker and mine as well. For exemple, I have no troubles understanding slovaks from western part of Slovakia but I need to focus more when speaking with people from the eastern part (but they seem to understand me without trouble. They say they have got quite a lot of exposure to Czech in television and literature, which is possible). Writen Slovak is understandable to me but with some rare tricky points in vocabulary (and when those come, my only way is to ask someone what does the word mean. I am quite unsure there is any writen czech-slovak dictionary). I can understand parts of Polish but far less than Slovak (there is quite a lot of czech jokes about Polish language). I can understand bits of spoken Ukrainian and Russian but not the writen since there's different alphabet. I have never tried understanding Bulgarian but it is said to be unintelligible. Perhaps near future might bring unexpected ties between Czech and Croatian since most czechs choosing a holiday destination by seaside go there. Briefly, Slavic languages are intelligible to some point. But I wouldn't overestimate it. I wouldn't even say they are more mutually intelligible than Romance languages. Their intelligibility is often limited even when it comes to native speakers so don't expect you'll study one and you'll automatically understand others well. Even if your first learnt Slavic language is Slovak, "the bridge". By the way, Chung, where did you get such awesome knowledge of Slavic languages? Or better question why did you choose this language family, if I may ask? And one more thing:
I don't think the correct czech translation is not the point here, perhaps you should read through the thread or the forums more carefully. Translations by Ayazid are correct."Pozor, policie varuje" means "Attention, police warns:" and it is followed by some advice like "pay attention to your personal belongings". And prdel means ass. Edited by Cavesa on 16 August 2011 at 10:56pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7147 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 54 of 63 17 August 2011 at 5:54am | IP Logged | |||||
Ďakujem pekne. Much reading about comparative Slavonic linguistics combined with study to varying degrees of several Slavonic languages over the past several years helped me to make my observations. I enjoy travelling to Eastern Europe and coming to grips with Slavonic languages has been a by-product of such travel. If for whatever reason I had travelled to China as much as I have to Eastern Europe, then I would have expected myself to have built substantial knowledge about the structure of several Sino-Tibetan languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6694 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 55 of 63 18 November 2011 at 1:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
In the excellent Anglophone quiz QI Stephen Fry has passed along the information that young virile men are called he equivalent of 'he-goat' in Albanian - however I haven't checked the information. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Vlad Trilingual Super Polyglot Senior Member Czechoslovakia foreverastudent.com Joined 6575 days ago 443 posts - 576 votes 2 sounds Speaks: Czech*, Slovak*, Hungarian*, Mandarin, EnglishC2, GermanC2, ItalianC1, Spanish, Russian, Polish, Serbian, French Studies: Persian, Taiwanese, Romanian, Portuguese | Message 56 of 63 18 November 2011 at 3:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Maybe this is a regional difference, but I use "keby som to bol byval vedel, tak by som tam nesiel" construction very often. I hear it around me quite often too.
Delodephius wrote an interesting thing though. A while ago I was wondering how intelligible or unintelligible Slovak and Czech were before the federation in 1918, because after having learned some Polish I feel like Polish is only slightly further away from Slovak than Czech is and that the fact that we can understand Czech better is only because we are used to the language. Delodephius on the other hand as a native speaker of Slovak says he has difficulties understanding Czech. He might be an exception, but I don’t think that is probable. Either way it is, I personally feel that the distance between Slovak and Polish and Slovak and Czech is only slightly greater and that the difference between all three of the languages is very small (compared to Russian for instance). Edit: The Russian translations of the Czech sentences are all wrong, except for vonavka and Pozor, policije varuje. That's a really good one:) Edited by Vlad on 18 November 2011 at 3:36pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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