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Easiest Slavic Language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Paco Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 4278 days ago 145 posts - 251 votes  Speaks: Cantonese* | Message 9 of 25 18 June 2014 at 5:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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My two cents: Availability of resources is also a decisive factor, if you would like
to learn a language to proficiency, in determining difficulty of the real learning process, which perhaps is a more practical concern than that of the languages themselves. For instance, Russian resources no doubt come in larger quantities and possibly higher quality. Another thing you may consider is that if you would only learn 1 eventually, differences among individual Slavic languages may be less a concern. (I do not mean, of course, that the difference between this and a truly exotic East Asian language is negligible.) Any Slavic language is foreign enough to English speakers, so theoretical difficulty may be overridden by: possibility of immersion, good resources, and affinity. By the way, I would recommend the thread "Slavic Language Family Learning Sequence", which gives an overview on where to start and more. You can find it in Chung's brilliant post. Afterwards check out other posts by experienced Slavic language learners. EDITED: Thank you drygramul. Edited by Paco on 20 June 2014 at 8:59am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| drygramul Tetraglot Senior Member Italy Joined 4469 days ago 165 posts - 269 votes Speaks: Persian, Italian*, EnglishC2, GermanB2 Studies: French, Polish | Message 10 of 25 18 June 2014 at 6:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think you meant not negligible.
I agree. That's what makes Sorbian the hardest existing slavic language to learn. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5010 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 11 of 25 18 June 2014 at 6:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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The Czech diglossia is totally overrated. I mean it. The differences of various regional variants aren't much bigger (if at all) than various regional differences of French or Italian. There are a few regional words but not that many. And the grammar differences are basically matter of replacing a few endings in declinations and conjugations with other while keeping the same roots and rules. And large % of speakers speak nearly standard language.
Really, it is a myth that Czech is a language with important diglossia like Arabic. Czech has a few points that make it less difficult that it may seem at first: -words from other languages, most importantly Latin, German, French and recently English. The same applies to some extent to other Slavic languages but especially the Western Branch -the grammar is quite regular. I believe most Latin learners will find a lot of similarity in the logic behing the grammar. -it is written very phonetically. Compared to English, it is much easier to learn vocabulary as you can very early precisely tell how is each word writen from the sound of it and vice versa. Compared to Czech and other slavic languages, English looks like two separate languages merged together. But it is one of the middle sized languages of the group when it comes to number of speakers, amount of original culture and amount of material for learners. I would suggest anyone wishing to start a slavic language, who doesn't have a particular preference for one, to choose either Polish or Russian as those two have plenty of resources. Really, the overall difficulty of various slavic languages in other aspects is quite balanced in my opinion. They are all more difficult for an English native than the romance or Germanic ones but still far less difficult than the asian ones :-) 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4773 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 12 of 25 18 June 2014 at 7:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5010 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 13 of 25 18 June 2014 at 9:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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Exactly. What I was trying to say was: we have quite a lot of regional variance but not a diglossia.
Everyone uses the standard variant at school, everyone can speak it but we are lazy, just as everyone else, so we use our regional varieties instead. Sure, there are a few common differences between most spoken dialects and the standard Czech but not more than in other languages. Spoken French is different from the standard writen one but noone speaks about diglossia. Why? More people learn French so it is not covered with stupid myths that easily. Example: People from southern Moravia will use some words uncommon elsewhere. But their grammar is the same as the standard one. Exactly the same because it is has always been one of the traditional and backwards regions so the language hasn't changed much since the times of the standard variant. People from northern Moravia or Slezko will use standard language, even more standard than the southern Moravians. They just tend to speak faster, making the long vowels sound short. (A classical joke some of Czech learners here might enjoy: "A proč vy ostraváci mluvíte tak krátce?" "Neničaspičo") People from Prague will use different endings for some persons when it comes to verbs but we use pretty standard vocabulary. Everyone can understand each other and the differences are really small and minor in importance. Diglossia is a myth fed by people who don't speak Czech in my opinion. Or rather it is a usual phenomenon present in every language but easily magnified through the "oh, Czech is such an impossible language to learn" looking glass. Really, if Czech is a language with diglossia, so is French, Spanish and English. And I'm mentioning only language I've had the pleasure to listen to a lot. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Gollum87 Diglot Newbie Yugoslavia Joined 3938 days ago 31 posts - 46 votes Speaks: Serbian*, English Studies: Italian | Message 14 of 25 27 June 2014 at 9:18am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm a native Slavic language speaker, and I know Serbian is so difficult for people to
learn... I know people living for 10 or more years in Serbia, and they still have problems with grammar... The most difficult thing is our cases... 7 cases in singular, 7 in plural, for every noun and pronoun.. I believe that makes the biggest problem for foreign learners... So I guess it is easier to learn Macedonian or Bulgarian... Still, while Serbian and Croatian are very easy to read, while Eastern Slavic languages (like Russian) are not that easy to read and pronounce correctly (even for us who speak a Slavic language)... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jpazzz Groupie United States Joined 5046 days ago 54 posts - 76 votes Studies: Russian | Message 15 of 25 27 June 2014 at 10:23am | IP Logged | ||
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This thread continues to inform and intrigue me. Thank you all!
Cheers, John 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| fabriciocarraro Hexaglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Brazil russoparabrasileirosRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4716 days ago 989 posts - 1454 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishB2, Italian, Spanish, Russian, French Studies: Dutch, German, Japanese | Message 16 of 25 27 June 2014 at 5:05pm | IP Logged | ||
I know native Brazilians who also have many problems with Portuguese... 1 person has voted this message useful |
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