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Is Belarusian worth learning? | ||
Tags: Belarusian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Bbcatcher 08 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4423 days ago 130 posts - 154 votes  Speaks: English*, Latin Studies: Russian, Mandarin, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Serbo-Croatian, Hungarian | Message 9 of 22 09 May 2014 at 11:17pm | IP Logged | ||
I used to study it; and gave up due to lack of progression. Now that my Russian is a higher level I may go back to it after I get some progress in Ukrainian and Mandarin. Do you actively study the languages that are close to Russian, or just dabble? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4627 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 10 of 22 09 May 2014 at 11:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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Normally I would say that any language is very useful if you have a connection with or interest in the country
where it is spoken. But if it's true that the Belarussin people themselves speak mainly Russian, I guess it's a complication. 1 person has 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 Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 11 of 22 10 May 2014 at 12:03am | IP Logged | ||
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I study them through native content. Belarusian and Polish are part of my family heritage, but the first Slavic language I started learning was Ukrainian, simply because I found a book that used Ilya Frank's method. Later I used this method for Polish too, along with Listening-Reading, and I've also been to Poland twice. Croatian is very special for me but I have to rely on books and whatever audio I can find.
Also, Belarusian used to seem way too similar to Russian before I started Polish. It provided a new reference point. Right now my highest priority are Belarusian and Croatian. Edited by Serpent on 10 May 2014 at 12:04am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Luso Hexaglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 6066 days ago 819 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, French, EnglishC2, GermanB1, Italian, Spanish Studies: Sanskrit, Arabic (classical) | Message 12 of 22 10 May 2014 at 12:47am | IP Logged | ||
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Now that Serpent has answered the question (and others too), I'm going to make a tongue-in-cheek, slightly off-topic comment (part is way off-topic):
Globally this is the best place to ask the OP's question, but also the worst: - the best because someone must be learning it and will give you the pros and cons; - the worst because there's people here capable of learning anything, even if it's not a language of the real world (not the case here, though). It always brings to mind the comment from the The Big Bang Theory series "girls don't count Klingon". :P Edited by Luso on 10 May 2014 at 1:12am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4673 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 13 of 22 10 May 2014 at 5:04am | IP Logged | ||
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In the best case scenario, Belarusian is a language spoken at home, in informal situations, in rural parts of the country.
If you learn Belarusian and address a Belarus person in that language, they will respond you in Russian, because they: 1. don't speak Belorussian at all 2. they speak it only at home, so by using their home language, you're disrupting their privacy, with foreigners their prefer using the more ''formal'' language, and between Russian and Belarusian, that would be Russian. 
Learning Corsican in order to use it on Corsica, Welsh to use it in Wales, Galician to use it in Galicia, may not always be practical, since most people in cities cannot speak them, they are used mostly in rural parts of these territories. (This is different than the situation in Paraguay where > 95 % of people are bilingual and speak both Spanish and Guarani). Edited by Medulin on 10 May 2014 at 5:40am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5339 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 14 of 22 10 May 2014 at 5:46am | IP Logged | ||
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Argh!! Now you guys made me spend half an hour on Belarusian that I was supposed to have spent on
Russian. Well, it was worth it. I liked it. I recognised a lot from Polish and Ukrainian, and I really, really like that the Belarusians , unlike the Russians, actually do spell things the way it s pronounced :-) It is never a waste of time to learn a language. I have a friend who was given the opportunity to learn Ukrainian 25 years ago, after already being fluent in Russian. The Ukrainians he met thought it was the craziest thing they had ever heard, why bother with Ukrainian when you could just speak Russian? Well today he is on TV every second day because he is Norway's most prominent expert on Ukraine, and has a high level job. If you want to study Belarusian, go for it! The half hour I spent on Belarusian was spent on an English based web site. It only takes you through the very first words and sentences, so if you studied it before and know Russian you are already well beyond that, but I post it in case anyone else is interested. It is a start, and it is free. Good luck! Belarusian language site Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 10 May 2014 at 5:55am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 5135 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 15 of 22 10 May 2014 at 6:04am | IP Logged | ||
Thanks, Medulin, for posting this map (and many others elsewhere)! What intrigues me about this map is that there doesn't seem to be a clear geographical pattern. Russian is dominant along the Russian border, but there's also a strong Russian-speaking pocket in the far South-West of the country where Poland, Ukraine and Belarus meet. Is what we see here maybe a purely urban-rural divide in the sense that this map would align nicely with a map of urban vs. rural areas in Belarus? Or is something else going on? And if, as it seems, Belorussian is spoken in all regions of the country, what about the border regions of neighboring countries - are there Belorussian speaking minorities in Russia, Ukraine and maybe even Lithuania or Latvia? I know that there is a Belorussian minority along the Polish-Belarus border around Białystok. Edited by Bakunin on 10 May 2014 at 6:07am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cabaire Senior Member Germany Joined 5604 days ago 725 posts - 1352 votes | Message 16 of 22 10 May 2014 at 9:49am | IP Logged | ||
Well, that lies in the history. In the region of Brest lived mainly Jews and Poles. The former were killed, the latter fled west, so the emptied city was repopulated with people from the whole of Russia, who of course speak Russian. This is all due to the cataclysm of the peoples in WW2. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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