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Comparing the difficulty of Slavonic lang | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes  20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 9 of 23 12 August 2009 at 4:12pm | IP Logged | ||
If you were to consider more Eastern European languages, I'd then list Estonian as the hardest followed by Finnish and then Hungarian. The difficulties of Slavonic languages were nothing compared to what I got when learning Estonian (and this was even with my intermediate background in Hungarian). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 10 of 23 12 August 2009 at 4:20pm | IP Logged | ||
Russian vowel reduction is very hard to grasp for a foreigner and is tied to the fact that Russian spelling is less phonetic than it appears. Vowel reduction is often unmarked in writing unless you are reading a special textbook or a good dictionary. I found that mastering vowel reduction and the accent placement in Russian is very important since inflectional distinctions depend on accent placement/vowel reduction. Your comment on Belorussian spelling being slightly more regular alludes to it since my understanding is that Belorussian spelling somewhat reflects the effects of vowel reduction. Ukrainian is largely free of vowel reduction (I can only detect it with я) but still has that mobile stress (compare Ukrainian прошу "please!" [accent on the first syllable] and прошу "I ask" [accent on the last syllable]). The grammar of Eastern Slavonic languages seems equally difficult to me. They all use cases (although Ukrainian does use vocative while Russian doesn't), verbal aspect and elaborate schemes for verbs of motion. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 11 of 23 12 August 2009 at 4:47pm | IP Logged | ||
For sure if we consider quantity/quality of resources and size of the pool of native speakers and RSL (i.e. Russian as a Second Language) speakers, Russian suffers from an embarrassment of riches. Latvian and Lithuanian aren't Slavonic languages per se but Baltic as hombre gordo stated. However it is likely that Baltic and Slavonic languages derive from a Proto Balto-Slavonic language since the Baltic and Slavonic languages have many exclusive isoglosses which may be indicative of a common ancestor rather than a long period of language contact via coexistence. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| paparaciii Diglot Senior Member Latvia Joined 6337 days ago 204 posts - 223 votes Speaks: Latvian*, Russian Studies: English | Message 12 of 23 12 August 2009 at 6:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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But how come they are so distinct from other Slavonic languages if taking into account their long period of language contact via coexistence?
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| Reykjavik Triglot Newbie UkraineRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5588 days ago 15 posts - 19 votes Speaks: Ukrainian, Russian*, English Studies: Icelandic | Message 13 of 23 12 August 2009 at 6:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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But how come Romance languages are so distinct from other Germanic languages if taking into account their long
period of language contact via coexistence? :p 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 14 of 23 12 August 2009 at 6:54pm | IP Logged | ||
One idea that I got from a book on linguistics was that we started from Proto-Indo-European. From there we got Proto-Balto-Slavonic among other branches. Afterwards the Slavonic languages diverge from the Baltic ones. While the modern languages are noticeably distinct and the mutual intelligibility between Baltic and Slavonic languages is virtually nil, comparative linguists seem to have been able to find many more exclusive isoglosses (i.e. shared innovations) between Baltic and Slavonic languages but relatively few that pertain only to Baltic languages (i.e. those shared among Lithuanian, Latvian or Old Prussian at the exclusion of Slavonic languages). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Reykjavik Triglot Newbie UkraineRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5588 days ago 15 posts - 19 votes Speaks: Ukrainian, Russian*, English Studies: Icelandic | Message 15 of 23 12 August 2009 at 7:01pm | IP Logged | ||
For people not so versed in historic linguistics, mind you — the split occurred somewhere around 0AD, when Vulgata Latin didn't exist yet, even. It is a -really- long time. It was still the time of first-second-third emperor of Rome when Proto-Balts and Proto- Slavs started speaking different languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| polyphoniac Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5761 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Icelandic | Message 16 of 23 04 September 2009 at 7:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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If 1 A.D. is a good approximation of when the split occurred, then the rate of linguistic change since then is nothing short of amazing. Especially if one considers that 1 A.D. was only about 87 generations ago (the average interval between generations in my family tree appears to be about 23 years). The living members of many families span five generations, the coexistence of six is not unheard of. I remember my great-grandparents; their speech was not significantly different from mine. And counting back by multiples of five generations takes one back to 1 A.D. in only 17 or 18 hops. I can believe the change took place; that it did so remains counter-intuitive nonetheless.
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