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A Comparison of Slavic Languages

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rivere123
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4830 days ago

129 posts - 182 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: French

 
 Message 1 of 10
09 June 2012 at 2:55am | IP Logged 
I'm curious to know how similar exactly are the Slavic languages, using Western European languages as an example. Note: to refrain from a debate, perhaps we could leave out the languages of the former Yugoslavia.

Is Ukrainian to Russian what Portuguese is to Spanish?
Are Czech and Slovak like Norwegian and Swedish?
How far are Bulgarian and Belarusian from Russian?
Where does Polish stand in regards to all of the others?

Thanks.
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Марк
Senior Member
Russian Federation
Joined 5056 days ago

2096 posts - 2972 votes 
Speaks: Russian*

 
 Message 2 of 10
09 June 2012 at 10:20am | IP Logged 
rivere123 wrote:
I'm curious to know how similar exactly are the Slavic languages,
using Western European languages as an example. Note: to refrain from a debate, perhaps
we could leave out the languages of the former Yugoslavia.

Is Ukrainian to Russian what Portuguese is to Spanish?
Are Czech and Slovak like Norwegian and Swedish?
How far are Bulgarian and Belarusian from Russian?
Where does Polish stand in regards to all of the others?

Thanks.

They are all quite similar. They are devided into three groups: Eastern, western,
Southern. Russian and Belarussian are very close, Bulgarian is rather distant from
them. polish is a Western language (so are Czech and Slovak, which are very close)
About Ukrainian and Russian you are probably right.
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Chung
Diglot
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20 sounds
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 3 of 10
09 June 2012 at 10:55pm | IP Logged 
rivere123 wrote:
I'm curious to know how similar exactly are the Slavic languages, using Western European languages as an example. Note: to refrain from a debate, perhaps we could leave out the languages of the former Yugoslavia.

Is Ukrainian to Russian what Portuguese is to Spanish?
Are Czech and Slovak like Norwegian and Swedish?
How far are Bulgarian and Belarusian from Russian?
Where does Polish stand in regards to all of the others?

Thanks.


You can't really determine the degree of overall similarity here with exactitude but what you can more readily do is to come up with some qualtitative measure that's approximate and dependent on the judgement of relevant speakers. I gather also that you mean Romance and Germanic languages when referring to "Western European languages" to provide analogies.

Based on what I've observed:
- Ukrainian and Russian seem to diverge roughly as much as Portuguese and Spanish.
- Czech and Slovak diverge roughly as much as Norwegian and Swedish.
- Bulgarian differs substantially from Russian and they seem to diverge roughly as much as English and German
- Belorussian seems to diverges from Russian roughly as much as Galician and southern Portuguese
- Polish in Slavonic is a bit like Portuguese in Romance in that they're may be perceived as "oddballs" in the group (I've observed that Polish's diagraphs (e.g. cz, rz, sz, etc.) and nasal vowels sometimes give a strange first impression to other Slavs. Portuguese's nasal vowels and innovations/extension of the verb conjugations from Latin could similarly give a strange first impresson to people who know only other Romance languages).

I've seen only a few studies which try to quantify the similarity within Slavonic but I'm not a specialist in the field and so ain't in touch with comparative linguists who may well have done lots of studies.

Czech perception of Slovak
Czechoslovak inter-intelligibility
Contact between Czech and Slovak
Summary of lexicostatistcal analysis for other Slavonic languages from Slovak standpoint
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Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6597 days ago

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Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish

 
 Message 4 of 10
09 June 2012 at 11:49pm | IP Logged 
Chung wrote:
- Belorussian seems to diverges from Russian roughly as much as Galician and southern Portuguese
good comparison
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taqseem
Newbie
Switzerland
Joined 5694 days ago

34 posts - 47 votes
Studies: English

 
 Message 5 of 10
10 June 2012 at 12:52pm | IP Logged 
Chung wrote:

- Bulgarian differs substantially from Russian and they seem to diverge roughly as much as English and German


the comparison is a bit far-fetched. as a russian speaker i can understand nearly everything here

Bсички хора се раждат свободни и равни по достойнство и права. Tе са надарени с разум и съвест и
следва да се отнасят помежду си в дух на братство.


i doubt an average English speaker can get the gist of this

Alle Menschen sind frei und gleich an Würde und Rechten geboren. Sie sind mit Vernunft und Gewissen begabt
und sollen einander im Geist der Brüderlichkeit begegnen.

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Марк
Senior Member
Russian Federation
Joined 5056 days ago

2096 posts - 2972 votes 
Speaks: Russian*

 
 Message 6 of 10
10 June 2012 at 1:07pm | IP Logged 
taqseem wrote:
Chung wrote:

- Bulgarian differs substantially from Russian and they seem to diverge roughly as much
as English and German


the comparison is a bit far-fetched. as a russian speaker i can understand nearly
everything here

Bсички хора се раждат свободни и равни по достойнство и права. Tе са надарени с
разум и съвест и
следва да се отнасят помежду си в дух на братство.


i doubt an average English speaker can get the gist of this

Alle Menschen sind frei und gleich an Würde und Rechten geboren. Sie sind mit
Vernunft und Gewissen begabt
und sollen einander im Geist der Brüderlichkeit begegnen.

You are right. Russian and Bulgarian have much bigger lexical similarity than English
and German.
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Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6597 days ago

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Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish

 
 Message 7 of 10
10 June 2012 at 2:18pm | IP Logged 
More like German and Dutch, maybe? Also in terms of grammar...
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Chung
Diglot
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 Message 8 of 10
10 June 2012 at 6:14pm | IP Logged 
The vocabulary of Bulgarian and Russian are more similar to each other than the genetic division suggests because of the degree to which Old Church Slavonic (roughly "Old Bulgarian/Old Macedonian") affected the Russian recension of Church Slavonic, and then later on the degree to which Bulgarian codification drew on Russian vocabulary to affirm Bulgarian's "Slavonic credentials" (Pan-Slavism?). On the other hand, the two differ markedly in inflection with the two standing on nearly opposite ends in morphological typology - reminiscent of English and German. Bulgarian has retained and even elaborated the ancestral verb conjugations but lost nearly all declension and explicit case marking outside pronouns and developed less flexible word order. Russian has lost some of the ancestral verb conjugations, but retained nearly all declension and arguably expanded on it by having 2 locative cases, and been able to retain more flexible word order.

Remember that trying to pinpoint the degree of overall similarity as desired in the original post is pretty much impossible because it's rather fuzzy and for the case of Bulgarian and Russian has varied on who's saying it.

Perhaps this bit on Yahoo Answers can put it in better perspective than my one-liner. What I find interesting in this brief exchange is that a Russian asserts high mutual intelligibility while a Bulgarian asserts much lower mutual intelligibility. In addition there's a comment about Russian and Bulgarian differing as much as German and Swedish, which is interesting since it also refers ti the change in morphological typology (i.e. Bulgarian and Swedish are more analytic than Russian and German respectively).

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110810111827AAsY9Nt wrote:
constantinos m: Without one having learned the language of the other , do russian people understand more or less bulgarian and vice versa? I have noticed a great deal of words in russian is found also in bulgarian with the same or near-same meaning . Of course i have noticed that russian grammar is more complex , but is there some high degree of intelligibility between them ?
Having said that , are there any slavic people reading this able to attest the level of intelligibility between other slavic lungages ? For example i was surprised when a bulgarian was speaking with a serb each in their own language but they told me they made a lot of sence of one another because of the similarity of Bulgarian and serbian (to my ears there were some audible differences).

TeNGo RitmI seRrati in 20m²: Both languages Bulgarian and Russian have a lot words in common but we still need interpreter to understand each other. However, Serbian, Macedonian, Croatian are more closer, actually Macedonian is the same - no interpreters needed, for Serbo-Croatian sometimes we need one.
Source(s): Bulgarian

Erik van Thienen: During the Middle Bulgarian period, the language underwent dramatic changes, losing the Slavonic case system, but preserving the rich verb system (while the development was exactly the opposite in other Slavic languages) and developing a definite article. Consequently, modern Bulgarian is about as far from Russian as Swedish is from German."

"Bulgarian demonstrates several linguistic characteristics that set it apart from all other Slavic languages except for the closely related Macedonian language, such as the elimination of case declension, the development of a suffixed definite article [...], the lack of a verb infinitive, and the retention and further development of the Proto-Slavic verb system."

"Most of the word-stock of modern Bulgarian consists of derivations of some 2,000 words inherited directly from proto-Slavic through the mediation of Old and Middle Bulgarian. Thus, the native lexical terms in Bulgarian account for 70% to 75% of the lexicon."

"The remaining 25% to 30% are loanwords from a number of languages, as well as derivations of such words. The languages which have contributed most to Bulgarian are Russian and Turkish, and to a lesser extent French."

"Loanwords from Russian accounted for 10% of the borrowings."
Source: Wikipedia

Wave 2012: Yes, we understand, except certain words. General idea is almost always 100% understandable.

Why.
Many words have the same roots and just different endings.
Many words were used before (but they are still known) in 1 language and still are used in 2 language.

That is why in general it is clear and understandable what people talk about.
Source(s): Russian.





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