SII Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5797 days ago 184 posts - 194 votes Speaks: Russian* Studies: English
| Message 9 of 13 16 December 2009 at 4:34pm | IP Logged |
West-Belorussian lands many years were under Poland occupation, so Belorussian language has many Polish "elements". As result, many words in Russian and Belorussian are very different.
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Cherepaha Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6594 days ago 126 posts - 175 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Spanish, Polish, Latin, French
| Message 10 of 13 23 December 2009 at 6:05am | IP Logged |
You can view Russian and Belorussian tests next to each other on the same page on a site called "Небесное Искусство" (The Heavenly Art): http://www.sky-art.com/andersen/tales/be/050_1_be.htm
To get both texts to display
1. scroll down the page to the section that reads: "Эту сказку можно посмотреть на 2-х языках одновременно. Выберите языки:" (You can view this fairy tale in two languages at the same time. Select the Languages:)
2. select "Русский (Russian) and "Белорусский" (Belorussian) from the pull down menus
3. click on "Посмотреть" (View) button
This way, if you speak any one of those languages, you can see how much you can understand of the other, and also look at the translation for any unclear areas. I found it a great tool!
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Grammaticus Hexaglot Newbie Norway Joined 5758 days ago 36 posts - 40 votes Speaks: FrenchC2, Norwegian*, EnglishC2, GermanC2, Italian, Russian
| Message 11 of 13 23 December 2009 at 5:00pm | IP Logged |
Morak99 wrote:
From what I understand, Belarusian and Russian are highly mutally intelagible, and the government in Belarus tries to encourage Russian over thier native language(for commercial reasons, presumably). |
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Russian is the native-language of the vast majority of people in Belarus. Go for a stroll on the streets or in the Metro o Minsk and I can almost guarantee you, you won't ever hear any Belorussian.
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William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6277 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French
| Message 12 of 13 24 December 2009 at 7:41pm | IP Logged |
I have little contact with Belarusian other than listening to some music and looking at some written text. It reminds me of Russian, with some Polish elements. I think it is a little closer to Russian than Ukrainian is.
Re Minsk, Lee Harvey Oswald was sent there during his temporary defection to the USSR. He made a number of references to Russian in a diary he kept - I don't think he mentioned Belarusian at all.
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William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6277 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French
| Message 13 of 13 29 December 2009 at 3:31pm | IP Logged |
I had the strange experience of understanding someone speaking recently without knowing what the language was. It was Slavic, like Russian but not Russian, and included words of recognisibly Polish origin.
It turned out to be Ukrainian.
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