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How close to Russian is Belarusian?

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13 messages over 2 pages: 1
SII
Senior Member
Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5791 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 6588 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 5752 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).


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 6271 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 6271 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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