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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| CaitO'Ceallaigh Triglot Senior Member United States katiekelly.wordpress Joined 6646 days ago 795 posts - 829 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian Studies: Czech, German | Message 1 of 6 02 May 2008 at 7:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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Has anyone who's studied both languages ever noticed just how similar they are? I had learned quite a bit of Czech in the early 90s, and then took up Russian once back home in the states, but never looked at them both at the same time 'til now.
The grammar to me seems almost identical, with a few variances. Czech's seems slightly more complicated to me. Often times, it feels like the same language, but with different accents. I was wondering what anyone else who's studied both of these languages, or other Slavic languages, thought. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6945 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 2 of 6 02 May 2008 at 9:50pm | IP Logged | ||
I think that Czech grammar seems more complicated to you at the moment since you're more familiar with Russian. :-) A while ago I bought Oxford's "Take Off in Russian" and the Penguin's "Russian Course" thinking that I would start to study Russian. I still haven't got around to studying that language, but I have browsed them and those of the Princeton course now and then and I do agree that there are quite a few similarities (the ones in vocabulary and the use of verbs of motion strike me as most obvious). I think that you get these "mini-Eureka" feelings when you move from one Slavonic language to the next. I definitely don't think that it's unique when studying Czech after having learned Russian. I remember my mild fascination of last year of the similarities that I encountered while learning Slovenian after having learned some Czech, Polish and Slovak. Nowadays I'm getting a similar fascination with the overlap of Ukrainian with Polish and Slovak. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| paparaciii Diglot Senior Member Latvia Joined 6125 days ago 204 posts - 223 votes Speaks: Latvian*, Russian Studies: English | Message 3 of 6 04 May 2008 at 9:24am | IP Logged | ||
But this is the point where the similarity of these languages stops. The fact is that they are mutually unintelligible. So your illusion is false. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| showtime17 Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Slovakia gainweightjournal.co Joined 5873 days ago 154 posts - 210 votes Speaks: Russian, English*, Czech*, Slovak*, French, Spanish Studies: Ukrainian, Polish, Dutch | Message 4 of 6 07 May 2008 at 2:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well it depends. I speak both fluently and for me it can sometimes be tempting to use Czech or Slovak words in Russian, but that's the way similarities go in any language group. For example I speak French and now am learning Spanish and those languages are also very similar, so if you know one it is much easier to learn the other.
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| Deniz Bilingual Heptaglot Groupie Czech RepublicRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6608 days ago 94 posts - 97 votes Speaks: Czech*, Slovak*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, FrenchB2 Studies: Russian, Arabic (Written), Portuguese, Indonesian, Persian | Message 5 of 6 08 May 2008 at 7:12am | IP Logged | ||
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I second to showtime. It is the same language family and that implies many overlapping parts in the grammar systems and a lot of common vocabulary (this concept of language families may seem a big and pleasant surprise to native English speakers, as English basically got out of the Germanic language family after the Norman invasion and lies between the romance and Germanic families in a sort of "homeless" state :) ). On the other hand even a native Czech speaker will not understand Russian without dedicated studies (that are for sure extremely facilitated by the similarities) just like an Italian will not understand a fluent flow of French for instance.
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| Russianbear Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6564 days ago 358 posts - 422 votes 1 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, Ukrainian Studies: Spanish | Message 6 of 6 08 May 2008 at 12:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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The two languages are indeed similar, as can be seen from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swadesh_list_of_Slavic_language s
But I wouldn't say they are close to being the same language. Perhaps it may feel that way in the early stages, since a lot of the simple words tend to be very similar, but I have tried reading some Wikipedia articles in Czech and often found myself not understanding things - even though I also know Ukrainian, which probably gives me a better Slavic vocabulary base than Russian alone would. It seems Czech has evolved the most out of the Slavic languages and FX was probably right to call it L'enfant terrible of the Slavic language family. I think of all the Slavic languages that I tried to read, Czech was the one I understood the least. Edited by Russianbear on 08 May 2008 at 3:39pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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