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How close to Russian is Belarusian? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Stryozyk Newbie United States Joined 5278 days ago 39 posts - 44 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian | Message 1 of 13 15 December 2009 at 10:51pm | IP Logged |
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I have one more question about the Slavic languages. I was looking into Ukrainian and its similarities to Russian and
the consensus seemed to be that while the two are closely related and share a good degree of mutual intelligibility, they are separate languages with differing grammars, alphabets, etc. So I was just wondering if the same holds true for Belarusian. Is it as different from Russian as Ukrainian is, or even more different? Or, is Belarusian closer to Ukrainian but farther away from Russian? What is the interrelationship of the three? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6964 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes  20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 2 of 13 15 December 2009 at 11:47pm | IP Logged |
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It's a little bit fuzzy. In general, Belorussian is considered to be somewhat closer to Russian than to Ukrainian, yet there are dialects in Belorussia that are close to Ukrainian.
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 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6717 days ago 4250 posts - 5710 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 13 16 December 2009 at 1:58am | IP Logged |
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Only today I read the wiki entry on L.L. Zamenhof (inventor of Esperanto):
He considered his native language to be his father's Russian[1] (or perhaps Belarusian, which was not considered distinct from Russian at the time(...) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._L._Zamenhof Can any speakers of both (or all three) confirm how similar/different they are? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Morak99 Newbie United States Joined 5293 days ago 19 posts - 20 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 4 of 13 16 December 2009 at 2:46am | IP Logged |
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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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| RedKing'sDream Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5607 days ago 53 posts - 68 votes Speaks: English*, Russian Studies: Ukrainian | Message 5 of 13 16 December 2009 at 8:22am | IP Logged |
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They're definitely not highly mutually intelligible.
Many words and phrases are, but many are completely different, so the result is much less intelligibility than one would think. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Stryozyk Newbie United States Joined 5278 days ago 39 posts - 44 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian | Message 6 of 13 16 December 2009 at 4:16pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks so much, everyone, for your responses. If anyone else has more to say on the subject I would still very
much welcome it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6717 days ago 4250 posts - 5710 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 13 16 December 2009 at 4:20pm | IP Logged |
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How different is "completely different"? Are they different in grammar, vocabulary or something else? Register? Slang? Is written Belarusian easier or harder to understand for a Russian? What about the other way around? I'm asking a lot of questions, but seeing arguments for both sides makes me wonder.
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| taras Diglot Newbie Russian Federation t-english.ru Joined 5337 days ago 5 posts - 6 votes Speaks: Russian*, English | Message 8 of 13 16 December 2009 at 4:26pm | IP Logged |
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Belarusian is definetely closer than Ukraian to Russian. I think, but am not sure that it also closer to Russien than to Ukraian.
1 person has voted this message useful |
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