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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| ChristopherB Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 6110 days ago 851 posts - 1074 votes  2 sounds Speaks: English*, German, French | Message 9 of 15 05 April 2010 at 7:02am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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There is one interesting statement from Professor Arguelles, namely that Bulgarian is the only Slavic language he has studied that had the feel of being a Russian dialect, as opposed to a full language in its own right. Taking into account the differences in grammar, very helpfully elucidated in this thread, how different are the vocabularies of the two languages? Is it true that the Slavic languages are closer to one another than even the Romance languages are?
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| unityandoutside Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5808 days ago 94 posts - 149 votes Speaks: English*, Russian Studies: Latin, Mandarin | Message 10 of 15 05 April 2010 at 8:08am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Did he really say that? I can see that statement being made about Belorussian maybe, but... Bulgarian? Definitely one of the Slavic languages that resembles Russian the least. One thing I do notice though, upon clicking through a couple wikipedia articles in Bulgarian, is that there are a good number of words that are, well... Russian. A really good number, more than three recognizable loanwords per sentence in several cases. Additionally, a number of common prepositions seem to be identical in Russian and Bulgarian. Ones I noticed were:
в (v) in, into с (s) with, from по (po) according to, by от (ot) out of, from без (bjez) without на (na) on, onto and the connecting words или (ili, "or"), and но (no, "but") Maybe the situation between the two languages is comparable to French influence on English, where the two languages are genetically distinct but share a lot a vocab due to extensive loaning (especially in higher registers). Whether this is accurate or not, on a superficial level, Bulgarian may look closer to Russian than it really is. But the core of the languages are fairly distant. It really suprises me that the professor would have said that Bulgarian was like a "dialect of Russian", as he doesn't seem like someone prone to making these kind of statements without knowledge to substantiate them. edit: Bulgarian and Russian vocabulary look pretty similar in general, even ignoring loanwords. I could even clearly pick out words in some spoken Bulgarian on youtube (there were English subtitles to help me a bit). I would be interested to see examples of more colloquial language. Edited by unityandoutside on 05 April 2010 at 8:21am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| ChristopherB Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 6110 days ago 851 posts - 1074 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, German, French | Message 11 of 15 05 April 2010 at 11:49am | IP Logged | ||||||||
From "Czech through Russian":
I'm curious then, how much resemblance between the two can you find if then compared with, say, Czech or Polish? From Russian, would your understanding of them be greater or less than Bulgarian? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Sennin Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 5828 days ago 1457 posts - 1759 votes 5 sounds | Message 12 of 15 05 April 2010 at 2:19pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
All due respect to the professor, but that's total nonsense. Maybe on a beginners level it would seem that way, I'm sure he would change his opinion if he's to study the language in any depth. In any case if the grammar is simpler that would only put it further away from Russian... Russian grammar is pretty tough ^_^.
Yes, sort of.. Russian is the biggest out of the Slavic languages, so it has a certain influence. In some cases there is a "Rusophile" way to say things, e.g. you can say "тоест" (as a fixed expression), but also "с други думи" or the literary/old "сиреч". Another thing to keep in mind is that some of the "loanwords" are actually false friends. Also, Bulgarian seems to be in the strange position of using "мерси" for "thank you". Not to start with the Turkish loanwords. The vocabulary is all over the place, a bit like in English. Having studied English, and then French, I have say that the difficulty of learning Russian and French vocabulary is about the same for me. But I haven't really reached any advanced level in Russian so the final verdict is not clear. Maybe it gets tougher with more advanced vocabulary (or easier?). Edited by Sennin on 05 April 2010 at 2:51pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| abr Groupie Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5274 days ago 40 posts - 62 votes Speaks: Russian* Studies: English, Spanish | Message 13 of 15 05 April 2010 at 3:08pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Interesting one. Because Old Russian uses "Аз есьм" to provide the same meaning. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6950 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 14 of 15 05 April 2010 at 4:34pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Older forms of Russian borrowed a fair bit from Old Church Slavonic (i.e. something nearly synonymous with "Old Bulgarian" or "Old Macedonian"). The Russians' import of so many Old Church Slavonicisms has reduced the degree of observed lexical divergence between Russian and Bulgarian which would have been higher otherwise. However the professor's feeling that Bulgarian is like a Russian dialect seems to me quite odd. I wonder if he is genuinely overlooking the elaborate patterns of verb conjugation which distinguish Bulgarian and Macedonian from all other Slavonic languages.
Have you had a chance to read this thread on Slavonic mutual intelligibility? how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=1954 6&PN=2 The tricky part admittedly is measuring the degree of mutual intelligibility and determine whether intra-Slavonic intelligibility is greater than intra-Romance intelligibility. It's a bit subjective, I'm afraid. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Sennin Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 5828 days ago 1457 posts - 1759 votes 5 sounds | Message 15 of 15 08 April 2010 at 2:30am | IP Logged | ||||||||
This one doesn't mean "according to" or "by". It could be "in", in the sense of "speaking in <Language>" (e.g. "говоря по български"); It can also be used to introduce a subordinate clause for the place or manner of doing something. Edited by Sennin on 08 April 2010 at 2:37am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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