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Czech & Russian - similarities?

 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages Post Reply
13 messages over 2 pages: 1
arkady
Bilingual Diglot
Groupie
United States
rightconditi
Joined 5418 days ago

54 posts - 61 votes 
Speaks: English*, Russian*
Studies: German

 
 Message 9 of 13
10 March 2010 at 4:00pm | IP Logged 
That is a fascinating comparison Delodephius. As a native Russian speaker I was always frustrated by my inability to understand any other slavic language. Mind you the frustration was especially exacerbated because the sounds are very inviting and create a sense of understanding while in reality no such understanding exists.

Edited by arkady on 10 March 2010 at 4:00pm

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Delodephius
Bilingual Tetraglot
Senior Member
Yugoslavia
Joined 5421 days ago

342 posts - 501 votes 
Speaks: Slovak*, Serbo-Croatian*, EnglishC1, Czech
Studies: Russian, Japanese

 
 Message 10 of 13
11 March 2010 at 4:53pm | IP Logged 
I had a totally different experience. Maybe because I'm a bilingual Slavic speaker or maybe because of the Slavic languages I speak are more "open" to other Slavic languages. My problem with other Slavic languages has always been false friends and different syntax. For example Russian doesn't use the verb 'to be' so often or at all in most cases and sometimes I can't understand the meaning of a Russian sentence simply because the lack of this one word. It is almost as a topic marker in my native language. :-)
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arkady
Bilingual Diglot
Groupie
United States
rightconditi
Joined 5418 days ago

54 posts - 61 votes 
Speaks: English*, Russian*
Studies: German

 
 Message 11 of 13
12 March 2010 at 8:22pm | IP Logged 
What you are saying makes perfect sense, I had a Ukranian friend in college and he told me I should tune into some Ukranian news broadcasts. I was reluctant and told him I really don't understand the language, but he assured me I would have no problem and maintained that they are similar enough. His primarily language was Russian, but I believe he spoke Ukranian reasonably well.

Anyway, I followed his advice and realized that I understood nothing. Hell, I couldn't even extract the general meaning of the sentence let alone the topic. He was completely and utterly puzzled by my lack of understanding, he felt there should have been no problem. So I am either stupid or Russians do not understand other Slavic languages, while other Slavic languages understand Russian. It simply has to be or I am just stupid ;)
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Delodephius
Bilingual Tetraglot
Senior Member
Yugoslavia
Joined 5421 days ago

342 posts - 501 votes 
Speaks: Slovak*, Serbo-Croatian*, EnglishC1, Czech
Studies: Russian, Japanese

 
 Message 12 of 13
12 March 2010 at 10:57pm | IP Logged 
Russian language has this one "problem" we other Slavs see and that is the "swallowing" of vowels. Russian is full of semi-vowels, only the accented vowel is clearly pronounced. Imagine how Russian would sound if you pronounced every vowel as if it was under accent. It would sound like every other Slavic language.

Grammar is not such a big deal. Macedonian and Bulgarian don't have cases but they have little problem understanding other Slavic languages.

I personally don't understand spoken Russian, at least not if it is spoken at a regular pace. If you would speak slowly I would understand you without a problem. I for example can't follow Czech radio speakers because it is too fast for me. Maybe it is my dialect (which is spoken quite slowly, lazily). But I understand written Czech 99%.

So I think you are no more stupid than the rest of us. Understanding a related language to your own also requires a great deal of understanding and openness to differences. At least I know people who tried listening to a related language and just after few sentences gave up, but once I noted to them the differences and explained to them why the two languages are different they realized they actually understand the language; at first they were simply blinded by their lingua-centrism I guess.
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anole
Diglot
Newbie
Czech Republic
Joined 5389 days ago

10 posts - 14 votes
Speaks: Czech*, English
Studies: French, Latin

 
 Message 13 of 13
12 March 2010 at 11:52pm | IP Logged 
Marijke Rose wrote:
Well, short background, I'm learning Czech and had a bit of an unexpected surprise something of a week ago which nearly knocked me off my feet. Got a Russian friend and, out of totally morbid curiosity (because I love, love, love languages), had to ask him how to say "good day" in Russian and his answer was, well, most unexpected. Of course, it is written differently, but the pronunciation of the phrase in Czech and Russian are nearly the same.

(Side note, our common language is not English, but German, so I'd asked how to say "guten Tag", of course - and I'm learning Czech from a German-speaking POV, for the sake of the pronunciation guides.)

You're right... these languages are very similar, I speak Czech and it's a piece of cake to understand Russian, although it's written really differently.


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