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What is the Easiest Slavic Language? | ||
Tags: Easiness | Slavic Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| brian91 Senior Member Ireland Joined 5232 days ago 335 posts - 437 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 1 of 40 13 September 2010 at 3:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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I am mainly interested in learning Polish/Russian/Czech but am also open to learning others. For example, Bulgarian is supposedly the easiest Slavic language, but I'm not sure how true this is. Also, is it true that Polish is
more difficult than Russian? Thanks in advance, Brian 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Darobat Diglot Senior Member Joined 6976 days ago 754 posts - 770 votes Speaks: English*, Russian Studies: Latin | Message 2 of 40 13 September 2010 at 4:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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Easiness is entirely subjective. Also, passion for a language will mean you are more likely to succeed in the long run. Thus, my answer is that the easiest one to learn will be the one you are most passionate about.
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| Arti Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 6800 days ago 130 posts - 165 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: French, Czech | Message 3 of 40 13 September 2010 at 8:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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As you are a native English speaker, Bulgarian will be more comprehensible for you as it lacks cases. However its verb system is quite hard and archaic, so be ready for learning many verb forms by heart. May be it won't be so difficult as you already know the structure of Spanish, I guess the logic inside of Bulgarian grammar looks like Romance languages in general.
As for Polish, it is considered to be "the most Slavic one". It preserved many archaic features in the pronunciation and in grammar that do not exist in other Slavic languages. I don't know if it makes Polish the "hardest" one, but for the English speakers, any language that has 6-7 cases is "hard" at the beginning. 9 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| doviende Diglot Senior Member Canada languagefixatio Joined 5774 days ago 533 posts - 1245 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Hindi, Swedish, Portuguese | Message 4 of 40 14 September 2010 at 9:57am | IP Logged | ||
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What's been said about passion is totally true. Language learning is always about the time and effort put in, not about how "easy" the descriptions of the grammar seem. Even an "easy" language is going to take hundreds of hours of study time in order to be good at it.
That said, what really makes a language "easy" for me in a meaningful way, is the amount of material that's easily available. For instance, I'm having trouble gathering any material for Punjabi beyond some lame "teach yourself" books, so it's perpetually on the back-burner. If we evaluate slavic languages by this criteria, Russian and Polish are near the top because there's soooo much good material available. For instance, I'm aware of hundreds of gigabytes of Polish audiobooks that exist in various places on the internet. Whenever I find time to start a slavic language, it'll probably be Polish. Bulgarian, on the other hand, is moderately difficult to find materials for. There are some ebooks available if you know where to look, but up until this year, I hadn't really seen much on the internet. Hopefully that's changing. Another thing you should consider is whether there are any people who speak the language nearby. For instance, I have several friends in my home town that speak Polish, and there are currently plenty of Polish speakers here in Berlin where I am right now. That certainly motivates me. On the other hand, I only rarely met speakers of Russian back in Vancouver, so I'm not as motivated to learn it. Anyway, develop your own criteria for what motivates you. I think for slavic languages, you're going to have some difficult moments if you haven't studied one before, but just remember that there are plenty of little children out there who can speak them, and you have more intelligence and experience to help you than those children did. It's just a matter of time. You just have to find enough reasons to keep putting in all that time. 14 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| reineke Senior Member United States https://learnalangua Joined 6235 days ago 851 posts - 1008 votes Studies: German | Message 5 of 40 14 September 2010 at 3:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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Pointless. They're in the same category of difficulty for English speakers. Any differences are easily outweighed by specific reasons for learning the language.
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| egill Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5484 days ago 418 posts - 791 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English* Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 6 of 40 14 September 2010 at 11:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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Of course passion and interest are integral and can outweigh other reasons, but I don't think the original poster's question
is pointless or beyond the pale. We can still compare particular aspects of it objectively. For example, as doviende mentioned earlier, certain languages have more materials and in those terms he feels Russian and Polish are easier to learn. That is to say, given the same amount of enthusiasm and interest, we can say ceteris paribus, with a measure of objectivity, which ones might be easier. Or perhaps we might give a more nuanced answer based on different aspects, e.g. declension complexity, possible lexical transference, material availabilty, etc. Edited by egill on 14 September 2010 at 11:39pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Sennin Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 5822 days ago 1457 posts - 1759 votes 5 sounds | Message 7 of 40 15 September 2010 at 1:34am | IP Logged | ||
One place to look for ebooks would be http://chitanka.info/. There you can find hundreds* of public domain and out of print Bulgarian books. Problem solved :-). It's a great source if you want to read the classics. ( *thousands? ) Edited by Sennin on 15 September 2010 at 1:42am 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| TDC Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6709 days ago 261 posts - 291 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, French Studies: Esperanto, Ukrainian, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Persian | Message 8 of 40 17 September 2010 at 9:28am | IP Logged | ||
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I'd recommend learning Russian first. There are many more speakers than any other Slavic languages. It is a useful bridge to learning other Slavic languages. There is more material (books, movies, music) readily available in Russian. Also, the 1970s Assimil course is absolutely excellent and can take you to a decent level in Russian. Edited by TDC on 17 September 2010 at 9:29am 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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