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What is the Easiest Slavic Language? | ||
Tags: Easiness | Slavic Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| mjhowie1992 Diglot Newbie AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4977 days ago 24 posts - 27 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Mandarin | Message 9 of 40 19 September 2010 at 2:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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In my personal opinion, Polish is the easiest. However, I am frequently exposed to
Polish, so of course I am biased on this topic. To me, Polish seems to be the most regular. I have looked a little into Czech, and I have not liked its grammar structure, and there seem to be no patterns in the way cases are formed. I believe that Polish is the easiest language to pronounce out of the three for a tongue originally trained to speak a West Germanic language. Russian has too many slight differences between its "soft" and "hard" consonants, which can take a long time for a learner to learn to differentiate. Czech doesn't seem to be as widespread as Polish is, but then again, neither of those languages can compare to the expanse that Russian has accomplished over the years. I still say that Polish is the easiest, even though none of those three languages are necessarily "easy" for a learner with no prior Slavic knowledge. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| lecorbeau Diglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 5817 days ago 113 posts - 149 votes  Speaks: English*, French Studies: Serbo-Croatian, Turkish | Message 10 of 40 22 September 2010 at 7:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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consider Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian!
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| Merv Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5070 days ago 414 posts - 749 votes Speaks: English*, Serbo-Croatian* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 11 of 40 24 September 2010 at 6:09am | IP Logged | ||
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None of the Slavic languages are easy. If you don't anticipate learning 2 or 3, I would suggest you go straight to
Russian. It may be harder than Bulgarian, but the efforts will be justified much more. Bulgarian gives you access to ~10 million people and a small body of literature. Most of the educated Bulgarians and Macedonian Slavs speak English/French/German anyway. Russian gives you access to ~150 million people in Russia and 10's of millions more in Ukraine, Belarus, and other ex-Soviet countries. There is a very, very rich literature. As for the last comment that you should consider Serbo-Croatian, it would be easier than Russian in terms of being phonetic, of having predictable accent, and of lacking palatalization (something a bit alien to a lot of foreigners). However, acquiring a perfect accent would be harder than in just about any other Slavic language, due to the subtle pitch accent system. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6069 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 12 of 40 24 September 2010 at 12:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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I would go for Russian. It has more and better study materials for learners than any other Slavic language, and a knowledge of Russian sets you up well to study the others in the family, should you so wish.
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| Streak Newbie United States Joined 4974 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes Speaks: English* | Message 13 of 40 26 September 2010 at 1:14am | IP Logged | ||
TDC, would you recommend the Assimil course to a complete beginner? I own the Teach Yourself Russian course, but the very first audio conversation was a long, complex dialogue that immediately lost me. I obviously need to start with something much more basic. I have a copy of the Pimsleur Russian course and I'm hoping that will give me something to start with. I know the Pimsleur courses get a lot of criticism, but I need to start somewhere, and it helps me immensely to have the structure of doing an actual "program". 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| liddytime Pentaglot Senior Member United States mainlymagyar.wordpre Joined 6026 days ago 693 posts - 1328 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Galician Studies: Hungarian, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Norwegian, Persian, Arabic (Written) | Message 14 of 40 26 September 2010 at 4:19am | IP Logged | ||
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I agree,
Unless you have a specific reason for studying one of the less spoken Slavic tongues ( Czech girlfriend, Polish grandparents, work exclusively with Bulgarians, planning to work in Serbia etc...) go for Russian. 1. Most number of speakers 2. Easy to find quality instructional material ( don't forget the free DLI and FSI courses!! I also highly recommend Modern Russian and the free Princeton course is also quite good) 3. Easy to find podcasts and web material 4. Easy to find native speakers in whichever country you are in 5. Relatively easy to jump to another Slavic language after having a good command of Russian 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Sennin Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 5831 days ago 1457 posts - 1759 votes 5 sounds | Message 15 of 40 26 September 2010 at 8:31pm | IP Logged | ||
Heh. It's quite a long jump in most cases ;-). 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| clumsy Octoglot Senior Member Poland lang-8.com/6715Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4975 days ago 1116 posts - 1367 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Japanese, Korean, French, Mandarin, Italian, Vietnamese Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swedish Studies: Danish, Dari, Kirundi | Message 16 of 40 27 September 2010 at 2:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well, it is often said that Polish is harder than Russian, Czech is also not one of the easiest.
There are a lot of irregularities, Russian is said to be hard, but not so hard, maybe also Serbo Croatian is said to be very hard... So you should choose from some things like Russian, Ukrainian or Bulgarian. Ith ink it could be true that Bulgarian is the easiest, considering, it has no noun declension. The noun declension is one of the hardest part in Slavic languages (if not the hardest). Some people say that Polish is the hardest out of Slavic languages~~ But Czech and Serbian are not considered easy as well. So Russian or Bulgarian. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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