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From a South to a West Slavic language? | ||
Tags: Slavic Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Kartof Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4876 days ago 391 posts - 550 votes  Speaks: English*, Bulgarian*, Spanish Studies: Danish | Message 1 of 15 29 January 2012 at 1:04am | IP Logged |
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What kind of hurdles would somebody learning a West Slavic language from a South Slavic perspective (namely
Bulgarian) have to overcome? I'm well aware of the opposing instances of declension/conjugation difficulty, but what about lexicon, word order, and idiomatic expressions? Just looking at the prevalence of accented characters, diacritic marks, and consonant clusters in these languages makes me woozy but what about their pronunciation? What portion of the vocabulary is transparent? Thanks for any answers or input. Edited by Kartof on 29 January 2012 at 1:58am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6407 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 2 of 15 29 January 2012 at 9:06pm | IP Logged |
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Try the WALS site, hopefully it'll give you an overview of these languages.
I'd like to ask a related question - I understand Croatian, Polish, Czech quite well when spoken, but I read in them very slowly. Has anyone been in a similar situation with any two Slavic languages (especially a native speaker of one)? What would you suggest - reading while listening to the audio, reading without audio, working on my listening first and and putting off learning to read till later? To complicate things further, I'll hopefully be spending 2-3 days in Warsaw and 5-7 in Prague in May. Edited by Serpent on 29 January 2012 at 9:08pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4819 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 3 of 15 30 January 2012 at 7:04pm | IP Logged |
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I am not learning another Slavic language (yet) but I have heard a lot of natives of
Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Slovak, and Croatian speaking Czech. Many of them struggle with the same things and one of the main reasons is not trying to get better. They get their point across so why bother. Every learner of a similar language needs to realise that no matter how easier it is in comparison with a distant language, it is still a foreign language with it's own rules, not just a dialect of your own mothertongue. One of the most common mistakes is the intonation of sentences. Grammar mistakes are present as well but they disturb much less. There is usually little trouble with vocabulary, since it often comes from the same roots (but beware of numerous false friends). So, no matter which language you choose, I'd guess you should listen a lot to get used to the different melody. The rest will come easier. For exemple in Czech Republic, many people will hardly notice you are making grammar mistakes. As long as you "sound Czech", you will be admired. If you speak in your accent and intonation, some may take you as "another poor imigrant". It is sad but it is true. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Kartof Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4876 days ago 391 posts - 550 votes Speaks: English*, Bulgarian*, Spanish Studies: Danish | Message 4 of 15 30 January 2012 at 10:31pm | IP Logged |
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That's interesting. I wouldn't expect intonation to be a greater issue in learning a language than grammar. What
sounds in Czech and other West Slavic languages are difficult to pronounce by other Slavic speakers? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6719 days ago 4250 posts - 5710 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 15 30 January 2012 at 11:58pm | IP Logged |
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I find it easier to listen to somebody with good prosody and the occasional grammar mistake, than someone with good grammar but bad prosody. There must be something written about this in Olle Kjellin's articles.
You can have perfect grammar but still sound like a foreigner. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4819 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 6 of 15 31 January 2012 at 2:18am | IP Logged |
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A few years ago, my English teacher called it "singing". I don't know the correct terms
for it, but melody of a Czech sentence is quite stable with intonation growing or falling in various types of sentences, like growing at the end of question, I'd say it is very similar to romance languages. Melody in a Russian sentence, and Ukrainian too, sounds to me confusing, like going up and down and again. Not sure whether you'll understand from my description. And many of Russian natives, especially those who started learning Czech quite late, take this melody with them to the Czech language and it sounds not right. Yes, the individual words are Czech, the grammar is Czech, the vocabulary is Czech, most of the sounds are good, but the whole thing together is not Czech. That is why I need to pay much more attention to most Russians speaking Czech than to Americans speaking Czech for exemple. I think the Croatians are a bit similar in this way. I know one who is extremely difficult to understand but in his case it is not the intonation, it is most of the language components. But he is getting better. Not sure about Bulgarian speakers, I don't know any in person. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 4866 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 7 of 15 31 January 2012 at 8:04am | IP Logged |
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But is a foreign accent always bad? I've heard Russian with Czech accent and I enjoyed
it. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 4866 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 8 of 15 31 January 2012 at 8:20am | IP Logged |
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Czech pronunciation is also very difficult because of the distinction of long and short
vowels. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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