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Are Czech and Slovakian separate langs? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4478 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes  Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 9 of 18 15 February 2012 at 7:41pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
This is not true. Croatian has 3 dialects 1. Kajkavian (which is shared with Slovenian) 2. Štokavian (which can be called Serbocroatian) 3. Čakavian (uniquely Croatian) Most speakers of Kajkavian and Čakavian understand the Slovenian language with ease. For them, the difference between the local Croatian dialect and Slovenian is like the one between Eastern Norwegian dialects and Swedish. I am a speaker of Čakavian and Slovenian is very easy to understand. Overall, there is a dialect continuum from Slovenia to Bulgaria. Were Bulgarian phonetics less consonantal (prone to vowel reduction), we could consider all SouthSlavic languages just a dialect of one single language. As for native speakers of Štokavian (60% of Croatia) they understand Slovenian like Norwegians understand spoken Danish, and vice versa. I have a friend from Ljubljana, and he learned standard Croatian just by watching Croatian soap operas (they watch Croatian TV without subtitles). Transition from Slovenian to Croatian is much easier, than the one from Štokavian to Slovenian. In Eastern and Southern Croatia, they don't understand Slovenian, but we in the West and in the North do. As for Slovak vs Czech: Czech is a diglossic language, they use 17th century Czech when they write, although with the newer spelling. But the spoken language has changed a lot in the last 350 years, but nothing of this has entered the standard written language, because the written standard of theirs is frozen it time, just in the case of Arabic and Tamil. That's why we speak of diglossia. Slovak was standardized at the end of the 19th/beginning of the 20th century, and they didn't choose 17th century literal Slovak for their standard, but the contemporary spoken Slovak. So most Slovaks write the way they speak (and vice verse), but the Czech do not. So, when you want to compare Slovak and Czech, you have to specify which Czech, (spoken or written?) is close to Slovak (both spoken and written).* ;) I'm a speaker of Croatian and I understand 70-75% of Slovak. In the case of Czech, the % goes down to around 25% (like in the case of Polish), much lower than 50% in the case of spoken Russian. ---- * Wikipedia answered my question ''Czech exists in two forms (excluding the four Moravian and two Silesian dialects): literary Czech and colloquial Czech. The standard Slovak language is closer to literary Czech''. Edited by Medulin on 15 February 2012 at 7:58pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6082 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 10 of 18 18 February 2012 at 4:00pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I notice multilingual product labels quite often give separate Czech and Slovak versions, though the translations are frequently very similar to each other.
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| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4819 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 11 of 18 18 February 2012 at 9:07pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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1.The diglossia is quite overestimated. There are many people who speak nearly standard
Czech, there are dialects which use the word endings from standard Czech but differ in other ways etc. If we are living in diglossia than so are the English speakers. And speakers of any other language because the colloquial and "real" language is hardly ever the same as the standard one. 2.The 17th century Standard Czech is much closer to 19th century Standard Slovak than the spoken Czech. Wikipedia is right here. The closest to Slovak is the Southern Moravian dialect, which makes sense, the furthest may be Prague? Pilsen? Not sure. 3.If you want to compare separately spoken Czech and standard Czech, than you should divide Slovak as well because the Eastern dialect is more different from the correct Slovak and it is used by approximately one third of the country. And none of this has anything to do with the original question "what languages to translate to for these two countries". You will use the official Czech and official Slovak and they will be separate languages. 3.The labels are nearly the same but if you were comparing two novels, you would see much more differences in ortograph, grammar and vocabulary roots. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Delodephius Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Yugoslavia Joined 5213 days ago 342 posts - 501 votes Speaks: Slovak*, Serbo-Croatian*, EnglishC1, Czech Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 12 of 18 26 February 2012 at 11:39pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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As a native Slovak speaker, but who was raised and still lives in a Slovak speaking
community outside of Slovakia, in Serbia, sometimes I have trouble understanding even written Czech while spoken Czech is almost incomprehensible to me. I do understand if they speak slowly and don't use much slang or idioms. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4478 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 13 of 18 27 February 2012 at 12:41am | IP Logged | ||||||||
This just supports the idea that the mutual comprehension is largely due to exposure in the Czechoslovakia times. ;) Slovak and Czech standards are based on different dialects, just like in the case of Macedonian and Bulgarian. Croatian and Serbian standards are based on the same dialect (Štokavski). Had Croatian been standardized on the Kajkavski dialect, today we may be speaking of Sloveno-Croatian instead of Serbo-Croatian. So, Slovak and Czech are more like Slovenian and Croatian, than like Croatian and Serbian. Edited by Medulin on 27 February 2012 at 12:47am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| stelingo Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5642 days ago 722 posts - 1076 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Czech, Polish, Greek, Mandarin | Message 14 of 18 27 February 2012 at 6:55pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I always understood that Slovenian and Croatian were not very mutually intelligible? This isn't the case when comparing Czech and Slovak. Most Slovaks and Czechs can undertstand each other without too many problems. Evidence for this can be found when watching Czech TV. Any news item about Slovakia is always reported by a Slovak journalist in Slovak on the main national news programme. Česko Slovenská Superstar is one of the ubiquitous talent shows to be found on TV wherever you go these days. The show is hosted by a Cz and Slovak TV presenter, there are 2 judges from each country and 50% of contestants are from each country. Everyone speaks their own language. You can find clips on youtube. Finally I have occasionally seen a Slovak film broadcast on Cz TV without subtitles. Edited by stelingo on 27 February 2012 at 7:00pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6966 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 15 of 18 27 February 2012 at 8:21pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
That's what I got too about Czech and Slovak. Certainly it's common for Slovaks even as far east as Košice or Humenné to settle for products whose descriptions or labels are in Czech or watch Czech TV as is (especially common for foreign shows which have subtitles or dubbing in Czech rather than Slovak). The differences between Slovenian and any standard of BCMS/SC (including Croatian) are rather substantial (e.g. Slovenian inflects for dual, BCMS/SC doesn't, Slovenian declension has less syncretism than BCMS/SC). However I've noticed that Croats who've been living close to Slovenia (including Zagreb) for some time do gain a fair bit of passive ability in Slovenian since the native dialects there (even more noticeable in some villages) are transitional to Slovenian. What is now considered "typical" Zagrebian colloquial speech is a mix of Neo-Štokavian and the original Kajkavian thanks to immigration into Zagreb and educational/societal pressure exerted by the standard language. However Croats from further east and south (not to mention Bosniaks, Serbs and Montenegrins) or people who've learned BCMS/SC by the book wouldn't be able to take in that much from Slovenian media as eastern Slovaks typically could from Czech media. This definitely has something to do the kind of language used on-screen since one is supposed to use standard language. On one hand, Standard Czech and Standard Slovak are still quite close but the intelligibility can drop if the Czech presenters speak much in "Common Czech" rather than "by the book" / in the standard. When I watched "Česko Slovensko má talent" a couple of years ago at my friends' place, I noted that the Czech presenter leaned more to standard Czech with only a few instances of things such as děkuju for děkuji or dobrej for dobrý. I don't recall anything as colloquial as já byla for byla jsem. On the other hand, Standard Slovenian and Standard Croatian aren't that close and the most common way for Croats to narrow the gap is to pick up certain non-standard features specific to the region around the Croato-Slovenian border. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Majka Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic kofoholici.wordpress Joined 4467 days ago 307 posts - 755 votes Speaks: Czech*, German, English Studies: French Studies: Russian | Message 16 of 18 27 February 2012 at 8:38pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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For me personally, I can understand Slovak without any problems. Well, there are some tricky words in Slovak and I wouldn't even try to speak it, but in understanding I would say it is the same as Czech for me.
The problem is that I was about 20 year old when Czechoslovakia split. Till then, I knew only a Slovak speaking president, I had daily dose of Slovak even in broadcasts for children, roughly half of the news was in Slovak, every Monday there was a Slovak film (besides the normal mix of Czech and Slovak films in the rest of time). And as I learned several languages without such constant exposition to them, I cannot say if I have the level of native understanding because of the mutual intelligibility or because of the immersion in very similar language. Today's teens and young people in their twenties and perhaps even beginning of thirties grew up without much Slovak. The Slovak journalist on the main TV news and Slovak films in TV are relatively recent addition (when the TV station got the same owner as a Slovak one), and the talent shows are, well, recent, too. Look few years back - the situation was different. There is a generation who grew without hearing Slovak often. Some of them have problems to understand Slovak, few of them say they cannot understand it at all, some have no problems. I think with the above mentioned changes, the problem will disappear and everybody will understand Slovak again. But it says for me that the mutual intelligibility of Czech and Slovak perhaps need some "ear training". Edited by Majka on 27 February 2012 at 8:40pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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