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A Comparison of Slavic Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| rivere123 Senior Member United States Joined 4617 days ago 129 posts - 182 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 1 of 10 09 June 2012 at 2:55am | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm curious to know how similar exactly are the Slavic languages, using Western European languages as an example. Note: to refrain from a debate, perhaps we could leave out the languages of the former Yugoslavia.
Is Ukrainian to Russian what Portuguese is to Spanish? Are Czech and Slovak like Norwegian and Swedish? How far are Bulgarian and Belarusian from Russian? Where does Polish stand in regards to all of the others? Thanks. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 4843 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 2 of 10 09 June 2012 at 10:20am | IP Logged | |||||
They are all quite similar. They are devided into three groups: Eastern, western, Southern. Russian and Belarussian are very close, Bulgarian is rather distant from them. polish is a Western language (so are Czech and Slovak, which are very close) About Ukrainian and Russian you are probably right. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6943 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 3 of 10 09 June 2012 at 10:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
You can't really determine the degree of overall similarity here with exactitude but what you can more readily do is to come up with some qualtitative measure that's approximate and dependent on the judgement of relevant speakers. I gather also that you mean Romance and Germanic languages when referring to "Western European languages" to provide analogies. Based on what I've observed: - Ukrainian and Russian seem to diverge roughly as much as Portuguese and Spanish. - Czech and Slovak diverge roughly as much as Norwegian and Swedish. - Bulgarian differs substantially from Russian and they seem to diverge roughly as much as English and German - Belorussian seems to diverges from Russian roughly as much as Galician and southern Portuguese - Polish in Slavonic is a bit like Portuguese in Romance in that they're may be perceived as "oddballs" in the group (I've observed that Polish's diagraphs (e.g. cz, rz, sz, etc.) and nasal vowels sometimes give a strange first impression to other Slavs. Portuguese's nasal vowels and innovations/extension of the verb conjugations from Latin could similarly give a strange first impresson to people who know only other Romance languages). I've seen only a few studies which try to quantify the similarity within Slavonic but I'm not a specialist in the field and so ain't in touch with comparative linguists who may well have done lots of studies. Czech perception of Slovak Czechoslovak inter-intelligibility Contact between Czech and Slovak Summary of lexicostatistcal analysis for other Slavonic languages from Slovak standpoint 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6384 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 4 of 10 09 June 2012 at 11:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
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| taqseem Newbie Switzerland Joined 5481 days ago 34 posts - 47 votes Studies: English | Message 5 of 10 10 June 2012 at 12:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
the comparison is a bit far-fetched. as a russian speaker i can understand nearly everything here Bсички хора се раждат свободни и равни по достойнство и права. Tе са надарени с разум и съвест и следва да се отнасят помежду си в дух на братство. i doubt an average English speaker can get the gist of this Alle Menschen sind frei und gleich an Würde und Rechten geboren. Sie sind mit Vernunft und Gewissen begabt und sollen einander im Geist der Brüderlichkeit begegnen. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 4843 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 6 of 10 10 June 2012 at 1:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
You are right. Russian and Bulgarian have much bigger lexical similarity than English and German. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6384 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 7 of 10 10 June 2012 at 2:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
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More like German and Dutch, maybe? Also in terms of grammar...
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| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6943 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 8 of 10 10 June 2012 at 6:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The vocabulary of Bulgarian and Russian are more similar to each other than the genetic division suggests because of the degree to which Old Church Slavonic (roughly "Old Bulgarian/Old Macedonian") affected the Russian recension of Church Slavonic, and then later on the degree to which Bulgarian codification drew on Russian vocabulary to affirm Bulgarian's "Slavonic credentials" (Pan-Slavism?). On the other hand, the two differ markedly in inflection with the two standing on nearly opposite ends in morphological typology - reminiscent of English and German. Bulgarian has retained and even elaborated the ancestral verb conjugations but lost nearly all declension and explicit case marking outside pronouns and developed less flexible word order. Russian has lost some of the ancestral verb conjugations, but retained nearly all declension and arguably expanded on it by having 2 locative cases, and been able to retain more flexible word order.
Remember that trying to pinpoint the degree of overall similarity as desired in the original post is pretty much impossible because it's rather fuzzy and for the case of Bulgarian and Russian has varied on who's saying it. Perhaps this bit on Yahoo Answers can put it in better perspective than my one-liner. What I find interesting in this brief exchange is that a Russian asserts high mutual intelligibility while a Bulgarian asserts much lower mutual intelligibility. In addition there's a comment about Russian and Bulgarian differing as much as German and Swedish, which is interesting since it also refers ti the change in morphological typology (i.e. Bulgarian and Swedish are more analytic than Russian and German respectively).
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