Czech and Slovak (Specific Languages) Language Learning Forum

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Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages

20 messages over 3 pages: 1 2 3

Vlad
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Czechoslovakia
foreverastudent.com
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Speaks: Czech*, Slovak*, Hungarian*, Mandarin, English^C2, German^C2, Italian^C1, Spanish, Russian, Polish, Serbian, French
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Message 17 of 20

18 February 2011 at 3:39am | IP Logged

Stelingo,

one would probably need to see more, but only based on this short video I don't think the
little girl understood the Czech presenters very well.

On the other hand it would be interesting to know what other languages she speaks. They
said they come from Lúčenec, which is a couple of kilometers from the Hungarian border
and everyone speaks at least some Hungarian over there. Her surname is Olahová, which is
a typical Olah gypsy surname (as opposed to the traditional Roma) and Lúčenec is known to
have the largest community of Olah gypsies in Slovakia. These gypsies usually speak both
gypsy languages, so it might well be that this girl is growing up with 4 native
languages.
1 person has voted this message useful

Solfrid Cristin
Heptaglot
Winner TAC 2011 & 2012
Senior Member
Norway
Joined 5121 days ago
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Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian
Studies: Russian

Message 18 of 20

18 February 2011 at 9:31am | IP Logged

I have read the articles with great interest, also because they had references to Norwegian, Swedish and Danish. It seems like the differences percentage wise are almost exactly the same, which then gives me a much better picture of the differences between Czech and Slovak.
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burkus
Super Polyglot
Newbie
Hungary
riowang.blogspot.com
Joined 4815 days ago
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Speaks: Hungarian*, Latin, Ancient Greek, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Mandarin, Romanian, Czech, Slovak, Persian
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Message 19 of 20

18 February 2011 at 4:37pm | IP Logged

William Camden wrote:

Splog wrote:

William Camden wrote:

I found in 1993 that I could get by with Russian in Prague. At least until recently,
many
people at that point had had Russian as an obligatory school subject.

You would be hard-pushed to find a Russian speaker in Prague now (other than native
Russian speakers - of which there are plenty). It was dropped like a hot potato at
schools in the late 1980s. English is the language they replaced it with.

In terms of speaking Czech to a Slovak, the most honest answer is: the older they are
the more they are likely to understand you. Most Czech and Slovak children seem to have
quite a hard time understanding each other, but for people over the age of 30 or so,
they grew up with both languages.

There was also a dropping of Russian in favour of English in Hungary, which is mentioned in a Hungarian film of 1992, I think with the title Dear Emma, Sweet Bobi, about two teachers of Russian who retrain as English teachers after 1989.

http://riowang.blogspot.com/2008/10/propos-svejk.html

A blog by a Hungarian which often has interesting articles. The author notes that Hungarians rarely know Slavic languages, even though many neighbouring countries speak one or other of them. Perhaps Hungarians got rid of Russian a little too quickly.

Thank you very much for the reference to and good words on the blog. As to Hungarians, they never dropped Russian – they, at least in the majority, simply resisted learning it for forty-five years (as I have described it in http://riowang.blogspot.com/2007/12/russian-first.html ). Even in the 1970s or 1980s you could have found many more young people in Budapest speaking German than Russian, and since 1990 English has of course completely substituted for it. In recent years there is a new revival of Russian as a secondary language, with Russian language schools flourishing and many young people learning it again.

As to Czech vs Slovak, I spoke the first much before learning the second, but I never had any communication problem in Slovakia. This is of course the experience of a foreigner speaking both languages in more or less common everyday situations, but I think it might be useful to know for other foreigners who hesitate over which one to learn first.

Edited by burkus on 18 February 2011 at 5:28pm
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William Camden
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United Kingdom
Joined 6059 days ago
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Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French

Message 20 of 20

21 February 2011 at 9:41am | IP Logged

I mentioned it in the past on this forum, but a couple of years ago I went on a long coach journey from London to Vienna. The coach was Slovak and the journey was to terminate in Slovakia. There was a screen where films were shown and these tended to be in Czech, or English with Czech subtitles. The Slovak-speaking passengers had no obvious problems with the Czech that I could see.

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