Register  Login  Active Topics  Maps  

Slavic Language Family Learning Sequence

 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages Post Reply
51 messages over 7 pages: 1 2 3 46 7  Next >>
Chung
Diglot
Senior Member
Joined 6916 days ago

4228 posts - 8259 votes 
20 sounds
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 33 of 51
08 June 2006 at 8:29am | IP Logged 
Oh I know. I put in my own observations then too. Thanks, Nephilim.

I was just answering brumblebee's question about choosing Slovak over Czech which hadn't been dealt with in the earlier posts.
1 person has voted this message useful



brumblebee
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6535 days ago

206 posts - 212 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Portuguese

 
 Message 34 of 51
08 June 2006 at 1:41pm | IP Logged 
andee wrote:
Chung wrote:
From what I can piece together from old posts, Ardaschir knows Russian and Polish but I'm not sure to which level. I have a nagging suspicion that he knows other Slavonic languages too but I can't seem to find a post which mentions this.

Serbo-Croatian, Czech, and Bulgarian.


Wow! How many languages does Ardaschir know?
1 person has voted this message useful





jeff_lindqvist
Diglot
Moderator
SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6669 days ago

4250 posts - 5710 votes 
Speaks: Swedish*, English
Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French
Personal Language Map

 
 Message 35 of 51
08 June 2006 at 1:55pm | IP Logged 
Too many. ;) I stopped counting halfway through THIS thread...
2 persons have voted this message useful



Julie
Heptaglot
Senior Member
PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6663 days ago

1251 posts - 1733 votes 
5 sounds
Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, GermanC2, SpanishB2, Dutch, Swedish, French

 
 Message 36 of 51
08 June 2006 at 4:46pm | IP Logged 
To those of you, who are learning any of Slavonic languages - how do you estimate the intelligibility?

I'm asking because after having read that it's good for example to learn one slavonic language from each of the three groups (by the way, I find this idea really interesting and hope to realize it one day :)), I've become a bit frustrated of my comprehension in these languages.

I'm a native speaker of Polish, with quite good knowledge about the grammar of Polish language and the history, including some basics in the history of Slavonic languages and Old Church Slavonic. I have never been learning any of Slavonic languages seriously. In primary school I had three years of Russian but it was earlier then 10 years ago :)). Now I have a course of Czech language at the university but the teachers uses very specific methods, which means: a huge amount of grammar (e.x. all the conjugations during less then six lessons ;)) and reading some fragments of original literature, trying to translate it into Polish.

What I want to say: with native command of Polish, and some basics in Russian and Czech, without normal studying: the slavonic languages seem to me quite unintelligible. I can read something and guess what it, more or less, means (reading Russian makes me a bit tired because of the alphabet, though :)) but my listening comprehension is really bad. So I really wonder, how much can understand a person, who learns any of Slavonic languages as a non-Slavonic native speaker? :)
1 person has voted this message useful



Sir Nigel
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6864 days ago

1126 posts - 1102 votes 
2 sounds

 
 Message 37 of 51
08 June 2006 at 9:36pm | IP Logged 
There's a lot of transparency between the languages. My sister is going to Poland sometime in the Summer and was saying she was "so confused" after doing the first Pimsleur lessons. She speaks some Russian so it sounds a lot the same and not at the same time.

My mum who grew up speaking Ukrainian can catch some of the Russian my sister and I use, but it's not always clear what the words mean.
1 person has voted this message useful



Chung
Diglot
Senior Member
Joined 6916 days ago

4228 posts - 8259 votes 
20 sounds
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 38 of 51
09 June 2006 at 9:39am | IP Logged 
Hi Julie

Since my first Slavonic language was Polish, there isn't a lot of obvious transparency with the other Slavonic languages.

However, I started to notice a few tendencies when I started to learn other Slavonic languages after Polish:

Polish and Croatian 'g' tends to match 'h' in Czech, Slovak, Ukrainian, Belarussian and Upper Sorbian (glówa = hlava (Czech and Slovak) = glava (Croatian); gwar is related to Slovak hovorit^ = 'to speak' and Croatian govoriti = 'to speak')

Polish 'a,' (a z ogoniem) tends to become 'u' or 'ú' in Slovak or Croatian and 'ou' in Czech (ex. are = sa, = sú = su = jsou)

Polish 'rz' usually matches 'r^' in Czech and r in Slovak (ex. przy ~ pr^i ~ pri)

Like you, I find it to be easier to read a text from a Slavonic language that I haven't studied (e.g Russian) than to understand it aurally.

I think what throws me off most when hearing other Slavonic languages is the difference in accents. For a while I was used to only the Polish accent (which is fixed on the second-last syllable). Then I started to learn Czech and Slovak and get used to stress on the first syllable. Now I'm starting to get used to Croatian which has variable stress with tones.

My Polish teacher told me once that knowing one Slavonic language makes it easier only to learn another one. Even trying to understand Kaszubian or Silesian let alone standard Slavonic languages such as Czech and Russian would be hard enough. In other words, I still need to study the other languages and not think that every other Slav will always by and large understand the gist of what I mean just because I know some Polish and vice-versa.

Regards
Chung
1 person has voted this message useful



Julie
Heptaglot
Senior Member
PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6663 days ago

1251 posts - 1733 votes 
5 sounds
Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, GermanC2, SpanishB2, Dutch, Swedish, French

 
 Message 39 of 51
09 June 2006 at 12:52pm | IP Logged 
Hi Chung,

that's really interesting what you've written, specially that "knowing one Slavonic language makes it easier only to learn another one". That's how I see it: learning any Slavonic language would be for me much easier than learning anything else, if one day I start it seriously, but it doesn't mean these languages are quite easy without learning ;)

And it's true about the accents. For me it's quite easy to pronounce the words in Czech or Slovak with the initial accent (the exception is when there are any long, unaccented vowels, that's hard for me as "unnatural") - but it makes listening comprehension much more difficult, I guess I just look for the word borders not where they really are :)

By the way, I understand written Czech or Slovak better than Kaszubian. Some scientificts say that Kaszubian was actually a non-Slavonic language (from the same family as e.x. Prussian) which due to history of this area was looong time ago strongly influenced by Slavonic Polish, and that's why it changed the affilation. It's not a common opinion but it shows quite well how Kaszubian can be perceived.

Edited by Julie on 09 June 2006 at 1:00pm

1 person has voted this message useful



brumblebee
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6535 days ago

206 posts - 212 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Portuguese

 
 Message 40 of 51
09 June 2006 at 1:04pm | IP Logged 
Isn't Kaszubian a minority language of Poland? I think that I might have read somewhere that it is somehow related to the extinct language, Pomeranian.


1 person has voted this message useful



This discussion contains 51 messages over 7 pages: << Prev 1 2 3 46 7  Next >>


Post ReplyPost New Topic Printable version Printable version

You cannot post new topics in this forum - You cannot reply to topics in this forum - You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum - You cannot create polls in this forum - You cannot vote in polls in this forum


This page was generated in 0.3594 seconds.


DHTML Menu By Milonic JavaScript
Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved
No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization.