More properly, their speech is best seen as closer to Macedonian than to Bulgarian or Serbo-Croatian. In addition, the two groups have different cultural norms and values. The claim for separate languages is based more on politics than on linguistic science. Generally, when foreigners say speakers of a certain language speak too fast, speakers of that language can hear that fast speech just fine. It has a very high degree of mutual intelligibility with Galician (spoken in Northwestern Spain), which is a language thats sort of a cross between Portuguese and Spanish. It may have been split from Polish for up to 800 years, where it underwent heavy German influence. While the two share a similar grammar system and some vocabulary words, . I guess this would not have worked for Macedonian and Slovene in the Yugoslav army. However, all three languages - Ukrainian, Russian and Belarusian - are in part mutually intelligible, and already knowing one can help a lot if you want to learn one of the . Polish only a few words. Russian is also 85% mutually intelligible with Belarusian and Ukrainian in writing. Youre welcome Robert, for a non-slavic speaker, you have a pretty good grasp of these linguistic niceties. Polish 5 % spoken, 20 % written ago. The main difference is in the ortography. Despite all of this, Ukrainian and Russian aren't the closest languages in the Slavic language family, and they're not even mutually intelligible. Ukrainian and Russian are today closer than they were a hundred years ago due to Soviet Russification, and somewhat mutually intelligiblespeakers in Ukraine often switch back and forth from one . Even the most common, most simple words sound alien in spoken Bulgarian, VODA(WATER) is pronounced ,VODA . [1] The Serbo-Croatian vocabulary in both Macedonian and Torlakian is very similar, stemming from the political changes of 1912; whereas these words have changed more in Bulgarian. akavian is full of romanisms, kajkavian of germanisms and tokavian of turkish and other orientalisms. Russian is also 85% mutually intelligible with Belarusian and Ukrainian in writing. In some respects, all Slavic languages have a lot in common. . For example, British Sign Language (BSL) and American Sign Language (ASL) are quite different and mutually unintelligible, even though the hearing people of the United Kingdom and the United States share the same spoken language. Or they will say, Well, that is about 70% our language. If it is a dialect, they will say, That is really still our language. If I had to name a Slavic language worst for intelligibility, it would absolutely and positively have to be Bulgarian its phonetics are completely foreign (to the extent that sometimes in the back of my mind I think that it sounds barbarian and Turkish), as is its grammar (the vocabulary, however, is not, being probably 90% similar to Russian, making written Bulgarian pretty easy). The answer is that Izetbegovi is speaking too fast, he is often basically mumbling, and due to the different stress, I cannot identify, where the words start and end. You also have these words? Because mutual intelligibility comes in varying degrees, its hard to determine how much overlap there needs to be for something to be classified as such. French has a reasonable degree of lexical similarity with Italian,Sardinian, Romansh, Portuguese, Romanian and Spanish, making it partially mutually intelligible with these languages. But which languages in the world are actually closest to . Its grammar is close to that of Russian. In the evening of the first day it reaches 93%, in a week 95%, all unsupervised, almost effortlessly, just by being there, watching, listening, talking and asking for an explanation here and there. Im a speaker of Torlakian Serbian characteristically closer to Macedonian than Standard Serbian, having three (nom/acc/voc) cases and using a fusional instead of an analytic past tense and, with regards to a certain comment made two years ago on here, can, without issue, understand Zona Zamfirova, a movie about life in Ottoman Ni, without any subtitles. [2] As a consequence, spoken mutual intelligibility is not reciprocal. America paid us to hand over al-Qaeda suspects Hello everyone, Score: 4.1/5 (74 votes) . Exposure doesnt count. The Answer, and Examples for 8 World Languages. According to a paper on Mutual Intelligibility of Languages in the Slavic Family (link in comments): Native Belarusian speakers can understand 80% of spoken Ukrainian and 80% of written . And Shtokavian is dialect of Serbian language. Personally Im a Taoist in relation to 9/11, the middle way, you know? Ukrainian 15 % spoken, 25 % written Now tokavian and akavian. For true MI testing, we want virgin ears, and it has to be both ways. Russia) in Canada, and they barely can understand standard Ukrainian. There are some words that we don't understand, but in general, these languages are much closer to each other than the pairs Russian-Ukrainian and Russian-Belarusian. Polish and Ukrainian have higher lexical similarity at 72%, and Ukrainian intelligibility of Polish is ~50%+. Huchon, Mireille, Histoire de la langue franaise, pages 214 and 223. the interrogatives are much more similar (kda vs. koga when; kd~kud vs. kade where; to~kakv (second form is more characteristic of Bulgarian) vs. to what; koj/koja/koe/koi vs. koj/koja/koe/koi who/which/that (interr. This phenomenon is called asymmetrical mutual intelligibility. Western Ukraine, at least urban Western Ukraine, no longer speaks the Galician dialect but rather standard Ukrainian. In writing, however, Scots language looks similar to English (albeit with some spelling variations). Pannonian Rusyn lacks full intelligibility of Rusyn proper. The Bulgarian language is the earliest written record Slavic language. Torlakian (considered a subdialect of Serbian Old Shtokavian by some) has significant mutual intelligibility with Macedonian and Bulgarian. By the way, osnovnata (osnovna-ta) is related to the Czech word osnova (basis, outline). The reason there are subtitles on Russian-language shows in Ukraine is because of Ukraines puristic state language policies. Yet there is a dialect continuum between Slovenian and Kajkavian. December 2014. This understanding can be in spoken or written communication. Needless to say, Polish is very familiar too, except its phonology, getting the gist of which is just a matter of some time. Regarding Polish and Russian there are many words with opposite meaning. The Croatians left Croatia and came to Italy from 1400-1500. The German influence is more prominent in the west; Polish influence is greater in the east. With Lonely Planet's Ukrainian Phrasebook, let no barriers . The unintelligibility is only due to the manner of speaking and not because of lexical and/or grammatical differences. If one takes the transitional dialects which make a triangle between Serbian, Macedonian, Bulgarian, one can say that it is also one language. It was a long time ago though, so Ill try to convince her (and maybe a couple more Russians) to try this again tonight. This is a great boon to travelers and language learners. If you're russian you understand the meaning of what other is saying to a degree of around 80%. Ukrainian and Russian only have 60% lexical similarity. Ni Torlak uses a definite suffix, -ta/-to/-ti/-te/-ta (fem.sg/neu.sg/masc.pl/fem.pl/neu.pl), but less frequently than Macedonian does, and only in the nominative; it doesnt have a distance contrast as it does in standard Macedonian but it isnt even present in Serbian to begin with Those 12% in Polish are very dubious as well. As a native Russian speaker, I noticed that my understanding of Polish went from 20% to 70% in a matter of hours when watching a film in Polish with subtitles. do is the same verb (prim/pri/pri/primo/prite/pre vs. pravam/pravi/pravi/pravime/pravite/pravaat; as opposed to Serbian raditi) Cieszyn Silesian speakers strongly reject the notion that they speak the same language as Upper Silesians. Rusyn ~ Ukrainian . Later I found out that Slovenian and Bulgarian/Macedonian are all south Slavic languages while Serbian language is actually a western Slavic language like Slovak/Czech/Polish. So if you believe the fantastic conspiracy theory that 19 hijackers some have been discovered to be still alive were able to hijack 4 commercial planes for hours uninterrupted armed only with boxcutters and crash them into US largest and with the Pentagon most well guarded which has its own missile defence and radar system buildings on US? Bulgarian and Macedonian can understand each other to a great degree (65-80%) but not completely. A different dialect is spoken in each town. 12 Dec 2016 #221. Ja u da radim is a form more related to Macedonian and south eastern dialects of Serbo-Croatian. But still Slovene and Dalmatian akavian speaker can talk if they stick to old slavic part of their respective languages. I will also send you a copy so you can look over the Serbo-Croatian part and tell me if there are any errors. Macedonian and Bulgarian are fairly similar but they are not close to being fully mutually intelligible. The problem is that native speakers can understand other speakers of their own language. Good post, OP. Is Ukrainian mutually intelligible with Polish? Thus, this exposure gives them an edge when trying to understand Czech. Is the virgin Intelligibility important? . The Polish langauge uses the Latin script, while the Ukrainian is written in Cyrillic. Nevertheless Ukrainian intelligibility of Russian is hard to calculate because presently there are few Ukrainians in Ukraine who do not speak Russian. (Jim Morrison). Polish is not intelligible with Kashubian, a language related to Polish spoken in the north of Poland. Thanks for clearing this up! However, Balachka is dying out and is now spoken only by a few old people. It is not a failure. http://www.network54.com/Forum/84302/thread/1284248981/last-1288620675/The+real+9-11+cover+up-+Political+hijacking++was+originally+aimed+at+Russia. But, as the goal of the OP was to debunk the myth that says every slavic speaker can understand each other, he is quite right on that. Burgenland Croatian, spoken in Austria, is intelligible to Croatian speakers in Austria, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary, but it has poor intelligibility with the Croatian spoken in Croatia. Lets say a young Czech goes to Slovakia without prior exposure to Slovak. You get 0%. 70%? As soon as one gets even a very moderate amount of exposure, comprehension improves, even between such geographically distant languages as Polish and Serbian I remember staying in Montenegro and a Pole buying bread and a Montenegrin could still communicate with each other speaking at a slow-enough pace. Since then, Slovak has been disappearing from the Czech Republic, so the younger people dont understand Slovak so well. Once you learn Ukrainian, you can understand Polish, Czech, Belarusian, or other Slavic languages because they are quite similar. I must confess that as a Czech, I understand only little, what the Macedonian reporter is saying, and when I was listening to the first guy from Bosnia (Izetbegovi), I was often lost, understanding only slightly more, maybe 20-30%. Tradues em contexto de "mutuamente compreensvel" en portugus-ingls da Reverso Context : Os membros da equipa de verificao da Comisso podem comunicar com as autoridades e com o pessoal do operador da instalao numa lngua comum e mutuamente compreensvel. Ponaszymu also has many Germanisms which have been falling out of use lately, replaced by their Czech equivalents. Interesting article but I think there are some minor and some major mistakes and misunderstandigs. My email is on the Contact page. For me having learnt some Slavic languages and watching Bulgarian TV was not very difficult. I would say that Macedonian is about 25% intelligible to a Serbian speaker that was never exposed to Macedonian. Just search for alternative Croatian or kaikavian lessons and you will find me, along witht he contact information. For majority of the Shtokavian speakers thats just another language: different grammar, vocabulary, pronunciations, even sounds (Kai has at least 9 vowels while Shto Croatian only 5 for example). [2], Because of the difficulty of imposing boundaries on a continuum, various counts of the Romance languages are given; in The Linguasphere register of the worlds languages and speech communities David Dalby lists 23 based on mutual intelligibility:[13]. Written intelligibility is higher at 25%. Ukrainian much less comprehensible. I also recognize a Macedonian who speaks Serbian by the vowel e, and their sound of () is much softer than Serbian one, something between Serbian and or even as same as . I think this is very difficult for Macedonians to distinguish this two consonants and pronounce them correctly. Polish and Ukrainian mutual intelligibility question. How close is Ukrainian language to Polish? Then conversation is intelligible 100%. It was formerly thought to be a Slovenian dialect, but some now think it is more properly a Kajkavian dialect. The latter is heavily mixed with Shtokavian. The Mutually Intelligible Languages of 8 Popular World Languages, What You Should Know About Mutually Intelligible Languages, The 11 Best Language Learning Apps of 2023, How to Say Thank You in 35 Different Languages Around the Globe, The Penny Pinchers Guide to Learning Any Language for Free, The Top 8 What Language Should I Learn Online Quizzes, The 6 Best Sources of Language Learning Videos on the Internet. ", "English in Scotland a phonological approach", "Mutual Intelligibility of Closely Related Languages within the Romance language family", "How Konkani Won the Battle for 'Languagehood', "Algumas observaes sobre a noo de lngua portuguesa", Romanian language Britannica Online Encyclopedia, "UCLA Language Materials Project: Language Profile", "Uzbek | the Center for East European and Russian/Eurasian Studies", "Soviet Dungan nationalism: a few comments on their origin and language", "The Linguistic Characteristic Of Esan Language: Towards Its Empowerment and Development", "Mutual intelligibility of spoken Maltese, Libyan Arabic, and Tunisian Arabic functionally tested: A pilot study", "Gdzie "sicz", a gdzie "porohy"?! It is more like the other slavic languages (v instead of u, z instead of s, itd, less vowels, and no distinction between and ). The Torlakian spoken in the southeast is different. 50% The intelligibility of Serbo-Croatian and Macedonian is highly controversial, and intelligibility studies are in order. possession is indicated most frequently using dative pronouns, unlike Serbians tendency to use possessive pronouns in greater frequency [1] Advanced speakers of a second language typically aim for intelligibility, especially in situations where they work in their second language and the necessity of being understood is high. Much like Nordic languages. Donations are the only thing that keep the site operating. The President outlines the role played by a former London public schoolboy, Omar Sheikh, in the kidnap and murder of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter, in February 2002. Thats why in the Czechoslovak army the rule was: speak your own language, understand both. Balgarski is balgarskijat, grupa is grupata, oficialni is oficijalnijat etc. Kajkavian differs from the other Slavic lects spoken in Croatia in that is has many Hungarian and German loans (Jembrigh 2014). Then tokavian person reaction would be: What? These three languages have an 86% lexical similarity; that is, they share 86% of the same words. 4. However, Dutch speakers usually understand more German than the reverse because they study German in school. Mutual intelligibility between languages can make learning them much easier. Macedonian and Bulgarian would be much closer together except that in recent years, Macedonian has been heavily influenced by Serbo-Croatian, and Bulgarian has been heavily influenced by Russian. Far Northeastern Slovak (Saris Slovak) near the Polish border is close to Polish and Ukrainian. Regarding Russian/Ukrainian mutual intelligebility: most people who lived in Ukraine during the Soviet era and return there today say that modern Ukrainian differs greatly from the one spoken during Soviet times. The key problem of Bulgarian is the different gramar the lack of declination and the use of postpositive articles. Spanish is also partially mutually intelligible with Italian, Sardinian and French, with respective lexical similarities of 82%, 76% and 75%. I can give you an example of how I can read Bulgarian: Portuguese also has a high degree of mutual intelligibility with Spanish. Can a Russian speaker understand Polish? Im gonna estimate 40% for Bulgarian, cant really say what the difference between written and spoken Bulgarian would be for me. Thank you very much for this. Maybe it is true for two persons from the opposite end of the dialect continium (Hrvatsko Zagorje and Strumica), that have never been out of their villages and try to communicate on their respective native dialects. Czech-Slovak is now 91%, Czech-Serbo-Croatian is 18%, Czech-Macedonian is 17% and Czech=-Bulgarian is 13%. One of the most bizarre cases is that of Bulgarian, where the level of mutual intelligibility with spoken Czech is very low (close to zero), due to a completely different grammar. 99% of people in Ukraine are bilinguals who essentially speak and learn both Russian and Ukrainian from birth (although depending on the region, ones prevailence over the other varies). Re: Rus/Ukr I have read a book from Fraenkel/Kramer I believe or something similar, which said (according to some empiry) that Macedonians were easily switching to Serbian in comparison to Slovenes who stuck to their language in the time of Yugoslavia. Standard Czech and standard Slovak is almost totally intelligible (I would say about 90%) only very few words are of different origin. However, in recent years, there has also been quite a bit of bilingual learning. Lach is not fully intelligible with Czech; indeed, the differences between Lach and Czech are greater than the differences between Silesian and Polish, despite the fact that Lach has been heavily leveling into Moravian Czech for the last 100 years. It is time to stop believing to the politically motivated propaganda about our languages and start telling the truth. Eastern Slovak may have 72% intelligibility of Ukrainian. Slovenian language might be closer to the Macedonian/Bulgarian than to the Serbian language. However, any suggestions that Kajkavian is a separate language are censored on Croatian TV (Jembrigh 2014). Email me and give me your name please and I will use you in the paper. A Moravian Czech speaker (Eastern Czech) and a Bratislavan Slovak (Western Slovak) speaker understand each other very well. Toj e oficialnijat ezik na Republika Balgarija i edin iz 23-te oficialni ezika na Evropejskija sajuz. Polish uses Latin letters, just like English. This stuff is not all that controversial. As a native of Ni, I can say that the Serbo-CroatianMacedonian figures might be roughly on-point. Due to no prior exposure to Russian, I could not understand that language, other than a few words and expressions here and there. In other respects I am happy to say I manage to keep my identity clear of any overt nationalist definitions Its predecessor stage is known in Western academia as Ruthenian (14th to 17th centuries), in turn descended from what is referred to in modern linguistics as Old East Slavic (10th to 13th centuries). Also cyrillic in Macedonian is almost as same as Serbian, but many Croats dont know or dont want to know cyrillic, and that makes Macedonian more different to them than to Serbs. Russian is also 85% mutually intelligible with Belarusian and Ukrainian in . Perhaps you would care to explain why the FBI has NOT charged Osama Bin Ladin with 9/11 but with the African Embassy bombings. Ukrainian, and Belarusian. The revelation comes from General Musharrafs memoir, In the Line of Fire, which begins serialisation in The Times today and will further embarrass the White House at a time when relations between the US and Pakistan are already strained.. Pakistani intelligence chiefs are concerned that General Musharraf may jeopardise their relationship with British intelligence agencies after claiming that a convicted terrorist was once an MI6 informer. Finally, I think the Ukrainians' mentality if more Polish, while the Russian mentality is more fourteenth century Mongol. The Rusyn language is composed of 50% Slovak roots and 50% Ukrainian roots, so some difficult intelligibility with Ukrainian might be expected. So you are a speaker of Southern Chakavian, right? This is great. There is as much Czech literature and media as Slovak literature and media in Slovakia, and many Slovaks study at Czech universities. plenty of prepositions are used in a similar, if not identical, manner; to name an example, na is used in both Macedonian and Ni Torlak as a replacement for the Serbian genitive, in addition to its standard use as on(to) Macedonian 40 % spoken, 60 % written I use Ethnologues list of languages and dialects, but extend it a bit.