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 . However, any suggestions that Kajkavian is a separate language are censored on Croatian TV (Jembrigh 2014). In terms I think (as a native Serbian speaker from south eastern Belgrade) the main difference between Serbian and Macedonian is that Macedonian doesnt have cases and have definite articles as well. Feb 22, 2020. 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 Having lived in Moscow and being married to a Russian, I now speak Russian well enough to be mistaken for a Russian-speaking tourist from Poland or Lithuania when in Moscow. The translation is not very problematic. A number of native speakers of various Slavic lects were interviewed about mutual intelligibility, language/dialect confusion, the state of their language, its history and so on. In other cases, I had to rely on the context. My father once read an article in polish and he said he understood almost everything, but when its spoken he said about 60%. I simply didnt know what for example word iskati (to seek) means when I first watched that movie, I was 14, I understand it from the context like I can understand Macedonian. Polish Language Overview, Structure & Facts | What is Polski? So, when you're learning the Polish alphabet, all you have to pay attention to are the special accents and the pronunciation. I can randomly pick up another paragraph from that Wikipedia page, and it would be harder: Belarussian is nonetheless a separate language from both Ukrainian and Russian. Scots and English are considered mutually intelligible. In akavian they are once more old slavic. Chakavian has a low mutual intelligibility with either, in part due to its large number of loanwords from Venetian. It is time to stop believing to the politically motivated propaganda about our languages and start telling the truth. However, Bulgarians claim to be able to understand Serbo-Croatian better than the other way around. I dont know about Macedonian (havent ever heard or read it) but it seems to be like in the middle between Serbian and Bulgarian (just like frisian is in the middle of dutch and english). Generally, when foreigners say speakers of a certain language speak too fast, speakers of that language can hear that fast speech just fine. People from Lviv and larger cities and towns in western Ukraine have a slight clipped accent but they speak standard Ukrainian. While common speech from urban areas arent always mutually intelligible across regions, speakers from these regions can often use a more formal form of Arabic to speak with each other. Also, I can only understand a small bit of Russian, and Ukrainian is even more far off for me(the pronunciation is easier but understanding is harder) and I can understand quite a bit of bulgarian(especially when written). Belarussian has 80% intelligibility of Ukrainian and 55% of Polish. Jeff Lindsay estimates that Russian has 85% intelligibility with Rusyn (which has a small number of speakers in Central and Eastern Europe). 5. Also akavian has some elements of its own. It is an official language of the Bulgarian republic and one of 23 official languages of the European Union. Briefly put, mutual intelligibility is when speakers of one language can understand a related language to some degree. The base of Molise Croatian was Shtokavian with an Ikavian accent and a heavy Chakavian base similar to what is now spoken as Southern Kajkavian Ikavian on the islands of Croatia. Below is an incomplete list of fully and partially mutually intelligible languages, that are so similar that they are sometimes considered not to be separate, but merely varieties of the same language. Just one example: the letter g was eliminated in order to make the Ukrainian h correspond exactly with Russian g. Are belarusian and russian mutually intelligible? - AskingForAnswer 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. As a native of Ni, I can say that the Serbo-CroatianMacedonian figures might be roughly on-point. 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). If you know Polish, you're likely to understand a little Russian, Ukrainian and other Slavic languages, but this doesn't mean that the languages are mutually intelligible. Do you speak Boyko or Hutsul? It differs from the rest of Silesian in that it has undergone heavy Czech influence. Belarussian almost completely comprehensible, except a few words. Although Chakavian is clearly a separate language from Shtokavian Croatian, in Croatia it is said that there is only one Croatian language, and that is Shtokavian Croatian. Serbian is a macrolanguage made up to two languages: Shtokavian Serbian and Torlak or Gorlak Serbian. For example, all Russian shows get subtitles on Ukrainian TV. Polish lacks full intelligibility of Silesian, although this is controversial (see below). Ekavian Chakavian has two branches Buzet and Northern Chakavian. Im gonna estimate 40% for Bulgarian, cant really say what the difference between written and spoken Bulgarian would be for me. Its grammar is close to that of Russian. A question: how is it decided that the cut-off between a language and dialect is 90% MI? Rather than 95%, or 85%. 'My heart remains in Ukraine': The refugee women longing to return 3. Polish and Russian: are they similar or very different languages? It is not intelligible with Shtokavian, although this is controversial. But in the case of written Russian, you could elevate this number up to 70-80% quite easily. Poles who know German and Old Polish can understand Silesian quite well due to the Germanisms and the presence of many older Polish words, but Poles who speak only Polish have a hard time with Silesian. 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) a person with Virgin ears from any where in the Czech republic and west and central Slovakia will understand each other fairly well. Macedonian: 50-60 % His wife had never been to Poland and her language was completely foreign to me. Student Authored Website. The long war over the Ukrainian language - The Boston Globe Not sure where did you get more similarity between Boyko dialects and Russian language? Grammar, on the other hand, is a different matter altogether. It is not that hard. The unintelligibility is only due to the manner of speaking and not because of lexical and/or grammatical differences. But despite similarities in grammar and vocabulary and almost identical alphabets, they differ sharply in many ways and are not mutually intelligible. Mutual intelligibility between languages - CourseFinders It seems polish and bulgarian are the easiest for me to understand (save for bosnian, serbian, and crnogorski). Ni Torlak vowel reflexes are otherwise in line with standard Serbian and Northwestern Macedonian, deriving nuclear /u e i e u r/ from / y * *l *r/; some Torlak dialects towards Kosovo or Bulgaria instead have [l ~ l] for /l/ (giving [v()l(:)k] where Serbian normally has [v:k]) but none in my vicinity. However, there are dialects in between Ukrainian and Russian such as the Eastern Polissian and Slobozhan dialects of Ukrainian that are intelligible with both languages. In some respects, all Slavic languages have a lot in common. Ikavian Chakavian has two branches Southwestern Istrian and Southern Chakavian. Here are the estimates about inteligebility with other Slavic languages from a person thats fluent in Slovenian and Serbo-Croatian: Are Slovenian and Croatian mutually intelligible? - 2023 That is ~90% our language. Its specific czech and many foreiner has problem spelling it. Just search for alternative Croatian or kaikavian lessons and you will find me, along witht he contact information. This understanding can be in spoken or written communication. Slovak somewhat more than Polish, but still very little. What Are Mutually Intelligible Languages? #5. Thread starter Bamaro; Start date Feb 15, 2023 . I just didnt realize that when you talked about learning the other language you were actually referring to the errors inherent in doing a non-virgin ears MI study, and not conflating language learning with mutual intelligibility. Belarussian and Ukrainian have 85% similar vocabulary. Classifications may also shift for reasons external to the languages themselves. Hence, many religious books were imported from Russia, and these books influenced Bulgarian. Hutsul, Lemko, Boiko speech (small Ukrainian/Rusyn dialects) stangely enough, more comprehensible than standard Ukrainian. However, Chakavian magazines are published even today (Jembrigh 2014). If you choose to study a language thats mutually intelligible with one you already know, chances are youll have to put a lot less work in than if you were learning a language from scratch. In my experience, its quite easy. The grammar in both languages is similar, but, predictably, there are a few differences: While Ukrainian includes the past continuous tense, there are only three tenses in Russian (past, present and future). For instance, Portuguese and Spanish have a relatively high degree of mutual intelligibility, but theyre technically separate languages. So I tried with my native Slovenian language and I was surprised how well Bulgars understand Slovenian language. We also participate in other affiliate advertising programs for products and services we believe in. Also sorry for my English. Regular speech is generally quite fast. From the 1500s to 1900, a large corpus of Kajkavian literature was written. The Rusyn language is composed of 50% Slovak roots and 50% Ukrainian roots, so some difficult intelligibility with Ukrainian might be expected. The main difference is in the ortography. Ive been following this page and kept coming to it for the past months, actually more than a year (and have noticed some updates).