I speak both Southern akavian and neotokavian. How come you have not done a post about 9/11 before Robert? 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. You are probably talking about the study Mutual intelligibility between West and South Slavic languages? Im The Lizard King, I Can Do Anything! I think the OP exagerated a bit. Despite all of this, Ukrainian and Russian aren't the closest languages in the Slavic language family, and they're not even mutually intelligible. Get 70% off + 10 languages + 14 day free trial. Usually, theyre at least partially mutually intelligible with the main language they stem from. "A New Methodology for Romance Classification". Email me and give me your name please and I will use you in the paper. 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. Comment * document.getElementById("comment").setAttribute( "id", "ac933fc62d348b183dfc4516edf000ec" );document.getElementById("b83dbe3da2").setAttribute( "id", "comment" ); document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Your email address will not be published. People who live in border regions have an advantage of speaking two languages and can easily comprehand other ones as well. You can pick out the common words like Voda (water), Hleb (bread), zima (cold) and so forth but it is tough to get the jist of what they are saying with out more immersion. Therefore . How this is measured varies, but mutual intelligibility and vocabulary overlap, and often play a role in these calculations. This is because colloquial Ukrainian is closer to the Ukrainian spoken in the Soviet era which had huge Russian influence. Exposure doesnt count. Serbian is a macrolanguage made up to two languages: Shtokavian Serbian and Torlak or Gorlak Serbian. The idea is that the Kajkavian and Chakavian languages simply do not exist, though obviously they are both separate languages. Hutsul, Lemko, Boiko speech (small Ukrainian/Rusyn dialects) stangely enough, more comprehensible than standard Ukrainian. Asymmetric intelligibility refers to two languages that are considered partially mutually intelligible, but where one group of speakers has more difficulty understanding the other language than the other way around. My take on it is right here. Linguistic distance is the relative degree of difference between languages or dialects. 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. 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. An inherent pure inherent intelligibility test would involve a a speaker of Slavic lect A listening to a tape or video of a speaker of Slavic Lect A. 3. It seems polish and bulgarian are the easiest for me to understand (save for bosnian, serbian, and crnogorski). My email is on the Contact page. The claim for separate languages is based more on politics than on linguistic science. That barrier, however, is not too difficult to overcome. Do you speak Ukrainian. The post-1991 reforms of the Ukrainian language were not an introduction of Polish or Western Ukrainian as some Russian nationalists (and non-nationalists, who believe them) claim, but rather a return to a standard adopted in Kharkiv in 1927. In Serbian word order is not that important like it is in English. Other Western Slovak speakers (Bratislava) say that Eastern Slovak (Kosice) is hard to understand. You are wrong about Slovenian and Croatian languages. Also what is a dialect and what is a language? becomes confusing for me since I can say a sentence in Kai/Cha thats almost the same in Slovene but different in BSCM standards. Its mainly in the weird Bulgarian grammar! Many people know cases well but simply dont want to speak them correctly in conversation with someone who doesnt speak them correctly because that makes them feel like they want to judge other people who doesnt use cases correctly or that makes them more educated, even more smart, than someone who doesnt use it, and that makes both sides uncomfortable. What I took as Czech speaking Czech language, which I perfectly understand, was actually Czech who tries to speaks Polish. 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. but they are often mutually intelligible. Lach is a Czech-Polish transitional lect with a close relationship with Cieszyn Silesian. Russian has low intelligibility with Czech and Slovak, maybe 30%. uses the Cyrlic script, and a Banat norm, which uses the Latin script. Since then, Slovak has been disappearing from the Czech Republic, so the younger people dont understand Slovak so well. What Are Mutually Intelligible Languages? Belarusian is, in a sense, in between other slavic languages. I use Wikipedia as a reference for new languages that Wikipedia misses, like the 4 Croatian languages. The diffete. Kajkavian differs from the other Slavic lects spoken in Croatia in that is has many Hungarian and German loans (Jembrigh 2014). Huchon, Mireille, Histoire de la langue franaise, pages 214 and 223. For instance, West Palesian is a transitional Belarussian dialect to Ukrainian. 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. Intelligibility among languages can vary between individuals or groups within a language population according to their knowledge of various registers and vocabulary in their own language, their exposure to additional related languages, their interest in or familiarity with other cultures, the domain of discussion, psycho-cognitive traits, the mode of language used (written vs. oral), and other factors. It is estimated that there is 89% lexical similarity with French, 87% similarity with Catalan (spoken in Southern Spain), 85% with Sardinian, 82% with Spanish, 78% with Ladin (spoken in Northern Italy) and 77% with Romanian. I see your point, and I agree: there must be a difference in method when determining linguistic intelligibility based on different populations. However Serbian, Bosnian, and Croatian are not like Czech and Slovak. Croats say Macedonian is a complete mystery to them. Some simple words as Zboruva talk were not understood by a Bulgarian and I was obliged to use the word govori so that I adapted my Macedonian to get understood, although we seldom say govori. It is often said that Ukrainian and Russian are intelligible with each other or even that they are the same language (a view perpetuated by Russian nationalists). They exist, but not in such a degree to render them unintelligible. For instance, akavian Croatian is not intelligible with Standard Croatian. A western Slovak can even understand most of Ruthenians hen they are speaking. Traditionally, dialects are regional variations of one main language. 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. I have no idea, what Sledva da se otbelei, e tova means. Robert does look at these stories. It is more like the other slavic languages (v instead of u, z instead of s, itd, less vowels, and no distinction between and ). Recently a Croatian linguist forwarded a proposal to formally recognize Chakavian as a separate language, but the famous Croatian Slavicist Radoslav Katii argued with him about this and rejected the proposal on political, not linguistic grounds. Nevertheless, the ISO has recently accepted a proposal from the Kajkavian Renaissance Association to list the Kajkavian literary language written from the 1500s-1900 as a recognized language with an ISO code of kjv. Those 12% in Polish are very dubious as well. Sorry for so much criticism it is just my Czech/Moravian opinion on the subject. She stated that Czech and Slovak are mutually intelligible and that the main differences between the two languages is that Slovak has somewhat of a Hungarian inflluence, and Czech has more of a German and Latin component. If we consider that syntax/lexics is the heart of language, than Serbian and Macedonian are the same language. So they speak Macedonian to me and I speak Serbian to them, and we understand each other perfectly. I kind of like it though . In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. According to Ethnologue, there are more than 7,000 languages in the world, with some being more difficult to learn than others. 4. To deal with the conflict in cases such as Arabic, Chinese and German, the term Dachsprache (a sociolinguistic "umbrella language") is sometimes seen: Chinese and German are languages in the sociolinguistic sense even though speakers of some varieties cannot understand each other without recourse to a standard or prestige form. NATO EU. And, as it was already sad, all Slovaks understand czeh better than czech slovaks thanks to hostory and politics. Polish: 5% Grammar is almost identical. Torlakian (considered a subdialect of Serbian Old Shtokavian by some) has significant mutual intelligibility with Macedonian and Bulgarian. Are Polish and Ukrainian mutually intelligible? Written intelligibility was only calculated for a number of language pairs. Chakavian actually has a written heritage, but it was mostly written down long ago. It shows that Macedonians indeed grew up to certain extent as bilingual Macedonian-Serbian. Was he from Belgrade or Novi Sad or Nis? 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. Serbia is large and you should also ask Serbians in other regions. I could try. It is sometimes used as an important criterion for distinguishing languages from dialects, although sociolinguistic factors are often also used. I am really sorry, but if you are speaking about science, you cannot just say. Nobody Ive ever talked to that lived in Serbia had anything other than [u] for //. A primary challenge to these positions is that speakers of closely related languages can often communicate with each other effectively if they choose to do so. Russian is also 85% mutually intelligible with Belarusian and Ukrainian in . If one takes the transitional dialects which make a triangle between Serbian, Macedonian, Bulgarian, one can say that it is also one language. http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/sheikhmedia.htm Slovenians, Macedonians and Bulgars used to be one nation called Sklaveni and they were living in the south Hungary. Speaking of myself, after calculating everything, I can understand to specific degree Slovene, somewhat Slovak/Russian, Serbo-Croatian std without problems and also Macedonians. There was a lot of past Yugoslav politics that hid the truth. Kajkavian has 82% intelligibility of Chakavian. Is the virgin Intelligibility important? Ive been following this page and kept coming to it for the past months, actually more than a year (and have noticed some updates). This is simply reality in Serbia today. So I understood all but one word (), and Google Translator indeed confirms that my guess was right and it means also. If youve studied one language, you may very well understand some of anotheror have a much easier time learning it. The more the better. Crazy! Thanks so much for this post. Rural variations are usually less mutually intelligible. Many Turkic languages are mutually intelligible to a higher or lower degree, but thorough empirical research is needed to establish the exact levels and patterns of mutual intelligibility between the languages of this linguistic family. Some islanders go even further than that and don`t consider themselves ethnic Croats. The Rusyn language is composed of 50% Slovak roots and 50% Ukrainian roots, so some difficult intelligibility with Ukrainian might be expected. There can be various reasons for this. Accent is on last or penultimate syllable. Chakavian and Kajkavian have high, but not full mutual intelligibility. Ukrainian 15 % spoken, 25 % written Yet we speak of Kai/Cha as of Serbo-Croatian dialects, while Slovenian is totally foreign. This is a political point, of course. I thought this is Croatia! Spanish is most mutually intelligible with Galician. Polish has 22% intelligibility of Silesian, 12% of Czech, 6% of Russian, and 5% of Bulgarian. Much of the claimed intelligibility is simply bilingual learning. Not true about Czech / Slovak inteligibility. The distance of Slovene may seem unlikely, but I think that it is still rather optimistic, because Czech and Slovene are quite distant, despite geographical closeness. I speak Slovenian and Croats think that I can speak Kaikavian. 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. I have the hardest time to understand anything of Bulgarian, it sounds really fast and choppy but similar to Russian sometimes. 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. Cieszyn Silesian or Ponaszymu is a language closely related to Silesian spoken in Czechoslovakia in the far northeast of the country near the Polish and Slovak borders. This phenomenon is called asymmetrical mutual intelligibility. Bulgarian has 80% intelligibility of Macedonian, 41% of Russian, and 5% of Polish and Czech. But in the case of written Russian, you could elevate this number up to 70-80% quite easily. Thanks for the information about Eastern Slovak I will incorporate it. A koine is currently under development. . The Macedonian spoken near the Serbian border is heavily influenced by Serbo-Croatian and is quite a bit different from the Macedonian spoken towards the center of Macedonia. Cheers brothers and sisters! Hello, can you tell me, how much Kajkavian can your average Chakavian speaker understand in percentage? From the 1500s to 1900, a large corpus of Kajkavian literature was written. I also have no problems understanding standard Croatian or the Kajkavian and Cakavian Croatian dialects and Bosnian and Montenegrin to me are the same language and completely understandable. I can only speak from my personal experience (business trips to Czech Republic - Ostrava, Praha, Mlad Boleslav, Mikulov ). You really need to go look at the new version of the paper. Similar things are also valid for Ukraine and Belarus, both of which were parts of the Soviet Union, where Russian was the dominant official language. Personally, I must admit that Serbs from areas above Nis (cf. Russian, the native language of 160 million people, including many . In essence, such kinds of bilingualism also improve understanding of other, unrelated Slavic languages, since two Slavic languages fill in the comprehension gaps. Its a nasty drug, and I hear its addicting. What Are Mutually Intelligible Languages? That is good to know. To some extent, Russian, Rusyn, Ukrainian, and Belarusian retain a degree of mutual intelligibility. In fact, people in the north of Poland regard Silesian as incomprehensible. (I will come to Bulgarian too). One more thing is that Serbian has, for example, two versions of the future case, with da (that) and verb in some person form, 1st in this case: ja u da radim (I will work) and ja u raditi where raditi (to work) is an infinitive. Many of our word roots are the same. So, when you're learning the Polish alphabet, all you have to pay attention to are the special accents and the pronunciation. I also worked in a resteraunt with lots of west and south slavs there and I have to say that Serbian and crotian has a lot of ilarities with Slovak. Price, Glanville (1971), French Language: Present and Past, Jameson Books, Pope, Mildred K. From Latin to French, with Especial Consideration of Anglo-Norman. Still others (for example, Voegelin and Voegelin 1977) recognize just two main dialect groups: Eastern and Western Ukrainian. Robert Lindsay. Istorieskoto mu razvitie se charakterizira s etiri glavni perioda. Macedonian syntax and lexics are more similar to Serbian, even though structures of the language such as articles (no declensions) function as in Bulgarian. 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 In other respects I am happy to say I manage to keep my identity clear of any overt nationalist definitions In the present study we tested the level of mutual intelligibility between three West Slavic (Czech, Slovak and Polish) and three South Slavic languages (Croatian, Slovene and Bulgarian). (Download). But akavian being archaic it has old slavic package. It has many Hungarian words, archaic Slavic words and words of an unknown origin (at least to me). They say, ~60%, ~65%, etc. Your English is pretty much ok. Un- or fortunately, you are right about the thesis about Macedonian and Bulgarian. It was a long time ago though, so Ill try to convince her (and maybe a couple more Russians) to try this again tonight. OMG! 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. Standard Czech and standard Slovak is almost totally intelligible (I would say about 90%) only very few words are of different origin.