This comment is fantastic! This is heartening, although Kajkavian as an existing spoken lect also needs to be recognized as a living language instead of a dialect of Croatian, whatever that word means. Some say it is a part of Czech, but more likely it is a part of Polish like Silesian. most speakers of one language find it relatively easy to achieve some degree of understanding in the related language(s). Russia) in Canada, and they barely can understand standard Ukrainian. Regular speech is generally quite fast. Bolgarian 30 % spoken, 50 % 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. Nevertheless, although intelligibility with Slovenian is high, Kajkavian lacks full intelligibility with Slovenian. Russian has 85% intelligibility with Rusyn (which has a small number of speakers in Central and Eastern Europe). It has also been described as a transitional dialect between Polish and Slovak. 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. Tunisian Arabic is also considered mutually intelligible with Maltese, particularly with regards to idiomatic expressions. December 2014. . Ukrainian, and Belarusian. The Aegean Macedonian dialects mostly spoken in Greece, such as the Lerinsko-Kostursko and Solunsko-Vodenskadialects, sound more Bulgarian than Macedonian. There is an old Kajkavian-Chakavian dialect continuum of which little remains, although some of the old Kajkavian-Chakavian transitional dialects are still spoken (Jembrigh 2014). Belarussian and Ukrainian have 85% similar vocabulary. Serbian is a macrolanguage made up to two languages: Shtokavian Serbian and Torlak or Gorlak Serbian. People from Lviv and larger cities and towns in western Ukraine have a slight clipped accent but they speak standard Ukrainian. Reactions: So far there have been few reactions to the paper. Foreign languages arent always as foreign as youd expect. Russian is followed by Polish with over 40 million speakers, Ukrainian with 33 million and Czech with 13 million. And yes, comprehension has suffered since Czechoslovakia broke up, due to lack of exposure. I can understand anyone who speaks English, even those who speak it as foreigners might say too fast. http://www.network54.com/Forum/84302/thread/1289113786/last-1289113786/British+intelligence+links+to+African+Emabssy+bombings. . 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. If you choose to learn a language which is at least to some extent mutually intelligible to a language you already know . Bratislava speakers say that Kosice speech sounds half Slovak and half Ukrainian and uses many odd and unfamiliar words. 6. Personally, I must admit that Serbs from areas above Nis (cf. Just search for alternative Croatian or kaikavian lessons and you will find me, along witht he contact information. 0%. Probably, ja u da radim for Bosnians and Croatians sounds very Serbian. But I can tell you this. As far as grammars are concerned (declension and conjugation), they are so similar that there is almost no effort in understanding that this noun is, for example, in dative plural, and that verb is imperfective past. The intelligibility of Belarussian with both Ukrainian and Russian is a source of controversy. Then conversation is intelligible 100%. 10%? I speak tokavski croatian (and can read and understand serbian (both cyrillic and latin) and can adapt my croatian to be more serbian grammatically and with vocabulary) and just recently I had a conversation where I spoke croatian and the other person spoke polish. In fact, I cannot often identify any words at all. In my experience, its quite easy. 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. This is not the case, as all figures were derived from estimates by native speakers themselves, often a number of estimates averaged together. Polish ~ Kashubian . A koine is currently under development. Traditionally, dialects are regional variations of one main language. (j/k) Polish: 5% There are numerous intelligibility tests out there that work very well, or you can just ask native speakers to give you a %, and most of the honest ones will tell you; in fact, they will often differentiate between oh that is our language, they speak the same language as us, for dialects and then no, that is not our language, that is different, and they do not speak our language for separate languages. 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. 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. I also understand more of other Slavic languages then neotokavian speakers do. That is a particularly ugly version of nationalism brewing in your vicinity. The Torlakian spoken in the southeast is different. General. We also participate in other affiliate advertising programs for products and services we believe in. Your English is pretty much ok. Un- or fortunately, you are right about the thesis about Macedonian and Bulgarian. Masovian, which is spoken throughout the central and eastern regions of Poland. ENGLISH: Bulgarian language is an Indo-European language from the group of South-Slavic languages. I am communicating very often with speakers of the other Slavic languages, so I did an experiment and I tried to write something in Bulgarian for one first time. One way to look at Macedonian is that it is a Serbo-Croatian-Bulgarian transitional lect. Still others (for example, Voegelin and Voegelin 1977) recognize just two main dialect groups: Eastern and Western Ukrainian. 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. All Rights Reserved. Yet we speak of Kai/Cha as of Serbo-Croatian dialects, while Slovenian is totally foreign. http://ifaq.wap.org/society/voweldeployment.html. I can grasp only something in the sense that these four periods have different names and that they dont designate different languages (delene e uslovno i imenata ne otrazjavat razlini ezici), but only periods of the development of Bulgarian (samo periodi v razvitieto na balgarskija ezik), with typical changes or features (za koito se otkrivat charakterni belezi). Or as an English speaker, you might catch the gist of some Scots. This term is similar to linguistic distance in that it can reflect how similar or different languages are. Polish has 22% intelligibility of Silesian, 12% of Czech, 6% of Russian, and 5% of Bulgarian. These attacks killed over 200 people. From a grammatical and morphological perspective, Ukrainian is closer to Russian: they both have East Slavic roots. I do hope that you understand the point. Greg, Kaikavian is dialect of Slovenian language. Is Ukrainian closer to Russian or Polish? Im The Lizard King, I Can Do Anything! Together with the basic norm used in Bulgaria, there also exists a Macedonian norm, which (sao=also?) 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. How is it possible if they speak the same language? ago. 2. 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. I tested this on my wife by showing her news clips on Youtube. Maybe its a lack of vocabulary, but I havent heard that word from someone personally yet. Hello Mr Lindsay, I would be able to translate what he says! The reason there are subtitles on Russian-language shows in Ukraine is because of Ukraines puristic state language policies. The historical development is characterized by four main periods. But when you see it, you are shocked that you can read it. Pure Silesian appears to be a dying language. Nice to meet you, Robert; Ill make sure to read more of your articles now! I hope you will like it and will be useful for your researches! An academic paper has been published making the case for a separate Balachka language. Once you pick up those basic 50 words, understanding Macedonian becomes super easy that was my experience with Macedonian friends (the few of them who dont speak Serbian). That is ~90% our language. Croats say Macedonian is a complete mystery to them. Amazon and the Amazon logo are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc, or its affiliates. Serbo-Croatian and Russian have 10-15% intelligibility, if that, yet written intelligibility is higher at 25%. Basically, you only hear a series of consonants with hardly recognizable vowels. Only nationalists and fanatics disagree. Russian is actually a little further, but most Belarusian speakers are bilingual (Bel-Rus) and most Ukrainian . A lect called iarija Slovenian is spoken on the Istrian Peninsula in Slovenia just north of Croatia. He was a member of a group of linguists who met periodically to discuss the field. The overall lexical similarity between Spanish and Portuguese is estimated to be 89%. On the other hand, it can be difficult for Russians to understand Ukrainian (though it is easy for them to learn it). Required fields are marked *. Check out his page on the FBI 10 most wanted website. 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. Interesting article a person with Virgin ears from any where in the Czech republic and west and central Slovakia will understand each other fairly well. You can pick up the gist of thats being said in any sentence. Between some languages, there can also be imbalanced mutual intelligibility, known as asymmetric intelligibility. This occurs when speakers of one language can understand a related language to a greater degree than speakers of the related language can understand the other. I kind of like it though . But still Slovene and Dalmatian akavian speaker can talk if they stick to old slavic part of their respective languages. A different dialect is spoken in each town. His wife had never been to Poland and her language was completely foreign to me. So I tried with my native Slovenian language and I was surprised how well Bulgars understand Slovenian language. It is true that Western Slovak dialects can understand Czech well, but Central Slovak, Eastern Slovak and Extraslovakian Slovak dialects cannot. Russia Invades Ukraine pt XII. Polish: Ukrainian and Belarusian (both partially; moreover, . That being said, the line between a language and a dialect is often blurred. It is rather controversial outside Linguistics, as you run into nationalists and other fools who emotionally distort things. Finally, understanding mutual intelligibility gives you helpful insight into the history of a language. For me, Serbian and Macedonian are as different as Serbian and Slovene, they sounds somehow the same, but I dont understand them correctly. Then tokavian person reaction would be: What? Thanks for clearing this up! There is a group of Bulgarians living in Serbia in the areas of Bosilegrad and Dimitrovgrad who speak a Bulgarian-Serbian transitional dialect, and Serbs are able to understand these Bulgarians well. Mi povidamo Horvatski jazik means We speak croatian language in akavian. Here are three critical ways in which Bulgarian and Russian speakers differ. Your email address will not be published. Could you please explain what you mean by language and intelligibility and hopefully remedy this failure of the original text? Around 80% comprehension, it gets hard to talk about complex or technical things. Rusyn ~ Ukrainian . But thats politics for you. Shtokavian is simply the same Serbo-Croatian language that is also spoken in Croatia, Montenegro and Bosnia. There can be various reasons for this. For true MI testing, we want virgin ears, and it has to be both ways. ????? Sorry I can`t give you percentage. Everything else we chalk up to bilingual learning as we call it and we do not think it is accurate. At least not in general if so, it might depend on the school. While discussing mutual intelligibility, the author often calls upon bilingual learning; for example, Czech and Slovak are considered highly intelligible because of the strong cross-cultural overlap. This difference is because Bulgarian is not spoken the same way it is written like Serbo-Croatian is. What sort of Slav nation are you a part of my friend? They give you strict % figures, and it is pretty amazing. So I understood 100% But I admit that it was a relatively very easy text. English professor. I always aske her about whether she understands Bulgarian and Serbian and she claims Serbian is way closer to her language rather than Bulgarian. Belarussian has 80% intelligibility of Ukrainian and 55% of Polish. 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 . I think that Russian has at least 89% with Belorussian, because I understand all speech in Belorusian. Ukranian: 20% I cant say that I would understand every word, but it is usually not difficult to guess some missing gaps from the context, so I could read professional books in Bulgarian in the past. Mutual intelligibility with varieties of Serbo-Croatian is hindered by differences in vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation, Kajkavian being the most mutually intelligible. . So they speak Macedonian to me and I speak Serbian to them, and we understand each other perfectly. Personal communication. 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. Method: It is important to note that the percentages are in general only for oral intelligibility and only in the case of a situation of a pure inherent intelligibility test. [1] For Kai-Cha it was less shocking as many words were taught by their parents (or they remembered them from childhood, before the school system forces you to use only the Std Cro). Test only Serbs who know almost no English (they exist in older generation). December 2014. True science would involve scientific intelligibility testing of Slavic language pairs. Hello everyone, Writing in Chakavian started very early in the Middle Ages and began to slow down in the 1500s when writing in Kajkavian began to rise. In the 1500s, Kajkavian began to be developed in a standard literary form. Chakavian has a low mutual intelligibility with either, in part due to its large number of loanwords from Venetian. The Czech law even states that Slovak language can be used in schools and in official documents. Intelligibility problems are mostly on the Czech end because they dont bother to learn Slovak while many Slovaks learn Czech. 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). Download: Macedonian: 50-60 % Also sorry for my English. Kajkavian differs from the other Slavic lects spoken in Croatia in that is has many Hungarian and German loans (Jembrigh 2014). From his own words it is possible to conclude that mutual inteligibility between czech and slovak is very high, and Ive heard from young czechs that they still can understand slovak with no effort. My email is on the Contact page. We found that Czech and Slovak have by far the highest level of mutual intelligibility, followed by Croatian and Slovene. FluentU is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. Heres his interview with Bosnian figures, and Bosnian is part of B/H/S landscape 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. Are Polish and Ukrainian mutually intelligible? Not everyone within each of the three broad dialect areas speaks Yiddish in the same way -- there are sub-dialects, but they are mutually intelligible. But reading a Bulgarian text is surprisingly easy, because the phonology and vocabulary are very similar. In addition, Bin Laden is a suspect in other terrorist attacks throughout the world. Most pairs have no figure for written intelligibility. Polish and Ukrainian have higher lexical similarity at 72%, and Ukrainian intelligibility of Polish is ~50%+. Slobozhan Ukrainian speakers in this region find it easier to understand their Russian neighbors than the Upper DnistrianUkrainian spoken in the far west in the countryside around Lviv. Hello can I use your comments in a paper I am writing? The Lemko dialect of Rusyn has only marginal intelligibility with Ukrainian. So, i've been interested about how much Polish speakers can understand Ukrainian without learning the language, but, most results i found said it's not really mutually intelligible, despite sharing alot or some words. adrian. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Because so many Slavic languages are national languages, they tend to have pretty big populations. 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. Russian. Spoken Bulgarian is very difficult to understand for other Slavs due to phonology and unique syllable stress. 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 . The biggest Slavic language by far is Russian, which has 154 million native speakers and over 258 million speakers in total. 3. . 1996 . I am a good control for this because I am an American but my father is Slovak(my mother is half Slovak but American) and I can understand about 50 % of Slovak and I do have a hard time with Czech but once I get past their hacek r I can understand quite a bit. There can be huge differences between spoken/written forms of a Slavic language, because the written form may have a very similar vocabulary, phonology and grammar, but due to a different, strong stress, you wont understand almost anything. Sledva da se otbelei, e tova delene e uslovno i imenata ne otrazjavat razlini ezici, a samo periodi v razvitieto na balgarskija ezik, za koito se otkrivat charakterni belezi. The fact that such process works is almost a definition of mutual intelligibility for me. Bulharsk jazyk je plurocentrick jazyk m nkolik kninch norem. Also how much of Rusyn do Russians understand on a % basis? Written intelligibility is higher at 25%. Kajkavian was removed from public use after 1900, hence writing in the standard Kajkavian literary language was curtailed. 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. In this week's Slavic languages comparison, we talk about animals in Polish and Ukrainian. @AJ 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. I grew up as a Ukrainian speaker in North America. In other words, Ukrainian speakers can often understand Russian, while Russian speaker doesn't understand Ukrainian, especially Russian speakers from outside Ukraine. The languages really split about 1,000 years ago, but written Slovak was based on written Czech, and there was a lot of interlingual communication. In its written form Bulgarian is even more different than in its spoken form. All South Slavic languages in effect form a large dialect continuum of gradually mutually intelligible varieties depending on distance between the areas where they are spoken. Yiddish speakers usually have an easier time understanding German than vice versa, largely because Yiddish has added words from other languages, including Hebrew and Slavic languages, which makes it more difficult for German speakers to understand. Pannonian Rusyn is actually a part of Slovak, and Rusyn proper is really a part of Ukrainian. Kajkavian is fairly uniform across its speech area, whereas Chakavian is more diverse (Jembrigh 2014). Slovak: 20% 5. These figures were tallied up for each pair of languages to be tabulated and were then all averaged together. Kajkavian is a dialect of Slovenian language. It is true that Czech is more urban and less folk and many Slovaks study in Czech republic. Woof woof! Price, Glanville (1971), French Language: Present and Past, Jameson Books, Pope, Mildred K. From Latin to French, with Especial Consideration of Anglo-Norman. Look at this Polish girl: Russian speakers are also likely to understand some Bulgarian, along with other Slavic languages to a lesser extent. I am afraid you are not right because if you take Serbian dialects till Nis, then they are very mutually intelligible with Macedonian! Polish is spoken outside of Poland by Polish diaspora groups in countries like Ukraine, Belarus, Germany, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Then she asked me to go do something useful, so this is all I can contribute with. What percentage of Ukraine speaks Polish? Czech and Slovak are more intelligible to me then Slovenian with Slovak more so then Czech. In contrast, there is often significant intelligibility between different Scandinavian languages, but as each of them has its own standard form, they are classified as separate languages. More properly, their speech is best seen as closer to Macedonian than to Bulgarian or Serbo-Croatian. As an example, in the case of a linear dialect continuum that shades gradually between varieties, where speakers near the center can understand the varieties at both ends with relative ease, but speakers at one end have difficulty understanding the speakers at the other end, the entire chain is often considered a single language. But even they will know the literary norm of their own language which will ease up the communication. Interesting when one considers that Ukrainians do not even consider Rusyn a real language. In addition, a Net search was done of forums where speakers of Slavic languages were discussing how much of other Slavic languages they understand. I see your point, and I agree: there must be a difference in method when determining linguistic intelligibility based on different populations. I can barely understand czech (slovak I havent tried) and, as similar as it is to croatian, I can only understand a little slovenian. Jeff Lindsay estimates that Russian has 85% intelligibility with Rusyn (which has a small number of speakers in Central and Eastern Europe).