Polish lacks full intelligibility of Silesian, although this is controversial (see below). These 4 main Polish dialects are: Greater Polish, which is spoken in the west of the country. Russian has 85% intelligibility of Rusyn, 74% of oral Belorussian and 85% of written Belorussian, 60% of Balachka, 50% of oral Ukrainian and 85% of written Ukrainian, 36% of oral Bulgarian and 80% of written Bulgarian, 38% of Polish, 30% of Slovak and oral Montenegrin and 50% of written Montenegrin, 12% of oral Serbo-Croatian, 25% of written Serbo-Croatian, and 10% of Czech. 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. I guess this would not have worked for Macedonian and Slovene in the Yugoslav army. 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. If youre learning multiple languages at once, pairing similar languages is a great way to maximize your studying. The main Turkologist I worked with on that chapter told me that he thought 90% was a good metric. Intelligibility data for Saris Slovak and Ukrainian is not known. 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. The key problem of Bulgarian is the different gramar the lack of declination and the use of postpositive articles. After all, you can look at the study that I listed above and check the results of the written translation task (translation of 50 individual words), which illustrates the similarity of lexicons: Czechs best understand Slovak words (96,52%), then Polish (64,29%), then Bulgarian (57,00%), Croatian (55,38%) and Slovene (49,73%). Ive been following this page and kept coming to it for the past months, actually more than a year (and have noticed some updates). 12 Dec 2016 #221. Slovak students do not have to pass a language test at Czech universities. 5. According to former Pakistani President Musharraf Omar Sheikh who wired $100,000 to Mohammed Atta was recruited during the 90s by British intelligence. I can randomly pick up another paragraph from that Wikipedia page, and it would be harder: Menu. Bulgarian more comprehensible than standard Ukrainian. I speak both Southern akavian and neotokavian. This gives rise to claims of Macedonians being able to understand Serbo-Croatian very well, however, much of this may be due to bilingual learning. Yet some say that the subtitles are simply put on as a political move due to Ukraines puristic language policy. How is it possible if they speak the same language? 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. To some extent, Russian, Rusyn, Ukrainian, and Belarusian retain a degree of mutual intelligibility. 15), Part II", "Intelligibility of standard German and Low German to speakers of Dutch", "Cross-Border Intelligibility on the Intelligibility of Low German among Speakers of Danish and Dutch", "Mutual intelligibility of Dutch-German cognates by humans and computers", "Morpho-syntax of mutual intelligibility in the Turkic languages of Central Asia - Surrey Morphology Group", "Kirundi language, alphabet and pronunciation", "Tokelauan Language Information & Resources", "Majlis Bahasa Brunei Darussalam Indonesia Malaysia (MABBIM)", "Indonesian-Malay mutual intelligibility? Pronunciation is quite different, but all patterns are easy to catch. In fact, I would probably have a hard time to understand a Czech speaking with such an intonation. some things in this article are heavily exaggerated. However, in terms of vocabulary Ukrainian is closer to Polish, from which it has borrowed a large number of words. 70%? Thus, this exposure gives them an edge when trying to understand Czech. https://bg.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%91%D1%8A%D0%BB%D0%B3%D0%B0%D1%80%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8_%D0%B5%D0%B7%D0%B8%D0%BA The more German the Silesian dialect is, the harder it is for Poles to understand. There is just a little problem to understand east Slovaks for Czechs from naywhere. 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. A different dialect is spoken in each town. 7. This is a Chakavian-Slovenian transitional lect that is hard to categorize, but it is usually considered to be a Slovenian dialect. This is not the case, as all figures were derived from estimates by native speakers themselves, often a number of estimates averaged together. 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. Yes and if you could more than one listener, it would be great. A Slovak from Bratislava can and does understand eastern Slovak dialects, he might have to tune his ear a bit, but I know because Ive talked to many members of my family about this and other Slovaks and they all say it sounds really stupid and a few words are different but they definantly understand. People from Lviv and larger cities and towns in western Ukraine have a slight clipped accent but they speak standard Ukrainian. Sorry for so much criticism it is just my Czech/Moravian opinion on the subject. Its also said that Serbo-Croatian can understand Bulgarian and Macedonian, but this is not true. Western Ukraine, at least urban Western Ukraine, no longer speaks the Galician dialect but rather standard Ukrainian. Classifications may also shift for reasons external to the languages themselves. Was he educated? 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 . Is there any way you could give me percentage figures for these observations of your wifes? Needless to say, Polish is very familiar too, except its phonology, getting the gist of which is just a matter of some time. 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. Thank you very much for this. This stuff is not all that controversial. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1n9KMawa-8 Here are three critical ways in which Bulgarian and Russian speakers differ. adrian. This is simply not the case. Pobrzajte in Serbian means (pourite) but I understand it because brzo means fast and prefix po also exists in Serbian, and the imperative form is the same. "Proto-Slavonic,". but what if person is from island and speaks heavy akavian and tokavian speaker is real tokavian like from Slavonia (North Eastern Croatia). But the end of the sentence clarified these words. Just one example: the letter g was eliminated in order to make the Ukrainian h correspond exactly with Russian g. Page 183 section 481. http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/wanted_terrorists/usama-bin-laden/view That is ~90% our language. . Lemko is spoken heavily in Poland, and it differs from Standard Rusyn in that it has a lot of Polish vocabulary, whereas Standard Rusyn has more influences from Hungarian and Romanian. 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. Im gonna estimate 40% for Bulgarian, cant really say what the difference between written and spoken Bulgarian would be for me. Written intelligibility is often very different from oral intelligibility in that in a number of cases, it tends to be higher, often much higher, than oral intelligibility. Although even if they stuck to Polish/Ukrainian, they'd probably still understand each other. Hutsul, Lemko, Boiko speech (small Ukrainian/Rusyn dialects) stangely enough, more comprehensible than standard Ukrainian. 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. I have friends from Bulgaria and I can tell you that they have problems by understanding some things. Kajkavski it seems has changed less than akavski. There are new scientific figures for Czech-Slovak, Czech-Serbo-Croatian and Czech-Bulgarian. Speaking of myself, after calculating everything, I can understand to specific degree Slovene, somewhat Slovak/Russian, Serbo-Croatian std without problems and also Macedonians. But in the case of written Russian, you could elevate this number up to 70-80% quite easily. My father once read an article in polish and he said he understood almost everything, but when its spoken he said about 60%. The results show that in most cases, a division between West and South Slavic languages does exist and that West . The two languages are not mutually intelligible, and there are significant differences in grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. It is quite true that Macedonian speakers (even today) are switching to Serbian (although there is a resistence among some speakers of Macdonian) on informal situations. Russian is partially mutually intelligible with Ukrainian, Rusyn and Belarusian. 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 . Mutual Intelligibility of Languages in the Slavic Family. Email me and give me your name please and I will use you in the paper. I believe Yet we speak of Kai/Cha as of Serbo-Croatian dialects, while Slovenian is totally foreign. 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. Russian. Give me a figure in % for the Rusyn if you would. For instance, in 1932, Ukrainian g was eliminated from the alphabet in order to make Ukrainian h correspond perfectly with Russian g. After 1991, the g returned to Ukrainian. For me having learnt some Slavic languages and watching Bulgarian TV was not very difficult. possession is indicated most frequently using dative pronouns, unlike Serbians tendency to use possessive pronouns in greater frequency Mezentseva, Inna. Upper Dnistrian is influenced by German and Polish. I would hazzard to say that Polish and Czech languages are at minimum 50% Intelligible and comprehensible between Poles and Czechs (when spoken with normal pace ) and at least 60-70% . The Russian language in the Ukraine has been declining recently mostly because since independence, the authorities have striven to make the new Ukrainian as far away from Russian as possible by adopting the Kharkiv Standard adopted in 1927 and jettisoning the 1932 Standard which brought Ukrainian more in line with Russian. Macedonian: 50-60 % Or maybe you are just a gatekeeper. 25/01/23 | StarsInsider. The person did not understand everything what I wrote. Nevertheless, most Bulgarians over the age of 30-35 understand Russian well since studying Russian was mandatory under Communism. In my experience, its quite easy. Its grammar is close to that of Russian. Furthermore, there is a dialect continuum between Kajkavian and Chakavian as there is between Kajkavian and Slovenian, and lects with a dialect continuum between them are always separate languages. Are Polish and Ukrainian mutually intelligible? And, as it was already sad, all Slovaks understand czeh better than czech slovaks thanks to hostory and politics. Scots and English are considered mutually intelligible. Hence, Russians understand the colloquial Ukrainian spoken in the countryside pretty well, but they understand the modern standard heard on TV much less. In terms Bulgarian has 80% intelligibility of Macedonian, 41% of Russian, and 5% of Polish and Czech. 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). Pannonian Rusyn is actually a part of Slovak, and Rusyn proper is really a part of Ukrainian. Despite a lot of commonality between the dialects, the differences between them are significant. https://www.academia.edu/4080349/Mutual_Intelligibility_of_Languages_in_the_Slavic_Family There is much nonsense said about the mutual intelligibility of the various languages in the Slavic family. There is a big problem with this. I've ne. Is there an agreed-upon standard? Russian is followed by Polish with over 40 million speakers, Ukrainian with 33 million and Czech with 13 million. This is not necessarily correct in terms of vocabulary, but you will find a lot in common in the grammatical rules . About the mistakes This is great. With this, off I go to sleep. a person with Virgin ears from any where in the Czech republic and west and central Slovakia will understand each other fairly well. An academic paper has been published making the case for a separate Balachka language. However Serbian, Bosnian, and Croatian are not like Czech and Slovak. . Russian only has 60% intelligibility of Balachka. You are probably talking about the study Mutual intelligibility between West and South Slavic languages? However, many of these dialects are at least partially mutually intelligible. I always aske her about whether she understands Bulgarian and Serbian and she claims Serbian is way closer to her language rather than Bulgarian. My gues. 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. Also after studying Ethnologue for a very long time, I noticed that they tended to use 90% as a cutoff for language versus dialect most but not all of the time. This is the first time that this has been done using just . Since then, Slovak has been disappearing from the Czech Republic, so the younger people dont understand Slovak so well. Ukrainians seems closer to Slovak than Russian but some words in Russian are almost exactly the same in Slovak but in Ukranian they are completely different. 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. Some people in Croatia asked me if I speak Kajkavian when I spoke Slovenian with my friends. When I was first exposed to spoken BCS, the most significant issue was their prosody, because the vocabulary and the grammar presented very little difficulty for me as a Ukrainian/Russian bilingual. Young czechs and slovaks communicate on internet on daily basis and they understand each other just perfectly. Lesser Polish, which can be heard in the south and southeast. can take anywhere. A prima example of this is Russian where the 5% intelligibility could be pretty accurate in the case of a regular communication, because Russians have a very strong intonation, and they simply dont pronounce vowels properly. 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. I am a native Spanish speaker but my girlfriend is Macedonian. It is important to note that the idea of this paper was try to test "pure inherent intelligibility." A pure inherent intelligibility test would involve a couple of things. . These recommendations are based on research into the mutual intelligibility of Germanic languages, conducted by Femke Swarte. Torlak Serbian is spoken in the south and southwest of Serbia and is transitional to Macedonian. Vitebsk, Belarus. From some reason, the Hutsul, Lemko, andBoiko dialects of the Rusyn language are much more comprehensible to Russians than Standard Ukrainian is. How close is Ukrainian language to Polish? The idea is that the Kajkavian and Chakavian languages simply do not exist, though obviously they are both separate languages. In addition, a Net search was done of forums where speakers of Slavic languages were discussing how much of other Slavic languages they understand. Czech-Polish is not at 12% anymore, a new study has found it is 32%. 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.