question for speakers of Slavic languages

[Ran]

Inspired by the other thread...

For speakers for Slavic languages:
How easy is it for you to understand other Slavic languages without formal training, spoken or written?
(And... if possible, Old Church Slavonic?)

[Niedokonany]

For me, OCS can be surprisingly intelligible, but I doubt if I'm really representative due to my interest in Proto-Slavic and such. It's not impossible for me to grasp some whole clauses, or at least get some idea. Definitely more intelligible than, say, Russian spoken at normal rate. Generally, written Slavic stuff is much easier for me. As for spoken stuff, it's possible for me to have a small talk with e.g. Slovaks but it often requires patience and some pointing to things.

[alice]

An acquaintance once told me that one of his Polish buddies liked to listen to Czech radio at night and laugh at how antique it sounded, a bit like Dutch with Flemish, or so I heard.

[Niedokonany]

Czech is kinda stereotypically funny here, it's funny even when it's not. Personally I believe Sorbian langs can be more hilarious.

[Mecislau]

As a Russian speaker...

Ukrainian: Written Ukrainian is quite easy for me to understand. The hardest part is really just dealing with some Polonisms and native coinages where Russian uses Slavonicisms, though in written text those are usually not too tricky to figure out based on context. A couple Ukrainian case endings confuse me a little bit because they are used differently in Ukrainian and Russian, like -ому (adjectival locative in Ukrainian, adjectival dative in Russian) or the -у genitives, which just don't "feel right" to me. Spoken Ukrainian, on the other hand, is slightly more difficult, but still nothing too hard.

Belorussian: Spoken Belorussian is probably the easiest spoken Slavic language for me to understand. Russian and Belorussian are basically at that unfortunate awkward point where they're so similar that Belorussian just sounds like a funny dialect with lots of grammar "mistakes". (Ukrainian feels this way too, to a lesser extent). Written Belorussian is endlessly confusing to me, though, just because the orthography is so ridiculously phonetic from my perspective, even though most of what seems different about Belorussian spelling is present in Russian phonetically, just not orthographically.

Polish: Written Polish is similarly confusing for me, like Belorussian. It's like someone went out of their way to make its spelling as opaque as possible to non-Poles However, since I do have a bit more background in Slavic linguistics, I can usually decode quite a bit of Polish. Spoken Polish is pretty much beyond me, though. They just pronounce everything funny. Even though I know the rules behind it, I find it hard to equate, say, Polish ['ʑɛka]* and Russian [rʲɪ.'ka] "river", or Polish ['ɕa.wɔ] and Russian ['tʲe.ɫə], even though orthographically the connection is much clearer: rzeka, река, ciało, тело.

*I hope that's right; I can't keep the IPA for Polish fricatives and affricates straight in my head.

Czech: Czech, thankfully, has a much saner orthography for a West Slavic language. Written Czech I can puzzle my way through, though it's distant enough that there's a lot more vocabulary difference from Russian (though Slovak is worse). I haven't really heard enough complex spoken Czech to judge, but the relatively simple spontaneous Czech conversations I've heard struck me as fairly straightforward to follow (but simple conversations use simple vocabulary which is less likely to change, so...)

Bulgarian/Macedonian: These always struck me as quite interesting, a strange combination of familiar and foreign. The vocabulary is very familiar, due to Russian having imported such a large amount of Southeast Slavic loanwords via Church Slavonic, and Bulgarian in turn re-importing a lot of Russian later on. So much of the vocabulary just seems extremely familiar. However, Bulgarian (and the South Slavic languages in general) have so many Turkish loanwords that mean absolutely nothing to me. Also, the much more analytic grammar of Bulgarian and Macedonian is ridiculous. It just seems so strange and hard to parse, coming from my Russian background, but as long as I know the meaning of most of the words in a sentence, I can piece together the intended grammar. For this reason, written Bulgarian is far easier for me to understand than spoken Bulgarian.

Bosnio-Serbo-Montenegrin-Croatian: These lie somewhere in between Bulgarian and Czech for me, I guess. The grammar is much more like Russian, except for a few funny tenses Russian's lost that once again mean nothing to me when I hear them in use. I also find a lot of Serbo-Croatian words just funny-sounding. It's like Bulgarian in that I can identify a lot of words in the written language, but various aspects of the grammar confuse in, in particular the large clitic series. I haven't heard enough of the spoken language to say much, however.

Old Church Slavonic: My Russian background really helps here, since Russian has a very large Church Slavonic layer of vocabulary and to a lesser extent grammar, and I was/am exposed to bits and pieces of the language just through my church (although much of that Church Slavonic has been russified, but not all of it). The fact that I've dealt with lots of old Russian texts certainly helps as well, so I'm probably not a fair judge of a more typical perspective in this case.




One thing I have found is that it's surprising how small the pronunciation differences can be to start tripping me up. For instance, I'm simply used to the fact that /e/ should palatalize just about everything before it, but when I hear rapid speech in a Slavic language that doesn't do this, I'll completely fail to comprehend a number of words just because of that little difference. However, if I see the same thing in writing, the meaning is completely obvious.

[Niedokonany]

It's like someone went out of their way to make its spelling as opaque as possible to non-Poles

In comparison with other pre-XIX century Central European orthographies it's not that unusual at all, though. Some languages like Czech and Lithuanian have secondarily shifted to a more diacritical orthography, the former much earlier. Hungarian still uses some similar conventions.

Polish ['ʑɛka]* and Russian [rʲɪ.'ka] "river", or Polish ['ɕa.wɔ] and Russian ['tʲe.ɫə], even though orthographically the connection is much clearer: rzeka, река, ciało, тело.

['ʐ/ʒ/z̠ɛka], ʑ is the alveopalatal "ź", mostly from historical palatalized *z. ciało is ['t͡ɕawɔ],['ɕa.wɔ] ≡ сеяло.

*I hope that's right; I can't keep the IPA for Polish fricatives and affricates straight in my head.

The IPA for Polish fricatives & affricates is a constant and prolific source of flamewars on some conlanging and language-related forums, so don't worry. Esp. the postalveolar or retroflex series.

One thing I have found is that it's surprising how small the pronunciation differences can be to start tripping me up. For instance, I'm simply used to the fact that /e/ should palatalize just about everything before it, but when I hear rapid speech in a Slavic language that doesn't do this,

The word stress and vowel reduction are what pretty much destroys the comprehensibility of spoken Russian for me, even though when written it may look familiar. And of course you have more time to think over a written text.

[Beli Orao]

As a Serbo-Croatian speaker:

Russian: Written Russian isn't too difficult, I only have trouble with more involved texts. I've been exposed to Russian enough that I can understand quite a bit of the spoken language, but it all depends on the speed and topic. The one reason I've never undertaken a systematic study of the language to learn "proper" Russian is because the standard language sounds very annoying to me - the palatalization makes it sound like a very effeminate and lazy version of Serbian.

Polish: I'm not a fan of the orthography. Spoken Polish is slightly easier for me to understand than Russian even though I've been exposed to it far less. If I'm listening to a Polish friend talk to her parents, I can understand most of it.

Macedonian: I've been exposed to this language since childhood so I can understand it nearly as well as I can my native language. Just recently I had a conversation with a Macedonian guy in Slavic, with him only having to substitute in a few Serbian words for clarity's sake. I've always seen it as "Serbian sine flexione" in that the phonology and vocabulary are very similar. I'm familiar enough with the grammar that it doesn't pose a barrier to comprehension.

Bulgarian: Same as Macedonian, though for some reason I have a harder time understanding this language. Macedonian sounds much more "Serbianized."

Slovenian: Archaic-sounding Serbo-Croatian. More difficult than Macedonian but easier than any other Slavic language.

Czecho/slovak: Probably the easiest to understand after South Slavic. I like the sound of Czech but I've never had a chance to learn the language.

[Viktor77]

I hosted a lot of Slavic speakers. The first one was Slovak but spoke and understood Czech perfectly and used to listen to both for music and converse with speakers of Czech. No surprise there. The second however was Slovenian and he went to the Czech Republic for training. He told me it was easy for him to communicate with his Czech teammates and coach and he easily communicated here with a Slovak. Despite the differences between West and South Slavic, it appears they are mutually intelligible if one puts in a mild bit of effort.

[Skomakar'n]

@Viktor77:
Where is 'here'?

[Viktor77]

@Viktor77:
Where is 'here'?

In the United States. His team here had him and a Slovak player on it and they often hung out together and talked.

[Skomakar'n]

@Viktor77:
Where is 'here'?

In the United States. His team here had him and a Slovak player on it and they often hung out together and talked.

Oh.

I'll have to start looking at Czech or Russian or Bosnian soon enough.

[Shm Jay]

And how do the Novegradians find the other Slavic languages? We have to have a viewpoint from the North Slavic languages

[Beli Orao]

I'll have to start looking at Czech or Russian or Bosnian soon enough.

Why not Hercegovinian?

[Skomakar'n]

I'll have to start looking at Czech or Russian or Bosnian soon enough.

Why not Hercegovinian?

Czech because a friend of mine goes to the republic just about every year. I tagged along two years ago, and a Czech mate of his, whom I met, came to him about a year later. It would be nice to be able to speak to him in his native tongue.

Bosnian because my girlfriend has a good friend, who is also my friend, of course, but mainly her friend. This friend has Bosnian parents, and speaks the language, so it would be fun to know, to be able to speak to her in it. Aren't Bosnian, Hercegovinian, Serbian and Croatian all pretty much the same thing anyway (you're not allowed to say no if you're a native speaker of any of these languages and have inherited the collective hate towards any of the other, and wish to distantiate yourself from any of them)?

Russian because both my girlfriend and sister are interested in learning it, and Russian is, well, Russian. It's the first language you think of when you hear the word Slavic.

[Viktor77]

Russian because both my girlfriend and sister are interested in learning it, and Russian is, well, Russian. It's the first language you think of when you hear the word Slavic.

I think of Czech lol.

[Yng]

Bosnian because my girlfriend has a good friend, who is also my friend, of course, but mainly her friend. This friend has Bosnian parents, and speaks the language, so it would be fun to know, to be able to speak to her in it.

Warning: If you start chattering to your girlfriend's female friend in her native language all the time, your girlfriend will probably not like it.

[Io]

OCS/Polish/Czech/Slovak/Slovenian/Ukrainian/Belorussian: Moonspeak.

Croatian-Serbian: I don't have experience talking to people from countries where they're spoken, I'm pretty sure I'll be able to have a simple conversation and understand each other, if I read/watch/listen to Cro/Ser tv/radio/news it goes like this: moonspeak. moonspeak. moonspeak. perfectly intelligible sentence. moonspeak. somewhat intelligible sentence. moonspeak. moonspeak.

What the hell is 'chvor' in Croatian?! For the purposes of answering this thread I watched some cro tv and I heard that word, in Bulgarian it's this, that is the 'knot' thing in wood from where a branch grows. Oh and Slovenian sounds just weird, somewhat Romanian-Albanian somehow

Russian: I can say I understand it perfectly well, with sometimes major exceptions, I can easily watch or read news and similar stuff in it but sometimes I just can't get anything from certain texts.

[Viktor77]

OCS/Polish/Czech/Slovak/Slovenian/Ukrainian/Belorussian: Moonspeak.

Croatian-Serbian: I don't have experience talking to people from countries where they're spoken, I'm pretty sure I'll be able to have a simple conversation and understand each other, if I read/watch/listen to Cro/Ser tv/radio/news it goes like this: moonspeak. moonspeak. moonspeak. perfectly intelligible sentence. moonspeak. somewhat intelligible sentence. moonspeak. moonspeak.

What the hell is 'chvor' in Croatian?! For the purposes of answering this thread I watched some cro tv and I heard that word, in Bulgarian it's this, that is the 'knot' thing in wood from where a branch grows. Oh and Slovenian sounds just weird, somewhat Romanian-Albanian somehow

Russian: I can say I understand it perfectly well, with sometimes major exceptions, I can easily watch or read news and similar stuff in it but sometimes I just can't get anything from certain texts.

You get screwed on the whole lacking-case deal, right? Since you wouldn't know the general Slavic case inflection (if one can determine such a thing).

[Io]

I know the Turkish case endings but that doesn't mean I can understand Turkish.

[Viktor77]

I know the Turkish case endings but that doesn't mean I can understand Turkish.

I mean that a speaker of a Slavic language other than Bulgarian or Macedonian would be additionally aided in ineligibility by a knowledge of recognised case-endings for nouns. Since Bulgarian lacks case, it lacks those endings and so a Bulgarian speaker looses a bit of intelligibility versus maybe a Polish speaker or Serbian speaker.

[Mecislau]

I know the Turkish case endings but that doesn't mean I can understand Turkish.

I mean that a speaker of a Slavic language other than Bulgarian or Macedonian would be additionally aided in ineligibility by a knowledge of recognised case-endings for nouns. Since Bulgarian lacks case, it lacks those endings and so a Bulgarian speaker looses a bit of intelligibility versus maybe a Polish speaker or Serbian speaker.

I'm obviously not a Bulgarian speaker, so I can't speak for Io, but knowledge of Slavic language with cases won't necessarily be that helpful with other Slavic languages if you know absolutely nothing about them, since the actual case endings vary a fair amount. For instance, just looking up a Czech declension table... I would have a ton of trouble associating -/u/ with a genitive singular (it sounds like a dative to me), -/e/ with a genitive singular (what the hell is that), -/u:/ with a genitive plural (that sound means nothing to me), -/i/ with the instrumental singular (that's a nominative/accusative plural, dammit), -/ovi/ with an animate dative singular (again, means nothing; sounds more like a genitive plural), ... And that's just masculine nouns.

So basically there's a large chunk of the Czech declensional paradigm that is utterly foreign to me as a Russian speaker. Since I have quite a bit of background in Slavic linguistics, though, I can figure them out easily enough when I see them, but when it comes to interpreting them on-the-fly in spoken speech, I'm at a loss. I rely far more on being able to recognize spoken words and then filling in the gaps by context than being able to properly interpret every ending.

[Beli Orao]

you're not allowed to say no if you're a native speaker of any of these languages and have inherited the collective hate towards any of the other, and wish to distantiate yourself from any of them

I was being sarcastic. I'm a native Serbo-Croatian speaker and find it funny when I hear the nationalists' various names of the language being used on a linguistics forum.

Croatian-Serbian: I don't have experience talking to people from countries where they're spoken, I'm pretty sure I'll be able to have a simple conversation and understand each other, if I read/watch/listen to Cro/Ser tv/radio/news it goes like this: moonspeak. moonspeak. moonspeak. perfectly intelligible sentence. moonspeak. somewhat intelligible sentence. moonspeak. moonspeak.

You'd be surprised how much you'd understand. You do essentially speak caseless Serbo-Croat, after all.

I'm obviously not a Bulgarian speaker, so I can't speak for Io, but knowledge of Slavic language with cases won't necessarily be that helpful with other Slavic languages if you know absolutely nothing about them, since the actual case endings vary a fair amount.

Is it just me, or do East Slavic cases seem a lot more similar to South Slavic than either is to West Slavic? When I speak my pidgin-Russian I almost exclusively use Serbian cases (never having bothered to so much as look at a Russian declension table ) and I'm understandable.