Bosnian and Montenegrin are also just dialects of Serbian language. It was formerly thought to be a Slovenian dialect, but some now think it is more properly a Kajkavian dialect. Mutually Intelligible And Different. It's also highly intelligible with Portuguese in writing, though less so when spoken. I was born in Upper State and I can barely understand some southern speakers.Do you think the politics in USA is also preventing the formation of new languages ? I use Wikipedia as a reference for new languages that Wikipedia misses, like the 4 Croatian languages. When we do intelligiblity studies, we look for virgin ears or people who have not heard the other language much or at all. Silesian itself appears to be a macrolanguage as it is more than one language since as Opole Silesian speakers cannot understand Katowice Silesian, so Opole Silesian and Katowice Silesian are two different languages. On the other hand, it can be difficult for Russians to understand Ukrainian (though it is easy for them to learn it). So you believe the 9/11 narrative? So I asked my Russian wife to listen to some of them (mostly local news on Youtube). 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 The differences to me are like New England English versus English in the deep South versus Australian. Regarding Polish and Russian there are many words with opposite meaning. Score: 4.1/5 (74 votes) . Ukrainian and Russian only have 60% lexical similarity. A question: how is it decided that the cut-off between a language and dialect is 90% MI? Im of the Yugoslav variety by rearing, and a Serb by select bits of culture, by most of my native language and by all of where my tax money goes. 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. Slovak: 20% I think that Russian has at least 89% with Belorussian, because I understand all speech in Belorusian. Bulgarian and Macedonian can understand each other to a great degree (65-80%) but not completely. Polish is the most incomprehensible Slavic language for other Slavs, both spoken and written. Do you speak Boyko or Hutsul? That word have special meaning and I think that Serbian needs that word, but if I tell that word seriously while I speak, everybody will laugh at me. If youve studied one language, you may very well understand some of anotheror have a much easier time learning it. Scientific intelligibility studies of Czech and Slovak have shown ~82% quite high but still low enough for them to be closely related separate languages and not dialects of one language. In the 1500s, Kajkavian began to be developed in a standard literary form. Answer (1 of 11): Look, if you're Ukrainian you most likely already speak russian. Anti-Ethnic Sentiments non-Shtokavian dialects: Kajkavian, Chakavian and Torlakian) diverge more significantly from all four normative varieties. I think it was mostly due to a learning few high frequency Polish words that are difficult for a Russian native speaker to understand. Re: Rus/Ukr Far Northeastern Slovak (Saris Slovak) near the Polish border is close to Polish and Ukrainian. Serbo-Croatian has variable intelligibility of Macedonian, averaging ~55%, while Nis Serbians have ~90% intelligibility with Macedonian. Yet we speak of Kai/Cha as of Serbo-Croatian dialects, while Slovenian is totally foreign. The problem is that most linguists are not interested in scientific intelligibility testing of language pairs. I am afraid you are not right because if you take Serbian dialects till Nis, then they are very mutually intelligible with Macedonian! The diffete. Personal communication. Croatian language doesnt exists. It is not intelligible with Shtokavian, although this is controversial. This has, however, more to do with the new Ukrainian norm. Classifications may also shift for reasons external to the languages themselves. It is rather controversial outside Linguistics, as you run into nationalists and other fools who emotionally distort things. Belic) maybe do not understand Macedonian so well as Macedonian the Serbian language do (because of the according to you Bilingual learning . They give you strict % figures, and it is pretty amazing. Ukranian: 20% 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. . I work with Russians (dro. Therefore I would go with 25%. (j/k) Serbs until recently where still self titled Yugoslavs. But when you see it, you are shocked that you can read it. Jembrigh, Mario. Traditionally, dialects are regional variations of one main language. I will tell you also this: Not only are these Slavic languages very similar to Russian in written form, but they are also around 70% mutually intelligible. Portuguese has varying degrees of mutual intelligibility with Spanish, Galician, French and Italian. However, the Torlak Serbians can understand Macedonian well, as this is a Serbo-Croatian dialect transitional to both languages. Can Ukrainians and Polish understand each other? 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. Thank you very much for this. Yes of course. About Slovak being two different unintelligible languages I highly doubt so. That is a particularly ugly version of nationalism brewing in your vicinity. akavski has considerably more italian influence, due to many of the people there speaking italian (vicinity to italy) and the presence of istriot language and the former presence of dalmatian language. The translation is not very problematic. True MI testing does try to find virgin ears that have heard little of the other language and speak little or none of it. One way to look at Macedonian is that it is a Serbo-Croatian-Bulgarian transitional lect. Macedonian: 50-60 % 1. Many Ukrainian-speakers consider the language . 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 Chakavian has 82% intelligibility of Kajkavian. https://www.academia.edu/4080349/Mutual_Intelligibility_of_Languages_in_the_Slavic_Family Macedonain and Serbo-Croatian being 25% inteligible is simply not true. Thanks so much for this post. Lesser Polish, which can be heard in the south and southeast. uses the Cyrlic script, and a Banat norm, which uses the Latin script. If we follow this line of reasoning, it would be correct to conclude that English is highly intelligible to Serbian speakers because most Serbs speak English. I am not saying this to slam Ukrainians, but just an observation. Russian is also 85% mutually intelligible with Belarusian and Ukrainian in . LIFESTYLE Languages. Macedonian and Bulgarian are fairly similar but they are not close to being fully mutually intelligible. The Bulgarian language is the earliest written record Slavic language. Czech and Slovak are simply dialects of this one tongue. 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. But even they will know the literary norm of their own language which will ease up the communication. In recent years, many of the German words are falling out of use and being replaced by Polish words, especially by young people. Interesting article but I think there are some minor and some major mistakes and misunderstandigs. 8. And, as it was already sad, all Slovaks understand czeh better than czech slovaks thanks to hostory and politics. In fact, I would probably have a hard time to understand a Czech speaking with such an intonation. In some respects, all Slavic languages have a lot in common. 2 Ukrainian Phrasebook And Dictionary Paperback 1-03-2023 Mutually Intelligible? 3. However, any suggestions that Kajkavian is a separate language are censored on Croatian TV (Jembrigh 2014). In writing, German is also somewhat mutually intelligible with Dutch. Nevertheless, writing continues in various Kajkavian dialects which still retain some connection to the old literary language, although some of the lexicon and grammar are going out (Jembrigh 2014). In brief, there is some mutual intelligibility, enough to have a simple conversation of the 'me Tarzan - you Jane' type, speakin. Actually the way it is spoken sometimes sounds more like Slovak to me than Czech or polish does, however past really basic speech it is pretty hard to understand. If you can speak Russian fluently, you will be able to understand 77% of Polish words, while Czech, Slovak, Bulgarian, and . | Animals | Slavic Languages Comparison The Best Online German Learning Resources Ukrainian phrases Ukrainian Phrasebook And Dictionary Paperback Lonely Planet: The world's leading travel guide publisher. Yet there is a dialect continuum between Slovenian and Kajkavian. You really need to go look at the new version of the paper. A lect called iarija Slovenian is spoken on the Istrian Peninsula in Slovenia just north of Croatia. If you choose to learn a language which is at least to some extent mutually intelligible to a language you already know . I myself who have learned some Macedonian, pick up much more words from spoken Serbo-Croatian than spoken Bulgarian. Russian. Russians, they usually need some adaptation time (and of course they need to be willing to try -- which is not always the case, since many Russians are monolingual and . Feb 22, 2020. How many English speakers know Serbo-Croatian? 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. Russian has high intelligibility of Belarussian, on the order of 75%. Czechs claim only 10-15% intelligibility of Polish. Bulgarian lexics does not seem to be familiar to Macedonians, what shows that Macedonian has been for too much time separated from the contact with Bulgarian which made Bulgarian unknown for Macedonian ear. Spoken Slovenian is a surprise too its phonology has a significant German influence. It all adds up, man. You can pick up the gist of thats being said in any sentence. I can illustrate it on the video posted above Vojnata vo Bosna. WORD. Intelligibility is more than 90% = dialect, less than 90% = language. While not usually considered mutually intelligible, theres also enough similarity between French and Italian that speakers of Portuguese may understand both of these languages. A koine is currently under development. Download: The Croatians left Croatia and came to Italy from 1400-1500. Your English is pretty much ok. Un- or fortunately, you are right about the thesis about Macedonian and Bulgarian. Northern Germanic languages spoken in Scandinavia form a dialect continuum where two furthermost dialects have almost no mutual intelligibility. It has a very high degree of mutual intelligibility with Galician (spoken in Northwestern Spain), which is a language thats sort of a cross between Portuguese and Spanish. Very interesting. Russian is partially mutually intelligible with Ukrainian, Rusyn and Belarusian. 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). 7. So you are a speaker of Southern Chakavian, right? The main difference is in the ortography. Most of the Ukrainian speakers who do not speak Russian are in Canada at the moment. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Understanding the connection between mutually intelligible languages, can make it easier to learn an additional language. Your email address will not be published. Maybe its a lack of vocabulary, but I havent heard that word from someone personally yet. Mutual intelligibilityrefers to whether speakers of one language can understand speakers of another language. Ive been following this page and kept coming to it for the past months, actually more than a year (and have noticed some updates). I could try. For instance, Portuguese and Spanish have a relatively high degree of mutual intelligibility, but theyre technically separate languages. 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. Much of my vocabulary simply isnt present in their lects, even when I try and align myself to speak more in line with the norm. That information is in error. When I visited Bulgaria I tried to communicate in Serbian language with the Bulgars. Because so many Slavic languages are national languages, they tend to have pretty big populations. 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 . From some reason, the Hutsul, Lemko, andBoiko dialects of the Rusyn language are much more comprehensible to Russians than Standard Ukrainian is. Yes and if you could more than one listener, it would be great. If the central varieties die out and only the varieties at both ends survive, they may then be reclassified as two languages, even though no actual language change has occurred during the time of the loss of the central varieties. In fact, many Macedonians are switching away from the Macedonian language towards Serbo-Croatian. The main Turkologist I worked with on that chapter told me that he thought 90% was a good metric. Ponaszymu also has many Germanisms which have been falling out of use lately, replaced by their Czech equivalents. Most pairs have no figure for written intelligibility. I hope you will like it and will be useful for your researches! I am a native Macedonian and I totally dont agree with you. Thank you. It is true that Western Slovak dialects can understand Czech well, but Central Slovak, Eastern Slovak and Extraslovakian Slovak dialects cannot. Civis Illustris. 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. Check out his page on the FBI 10 most wanted website. I speak Slovenian and Croats think that I can speak Kaikavian. 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. [5][6] In a similar vein, some claim that mutual intelligibility is, ideally at least, the primary criterion separating languages from dialects.[7]. OMG! Ukrainian language, formerly called Ruthenian or Little Russian (now considered pejorative), Ukrainian Ukrans'ka mova, East Slavic language spoken in Ukraine and in Ukrainian communities in Kazakhstan, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Lithuania, and Slovakia and by smaller numbers elsewhere. Im Czech . Polish 5 % spoken, 20 % written the copula is mostly the same (sm/si/e/smo/ste/su vs. sum/si/e/sme/ste/se) However, Balachka is dying out and is now spoken only by a few old people. 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. However, my girlfriend never ever says these words and rather uses on and ona just like in Serbian. Slovenians have a very hard time understanding Poles and Czechs and vice versa. Belarussian and Ukrainian have 85% similar vocabulary. And yes, comprehension has suffered since Czechoslovakia broke up, due to lack of exposure. Some famous linguists who are acquaintances of mine (they have Wikipedia pages) told me that they thought that 90% was a good metric. In fact, people in the north of Poland regard Silesian as incomprehensible. Furthermore, not only does this app provide small lessons that can be expanded into full-on courses, but it also allows you to interact with native speakers of the target language. Is there an agreed-upon standard? Please listen and watch the movie Zona Zamfirova. Despite a lot of commonality between the dialects, the differences between them are significant. 60%? Most Macedonians already are able to speak Serbo-Croatian well. Much of the claimed intelligibility is simply bilingual learning. However, Chakavian magazines are published even today (Jembrigh 2014). This is a political point, of course. possession is indicated most frequently using dative pronouns, unlike Serbians tendency to use possessive pronouns in greater frequency Russian. Or as an English speaker, you might catch the gist of some Scots. A Moravian Czech speaker (Eastern Czech) and a Bratislavan Slovak (Western Slovak) speaker understand each other very well. What is the basis on which your Serbian friend said that? 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. This list focuses on common languages widely thought to be at least partially and mutually intelligible. Due to no prior exposure to Russian, I could not understand that language, other than a few words and expressions here and there. Other Western Slovak speakers (Bratislava) say that Eastern Slovak (Kosice) is hard to understand. adrian. Even little kids who watch the show understand. I kind of like it though . In other words, Ukrainian speakers can often understand Russian, while Russian speaker doesn't understand Ukrainian, especially Russian speakers from outside Ukraine. Answer (1 of 4): Yes. Now onto the discussion. This is a great boon to travelers and language learners. Is there any particular method to determine this? While the two share a similar grammar system and some vocabulary words, . Good post, OP. In the former Czechoslovakia, everything was 50-50 bilingual media, literature, etc. 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). Polish uses Latin letters, just like English. What is the most mutually intelligible Slavic language? As such, spoken Danish and Swedish normally have low mutual intelligibility,[2] but Swedes in the resund region (including Malm and Helsingborg), across a strait from the Danish capital Copenhagen, understand Danish somewhat better, largely due to the proximity of the region to Danish-speaking areas. Colloquial Ukrainian spoken in most of the country is pretty much comprehensible to Russians. Russian 20 % spoken, 30 % written The only big one i disagree with your breakdown is serbian/croatian vs bulgarian. Finally, understanding mutual intelligibility gives you helpful insight into the history of a language. The more the better. Its often said that Czechs and Poles can understand each other, but this is not so. We speak them too. 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%). Its often said that all Slavic languages are mutually intelligible with each other. Slow, deliberate speech is not typical. Portuguese also has a high degree of mutual intelligibility with Spanish. Ukrainian pronounces the "o" as "o" whereas Russians pronounce it typically as an "a." The Ukrainian "" and "" have different pronunciations compared to their Russian equivalents, "" and "". Shtokavian is simply the same Serbo-Croatian language that is also spoken in Croatia, Montenegro and Bosnia. 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. I can understand about 50% 75% of Bulgarian and Macedonian enough to get buy and carry on a conversation. Polish and Ukrainian have higher lexical similarity at 72%, and Ukrainian intelligibility of Polish is ~50%+. Complaints have been made that many of these percentages were simply wild guesses with no science behind them. Hag_Boulder 9 mo. But being that they are Slavic with the same or similar grammar and structure you pick up different slavic languages and their style very quick. Re: Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian Mutual Intelligibility. If we consider that syntax/lexics is the heart of language, than Serbian and Macedonian are the same language. It exists in differing degrees among many related or geographically proximate languages of the world, often in the context of a dialect continuum. I think that nowadays people from Ni also dont understand that Serbian enough. However, you do say later in the text that I think that this article is full of dubious numbers, but this is not necessarily the authors fault. Then she asked me to go do something useful, so this is all I can contribute with. Spanish has varying degrees of mutual intelligibility with Galician, Portuguese, Catalan, Italian, Sardinian and French. It is more like the other slavic languages (v instead of u, z instead of s, itd, less vowels, and no distinction between and ). For example, the varieties of Chinese are often considered a single language even though there is usually no mutual intelligibility between geographically separated varieties. This makes Polish a much much easier language to learn than Russian. I would say that Macedonian is about 25% intelligible to a Serbian speaker that was never exposed to Macedonian. Kajkavian is a dialect of Slovenian language. Many of our word roots are the same. As a Polish native speaker I used to be sure that Czech and Polish are mutually intelligible until I met Czech couple. Russian has 85% intelligibility with Rusyn (which has a small number of speakers in Central and Eastern Europe). However, Bulgarian-Russian written intelligibility is much higher. Less than 90% mutual intelligibility = separate languages. Ability of speakers of two language varieties to understand the other, As a criterion for identifying separate languages, List of languages sometimes considered varieties, List of dialects or varieties sometimes considered separate languages, Alexander M. Schenker. If you think this website is valuable to you, please consider a contribution to support the continuation of the site. If the Torlaks can understand those languages it is because they have been hearing them! Its vocabulary and grammar has enough similarities for Poles, Ukrainians and Belarusians to understand each other well, whereas Russians understand only will recognise separate words. A different dialect is spoken in each town. In this week's Slavic languages comparison we talk about animals in Polish and Ukrainian. Menu. Young Czechs and Slovaks talk to each other a lot via the Internet. My father once read an article in polish and he said he understood almost everything, but when its spoken he said about 60%. Save. Serbs/Croats used to live in the south Poland and they moved south to the current location. [2], Sign languages are not universal and are usually not mutually intelligible,[3] although there are also similarities among different sign languages. For example the word najgolemata (the biggest) written in Serbian latin means najvea in Serbian, but I somehow know what golem/golema means, but when I hear this ta (definite article) in the end of the word, that sounds Macedonian to me more than golema, prefix naj (makes superlative form) is the same in Serbian. Slobozhan Russian is very close to Ukrainian, closer to Ukrainian than it is to Russian, and Slobozhan Ukrainian is very close to Russian, closer to Russian than to Ukrainian. Czechs say Lach is a part of Czech, and Poles say Lach is a part of Polish. Belarussian almost completely comprehensible, except a few words. Its specific czech and many foreiner has problem spelling it. Slovak 50 % spoken, 70 % written Hello, can you tell me, how much Kajkavian can your average Chakavian speaker understand in percentage? Greg, Kaikavian is dialect of Slovenian language. Bulgarian more comprehensible than standard Ukrainian. The results show that in most cases, a division between West and South Slavic languages does exist and that West . 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 also friends from Central Macedonia (Prilep, Bitola) and I can tell how different they speak from the Skopjian dialect. 99% of people in Ukraine are bilinguals who essentially speak and learn both Russian and Ukrainian from birth (although depending on the region, ones prevailence over the other varies). between Ni Torlak and Macedonian than between either of those two and Serbian How close is Ukrainian language to Polish? I have no idea, what Sledva da se otbelei, e tova means. 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. Thank you very much for this. Borg, Albert J.; Azzopardi-Alexander, Marie (1997). Serbians often say radiu and its very similar to Croatian raditi u or radit u, but sometimes Serbians say ja u da radim or even u da radim without ja (I), because u is first singular form of the verb hteti and ja is needless, but its very rare and common for southern Serbian dialects and also very very irregular in official Serbian, but that is very similar to official Macedonian. They are native Kajkavian speakers and this is another proof that Kajkavian is actually Slovenian. 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. Generally, when foreigners say speakers of a certain language speak too fast, speakers of that language can hear that fast speech just fine. On the one hand, Belarussian has some dialects that are intelligible with some dialects of both Russian and Ukrainian.