I can illustrate it on the video posted above Vojnata vo Bosna. Some islanders go even further than that and don`t consider themselves ethnic Croats. Bulgarian is a pluricentric language it has several literary norms. Even little kids who watch the show understand. 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. I can easily translate the first two sentences: Bulgarian is the oldest documented Slavic language. Huchon, Mireille, Histoire de la langue franaise, pages 214 and 223. Ukrainian and Russian only have 60% lexical similarity. Some Poles say they find Silesian harder to understand than Belorussian or Slovak, which implies intelligibility of 20-25%. It is just a dialect in east Slovakia that westernd Slovaks (and Czechs) find harder to understand but it is not like they would not understand a word. 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). A Serbian native speaker felt that the percentages for South Slavic seemed to be accurate. Thanks for clearing this up! Kajkavski it seems has changed less than akavski. I can read and understand a lot of Bulgarian in written form, its basically old slavic , many such words are simply obsolete or archaic in modern serbian, but i do get the gist of any written article. Ukrainian 15 % spoken, 25 % written OMG! Russia Invades Ukraine pt XII. So I understood all but one word (), and Google Translator indeed confirms that my guess was right and it means also. [8], However, others have suggested that these objections are misguided, as they collapse different concepts of what constitutes a "language".[9]. Intelligibility between languages can be asymmetric, with speakers of one understanding more of the other than speakers of the other understanding the first. It is no surprise that Ukrainian (and to a smaller extent) Belarusian have tons of Polish words, and are therefore more lexically similar to Polish than to Russian. Serbs/Croats used to live in the south Poland and they moved south to the current location. Ive done tests with my friends shtokavians-only (or monolingual Croats regarding the situation here) and it was very interesting. Lach is a Czech-Polish transitional lect with a close relationship with Cieszyn Silesian. Only nationalists and fanatics disagree. How close is Ukrainian language to Polish? 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. Balgarskijat ezik e pluricentrien ezik ima njakolko kniovni normi. I can understand about 50% 75% of Bulgarian and Macedonian enough to get buy and carry on a conversation. akavian differs from the other nearby Slavic lects spoken in the country due to the presence of many Italian words. Their mutual intelligibility varies greatly, between the dialects themselves, with Shtokavian, and with other languages. Mezentseva, Inna. But they would learn it quickly if they cared. 6. Serbian is a macrolanguage made up to two languages: Shtokavian Serbian and Torlak or Gorlak Serbian. Email me and give me your name please and I will use you in the paper. I grew up as a Ukrainian speaker in North America. For example, all Russian shows get subtitles on Ukrainian TV. Russian has low intelligibility with Czech and Slovak, maybe 30%. akavian is full of romanisms, kajkavian of germanisms and tokavian of turkish and other orientalisms. Some comments on Ukrainian: wovel a shifts to o not shits hahhaha sorry. 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 understood perfectly him, but not her. I believe This phenomenon is called asymmetrical mutual intelligibility. | 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. slavic mutual newspaper Congratulations on a brilliant article! For example, those who learn Ukrainian will eventually know 70% of Polish lexicon and a . Ukrainian much less comprehensible. Is Ukrainian more like . theres a macedonian TV program called Vo Centar, hosted by a macedoanian journalist who goes around the Balkans and interviews prominent names in politics etc. French has 89% lexical similarity with Italian, 80% similarity with Sardinian (spoken on the Italian island of Sardinia), 78% similarity with Romansh (spoken in parts of Switzerland) and 75% similarity with Portuguese, Romanian and Spanish. Dont let the past politics fool you. Polish 5 % spoken, 20 % written Paul McGrane. Kajkavian is fairly uniform across its speech area, whereas Chakavian is more diverse (Jembrigh 2014). For instance, West Palesian is a transitional Belarussian dialect to Ukrainian. possession is indicated most frequently using dative pronouns, unlike Serbians tendency to use possessive pronouns in greater frequency Its specific czech and many foreiner has problem spelling it. 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 . 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 . can take anywhere. Czech and Slovak are simply dialects of this one tongue. Lets say a young Czech goes to Slovakia without prior exposure to Slovak. More? Hello everyone, But I can tell you this. Are Polish and Ukrainian mutually intelligible? [2], Sign languages are not universal and are usually not mutually intelligible,[3] although there are also similarities among different sign languages. If you can speak Russian fluently, you will be able to understand 77% of Polish words, while Czech, Slovak, Bulgarian, and . Frequency of exposure is one of the main causes of this. Most people in the region speak Russian with a few Ukrainian words. ????? 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. Yet, it is closer to Russian that standard Ukrainian. He printed out the paper and showed it to his colleagues at the next meeting, and they spent some time discussing it. . Funny thing when Slovene tourists come to Dalmatian islands they start to speak awkward Serbo Croatian they learned long ago in yugo schools because they fear of not being understood. I speak both Southern akavian and neotokavian. But which languages in the world are actually closest to . 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. Russian, Polish, Czech, and Ukrainian materials are available. CZECH: Bulharsk jazyk je indoevropsk jazyk ze skupiny jihoslovanskch jazyk. But even they will know the literary norm of their own language which will ease up the communication. This implies that some of the high intelligibility between Slovak and Polish may be due to bilingual learning on the part of Slovaks. I met Croats from Zagreb and they speak Slovenian perfectly. I kind of like it though . Not only that, but it is not even fully intelligible with the Eastern Slovak that it resembles most. Russian is also 85% mutually intelligible with Belarusian and Ukrainian in writing. 10%? Was he from Belgrade or Novi Sad or Nis? This is a political point, of course. Robert Lindsay, Independent Journalist: l Talk about Things You're Not Supposed to Talk About. Vitebsk State University. Intelligibility between the two is estimated at 82%. Intelligibility may be 85%. Zona Zamfirova is the movie in a Serbian dialect, but I dont understand it as same as I dont understand Macedonian or even more so, that is more like Bulgarian with the hard vowels. I see your point, and I agree: there must be a difference in method when determining linguistic intelligibility based on different populations. The intelligibility of Serbo-Croatian and Macedonian is highly controversial, and intelligibility studies are in order. 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. However Serbian, Bosnian, and Croatian are not like Czech and Slovak. Or when I heard the word pobrzajte (hurry up (plural)) it was very interesting to me. Still others (for example, Voegelin and Voegelin 1977) recognize just two main dialect groups: Eastern and Western Ukrainian. 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. Can you give me a figure for how much of a Bulgarian text you can understand? 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). Amazon and the Amazon logo are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc, or its affiliates. Then conversation is intelligible 100%. Torlakian (considered a subdialect of Serbian Old Shtokavian by some) has significant mutual intelligibility with Macedonian and Bulgarian. Robert does look at these stories. There is one factor they dont know about the internet. 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. 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. In this case, too, however, while mutual intelligibility between speakers of the distant remnant languages may be greatly constrained, it is likely not at the zero level of completely unrelated languages. With Lonely Planet's Ukrainian Phrasebook, let no barriers . You are probably talking about the study Mutual intelligibility between West and South Slavic languages? How can you mesure intelligibility by using one single person. http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/wanted_terrorists/usama-bin-laden/view Im Czech . Czech and Slovak are more intelligible to me then Slovenian with Slovak more so then Czech. In the former Czechoslovakia, everything was 50-50 bilingual media, literature, etc. Robert Lindsay. There are some dialects around Buzet that seem to be the remains of old Kajkavian-Chakavian transitional dialects (Jembrigh 2014). The Mutually Intelligible Languages of 8 Popular World Languages, What You Should Know About Mutually Intelligible Languages, The 11 Best Language Learning Apps of 2023, How to Say Thank You in 35 Different Languages Around the Globe, The Penny Pinchers Guide to Learning Any Language for Free, The Top 8 What Language Should I Learn Online Quizzes, The 6 Best Sources of Language Learning Videos on the Internet. Just search for alternative Croatian or kaikavian lessons and you will find me, along witht he contact information. On the other side, i.e. Russian is also 85% mutually intelligible with Belarusian and Ukrainian in writing. If you speak Russian, it will be easier for you to understand other Slavic languages, which include Ukrainian, Belorussian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Bulgarian, Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, and Slovene. Pronunciation is quite different, but all patterns are easy to catch. But reading a Bulgarian text is surprisingly easy, because the phonology and vocabulary are very similar. In fact, I would probably have a hard time to understand a Czech speaking with such an intonation. Russian influence only ended in 1878. Although Chakavian is clearly a separate language from Shtokavian Croatian, in Croatia it is said that there is only one Croatian language, and that is Shtokavian Croatian. Theres a good reason for this: mutual intelligibility. It seems polish and bulgarian are the easiest for me to understand (save for bosnian, serbian, and crnogorski). So give these mutually intelligible languages a second look. Eastern Slovak has 82% intelligibility of Rusyn and 72% of Ukrainian. They are essentially the same language and even somebody with virgin ears can understand anybody almost perfectly, as long as he has half a brain. That barrier, however, is not too difficult to overcome. Serbo-Croatian and Russian have 10-15% intelligibility, if that, yet written intelligibility is higher at 25%. Czechs are more urbane. 1. In 1933, reforms were forced that streamlined Ukrainian more in line with the Russian language. Its a nasty drug, and I hear its addicting. But in the case of written Russian, you could elevate this number up to 70-80% quite easily. The grammar in both languages is similar, but, predictably, there are a few differences: While Ukrainian includes the past continuous tense, there are only three tenses in Russian (past, present and future). This has, however, more to do with the new Ukrainian norm. So I understood 100% But I admit that it was a relatively very easy text. . 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. Croatian linguist. Balgarski is balgarskijat, grupa is grupata, oficialni is oficijalnijat etc. Therefore, for the moment, there are five separate Croatian languages: Shtokavian Croatian, Kajkavian Croatian, Chakavian Croatian, Molise Croatian, and Burgenland Croatian. Then she asked me to go do something useful, so this is all I can contribute with. Ikavian Chakavian has two branches Southwestern Istrian and Southern Chakavian. For instance, akavian Croatian is not intelligible with Standard Croatian. Polish has 22% intelligibility of Silesian, 12% of Czech, 6% of Russian, and 5% of Bulgarian. > Much of the claimed intelligibility was simply bilingual learning. Lach is not fully intelligible with Czech; indeed, the differences between Lach and Czech are greater than the differences between Silesian and Polish, despite the fact that Lach has been heavily leveling into Moravian Czech for the last 100 years. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11185-015-9150-9 The written languages differ much more than the spoken ones. We hate SPAM and promise to keep your email address safe. 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. All foreign movies in both the Czech Republic and Slovakia are translated into Czech, not Slovak. It is not that hard. However, you do say later in the text that Macedonain and Serbo-Croatian being 25% inteligible is simply not true. An example of equal treatment of Malaysian and Indonesian: the, List of dialects or varieties sometimes considered separate languages, List of languages sometimes considered varieties, North Germanic languages Mutual intelligibility, Learn how and when to remove this template message, considered separate languages only for political reasons, "Listening instruction and patient safety: Exploring medical English as a lingua franca (MELF) for nursing education", "The Contribution of Linguistic Factors to the Intelligibility of Closely Related Languages", "Taking taxonomy seriously in linguistics: Intelligibility as a criterion of demarcation between languages and dialects", "uvalar: The Internal Classification & Migration of Turkic Languages", "Mutual Comprehensibility of Written Afrikaans and Dutch: Symmetrical or Asymmetrical? The Mutually Intelligible Languages of 8 Popular World Languages 1. Hence the figures are averages taken from statements by native speakers of the languages in question. So I tried with my native Slovenian language and I was surprised how well Bulgars understand Slovenian language. Maltese. Vitebsk, Belarus. Download: Of course, the interviews are subtitled in Macedonian, but even an untrained ear and eye can see how similar these languages are. 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. Belarussian and Ukrainian have 85% similar vocabulary. He said he is frequent visitor in Poland and therefore he speaks Polish. Slovak-Czech MI tests out at 82% in studies, which seems about right. 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. Silesian or Upper Silesian is also a separate language spoken in Poland, often thought to be halfway between Polish and Czech. Yes and if you could more than one listener, it would be great. Apart lack of understandability there are phrases that could be ill understood with famous Polish I am looking for the broom It shows that Macedonians indeed grew up to certain extent as bilingual Macedonian-Serbian. Click here to get a copy. French has a reasonable degree of lexical similarity with Italian,Sardinian, Romansh, Portuguese, Romanian and Spanish, making it partially mutually intelligible with these languages. Czechs say Lach is a part of Czech, and Poles say Lach is a part of Polish. How to explain that? His level of understanding might be 90%, or 82%, 85%. 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. Speakers of the Torlak dialect (any Torlak dialect) understand Serbo-Croation, Macedonian and Bulgarian with no problem, and can comprehand Slovenian as much as 80-90% within a few weeks of exposure. 40% of Silesian vocabulary is different from Polish, mostly Germanisms. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Check out his page on the FBI 10 most wanted website. Im Slovenian, my mother tongue is Slovenian, however I have also learnt Serbo-Croatian from a very early age. He said if he was there for about a week he could understand probably everything. The unintelligibility is only due to the manner of speaking and not because of lexical and/or grammatical differences. Hello, the difference of course is completely arbitrary, but above 90%, most speakers regard their comprehension as full or say things like I understand it completely. Below 90%, it starts getting a lot more iffy, and down towards 80-85%, people start saying things like, I understand most of it but not all! and people start regarding the other tongue as possibly a separate language. They sometimes say that youngsters do not but that is just a myth. http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/sheikhmedia.htm I thought this is Croatia! How much of Ukrainian can these Russians in Canada understand? Every major language has some dialects Also both sides are able to use standard Slovak. This is not necessarily correct in terms of vocabulary, but you will find a lot in common in the grammatical rules . Im a speaker of Torlakian Serbian characteristically closer to Macedonian than Standard Serbian, having three (nom/acc/voc) cases and using a fusional instead of an analytic past tense and, with regards to a certain comment made two years ago on here, can, without issue, understand Zona Zamfirova, a movie about life in Ottoman Ni, without any subtitles. Or maybe you are just a gatekeeper. Interesting article This is simply not the case. True science would involve scientific intelligibility testing of Slavic language pairs. Sign languages are independent of spoken languages and follow their own paths of development. Polish and Ukrainian have higher lexical similarity at 72%, and Ukrainian intelligibility of Polish is ~50%+. Reactions: So far there have been few reactions to the paper. Macedonian 40 % spoken, 60 % written Menu. They give you strict % figures, and it is pretty amazing. The main Shtokavian dialects of Croatian, Serbian, Montenegrin and Bosnian are mutually intelligible. Is the virgin Intelligibility important? So dominant, in fact, that parts of Ukraine and Belarus were significantly russified in a matter of a generation, even if not completely. I will tell you also this: It is very strange when some words are not understood, although the communication is possible. Slovene has some commonalities with the West Slavic languages. Glad to hear you are steering clear of it. "A New Methodology for Romance Classification". That is ~90% our language. 60%? It is difficult to get a high-paying job that requires skill and . What percentage of Ukraine speaks Polish? The base of Molise Croatian was Shtokavian with an Ikavian accent and a heavy Chakavian base similar to what is now spoken as Southern Kajkavian Ikavian on the islands of Croatia. However, Chakavian magazines are published even today (Jembrigh 2014). Do you speak Boyko or Hutsul? Croatian language doesnt exists. At least not in general if so, it might depend on the school. It has been massively updated with a lot of new research from controlled scientific intelligibility studies. BULGARIAN: Balgarskijat ezik e naj-rannijat pismeno dokumentiran slavjanski ezik. My mother is a native Croatian speaker and she told me that serbian and croatian have very good intelligibility but however the grammar is very different.Comparing those two languages would be like comparing czech and slovakian. Eastern Slovak has ~80% intelligibility of Rusyn. However, in terms of vocabulary Ukrainian is closer to Polish, from which it has borrowed a large number of words. 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. A professor of Slavic Linguistics at a university in Bulgaria reviewed the paper and felt that the percentages were accurate. In brief, there is some mutual intelligibility, enough to have a simple conversation of the 'me Tarzan - you Jane' type, speakin. My family comes from Kaikavian (50%), Chakavian (25%) and Shtokavian (25%) areas, but at home, especially last years, we prefer to use only Kaikavian-Chakavian. Are Russian and Polish mutually intelligible? I hope you will like it and will be useful for your researches! Pannonian Rusyn is spoken by a group of Rusyns who migrated to northwestern Serbia (the Bachka region in Vojvodina province) and Eastern Croatia from Eastern Slovakia and Western Ukraine 250 years ago. When I visited Bulgaria I tried to communicate in Serbian language with the Bulgars. http://www.network54.com/Forum/84302/thread/1284248981/last-1288620675/The+real+9-11+cover+up-+Political+hijacking++was+originally+aimed+at+Russia, http://www.network54.com/Forum/84302/thread/1289113786/last-1289113786/British+intelligence+links+to+African+Emabssy+bombings, http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/sheikhmedia.htm, http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/wanted_terrorists/usama-bin-laden/view, http://ifaq.wap.org/society/voweldeployment.html, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58Aog4AJdQM, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1n9KMawa-8, https://www.academia.edu/4080349/Mutual_Intelligibility_of_Languages_in_the_Slavic_Family, http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11185-015-9150-9, 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, Alt Left: Ukrainian Nazis Execute Two of Their Own Men for Refusing to Fight, The Conquest of Germany and Japan Never Ended, Protected: Post to Discuss All of the Various POIs and Theories in the Delphi Murders from the Crime to the Present, Protected to Avoid Libel and Character Assassination Part 10, NATO Helped the Ukrainians Fire All Those Drones at Russia, Including all the Way to Moscow, The Conquest and Destruction of Russia Project Goes Way Back to Post World War 2, The Jewish Conspiracy To Subject Humankind.