Chakavian actually has a written heritage, but it was mostly written down long ago. 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. Everything else we chalk up to bilingual learning as we call it and we do not think it is accurate. 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. However, Russian is only 74% mutually intelligible with spoken Belarusian and 50% mutually intelligible with spoken Ukrainian. It is best seen as a Ukrainian dialect spoken in Russia specifically, it is markedly similar to the Poltavian dialect of Ukrainian spoken in Poltava in Central Ukraine. Kajkavski it seems has changed less than akavski. These recommendations are based on research into the mutual intelligibility of Germanic languages, conducted by Femke Swarte. Macedonian and Bulgarian are fairly similar but they are not close to being fully mutually intelligible. Id like to know about written mutual intelligibility, because, about spoken mutual intelligibility, there are people from portugal that cannot understand brazilians and vice-versa, though they speak the same language. Since then, Slovak has been disappearing from the Czech Republic, so the younger people dont understand Slovak so well. http://www.network54.com/Forum/84302/thread/1284248981/last-1288620675/The+real+9-11+cover+up-+Political+hijacking++was+originally+aimed+at+Russia. I also have formal training in several Slavic languages, which make most of them, except some of the Balkan ones, pretty much comprehensibe to me. Spanish is most mutually intelligible with Galician. Mutual intelligibility mostly applies to the educated, standardized forms of these languages, not to the various sub-standard dialects. 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. Nice article, but I think there is a difference between spoken mutual intelligibility and different languages. Now onto the discussion. Mutually Intelligible And Different. BULGARIAN (transferred to the Latin script): algarskijat ezik e indoevropejski ezik ot grupata na junoslavjanskite ezici. Slovak students do not have to pass a language test at Czech universities. There are new scientific figures for Czech-Slovak, Czech-Serbo-Croatian and Czech-Bulgarian. Are Polish and Ukrainian mutually intelligible? 50% the copula is mostly the same (sm/si/e/smo/ste/su vs. sum/si/e/sme/ste/se) By the way, osnovnata (osnovna-ta) is related to the Czech word osnova (basis, outline). 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 . There can be various reasons for this. I have to really focus and try hard to understand them but with patience I can get buy. She stated that Czech and Slovak are mutually intelligible and that the main differences between the two languages is that Slovak has somewhat of a Hungarian inflluence, and Czech has more of a German and Latin component. I have a newer version of the paper that I can give in which I changed some of the things you are complaining about. Between sources, you might find some claiming that two languages are mutually intelligible, while other sources claim those same languages arent. Mr.Lindsay, When Kievan Rus' fell to the Mongols in the 13th century, the formerly united states became split, and what were once very closely-related dialects began to . Serbo-Croatian and Bulgarian have 10-15% oral intelligibility, however, there are Bulgarian dialects that are transitional with Torlak Serbian. So you believe the 9/11 narrative? However, Bulgarian-Russian written intelligibility is much higher. How do they arrive at these estimates? Croatian language doesnt exists. It was probably in the same ballpark as Polish for me. According to former Pakistani President Musharraf Omar Sheikh who wired $100,000 to Mohammed Atta was recruited during the 90s by British intelligence. Its also highly intelligible with Portuguese in writing, though less so when spoken. Are Polish and Ukrainian mutually intelligible? It exists in differing degrees among many related or geographically proximate languages of the world, often in the context of a dialect continuum. 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. Slovenian language might be closer to the Macedonian/Bulgarian than to the Serbian language. I would be able to translate what he says! Rather than 95%, or 85%. It was for me a bit strange, because Bulgarian science still supports the thesis that Macedonian is Bulgarian. Linguistic distance is the name for the concept of calculating a measurement for how different languages are from one another. Young Czechs and Slovaks talk to each other a lot via the Internet. The idea is that the Kajkavian and Chakavian languages simply do not exist, though obviously they are both separate languages. You cannot simply separate the articles from the words during a regular conversation. Russian, Polish, Czech, and Ukrainian materials are available. To deal with the conflict in cases such as Arabic, Chinese and German, the term Dachsprache (a sociolinguistic "umbrella language") is sometimes seen: Chinese and German are languages in the sociolinguistic sense even though speakers of some varieties cannot understand each other without recourse to a standard or prestige form. Finally, I think the Ukrainians' mentality if more Polish, while the Russian mentality is more fourteenth century Mongol. Pannonian Rusyn is actually a part of Slovak, and Rusyn proper is really a part of Ukrainian. While Norway was under Danish rule, the Bokml written standard of Norwegian developed from Dano-Norwegian, a koin language that evolved among the urban elite in Norwegian cities during the later years of the union. For instance, Portuguese and Spanish have a relatively high degree of mutual intelligibility, but theyre technically separate languages. In the Kievan Rus', Russian and Ukrainian were dialects of the same language, meaning that they were largely mutually intelligible with only minor vocabulary or grammatical differences. Serbs until recently where still self titled Yugoslavs. 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. 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. Anti-Ethnic Sentiments There is . Mutual Intelligibility among the Slavic Languages by Robert Lindsay The mutual intelligibility (MI) of the languages of the Slavic family is an interesting topic because many are mutually intelligible to one degree or another. Because they use different alphabets, German and Yiddish are only mutually intelligible when spoken. However, any suggestions that Kajkavian is a separate language are censored on Croatian TV (Jembrigh 2014). 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. 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. I think that nowadays people from Ni also dont understand that Serbian enough. Torlakian (considered a subdialect of Serbian Old Shtokavian by some) has significant mutual intelligibility with Macedonian and Bulgarian. Polish and Ukrainian mutual intelligibility question. When you find out it is a separate language, you ask for %, and they often tell you! Was he from Belgrade or Novi Sad or Nis? Ukrainian has 82% intelligibility of Belarusian and Rusyn and 55% of Polish. But still Slovene and Dalmatian akavian speaker can talk if they stick to old slavic part of their respective languages. Also I have a long article coming up as a chapter in a peer reviewed book being published out of Turkey. It forms a single tongue and is not several separate languages as many insist. Amazon and the Amazon logo are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc, or its affiliates. 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. Here are the estimates about inteligebility with other Slavic languages from a person thats fluent in Slovenian and Serbo-Croatian: Kajkavian is probably closer to Slovenian than it is to Chakavian. Kajkavian is fairly uniform across its speech area, whereas Chakavian is more diverse (Jembrigh 2014). Part of the problem between Serbo-Croatian and Macedonian is that so many of the basic words be, do, this, that, where are different, however, much of the rest of the vocabulary is the same. Some reports say there is difficult intelligibility between Ekavian Chakavian in the north and Ikavian Chakavian in the far south, but speakers of Labin Ekavian in the far north say they can understand the Southeastern Istrian speech of the southern islands very well (Jembrigh 2014). "Proto-Slavonic,". 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. Bulgarian and Macedonian can understand each other to a great degree (65-80%) but not completely. True MI testing does try to find virgin ears that have heard little of the other language and speak little or none of it. Download: Intelligibility between languages can be asymmetric, with speakers of one understanding more of the other than speakers of the other understanding the first. Yet some say that the subtitles are simply put on as a political move due to Ukraines puristic language policy. And o shifts to u. Then conversation is intelligible 100%. Interesting article but I think there are some minor and some major mistakes and misunderstandigs. It is an official language of the Bulgarian republic and one of 23 official languages of the European Union. 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. If youve studied one language, you may very well understand some of anotheror have a much easier time learning it. Polish has 22% intelligibility of Silesian, 12% of Czech, 6% of Russian, and 5% of Bulgarian. The Chinese language, on the other hand, is comprised of a number of dialects that arent always mutually intelligible. It consists of at least four major dialects, Ekavian Chakavian, spoken on the Istrian Peninsula, Ikavian Chakavian, spoken in southwestern Istria, the islands of Bra, Hvar, Vis, Korula, and olta, the Peljeac Peninsula, the Dalmatian coast at Zadar, the outskirts of Split and inland at Gacka, Middle Chakavian, which is Ikavian-Ekavian transitional, and Ijekavian Chakavian, spoken at the far southern end of the Chakavian language area on Lastovo Island, Janjina on the Peljeac Peninsula, and Bigova in the far south near the border with Montenegro. Likewise with Polish vs Czech, and Slovenian vs Standard Croatian (these pairs are the most commonly mistaken as mutually intelligible). 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. Civis Illustris. But other results that included Czech and Bulgarian were very poor. Macedonian syntax and lexics are more similar to Serbian, even though structures of the language such as articles (no declensions) function as in Bulgarian. The Serbo-Croatian vocabulary in both Macedonian and Torlakian is very similar, stemming from the political changes of 1912; whereas these words have changed more in Bulgarian. Serbs/Croats used to live in the south Poland and they moved south to the current location. Sorry for so much criticism it is just my Czech/Moravian opinion on the subject. [1] Saris Slovak has high but not complete intelligibility of Polish, possibly 85%. Ukrainian and Belarusian are the closest languages, as together with Russian they form the East Slavic group of languages. BULGARIAN: Balgarskijat ezik e naj-rannijat pismeno dokumentiran slavjanski ezik. Macedonian 40 % spoken, 60 % written Czech-Polish is not at 12% anymore, a new study has found it is 32%. I put it to Google translator and I got this: An individual's achievement of moderate proficiency or understanding in a language (called L2) other than their first language (L1) typically requires considerable time and effort through study and practical application if the two languages are not very closely related. Given that Polish and Russian belong to different groups under the same language family, we can deduce that these two languages share a lot of similarities but also have many differences. They are essentially speaking the same language. When I visited Bulgaria I tried to communicate in Serbian language with the Bulgars. 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. Russian is followed by Polish with over 40 million speakers, Ukrainian with 33 million and Czech with 13 million. In this week's Slavic languages comparison, we talk about animals in Polish and Ukrainian. 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. And, as it was already sad, all Slovaks understand czeh better than czech slovaks thanks to hostory and politics. Russian is partially mutually intelligible with Ukrainian, Rusyn and Belarusian. I can only speak from my personal experience (business trips to Czech Republic - Ostrava, Praha, Mlad Boleslav, Mikulov ). Croats say Macedonian is a complete mystery to them. Grammar is almost identical. They understand almost nothing. The Polish alphabet includes certain additional letters formed using diacritics: the kreska in the letters , , , , and through the letter in ; the kropka in the letter , and the ogonek ("little . From the 1500s to 1900, a large corpus of Kajkavian literature was written. 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 . 0%. 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. The real reason that Slavs cant even understand each other: not enough vowels in their tongues! The results show that in most cases, a division between West and South Slavic languages does exist and that West . 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. Older people who rembember federation understand everything. . While not usually considered mutually intelligible, theres also enough similarity between French and Italian that speakers of Portuguese may understand both of these languages. So I tried with my native Slovenian language and I was surprised how well Bulgars understand Slovenian language. Bulharsk jazyk je plurocentrick jazyk m nkolik kninch norem. Much like Nordic languages. 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). Spanish is most mutually intelligible with Galician. 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. 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. In addition, the two groups have different cultural norms and values. Molise Croatian is not intelligible with Standard Croatian. Is Ukrainian more like . The thesis that Bulgarian and Macedonian are the same language is not real in the practice. For example we chakavians use a lot of words used in Polish, Ukrainian, Slovak etc but in standard Croatian those words are described as archaisms and instead words used in tokavian come from Turkish. But islanders more often say Mi povidamo na nau or domau. Intelligibility between the two is estimated at 82%. My father once read an article in polish and he said he understood almost everything, but when its spoken he said about 60%. Is Ukrainian closer to Russian or Polish? I speak both Southern akavian and neotokavian. by Christine Ro. There is a big problem with this. My guest from Ukraine will have to guess 6 animals that I'll describe to her in Polish. Russian has 85% intelligibility with Rusyn (which has a small number of speakers in Central and Eastern Europe). Macedonain and Serbo-Croatian being 25% inteligible is simply not true. This list focuses on common languages widely thought to be at least partially and mutually intelligible. One way to look at Macedonian is that it is a Serbo-Croatian-Bulgarian transitional lect. I also conclude that in terms of straight linguistic science anyway, Czech and Slovak are simply one language called Czechoslovakian. 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 addition, Bin Laden is a suspect in other terrorist attacks throughout the world. I can randomly pick up another paragraph from that Wikipedia page, and it would be harder: Most native speakers agree on MI. A western Slovak can even understand most of Ruthenians hen they are speaking. but they are often mutually intelligible. Macedonian has 65% oral and written intelligibility of Bulgarian. In Serbian word order is not that important like it is in English. General Musharraf says that Sheikh, who orchestrated the abduction, was recruited by MI6 while he was studying at the London School of Economics and sent to the Balkans to take part in jihad operations there. Tunisian Arabic is also considered mutually intelligible with Maltese, particularly with regards to idiomatic expressions. Hello can I use your comments in a paper I am writing? I will also send you a copy so you can look over the Serbo-Croatian part and tell me if there are any errors. Portuguese has varying degrees of mutual intelligibility with Spanish, Galician, French and Italian. https://www.academia.edu/4080349/Mutual_Intelligibility_of_Languages_in_the_Slavic_Family 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. 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. IOW, I think there are two languages Czech and Slovak and I do not agree that they are the same language with two dialects. Crazy! And the 25% is very low. 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. uses the Cyrlic script, and a Banat norm, which uses the Latin script. What Are Mutually Intelligible Languages? Subtitles are absurd when 99% of the audience can already understand whats going on. Reading a Bulgarian text is not like reading an ordinary book in Czech, it would cost my brain much more kilojoules (but maybe mainly due to the monotonous Cyrilic script), but it is possible. He said he is frequent visitor in Poland and therefore he speaks Polish. Also cyrillic in Macedonian is almost as same as Serbian, but many Croats dont know or dont want to know cyrillic, and that makes Macedonian more different to them than to Serbs. It is more like the other slavic languages (v instead of u, z instead of s, itd, less vowels, and no distinction between and ). In addition, a Net search was done of forums where speakers of Slavic languages were discussing how much of other Slavic languages they understand. They say, ~60%, ~65%, etc. Also there have been some czecho-slovak shows in TV lately like Czecho-Slovak Idol or Talent with judges and competitors from both countries and I have never heard of anyone who would complain about not understanding. 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. Serbo-Croatian intelligibility of Slovenian is 25-30%. Polish only a few words. 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. That being said, the line between a language and a dialect is often blurred. Not only are these Slavic languages very similar to Russian in written form, but they are also around 70% mutually intelligible. Russian. He alleges that Sheikh later double-crossed British intelligence. However, in recent years, there has also been quite a bit of bilingual learning. Heres his interview with Bosnian figures, and Bosnian is part of B/H/S landscape http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11185-015-9150-9 I have also friends from Central Macedonia (Prilep, Bitola) and I can tell how different they speak from the Skopjian dialect. I think it was mostly due to a learning few high frequency Polish words that are difficult for a Russian native speaker to understand. English professor. 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.