I understood every single clip he showed with equal clarity. Yes I didn't understand a single word. Every one of the languages he showed sounds like Russian to me.
I am a Spaniard and I could speak in Russian with a Serbian guy who was speaking in Serbian ..... but we both were a bit drunk.... in that situation one can speak any language.
@@meduzsazsa8490 when the Soviet Union disappeared, many emigrants came to Spain, in my village there was a bar, the owner was Lithuanian and it was the place where people from the east used to go, the frank language there was Russian, the bar was placed close to my house, I used to go there to have a coffee or in the nights to have a beer or to have dinner, I found I love some dishes from Lithuania. A couple of years later I was able to speak Russian enough to have a casual bar conversion in Russian.
Alcohol increases understandence many times! So I were speaking with a drunk Germanian for a long time using the only phrases: "I don't understand" and "Ich verstanden nicht". And we both were looking like two old chums if to see from the side 😅
I am from Hungary. I am almost native in Bulgarian, my paternal ancestors were gardeners from Bulgaria. I studied in Russian school. I understand 95 % of Macedonian, 70 % of Belarussian, 60 % of Serbian-Croatian-Bosnian -Montenegrian and Ukranian, 50 % of Slovenian, 30 % of Czech and Slovak, 20 % of Polish. Understanding in writing is better, for example written Ukranian is easier for me than spoken, same with Polish.
Controversial... Both of these languages have many different difficulties. Russian has lots of exceptions and so on... As a russian speaker, I can say Russian is very difficult even for native speakers :)
@@antons6545hahah I may be wrong.As a polish I had russian at school.So guess I cant be objective.I think that nations with non slavic languages know better which one is easier.🙂
@@antons6545 it depends on what the speakers native language is to begin with. i speak both polish and russian fluently since i was a child and i always found russian harder because i didnt use the same alphabet often however i think alot of people would find polish grammar much harder.
Wherever I go, people ask me the same question: what was it like growing up Chinese? And I always answer, Growing up Chinese was very weird for me, because no one around me was Chinese, and neither was I.
@@polyglotdreams ja som si po pozretí videa o podobnosti slovinčiny, slovenčiny a chorvátštiny myslel, že ste (asi) zo Slovinska. To bolo ale moje prvé video od Vás a keď ste svoj pôvod v tomto videu vysvetlili, bol som tiež prekvapený. Super videá, vďaka!
@@polyglotdreams You should know that Kajkavian is actually a dialect of Slovene language and not of Croatian language despite what Croat nationalist claim.
This is the first "Slavic languages" video I've seen where Slovak is talked about more than Czech, almost always its the other way around. We Slovaks often get overlooked, or confused for Slovenians.
słowacki jest najbardziej bliski prasłowiańskiemu bardziej niż polski , polski miał wpływ kulturowy na białoruski i ukraiński dlatego dość duża ilość wspólnych słów . Jjak byłem w Słowenii to młodzi ludzie nie rozumieli jak mówiłem po chorwacku/serbsku ale jako Polak ich mowa była dla mnie podobna do słowackiej :) . Nie jestem znawcą ale to nie przypadek że Słowacja jest mylona z Słowenią , może były późniejsze migracje? Mieszkańcy okolic Krakowa w Polsce dawniej byli nazywani Chorwatami gdyż była wtórna migracja z Chorwacji .
As a Bulgarian I understand 99% Russian but it’s difficult to speak, because of all the cases, I can’t remember which case to apply at which time. But is very easy to understand. The words are practically the same… BG „човек”, - Ru „человек”, БГ “хляб” - Ру “хлеб” Бг “небе” - Ру “небо”…
I am russian, learning bulgarian now, and I want to thank you for removing cases, otherwise it would be impossible 😅. Cases is something you learn with mother's milk. They are extremely hard to learn for adults even if you have them in your native language
@@serged5689 I believe that the Bulgarian language lost the cases during Roman occupation so it is probably to Rome that you should direct your thanks!
As a Polish native speaker, it always amazes me that I find Slovak much more intelligible than Czech even if these two languages are so similar to one another.
@@Emeel---X Większy wpływ ma tutaj też to, że słowacki ma podobniejszą do polskiego morfologię. Odmiany przez przypadki rzeczowników i odmiany czasowników przez osoby są o wiele podobniejsze między polskim i słowackim niż polskim i czeskim.
As the famous Croatian writer Predrag Matvejević once said, "The Serbo-Croatian language is the language that Croats call 'Croatian' and Serbs call 'Serbian'." Fantastic overview, sir!
This is so unique, that you can do the whole review including all the Slavic languages. Salute! I really admire how knowledgeable and understanding you are in Linguistic. 🙏
I like this style of videos very much. I only had some russiant school and vistided Poland and Chechoslovakia (Tschechosslowakei) as a kid. But I always liked the sound of the languages. Maybe I go bavk to russian and the cyrillic script tonot lose everything completely
@@undekagon2264Radio Garden allows you to listen to any station in the world and save favorites list If you've not played Russian on Clozemaster now might be the time. Amazon Russian flash cards Word scrambles word searches crosswords
Man you're a legend :) I still think that the easiest language to learn for an alien (from ground up not knowing any) would be Macedonian No gramatical cases No pronunciation exceptions No "Slavonic" or silent letters (except maybe Dz and Dzh) 3 genders yes, but distinguished by a noun's last letter
I came back 2 weeks ago from Poland, I loved it, though I learned some words before heading there, I wanted to see which slavic language is worth it and I won't lie: I will keep learning Polish, the difficulty is what makes it fun in my opinion, thanks for explaining the slavic languages, greetings from México :)
Muy bien, amigo. Yo soy polaco y aprendo tu idioma. Aunque no siempre es fácil- me encanta. Que disfrutes también tu aventura con mi lengua. Saludos desde Polonia 🇵🇱
I’m a native speaker of Polish and I have to say that the easiest way to understand other Slavic languages is to learn a very interesting artificial language called Interslavic - at least for native Slavs, not sure if it would work with non-Slavic speakers. I’m not very good at understanding other Slavic languages or even the varieties native to Poland such as Kaszubian or Silesian but experiencing the Interslavic speech was a mind-blowing experience. Picture this: I’m on holidays in Croatia and some dude comes up to me and wants to sell me a cruise or something. I’m not interested so I tell him to leave me (in English because I find it easier lol). Instead of leaving me be this guy asks me where do I come from, and immediately starts speaking a weird mixture of Russian, Croatian, Polish, probably Czech and I don’t know what else! And I understood 99% of what he said! I was able to understand all the details about the cruise, prices, discounts, places it visits, time schedule, the boarding point, whether lunch was included, what else was provided- without actually knowing most of the languages this Interslavic speech was based on. Needless to say I was so amazed by this experience that I bought what he was selling just to thank him for the opportunity to learn about this interlinguistic project :D I think we Slavs should get to know that Interslavic thing, it helps a lot with communication:)
@@polyglotdreams - maybe produce a video on your take on Interslavic? while the idea sounds great, and some of the decisions, I find it highly confusing, including what _is_ really interslavic nowadays ? It seems like the concept keeps changing...? Is it now - really in the core - Church-Slavonic - with extending the vocabulary - by using shared slavic vocabulary? I speak Polish and Russian, and have studied some Bulgarian and some Serbian. I can indeed communicate with any Slavic speaker if both sides are interested in communication; but how to really approach InterSlavic?
@@kobikaicalev175 Interslavic should be taught in all majority Slavic countries. The problem with Slavic nationalities is they can be chauvinistic. While it's easy for someone who speaks one Slavic language to learn another, politics usually get in the way. For example, Russians think other Slavs should learn Russian because Russians are the most numerous of the Slavs. Other Slavs view this attitude as Russian attempts at dominance. Interslavic facilitates communication among Slavic national groups without anyone feeling bullied or exploited.
As someone from Bosnia I can confirm that Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian are all just different official names/standards for the same language. They are a product of not just modern nationalism, but also historical divisions. Afterall, we don't have any single unifying name for the language, only the local country names. Interestingly, most of us just say "naš" (which means "our (language)") when we're referring to our language in everyday life, and especially when we're meeting someone from "our" countries in a foreign land like Germany where many of us emigrate to.
@@ruralsquirrel5158 well, there is a problem that if people from ex-Yugoslavia agree that the language is the same, there are a great multitude of people from one particular nation that then openly say that language is their own and since it's the same throughout the language proves that all those different nations (both historically, culturally and religiously) are of their nation, thus all these lands are also of their nation, and call the others apostates of their nation... Were it not for that problem, it would be easier for the others to not be too nationalistic and irrational ;)
Imagine if for some reason the was a conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina and as a result Herzegovina will become independent. What will they call their language? Herzegovinian? Ahah 😂
@@gamermapper we had a Monty Python type of comedians from Sarajevo (Top Lista Nadrealista - TLN) that did a sketch in the late '80's where they presented 6 mutually unintelligible languages, being: Serbian Croatian Bosnian Herzegovinian Montean (Gorski) Negrian (Crnski) and joked about having simultaneous translators for people to communicate :D ua-cam.com/video/DztrX5dXmxU/v-deo.html
In general, the Russian language is more connected with the languages of the South Slavs, since the Church Slavonic language came from them and we have many words with two spellings, for example the word Град And Город
Correct. Russian evolved as mainly a written imperial language, which had one of its principal origins in the religious texts written in Churchslavonic (which in turn had its origin in old Bulgarian/Macedonian). This is why any Russian who was never exposed to Bulgarian language, will understand some 95-99% if given a Bulgarian book to read, but much less than 50% if listened to spoken Bulgarian. Try it out, it's an interesting and funny exercise.
@@eugenecrabs8622not true. As a russian speaker i have to learn bulgarian to understand it, and it has different grammar more similar to english in some aspects. Most words share common roots, so you can guess the meaning in a lot of words but still nowhere enough to understand 95%. Also, many words have simialr sounds but different meaning. I found other slavic languages more similar in terms of grammar for sure
I am a Polish native speaker who has been studying Russian dance childhood. I might say this: when I listen to Ukrainian or Belarussian I quite a lot from the conversation. The między knowledge of Polish and Russian helps a lot. I know both, the Cyrilic and Roman alphabets and this helps me with written Bułgaria n or Croatian 😊 Thanks to Cyrilic alphabet I can even read signs in Geek 😊
I really love this kind of content. I enjoyed every minute. I lern polish and felt in love with Slavic languages. Would love the see more like this, cause I am absolutely interested in language science.
Thank you so much. More is yet to come. Did you watch the video about the East Asian cultural sphere concerning Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, and Korean?
A curio: Slavic nasal vowels was common in proto-Slavic and round (“bulgarian”) glagolic script has got characters for them. Nowadays they only exist in polish.
Of course, you don't. You know ow nothing about Bulgarian as demonstrated in this video, except for Yugoslav proganda. This is not serious scholarship about Alavic languages. You know nothing about Glagolitc and Cyrillic. Your level is worse than Wikipedia @@polyglotdreams
@@RositsaPetrovarjp7 He didn't say he knew anything about Bulgarian though, did he? But yeah, he spent more time talking about a minor Polish dialect, spoken by 100k people and then all he said about Bulgarian was that it does not have cases and that it's a good stepping stone if you want to learn Macedonian or something like that. I guess it's not really that offensive but it's strange. Especially if he is really interested in Slavic languages as a whole as he claims.
@karczameczka The Glagolitic script was not exactly Bulgarian. It was created by the Byzantians Cyril and Methodius initially for a state called Great Moravia. It wasn't adopted in Moravia because of the Roman church opposing the influence from Constantinople. That's why Western Slavic countries use the Latin alphabet. The actual alphabet created in Bulgaria was the one that followed the Glagolitic and yes, it's the Cyrilic alphabet.
As a Polish person raised in Silesia close to the Czech border, who apart from French, German and English in school learned by himself a bit of Russian and Ukrainian, who lives for 10 years in Bulgaria and speaks the language, I can say that I understand most of any written text in every Slavic language, but Slovenian :D It's somehow so different than the rest, sounds a bit like Czech with some balkan vocabulary. My suggestion of top 3? Russian, Serbocroatian, Slovak - because it's easier to learn than Polish, and Polish can be a fourth one. With these Bulgarian will be easy to learn, unless you didn't learn English before, because the gramar is more similar to it than to the rest of Slavic languages.
@@polyglotdreams Sorry, as a Slovak, I would agree with @Kajkes in this one. Polish uses extra awkward unnecessary letters somewhat similar to French, which distract from hearing the words or the message. They are harder to understand down south than the Slovaks are. Also, there are many Slovak villages spread out in Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia from 200-300 years and locals understand each other better, but there are no Polish villages there that I know. I also agree with some commenters that Slovenia is more different from other Slavic languages, having visited Ljubljana myself, and could not understand much.
@@Cyclonut96 Dude, we dont ask to be understand. Awkward? For me your language is awkward. .Our language is unique among other slavic ones plus we are the 2nd largest slavic nation and speakrs of language.
Around 20 years ago I took Ukrainian as my language in college. I was the only non-Russian major in the class. The Russian majors took Ukrainian as it has more cases and learning Ukrainian grammar made them better in their Russian. I barely remember anything, but I keep thinking to add it to my learning time.
Excellent, I just spoke about this subject with two polish people today, and they guessed it would be Russian. After that, they thought maybe Polish, but they couldn't think of a third one.
I speak all of those 3 languages and I say personally that it is true, however with Bulgarian, I struggle. I would also struggle with Slovenian, but that is luckily not the case, as I speak Slovenian too.
Hello Tim, I really enjoyed searching this video. I started with Russian many years ago but didn't get to a very high level. Since then, I studied Croatian and then studied Polish. I found Polish and Russian the most useful for me as I worked in a shop where there were lots of Polish and Lithuanian people. Polish is my best Slavic language because of my exposure to it. I then went on to learn some Ukrainian in 2022. I found it relatively easy because of my Polish and Russian. Now, I just started learning Czech as I'm going to the Polyglot Gathering in Prague in May Hope to see you there. Thanks for the great video. and for your passion for languages.
Thank you very much. I'm Bulgarian and have learned Russian at school (it was compulsory back then). I have wondered what other Slavic language it would be useful to know and thanks to your video I have chosen Polish 😊 I admire how brave you are to jump in this quite political and sensitive topic.
Thank you for choosing Polish 😀 In Poland we were forced to learn Russian at schools too. It's never a good thing to be forced to do something even if it's something as important as foreign language. Luckily I still remember most of Cyrillic alphabet 😀
Polish may have more native speakers, but Slovak is truly a central and kind of more neutral basis for Western Slavic languages. Is also an inroad to Serbian, Croatian, etc. Of all, Slovak gives the learner a basis to break into nearly all Slavic languages.
@@polyglotdreams You are right, but basically all Kashubian or Silesian speakers use Polish as second language (adding this lovely melody of Kashubian or Silesian to non-melodical Polish)
Lots of people in my surrounding, who are native Ukrainian speakers, are actually dropping vocative case a lot in their speech. While it is present on paper, in the urban environment, where Russian was a dominant language until recently, Ukrainian variation was also influenced.
@@myhal-bavyt sure but still it is not completely lost as in Russian and Belarusian. Poles also occasionally seem to drop vocative forms in favor of nominative
@@valentinezaretsky4788 of course is not lost, but its usage varies on the place and the speaker. I believe it is very common in rural areas and less common in urban contexts. But things might change in the next years due to the Russian language fading out in Ukraine.
@@myhal-bavyt You might be misinterpreting Surzhyk with Ukrainian!---Ukrainian definitely HAS the vocative case--RuZZian does not--Surzhyk (mix) may or may not!
Summed suggestions: East: Russian West: Polish South: BCMS (Also, if anyone is wondering discussion of starting southern languages is at 19:30 though there is an earlier aside around 14-15)
I had exactly this intuition: that speak one of the three languages of each sub-group, you could perfectly communicate with every Slavic-speaking folks (at least, have simple conversations). Myself, speaking ok Russian and rather broken Serbian/Montenegrin, I could already grasp some words in Polish conversations or newspaper and I could communicate with Bulgarians when I was in Sofia last summer. This video encouraged me to start Polish. It's kinda far on my lanuages waiting list so I'll have to be patient... But I'll do it for sure one day! Hvala puno/spassiba/merci!
Polish is a bunch of amaziness! Totally cute and adorable language full of surprises. If you're a native slav speaker, you'll sooner or later come to the point where you start understanding your own language the way better than before only by learining Polish.
@@polyglotdreams By the way Slavs and Slavic is political term invented by Katerina the Great for russian empire expansion 250 years ago, just so you know.
I learned Russian and Czech, and found that while they help me understand some Polish, it is still hard to follow. Surprisingly, Czech helped me understand a lot of Slovene (besides Slovak, obviously). As you said, the South Slavic languages are otherwise a big blank for me, and I always wondered which to learn. You and me being around the same age, I like the idea of Serbo-Croatian from the old-timer textbooks we grew up with. You've convinced me that should be the best choice. Great video!
It makes sense that Czech helps you understand Slovene if you look at history. Apparently Slovene has gone through the least changes in the last few centuries and before the hungarians settled where thery currently liver the Czech and Slovene lands were connected by slavic speakers
Slovene has a lot more shared history with czechoslovakian language than with most of other south Slavic language until fairly recently. It is fairly fragmented in terms of number of dialects, to the point where several are hardly mutually intelligible, when spoken in a really archaic/traditional way, presumably because of our geography and varied neighbouring influences through the centuries. Considering that the first slovene-speaking country (carantania) encompassed a big part of modern day Austria and even some Hungary, historical Czech-Slovak-Slovene dialect continuum is pretty understandable.
Its about 'practice' and exposure - if you learn Czech&Russian as non-native speaker, then if you are exposed to Polish only ocasionally, obviously you would understand little. .... ....But it would be very different after a month just watching Polish TV one or two hours a day.... after a while you would start to decode 'similar but different' stuff you and that allows you to decode spoken language/sentences as a whole (speaking is something completely different of course). I have similar experience with Ukrainian ...as a native speaker of Czech, I learned Russian ..... and after the start of the war I started to watch stuff in Ukrainian on youtube ...... at first i did understand little, but after few hours of listening to UA, many things started to 'click' (these patterns of 'similar but different' compared to either to russian or czech) and I now basically understand everything in Ukrainian when I watch a video
After studying Czech and Polish, I realized that these languages have a lot of false friends. Mám jístotu že nevíš co znamená "pevnost". A classical example is "Szukam dzieci w sklepie." Gramatically they are quite similar though.
Hey dude, you sound like the perfect target audience for Interslavic. It's a constructed, semi-naturalistic language meant to be intelligible to any Slavic speaker and contains features and vocabulary from West, East and South Slavic branches, as well as being etymologically conservative and phonologically "middle-ground" when it comes to the living Slavic languages. As for the BCMS language - that's one funny situation. Politically they're considered the same language, but in reality it's the Shtokavian, Chakavian and Kajkavian dialects that are different from each other - much more so than those national "languages", all of which are based on Shtokavian. For that reason I just use the term "shtokavian language" when I talk about BCMS.
English is better understandable for me as Czech than some interslavic. Problem with interslavic is that you still need at least some experiences with other slavic languages, for example it uses DA for yes and you just have to know it's yes in other slavic languages, there are many similar examples. I can kind of understand it, but it's very uncomfortable to read it and sometimes it needs some time to get it. The best interslavic in these days is just English. 😀
@@SaturnineXTS Ok, but you are growing up surrounded by English, kids born after like 2010 already speak English maybe even better than their native langauges. I am not saying it's literally a good thing for your culture, but it will make communication in the future definitely easier.
True. Croatian 3 different dialects are more different that one of the dialects (shtokavian) from the rest of BSM. The shtokavian became the main dialect during the 19th century when it got codified as the main language, and one of the reasons then was purely political, in order to get a southern interslavic language as it was different also from Serbian at the time.
In Ukraine we do have vocative - кличний відмінок as 7th case. I won't refer to someone by just друг, подруга, мама, тато, жрець etc., but will call by друже, подруго, мамо, тату, жерче. The vocative used to be delited by russian and replaced just by nominative. But after restoring the independence we restores the vocatice. ☺️
Very nice overview. Just a minor note - native Slovak speaker would say "Čítal som knihu/čítala som knihu" with a slightly different word order and omitting the personal pronoun as the person is immediately obvious from the verb suffix. "Ja som čítal/čítala knihu" has a slightly different meaning putting an extra emphasis on the person rather than just declaring someone has read a book.
Apparently, it doesn't work with all Slavic languages, but most of the neighboring languages can be learned without any effort just by consuming the content. That's true. I am Ukrainian and I understand the Polish language very well, although I have never even studied it. Czech and Slovak are a little more difficult for me, because there is much less of it in our information field, but after watching a few videos I started to understand about 70 percent of what they say. With the Belarusian language, everything is generally so easy to understand that sometimes, if I hear a song in this language, I cannot immediately understand that it is foreign, because our languages, although different, have high mutual inteligibility, not like with russian.
Although I don’t speak any Slavic language, as someone who’s interested in etymology, philology, culture, etc. I have a strong feeling that Ukrainian, and Belarusian are closer to Polish (West Slavic) than Russian (East Slavic) despite those (Belarusian and Ukrainain) are written in Cyrillic and culturally they are orthodox unlike the Polish are catholic. Therefore, categorically they can be in between or cross-categorized.
I speak both in Ukrainian and Russian. I think Ukrainian is closer to Polish more than to russian. Russian is similar to Bulgarian. The core of Russian is in church - Slavonic language that no longer exist but were made by Bulgarian/Macedonian priests to spread christianity.
I am Ukranian, and I confirm, your feeling are true. I was surprised when I heard Belarusian for a first time I understood everything - most of the lexicon is the same as Ukrainian, however Belarusian have a different pronunciation or accent. In fact when the presenter in this video switched on the Belorusian Tv, i first thought the lady was speaking Ukrainian😆, and then I started to wonder why her accent is different until I realised after a few seconds it was Belarusian. And when I first was in Poland I had such a dejauvea - like I was in Kyiv or Lviv, but the signs have Ukrainian words written in Latin letters. There is definitely way more difference between Ukrainian and Russian than Ukrainian and Belarusian / Polish
@@polyglotdreams Please don't follow the Geographic designations----better to look at Linguistic ones--Keep in mind that RuZZian is an invented non-native language--- the Finno-Ugrics of Muscovy and others were forced to learn this artificially created language because Peter thought that a great Empire should have its own unique language--so INSTEAD of choosing one of the many native languages within the Empire,--or even French which most of the ruling elite spoke, the decision was made to CREATE a NEW language based on Old Church Slavonic (which was common like Latin as a canonical language instead.
I’am a native macedonian speaker. I can understand 100 percent of serbo-croatian or bulgarian, and can speak the languages relatively good, which is not that surprising. What surprised me the most is how much I can understand russian (around 60 percent and that number rises if they talk slower) although I have never studied the language, nor I have been exposed to russian media, culture etc. I understand russian much better than slovene, even though macedonian and slovenian are in the same south slavic group, which makes no sense to me. Someone mentioned that it could be explained by the old church slavonic language… When it comes to the south slavic languages, it’s worth mentioning the Torlakian (shopski) dialect, which is a transitional form between serbo-croatian on one hand and macedonian-bulgarian on the other. It’s spoken mainly in south serbia, northeastern part of macedonia and northwest bulgaria. The relationship between the macedonian and bulgarian language is hot topic. I can say that they share very similar grammar and the difference is largely lexical and idiomatic. From my experience, I think that the bulgarian language is heavily influenced by the russian lexicon, and that is not surprising considering that they were part of the Eastern block for 50 years. Conversely, the macedonian language, as part of non-aligned and pro-west oriented Yugoslavia, has adopted a lot of German, French and English words. And for me, as a south slavic speaker, the toughest language, definitely is polish. I can’t understand almost anything, with the exception of the word K…A, but surprisingly the slovak language is much more intelligible to my south slavic ear
@@polyglotdreams As a Bulgarian native speaker from the South-Western part of Bulgaria I can confirm 100% what carli2302 wrote. I can understand 100% of the language(s) spoken on either side of Bulgarian-Macedonian border plus I understand about 85-90% of BCMS although I have never studied it. I've also noticed that speakers of BCMS have hard time understanding Bulgarian( unlike Bulgarians most of whom are able to understand BCMS ) which make me think that you are wrong about suggesting Learning BCMS as the language of South Slavic group in order to be able to understand all Slavic languages. I've learnt Russian for a short period of time as well. Not long enough to be able to learn to speak it grammatically correct ( I have absolutely no knowledge of how to use the cases properly ) but somehow I am able to communicate with Russian speakers without any problems. I've noticed that I can understand Belorussian quite well and I am able to understand about 65-70% of Ukrainian probably because of my very limited exposure to Slovak as well.( I used to work with some Slovaks about 20 years ago) . I can't speak any Slovak but I am somehow able to understand it both in oral and written form. Unlike Slovenian 🙂 which I can only understand in written form. The way vowel accents are used in Slovenian is so uncharacteristic for my years that my brain just shuts off. I am also able to understand to some extend both Polish and Czech but only in their written form. My brain is not willing to suffer the efforts of trying to understand sounds that come out of Polish speakers.
let me clarify for you - old church Slavonic language == old Bulgarian language. The modern Russian is based on it. So the influence is in different direction :)
@@valentinbitsinandmaxx8389 The fact that you can understand Serbians but they dont understand Bulgarian is maybe because major population of Bulgaria listen Serbian music :D
As a Croat, I can say its the same the other way, but I can't speak Macedonian because I've never been laerning it. For me it is definitely the most intelligible Slavic language. I guess it can be explained by heavy Serbian influence on Macedonian in Yugoslavia.
Totally agree with this video!! I've learned quite a bit of Serbo-Croat, CZ and Russian. Just some extra points from my side. On cases: Slovak and Slovene, I believe do not have Vocative. When it comes to BCSM, Kajkavian and Cajkavian are out of that standard, and are probably better classified as separate languages from BCSM. You will hear some Kajkavian and Cajkavian influence in local Croatian speech in many areas, kinda like you'll hear Bavarian hints or Koelsch hints in local Standard German. For language learning, I would take Slovak over PL, just because Slovak is easier, and nicer to hear, it would be good enough to understand PL, UKR, and even, with BCSM, Slovenian. CZ is tougher than SK. I was able to communicate with Bulgarians and Macedonians, just using Serbian, with Upper Sorbians, Slovaks and Poles, using CZ. A knowledge of RUS with some CZ/SK goes a long way to catch most of Ukrainian and Rusyn. Polish only really comes in handy enough in case you need to communicate in Belarus to back up the Russian. I just don't like the sound of Polish or it's writing, but hey, personal preferences, hehe. Unfortunately, Sorbian is dying, with probably only less than 50,000 speakers left. Although I speake German fluently, I would make it a point to speak CZ with Sorbian speakers so they could show its use to outside speakers! WOnderful video!!
Often, when selecting a language, the language selects you. Ex, if you have a Serbian partner, or a Polish girlfriend, get relocated to Bosnia--you take that as a start, and it will end up useful way beyond that.@@polyglotdreams
Positive on lack of vocative in Slovene. It might have existed historically and might show up in random isolated phrases, but generally it's neither taught neither used. I'm not sure about all dialects, though. As a Slovene I find it interesting, that aside from Kajkavian, which is really closely related to Slovene, I can understand Čakavian much better than Štokavian or Serbian, especially, once one gets used to various Slovene dialects. Although even Serbian is not that hard to understand with intermittent exposure - our generation (post YU) were still able to study from exclusively Serbian and English textbooks in uni in one class.
I'm a Croatian and I find all Slavic languages ugly to hear compared to Romanic languages and English, even though the vocabulary is very, very rich in literature. Many different words with same meaning. Expecially because many words in Croatian can be told slavic based and latin based. To me the most beautiful Croatian dialect is spoken in Dalmatia (čakavica, ikavica).
@@juranalinaric6007 I find Croatian-Serbian in all its dialects very melodious, yet clean and emphatic. Russian sounds very sweet. Czech, Slovak and Sorbian have a good rythm and are very clear. Polish, however, I don;t like the phonetics, very slushy and fast, and Bulgarian seems kinda flat and with many ambiguous vowels.
Serbo-Croatian is a large and diverse language. It has very different dialects. Some might be very different from one another, in fact even closer to Slovene than to standard Serbo-Croatian. They could be as different as Russian and Ukrainian. However the thing is that these dialects are not official languages. And the official languages of current Yugoslav states (BTW, I wish Yugoslavia was still existing) (Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, Montenegrin, what next, Herzegovinian? Metohijan? Dalmatian? 🤔) are actually all based on the same dialect, Štokavian, therefore it actually doesn't make sense to call these different languages. But if they actually did use a different dialect (like Kajkavian, Čakavian or Torlakian), it actually would. This is why, in my opinion, Macedonian and Bulgarian being separate langauges makes kinda more sense.
Not really. The example you are talking about is the most extreme one, and its Croatian spoken in the Zagorje region, which is only a very minuscule percentage of the population. All other regions speak the same language.
Who do you think has easier starter point to become a polyglot like. 1. Who knows English 2. Who knows Slavic language 3. Who knows Latin family language
As a Brazilian Portuguese native speaker, Spanish and Italian are the easiest languages to learn, then French. Catalan is not hard, but it takes effort to look up for content. For example, Catalan or Valencian youtube is very weak in terms of creators and viewers. There are few good resources to learn Neapolitan or Sicilian, and those are spoken and sung languages. They are not published, not used in movies and series(with a few recent exceptions), and not used in education. I am more of a polyreader than a polyglot. I have read several books in French and in Italian, as well as a few in Spanish, a couple of books in Catalán and a theater piece in Neapolitan. If you know Spanish or Portuguese, Italian, and French or Catalán, you'll understand to a good degree almost any little spoken Romance language, specially in its written form. There's the one exception though, which is Romanian. To understand Romanian, study Romanian, and that's what I've been doing lately. The good thing about Romanian is that it can be a good introduction to Slavic languages, in the sense that it contains hundreds of words of Slavic origin.
As a religious Jew who was raised in Ukraine, I speak Russian at home, I picked Ukrainian in the streets, I learned Hebrew, Aramaic (the language of the Talmud) and Yiddish in school and currently I’m writing a comment in English 😂. Because of this languages I’m able to understand written Polish, and quite well to understand Belarusian. When I was in Germany I realised that I can understand almost half of the written words, and people around me understood me quite well when I spoke to them in Yiddish, though when they spoke to me I couldn’t understand a word 😂. Also Hebrew and Aramaic are letting me to learn Arabic on duolingo easier, because they are all Semitic languages.
@@MLiv-bn4cl In the future, learning German will be a breeze for you, then Dutch, then Afrikaans...If you study Polish, then you get Czech almost for free and so on. If you were to study Romance languages, I'd suggest you French and Spanish.
I am a native Polish speaker. I learnt Russian at school and then used this language a bit in conversation and reading. I confirm that I can understand other West and East Slavic languages. I don't see the Silesian as a separate language. I understand the political reasons why some Silesians claim it but if Silesian would be considered a separate language, we can also consider the Greater Polish dialect a separate language. But we know that it's not true.
Bielarusian have two (or actually three) standards of writing: with both cyrylic and latin script. The third standard is more of a historical curiosity: its arabic alphabet. Yes, arabic alphabet was use to write Bielarusian language: by tatars living in Grodno region of Bielarus and Podlasie region of Poland.
It also has two literary standards, Taraškievica and Narkamaŭka. Fun fact, so does Ukrainian but seems like they've completely abandoned Skrypnykivka today.
@@gamermapper Parts of Skrypnikivka are slowly being reintroduced like using strong G in imported words instead of usual H, pronouncing words of greek origin with T instead of F for "TH", and using Ye Instead of E for latin loanwords where "je" is used there. And in general using direct phonological import instead of adaptation for local phonetic palette. Still, it's only visible on radio and on some tv channels (TET used to go all in on Skrypnikivka, but after few years gave up and only some parts got remained). Most of it sounds kinda ok, but some things like "proyekt" instead of "proekt" kinda irks my ears.
That's a wonderful overview! I'm Polish. I agree with the top3 recommendations no doubt. Then I think Bulgarian and Czech seem equally worthy of the 4th spot (or you can alternate with Macedonian and Slovak respectively) as they give better coverage than Slovene, which mainly only applies to Slovenia and is the most "lonely" member of the Slavic family. But those are minor nit-picks of mine :D I know it's a somewhat different topic but I can't help but mention PJM (Polish Sign Language) which is a native language of the Deaf community in Poland. It has many similarities to sign languages in our neighboring countries. A user of PJM once explained to me how Ukrainian and Russian sign languages are different but share the same root so it's possible for the users to communicate some basic information(a fully-fledged conversation is much more difficult though). I find it really interesting how you don't actually need words to see the Slavic connection, our shared culture and tradition :)
7:19 One thing to note is that the country name is Belarus and the language name is Belarusian (with one s) but not “Bela-russian”. This is important because otherwise it sounds as another version of russian, which is not the case. From historical perspective and language genesis, Belarusian is a successor of Rusian [roosian] (called after the medieval state of Rus’) just as Ukrainian. I’m sure that author knows all of these facts. And many thanks for explaining the history of Ukrainian language for the English-speaking audience.
No, you don't need to take it too seriously. This distinction is by and large a forced nationalistic shibboleth. Don't waste your time on these and thanks for the terrific video!
@@michaelyaroslavtsev2444 Nonsense!--The Kremlin purposefully tries to BLUR the two DIFFERENT words--Rus' (roosh) and RuZZian in order to linguistically and culturally genocide the Belarus'ian and Ukrainian people by pretending that Muscovy (which changed its name in 1721 to "Rossiya" is heir to ancient Rus' (Ukraine and Belarus'). Belarus' is Belarus' NOT Belarussian!
@@polyglotdreams The Kremlin purposefully tries to BLUR the two DIFFERENT words--Rus' (roosh) and RuZZian in order to linguistically and culturally genocide the Belarus'ian and Ukrainian people by pretending that Muscovy (which changed its name in 1721 to "Rossiya" is heir to ancient Rus' (Ukraine and Belarus'). Belarus' is Belarus' NOT Belarussian!
My first slavic lagnauge I'm tackling is polish. I mostly know Spanish and Italian to conversational level and currently focusing on Hungarian, Portuguese and Polish. And I feel I want to tackle czech and ukranian after russian and polish because I feel I would visit those countries more often and it'll be more useful to me.
Silesia mentioned! Ślōnsko siyła, ślōnsko sztama 😀 As a Silesian native I would like to say, that it helps me understanding most of polish, Czech, Slovak and - suprisingly - Ukrainian. Silesian is a language to go.
Russian is my native language. Serbo-Croatian was my major at the Slavic languages department, Polish was the second foreign Slavic language. Though I know Polish poorly, it helps me with other languages. Now I can understand on a very high level any Slavic language. Czech and Slovak to a lesser extent, but others... But I must say I now speak Serbian as a native, so the Southern branch is really easy. The Eastern is easy too for obvious reasons (all the things that are different from Russian in Ukrainian and Belarusian basically come from Polish). Slavic languages are the best❤
This was a very informative, interesting video! I have recently started learning Slovene due to an interest in music from there. It has been quite a challenge as my first Slavic language.
Omg, giving a list of the most spoken/applicable language of each branch of the family tree is so helpful, thank you :) this is what I’ve been trying to figure out
People don't speak Ukrainian in most parts of the Ukraine too despite discriminatory practices of the regime against the Russian language. It's a bit like Irish in Ireland: people claim to know it, to love it even but with the exception of few symbolic phrases normally prefer to communicate in English.
@@xxxyyy8779what regime? I live in Ukraine (Dnipro, more like the eastern part) and you are talking nonsense. I hear Ukrainian everywhere. We all know it.
@@xxxyyy8779 totally wrong. people in Ukraine speaks ukrainian, like 75% ukrainian language everywhere in Ukraine. 98% Western Ukraine, 70% Eastern Ukraine.
No idea if anyone mentioned this yet, but Ukrainian does have the vocative case! Literary Standard Ukrainian requires it, and some spoken dialects still retain it completely. While the usage of vocative in spoken informal language is slowly fading away (mostly due to the influence of Russian), there are still situations when you would use it with people for your language to sound more natural. Hope this is at least somewhat interesting!
What an amazing video! Very well explained, structured and with examples. This of course encourages me to keep learning languages, and now I know a proper sequence for understanding most of them. Claps!
This video's basis is exactly the question I've been pondering for a couple of years! As a sidenote, my first language was Polish. I can understand written Croatian relatively well, and one time I extensively used Croatian sources for a university paper! Prior to that, I had had zero previous exposure to it. Fun anecdote. :)
As an Ukrainian, who knows Russian as well as Ukrainian, I see it's an absolute win. Really, I was in Bulgaria and it was a bit easier to undertand their language, than I thought. 'Cose I know Ukrainian, I can understand every West Slavic language (if it isn't too fast, of course) and also can get the gist of conversation of South Slavs, but not even half of words, that have used in dialogue. So, I need to learn to Serbo-Croatian language and it's done. O, and Spanish, French, Chinese (oh, no. I don't like hieroglyphs) and Arabian (how, including all of dialects?). After that I can trawel all ower the world, almost
@@polyglotdreams as I'm a teenager, who wants to enter the Faculty of International Relations, it looks like doable. Can you advise me how should I start, to have most efficiency? Especially with non-alphabet languages (like Chinese or Arabic), 'cose learn it like in school is absolute failure
@@Чуни-муни Learn Chinese--it is difficult but Japanese uses some Chinese characters, and even in Korean one might be able to discern some Chinese sounds and words!
I'm an American who first learned Russian close to fluent, then learned Polish to an intermediate level. Now I'm living in Montenegro for a few months and thinking about starting to learn Serbian, hence why I'm watching videos like yours. Good to know we're on the same page as to which Slavic languages to learn and in which order. haha
As someone who first learned to speak using a dialect of South Serbia the Čital form in Slovakian is the same in Svrljisko Zaplanjski. Out of all the West Slavic languages I understand Slovak the most - Id say even more than any Eastern Slavic language as well. Na Kralove Holi, Stoji strom zeleni! :)
I'm here to solve this even better: LEARN INTERSLAVIC, a constructed language that all slavs can understand and is easier for learning than all of the national Slavic languages. I'm not slav but I am studying it, is a highly valuable language.
Thank you for mentioning Rusyn! And yes 26:18 - it indeed can help, as for Slovak and Rusyn is is even closer than Rusyn and Ukrainian (based on the number of speakers). It's because as you can see on the map at 7:47 most Rusyn speakers live in Slovakia and except of the state language (Slovak) speak the Prešov Rusyn variant, which is very different from the one spoken in Zakarpattyan Ukraine and even sometimes hard to understand, yet Prešov Rusyn is extremely close to the Lemko Rusyn that is a codified langauge in Poland and thus spoken by Polish Rusyns and lastly - Pannonian Rusyn spoken in Serbia was codified based on a Sotak eastern SLOVAK dialect). Ironically, people oftentimes just focus on Zakarpattyan Rusyn when mentioning Rusyn, yet except of not having a proper codification (because of the Ukrainian government not officially recognising Rusyns and Rusyn language as separate) it doesn't even have that big of an amount of speakers, compared to Prešov, Lemko or Pannonian variants - all of which have proper codifications and grammatical rules and syntactically differ quite lot from Ukrainian and even from the eastern Slavic language group. That being said, saying that 90% of Rusyn is similar to Ukrainian checks out maybe only for the Zakarpattyan variant/(dialect continuum?), which is not the best sample when talking about Rusyns. If you want to compare proper standardised variants of Rusyn, I recommend the lem.fm radio, which contains Prešov, Lemko and sometimes even Pannonian variants. And I really hope our fellow Zakarpattyan Carpatho-Rusyn brothers will be able to codify their variant very soon!
@@DIMA-q2o in that case Ukrainian is a dialect of Polish...or Russian...:) you can clearly see what harm national opression - saying that Ukrainian language is a dialect of XY and that Ukrainians are just a subethnos of XY - did to Ukrainian people, so stop being stuck up in past and respect others if you yourself want to be respected. All of the countries (Poland, Slovakia, USA, Canada, Hungary, Serbia...) where Carpatho-Rusyns live as a minority recognise Carpatho-Rusyn as a separate national identity and language...Ukraine is the ONLY exception. In addition, Carpatho-Rusyn language is protected by the European charter of minority languages...so I guess go whine to them that they are protecting a "dialect" and right after that proceed to complain about how Russians and Poles considered Ukrainian just as a dialect of their language...the hypocrisy is so strong :)
Language distinction is inherently tied to a political process. Ukrainian Rusyns are predominantly content to be a part of Ukrainian nation and for them the distinction is not critical, as long as they can talk and create using the language as they learned it since childhood. A Ukrainian coming to Slovakia and claiming that Rusyn is a dialect of Ukrainian would be a tone deaf stupidity, because there’s a clear political will for recognition there. And frankly, Ukrainian Rusyn variants could easily influence standard Ukrainian development, with the current drive to ditch Russian influences. Splitting is not the only fate for languages, after all. PS: There was a Russian funded campaign to attempt to rile up a “DNR” situation in transcarpathia around Rusyn language. It failed, but left an imperial aftertaste. As a result, Ukrainians without a taste for linguistic nuances can react to attempts to distinguish Rusyn and Ukrainian… aggressively.
Ukrainian native speaker here. There's a small mistake in this video (at 23:27). Ukrainian actually does have a vocative case. In some schools across the country it was, or maybe still is called "vocative form", but it's actually one of the grammatical cases. And also, I wanted to thank you for telling the true history of Russian language in Ukraine. So good to see that people from other countries research this topic, and then other people can learn from them. So yeah, thank you again for that 🙂
Great video. Born and raised in West Bulgaria with relatives in Macedonia (Skopje, Bitola) and Serbia (Pirot). Learned Russian at school 35 years ago. Recently tried to read беларуская мова (Belarusian language) and I am pretty positive about not only understanding the context, but some of the details. Not so much with Ukrainian, but still understanding the context. I do have troubles understanding and reading Polish. Reading Polish is a pain because of the different alphabet system they are using. However I am understanding the core of the text, not much when they are speaking. Especially if Polish is spoken in a fast way.
Смешно потому что я русскоговорящий беларус но пока украинский понимаю лучше чем белорусский. В основном наверное потому что в интернете гораздо больше контента на украинском, что в сериалах что в соц сетях, чем на белорусском. Но и на белорусском достаточно, хорошо что это не как какой-то кашубский или лужицкий на котором вообще почти ничего нету.
You can understand foreign languages better by watching movies with the foreign languages subtitles. It has worked for me. Immersive translate can also generate those subtitles for those movies that lack them
I'm from Belarus, I speak Belarusian and Russian. We have both these as the state languages. Unfortunately, I rarely see anybody speaking Belarusian... Also I can understand Ukrainian because I have watched LOTS of Ukrainian TV shows and have Ukrainian pals. And now I'm studying at the Polish university.
15:45 not 550.000 (spoken), the text correctly says 50.000. Other German sources count as little as 20.000 to 30.000 speakers. Upper Sorbian (in southeast Saxony, is closer to Czech) is "endangered of extinction". Lower Sorbian (closer to Polish, located further north, in south Brandenburg) is considered a "seriously endangered of extinction" language because it is only spoken in very few families by the middle and younger generations.
As a Bulgarian i can easy understand Russian, but... when i heard Slovenian it is even more understandable and close. As for makedonian language- it is heavy dialect of bulgarian. There was an old joke that makedonian is nothing more than pure bulgarian writen on a serbian typewriter.
Yes correct, because one of the main source for modern Russian is the old church Bulgarian language which had been used for a centuries before Communists in 1917 created the modern Russian
Great video! I am Macedonian, I speak excellent Serbo-Croat, have learned some Slovenian, understand at least 60% of Bulgarian, speak also English and German... Choosing the next one - it will, most probably be Polish 🙂
As a Serbian born in Croatia I am surprised that you didn't mention the biggest,,difference''between two and that is Croats speak ijekavicu and Serbs speak ekavicu...everything else is pretty much same.
There are Serbs who speak ijekavica and there are Croats who speak ekavica, also both ekavica and ijekavica are considered grammatically correct in standard Serbian.
Amazing summary for Ukrainian/East Slavic native. I came to the same conclusions by spontaneous understanding Polish, and other languages becoming intelligible. So far, South Slavic are a bit more challenging. Small fix, Ukrainian had Vocative case
Bosnian, Serbian, Croatian and Montenegrian are the same language with some minor differences wich won't stop you from speaking all 4 if you learn one of them. For example, Bosnian/Croatian "ijekavica" and Serbian/Montenegrian "Ekavica". Here are some examples that all of us understand as soon as it is spoken. Milk Mleko (Ekavica) Ml(ij)eko hence IJekavica White Belo (Ekavica) Bijelo (IJekavica) I am natively Bosnian and travel for work to Montenegro/Serbia/Croatia and I haven't had single problem except word or two here and there. Serbia and Montenegro use Cyrillic alphabet but it is a same alphabet except with different signs assigned to each letter. Some are same and some are different. You will have to learn Cyrillic alphabet if you want to correspond with someone who does not know Latin alphabet. Most people in the region most!y know both alphabets which is awesome. Thanks to Cyrillic alphabet I can decipher and read Ukrainian and Russian. Some letters are different but eventually you catch on. I can understand Slovenian and communicate somewhat and same for Macedonian. I'm not an expert but I feel that Bulgarian wouldn't help me understand Macedonian better. That's me though. The hardest part are the dialects in Croatia you mentioned. I'm having difficulties understanding them and as if some of those are completely different languages. I can communicate but honestly I'm struggling. There are many parts of the former Yugoslavia that speak different dialects that are hard to understand. Most of those people however speak SHBM language. Hope this helps somone.
Montenegrin Ekavian? Montenegro is more Ijekavian than Croatia... probably even more than Bosnia, since Western and North-Western Bosnia are Ikavian in native dialects, and some parts of Eastern Bosnia tend to get some Ekavian influences (just some). Western Serbia was like this, but they lost Ijekavian speach due to promotion of standardized Serbian. Even Vuk Karadžić, who was from this region wrote his "Rječnik", not "Rečnik". And Croatia is just a mess, like a carpet. Montenegro and Eastern Herzegovina are probably clearest Ijekavian regions.
@@sabkobds you might be right but all four languages are 99% the same and learning one you learn all four except you may have to learn Cyrillic alphabet to correspond with people that use Cyrillic only and the mixture. I'm just trying to simplify for the folks and ekavica and ijekavica can be ignored as we all understand both dialects as they are practically easy to decipher. On the other hand some dialects are the problem for most people speaking SBCM languages unless they live in the area or they learned because they wanted.
Your life honestly sounds so interesting, learning Slavic languages while traveling to South America and South East Asia and being Japanese! If you ever decide to tell tales of your travels, I will be thrilled to hear them!
As a Czech, I personally speak 5 Slavic languages (Czech, Polish, Slovenian, Serbian, Russian) and such logic has been familiar to me before, as it is logical that all languages in one group are similar to each other. At this point, if I know the nationality of a Slavic person, I never speak English to them, since I am able to conversate with them naturally. But I have biggest trouble with Bulgarian, since in spoken form, it is really hard to understand, yet thanks to knowledge of Russian, written form is fine and I can catch the context most of the time. The problem is that since English is everywhere and it is both positively and negatively influencial to young generation, people will rather respond in English after spotting one tiny mistake or a little shift from an accent, which I find annoying, useless and sad. And to this day, I wonder what makes them "go full English" with no chance to go back? I learned Slavic languages to learn about cultures and to make conversations with Slavic people easier. What makes them automatically switch to a language that is unnatural for both, hence making our conversations even more harder, where sometimes I must speak even slowly, since somebody's English is plain horrible (something like "hotel is this, go street, then shop, go next")? That is something that does not make even sense for me and it starts to make me really disappointed.
I was raised in Ukraine, in Kharkiv, but I never spoke and even very rarely heard Ukrainian. My mother tongue was Russian. Only after the war in Ukraine started I have started to listen and read Ukrainian news and shows. So now I understand 99% of Ukrainian, although I can’t speak it, because I live in the USA and I don’t have anyone to speak it with
@@polyglotdreams "Ukrainian language" is mix of polish and Russian or transitional variation as I understand, similar as serbo-croatian as transition between northern Slavic and Balcanian prothoromanic!
@@radestankovic6884 Ukrainian and Belarusian languages came from the Ruthenian language (spoken language of Rus), Russian came from church Bulgarian (language of bureaucracy and church in Rus)
Thank you. So, my native is Russian, and I have learned Polish a little. Maybe once I will learn Polish deeply, but right now I need German. I noticed that I understand pretty clear Belarusian (thanks to Belsat, I was waching it in a lithuanian prison), can understand and speak Ukrainian (maybe B1-B2) because of watching many many ukrainian videos. Polish was a challenge for me to listen, but now I understand it well. And that's true, across Europe I met many Poles and always tried to speak Polish, it is really useful! My favorite is, when a young woman is speaking Polish, it is better than music. I love Poland, I don't know why) The most difficult point with Slavic languages and Eastern Europe at all is... politics. Politics are everywhere. Mostly language indentity means something political. And it is very, very painful for me. The awful war is still going on. I was a human, but now I am a refugee in Lithuania. Everything from Russia is totally hated here, so I must hide my origin and I usually say I am Polish or I will be discriminated.
And one more for you to discover what the politics here is! Once I said to my mom, that I love Poland and Polish people. And Polish girls are the best I have ever met (I am very young). And my mom answered - please no, I can agree with every choice your will date, but NOT from Poland, I promise she will hate us (my relatives) and all Russian at all. Why did she say it? No idea. But that's politics and its bad influence. I am more than a year "passportless" surviving in Eastern Europe, and Polish people always were welcome and tried to help me despite my "wrong" birthplace. I will never forget it.
I am Slovak living in Slovakia. In my opinion Slovak language is a crossroad of all 3 types of Slavic langugages. Dialects in northern Slovakia are similar to Polish language (soft pronounciation - č, š, ť, ľ,), dialect in South Slovakia are similar to Slovenian and Croatian languages (hard pronounciation). And in eastern parts of Slovakia many people talk Rusin language. There is very interesting similarity between Slovakian and Slovenian languages. Both nations call their country Slovensko. In Slovenia there live Sloven(s), but in Slovakia a man is called Slovak, but woman Sloven(ka). It think, in the past we were one nation. Now there is Hungary between us. Very interesting is using letter "L" in Slavic languages. South languages use letter "U" instead of "L", e.g. vuk = vlk = volk. Polish language uses something with similar pronounciation, it is a special polish "Ł". In old dialect of Slovakia there was also used U instead of L: bou som = bol som, bucha = blcha etc. Small children, when they start to talk, often use this "U" instead of L. But In Slovakia using U instead of L is a speech error (similar like problems with R) and small children have to visit a logopedic expert to remove it. And one piece of interest. In Slovak language there is long R and long L: Ŕ and Ĺ, e.g. vŕtať, mŕtvy, vŕzgať, kŕdeľ, mĺkvy, vĺčok, hĺbka.
@@pityu2002no way! Hungarian is a totally different language. Are you talking about borrowed Hungarian words or simply about Hungarian diaspora living there?
@@trymai_kavun cca 8 percent of the citizens of slovakia are Hungarian and they live by the southern border. Therefore in the south the hungarian is the most spoken language
I cant find ways to express how much I've loved to watch the entirety of this video. So many cultural aspects, historical facts and curiosities all brought together with so much care. I can really feel that you absolutely love languages and have passion for studying them. I've been studying Russian for 2 weeks, I'm a native portuguese speaker and an advanced english speaker, so Russian is going to be my third language and next Spanish (as it is very close to Portuguese). Thank you so much for your explanations on all those slavic languages, it was fantastic!
As Ukrainian/Russian speaking person I would say Belarusian, Rusyn, and Polish are the easiest ones (for me only). I was exposed to ukranian dialect as well, so some archaic constructions that ceased to exist in formal form but still exist in other langages were familiar to me. Now, when I started to learn Polish properly, it suddenly helped me with some Czech. A little bit. In written. Spoken czech, though, this is still quite a challenge, unlike Slovak, which is miraculously easy now. Southern slavic languages, oh, they are beautiful, but are quite a massacre still. In case with Polish, or Czech, or Slovak grammar is perfectly intuitive understandable even though some words meaning can be vague (like in Carroll's Jabberwocky). But all southern slavic have different nice surprizes as absence of cases (how to understand who did what to whom?), or weird cases endings if they exist, strange tenses (past perfect is okaish, you can find it in Ukrainian dialects, but aorist? what the hell is aorist?), and oh yes, articles. Some even deadlier than Polish clusters of consonants and tones come just as a bonus. As I've said they are beautiful, but for me require much, much more work than western group. (Ukrainian has 7 cases)
Your statement about absence of cases in all South Slavic languages is not correct. My language, Croatian, is a South Slavic language with 7 cases. Macedonian and Bulgarian have largely abandoned case system, but they developed system of articles and have pretty complex verbal system, the most complex amongst Slavic languages, and possibly in whole Europe.
I've been learning Russian the last year or two, and have wondered whether it would let me branch into other Slavic languages later. I have such a better understanding of its relation to al its linguistic neighbors now after this video. Guess it'll be Polish for me next! I landed here after stumbling on your video about the CN/KR/JP/VT crossovers. What a great channel! I've just subscribed!
Thank you so much for your support. I love the Slavic languages so I continue to work on them as often as I can and visit the Slavic nations... going again in May.
It won’t. Everyone understands russian , because of the russian occupational politics, but russians , knowing only their language, understand no one. There’s literally little similarities in real life languages between pussian and other Slav languages.
Russian was widely studied in the times of the USSR in all European USSR-controlled/allied countries. Given that, if you know Russian language, at least lots of old enough people in those countries would be able to communicate with you. It doesn't mean they will be glad to speak or hear Russian (due to political, nationalist, ideological reasons), but sure Russian is the most useful one. As for branching into, the cases are the same and case endings are similar more or less. The same three grammatical genders. Basic vocabulary is often the same, as well. More or less the same sounds.
@@sandwichbreath0 In some situations, Russian gets useful in the most unexpected places. For example, there's an American sci-fi writer Robert Sheckley who wrote tons of great short stories and several memorable novels. He is largely forgotten in the USA, but is considered a cult, legendary classic in the USSR and post-Soviet countries like Russia, Ukraine, etc. You can easily find 90+% of his works in Russian (for free in the internet libraries or for adequate money on paper), but hardly so in his native English. I think, Polish will definitely be a good choice, too. A very rich culture, songs, poetry.
I, a Slovak wife watched this with my Polish husband and I admit that this was a very educational and interesting video. Just beware the correct Slovak accent. You read the Slovak sentences with Polish accent. Instead of "čí-tala", you said "či-TA-la". The long and short syllables in Slovak and even more in Czech language can be challenging for foreigner, but necessary to be spoken correctly, as wrong accent changes the actual meaning of the word. Eg. krik (scream) vs krík (bush), or kura (chicken) vs kúra (a cure, a cosmetic procedure) etc. Overall, we really enjoyed this video. Keep up the amazing job! Pozdravujeme zo Slovenska :-)
Fantastic presentation. I missed one small detail: our languages reveal that most Slavs feel some sort of unity with Slavs from other countries, especially contrary to non Slavs. Correct if I am wrong. The term Slavs or the names of countries like Slovakia or Slovenia, derives from the word 'slovo' which means 'word'. So we are the people who recognise words and share the same/similar language. On the other hands, we have 'dumb'/'speechless' neighbours who don't know 'words. In Polish dumb is 'niemy', hence are western neighbours are 'Niemcy' (Germans).
I am Polish living in Hungary. I love all slavic languages. I always try to speak Polish to any slavs and make myself understood. Besides I speak the dialect of Polish Cieszyn Silisia from Istebna, which i between Polish, Czech, Slovak and sometimes German, it has a few words that comes from Hungarian.
@@polyglotdreams Here is an example of Jaworzynka (a village on the Czech, Slovak, Polish) borders. It is very close to my dialect of Istebna (The Cieszyn Sielesia region of Poland): ua-cam.com/video/UWH3W54LdVM/v-deo.html
Hello from Bulgaria, just one small thing (Im in the beginning of the video so sorry if u mentioned it), the southern slavic states are the only one section, which is divided on two under sections - "southwest and southeast". The Bulgarian language is alone in the southeast group.❤🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬 I like ur video veeeery much, I would like to see more 🎉🎉😊
My native language is Ukrainian (but russian too, I'm bilingual) and I fully understand Belorussian, and mostly Polish. The most hard slavic language is Chech, in my opinion.
70k is a number pulled out of official censuses. Due to the legal status of Rusyns in Ukraine, it was not, and is not really possible to get an accurate number of speakers, only the assumptions and estimations.
When I came to Poland, (from Ukraine) I was surprised, that i can understand almost of all the things thay say. But, if I tell tham back - they didn’t. or they just didnt want to understand
I was born in Siberian heart and spent 2-3 years in Kievan kindergarten being the only child who spoke Ukrainian with teachers. Of course i don't remember lot's of things and not good at speaking this language but as for me two easiest not Eastern languages are Bulgarian and Czechian. Bulgarian sounds and spoken almost the same as orthodox church priest in Russia (churchslavic), and Czech is a mix of English and our language. After this video i find out that Polish isn't that hard to understand if it isn't spoken fast. Thanks for the video
this is because Muscovy was inhabited by a non-Slavic population and it was Slavicized due to the influence of the church - the old Bulgarian language.
понятное дело, что коренное население залесья - финские племена, но это лишь субстрат (если ты разбираешься в антропологии). ты не учитываешь реформу языка и привилегированность образования. не было никаких школ, были монастыри - куда отправляли людей учиться на ВСЮ ЖИЗНЬ. и они естественно забыли свои родные говоры и могли общаться лишь на церковнославянском. реформы языка проводились с 16 века и преподавались только эти языки. а говоры и местные диалекты и до сих пор есть. съезди куда нибудь в псков где Окают. почитай лингвиста зализняка
@@nataliya6093 даже если допустить тот бред, что ты пишешь. то почему во всех международных генетических анализах население центральной россии имеет гаплогруппу R1a, идентичную остальным славянским национальностям? как ты это объяснять собираешься?
@@kedy8429 це ти пишеш маячню, якщо зараз не вибірково проводити аналізи в москві ( де купа "понаєхавших"), то результати аналізів будуть дуже цікавими 😂 Археологічні дослідження показують ВІДСУТНІСТЬ давніх слов'янських захоронень в центральних регіонах рашки, проти археології не попреш. Слов'янське населення прийшло на ці землі не так давно, а аналіз крові сучасних людей взагалі не має значення. Мова не передається через кров.
step 1. be born in a slavic country
Step 2 Learn Icelandic
@@FaizelMoosa-og3ylwhat? Why?
@@NehauonIceland has an enormous Slavic (mostly Polish) population
@@richardandersson7620
Do you mean Polish immigrants in Iceland?
I understood every single clip he showed with equal clarity. Yes I didn't understand a single word. Every one of the languages he showed sounds like Russian to me.
I am a Spaniard and I could speak in Russian with a Serbian guy who was speaking in Serbian ..... but we both were a bit drunk.... in that situation one can speak any language.
Lol divertido
So you understood russian and serbian? Whaat? 😂
@@meduzsazsa8490 when the Soviet Union disappeared, many emigrants came to Spain, in my village there was a bar, the owner was Lithuanian and it was the place where people from the east used to go, the frank language there was Russian, the bar was placed close to my house, I used to go there to have a coffee or in the nights to have a beer or to have dinner, I found I love some dishes from Lithuania. A couple of years later I was able to speak Russian enough to have a casual bar conversion in Russian.
Alcohol increases understandence many times! So I were speaking with a drunk Germanian for a long time using the only phrases: "I don't understand" and "Ich verstanden nicht". And we both were looking like two old chums if to see from the side 😅
@@joseamategarcia9276 Jolín, ¡qué bueno! Молодец!
I am from Hungary. I am almost native in Bulgarian, my paternal ancestors were gardeners from Bulgaria. I studied in Russian school. I understand 95 % of Macedonian, 70 % of Belarussian, 60 % of Serbian-Croatian-Bosnian -Montenegrian and Ukranian, 50 % of Slovenian, 30 % of Czech and Slovak, 20 % of Polish. Understanding in writing is better, for example written Ukranian is easier for me than spoken, same with Polish.
Excellent... BTW... I love Hungarian
Macedonian is just a Bulgarian dialect, so that's that.
KOSOVO JE SRBIJA!
@@standardoilofnewjersey4260 Albanian is not Slavic.
@@teodorivanov4558 OK. This is a political question. You can make any dialect a language, and any languages into dialects.
As a Russian speaker which knows a little bit of Belarusian and Ukrainian actually Polish is really easy and I actually love Poles and their language
Fantastic.. I am very pleased to know that.
I feel russian is much easier than polish.I learn it without books.
Controversial... Both of these languages have many different difficulties. Russian has lots of exceptions and so on... As a russian speaker, I can say Russian is very difficult even for native speakers :)
@@antons6545hahah I may be wrong.As a polish I had russian at school.So guess I cant be objective.I think that nations with non slavic languages know better which one is easier.🙂
@@antons6545 it depends on what the speakers native language is to begin with. i speak both polish and russian fluently since i was a child and i always found russian harder because i didnt use the same alphabet often however i think alot of people would find polish grammar much harder.
“I met many polish people among the way and they were very surprised to hear that I’m a Japanese citizen”
Also me, the viewer :0
宜しく
@@polyglotdreams😮😮😮
Wherever I go, people ask me the same question: what was it like growing up Chinese? And I always answer, Growing up Chinese was very weird for me, because no one around me was Chinese, and neither was I.
@@polyglotdreams ja som si po pozretí videa o podobnosti slovinčiny, slovenčiny a chorvátštiny myslel, že ste (asi) zo Slovinska. To bolo ale moje prvé video od Vás a keď ste svoj pôvod v tomto videu vysvetlili, bol som tiež prekvapený. Super videá, vďaka!
@@polyglotdreams You should know that Kajkavian is actually a dialect of Slovene language and not of Croatian language despite what Croat nationalist claim.
This is the first "Slavic languages" video I've seen where Slovak is talked about more than Czech, almost always its the other way around. We Slovaks often get overlooked, or confused for Slovenians.
Slovak is very special.
Polish here. I love Slovak language. It sounds beautiful. I've learned it for one year, so I'm not fluent or anything, but I love it. ❤
@@Marta_z_Dabrowy I am fond of Slovak too
słowacki jest najbardziej bliski prasłowiańskiemu bardziej niż polski , polski miał wpływ kulturowy na białoruski i ukraiński dlatego dość duża ilość wspólnych słów . Jjak byłem w Słowenii to młodzi ludzie nie rozumieli jak mówiłem po chorwacku/serbsku ale jako Polak ich mowa była dla mnie podobna do słowackiej :) . Nie jestem znawcą ale to nie przypadek że Słowacja jest mylona z Słowenią , może były późniejsze migracje? Mieszkańcy okolic Krakowa w Polsce dawniej byli nazywani Chorwatami gdyż była wtórna migracja z Chorwacji .
@@polyglotdreams Slovak it's just when Ukrainian tries speak czech.. :)
As a Bulgarian I understand 99% Russian but it’s difficult to speak, because of all the cases, I can’t remember which case to apply at which time. But is very easy to understand. The words are practically the same…
BG „човек”, - Ru „человек”,
БГ “хляб” - Ру “хлеб”
Бг “небе” - Ру “небо”…
The cases are a big challenge.
I am russian, learning bulgarian now, and I want to thank you for removing cases, otherwise it would be impossible 😅. Cases is something you learn with mother's milk. They are extremely hard to learn for adults even if you have them in your native language
Because the language of moscowites is a dialect of old bulgarian
@@serged5689 I believe that the Bulgarian language lost the cases during Roman occupation so it is probably to Rome that you should direct your thanks!
@@michaelmckelvey5122Roman occupation!?!? Which centuries!?
As a Polish native speaker, it always amazes me that I find Slovak much more intelligible than Czech even if these two languages are so similar to one another.
Czeski ma trudniejszą dla nas fonetykę, może pewien wpływ ma także "melodyka" czeskiego.
@@Emeel---X Większy wpływ ma tutaj też to, że słowacki ma podobniejszą do polskiego morfologię. Odmiany przez przypadki rzeczowników i odmiany czasowników przez osoby są o wiele podobniejsze między polskim i słowackim niż polskim i czeskim.
As the famous Croatian writer Predrag Matvejević once said, "The Serbo-Croatian language is the language that Croats call 'Croatian' and Serbs call 'Serbian'."
Fantastic overview, sir!
THANKS SO MUCH
Šta preporučuješ od njega da se pročita? :)
Значит мне не показалось, что сербский и хорватский звучат одинаково. Интересно.
@@V3G4N01разлика је само у нагласку, остало је 99% исто. Разлике су више регионалне него етничке.
This is so unique, that you can do the whole review including all the Slavic languages. Salute! I really admire how knowledgeable and understanding you are in Linguistic. 🙏
Thanks so much... it feels wonderful to be appreciated 👏
I like this style of videos very much. I only had some russiant school and vistided Poland and Chechoslovakia (Tschechosslowakei) as a kid. But I always liked the sound of the languages. Maybe I go bavk to russian and the cyrillic script tonot lose everything completely
@@undekagon2264Radio Garden allows you to listen to any station in the world and save favorites list
If you've not played Russian on Clozemaster now might be the time.
Amazon Russian flash cards
Word scrambles word searches crosswords
@undekagon2264 all the best ... and thanks
Man you're a legend :)
I still think that the easiest language to learn for an alien (from ground up not knowing any) would be Macedonian
No gramatical cases
No pronunciation exceptions
No "Slavonic" or silent letters (except maybe Dz and Dzh)
3 genders yes, but distinguished by a noun's last letter
I came back 2 weeks ago from Poland, I loved it, though I learned some words before heading there, I wanted to see which slavic language is worth it and I won't lie: I will keep learning Polish, the difficulty is what makes it fun in my opinion, thanks for explaining the slavic languages, greetings from México :)
All the best to you on your new journey into Slavic languages
@@polyglotdreamshow much languages do you know fluently(to have a complex conversation)
Muy bien, amigo. Yo soy polaco y aprendo tu idioma. Aunque no siempre es fácil- me encanta. Que disfrutes también tu aventura con mi lengua. Saludos desde Polonia 🇵🇱
are you single?
I’m a native speaker of Polish and I have to say that the easiest way to understand other Slavic languages is to learn a very interesting artificial language called Interslavic - at least for native Slavs, not sure if it would work with non-Slavic speakers. I’m not very good at understanding other Slavic languages or even the varieties native to Poland such as Kaszubian or Silesian but experiencing the Interslavic speech was a mind-blowing experience. Picture this: I’m on holidays in Croatia and some dude comes up to me and wants to sell me a cruise or something. I’m not interested so I tell him to leave me (in English because I find it easier lol). Instead of leaving me be this guy asks me where do I come from, and immediately starts speaking a weird mixture of Russian, Croatian, Polish, probably Czech and I don’t know what else! And I understood 99% of what he said! I was able to understand all the details about the cruise, prices, discounts, places it visits, time schedule, the boarding point, whether lunch was included, what else was provided- without actually knowing most of the languages this Interslavic speech was based on. Needless to say I was so amazed by this experience that I bought what he was selling just to thank him for the opportunity to learn about this interlinguistic project :D I think we Slavs should get to know that Interslavic thing, it helps a lot with communication:)
Yes... Interslavic is very easy to understand... quite amazing 👏
The interesting question is: 'was the cruise worth it?' Czy rejs byl z tego wart, czy nie?
@@polyglotdreams - maybe produce a video on your take on Interslavic? while the idea sounds great, and some of the decisions, I find it highly confusing, including what _is_ really interslavic nowadays ? It seems like the concept keeps changing...? Is it now - really in the core - Church-Slavonic - with extending the vocabulary - by using shared slavic vocabulary?
I speak Polish and Russian, and have studied some Bulgarian and some Serbian. I can indeed communicate with any Slavic speaker if both sides are interested in communication; but how to really approach InterSlavic?
@@kobikaicalev175 Interslavic should be taught in all majority Slavic countries. The problem with Slavic nationalities is they can be chauvinistic. While it's easy for someone who speaks one Slavic language to learn another, politics usually get in the way. For example, Russians think other Slavs should learn Russian because Russians are the most numerous of the Slavs. Other Slavs view this attitude as Russian attempts at dominance. Interslavic facilitates communication among Slavic national groups without anyone feeling bullied or exploited.
As someone from Bosnia I can confirm that Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian are all just different official names/standards for the same language.
They are a product of not just modern nationalism, but also historical divisions. Afterall, we don't have any single unifying name for the language, only the local country names.
Interestingly, most of us just say "naš" (which means "our (language)") when we're referring to our language in everyday life, and especially when we're meeting someone from "our" countries in a foreign land like Germany where many of us emigrate to.
Thanks for pointing that out.
Thank you for your honesty about this. Most people from ex-Yugoslavia are too nationalistic and get too irrational about this topic.
@@ruralsquirrel5158 well, there is a problem that if people from ex-Yugoslavia agree that the language is the same, there are a great multitude of people from one particular nation that then openly say that language is their own and since it's the same throughout the language proves that all those different nations (both historically, culturally and religiously) are of their nation, thus all these lands are also of their nation, and call the others apostates of their nation...
Were it not for that problem, it would be easier for the others to not be too nationalistic and irrational ;)
Imagine if for some reason the was a conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina and as a result Herzegovina will become independent. What will they call their language? Herzegovinian? Ahah 😂
@@gamermapper we had a Monty Python type of comedians from Sarajevo (Top Lista Nadrealista - TLN) that did a sketch in the late '80's where they presented 6 mutually unintelligible languages, being:
Serbian
Croatian
Bosnian
Herzegovinian
Montean (Gorski)
Negrian (Crnski)
and joked about having simultaneous translators for people to communicate :D
ua-cam.com/video/DztrX5dXmxU/v-deo.html
In general, the Russian language is more connected with the languages of the South Slavs, since the Church Slavonic language came from them and we have many words with two spellings, for example the word Град And Город
That is an interesting proposition.
Correct.
Russian evolved as mainly a written imperial language, which had one of its principal origins in the religious texts written in Churchslavonic (which in turn had its origin in old Bulgarian/Macedonian).
This is why any Russian who was never exposed to Bulgarian language, will understand some 95-99% if given a Bulgarian book to read, but much less than 50% if listened to spoken Bulgarian.
Try it out, it's an interesting and funny exercise.
@@eugenecrabs8622я как русский человек , могу подтвердить , если македонец , что то напишет , я это пойму , довольно легко 🙂
@@eugenecrabs8622not true. As a russian speaker i have to learn bulgarian to understand it, and it has different grammar more similar to english in some aspects. Most words share common roots, so you can guess the meaning in a lot of words but still nowhere enough to understand 95%. Also, many words have simialr sounds but different meaning. I found other slavic languages more similar in terms of grammar for sure
@@amnbvcxz8650 don't tell me that you cannot read a Bulgarian book without understanding 95% of it.
I am a Polish native speaker who has been studying Russian dance childhood. I might say this: when I listen to Ukrainian or Belarussian I quite a lot from the conversation. The między knowledge of Polish and Russian helps a lot. I know both, the Cyrilic and Roman alphabets and this helps me with written Bułgaria n or Croatian 😊 Thanks to Cyrilic alphabet I can even read signs in Geek 😊
That's awesome... fun isn't it
Интересно насколько сложно освоить русский поляку или наоборот. Насколько сложно вам было?
никаких проблем. просто хватит слушать радио "говорит Москва" 5-6 лет ежедневно
@@Nowherenear-w1d Поляку русский освоить гораздо легче, чем русскому польский.
@@supermind65536 Можете сравнить количество поляков освоивших русский, с количеством русских освоивших польский.
I really love this kind of content. I enjoyed every minute. I lern polish and felt in love with Slavic languages. Would love the see more like this, cause I am absolutely interested in language science.
Thank you so much. More is yet to come. Did you watch the video about the East Asian cultural sphere concerning Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, and Korean?
A curio: Slavic nasal vowels was common in proto-Slavic and round (“bulgarian”) glagolic script has got characters for them. Nowadays they only exist in polish.
That's interesting... I didn't know that.
The oldest forms of Cyrillic script have these characters as well.
Of course, you don't. You know ow nothing about Bulgarian as demonstrated in this video, except for Yugoslav proganda. This is not serious scholarship about Alavic languages. You know nothing about Glagolitc and Cyrillic. Your level is worse than Wikipedia
@@polyglotdreams
@@RositsaPetrovarjp7
He didn't say he knew anything about Bulgarian though, did he? But yeah, he spent more time talking about a minor Polish dialect, spoken by 100k people and then all he said about Bulgarian was that it does not have cases and that it's a good stepping stone if you want to learn Macedonian or something like that. I guess it's not really that offensive but it's strange. Especially if he is really interested in Slavic languages as a whole as he claims.
@karczameczka
The Glagolitic script was not exactly Bulgarian. It was created by the Byzantians Cyril and Methodius initially for a state called Great Moravia. It wasn't adopted in Moravia because of the Roman church opposing the influence from Constantinople. That's why Western Slavic countries use the Latin alphabet. The actual alphabet created in Bulgaria was the one that followed the Glagolitic and yes, it's the Cyrilic alphabet.
As a Polish person raised in Silesia close to the Czech border, who apart from French, German and English in school learned by himself a bit of Russian and Ukrainian, who lives for 10 years in Bulgaria and speaks the language, I can say that I understand most of any written text in every Slavic language, but Slovenian :D It's somehow so different than the rest, sounds a bit like Czech with some balkan vocabulary.
My suggestion of top 3? Russian, Serbocroatian, Slovak - because it's easier to learn than Polish, and Polish can be a fourth one. With these Bulgarian will be easy to learn, unless you didn't learn English before, because the gramar is more similar to it than to the rest of Slavic languages.
I have to disagree because Polish is such a beautiful language ☺️
In my opinion, the Slovenian language sounds very similar to Latvian, of course not in the lexical sense, but in the way it sounds
Im am slovenian. We have like 5 strong dialects within our language in such a small country
@@polyglotdreams Sorry, as a Slovak, I would agree with @Kajkes in this one. Polish uses extra awkward unnecessary letters somewhat similar to French, which distract from hearing the words or the message. They are harder to understand down south than the Slovaks are. Also, there are many Slovak villages spread out in Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia from 200-300 years and locals understand each other better, but there are no Polish villages there that I know. I also agree with some commenters that Slovenia is more different from other Slavic languages, having visited Ljubljana myself, and could not understand much.
@@Cyclonut96 Dude, we dont ask to be understand. Awkward? For me your language is awkward. .Our language is unique among other slavic ones plus we are the 2nd largest slavic nation and speakrs of language.
Around 20 years ago I took Ukrainian as my language in college. I was the only non-Russian major in the class. The Russian majors took Ukrainian as it has more cases and learning Ukrainian grammar made them better in their Russian. I barely remember anything, but I keep thinking to add it to my learning time.
Go for it!
Your passion really convinced me to watch this video until the end and it has inspired me to continue learning Polish!
Fantastic thanks for telling me
As a Slav, I could tell you within the first 10 seconds of this video what those 3 languages would be!
The most popular) no more
Excellent, I just spoke about this subject with two polish people today, and they guessed it would be Russian. After that, they thought maybe Polish, but they couldn't think of a third one.
Clearly it had to be a south slavic language, and Serbo-Croatian has the most numbers and the most territory@@polyglotdreams
I speak all of those 3 languages and I say personally that it is true, however with Bulgarian, I struggle. I would also struggle with Slovenian, but that is luckily not the case, as I speak Slovenian too.
My first thought was that it would be Polish, Russian and Bulgarian. Serbo-Croatian as third would be my second thought.
Hello Tim, I really enjoyed searching this video.
I started with Russian many years ago but didn't get to a very high level. Since then, I studied Croatian and then studied Polish. I found Polish and Russian the most useful for me as I worked in a shop where there were lots of Polish and Lithuanian people. Polish is my best Slavic language because of my exposure to it.
I then went on to learn some Ukrainian in 2022. I found it relatively easy because of my Polish and Russian. Now, I just started learning Czech as I'm going to the Polyglot Gathering in Prague in May
Hope to see you there.
Thanks for the great video. and for your passion for languages.
Great... thanks I will see you there
It’s great Tim that you’ve decided to start your channel, you’ve got some knowledge to share
Glad you think so!
Thank you very much. I'm Bulgarian and have learned Russian at school (it was compulsory back then). I have wondered what other Slavic language it would be useful to know and thanks to your video I have chosen Polish 😊 I admire how brave you are to jump in this quite political and sensitive topic.
I am very pleased to know that ... thank you so much for sharing.
Thank you for choosing Polish 😀
In Poland we were forced to learn Russian at schools too.
It's never a good thing to be forced to do something even if it's something as important as foreign language.
Luckily I still remember most of Cyrillic alphabet 😀
and you picked the Hardest to learn from the entire globe xZ
A Wednesday child 😅
And today people are forced to learn English.
Polish may have more native speakers, but Slovak is truly a central and kind of more neutral basis for Western Slavic languages. Is also an inroad to Serbian, Croatian, etc. Of all, Slovak gives the learner a basis to break into nearly all Slavic languages.
Pravda!!!
Jako Polak mogę się tylko z tobą zgodzić . Sądzę że Rosjanin szybciej zrozumie Słowaka niż Polaka.
I made a similar that comment about Slovak, but still Polish has many more speakers and helps you also with Kashubian, Silesian and Sorbian.
@@polyglotdreams You are right, but basically all Kashubian or Silesian speakers use Polish as second language (adding this lovely melody of Kashubian or Silesian to non-melodical Polish)
I used to work with a Croatian and he told me that his language was very close to Bulgarian.
Mistake: Ukrainian has 7 cases and Slovenian 6 (vocative)
Thanks... I stand corrrected Клѝчний відмίнок
You could even argue that there are vestiges of vocative in Russian, too (see a video by Микитко Сын Алексеев).@@polyglotdreams
Years ago there was a joke about the new names in Croatian, like: овца = вълнодаен травоядник
Small correction: Ukrainian and Rusyn didn’t lose vocative case and use it quite actively
Yes... my bad
Lots of people in my surrounding, who are native Ukrainian speakers, are actually dropping vocative case a lot in their speech. While it is present on paper, in the urban environment, where Russian was a dominant language until recently, Ukrainian variation was also influenced.
@@myhal-bavyt sure but still it is not completely lost as in Russian and Belarusian. Poles also occasionally seem to drop vocative forms in favor of nominative
@@valentinezaretsky4788 of course is not lost, but its usage varies on the place and the speaker. I believe it is very common in rural areas and less common in urban contexts. But things might change in the next years due to the Russian language fading out in Ukraine.
@@myhal-bavyt
You might be misinterpreting Surzhyk with Ukrainian!---Ukrainian definitely HAS the vocative case--RuZZian does not--Surzhyk (mix) may or may not!
Summed suggestions:
East: Russian
West: Polish
South: BCMS
(Also, if anyone is wondering discussion of starting southern languages is at 19:30 though there is an earlier aside around 14-15)
THANKS
After 1992. I suddenly became polyglot , who speaks three languages and all of them are my mother language. Sad and funny story, isn't it.
Yes... for sure
I had exactly this intuition: that speak one of the three languages of each sub-group, you could perfectly communicate with every Slavic-speaking folks (at least, have simple conversations). Myself, speaking ok Russian and rather broken Serbian/Montenegrin, I could already grasp some words in Polish conversations or newspaper and I could communicate with Bulgarians when I was in Sofia last summer.
This video encouraged me to start Polish. It's kinda far on my lanuages waiting list so I'll have to be patient... But I'll do it for sure one day!
Hvala puno/spassiba/merci!
Awesome... that is what I hope for... Slaves appreciating all the variations.
Polish is a bunch of amaziness! Totally cute and adorable language full of surprises. If you're a native slav speaker, you'll sooner or later come to the point where you start understanding your own language the way better than before only by learining Polish.
dziękuje, Ďakujem, Děkuji, Дякую
@@polyglotdreams By the way Slavs and Slavic is political term invented by Katerina the Great for russian empire expansion 250 years ago, just so you know.
*dziękuję
I learned Russian and Czech, and found that while they help me understand some Polish, it is still hard to follow. Surprisingly, Czech helped me understand a lot of Slovene (besides Slovak, obviously). As you said, the South Slavic languages are otherwise a big blank for me, and I always wondered which to learn. You and me being around the same age, I like the idea of Serbo-Croatian from the old-timer textbooks we grew up with. You've convinced me that should be the best choice. Great video!
Thank you so much for sharing your experiences. I have read that Slovak and Slovene have the same origin.
It makes sense that Czech helps you understand Slovene if you look at history. Apparently Slovene has gone through the least changes in the last few centuries and before the hungarians settled where thery currently liver the Czech and Slovene lands were connected by slavic speakers
Slovene has a lot more shared history with czechoslovakian language than with most of other south Slavic language until fairly recently. It is fairly fragmented in terms of number of dialects, to the point where several are hardly mutually intelligible, when spoken in a really archaic/traditional way, presumably because of our geography and varied neighbouring influences through the centuries.
Considering that the first slovene-speaking country (carantania) encompassed a big part of modern day Austria and even some Hungary, historical Czech-Slovak-Slovene dialect continuum is pretty understandable.
Its about 'practice' and exposure - if you learn Czech&Russian as non-native speaker, then if you are exposed to Polish only ocasionally, obviously you would understand little. ....
....But it would be very different after a month just watching Polish TV one or two hours a day.... after a while you would start to decode 'similar but different' stuff you and that allows you to decode spoken language/sentences as a whole (speaking is something completely different of course).
I have similar experience with Ukrainian ...as a native speaker of Czech, I learned Russian ..... and after the start of the war I started to watch stuff in Ukrainian on youtube ...... at first i did understand little, but after few hours of listening to UA, many things started to 'click' (these patterns of 'similar but different' compared to either to russian or czech) and I now basically understand everything in Ukrainian when I watch a video
After studying Czech and Polish, I realized that these languages have a lot of false friends. Mám jístotu že nevíš co znamená "pevnost". A classical example is "Szukam dzieci w sklepie." Gramatically they are quite similar though.
I got the next one for you - Mezduslovjanski, this is owesome artificial project, this language is understandable for every slavic speaker.
Yes... I agree, but few people speak so you can learn it to help you understand all the Slavic languages.
Hey dude, you sound like the perfect target audience for Interslavic. It's a constructed, semi-naturalistic language meant to be intelligible to any Slavic speaker and contains features and vocabulary from West, East and South Slavic branches, as well as being etymologically conservative and phonologically "middle-ground" when it comes to the living Slavic languages.
As for the BCMS language - that's one funny situation. Politically they're considered the same language, but in reality it's the Shtokavian, Chakavian and Kajkavian dialects that are different from each other - much more so than those national "languages", all of which are based on Shtokavian. For that reason I just use the term "shtokavian language" when I talk about BCMS.
Yes... Interslavic is quite easy to understand for most Slavic speakers. Spot on about BCMS.
English is better understandable for me as Czech than some interslavic. Problem with interslavic is that you still need at least some experiences with other slavic languages, for example it uses DA for yes and you just have to know it's yes in other slavic languages, there are many similar examples. I can kind of understand it, but it's very uncomfortable to read it and sometimes it needs some time to get it. The best interslavic in these days is just English. 😀
@@Pidalin That's because you have studied English. Imagine understanding English in like 85% without ever having to learn it
@@SaturnineXTS Ok, but you are growing up surrounded by English, kids born after like 2010 already speak English maybe even better than their native langauges. I am not saying it's literally a good thing for your culture, but it will make communication in the future definitely easier.
True. Croatian 3 different dialects are more different that one of the dialects (shtokavian) from the rest of BSM. The shtokavian became the main dialect during the 19th century when it got codified as the main language, and one of the reasons then was purely political, in order to get a southern interslavic language as it was different also from Serbian at the time.
In Ukraine we do have vocative - кличний відмінок as 7th case. I won't refer to someone by just друг, подруга, мама, тато, жрець etc., but will call by друже, подруго, мамо, тату, жерче. The vocative used to be delited by russian and replaced just by nominative. But after restoring the independence we restores the vocatice. ☺️
Interesting... thanks
Vocative is an amazing case-Serbian and Croatian have it. I think English has it when we call out to someone Oh Susan!
💯. Наприклад: Петрові, Павлові
@@ТимофійЛещенко wrong example: what you listed is a dative case.
@@eugenecrabs8622 yep.my mistake
Thank you for a nice introduction to slavic languages. Lepo delo. Pozdrav iz Slovenije
Thank you for your comment. I just 💯 absolutely love Slovenia 🇸🇮
Slovak is also known as the Esperanto of Slavic languages as it is well understood by all Slavs
For the most part, yes... but there is Interslavic.
@@polyglotdreams ,... except that Slovak is a living, official language, the interslavic is an academic one, in a textbook.
not a surprise, Slovakia is right in the middle geographicaly
That is not up to Slovak to say, but up to other Slavic language speakers.
Actually I know Russians and Poles whom I tested speaking Slovak and did not catch all that I said..
Very nice overview. Just a minor note - native Slovak speaker would say "Čítal som knihu/čítala som knihu" with a slightly different word order and omitting the personal pronoun as the person is immediately obvious from the verb suffix.
"Ja som čítal/čítala knihu" has a slightly different meaning putting an extra emphasis on the person rather than just declaring someone has read a book.
Yes, thank you.
The same is the case in BCMS
It's the same in BCMS
Apparently, it doesn't work with all Slavic languages, but most of the neighboring languages can be learned without any effort just by consuming the content. That's true. I am Ukrainian and I understand the Polish language very well, although I have never even studied it. Czech and Slovak are a little more difficult for me, because there is much less of it in our information field, but after watching a few videos I started to understand about 70 percent of what they say. With the Belarusian language, everything is generally so easy to understand that sometimes, if I hear a song in this language, I cannot immediately understand that it is foreign, because our languages, although different, have high mutual inteligibility, not like with russian.
Yes for speakers of one or two Slavic languages usually with exposure we begin to understand other Slavic languages quite naturally
Yes you can learn a lot just through exposure to comprehensible input in other Slavic languages when you know one or more Slavic languages
Although I don’t speak any Slavic language, as someone who’s interested in etymology, philology, culture, etc. I have a strong feeling that Ukrainian, and Belarusian are closer to Polish (West Slavic) than Russian (East Slavic) despite those (Belarusian and Ukrainain) are written in Cyrillic and culturally they are orthodox unlike the Polish are catholic. Therefore, categorically they can be in between or cross-categorized.
You could make that argument, but normally their classified as East Slavic languages.
I speak both in Ukrainian and Russian. I think Ukrainian is closer to Polish more than to russian. Russian is similar to Bulgarian. The core of Russian is in church - Slavonic language that no longer exist but were made by Bulgarian/Macedonian priests to spread christianity.
I am Ukranian, and I confirm, your feeling are true. I was surprised when I heard Belarusian for a first time I understood everything - most of the lexicon is the same as Ukrainian, however Belarusian have a different pronunciation or accent. In fact when the presenter in this video switched on the Belorusian Tv, i first thought the lady was speaking Ukrainian😆, and then I started to wonder why her accent is different until I realised after a few seconds it was Belarusian.
And when I first was in Poland I had such a dejauvea - like I was in Kyiv or Lviv, but the signs have Ukrainian words written in Latin letters.
There is definitely way more difference between Ukrainian and Russian than Ukrainian and Belarusian / Polish
@love_for_travel thanks so much for sharing your experiences
@@polyglotdreams
Please don't follow the Geographic designations----better to look at Linguistic ones--Keep in mind that RuZZian is an invented non-native language--- the Finno-Ugrics of Muscovy and others were forced to learn this artificially created language because Peter thought that a great Empire should have its own unique language--so INSTEAD of choosing one of the many native languages within the Empire,--or even French which most of the ruling elite spoke, the decision was made to CREATE a NEW language based on Old Church Slavonic (which was common like Latin as a canonical language instead.
I’am a native macedonian speaker. I can understand 100 percent of serbo-croatian or bulgarian, and can speak the languages relatively good, which is not that surprising. What surprised me the most is how much I can understand russian (around 60 percent and that number rises if they talk slower) although I have never studied the language, nor I have been exposed to russian media, culture etc. I understand russian much better than slovene, even though macedonian and slovenian are in the same south slavic group, which makes no sense to me. Someone mentioned that it could be explained by the old church slavonic language… When it comes to the south slavic languages, it’s worth mentioning the Torlakian (shopski) dialect, which is a transitional form between serbo-croatian on one hand and macedonian-bulgarian on the other. It’s spoken mainly in south serbia, northeastern part of macedonia and northwest bulgaria. The relationship between the macedonian and bulgarian language is hot topic. I can say that they share very similar grammar and the difference is largely lexical and idiomatic. From my experience, I think that the bulgarian language is heavily influenced by the russian lexicon, and that is not surprising considering that they were part of the Eastern block for 50 years. Conversely, the macedonian language, as part of non-aligned and pro-west oriented Yugoslavia, has adopted a lot of German, French and English words. And for me, as a south slavic speaker, the toughest language, definitely is polish. I can’t understand almost anything, with the exception of the word K…A, but surprisingly the slovak language is much more intelligible to my south slavic ear
Thanks... those are very interesting observations!
@@polyglotdreams As a Bulgarian native speaker from the South-Western part of Bulgaria I can confirm 100% what carli2302 wrote. I can understand 100% of the language(s) spoken on either side of Bulgarian-Macedonian border plus I understand about 85-90% of BCMS although I have never studied it. I've also noticed that speakers of BCMS have hard time understanding Bulgarian( unlike Bulgarians most of whom are able to understand BCMS ) which make me think that you are wrong about suggesting Learning BCMS as the language of South Slavic group in order to be able to understand all Slavic languages. I've learnt Russian for a short period of time as well. Not long enough to be able to learn to speak it grammatically correct ( I have absolutely no knowledge of how to use the cases properly ) but somehow I am able to communicate with Russian speakers without any problems. I've noticed that I can understand Belorussian quite well and I am able to understand about 65-70% of Ukrainian probably because of my very limited exposure to Slovak as well.( I used to work with some Slovaks about 20 years ago) . I can't speak any Slovak but I am somehow able to understand it both in oral and written form. Unlike Slovenian 🙂 which I can only understand in written form. The way vowel accents are used in Slovenian is so uncharacteristic for my years that my brain just shuts off. I am also able to understand to some extend both Polish and Czech but only in their written form. My brain is not willing to suffer the efforts of trying to understand sounds that come out of Polish speakers.
let me clarify for you - old church Slavonic language == old Bulgarian language. The modern Russian is based on it. So the influence is in different direction :)
@@valentinbitsinandmaxx8389 The fact that you can understand Serbians but they dont understand Bulgarian is maybe because major population of Bulgaria listen Serbian music :D
As a Croat, I can say its the same the other way, but I can't speak Macedonian because I've never been laerning it. For me it is definitely the most intelligible Slavic language. I guess it can be explained by heavy Serbian influence on Macedonian in Yugoslavia.
Totally agree with this video!! I've learned quite a bit of Serbo-Croat, CZ and Russian. Just some extra points from my side. On cases: Slovak and Slovene, I believe do not have Vocative. When it comes to BCSM, Kajkavian and Cajkavian are out of that standard, and are probably better classified as separate languages from BCSM. You will hear some Kajkavian and Cajkavian influence in local Croatian speech in many areas, kinda like you'll hear Bavarian hints or Koelsch hints in local Standard German. For language learning, I would take Slovak over PL, just because Slovak is easier, and nicer to hear, it would be good enough to understand PL, UKR, and even, with BCSM, Slovenian. CZ is tougher than SK. I was able to communicate with Bulgarians and Macedonians, just using Serbian, with Upper Sorbians, Slovaks and Poles, using CZ. A knowledge of RUS with some CZ/SK goes a long way to catch most of Ukrainian and Rusyn. Polish only really comes in handy enough in case you need to communicate in Belarus to back up the Russian. I just don't like the sound of Polish or it's writing, but hey, personal preferences, hehe. Unfortunately, Sorbian is dying, with probably only less than 50,000 speakers left. Although I speake German fluently, I would make it a point to speak CZ with Sorbian speakers so they could show its use to outside speakers! WOnderful video!!
Thanks so much for your interesting input.
Often, when selecting a language, the language selects you. Ex, if you have a Serbian partner, or a Polish girlfriend, get relocated to Bosnia--you take that as a start, and it will end up useful way beyond that.@@polyglotdreams
Positive on lack of vocative in Slovene. It might have existed historically and might show up in random isolated phrases, but generally it's neither taught neither used. I'm not sure about all dialects, though.
As a Slovene I find it interesting, that aside from Kajkavian, which is really closely related to Slovene, I can understand Čakavian much better than Štokavian or Serbian, especially, once one gets used to various Slovene dialects. Although even Serbian is not that hard to understand with intermittent exposure - our generation (post YU) were still able to study from exclusively Serbian and English textbooks in uni in one class.
I'm a Croatian and I find all Slavic languages ugly to hear compared to Romanic languages and English, even though the vocabulary is very, very rich in literature. Many different words with same meaning. Expecially because many words in Croatian can be told slavic based and latin based.
To me the most beautiful Croatian dialect is spoken in Dalmatia (čakavica, ikavica).
@@juranalinaric6007 I find Croatian-Serbian in all its dialects very melodious, yet clean and emphatic. Russian sounds very sweet. Czech, Slovak and Sorbian have a good rythm and are very clear. Polish, however, I don;t like the phonetics, very slushy and fast, and Bulgarian seems kinda flat and with many ambiguous vowels.
Serbo-Croatian is a large and diverse language. It has very different dialects. Some might be very different from one another, in fact even closer to Slovene than to standard Serbo-Croatian. They could be as different as Russian and Ukrainian. However the thing is that these dialects are not official languages. And the official languages of current Yugoslav states (BTW, I wish Yugoslavia was still existing) (Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, Montenegrin, what next, Herzegovinian? Metohijan? Dalmatian? 🤔) are actually all based on the same dialect, Štokavian, therefore it actually doesn't make sense to call these different languages. But if they actually did use a different dialect (like Kajkavian, Čakavian or Torlakian), it actually would. This is why, in my opinion, Macedonian and Bulgarian being separate langauges makes kinda more sense.
Not really. The example you are talking about is the most extreme one, and its Croatian spoken in the Zagorje region, which is only a very minuscule percentage of the population. All other regions speak the same language.
Who do you think has easier starter point to become a polyglot like.
1. Who knows English
2. Who knows Slavic language
3. Who knows Latin family language
For total number of languages - who knows Slavic languages.
As a Brazilian Portuguese native speaker, Spanish and Italian are the easiest languages to learn, then French. Catalan is not hard, but it takes effort to look up for content. For example, Catalan or Valencian youtube is very weak in terms of creators and viewers. There are few good resources to learn Neapolitan or Sicilian, and those are spoken and sung languages. They are not published, not used in movies and series(with a few recent exceptions), and not used in education. I am more of a polyreader than a polyglot. I have read several books in French and in Italian, as well as a few in Spanish, a couple of books in Catalán and a theater piece in Neapolitan. If you know Spanish or Portuguese, Italian, and French or Catalán, you'll understand to a good degree almost any little spoken Romance language, specially in its written form. There's the one exception though, which is Romanian. To understand Romanian, study Romanian, and that's what I've been doing lately. The good thing about Romanian is that it can be a good introduction to Slavic languages, in the sense that it contains hundreds of words of Slavic origin.
As a religious Jew who was raised in Ukraine, I speak Russian at home, I picked Ukrainian in the streets, I learned Hebrew, Aramaic (the language of the Talmud) and Yiddish in school and currently I’m writing a comment in English 😂.
Because of this languages I’m able to understand written Polish, and quite well to understand Belarusian. When I was in Germany I realised that I can understand almost half of the written words, and people around me understood me quite well when I spoke to them in Yiddish, though when they spoke to me I couldn’t understand a word 😂. Also Hebrew and Aramaic are letting me to learn Arabic on duolingo easier, because they are all Semitic languages.
@@MLiv-bn4cl In the future, learning German will be a breeze for you, then Dutch, then Afrikaans...If you study Polish, then you get Czech almost for free and so on. If you were to study Romance languages, I'd suggest you French and Spanish.
I am a native Polish speaker. I learnt Russian at school and then used this language a bit in conversation and reading. I confirm that I can understand other West and East Slavic languages.
I don't see the Silesian as a separate language. I understand the political reasons why some Silesians claim it but if Silesian would be considered a separate language, we can also consider the Greater Polish dialect a separate language. But we know that it's not true.
Bielarusian have two (or actually three) standards of writing: with both cyrylic and latin script. The third standard is more of a historical curiosity: its arabic alphabet. Yes, arabic alphabet was use to write Bielarusian language: by tatars living in Grodno region of Bielarus and Podlasie region of Poland.
It also has two literary standards, Taraškievica and Narkamaŭka. Fun fact, so does Ukrainian but seems like they've completely abandoned Skrypnykivka today.
@@gamermapper Parts of Skrypnikivka are slowly being reintroduced like using strong G in imported words instead of usual H, pronouncing words of greek origin with T instead of F for "TH", and using Ye Instead of E for latin loanwords where "je" is used there. And in general using direct phonological import instead of adaptation for local phonetic palette.
Still, it's only visible on radio and on some tv channels (TET used to go all in on Skrypnikivka, but after few years gave up and only some parts got remained).
Most of it sounds kinda ok, but some things like "proyekt" instead of "proekt" kinda irks my ears.
That's a wonderful overview! I'm Polish. I agree with the top3 recommendations no doubt. Then I think Bulgarian and Czech seem equally worthy of the 4th spot (or you can alternate with Macedonian and Slovak respectively) as they give better coverage than Slovene, which mainly only applies to Slovenia and is the most "lonely" member of the Slavic family. But those are minor nit-picks of mine :D
I know it's a somewhat different topic but I can't help but mention PJM (Polish Sign Language) which is a native language of the Deaf community in Poland. It has many similarities to sign languages in our neighboring countries. A user of PJM once explained to me how Ukrainian and Russian sign languages are different but share the same root so it's possible for the users to communicate some basic information(a fully-fledged conversation is much more difficult though). I find it really interesting how you don't actually need words to see the Slavic connection, our shared culture and tradition :)
The order if the additional ones is quite debatable as you point out. Thanks so much for the insights about sign language.
7:19 One thing to note is that the country name is Belarus and the language name is Belarusian (with one s) but not “Bela-russian”. This is important because otherwise it sounds as another version of russian, which is not the case. From historical perspective and language genesis, Belarusian is a successor of Rusian [roosian] (called after the medieval state of Rus’) just as Ukrainian.
I’m sure that author knows all of these facts. And many thanks for explaining the history of Ukrainian language for the English-speaking audience.
Yes... thanks. I know it was a typo
No, you don't need to take it too seriously. This distinction is by and large a forced nationalistic shibboleth. Don't waste your time on these and thanks for the terrific video!
@@michaelyaroslavtsev2444
Nonsense!--The Kremlin purposefully tries to BLUR the two DIFFERENT words--Rus' (roosh) and RuZZian in order to linguistically and culturally genocide the Belarus'ian and Ukrainian people by pretending that Muscovy (which changed its name in 1721 to "Rossiya" is heir to ancient Rus' (Ukraine and Belarus').
Belarus' is Belarus' NOT Belarussian!
@@polyglotdreams
The Kremlin purposefully tries to BLUR the two DIFFERENT words--Rus' (roosh) and RuZZian in order to linguistically and culturally genocide the Belarus'ian and Ukrainian people by pretending that Muscovy (which changed its name in 1721 to "Rossiya" is heir to ancient Rus' (Ukraine and Belarus').
Belarus' is Belarus' NOT Belarussian!
Современный русский, это не тот язык на которром говорили в Руси. Они кардинально отличаются.
Great video, just wanted to mention that unlike mentioned in 23:27, Ukrainian also has 7 grammatical cases, vocative exists too (Клична форма)
Yes.. thanks my mistake
And Slovenian doesn’t have vocative, so 6 cases only.
Neither Slovak has the vocative
My first slavic lagnauge I'm tackling is polish. I mostly know Spanish and Italian to conversational level and currently focusing on Hungarian, Portuguese and Polish. And I feel I want to tackle czech and ukranian after russian and polish because I feel I would visit those countries more often and it'll be more useful to me.
Awesome... all the best in your quest
@@polyglotdreams for learning is building vocabulary the most important thing to study first instead of grammar or accent?
Silesia mentioned! Ślōnsko siyła, ślōnsko sztama 😀 As a Silesian native I would like to say, that it helps me understanding most of polish, Czech, Slovak and - suprisingly - Ukrainian. Silesian is a language to go.
Thanks for sharing!
Russian is my native language. Serbo-Croatian was my major at the Slavic languages department, Polish was the second foreign Slavic language. Though I know Polish poorly, it helps me with other languages. Now I can understand on a very high level any Slavic language. Czech and Slovak to a lesser extent, but others... But I must say I now speak Serbian as a native, so the Southern branch is really easy. The Eastern is easy too for obvious reasons (all the things that are different from Russian in Ukrainian and Belarusian basically come from Polish). Slavic languages are the best❤
Thanks for sharing your experiences and insights.
This was a very informative, interesting video! I have recently started learning Slovene due to an interest in music from there. It has been quite a challenge as my first Slavic language.
That's great! Challenging at first.
Omg, giving a list of the most spoken/applicable language of each branch of the family tree is so helpful, thank you :) this is what I’ve been trying to figure out
You're so welcome!
Every Belarusian that I meet in Poland say that nobody speaks Belarusian in Belarus.
Sad...
People don't speak Ukrainian in most parts of the Ukraine too despite discriminatory practices of the regime against the Russian language. It's a bit like Irish in Ireland: people claim to know it, to love it even but with the exception of few symbolic phrases normally prefer to communicate in English.
@@xxxyyy8779what regime? I live in Ukraine (Dnipro, more like the eastern part) and you are talking nonsense. I hear Ukrainian everywhere. We all know it.
@@xxxyyy8779 what you are saying is nonsense. not sure you have ever been to Ukraine at all.
@@xxxyyy8779 totally wrong. people in Ukraine speaks ukrainian, like 75% ukrainian language everywhere in Ukraine. 98% Western Ukraine, 70% Eastern Ukraine.
Ukrainian has a vocative case, although it's not often used in practice today.
Yes... thanks
Not often used? Is the vocative replaced?
@@MarcLeonbacher-lb2oenah it's not
Slovak doesn't have vocative case any more.
Not true.. for example Paľo - Pali, Zuza - Zuzi, mama - mami, oco - oci, babka - babi)etc @@dymytryruban4324
No idea if anyone mentioned this yet, but Ukrainian does have the vocative case! Literary Standard Ukrainian requires it, and some spoken dialects still retain it completely. While the usage of vocative in spoken informal language is slowly fading away (mostly due to the influence of Russian), there are still situations when you would use it with people for your language to sound more natural. Hope this is at least somewhat interesting!
Yes, thank you... I overlooked that.
@@polyglotdreams No worries! Thank you for your video, it's one of the best I've seen on the subject!
What an amazing video! Very well explained, structured and with examples.
This of course encourages me to keep learning languages, and now I know a proper sequence for understanding most of them.
Claps!
Awesome, thanks for sharing.
This video's basis is exactly the question I've been pondering for a couple of years!
As a sidenote, my first language was Polish. I can understand written Croatian relatively well, and one time I extensively used Croatian sources for a university paper! Prior to that, I had had zero previous exposure to it. Fun anecdote. :)
Thank you so much for sharing that with me.
Fantastic video. This is the most in-depth and clear video I’ve seen on this. Thank you!
Glad you enjoyed it! Thanks so much for the appreciation ☺️
this video is full of anti-scientific lies, check the information🫤
@@polyglotdreams Najlepsze wideo o jezykach slowianskich jakie kiedykolwiek widzialem.
As an Ukrainian, who knows Russian as well as Ukrainian, I see it's an absolute win. Really, I was in Bulgaria and it was a bit easier to undertand their language, than I thought. 'Cose I know Ukrainian, I can understand every West Slavic language (if it isn't too fast, of course) and also can get the gist of conversation of South Slavs, but not even half of words, that have used in dialogue.
So, I need to learn to Serbo-Croatian language and it's done. O, and Spanish, French, Chinese (oh, no. I don't like hieroglyphs) and Arabian (how, including all of dialects?). After that I can trawel all ower the world, almost
Go for it.
@@polyglotdreams as I'm a teenager, who wants to enter the Faculty of International Relations, it looks like doable. Can you advise me how should I start, to have most efficiency? Especially with non-alphabet languages (like Chinese or Arabic), 'cose learn it like in school is absolute failure
@@Чуни-муни
Learn Chinese--it is difficult but Japanese uses some Chinese characters, and even in Korean one might be able to discern some Chinese sounds and words!
I'm an American who first learned Russian close to fluent, then learned Polish to an intermediate level.
Now I'm living in Montenegro for a few months and thinking about starting to learn Serbian, hence why I'm watching videos like yours.
Good to know we're on the same page as to which Slavic languages to learn and in which order. haha
Exactly... all the best to you.
As someone who first learned to speak using a dialect of South Serbia the Čital form in Slovakian is the same in Svrljisko Zaplanjski. Out of all the West Slavic languages I understand Slovak the most - Id say even more than any Eastern Slavic language as well. Na Kralove Holi, Stoji strom zeleni! :)
That's very interesting... thanks.
What a wonderful man and charismatic learner! It's a pleasure to listen to! ❤
I'm here to solve this even better:
LEARN INTERSLAVIC, a constructed language that all slavs can understand and is easier for learning than all of the national Slavic languages. I'm not slav but I am studying it, is a highly valuable language.
How do you study it? I can't find any sources. Please share
Certainly, many Slavic speakers can understand Interslavic, but it doesn't mean you will be able to understand all the Slavic languages.
Есть церковнославянский язык, который является чем-то средним между всеми славянскими языками
most useless "language" ever
just learn Russian
Thank you for mentioning Rusyn! And yes 26:18 - it indeed can help, as for Slovak and Rusyn is is even closer than Rusyn and Ukrainian (based on the number of speakers). It's because as you can see on the map at 7:47 most Rusyn speakers live in Slovakia and except of the state language (Slovak) speak the Prešov Rusyn variant, which is very different from the one spoken in Zakarpattyan Ukraine and even sometimes hard to understand, yet Prešov Rusyn is extremely close to the Lemko Rusyn that is a codified langauge in Poland and thus spoken by Polish Rusyns and lastly - Pannonian Rusyn spoken in Serbia was codified based on a Sotak eastern SLOVAK dialect). Ironically, people oftentimes just focus on Zakarpattyan Rusyn when mentioning Rusyn, yet except of not having a proper codification (because of the Ukrainian government not officially recognising Rusyns and Rusyn language as separate) it doesn't even have that big of an amount of speakers, compared to Prešov, Lemko or Pannonian variants - all of which have proper codifications and grammatical rules and syntactically differ quite lot from Ukrainian and even from the eastern Slavic language group. That being said, saying that 90% of Rusyn is similar to Ukrainian checks out maybe only for the Zakarpattyan variant/(dialect continuum?), which is not the best sample when talking about Rusyns. If you want to compare proper standardised variants of Rusyn, I recommend the lem.fm radio, which contains Prešov, Lemko and sometimes even Pannonian variants. And I really hope our fellow Zakarpattyan Carpatho-Rusyn brothers will be able to codify their variant very soon!
That information is so fascinating 👏 thank you.
the so-called East Slavic languages are anti-scientific and outdated nonsense, linguists talk about Central Slavic and peripheral Slavic languages.
Русинська один з діалектів української
@@DIMA-q2o in that case Ukrainian is a dialect of Polish...or Russian...:) you can clearly see what harm national opression - saying that Ukrainian language is a dialect of XY and that Ukrainians are just a subethnos of XY - did to Ukrainian people, so stop being stuck up in past and respect others if you yourself want to be respected. All of the countries (Poland, Slovakia, USA, Canada, Hungary, Serbia...) where Carpatho-Rusyns live as a minority recognise Carpatho-Rusyn as a separate national identity and language...Ukraine is the ONLY exception. In addition, Carpatho-Rusyn language is protected by the European charter of minority languages...so I guess go whine to them that they are protecting a "dialect" and right after that proceed to complain about how Russians and Poles considered Ukrainian just as a dialect of their language...the hypocrisy is so strong :)
Language distinction is inherently tied to a political process. Ukrainian Rusyns are predominantly content to be a part of Ukrainian nation and for them the distinction is not critical, as long as they can talk and create using the language as they learned it since childhood.
A Ukrainian coming to Slovakia and claiming that Rusyn is a dialect of Ukrainian would be a tone deaf stupidity, because there’s a clear political will for recognition there.
And frankly, Ukrainian Rusyn variants could easily influence standard Ukrainian development, with the current drive to ditch Russian influences. Splitting is not the only fate for languages, after all.
PS: There was a Russian funded campaign to attempt to rile up a “DNR” situation in transcarpathia around Rusyn language. It failed, but left an imperial aftertaste. As a result, Ukrainians without a taste for linguistic nuances can react to attempts to distinguish Rusyn and Ukrainian… aggressively.
I sincerely happy to meet you and your channel. Appreciate so much!
Ukrainian native speaker here. There's a small mistake in this video (at 23:27). Ukrainian actually does have a vocative case. In some schools across the country it was, or maybe still is called "vocative form", but it's actually one of the grammatical cases.
And also, I wanted to thank you for telling the true history of Russian language in Ukraine. So good to see that people from other countries research this topic, and then other people can learn from them. So yeah, thank you again for that 🙂
Yes... my mistake about th vocative. Thank you so much for the encouragement.
Great video. Born and raised in West Bulgaria with relatives in Macedonia (Skopje, Bitola) and Serbia (Pirot). Learned Russian at school 35 years ago. Recently tried to read беларуская мова (Belarusian language) and I am pretty positive about not only understanding the context, but some of the details. Not so much with Ukrainian, but still understanding the context. I do have troubles understanding and reading Polish. Reading Polish is a pain because of the different alphabet system they are using. However I am understanding the core of the text, not much when they are speaking. Especially if Polish is spoken in a fast way.
Thanks so much for sharing your experiences with Slavic languages
Смешно потому что я русскоговорящий беларус но пока украинский понимаю лучше чем белорусский. В основном наверное потому что в интернете гораздо больше контента на украинском, что в сериалах что в соц сетях, чем на белорусском. Но и на белорусском достаточно, хорошо что это не как какой-то кашубский или лужицкий на котором вообще почти ничего нету.
You can understand foreign languages better by watching movies with the foreign languages subtitles. It has worked for me. Immersive translate can also generate those subtitles for those movies that lack them
Great suggestion
I'm from Belarus, I speak Belarusian and Russian. We have both these as the state languages. Unfortunately, I rarely see anybody speaking Belarusian...
Also I can understand Ukrainian because I have watched LOTS of Ukrainian TV shows and have Ukrainian pals. And now I'm studying at the Polish university.
Yes, it is very unfortunate.
Так, то є дуже сумно
15:45 not 550.000 (spoken), the text correctly says 50.000. Other German sources count as little as 20.000 to 30.000 speakers. Upper Sorbian (in southeast Saxony, is closer to Czech) is "endangered of extinction". Lower Sorbian (closer to Polish, located further north, in south Brandenburg) is considered a "seriously endangered of extinction" language because it is only spoken in very few families by the middle and younger generations.
Thanks for the input.
As a Bulgarian i can easy understand Russian, but... when i heard Slovenian it is even more understandable and close. As for makedonian language- it is heavy dialect of bulgarian. There was an old joke that makedonian is nothing more than pure bulgarian writen on a serbian typewriter.
Of course, you understand that they will disagree with you and also for some solid reasons.
Yes correct, because one of the main source for modern Russian is the old church Bulgarian language which had been used for a centuries before Communists in 1917 created the modern Russian
Great video! I am Macedonian, I speak excellent Serbo-Croat, have learned some Slovenian, understand at least 60% of Bulgarian, speak also English and German... Choosing the next one - it will, most probably be Polish 🙂
AWESOME... I just live Slavic languages and cultures.
How do the collective West implement "divide et impera" policy among the Slavic peoples?
"If you put 100 black ants and 100 red ants in a jar, nothing happens.
But if you shake the jar hard, the ants will start killing each other. The reds will think of the blacks as their enemies, and the blacks will think of the reds as their enemies.
The real enemy is the one who shakes the jar.
That's what happens in human society.
So before people attack each other, we should think about who shook the can!".
© Otto von Bismarck
Do you know Bosnian language?
@@bosnjakizbosne7172
Ne, on govori samo crnogorski.
Ali to nije problem.
Covjek moze da nabavi crnogorsko-bosanski rjecnik.
@@kirrausanov Ja sam pitao njega, ako tebi treba bosansko-engleski rijecnik rado cu ti dati.
As a Serbian born in Croatia I am surprised that you didn't mention the biggest,,difference''between two and that is Croats speak ijekavicu and Serbs speak ekavicu...everything else is pretty much same.
I didn't have enough time in that video to go into those details
Bosnian, Serbian, Croatian is absolutely same one language.
There are Serbs who speak ijekavica and there are Croats who speak ekavica, also both ekavica and ijekavica are considered grammatically correct in standard Serbian.
What a fascinating video, thank you for sharing, I have really learnt something both new and valuable today.
I'm very pleased to know... thanks
Amazing summary for Ukrainian/East Slavic native. I came to the same conclusions by spontaneous understanding Polish, and other languages becoming intelligible.
So far, South Slavic are a bit more challenging.
Small fix, Ukrainian had Vocative case
Fantastic... and yes, my mistake about the vocative case.
The thing that you are a Japanese citizen is really the most surprising
Yes
I thought from south Africa Afrikaans speaker
Bulgarian here. Thank you for this extensive information and very interesting video!
what a video man, fantastic
Much appreciated!
Bosnian, Serbian, Croatian and Montenegrian are the same language with some minor differences wich won't stop you from speaking all 4 if you learn one of them. For example, Bosnian/Croatian "ijekavica" and Serbian/Montenegrian "Ekavica". Here are some examples that all of us understand as soon as it is spoken.
Milk
Mleko (Ekavica)
Ml(ij)eko hence IJekavica
White
Belo (Ekavica)
Bijelo (IJekavica)
I am natively Bosnian and travel for work to Montenegro/Serbia/Croatia and I haven't had single problem except word or two here and there. Serbia and Montenegro use Cyrillic alphabet but it is a same alphabet except with different signs assigned to each letter. Some are same and some are different. You will have to learn Cyrillic alphabet if you want to correspond with someone who does not know Latin alphabet. Most people in the region most!y know both alphabets which is awesome. Thanks to Cyrillic alphabet I can decipher and read Ukrainian and Russian. Some letters are different but eventually you catch on. I can understand Slovenian and communicate somewhat and same for Macedonian. I'm not an expert but I feel that Bulgarian wouldn't help me understand Macedonian better. That's me though. The hardest part are the dialects in Croatia you mentioned. I'm having difficulties understanding them and as if some of those are completely different languages. I can communicate but honestly I'm struggling. There are many parts of the former Yugoslavia that speak different dialects that are hard to understand. Most of those people however speak SHBM language. Hope this helps somone.
Yes... for sure
Montenegrin Ekavian? Montenegro is more Ijekavian than Croatia... probably even more than Bosnia, since Western and North-Western Bosnia are Ikavian in native dialects, and some parts of Eastern Bosnia tend to get some Ekavian influences (just some). Western Serbia was like this, but they lost Ijekavian speach due to promotion of standardized Serbian. Even Vuk Karadžić, who was from this region wrote his "Rječnik", not "Rečnik". And Croatia is just a mess, like a carpet. Montenegro and Eastern Herzegovina are probably clearest Ijekavian regions.
@@sabkobds you might be right but all four languages are 99% the same and learning one you learn all four except you may have to learn Cyrillic alphabet to correspond with people that use Cyrillic only and the mixture. I'm just trying to simplify for the folks and ekavica and ijekavica can be ignored as we all understand both dialects as they are practically easy to decipher. On the other hand some dialects are the problem for most people speaking SBCM languages unless they live in the area or they learned because they wanted.
Your life honestly sounds so interesting, learning Slavic languages while traveling to South America and South East Asia and being Japanese! If you ever decide to tell tales of your travels, I will be thrilled to hear them!
Please check out my memoir at Polyglotdreams.com
Kuril island maybe
What do you think about Interslavic?
It is easy to understand and makes a better candidate than Esperanto for Slavic speakers.
As a Czech, I personally speak 5 Slavic languages (Czech, Polish, Slovenian, Serbian, Russian) and such logic has been familiar to me before, as it is logical that all languages in one group are similar to each other. At this point, if I know the nationality of a Slavic person, I never speak English to them, since I am able to conversate with them naturally. But I have biggest trouble with Bulgarian, since in spoken form, it is really hard to understand, yet thanks to knowledge of Russian, written form is fine and I can catch the context most of the time.
The problem is that since English is everywhere and it is both positively and negatively influencial to young generation, people will rather respond in English after spotting one tiny mistake or a little shift from an accent, which I find annoying, useless and sad. And to this day, I wonder what makes them "go full English" with no chance to go back?
I learned Slavic languages to learn about cultures and to make conversations with Slavic people easier. What makes them automatically switch to a language that is unnatural for both, hence making our conversations even more harder, where sometimes I must speak even slowly, since somebody's English is plain horrible (something like "hotel is this, go street, then shop, go next")? That is something that does not make even sense for me and it starts to make me really disappointed.
I am in complete agreement with what you are saying
@@polyglotdreams That is better than nothing, thank you for your honest approach and good luck in your linguistic journeys!
Russian is a result of fino-ugric tribes reading old Bulgarian scriptures incorrectly 😅
I'm Italian and I've studied Ukrainian for an year now, they have the vocative case, as far a s I know.
Yes. My error
Great video!
It manages to be succinct and informative.
Thanks so much!!!
I was raised in Ukraine, in Kharkiv, but I never spoke and even very rarely heard Ukrainian. My mother tongue was Russian. Only after the war in Ukraine started I have started to listen and read Ukrainian news and shows. So now I understand 99% of Ukrainian, although I can’t speak it, because I live in the USA and I don’t have anyone to speak it with
Russian was also dominant when I was in Ukraine during Soviet times.
@@polyglotdreamsmaybe because Kharkov is a Russian city given to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic by bloody Communists?
There's a nice Russian word for someone like you - вырусь.
@@polyglotdreams "Ukrainian language" is mix of polish and Russian or transitional variation as I understand, similar as serbo-croatian as transition between northern Slavic and Balcanian prothoromanic!
@@radestankovic6884 Ukrainian and Belarusian languages came from the Ruthenian language (spoken language of Rus), Russian came from church Bulgarian (language of bureaucracy and church in Rus)
I was born a Slav, but I learned so many new things. Big thanks. It's very motivating
Thank you. So, my native is Russian, and I have learned Polish a little.
Maybe once I will learn Polish deeply, but right now I need German.
I noticed that I understand pretty clear Belarusian (thanks to Belsat, I was waching it in a lithuanian prison), can understand and speak Ukrainian (maybe B1-B2) because of watching many many ukrainian videos.
Polish was a challenge for me to listen, but now I understand it well. And that's true, across Europe I met many Poles and always tried to speak Polish, it is really useful!
My favorite is, when a young woman is speaking Polish, it is better than music.
I love Poland, I don't know why)
The most difficult point with Slavic languages and Eastern Europe at all is... politics.
Politics are everywhere. Mostly language indentity means something political. And it is very, very painful for me.
The awful war is still going on. I was a human, but now I am a refugee in Lithuania. Everything from Russia is totally hated here, so I must hide my origin and I usually say I am Polish or I will be discriminated.
😂😂😂😂😂
And one more for you to discover what the politics here is!
Once I said to my mom, that I love Poland and Polish people. And Polish girls are the best I have ever met (I am very young).
And my mom answered - please no, I can agree with every choice your will date, but NOT from Poland, I promise she will hate us (my relatives) and all Russian at all.
Why did she say it? No idea. But that's politics and its bad influence.
I am more than a year "passportless" surviving in Eastern Europe, and Polish people always were welcome and tried to help me despite my "wrong" birthplace. I will never forget it.
@@wearealsohumans 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Thanks so much for the comments... you can also see the controversy in the comments.
Thank you for sharing that
I am Slovak living in Slovakia. In my opinion Slovak language is a crossroad of all 3 types of Slavic langugages. Dialects in northern Slovakia are similar to Polish language (soft pronounciation - č, š, ť, ľ,), dialect in South Slovakia are similar to Slovenian and Croatian languages (hard pronounciation). And in eastern parts of Slovakia many people talk Rusin language.
There is very interesting similarity between Slovakian and Slovenian languages. Both nations call their country Slovensko. In Slovenia there live Sloven(s), but in Slovakia a man is called Slovak, but woman Sloven(ka). It think, in the past we were one nation. Now there is Hungary between us.
Very interesting is using letter "L" in Slavic languages. South languages use letter "U" instead of "L", e.g. vuk = vlk = volk. Polish language uses something with similar pronounciation, it is a special polish "Ł". In old dialect of Slovakia there was also used U instead of L: bou som = bol som, bucha = blcha etc. Small children, when they start to talk, often use this "U" instead of L. But In Slovakia using U instead of L is a speech error (similar like problems with R) and small children have to visit a logopedic expert to remove it.
And one piece of interest. In Slovak language there is long R and long L: Ŕ and Ĺ, e.g. vŕtať, mŕtvy, vŕzgať, kŕdeľ, mĺkvy, vĺčok, hĺbka.
I have also read that in the past you were one nation.
Sorry but dialects in south slovakia are extremely similar to Hungarian
@@pityu2002no way! Hungarian is a totally different language. Are you talking about borrowed Hungarian words or simply about Hungarian diaspora living there?
@@trymai_kavun cca 8 percent of the citizens of slovakia are Hungarian and they live by the southern border. Therefore in the south the hungarian is the most spoken language
I cant find ways to express how much I've loved to watch the entirety of this video. So many cultural aspects, historical facts and curiosities all brought together with so much care. I can really feel that you absolutely love languages and have passion for studying them. I've been studying Russian for 2 weeks, I'm a native portuguese speaker and an advanced english speaker, so Russian is going to be my third language and next Spanish (as it is very close to Portuguese). Thank you so much for your explanations on all those slavic languages, it was fantastic!
Thanks so much for the encouragement!
As Ukrainian/Russian speaking person I would say Belarusian, Rusyn, and Polish are the easiest ones (for me only). I was exposed to ukranian dialect as well, so some archaic constructions that ceased to exist in formal form but still exist in other langages were familiar to me. Now, when I started to learn Polish properly, it suddenly helped me with some Czech. A little bit. In written. Spoken czech, though, this is still quite a challenge, unlike Slovak, which is miraculously easy now.
Southern slavic languages, oh, they are beautiful, but are quite a massacre still. In case with Polish, or Czech, or Slovak grammar is perfectly intuitive understandable even though some words meaning can be vague (like in Carroll's Jabberwocky). But all southern slavic have different nice surprizes as absence of cases (how to understand who did what to whom?), or weird cases endings if they exist, strange tenses (past perfect is okaish, you can find it in Ukrainian dialects, but aorist? what the hell is aorist?), and oh yes, articles.
Some even deadlier than Polish clusters of consonants and tones come just as a bonus.
As I've said they are beautiful, but for me require much, much more work than western group.
(Ukrainian has 7 cases)
Thanks for sharing... yes 7 cases my mistake
Your statement about absence of cases in all South Slavic languages is not correct. My language, Croatian, is a South Slavic language with 7 cases. Macedonian and Bulgarian have largely abandoned case system, but they developed system of articles and have pretty complex verbal system, the most complex amongst Slavic languages, and possibly in whole Europe.
I've been learning Russian the last year or two, and have wondered whether it would let me branch into other Slavic languages later. I have such a better understanding of its relation to al its linguistic neighbors now after this video. Guess it'll be Polish for me next! I landed here after stumbling on your video about the CN/KR/JP/VT crossovers. What a great channel! I've just subscribed!
Thank you so much for your support. I love the Slavic languages so I continue to work on them as often as I can and visit the Slavic nations... going again in May.
It won’t. Everyone understands russian , because of the russian occupational politics, but russians , knowing only their language, understand no one. There’s literally little similarities in real life languages between pussian and other Slav languages.
Russian was widely studied in the times of the USSR in all European USSR-controlled/allied countries. Given that, if you know Russian language, at least lots of old enough people in those countries would be able to communicate with you. It doesn't mean they will be glad to speak or hear Russian (due to political, nationalist, ideological reasons), but sure Russian is the most useful one.
As for branching into, the cases are the same and case endings are similar more or less. The same three grammatical genders. Basic vocabulary is often the same, as well. More or less the same sounds.
@@DeadnWoon Excellent!
@@sandwichbreath0 In some situations, Russian gets useful in the most unexpected places. For example, there's an American sci-fi writer Robert Sheckley who wrote tons of great short stories and several memorable novels. He is largely forgotten in the USA, but is considered a cult, legendary classic in the USSR and post-Soviet countries like Russia, Ukraine, etc. You can easily find 90+% of his works in Russian (for free in the internet libraries or for adequate money on paper), but hardly so in his native English.
I think, Polish will definitely be a good choice, too. A very rich culture, songs, poetry.
I, a Slovak wife watched this with my Polish husband and I admit that this was a very educational and interesting video. Just beware the correct Slovak accent. You read the Slovak sentences with Polish accent. Instead of "čí-tala", you said "či-TA-la".
The long and short syllables in Slovak and even more in Czech language can be challenging for foreigner, but necessary to be spoken correctly, as wrong accent changes the actual meaning of the word. Eg. krik (scream) vs krík (bush), or kura (chicken) vs kúra (a cure, a cosmetic procedure) etc.
Overall, we really enjoyed this video. Keep up the amazing job! Pozdravujeme zo Slovenska :-)
Thanks so much for the pointers.
The same about croation pronunciation. Ja sam ČI-tala, stress on 1st syllable. But still, awesome work!
The same in Croatian example. Stress on 1st syllable. We have 4 types of accents that change the meaning.
Fantastic presentation. I missed one small detail: our languages reveal that most Slavs feel some sort of unity with Slavs from other countries, especially contrary to non Slavs. Correct if I am wrong. The term Slavs or the names of countries like Slovakia or Slovenia, derives from the word 'slovo' which means 'word'. So we are the people who recognise words and share the same/similar language. On the other hands, we have 'dumb'/'speechless' neighbours who don't know 'words. In Polish dumb is 'niemy', hence are western neighbours are 'Niemcy' (Germans).
Exactly 💯
I am Polish living in Hungary. I love all slavic languages. I always try to speak Polish to any slavs and make myself understood. Besides I speak the dialect of Polish Cieszyn Silisia from Istebna, which i between Polish, Czech, Slovak and sometimes German, it has a few words that comes from Hungarian.
That is very interesting thank you for sharing that
@@polyglotdreams Here is an example of Jaworzynka (a village on the Czech, Slovak, Polish) borders. It is very close to my dialect of Istebna (The Cieszyn Sielesia region of Poland): ua-cam.com/video/UWH3W54LdVM/v-deo.html
Hello from Bulgaria, just one small thing (Im in the beginning of the video so sorry if u mentioned it), the southern slavic states are the only one section, which is divided on two under sections - "southwest and southeast". The Bulgarian language is alone in the southeast group.❤🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬 I like ur video veeeery much, I would like to see more 🎉🎉😊
My native language is Ukrainian (but russian too, I'm bilingual) and I fully understand Belorussian, and mostly Polish. The most hard slavic language is Chech, in my opinion.
Why Czech?
I also noticed you said there are only 70,000 Rusyns. There are over 1 million of us.
Great the more the merrier
70k is a number pulled out of official censuses. Due to the legal status of Rusyns in Ukraine, it was not, and is not really possible to get an accurate number of speakers, only the assumptions and estimations.
Well protected in Slovakia.
and where are you?
@@alexbrown2401 In Zakarpattia
When I came to Poland, (from Ukraine) I was surprised, that i can understand almost of all the things thay say. But, if I tell tham back - they didn’t. or they just didnt want to understand
It takes time... you will get it
I was born in Siberian heart and spent 2-3 years in Kievan kindergarten being the only child who spoke Ukrainian with teachers. Of course i don't remember lot's of things and not good at speaking this language but as for me two easiest not Eastern languages are Bulgarian and Czechian. Bulgarian sounds and spoken almost the same as orthodox church priest in Russia (churchslavic), and Czech is a mix of English and our language. After this video i find out that Polish isn't that hard to understand if it isn't spoken fast. Thanks for the video
Thanks for sharing your history
this is because Muscovy was inhabited by a non-Slavic population and it was Slavicized due to the influence of the church - the old Bulgarian language.
понятное дело, что коренное население залесья - финские племена, но это лишь субстрат (если ты разбираешься в антропологии). ты не учитываешь реформу языка и привилегированность образования. не было никаких школ, были монастыри - куда отправляли людей учиться на ВСЮ ЖИЗНЬ. и они естественно забыли свои родные говоры и могли общаться лишь на церковнославянском. реформы языка проводились с 16 века и преподавались только эти языки. а говоры и местные диалекты и до сих пор есть. съезди куда нибудь в псков где Окают. почитай лингвиста зализняка
@@nataliya6093 даже если допустить тот бред, что ты пишешь. то почему во всех международных генетических анализах население центральной россии имеет гаплогруппу R1a, идентичную остальным славянским национальностям? как ты это объяснять собираешься?
@@kedy8429 це ти пишеш маячню, якщо зараз не вибірково проводити аналізи в москві ( де купа "понаєхавших"), то результати аналізів будуть дуже цікавими 😂
Археологічні дослідження показують ВІДСУТНІСТЬ давніх слов'янських захоронень в центральних регіонах рашки, проти археології не попреш. Слов'янське населення прийшло на ці землі не так давно, а аналіз крові сучасних людей взагалі не має значення. Мова не передається через кров.