The FASTEST Way to Understand 19 SLAVIC Languages
Вставка
- Опубліковано 12 січ 2024
- #languagelearning #languages #polyglot
Dive into the fascinating world of Slavic languages with Tim Keeley, a Professor of Cross-cultural Management and a polyglot with a passion for Slavic languages and cultures. In this comprehensive video.
Tim shares his 40-year experience studying Slavic languages, offering unique insights and effective strategies to learn and understand this diverse linguistic group.
Embark on a journey through the largest Indo-European ethno-linguistic group in Europe, exploring the intricacies of Slavic languages that range from 11 to 19, depending on classification criteria.
Tim introduces a methodical approach to grasp the essence of Slavic languages by focusing on just a few key languages, revealing how mastering even just three of them can provide a solid foundation for understanding the rest. He then reveals which other Slavic languages should be learned thereafter to gain the best understanding of all of the languages in the group.
0:41 My Slavic experience
1:34 Slavs background
2:18 How many Slavic languages are there?
2:07 3 groups of Slavic languages
3:38 The East Slavic languages
4:15 Russian
5:00 Ukrainian
7:46 Rusyn
7:56 Belarus
8:35 Demonstrate of East Slavic languages
9:53 The West Slavic languages
10:24 Polish
12:12 Kashubian
13:26 Silesian
14:07 Czech & Slovak
14:49 Czech
15:12 Croatian
15:39 Serbian
16:21 Sound demonstration
19:31 Slovene
20:46 BCMS
🌟 About Tim Keeley:
Tim Keeley, a seasoned professor and language enthusiast, brings four decades of experience living in Japan and mastering multiple Asian languages. His insights provide a roadmap for language learners eager to unlock the synergy among Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese.
👍 Like, Share, and Subscribe to Polyglot Dreams for More Language Insights!
🚀Website: polyglotdreams.com/
📧 email: timkeeley@polyglotdreams.com
💡More about me:
👉Academia: kyusan-u.academia.edu/TimDean..
👉 BBC : www.bbc.com/future/article/20..
👉Facebook: / tim.keeley
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!
As a Polish speaker I learn russian and Ukrainian just by watching videos in these languages. It's enough for me because there is a sufficient similarity between Polish and these languages and I don't need textbooks or lists of words. I acquire both languages spontaneously, simply memorizing some words and phrases I hear. When it comes to everyday speech, at the moment I could understand almost all in Ukrainian and about 80% in russian. That means I could understand people inteviewied in streets and the news without much effort.
That's a great and enjoyable way to learn.
Я русский, понимаю почти всё по-украински. По-белорусски где-то 75%. По-польски, к сожалению, не больше 20%.
@@Maria_Nizhny_NovgorodI think the fact that we use different letters is the most challenging thing. All the rest is simply too similar.
Me as a Polish speaker, I cannot even tell a difference between Ukrainian and Russian, they sound the same to me. So congratulations, you must be a language genius.
@@Marcin-vn4kk and learning an alphabet is actually incredibly easy. In one week you can know all the letters. I don't get why this aspect is so overblown. I mean, I've learned the Japanese hiragana and katakana in 5 days. Even tho o don't understand anything in Japanese, at least I can read it. Slavic people who use the Latin alphabet can learn Cyrillic even easier, it's much less new characters than Japanese syllabery.
step 1. be born in a slavic country
“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.
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. ❤
@@ms-ht1cj 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.. :)
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.
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 am Slovak and for me, these Polish nasal sounds are a nightmare. Even we are both West Slavic languages, but when we talk about the pronunciation, the Italian or Spanish are easier for me. On the other hand, we understand each other because many words are quite similar, but Polish pronunciation is so weird, other Slavic languages are OK.
Ale co ty mówisz oprócz akcentu i tego że kilkana słów jest innych da się dogadac
В каком роде "кошмар"? Что сложно произносить или звучит неприятно?
Chápem, že poľská výslovnosť môže byť pre vás výzvou, ale pre mňa je to práve to, čo milujem na učení sa poľštiny. Západoslovanské jazyky majú svoje jemnosti, a aj keď sa môžu zdať náročné, práve v týchto rozdieloch nájdem zábavu a vzrušenie. Je fascinujúce vidieť, ako sa naše jazyky líšia a zároveň prelínajú, najmä v takých oblastiach ako fonetika a výslovnosť.
@@user-uu4kz8sr5i Polish language is not phonetic. It is not normal and typical, that one letter you can pronounce in many ways. Such as: "ą", "ę", and you also use nasal sounds that are not normal (for most languages).
When you have languages that use more sounds and pronunciations for one letter (Polish, English) it means that they are not sure how to write it and in past they just copied those words from another language, but didn't know how to deal with it.
@@KyojuruziJa też jestem Słowakiem i uważam, że on całkowicie przesadza. Słowa takie jak „koszmar” są zupełnie niestosowne.
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
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
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.
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?
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 🇵🇱
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.
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.
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..
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
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
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.
Great video!
It manages to be succinct and informative.
Thanks so much!!!
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
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.
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.
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.
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🫤
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
@@user-wi4tn1yd6z 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 🇸🇮
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.
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.
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.
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
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
É muito gostoso ver sua paixão pelas linguas! Estou adorando seus vídeos e tem me animado para estudar mais. No momento estou tentando ficar proficiente em ingles, e aprender o básico do russo. E se eu continuar no gás, depois gostaria de saber alemão haha. Grande abraço do Brasil! E obrigado por compartilhar tanto conhecimento.
Clozemaster
Muito obrigado pelo seu apoio e pelas palavras gentis! Fico extremamente feliz em saber que meus vídeos têm sido uma fonte de inspiração para você continuar seus estudos de línguas. Sua dedicação em aprimorar o inglês e começar a aprender russo é realmente admirável, e tenho certeza de que você também terá sucesso no alemão se mantiver essa paixão e determinação. Lembre-se, cada nova língua é uma nova janela para o mundo. Grande abraço e muito sucesso na sua jornada linguística! Continue assim e obrigado por fazer parte da nossa comunidade de entusiastas de línguas!
Eu adoro português. É meu segundo linguagem (after French, before German)
My native tongue is English.
Bom Dia ❤️
Happy to see that your channel is boosting so fast!
Me too! Thanks so much for the support!
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.
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
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
Wow, excellent presentation!
This topic is well known to me but I stayed all the way because of your presentation. I subbed because you inspired me. I wish you all the best in your journey through life!
Awesome, thank you! Welcome to the community!
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.
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.
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!
Also, there is no such thing as "Bosnian". The ethnicity that changed its name from Muslim (in terms to ethnicity) to Bosniak, (old term for someone from geographical region of Bosnia), so they should call it Bosniak, not Bosnian, and also this artificial term is rejected by the majority of population in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Christians, but this fake term is constantly repeated by westerners as if it was something real. As for what is called Serbo-Croatian in linguistics, its origins are clear to everyone that knows a bit of real history. Serbo-Croatian is a literary Serbian language made and standardised as literary language by Serbian linguist Vuk Karadžić, shtokavian dialect of Herzegovina and most of Serbia, and this standard Serbian language was adopted by some Austri-Hungarian citizens (Croatian original language and literary standard is chakavian, not shtokavian) as their own, which would soon become a source for many linguistic and ethnic machinations by Austria-Hungary, creating an issue between Croats and Serbs that never existed before. To see the term BCSM is really sickening, it just shows how the west is using false regional differences to divide us and make us look different, the false differences they themselves created and keep promoting.
Thanks for your detailed input... it is controversial, and others may also offer well developed arguments. It is best leave the emotions out.
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!
It’s Belaroosian, not Belarusian. Old Russian and old Ukrainian were much more similar centuries ago. Ukrainian was morphed due to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth domination. Hence why it’s slightly more similar to Polish than Russian. Russian also morphed due to the adoption of German, French and English.
Yes, that was a type of by the editor. Thanks for your input.
Армянин что ли? Первый раз такую армянскую фамилию слышу - Беларусян. Змагары на все пойдут лишь бы отечество подешевле продать.
what old ukrainian? Nobody heard about Ukraine or the ukrainian language 150 years ago.
@@alexbrown2401 have you ever tried to read books? maybe you will learn something new...
@@alexbrown2401 боже, яке кончене)
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
@@user-gw6mm3hh2y 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.
very well made video. keep it up🔥🔥🔥
Thanks... I will keep doing my best...
i dont think ive been this engrossed in a youtube video in a very long time, incredible video thank you so much for sharing your knowledge! anymore content related to the slavic languages (especially regarding political history as you seem to have an interest in that?) would be fantastic if you are willing to make more (and if there is already some I apologise, I am new to the channel) as a non-native slavic language speaker you have greatly inspired me, I am very glad I have found your channel
Thank you so much for that positive input. As you can see the history is very controversial, so i will do some more later, but i need to let it cool for a while before getting into more deeply. Welcome 🙏 to the community.
what a video man, fantastic
Much appreciated!
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.
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.
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
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.
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 :)
It's amazing that you show I Love Languages channel. Her channel truly is amazing!!! 🥰
It’s great Tim that you’ve decided to start your channel, you’ve got some knowledge to share
Glad you think so!
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.
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 👏
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
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.
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?
The thing that you are a Japanese citizen is really the most surprising
Yes
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
Thank you for your hard work 💜
Thank you for your support 🙏
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.
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.
@@MLiv-bn4clBuharim jews speak uzbek ( Turkics) , Tajik( iranic) Russian ( slavic) and Hebrew/ Arabic ( for religious teaching ) and Chinese ( Tungan) for business , recently many learning English. Central asians jews grew up learning totally unrelated languages and somehow managed to sound native in many.
As a native speaker of Ukrainian and Russian + intermediate speaker of Serbian, basic Czech, etc I would definitely recommend to learn Ukrainian not Ruzzian out of all Eastern Slav.langs. Ruzzian stands aside of other Slavic languages.
There are far more similar elements in Ukrainian syntax and vocabulary with all surrounding langs - creating you a much more effective way to understand all Slavic langs.
From life experience Ukrainian speakers learn Serbian/Czech/Polish much faster than ruzzian speakers who barely understand or do not even try to understand Ukrainian or any other local language.
But we are looking for contrast when taking the approach of learning 3 or more Slavic languages.
1. In what order ( if any) to learn the three? Same sequence as in the video?
2.Is there a similar video for Germanic & Romance ( French, Spanish & er Romanian , Catalan..or Latin (!).)?
Apropos;
I met a Bulgarian who said that learning Russian was easy for him & a Macedonian who said Bulgarian was understandable to her and they spoke in gheir own languages to each other.
I don't think it is important what order you learn the first three languages it all depends on your life situation when you will be able to use them. I am working on videos for the romance and germanic languages. I also have such videos for languages in asia. Thanks for your comment...
Nowadays, certainly, there is a political overtone to the answer to your question. Sincerely, Russian language beats them all if you're looking for a number of speakers... Russian was the de facto official language in the USSR. Considering the influence and importance of the USSR, it is clear that lots of people all over the world, including the numerous foreign Asian, African, Cuban ones that studied at the Soviet Universities, know some Russian. Lots of people from the former Russian Empire also migrated to other countries, sometimes they gave their Russian skills to their heirs. Russian is definitely the most important of them all, whether we like current Russian leadership or not.
@@DeadnWoonWhy should one learn languages based on their "importance"? I will never understand that.
@@MarcLeonbacher-lb2oe Never say never, OK?..
Let's look at it practically. You want to find a pretty inexpensive or even free book by the American writer Robert Sheckley or by Agatha Christie or by Harry Harrison or by Rex Stout. And you fell in love with (the obviously charming) Slovak language... Good luck on your way then, but you will hardly find a lot of those authors translated into Slovak. That simple.
@@DeadnWoon That example sounds very strange. What is the connection between such authors and learning Slovakian? If one were to learn Slovakian, wouldn't that logically lead to reading slovakian authors?
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
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.
Thank you!
I Took Russian in school (& I followed it up later w/ the study of Church Slavonic), then I started getting into Polish, & I bought books on Bulgarian (but haven't had time to get into this one too much, yet), & I was thinking of learning Serbo-Croation or Slovene;
this video 1) confirmed that I happened to have gotten into some of the most useful ones already, & 2) helped narrow down any of my possible options for further studies in the Slavic languages.
Fantastic... I am pleased that it has been so helpful.
Great video, thank you!
Glad you liked it!
@@polyglotdreams ❤️ You have inspired me, after I had started out with Polish
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!
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.
Hey, Tim - super elaborate presentation! As someone who finds Slavic languages fascinating and is yet to acquire one, I was curious of from your years of experience which one you have found the easiest to study in terms of the language itself (disregarding the abundance or lack of resources). I surmise Macedonian is the simplest as, based on what I've read, it is a highly simplified form of Bulgarian that was meant to heighten mutual intelligibility with the neighbouring Serbs, thus compromising much of Bulgarian's complexity similarly to how creoles develop, albeit to a lesser degree.
Of the languages that have full case systems, though, I am of the impression that in practice Slovak would probably be easiest as it is basically as if to be a Czech dialect that was simplified (much as in the comparison of Macedonian to Bulgarian) and influenced by elements of Croatian, characterising it as probably the most "central" among the Slavic languages as you mentioned in the video.
On the other hand, it seems on paper that BCMS could be the easiest as it contains less exhaustive nominal declension patterns and slightly fewer phonemes, albeit with the caveat that the phonemic stress is less predictable, making proper pronunciation more complex. Across even the regional Štokavian standards alone, vocabulary also simultaneously consists of differences between common words themselves as well as in whether they it adopts the Ekavian, Ijekavian, or Ikavian variant. For example, standard Serbian and standard Croatian may differ in both regards, while Serbian and Montenegrin more or less overlap in vocabulary but still differ in the use of Ekavian and Ijekavian, respectively. Though the actual barrier this presents to conversation is very minor, it can still be an annoying feature to contend with for a foreign learner in terms of confident speech, especially if one mixes up words between different varieties and always second-guesses whether they should pronounce or write them one way or another based on observations of the usage around them that will change if moving from place to place. Moreover, grammatically speaking, BCMS appears to have certain minor nuances that do not exist to the same extent in Slovak, such as greater morphological alternation within inflectional paradigms in addition to a more intricate verbal system and particle usage. Colloquialisms and other informal patterns of speech also seem be in heavier use, which can be another obstacle to learners only acquainted with a textbook standard.
Essentially, I view Slovak to be heavier yet more robust and concise in its grammar, whereas BCMS is simpler upfront though clouded by greater ambiguity and possibility in expressing the same idea. I would love to hear your opinion on this and which language (whether one of these two or another one) has been the easiest for you personally.
Serbo-Croatian was new and exciting for me in 1997 when I rode a bicycle along the Adriatic Coast, so I would have to say that was easiest for me
Zdravo! I was watching your other video on methods on learning languages and I wanted to ask you on this slavic page if you have a system to learn all the constantly changing endings of Slovene. I can speak english, german and cantonese, but apart from german and it's cases, none really help with the multitude of ending changes. Moj mož je slovenec and I can no longer understand our children which is spurring me on. Any tips appreciated!
That is difficult... all I can say is look at the charts often and make example sentences using each one.
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.
Excellent video
Thank you very much!
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.
Your book looks really interesting, but are there any plans for an audiobook version? I'm an L2 speaker of German and Spanish, and I'm currently studying Ukrainian, so I try and avoid books in english to make time for reading the other languages, but I do have a lot of listening time on my hands.
Yes.. there are audiobooks, too... now just English, Italian, and Chinese. But French and Spanish are coming soon.
As Macedonian I would argue :)
We Macedonians can understand anyone from Bulgaria to Croatia without a problem. But all of them, including Bulgarians have truble understanding us ;)
After all, Ohrid is in Macedonia, isnt it? ;)
Thank you for sharing your experience.
Да бе, да. Македонския е просто един диалект с добавени сръбски думи. Какъв проблем имаме за да го разбираме?
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.
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.
A few years ago I went to work to Alaska, for the 1st time, at one of the many seafoods processing plants located over there. My expectations were, that I was going to be working among Hispanics and Americans. Inwardly, my jaw dropped when I quickly realized that over 80% of the hired workforce during that season, were people from former Yugoslavia and former Soviet Satellite States of the Eastern Bloc. Long story short I was fascinated and so, me wanting to learn Serbian I ended up picking up Russian because is the most accessible language to practice through the entertainment that is easily available and also because two different Ukrainians (A guy I've met while I was in Alaska, the other, a woman I've met while I was back home), suggested that should learn Russian first. Now I am doing just that and once in a while I roam around these types of videos.
Great... Slavic languages are fascinating
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.
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!
At some point I'll have to study a few Slavic languages, even if it means only reading one the colloquial language books and completing the Duolingo course and some other app, besides watching movies and listening to songs, watching videos, etc...
My three would be Russian, Polish or Czech, and Croatian or Serbian (I'd probably get books from both though). I'd try to dedicate at some point at least 2 years to learn Russian, or at least some 400 hours. Then, I'd like to adventure myself with the other languages while continuing studying Russian. Considering I already know several languages to a degree, I'd only focus on one Slavic language to take it to intermediate level. As to the others, I'd be fine with being able to understand well and be able to speak them reactively.
If ended up studying more languages my order would be more or less Russian, Polish, Croatian, Czech, Macedonian and Slovak. If my levels were B1+ in two of them, A2 in another 2, and A1 in the last two, at this point, I'd expose myself to authentic content in almost every Slavic language to at least become a great Slavic ear.
AWESOME plan
Very good video, thank you!
Thanks 🙏
Como sempre, os seus vídeos são super detalhados e interessantes. Gostei da abordagem de quais línguas traria maior ”custo-benefício”. Mas por esse prisma qual seria o melhor grupo para começar ?
Romance...
At 5:54 you put the "Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks” painting by Ukrainian-born russian painter Ilya Repin. It portrays Cossacks (Ukrainians) writing to their Turkish (by other less accepted theory to russian) enemy. While this picture is shown in your video you are saying something along the lines "300 years of russian ruling over Ukraine". If I wasn't familiar with the matter would assume that it's some russian troops who are depicted there. Might be a little misleading
But overall I loved your video 🤝
Thank you so much for pointing that out.
Козаки це українці
@@user-gw6mm3hh2y Я саме це й сказав
Ukraine has never existed.
@@alexbrown2401 right, right, but apart of that make sure not to eat dirt, buddy, ok?
I speak Russian fluently and I worked 6 years in a Polish company so I learned polish there. And im married to a Serbian woman and there have intermediate knowledge of Serbian, which is the perfect mix to understand all Slavs to at least 60-70%.
Fantastic!
Hey,
thank you for the very detailed analysis of the slavic languages and which ones to learn in order. Eventhough I am half Bulgarian I haven't found great motivation in studying it and rather opted for Russian since Bulgarian is a rather unique language and has a small amount of native speakers. Additionally I only need it very rarely. I generally have preferred learning the languages that have a very big amount of speakers (Chinese, Russian, French, Spanish) but maybe your video will help me to at least start studying the basics of Bulgarian as this would make my mother quite happy as well.
That's a great idea. Russian will help you a lot in improving your Bulgarian.
I'm from Belarus, born and raised in Minsk. But my native language is Russian. Of coarse I understand Belarusian. It's is learned here at schools as compulsory subject. But telling you the truth you can hardly meet any Belarusian on the streets speaking fluent Belarusian. The overwhelming majority speaks Russian in their daily life. I can easily understand Ukrainian and also understand a little bit of Polish.
I hope the Belarusian language can survive!
What's the difference between BelaRusian and Russian? I think the word Bela meant something because there used to be BelaSerbi and BelaChroatia - sorry have to go find the exact terms lol.
@@frostflower5555, Most likely "Bela" means "West" as it is known from the history that world sides were associated with colors sometimes, though there are still debates on this topic.
Есть мнение что когда варяги-викинги основывали Русь они плавали по системе рек и в каждом регионе Русси преобладали свой цвет красителей одежды, ну типа красная Русь чёрная Русь .
@@Ernest-cv3cuце маячня
So, I'm a native speaker of Russian and Ukrainian, regularly hearing Serbian, and as per this video, most easy for me was Slovak language. Should I learn more, if I already know English?)
Sure, why not learn most of the Slavic languages.
if we are talking about any circumstance(region) it's best to know english, french, russian, spanish, chinese and arabic. i already know russian and english so i have been learning french for more than a year. i also sometimes learn spanish and german, but french is my main goal, cuz it is widespread in every continent basicaly, like english, just with smaller numbers. it's also the most widespread romance language in europe and africa, french cinema and literature is very significant, france is one of the 3 great powers in europe along with russia and UK and since i live in europe it makes more sense to learn french than chinese, arabic or even spanish which has more importance in the americas than anywhere else. when i start learning non-european language, chinese would be my first choise even if it's the most difficult of the 6
This would be an awesome series!! :) please continue and do Germanic next and then bantu! :)
I plan to do that, and i also concentrate on more languages in Asia. Thanks for your support.
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.
How about learning a language for the sake of its cultural reach, the strength and variety of its literature, the influence of its musicians, the fascination of its history ? In that respect, of course, Russian comes clearly in the first place (as I used to say, Pushkin in spite of Putin). In the second position, I would say it’s between Czech and Polish, but I personally choose Czech. Maybe it’s just lack of knowledge on my part, but I think none of the South-Slavic languages have that kind of far-reaching cultural presence.
Certainly... cultural reach can be a primary motivating factor
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
Dobrý večer, pozdravujem Vás zo Slovenska! Ďakujem Vám za toto skvelé video. (Cheers from Slovakia Sir)
Thanks so much... 宜しくお願い致します
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.