In its written form Bulgarian is even more different than in its spoken form. I use Wikipedia as a reference for new languages that Wikipedia misses, like the 4 Croatian languages. http://www.izviestija.info/izviestija/, I was born in Canada to a Serbian family and speak Serbian so I am a good control as I was never formally educated in Serbian and its grammar. However, Chakavian magazines are published even today (Jembrigh 2014). In the 1500s, Kajkavian began to be developed in a standard literary form. Therefore I would go with 25%. some things in this article are heavily exaggerated. I just didnt realize that when you talked about learning the other language you were actually referring to the errors inherent in doing a non-virgin ears MI study, and not conflating language learning with mutual intelligibility. Nevertheless Ukrainian intelligibility of Russian is hard to calculate because presently there are few Ukrainians in Ukraine who do not speak Russian. 5%? Sledva da se otbelei, e tova delene e uslovno i imenata ne otrazjavat razlini ezici, a samo periodi v razvitieto na balgarskija ezik, za koito se otkrivat charakterni belezi. How come you have not done a post about 9/11 before Robert? non-Shtokavian dialects: Kajkavian, Chakavian and Torlakian) diverge more significantly from all four normative varieties. Czech completely and utterly incomprehensible. In Czech rep. Slovaks dont have to pass any language exams (the other foreigner do have to). Therefore . Belarussian is nonetheless a separate language from both Ukrainian and Russian. Writing in Chakavian started very early in the Middle Ages and began to slow down in the 1500s when writing in Kajkavian began to rise. Spanish and Catalan have a lexical similarity of 85%. If you take your 25 (supposedly from Novi Sad) and 90 from Nis, then we come to about 60 percent (from Serbian side). This is simply reality in Serbia today. Some islanders go even further than that and don`t consider themselves ethnic Croats. I would like to add an interesting fact Slovenian has very harsh dialects due to the historic separation of different regions. They exist, but not in such a degree to render them unintelligible. Ukrainians needs to make small preparation to become able for listening comprehension of Polish. Swarte will be awarded a PhD by the University of Groningen on 3 March. Ni Torlak uses a definite suffix, -ta/-to/-ti/-te/-ta (fem.sg/neu.sg/masc.pl/fem.pl/neu.pl), but less frequently than Macedonian does, and only in the nominative; it doesnt have a distance contrast as it does in standard Macedonian but it isnt even present in Serbian to begin with They have more in common than you might think! However, lexical similarity focuses on exclusively overlapping vocabulary to determine similarity between languages. . FluentU is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. .Interestingly, Ukrainians can understand the Russian language better than the Russians would understand the Ukrainian. Polish and Ukrainian have higher lexical similarity at 72%, and Ukrainian intelligibility of Polish is ~50%+. I think (as a native Serbian speaker from south eastern Belgrade) the main difference between Serbian and Macedonian is that Macedonian doesnt have cases and have definite articles as well. Lemko is spoken heavily in Poland, and it differs from Standard Rusyn in that it has a lot of Polish vocabulary, whereas Standard Rusyn has more influences from Hungarian and Romanian. The intelligibility of Serbo-Croatian and Macedonian is highly controversial, and intelligibility studies are in order. If the central varieties die out and only the varieties at both ends survive, they may then be reclassified as two languages, even though no actual language change has occurred during the time of the loss of the central varieties. Russian has 85% intelligibility of Rusyn, 74% of oral Belorussian and 85% of written Belorussian, 60% of Balachka, 50% of oral Ukrainian and 85% of written Ukrainian, 36% of oral Bulgarian and 80% of written Bulgarian, 38% of Polish, 30% of Slovak and oral Montenegrin and 50% of written Montenegrin, 12% of oral Serbo-Croatian, 25% of written Serbo-Croatian, and 10% of Czech. Mutual intelligibility mostly applies to the educated, standardized forms of these languages, not to the various sub-standard dialects. The truth is that a person can often understand other dialects, except his native one. There is as much Czech literature and media as Slovak literature and media in Slovakia, and many Slovaks study at Czech universities. Same question, how much Chakavian can your average Shtokavian speaker understand in percentage? General. slavic mutual newspaper There are numerous intelligibility tests out there that work very well, or you can just ask native speakers to give you a %, and most of the honest ones will tell you; in fact, they will often differentiate between oh that is our language, they speak the same language as us, for dialects and then no, that is not our language, that is different, and they do not speak our language for separate languages. If I tell them few sentences (phrases) in Boyko dialect, then Russians wont be able to understand at all. People observing conversation between Cieszyn Silesian and Upper Silesian report that they have a hard time understanding each other. Ekavian Chakavian has two branches Buzet and Northern Chakavian. Do you speak Ukrainian. Its spelling, however, is quite different from any of them. However, the Torlak Serbians can understand Macedonian well, as this is a Serbo-Croatian dialect transitional to both languages. Portuguese has varying degrees of mutual intelligibility with Spanish, Galician, French and Italian. It seems polish and bulgarian are the easiest for me to understand (save for bosnian, serbian, and crnogorski). As such, spoken Danish and Swedish normally have low mutual intelligibility,[2] but Swedes in the resund region (including Malm and Helsingborg), across a strait from the Danish capital Copenhagen, understand Danish somewhat better, largely due to the proximity of the region to Danish-speaking areas. 0%? America paid us to hand over al-Qaeda suspects Serbo-Croatian and Bulgarian have 10-15% oral intelligibility, however, there are Bulgarian dialects that are transitional with Torlak Serbian. Hello, the difference of course is completely arbitrary, but above 90%, most speakers regard their comprehension as full or say things like I understand it completely. Below 90%, it starts getting a lot more iffy, and down towards 80-85%, people start saying things like, I understand most of it but not all! and people start regarding the other tongue as possibly a separate language. 70%? Serbia is large and you should also ask Serbians in other regions. It is just a dialect in east Slovakia that westernd Slovaks (and Czechs) find harder to understand but it is not like they would not understand a word. French has a reasonable degree of lexical similarity with Italian,Sardinian, Romansh, Portuguese, Romanian and Spanish, making it partially mutually intelligible with these languages. Its a nasty drug, and I hear its addicting. Like rano i utro or kanapa dywan kawior. This gives rise to claims of Macedonians being able to understand Serbo-Croatian very well, however, much of this may be due to bilingual learning. My email is on the Contact page. She introduces her and her two friends from the Czech republic and Spain, Because she speaks very clearly and slowly, I understand everything between 0:25-0:32, but then she starts a fast flood of words and between 0:32-0:36 I basically hear only s. For example, British Sign Language (BSL) and American Sign Language (ASL) are quite different and mutually unintelligible, even though the hearing people of the United Kingdom and the United States share the same spoken language. There are distinct regional variations of Arabic. Menu. Macedonain and Serbo-Croatian being 25% inteligible is simply not true. 99% of people in Ukraine are bilinguals who essentially speak and learn both Russian and Ukrainian from birth (although depending on the region, ones prevailence over the other varies). Interesting when one considers that Ukrainians do not even consider Rusyn a real language. Have every heard of Dubrovnik dialect? I think the OP exagerated a bit. Around 80% comprehension, it gets hard to talk about complex or technical things. [2] As a consequence, spoken mutual intelligibility is not reciprocal. NATO EU. Bulgarian and Macedonian can understand each other to a great degree (65-80%) but not completely. Spanish is also partially mutually intelligible with Italian, Sardinian and French, with respective lexical similarities of 82%, 76% and 75%. Ukrainian and Belarusian are mutually intelligible and in general very close and have some common features like synthetical future, but Russian speakers (who know only Russian) only partially understand Ukrainian/Belarusian. [8], However, others have suggested that these objections are misguided, as they collapse different concepts of what constitutes a "language".[9]. It is not true at all that Ukrainian and Russian are mutually intelligible, as Russian only has 50% intelligibility of Ukrainian. Northern (Istrian and Kvarner) akavian is closer to kajkavian and Slovene then Southern akavian is ( I understand 95%+ n). Polish: Ukrainian and Belarusian (both partially; moreover, . Macedonian side, the situation is more complicated (i will explain later). This is the first time that this has been done using just . Nevertheless, although intelligibility with Slovenian is high, Kajkavian lacks full intelligibility with Slovenian. How this is measured varies, but mutual intelligibility and vocabulary overlap, and often play a role in these calculations. Thank you very much for this. A koine is currently under development. I cannot understand that much of kajkavski nor akavski, but I can understand more akavski than I can kajkavski. Polish lacks full intelligibility of Silesian, although this is controversial (see below). For majority of the Shtokavian speakers thats just another language: different grammar, vocabulary, pronunciations, even sounds (Kai has at least 9 vowels while Shto Croatian only 5 for example). Russian is also 85% mutually intelligible with Belarusian and Ukrainian in writing. Additionally, Norwegian assimilated a considerable amount of Danish vocabulary as well as traditional Danish expressions. The Bulgarian language is the earliest written record Slavic language. 2. Polish and Ukrainian have higher lexical similarity at 72%, and Ukrainian intelligibility of Polish is ~50%+. But akavian being archaic it has old slavic package. Now onto the discussion. True science would involve scientific intelligibility testing of Slavic language pairs. In addition, the Slobozhan dialects of Ukrainian and Russian such as (Slobozhan Ukrainian and Slobozhan Russian) spoken in Kantemirov (Voronezhskaya Oblast, Russia), and Kuban Russian or Balachka spoken in the Kuban area right over the eastern border of Ukraine are very close to each other. As soon as one gets even a very moderate amount of exposure, comprehension improves, even between such geographically distant languages as Polish and Serbian I remember staying in Montenegro and a Pole buying bread and a Montenegrin could still communicate with each other speaking at a slow-enough pace. Congratulations on a brilliant article! plenty of prepositions are used in a similar, if not identical, manner; to name an example, na is used in both Macedonian and Ni Torlak as a replacement for the Serbian genitive, in addition to its standard use as on(to) I guess this would not have worked for Macedonian and Slovene in the Yugoslav army. How is it possible if they speak the same language? Most of the Ukrainian speakers who do not speak Russian are in Canada at the moment. A Serbian native speaker felt that the percentages for South Slavic seemed to be accurate. Give me a figure in % for the Rusyn if you would. 0%. Croatian linguist. Pure Silesian appears to be a dying language. As a non-Ukrainian (as well as non-Polish) native speaker, I can understand Ukrainian through Polish more easily than Russian, even though I actually studied Russian formally, but never Ukrainian-:) . As a native of Ni, I can say that the Serbo-CroatianMacedonian figures might be roughly on-point. Pobrzajte in Serbian means (pourite) but I understand it because brzo means fast and prefix po also exists in Serbian, and the imperative form is the same. I am not saying this to slam Ukrainians, but just an observation. Ive not read em myself. Serbo-Croatian (Shtokavian) has 55% intelligibility of Macedonian (varies from 25-90%), 27% of Slovenian, 25% of Slovak, 20% of Ukrainian, 13% of oral Bulgarian and 25% of written Bulgarian, 10% of oral Russian and 22% of written Russian, 10% of Czech, and 5% of Polish. It is very strange when some words are not understood, although the communication is possible. 50% Chakavian has a low mutual intelligibility with either, in part due to its large number of loanwords from Venetian. Jen. About Slovak being two different unintelligible languages I highly doubt so. Slobozhan Russian is very close to Ukrainian, closer to Ukrainian than it is to Russian, and Slobozhan Ukrainian is very close to Russian, closer to Russian than to Ukrainian. I also worked in a resteraunt with lots of west and south slavs there and I have to say that Serbian and crotian has a lot of ilarities with Slovak. Woof woof! For instance, West Palesian is a transitional Belarussian dialect to Ukrainian. This implies that some of the high intelligibility between Slovak and Polish may be due to bilingual learning on the part of Slovaks. Also there have been some czecho-slovak shows in TV lately like Czecho-Slovak Idol or Talent with judges and competitors from both countries and I have never heard of anyone who would complain about not understanding. There are new scientific figures for Czech-Slovak, Czech-Serbo-Croatian and Czech-Bulgarian. Both me and her had a much easier time following the Rusyn dialects than standard Ukrainian (although they were by no means completely comprehensible). Russian is partially mutually intelligible with Ukrainian, Rusyn and Belarusian. If you think this website is valuable to you, please consider a contribution to support the continuation of the site. 8. Many Turkic languages are mutually intelligible to a higher or lower degree, but thorough empirical research is needed to establish the exact levels and patterns of mutual intelligibility between the languages of this linguistic family. So dominant, in fact, that parts of Ukraine and Belarus were significantly russified in a matter of a generation, even if not completely. In addition, a Net search was done of forums where speakers of Slavic languages were discussing how much of other Slavic languages they understand. However Serbian, Bosnian, and Croatian are not like Czech and Slovak. Croats say Macedonian is a complete mystery to them. For example, those who learn Ukrainian will eventually know 70% of Polish lexicon and a . If you choose to learn a language which is at least to some extent mutually intelligible to a language you already know . Greg, Kaikavian is dialect of Slovenian language. Jembrigh, Mario. Bulgarian is a pluricentric language it has several literary norms. Ukrainian is a lineal descendant of the colloquial language used in Kievan Rus (10th-13th century). Slovak-Czech MI tests out at 82% in studies, which seems about right. Or maybe you are just a gatekeeper. akavski has considerably more italian influence, due to many of the people there speaking italian (vicinity to italy) and the presence of istriot language and the former presence of dalmatian language. It uses shtokavian dialect but simultaniously italianized vocabulary,and it is very hard to be understood while speaking to a common Croatian speaker.Would that also be considered a separate language? Scientific intelligibility studies of Czech and Slovak have shown ~82% quite high but still low enough for them to be closely related separate languages and not dialects of one language. Bulharsk jazyk je plurocentrick jazyk m nkolik kninch norem. The main Turkologist I worked with on that chapter told me that he thought 90% was a good metric. When there, they have to pass a language test. Many Poles insist that Silesian is a Polish dialect, but this is based more on politics than reality. Torlakians are often said to speak Bulgarian, but this is not exactly the case. Chakavian has 82% intelligibility of Kajkavian. I can give you an example of how I can read Bulgarian: Russian 20 % spoken, 30 % written In contrast, there is often significant intelligibility between different Scandinavian languages, but as each of them has its own standard form, they are classified as separate languages. The intelligibility of Belarussian with both Ukrainian and Russian is a source of controversy. Most Croatian linguists recognized Kajkavian as a separate language. Civis Illustris. [1] Advanced speakers of a second language typically aim for intelligibility, especially in situations where they work in their second language and the necessity of being understood is high. It is sometimes used as an important criterion for distinguishing languages from dialects, although sociolinguistic factors are often also used. Spoken Slovenian is a surprise too its phonology has a significant German influence. December 2014. Some Poles say they find Silesian harder to understand than Belorussian or Slovak, which implies intelligibility of 20-25%. Its specific czech and many foreiner has problem spelling it. I also understand more of other Slavic languages then neotokavian speakers do. Serbo-Croatian intelligibility of Slovenian is 25-30%. Macedonian: 50-60 % And when islanders respond back in akavian they are puzzled: What? Czech has 82% intelligibility of Slovak (varies from 70-95%), 12% of Polish and 5% of Russian and Bulgarian. Vitebsk State University. In this case, another criteria I would also consider is how hard or easy it is for a Serb to start understanding Macedonian. Russian is actually a little further, but most Belarusian speakers are bilingual (Bel-Rus) and most Ukrainian . This comment is fantastic! . Routledge. They give you strict % figures, and it is pretty amazing. However, you do say later in the text that 12 Dec 2016 #221. I use Ethnologues list of languages and dialects, but extend it a bit. Once you learn Ukrainian, you can understand Polish, Czech, Belarusian, or other Slavic languages because they are quite similar. Belarussian has 80% intelligibility of Ukrainian and 55% of Polish. Many Ukrainian-speakers consider the language . I tested this on my wife by showing her news clips on Youtube. Borg, Albert J.; Azzopardi-Alexander, Marie (1997). Only nationalists and fanatics disagree. The main difference is in the ortography. I will also send you a copy so you can look over the Serbo-Croatian part and tell me if there are any errors. There is just a little problem to understand east Slovaks for Czechs from naywhere. Nice to meet you, Robert; Ill make sure to read more of your articles now! Salute from Czech republic. Slovak 50 % spoken, 70 % written Russian, Polish, Czech, and Ukrainian materials are available. uses the Cyrlic script, and a Banat norm, which uses the Latin script. Serbo-Croatian dialects in relation to Slovene, Macedonian, and Bulgarian: The non-standard vernacular dialects of Serbo-Croatian (i.e. adrian. Basically, you only hear a series of consonants with hardly recognizable vowels. Understanding the connection between mutually intelligible languages, can make it easier to learn an additional language. Dont let the past politics fool you. Russia Invades Ukraine pt XII. Molise Croatian is not intelligible with Standard Croatian. Good post, OP. If, for example, one language is related to another but has simplified its grammar, the speakers of the original language may understand the simplified language, but less vice versa. The Russian language in the Ukraine has been declining recently mostly because since independence, the authorities have striven to make the new Ukrainian as far away from Russian as possible by adopting the Kharkiv Standard adopted in 1927 and jettisoning the 1932 Standard which brought Ukrainian more in line with Russian. It should be noted that this division is conditional (actually: arbitrary) (and) names do not reflect the different languages, but only periods in the development of the Bulgarian language, which (have) detectable traits. This is simply not the case. Linguistic distance is the relative degree of difference between languages or dialects. For example the word najgolemata (the biggest) written in Serbian latin means najvea in Serbian, but I somehow know what golem/golema means, but when I hear this ta (definite article) in the end of the word, that sounds Macedonian to me more than golema, prefix naj (makes superlative form) is the same in Serbian.