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That's nearly the same as Russian. Are they mutually intelligible?
by forinti 6y ago
That's nearly the same as Russian. Are they mutually intelligible?
- jakupovic 6y agoSomewhat intelligible. If the Russian speaker is speaking slowly, one may get 20-30% of the meaning, from the Balkan side. If the people are really trying to communicate, they will probably just use English.
- bnt 6y agoBalkan person here: I can (mostly) understand anyone from Eastern Europe (Slovakia, Czechia, Russia) if they speak really slowly and use basic words and phrases.
- kspacewalk2 6y agoRussian is not a very phonetic language. However, unlike English, the mismatches are somewhat consistent, e.g. an adjective in masculine gender and accusative case ends with -ого (-ogo), which is pronounced (-avo/-ava), but at least it's always pronounced -avo/-ava.
- st1x7 6y agoNo. You'll likely be able to read if it's another Cyrillic language and you'll also pick up individual words. It's similar to an English speaker reading French - they won't understand the meaning but many of the words of latin origin will stand out.
- dmitriid 6y agoNot really. IANAL(inguist), but it sort looks like this: Russian has progressed/evolved more than many of the other Slavic languages (due to more speakers, being a part of an empire etc.). So there are significant differences between Russian and most other Slavic languages (even the closest ones, Ukranian and Belorussian). These differences are everywhere: in word forms, tenses, stress, pronunciation etc. Many other Slavic languages (especially Balkanian) retain a lot of forms, sounds, meanings that are archaic by Russian standards: anything from Bulgarian `ъ` sound which disappeared from Russian centuries ago, to words like `лепа` (beautiful) in Serbian which hasn't been used in Russian for over a century, to words like Polish `uroda` (beauty) which switched its meaning to mean "ugly" in Russian. And the list goes on: locative and vocative cases exist in Serbian, haven't existed in Russian for a long time; definiteness of Macedonian and Bulgarian hasn't existed in Russian for a long time, if ever; etc. etc. So all in all, other Slavic speakers have a higher chance and luck understanding Russian speakers, than Russian speakers other Slavik languages.
- d1sxeyes 6y agoYou're right about the evolution, although locative and vocative do still exist in Russian in some specific circumstances. Locative example: в саду (vs о саде) Vocative example: Маш, иди сюда
- amaccuish 6y agoМаш is a new invention, not related to the original vocative, like боже
- d1sxeyes 6y agoThat's true. But it is still a vocative form.
- dmitriid 6y agoTrue. IIRC, some linguists say that you can still find up to 15 cases in Russian, if you look carefully. They mostly remain in some specific situations and can't be properly split into fully-fledged cases. But they are still there :)
- dragandj 6y agoFunnily enough, for Serbian (Croatian etc.) speakers, Russian sounds very archaic, probably due to lots of Latin, Greek, and German loan words in Serbian.
- SomeoneFromCA 6y agoThe funniest word in Russian and Serbian is "ponos". Means diarrhea in Russian but, AFAIK honour in Serbian. And, Serbian for diarrhea is "proliv", which means "strait (as in Bering's strait)" in Russian. So funny.
- input_sh 6y agoIf you understand a little bit of any, you understand a little bit of both. That being said, Russian grammar is hard for a "Yugoslav" speaker, and people from here much rather learn English or German (or both, quite frequently) than Russian. I'd guestimate at least 10% speaks both English or German relatively fluently, and I personally don't know anyone from here that speaks Russian fluently.