3 ms·
Hey wait - I know that Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian are very similar. But Macedonian is basically a dialect of Bulgarian and Slovenian has a much more complica
by memsom 3y ago
Hey wait - I know that Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian are very similar. But Macedonian is basically a dialect of Bulgarian and Slovenian has a much more complicated grammar than BCS, it still has the dual and stuff like that. Slovenian and Macedonian are definitely different languages. Most Slavic languages are actually still reasonably close anyway - if you have a little exposure you can at least get the gist. My wife is a native Polish speaker and grew up during communism so learned Russian in school. She can more or less understand Czech and Slovak (as they are both reasonably close to Polish), and also Russian and Ukrainian (including the more Western dialects like Lemko.) By extension, she has a pretty good grasp of the basics of the other Slavic languages. That doesn't make any of those languages a dialect of Polish though.
- OfSanguineFire 3y agoYes, BCMS and Slovenian and Macedonian/Bulgarian are generally regarded as different languages, but historically the region had dialect continuums and mutual intelligibility can go across those languages. The Torlak dialect of Serbian is so transitional to Bulgarian/Macedonian that it could fairly be called a dialect of the latter. Even outside that dialect, it's not at all unusual to see Macedonians and Serbs in general converse, each person speaking his own language. Similarly, the Croatian dialect spoken in the northwest of Croatia (which has become increasingly fashionable after independence) is transitional to Slovenian and there is greater mutual intelligibility than with standard Croatian.