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Slovianski-language that a Slav should be able to learn in 7 days

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Re: Slovianski-language that a Slav should be able to learn in 7 days

#41

Post by jan_g »

vidarh wrote: post #33
pavlov wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah. I didn't realize that Scandinavians already understand each other so well. I'm a Finn who studied mandatory 6 years of Swedish at school, yet I can't understand a word of Danish... I wish they would teach us something more useful than Finland's regional Swedish dialect and accent -- it only has a few hundred thousand native speakers, of whom 95% speak Finnish anyway :(

Regarding Danish, have you tried reading it? Spoken Danish can be pretty hard for Norwegians and Swedes too at times. There's a common expression in Norway that Danes speak as if they have a potato in their mouth - a lot of sounds in Norwegian (and Swedish) are a lot harder/sharper than in Danish.

Funny that you should mention a potato. I remember my late grandfather saying, that speaking english is like speaking german with hot potato in one's mouth. Btw. I'm neither english nor german, but slovene (living right next to Italian border).

Re: Slovianski-language that a Slav should be able to learn in 7 days

#42

Post by klaut »

jan_g wrote: post #41
vidarh wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding Danish, have you tried reading it? Spoken Danish can be pretty hard for Norwegians and Swedes too at times. There's a common expression in Norway that Danes speak as if they have a potato in their mouth - a lot of sounds in Norwegian (and Swedish) are a lot harder/sharper than in Danish.

Funny that you should mention a potato. I remember my late grandfather saying, that speaking english is like speaking german with hot potato in one's mouth. Btw. I'm neither english nor german, but slovene (living right next to Italian border).

Koper, maybe? :) i come from that city as well but now i live in UK

Re: Slovianski-language that a Slav should be able to learn in 7 days

#43

Post by lini »

andr wrote: post #3

I am Bulgarian and I find that very hard to read. Much harder than Russian or Serbian. Many of the phonemes could be simplified to be made more universal. It feels very influenced by Polish, though, so I'd probably be easier for Central Europe Slavic countries.

I am Bulgarian as well, and I had absolutely no trouble reading and understanding the passage on the home page. However, I also studied a bit of Russian when I was a kid. I was recently on a trip through Eastern Europe (Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria) and did not have much trouble communicating with people in these countries.

Re: Slovianski-language that a Slav should be able to learn in 7 days

#44

Post by malkia »

lini wrote: post #43
andr wrote: post #3

I am Bulgarian and I find that very hard to read. Much harder than Russian or Serbian. Many of the phonemes could be simplified to be made more universal. It feels very influenced by Polish, though, so I'd probably be easier for Central Europe Slavic countries.

I am Bulgarian as well, and I had absolutely no trouble reading and understanding the passage on the home page. However, I also studied a bit of Russian when I was a kid. I was recently on a trip through Eastern Europe (Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria) and did not have much trouble communicating with people in these countries.

I'm bulgarian too, and no problem reading (the third column - with the cyrillic text).

Re: Slovianski-language that a Slav should be able to learn in 7 days

#45

Post by malkia »

dchest wrote: post #6
andr wrote: post #3

I am Bulgarian and I find that very hard to read. Much harder than Russian or Serbian. Many of the phonemes could be simplified to be made more universal. It feels very influenced by Polish, though, so I'd probably be easier for Central Europe Slavic countries.

I'm Russian, and I can read and understand about 90% of their sample texts. It reminds me Serbian (though I don't know it or any other Slavic languages, and I've read more Serbian and Macedonian than any other Slavic language, so maybe there's a bias because of this). BTW, Bulgarian is harder to read for me than Serbian or Macedonian.

We have a lot of turkish/altaic, or just old bulgarian (before our tribe came to the Balkans) words. I'm no historian, and even they do not agree, so take my words with a grain of salt.

I have noticed that we have for a lot of things - two words, one slavanian - that russian/serbian/polish/etc would understand, and one turkish-like that arab would understand.

Re: Slovianski-language that a Slav should be able to learn in 7 days

#46

Post by jerf »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #40

I'm surprised that Klingon wasn't considered sufficient - it has been around since 1979.

Generally speaking, a language where every phrase contains the connotation "I am barely refraining you from killing you where you stand", excepting the phrases that flat-out contain "I am killing you where you stand", are not the best languages for international human peace and brotherhood.

Re: Slovianski-language that a Slav should be able to learn in 7 days

#48

Post by lmkg »

One of the values of Esperanto is as a learning tool for Western European languages--according to one study, students with 1yr Esperanto + 3yr French instruction speak better French than students with 4yr French instruction.

Since I am about to start learning Bulgarian, I am particularly interested to know if this language has similar properties with respect to Slavic languages. Obviously since it's only been around since 2006 there isn't a comparable 4-year study, but even anecdotal evidence would be appreciated.

Re: Slovianski-language that a Slav should be able to learn in 7 days

#49

Post by pavel_lishin »

idlewords wrote: post #35

Co do języka, to nie mam wiele do powiedzenia /bo przecież kieliszek wódki i każdy się doskonale porozumie/, ale cieszy mnie niezmiernie, że mamy tu tylu słowian...

My biggest problem with understanding some Slavic languages (I'm a native Russian speaker) is the fact that I'm not sure how some of these consonants and vowels are pronounced. j, ż, ę, etc.

Re: Slovianski-language that a Slav should be able to learn in 7 days

#50

Post by idlewords »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #49
idlewords wrote: post #35

Co do języka, to nie mam wiele do powiedzenia /bo przecież kieliszek wódki i każdy się doskonale porozumie/, ale cieszy mnie niezmiernie, że mamy tu tylu słowian...

My biggest problem with understanding some Slavic languages (I'm a native Russian speaker) is the fact that I'm not sure how some of these consonants and vowels are pronounced. j, ż, ę, etc.

I think only Vietnamese is more of a disaster than when it comes to shoehorning a language into the Latin script.

I used to have a script that Cyrillicized Polish, for the benefit of my Russian speaking friend, who found it made it possible to half-understand things.

This might help: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJI6JDAxUd4

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