171–180 of 255 posts
I think if you speak slowly any of the Slavic languages it will be understandable enough "from Prague to Vladivostok"
Why "x" instead of "z" in cz/sz/rz etc. sounds? It's not used by any Slavic languages AFAIK, some use z, some use ^ (and they used z in the past), others use cyrylic but nobody uses x for these. It's weird. Also w for szcz makes no sense. Use r for "ja" while you're at it :)
- ch (č) instead of cx
- sh (š) instead of sx
- zh (ž) instead of zx
- shch instead of wx
- kh instead of 'x' or 'ch' (kharkiv)
- j instead of gx or dž or dzh. It's already well established how to pronounce 'jamaica' worldwide
- y instead of the slavic j. There is no need for i and y to represent the same vowel
- ye instead of ě
- ty instead of ť
- dy instead of ď
- ny instead of ň
- rzh instead of řEarlier quoted context omitted.
> Russian just is not a great example of a Slavic language. i am not sure what you mean but russian is by far the biggest slavic language in terms of number of speakers. i also think it is the biggest in terms of number of litterary and academic works
Having no neighbor to the east helped with that a bit. From my west-slavic (Polish) perspective I can understand Czech, Slovakian (a bit harder) and Ukrainian semi-ok. But Russian is way, way harder (there are some similar words but most are alien to me). I didn't have chance to listen to south slavic languages so I don't know how similar they are to west slavic ones.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm only familiar with Russian, but "es" for "to be" feels weird too. And it's used where Russian would just omit it. Are there Slavic languages that are more liberal with it? And I feel like some form of Cyrillic would be much more natural both because of the available phonemes and because I believe most Slavic speakers would be more familiar with it than the Latin alphabet. As a non-native learner, I've always had…
> And I feel like some form of Cyrillic would be much more natural both because of the available phonemes and because I believe most Slavic speakers would be more familiar with it than the Latin alphabet. (South) Slavic speaker here. Cyrillic would not be much more natural, we haven't used Cyrillic in over 30 years. Latin would be something all of us Slavenes would be able to read.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
why not sh, ch and zh then?
In some slavic languages "sh" and "ch" already exist. In fact in Czech "ch" is considered a single letter
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having no neighbor to the east helped with that a bit. From my west-slavic (Polish) perspective I can understand Czech, Slovakian (a bit harder) and Ukrainian semi-ok. But Russian is way, way harder (there are some similar words but most are alien to me). I didn't have chance to listen to south slavic languages so I don't know how similar they are to west slavic ones.
All the Balkan Slavic languages also feel just like dialects. I could very easily converse in Polish throughout all Baltic countries. Along with the ones you mentioned. I find Ukrainian very difficult though. I'm not a native Polish speaker so I chalk it up to that.
If you mean Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian/Montenegrin - they are only recognized as languages for political reasons. They actually are a particularly rich continuum of dialects but it is impractical to recognize this because it would imply there should be one literary norm.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We had rather brutal monarchies in the West, too. Colonialism was not altruistic trip around the globe. Almost all former European monarchies, from England to Belgium, were authoritarian imperialistic countries.
Don't look so far the the west, you have an example of non authoritarian monarchies in central Europe (e.g. Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth where you had a second constitution in the world, just after the US one, a parliament).
Slovio uses -s suffix for plural which is completely weird in any slavic language, -i would be much more natural (ulcas, domis, glovis vs ulci, domi, glovi) and that is what another panslavic language interslavic/Medžuslovjansky uses (ulici, domi, glavi): http://steen.free.fr/interslavic/
I'm only familiar with Russian, but "es" for "to be" feels weird too. And it's used where Russian would just omit it. Are there Slavic languages that are more liberal with it? And I feel like some form of Cyrillic would be much more natural both because of the available phonemes and because I believe most Slavic speakers would be more familiar with it than the Latin alphabet. As a non-native learner, I've always had…
Also I do not believe that there can be a better choice than "es", because I suppose that in order to simplify the grammar they have removed the personal terminations from the verbs, in which case "est" of the 3rd person singular becomes "es", just the simple stem of the verb.
Also, even if their examples show an explicit "es", optionally omitting redundant words is a trivial rule to add to any language grammar.
It is likely that there are other aspects of the language that can be criticized, but these 3 points seem OK.
Interslavic is another similar project. They don't like Slovio too much: http://steen.free.fr/interslavic/index.html http://steen.free.fr/interslavic/faq.html#slovio
As a Pole, both languages are readable, but InterSlavic takes less effort and feels more natural. This FAQ matches my intuitions. That said, I would be curious how it works for other Slavic languages. Or, in other words, is it sort of equidistant or favors one language or the other? I mean, the FAQ claims that it is the easiest for Czechs and Slovaks (is it because of their geographical centrality and possibility tha…
This seems enough to allow me to understand effortlessly the examples that I see for both InterSlavic and Slovio.
However I would need to study them more in detail, to form an opinion about which is better.
At least they achieve the goal of easy understanding for someone familiar with Slavic languages.