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Interslavic Language

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Re: Interslavic Language

#111

Post by axegon »

cpursley wrote: post #87

Isn't Bulgarian a better candidate as it's simpler than Russian, for example (fewer cases, less gender-specific things).

Native Bulgarian here. Better candidate: yes. Good candidate: no. Yes, it is considerably simpler but it is also vastly different from the larger Slavic languages: I have friends from other Slavic countries and I've observed that Poles, Czechs, Slovaks and Ukrainians for instance have far less difficulties understanding each other than understanding me. I would assume it's the same story with Russian but I have almost 0 interaction with Russians. And even for me, it took me days in Poland to start picking up on words, phrases and sentences. Then again I can understand over 70% of Serbo-Croatian without even trying but again, those make up for a very small number of the total Slavic population.

Re: Interslavic Language

#112

Post by adrianN »

tomcooks wrote: post #110
adrianN wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Esperanto would have had a good chance of becoming a useful language had the League of Nations adopted it as its official language. However the French veto prevented this and essentially killed the movement.

There are a lot more problems with Esperanto than the French veto I believe

More than with the current defacto lingua franca, English?

Re: Interslavic Language

#113

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

hourislate wrote: post #99
DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, there's strong anti-Russian feeling in several countries, but Russian is still, by far, the Slavic language with the most second-language speakers. According to Ethnologue, there are more than 100 million Russian speakers outside of Russia. It is the primary language in Belarus and half of the Ukraine (and is known by most people in the country). Almost 7 million people in Poland know how to speak it.[1] English…

>but Russian is still, by far, the Slavic language with the most second-language speakers Only because Russia tried to destroy the language and culture of all the nations it occupied. They forced citizens of other countries to speak Russian and not their native languages. It is only the most spoken by older generations while the younger generations of other countries are being raised in their native language. Given e…

What a negative comment! The same could be said of English, which is the dominant international language because of British imperialism.

It's also, historically speaking, simply not true that Russia tried to wipe out the languages of the countries it occupied (also, liberated from the Nazis) after WWII. Russian was taught in school as a second language, but there wasn't any plan to wipe out the Polish language, for example.

Re: Interslavic Language

#114

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

dmurray wrote: post #80
DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, there's strong anti-Russian feeling in several countries, but Russian is still, by far, the Slavic language with the most second-language speakers. According to Ethnologue, there are more than 100 million Russian speakers outside of Russia. It is the primary language in Belarus and half of the Ukraine (and is known by most people in the country). Almost 7 million people in Poland know how to speak it.[1] English…

The second-language speakers skew old, though. People under 30 are much more likely to speak English or German. (Not trying to say that English should be the preferred lingua franca here, just that Russian doesn't have the headstart your statistics suggest).

We're talking about Slavic languages. I've said repeatedly that English is the international language, but if it comes down to Russian vs. a constructed Slavic language, Russian is obviously more attractive, given its existing speaker base and culture.

Re: Interslavic Language

#115

Post by rimliu »

jwr wrote: post #106
yeellow wrote: post #5

Very interesting. I've tried to read some texts and I could easily understand them (as a native Polish speaker). I wonder if it is as easy for other Slavic nationalities. If so, it could be a nice intermediary language, if only for written texts. Unfortunately I guess almost nobody would learn to write or speak it but it is still funny to have a passive ability to read and understand and I guess all Slavic languages…

I am a native Polish speaker as well, and I can understand the texts very well, but I think they might be more difficult for younger readers, who did not learn any Russian. It seems to me that Polish has drifted away from most other Slavic languages. As an example, without learning any Russian you have no chance to understand "govorju" which is like the Russian verb "govorit'", which is "mówić" in Polish. One thing I…

To anecdotally confirm this point: I am not a native Russian speaker, but I am fluent and Russian, and I am also very familiar with Polish (it's complicated). Those texts are very readable to me, so knowing Russian and Polish is likely to cover the widest base.

Re: Interslavic Language

#116

Post by [deleted] »

strenholme wrote: post #30

As someone who has followed the constructed language and international auxiliary language community for a couple of decades, and as someone with an undergraduate degree in linguistics, I do not see a constructed language catching on with the mainstream public any time soon. A constructed language is a language that someone sits down and creates; this is different from a natural language which just forms as people com…

[deleted]

Re: Interslavic Language

#117

Post by michalu »

A friend once told me that you need to know 3 slavic languages to understand all of them very well. I learned that to be true from my own experience.

If you're born in a slavic country, learning second and third slavic language can be a matter of few months.

Perhaps, the value such language comes in that it could be designed to cut this process down to simply learning one additional language.

The point is, you don't need another language to speak with other slavs. Most slavs can understand each other you just need put effort into it.

Such language can perhaps broaden your ability to understand each other while speaking your native slavic language, instead of being a replacement language for all.

That's where it could work in my opinion.

Re: Interslavic Language

#118

Post by Jataman606 »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #113
hourislate wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but Russian is still, by far, the Slavic language with the most second-language speakers Only because Russia tried to destroy the language and culture of all the nations it occupied. They forced citizens of other countries to speak Russian and not their native languages. It is only the most spoken by older generations while the younger generations of other countries are being raised in their native language. Given e…

What a negative comment! The same could be said of English, which is the dominant international language because of British imperialism. It's also, historically speaking, simply not true that Russia tried to wipe out the languages of the countries it occupied (also, liberated from the Nazis) after WWII. Russian was taught in school as a second language, but there wasn't any plan to wipe out the Polish language, for e…

[flagged]

Re: Interslavic Language

#119

Post by antocv »

strenholme wrote: post #30

As someone who has followed the constructed language and international auxiliary language community for a couple of decades, and as someone with an undergraduate degree in linguistics, I do not see a constructed language catching on with the mainstream public any time soon. A constructed language is a language that someone sits down and creates; this is different from a natural language which just forms as people com…

> As someone who has followed the constructed language and international auxiliary language community for a couple of decades, and as someone with an undergraduate degree in linguistics, I do not see a constructed language catching on with the mainstream public any time soon.

But strenholme, all official national languages are constructed. Someone sat down and constructed that language.

Re: Interslavic Language

#120

Post by henrikschroder »

gpvos wrote: post #8

Interesting! I have been thinking about a similar "average Germanic" language, but I don't really have enough linguistics background to pull that off yet. Also, I have very roughly compared the Slavic languages to see which one I could learn to be able to communicate with people of most Slavic languages[0] and decided that Slovak was the most "average" language so I am planning to learn that. Too bad there's no Slova…

What would that Germanic language cover? German, Dutch, Flemish? That's it, right? English is out, because that's half French, and the Scandinavian languages have drifted too far from German to be even half-assed mutually intelligible, no?
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