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Interslavic Language

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Re: Interslavic Language

#131

Post by gpvos »

xixixao wrote: post #13
aasasd wrote: post #2

A sorta-weird thing about Slavic languages is, they evolved different meanings from the same roots—though related. So you constantly have your recognition of words misfiring. E.g. Old East Slavic ‘недѣлꙗ’ (‘nedělja’), meaning ‘Sunday’, somehow come to mean ‘a week’ with Russian ‘неделя’, while even close Belarusian and Ukrainian have ‘нядзеля’ and ‘неділя’ for Sunday, same with Bulgarian ‘неделя’ or Czech ‘neděle’.

Also for non-slavic speakers' interest: “ne” is No, and “dělat" is Work, so Sunday is literally the day of "Nowork".

So, in Russia they don't work at all during the week? This explains so much.

Re: Interslavic Language

#132

Post by emptyfile »

vbezhenar wrote: post #60
DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in practice, if one Slavic language comes close to serving as a lingua franca in Eastern Europe, isn't it Russian? If you're going to learn a second language in order to communicate with people, you're going to learn a language with a large existing community - English, Modern Standard Arabic, Standard Chinese (Mandarin), Russian, French (in West Africa), etc.

Russian is definitely way to go. Any slavic language is similar to Russian.

> Any slavic language is similar to Russian.

Nope.

Re: Interslavic Language

#133

Post by p1esk »

villedepommes wrote: post #105
tasogare wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm living in a foreign country and speak fluently 3 languages, and known a few things in a forth one. Deciding which language to use with which person is a taxing effort in itself, especially in a group setting. There is no such thing as "asshole-y thing" to use English because each communication setting is different. Sometime the most important thing is to be understood quickly, then using English if there is any f…

> There is no such thing as "asshole-y thing" to use English because each communication setting is different Exactly because each communication setting is different , in a number of them, switching to English unconditionally, which is what the parent was suggesting, is indeed an "asshole-y" thing to do. > Sometime the most important thing is to be understood quickly Isn't this exactly what I said, "Unless it's a lite…

It heavily depends on the goals of conversation, imo. If someone tells me he wants to practice his Russian, I have no problem with that. If I'm talking to a girl in a romantic setting, and she wants me to speak Russian to her, regardless of her understanding of it, sure. But if the goal is to actually exchange information, and their English is more suitable, then I don't see why they would be offended.

Also, there are a couple of nuances:

- sometimes people assume that if I'm Russian I always prefer speaking in Russian. I don't see why I shouldn't let them know when it is to the contrary.

- even if for some reason they want me to speak Russian when the goal of the conversation would be better served by using English, how should I speak to them? The way I normally speak to my Russian friends, or artificially slowing down my speech and choosing simple phrases? Which one is more offensive?

p.s. I see your point though (i.e. not appreciating the effort). I've heard it's common in some parts of France, where people don't want to you speak French if you don't speak it perfectly. Agreed on the "asshole'iness" of that :)

Re: Interslavic Language

#134

Post by ozzmotik »

andolanra wrote: post #57
ijzeren_jan wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a critical difference between Esperanto and Interslavic. Esperanto is meant for communication between Esperanto speakers. Interslavic, on the other hand, is meant to be understandable for Slavs who haven't actually learned it. In other words, the success of Interslavic cannot only be judged by the number of people who learnt it. Basically, one speaker is enough to serve an entire audience, one translator is…

The thing Interslavic is doing has also been tried before, but the illustrative example isn't Esperanto (which is an ad-hoc mixture of words taken arbitrarily from existing languages and put into a synthetic grammar) but rather Interlingua, which is a kind of streamlined Romance language. It too is more-or-less comprehensible by people who speak any Romance language, and was intended to be used in much the same way.…

i don't particularly speak any romance language, but that being said, i still more or less had a vague understanding of what was being said. granted, there was a period of my life where I studied several different world languages, back when I was obsessed with linguistics, and even though I don't speak really any of them with any fluency, it would seem that through osmosis i at least gained an appreciation of some fundamental etymological patterns across those languages

Re: Interslavic Language

#135

Post by ozzmotik »

lacampbell wrote: post #85
pvg wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least it's still in the ballpark! Compare with 'gift' or 'worry'.

TIL German 'gift' and English 'gift' are actually the same word! I had assumed it was a coincidence.

im pretty sure that Gift in German means poison, so i can't help but wonder what exactly you think an English gift is :^)

Re: Interslavic Language

#136

Post by aasasd »

ozzmotik wrote: post #135
lacampbell wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TIL German 'gift' and English 'gift' are actually the same word! I had assumed it was a coincidence.

im pretty sure that Gift in German means poison, so i can't help but wonder what exactly you think an English gift is :^)

Well, the word apparently has a bit unusual etymology:

> The word has been used as a euphemism for "poison" since Old High German, influenced by Late Latin dosis (“dose”), from Ancient Greek δόσις (dósis, “something given; dose of medicine”). The original meaning "gift" has disappeared in contemporary Standard German.

So yeah, the word is the same, it just became divorced from the former meaning.

Re: Interslavic Language

#137

Post by tom_mellior »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #114
dmurray wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

People are arguing against you because what you claim is not as obvious as you claim.

Re: Interslavic Language

#138

Post by yeellow »

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…

You could guess it from "gaworzyc" though. But I agree that knowing some Russian helps.

Re: Interslavic Language

#139

Post by henrikschroder »

tom_mellior wrote: post #124
gpvos wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would also cover the Scandinavian languages. I'd like it to include English as well, but not use any of the English-only Romance vocabulary; but there's a large chance that that would not result in anything that's useful for interacting with English-speakers. The grammar would be almost entirely based on German and Dutch with maybe one or two Scandinavianisms thrown in to make them feel a bit more at home, but for…

There are some attempts at Pan-Germanic listed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-Germanic_language Of the two that have their own Wikipedia pages linked from there (Tutonish and Folkspraak) I can just about understand almost all of the examples given, though they are very short and selection bias may be at play. Also I speak English, German, and Norwegian, so I guess I have an advantage over speakers of only one G…

> Especially when learning Norwegian I noticed that many words are obviously cognages with either German or English, but not both.

There's some extra hilarity there because it's not like all three Scandinavian languages have chosen the same cognates as each other. Swedish more often picked the German version of a word instead of the Old Norse that Norwegian and Danish picked.

"window" is "vindue" in da/no, but "fönster" in se, from "fenster" in ge.

"question" is "spørsmål" in da/no, but "fråga" in se, from "frage" in ge. (Oh look, English picked the French word here!)

There's probably examples of the opposite where Swedish picked the Old Norse word, and Danish or Norwegian picked something from German instead, but I can't think of any right now.

Re: Interslavic Language

#140

Post by ozzmotik »

aasasd wrote: post #136
ozzmotik wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

im pretty sure that Gift in German means poison, so i can't help but wonder what exactly you think an English gift is :^)

Well, the word apparently has a bit unusual etymology: > The word has been used as a euphemism for "poison" since Old High German, influenced by Late Latin dosis (“dose”), from Ancient Greek δόσις (dósis, “something given; dose of medicine”). The original meaning "gift" has disappeared in contemporary Standard German. So yeah, the word is the same, it just became divorced from the former meaning.

oh wow i was actually completely unaware of the etymological history of it, but after reading what you said i did some research and confirmed it for myself. thank you for sharing that with me, and for allowing me to turn an unknown unknown into a more productive form :^)
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