I understood every single clip he showed with equal clarity. Yes I didn't understand a single word. Every one of the languages he showed sounds like Russian to me.
I am a Spaniard and I could speak in Russian with a Serbian guy who was speaking in Serbian ..... but we both were a bit drunk.... in that situation one can speak any language.
@@meduzsazsa8490 when the Soviet Union disappeared, many emigrants came to Spain, in my village there was a bar, the owner was Lithuanian and it was the place where people from the east used to go, the frank language there was Russian, the bar was placed close to my house, I used to go there to have a coffee or in the nights to have a beer or to have dinner, I found I love some dishes from Lithuania. A couple of years later I was able to speak Russian enough to have a casual bar conversion in Russian.
Alcohol increases understandence many times! So I were speaking with a drunk Germanian for a long time using the only phrases: "I don't understand" and "Ich verstanden nicht". And we both were looking like two old chums if to see from the side 😅
I am from Hungary. I am almost native in Bulgarian, my paternal ancestors were gardeners from Bulgaria. I studied in Russian school. I understand 95 % of Macedonian, 70 % of Belarussian, 60 % of Serbian-Croatian-Bosnian -Montenegrian and Ukranian, 50 % of Slovenian, 30 % of Czech and Slovak, 20 % of Polish. Understanding in writing is better, for example written Ukranian is easier for me than spoken, same with Polish.
Wherever I go, people ask me the same question: what was it like growing up Chinese? And I always answer, Growing up Chinese was very weird for me, because no one around me was Chinese, and neither was I.
@@polyglotdreams ja som si po pozretí videa o podobnosti slovinčiny, slovenčiny a chorvátštiny myslel, že ste (asi) zo Slovinska. To bolo ale moje prvé video od Vás a keď ste svoj pôvod v tomto videu vysvetlili, bol som tiež prekvapený. Super videá, vďaka!
@@polyglotdreams You should know that Kajkavian is actually a dialect of Slovene language and not of Croatian language despite what Croat nationalist claim.
This is so unique, that you can do the whole review including all the Slavic languages. Salute! I really admire how knowledgeable and understanding you are in Linguistic. 🙏
I like this style of videos very much. I only had some russiant school and vistided Poland and Chechoslovakia (Tschechosslowakei) as a kid. But I always liked the sound of the languages. Maybe I go bavk to russian and the cyrillic script tonot lose everything completely
@@undekagon2264Radio Garden allows you to listen to any station in the world and save favorites list If you've not played Russian on Clozemaster now might be the time. Amazon Russian flash cards Word scrambles word searches crosswords
Man you're a legend :) I still think that the easiest language to learn for an alien (from ground up not knowing any) would be Macedonian No gramatical cases No pronunciation exceptions No "Slavonic" or silent letters (except maybe Dz and Dzh) 3 genders yes, but distinguished by a noun's last letter
This is the first "Slavic languages" video I've seen where Slovak is talked about more than Czech, almost always its the other way around. We Slovaks often get overlooked, or confused for Slovenians.
słowacki jest najbardziej bliski prasłowiańskiemu bardziej niż polski , polski miał wpływ kulturowy na białoruski i ukraiński dlatego dość duża ilość wspólnych słów . Jjak byłem w Słowenii to młodzi ludzie nie rozumieli jak mówiłem po chorwacku/serbsku ale jako Polak ich mowa była dla mnie podobna do słowackiej :) . Nie jestem znawcą ale to nie przypadek że Słowacja jest mylona z Słowenią , może były późniejsze migracje? Mieszkańcy okolic Krakowa w Polsce dawniej byli nazywani Chorwatami gdyż była wtórna migracja z Chorwacji .
As a Polish native speaker, it always amazes me that I find Slovak much more intelligible than Czech even if these two languages are so similar to one another.
@@Emeel---X Większy wpływ ma tutaj też to, że słowacki ma podobniejszą do polskiego morfologię. Odmiany przez przypadki rzeczowników i odmiany czasowników przez osoby są o wiele podobniejsze między polskim i słowackim niż polskim i czeskim.
For some reason being a person who speaks serbocroatian as mother tongue, Slovak seems to be easier to understand more than almost any other Slavic language
I came back 2 weeks ago from Poland, I loved it, though I learned some words before heading there, I wanted to see which slavic language is worth it and I won't lie: I will keep learning Polish, the difficulty is what makes it fun in my opinion, thanks for explaining the slavic languages, greetings from México :)
Muy bien, amigo. Yo soy polaco y aprendo tu idioma. Aunque no siempre es fácil- me encanta. Que disfrutes también tu aventura con mi lengua. Saludos desde Polonia 🇵🇱
A curio: Slavic nasal vowels was common in proto-Slavic and round (“bulgarian”) glagolic script has got characters for them. Nowadays they only exist in polish.
Of course, you don't. You know ow nothing about Bulgarian as demonstrated in this video, except for Yugoslav proganda. This is not serious scholarship about Alavic languages. You know nothing about Glagolitc and Cyrillic. Your level is worse than Wikipedia @@polyglotdreams
@@RositsaPetrovarjp7 He didn't say he knew anything about Bulgarian though, did he? But yeah, he spent more time talking about a minor Polish dialect, spoken by 100k people and then all he said about Bulgarian was that it does not have cases and that it's a good stepping stone if you want to learn Macedonian or something like that. I guess it's not really that offensive but it's strange. Especially if he is really interested in Slavic languages as a whole as he claims.
@karczameczka The Glagolitic script was not exactly Bulgarian. It was created by the Byzantians Cyril and Methodius initially for a state called Great Moravia. It wasn't adopted in Moravia because of the Roman church opposing the influence from Constantinople. That's why Western Slavic countries use the Latin alphabet. The actual alphabet created in Bulgaria was the one that followed the Glagolitic and yes, it's the Cyrilic alphabet.
I really love this kind of content. I enjoyed every minute. I lern polish and felt in love with Slavic languages. Would love the see more like this, cause I am absolutely interested in language science.
Thank you so much. More is yet to come. Did you watch the video about the East Asian cultural sphere concerning Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, and Korean?
Controversial... Both of these languages have many different difficulties. Russian has lots of exceptions and so on... As a russian speaker, I can say Russian is very difficult even for native speakers :)
@@antons6545hahah I may be wrong.As a polish I had russian at school.So guess I cant be objective.I think that nations with non slavic languages know better which one is easier.🙂
@@antons6545 it depends on what the speakers native language is to begin with. i speak both polish and russian fluently since i was a child and i always found russian harder because i didnt use the same alphabet often however i think alot of people would find polish grammar much harder.
As someone from Bosnia I can confirm that Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian are all just different official names/standards for the same language. They are a product of not just modern nationalism, but also historical divisions. Afterall, we don't have any single unifying name for the language, only the local country names. Interestingly, most of us just say "naš" (which means "our (language)") when we're referring to our language in everyday life, and especially when we're meeting someone from "our" countries in a foreign land like Germany where many of us emigrate to.
@@ICXCTSARSLAVY well, there is a problem that if people from ex-Yugoslavia agree that the language is the same, there are a great multitude of people from one particular nation that then openly say that language is their own and since it's the same throughout the language proves that all those different nations (both historically, culturally and religiously) are of their nation, thus all these lands are also of their nation, and call the others apostates of their nation... Were it not for that problem, it would be easier for the others to not be too nationalistic and irrational ;)
Imagine if for some reason the was a conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina and as a result Herzegovina will become independent. What will they call their language? Herzegovinian? Ahah 😂
@@gamermapper we had a Monty Python type of comedians from Sarajevo (Top Lista Nadrealista - TLN) that did a sketch in the late '80's where they presented 6 mutually unintelligible languages, being: Serbian Croatian Bosnian Herzegovinian Montean (Gorski) Negrian (Crnski) and joked about having simultaneous translators for people to communicate :D th-cam.com/video/DztrX5dXmxU/w-d-xo.html
I’m a native speaker of Polish and I have to say that the easiest way to understand other Slavic languages is to learn a very interesting artificial language called Interslavic - at least for native Slavs, not sure if it would work with non-Slavic speakers. I’m not very good at understanding other Slavic languages or even the varieties native to Poland such as Kaszubian or Silesian but experiencing the Interslavic speech was a mind-blowing experience. Picture this: I’m on holidays in Croatia and some dude comes up to me and wants to sell me a cruise or something. I’m not interested so I tell him to leave me (in English because I find it easier lol). Instead of leaving me be this guy asks me where do I come from, and immediately starts speaking a weird mixture of Russian, Croatian, Polish, probably Czech and I don’t know what else! And I understood 99% of what he said! I was able to understand all the details about the cruise, prices, discounts, places it visits, time schedule, the boarding point, whether lunch was included, what else was provided- without actually knowing most of the languages this Interslavic speech was based on. Needless to say I was so amazed by this experience that I bought what he was selling just to thank him for the opportunity to learn about this interlinguistic project :D I think we Slavs should get to know that Interslavic thing, it helps a lot with communication:)
@@polyglotdreams - maybe produce a video on your take on Interslavic? while the idea sounds great, and some of the decisions, I find it highly confusing, including what _is_ really interslavic nowadays ? It seems like the concept keeps changing...? Is it now - really in the core - Church-Slavonic - with extending the vocabulary - by using shared slavic vocabulary? I speak Polish and Russian, and have studied some Bulgarian and some Serbian. I can indeed communicate with any Slavic speaker if both sides are interested in communication; but how to really approach InterSlavic?
@@kobikaicalev175 Interslavic should be taught in all majority Slavic countries. The problem with Slavic nationalities is they can be chauvinistic. While it's easy for someone who speaks one Slavic language to learn another, politics usually get in the way. For example, Russians think other Slavs should learn Russian because Russians are the most numerous of the Slavs. Other Slavs view this attitude as Russian attempts at dominance. Interslavic facilitates communication among Slavic national groups without anyone feeling bullied or exploited.
Hello Tim, I really enjoyed searching this video. I started with Russian many years ago but didn't get to a very high level. Since then, I studied Croatian and then studied Polish. I found Polish and Russian the most useful for me as I worked in a shop where there were lots of Polish and Lithuanian people. Polish is my best Slavic language because of my exposure to it. I then went on to learn some Ukrainian in 2022. I found it relatively easy because of my Polish and Russian. Now, I just started learning Czech as I'm going to the Polyglot Gathering in Prague in May Hope to see you there. Thanks for the great video. and for your passion for languages.
As the famous Croatian writer Predrag Matvejević once said, "The Serbo-Croatian language is the language that Croats call 'Croatian' and Serbs call 'Serbian'." Fantastic overview, sir!
In general, the Russian language is more connected with the languages of the South Slavs, since the Church Slavonic language came from them and we have many words with two spellings, for example the word Град And Город
Correct. Russian evolved as mainly a written imperial language, which had one of its principal origins in the religious texts written in Churchslavonic (which in turn had its origin in old Bulgarian/Macedonian). This is why any Russian who was never exposed to Bulgarian language, will understand some 95-99% if given a Bulgarian book to read, but much less than 50% if listened to spoken Bulgarian. Try it out, it's an interesting and funny exercise.
@@eugenecrabs8622not true. As a russian speaker i have to learn bulgarian to understand it, and it has different grammar more similar to english in some aspects. Most words share common roots, so you can guess the meaning in a lot of words but still nowhere enough to understand 95%. Also, many words have simialr sounds but different meaning. I found other slavic languages more similar in terms of grammar for sure
Thank you very much. I'm Bulgarian and have learned Russian at school (it was compulsory back then). I have wondered what other Slavic language it would be useful to know and thanks to your video I have chosen Polish 😊 I admire how brave you are to jump in this quite political and sensitive topic.
Thank you for choosing Polish 😀 In Poland we were forced to learn Russian at schools too. It's never a good thing to be forced to do something even if it's something as important as foreign language. Luckily I still remember most of Cyrillic alphabet 😀
I had exactly this intuition: that speak one of the three languages of each sub-group, you could perfectly communicate with every Slavic-speaking folks (at least, have simple conversations). Myself, speaking ok Russian and rather broken Serbian/Montenegrin, I could already grasp some words in Polish conversations or newspaper and I could communicate with Bulgarians when I was in Sofia last summer. This video encouraged me to start Polish. It's kinda far on my lanuages waiting list so I'll have to be patient... But I'll do it for sure one day! Hvala puno/spassiba/merci!
Polish is a bunch of amaziness! Totally cute and adorable language full of surprises. If you're a native slav speaker, you'll sooner or later come to the point where you start understanding your own language the way better than before only by learining Polish.
@@polyglotdreams By the way Slavs and Slavic is political term invented by Katerina the Great for russian empire expansion 250 years ago, just so you know.
15:45 not 550.000 (spoken), the text correctly says 50.000. Other German sources count as little as 20.000 to 30.000 speakers. Upper Sorbian (in southeast Saxony, is closer to Czech) is "endangered of extinction". Lower Sorbian (closer to Polish, located further north, in south Brandenburg) is considered a "seriously endangered of extinction" language because it is only spoken in very few families by the middle and younger generations.
7:19 One thing to note is that the country name is Belarus and the language name is Belarusian (with one s) but not “Bela-russian”. This is important because otherwise it sounds as another version of russian, which is not the case. From historical perspective and language genesis, Belarusian is a successor of Rusian [roosian] (called after the medieval state of Rus’) just as Ukrainian. I’m sure that author knows all of these facts. And many thanks for explaining the history of Ukrainian language for the English-speaking audience.
No, you don't need to take it too seriously. This distinction is by and large a forced nationalistic shibboleth. Don't waste your time on these and thanks for the terrific video!
@@michaelyaroslavtsev2444 Nonsense!--The Kremlin purposefully tries to BLUR the two DIFFERENT words--Rus' (roosh) and RuZZian in order to linguistically and culturally genocide the Belarus'ian and Ukrainian people by pretending that Muscovy (which changed its name in 1721 to "Rossiya" is heir to ancient Rus' (Ukraine and Belarus'). Belarus' is Belarus' NOT Belarussian!
@@polyglotdreams The Kremlin purposefully tries to BLUR the two DIFFERENT words--Rus' (roosh) and RuZZian in order to linguistically and culturally genocide the Belarus'ian and Ukrainian people by pretending that Muscovy (which changed its name in 1721 to "Rossiya" is heir to ancient Rus' (Ukraine and Belarus'). Belarus' is Belarus' NOT Belarussian!
Omg, giving a list of the most spoken/applicable language of each branch of the family tree is so helpful, thank you :) this is what I’ve been trying to figure out
I'm an American who first learned Russian close to fluent, then learned Polish to an intermediate level. Now I'm living in Montenegro for a few months and thinking about starting to learn Serbian, hence why I'm watching videos like yours. Good to know we're on the same page as to which Slavic languages to learn and in which order. haha
As a Bulgarian I understand 99% Russian but it’s difficult to speak, because of all the cases, I can’t remember which case to apply at which time. But is very easy to understand. The words are practically the same… BG „човек”, - Ru „человек”, БГ “хляб” - Ру “хлеб” Бг “небе” - Ру “небо”…
I am russian, learning bulgarian now, and I want to thank you for removing cases, otherwise it would be impossible 😅. Cases is something you learn with mother's milk. They are extremely hard to learn for adults even if you have them in your native language
@@serged5689 I believe that the Bulgarian language lost the cases during Roman occupation so it is probably to Rome that you should direct your thanks!
I am a Polish native speaker who has been studying Russian dance childhood. I might say this: when I listen to Ukrainian or Belarussian I quite a lot from the conversation. The między knowledge of Polish and Russian helps a lot. I know both, the Cyrilic and Roman alphabets and this helps me with written Bułgaria n or Croatian 😊 Thanks to Cyrilic alphabet I can even read signs in Geek 😊
Ahoj, Hi - thank you for very usefull video on slav languages. What is the name of "nazi" movie? when you talked about difficulty of Polish - where Grzegorz tells hism name to officers :D Děkuji.
Hey dude, you sound like the perfect target audience for Interslavic. It's a constructed, semi-naturalistic language meant to be intelligible to any Slavic speaker and contains features and vocabulary from West, East and South Slavic branches, as well as being etymologically conservative and phonologically "middle-ground" when it comes to the living Slavic languages. As for the BCMS language - that's one funny situation. Politically they're considered the same language, but in reality it's the Shtokavian, Chakavian and Kajkavian dialects that are different from each other - much more so than those national "languages", all of which are based on Shtokavian. For that reason I just use the term "shtokavian language" when I talk about BCMS.
English is better understandable for me as Czech than some interslavic. Problem with interslavic is that you still need at least some experiences with other slavic languages, for example it uses DA for yes and you just have to know it's yes in other slavic languages, there are many similar examples. I can kind of understand it, but it's very uncomfortable to read it and sometimes it needs some time to get it. The best interslavic in these days is just English. 😀
@@SaturnineXTS Ok, but you are growing up surrounded by English, kids born after like 2010 already speak English maybe even better than their native langauges. I am not saying it's literally a good thing for your culture, but it will make communication in the future definitely easier.
True. Croatian 3 different dialects are more different that one of the dialects (shtokavian) from the rest of BSM. The shtokavian became the main dialect during the 19th century when it got codified as the main language, and one of the reasons then was purely political, in order to get a southern interslavic language as it was different also from Serbian at the time.
I learned Russian and Czech, and found that while they help me understand some Polish, it is still hard to follow. Surprisingly, Czech helped me understand a lot of Slovene (besides Slovak, obviously). As you said, the South Slavic languages are otherwise a big blank for me, and I always wondered which to learn. You and me being around the same age, I like the idea of Serbo-Croatian from the old-timer textbooks we grew up with. You've convinced me that should be the best choice. Great video!
It makes sense that Czech helps you understand Slovene if you look at history. Apparently Slovene has gone through the least changes in the last few centuries and before the hungarians settled where thery currently liver the Czech and Slovene lands were connected by slavic speakers
Slovene has a lot more shared history with czechoslovakian language than with most of other south Slavic language until fairly recently. It is fairly fragmented in terms of number of dialects, to the point where several are hardly mutually intelligible, when spoken in a really archaic/traditional way, presumably because of our geography and varied neighbouring influences through the centuries. Considering that the first slovene-speaking country (carantania) encompassed a big part of modern day Austria and even some Hungary, historical Czech-Slovak-Slovene dialect continuum is pretty understandable.
Its about 'practice' and exposure - if you learn Czech&Russian as non-native speaker, then if you are exposed to Polish only ocasionally, obviously you would understand little. .... ....But it would be very different after a month just watching Polish TV one or two hours a day.... after a while you would start to decode 'similar but different' stuff you and that allows you to decode spoken language/sentences as a whole (speaking is something completely different of course). I have similar experience with Ukrainian ...as a native speaker of Czech, I learned Russian ..... and after the start of the war I started to watch stuff in Ukrainian on youtube ...... at first i did understand little, but after few hours of listening to UA, many things started to 'click' (these patterns of 'similar but different' compared to either to russian or czech) and I now basically understand everything in Ukrainian when I watch a video
After studying Czech and Polish, I realized that these languages have a lot of false friends. Mám jístotu že nevíš co znamená "pevnost". A classical example is "Szukam dzieci w sklepie." Gramatically they are quite similar though.
Polish may have more native speakers, but Slovak is truly a central and kind of more neutral basis for Western Slavic languages. Is also an inroad to Serbian, Croatian, etc. Of all, Slovak gives the learner a basis to break into nearly all Slavic languages.
@@polyglotdreams You are right, but basically all Kashubian or Silesian speakers use Polish as second language (adding this lovely melody of Kashubian or Silesian to non-melodical Polish)
In Ukraine we do have vocative - кличний відмінок as 7th case. I won't refer to someone by just друг, подруга, мама, тато, жрець etc., but will call by друже, подруго, мамо, тату, жерче. The vocative used to be delited by russian and replaced just by nominative. But after restoring the independence we restores the vocatice. ☺️
Excellent, I just spoke about this subject with two polish people today, and they guessed it would be Russian. After that, they thought maybe Polish, but they couldn't think of a third one.
I speak all of those 3 languages and I say personally that it is true, however with Bulgarian, I struggle. I would also struggle with Slovenian, but that is luckily not the case, as I speak Slovenian too.
What an amazing video! Very well explained, structured and with examples. This of course encourages me to keep learning languages, and now I know a proper sequence for understanding most of them. Claps!
As a Polish person raised in Silesia close to the Czech border, who apart from French, German and English in school learned by himself a bit of Russian and Ukrainian, who lives for 10 years in Bulgaria and speaks the language, I can say that I understand most of any written text in every Slavic language, but Slovenian :D It's somehow so different than the rest, sounds a bit like Czech with some balkan vocabulary. My suggestion of top 3? Russian, Serbocroatian, Slovak - because it's easier to learn than Polish, and Polish can be a fourth one. With these Bulgarian will be easy to learn, unless you didn't learn English before, because the gramar is more similar to it than to the rest of Slavic languages.
@@polyglotdreams Sorry, as a Slovak, I would agree with @Kajkes in this one. Polish uses extra awkward unnecessary letters somewhat similar to French, which distract from hearing the words or the message. They are harder to understand down south than the Slovaks are. Also, there are many Slovak villages spread out in Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia from 200-300 years and locals understand each other better, but there are no Polish villages there that I know. I also agree with some commenters that Slovenia is more different from other Slavic languages, having visited Ljubljana myself, and could not understand much.
@@Cyclonut96 Dude, we dont ask to be understand. Awkward? For me your language is awkward. .Our language is unique among other slavic ones plus we are the 2nd largest slavic nation and speakrs of language.
This was a very informative, interesting video! I have recently started learning Slovene due to an interest in music from there. It has been quite a challenge as my first Slavic language.
Your unique XPs much appreciated. Q) Which of the south slavic is the most closest to Russian in case I currently HAVE TO learn one of them before POSSIBLY learning Russian later in life. Q) And which one, (same as above) in the case I am a native English speaker ? Or is the answer the same for both. tyvm 🙏
Very nice overview. Just a minor note - native Slovak speaker would say "Čítal som knihu/čítala som knihu" with a slightly different word order and omitting the personal pronoun as the person is immediately obvious from the verb suffix. "Ja som čítal/čítala knihu" has a slightly different meaning putting an extra emphasis on the person rather than just declaring someone has read a book.
Zdravo! I was watching your other video on methods on learning languages and I wanted to ask you on this slavic page if you have a system to learn all the constantly changing endings of Slovene. I can speak english, german and cantonese, but apart from german and it's cases, none really help with the multitude of ending changes. Moj mož je slovenec and I can no longer understand our children which is spurring me on. Any tips appreciated!
Lots of people in my surrounding, who are native Ukrainian speakers, are actually dropping vocative case a lot in their speech. While it is present on paper, in the urban environment, where Russian was a dominant language until recently, Ukrainian variation was also influenced.
@@myhal-bavyt sure but still it is not completely lost as in Russian and Belarusian. Poles also occasionally seem to drop vocative forms in favor of nominative
@@valentinezaretsky4788 of course is not lost, but its usage varies on the place and the speaker. I believe it is very common in rural areas and less common in urban contexts. But things might change in the next years due to the Russian language fading out in Ukraine.
@@myhal-bavyt You might be misinterpreting Surzhyk with Ukrainian!---Ukrainian definitely HAS the vocative case--RuZZian does not--Surzhyk (mix) may or may not!
Nie jestem pewien, czy to był klip filmowy z polskiego serialu „Stawka Większa niż Życie”. Jeśli masz jakieś konkretne szczegóły dotyczące klipu, takie jak sceny czy postacie, które się w nim pojawiły, mogę spróbować pomóc w jego zidentyfikowaniu. O ile mi wiadomo, "Stawka Większa niż Życie" to kultowy polski serial telewizyjny z lat 60., który opowiada o przygodach polskiego szpiega Hansa Klossa podczas II wojny światowej.
People don't speak Ukrainian in most parts of the Ukraine too despite discriminatory practices of the regime against the Russian language. It's a bit like Irish in Ireland: people claim to know it, to love it even but with the exception of few symbolic phrases normally prefer to communicate in English.
@@xxxyyy8779what regime? I live in Ukraine (Dnipro, more like the eastern part) and you are talking nonsense. I hear Ukrainian everywhere. We all know it.
@@xxxyyy8779 totally wrong. people in Ukraine speaks ukrainian, like 75% ukrainian language everywhere in Ukraine. 98% Western Ukraine, 70% Eastern Ukraine.
This video's basis is exactly the question I've been pondering for a couple of years! As a sidenote, my first language was Polish. I can understand written Croatian relatively well, and one time I extensively used Croatian sources for a university paper! Prior to that, I had had zero previous exposure to it. Fun anecdote. :)
Serbo-Croatian is a large and diverse language. It has very different dialects. Some might be very different from one another, in fact even closer to Slovene than to standard Serbo-Croatian. They could be as different as Russian and Ukrainian. However the thing is that these dialects are not official languages. And the official languages of current Yugoslav states (BTW, I wish Yugoslavia was still existing) (Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, Montenegrin, what next, Herzegovinian? Metohijan? Dalmatian? 🤔) are actually all based on the same dialect, Štokavian, therefore it actually doesn't make sense to call these different languages. But if they actually did use a different dialect (like Kajkavian, Čakavian or Torlakian), it actually would. This is why, in my opinion, Macedonian and Bulgarian being separate langauges makes kinda more sense.
Not really. The example you are talking about is the most extreme one, and its Croatian spoken in the Zagorje region, which is only a very minuscule percentage of the population. All other regions speak the same language.
Bielarusian have two (or actually three) standards of writing: with both cyrylic and latin script. The third standard is more of a historical curiosity: its arabic alphabet. Yes, arabic alphabet was use to write Bielarusian language: by tatars living in Grodno region of Bielarus and Podlasie region of Poland.
It also has two literary standards, Taraškievica and Narkamaŭka. Fun fact, so does Ukrainian but seems like they've completely abandoned Skrypnykivka today.
@@gamermapper Parts of Skrypnikivka are slowly being reintroduced like using strong G in imported words instead of usual H, pronouncing words of greek origin with T instead of F for "TH", and using Ye Instead of E for latin loanwords where "je" is used there. And in general using direct phonological import instead of adaptation for local phonetic palette. Still, it's only visible on radio and on some tv channels (TET used to go all in on Skrypnikivka, but after few years gave up and only some parts got remained). Most of it sounds kinda ok, but some things like "proyekt" instead of "proekt" kinda irks my ears.
Totally agree with this video!! I've learned quite a bit of Serbo-Croat, CZ and Russian. Just some extra points from my side. On cases: Slovak and Slovene, I believe do not have Vocative. When it comes to BCSM, Kajkavian and Cajkavian are out of that standard, and are probably better classified as separate languages from BCSM. You will hear some Kajkavian and Cajkavian influence in local Croatian speech in many areas, kinda like you'll hear Bavarian hints or Koelsch hints in local Standard German. For language learning, I would take Slovak over PL, just because Slovak is easier, and nicer to hear, it would be good enough to understand PL, UKR, and even, with BCSM, Slovenian. CZ is tougher than SK. I was able to communicate with Bulgarians and Macedonians, just using Serbian, with Upper Sorbians, Slovaks and Poles, using CZ. A knowledge of RUS with some CZ/SK goes a long way to catch most of Ukrainian and Rusyn. Polish only really comes in handy enough in case you need to communicate in Belarus to back up the Russian. I just don't like the sound of Polish or it's writing, but hey, personal preferences, hehe. Unfortunately, Sorbian is dying, with probably only less than 50,000 speakers left. Although I speake German fluently, I would make it a point to speak CZ with Sorbian speakers so they could show its use to outside speakers! WOnderful video!!
Often, when selecting a language, the language selects you. Ex, if you have a Serbian partner, or a Polish girlfriend, get relocated to Bosnia--you take that as a start, and it will end up useful way beyond that.@@polyglotdreams
Positive on lack of vocative in Slovene. It might have existed historically and might show up in random isolated phrases, but generally it's neither taught neither used. I'm not sure about all dialects, though. As a Slovene I find it interesting, that aside from Kajkavian, which is really closely related to Slovene, I can understand Čakavian much better than Štokavian or Serbian, especially, once one gets used to various Slovene dialects. Although even Serbian is not that hard to understand with intermittent exposure - our generation (post YU) were still able to study from exclusively Serbian and English textbooks in uni in one class.
I'm a Croatian and I find all Slavic languages ugly to hear compared to Romanic languages and English, even though the vocabulary is very, very rich in literature. Many different words with same meaning. Expecially because many words in Croatian can be told slavic based and latin based. To me the most beautiful Croatian dialect is spoken in Dalmatia (čakavica, ikavica).
@@juranalinaric6007 I find Croatian-Serbian in all its dialects very melodious, yet clean and emphatic. Russian sounds very sweet. Czech, Slovak and Sorbian have a good rythm and are very clear. Polish, however, I don;t like the phonetics, very slushy and fast, and Bulgarian seems kinda flat and with many ambiguous vowels.
É muito gostoso ver sua paixão pelas linguas! Estou adorando seus vídeos e tem me animado para estudar mais. No momento estou tentando ficar proficiente em ingles, e aprender o básico do russo. E se eu continuar no gás, depois gostaria de saber alemão haha. Grande abraço do Brasil! E obrigado por compartilhar tanto conhecimento.
Muito obrigado pelo seu apoio e pelas palavras gentis! Fico extremamente feliz em saber que meus vídeos têm sido uma fonte de inspiração para você continuar seus estudos de línguas. Sua dedicação em aprimorar o inglês e começar a aprender russo é realmente admirável, e tenho certeza de que você também terá sucesso no alemão se mantiver essa paixão e determinação. Lembre-se, cada nova língua é uma nova janela para o mundo. Grande abraço e muito sucesso na sua jornada linguística! Continue assim e obrigado por fazer parte da nossa comunidade de entusiastas de línguas!
Also, there is no such thing as "Bosnian". The ethnicity that changed its name from Muslim (in terms to ethnicity) to Bosniak, (old term for someone from geographical region of Bosnia), so they should call it Bosniak, not Bosnian, and also this artificial term is rejected by the majority of population in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Christians, but this fake term is constantly repeated by westerners as if it was something real. As for what is called Serbo-Croatian in linguistics, its origins are clear to everyone that knows a bit of real history. Serbo-Croatian is a literary Serbian language made and standardised as literary language by Serbian linguist Vuk Karadžić, shtokavian dialect of Herzegovina and most of Serbia, and this standard Serbian language was adopted by some Austri-Hungarian citizens (Croatian original language and literary standard is chakavian, not shtokavian) as their own, which would soon become a source for many linguistic and ethnic machinations by Austria-Hungary, creating an issue between Croats and Serbs that never existed before. To see the term BCSM is really sickening, it just shows how the west is using false regional differences to divide us and make us look different, the false differences they themselves created and keep promoting.
Ovde stvarno nisu u pitanju nikakve emocije nego ozbiljno poznavanje istorijskih činjenica bez kojih je nemoguće istinski sagledati i razumeti temu kojom ste se bavili u ovom videu, koji je inače odličan. Osim što potvrđujem sve što je @Raznosac napisao, imam još par napomena za Vas. Ne znam da li ste na Vašim putovanjima imali prilike da primetite da u Srbiji svi podjednako koriste i azbučno (takozvano ćirilično) i latinično pismo. Rođena sam u Srbiji i srpski je moj maternji jezik, a sve primere jezika koji su u ovom videu mogla sam prilično dobro da razumem, naravno lakše je ako se sporije izgovaraju, a ako je zapisano to onda još dodatno olakšava i svejedno mi je da li je npr latinicom pisan Poljski tekst ili azbukom (ćirilicom ) Ruski ili Bugarski. Stranci uglavnom ne mogu da izgovore tri samoglasnika SRB zajedno pa ubacuju između vokale i tako od Srbi nastane reč Sorabi i to onda strancima deluje kao da su različiti pojmovi. Vaše interesovanje i ljubav prema tzv slovenskim jezicima je za poštovanje i zato Vam predlažem da ako imate želju da bolje razumete sličnosti, razlike, nastanak i sve u vezi grupe slovenskih jezika odvojite vreme i za proučavanje istorije svih krajeva koje naseljavaju narodi koji govore te jezike, a verujem da bi Vam bile veoma interesantne knjige profesora istorije koji se bavi arheolingvistikom - prof.Radovan Damjanović "Srpsko-srpski rečnik".
Well technically speaking , all the dialects in Bosnia , most of Serbia and most of Croatia are Shtokavian , so if anything the language can be called Shtokavian language. I said most of Serbia and most of Croatia as Serbia also has Torlakian dialects that gives way to Bulgarian language and Croatia has Kajkavian dialects that gives way to Slovenian Language 🎉❤
I’am a native macedonian speaker. I can understand 100 percent of serbo-croatian or bulgarian, and can speak the languages relatively good, which is not that surprising. What surprised me the most is how much I can understand russian (around 60 percent and that number rises if they talk slower) although I have never studied the language, nor I have been exposed to russian media, culture etc. I understand russian much better than slovene, even though macedonian and slovenian are in the same south slavic group, which makes no sense to me. Someone mentioned that it could be explained by the old church slavonic language… When it comes to the south slavic languages, it’s worth mentioning the Torlakian (shopski) dialect, which is a transitional form between serbo-croatian on one hand and macedonian-bulgarian on the other. It’s spoken mainly in south serbia, northeastern part of macedonia and northwest bulgaria. The relationship between the macedonian and bulgarian language is hot topic. I can say that they share very similar grammar and the difference is largely lexical and idiomatic. From my experience, I think that the bulgarian language is heavily influenced by the russian lexicon, and that is not surprising considering that they were part of the Eastern block for 50 years. Conversely, the macedonian language, as part of non-aligned and pro-west oriented Yugoslavia, has adopted a lot of German, French and English words. And for me, as a south slavic speaker, the toughest language, definitely is polish. I can’t understand almost anything, with the exception of the word K…A, but surprisingly the slovak language is much more intelligible to my south slavic ear
@@polyglotdreams As a Bulgarian native speaker from the South-Western part of Bulgaria I can confirm 100% what carli2302 wrote. I can understand 100% of the language(s) spoken on either side of Bulgarian-Macedonian border plus I understand about 85-90% of BCMS although I have never studied it. I've also noticed that speakers of BCMS have hard time understanding Bulgarian( unlike Bulgarians most of whom are able to understand BCMS ) which make me think that you are wrong about suggesting Learning BCMS as the language of South Slavic group in order to be able to understand all Slavic languages. I've learnt Russian for a short period of time as well. Not long enough to be able to learn to speak it grammatically correct ( I have absolutely no knowledge of how to use the cases properly ) but somehow I am able to communicate with Russian speakers without any problems. I've noticed that I can understand Belorussian quite well and I am able to understand about 65-70% of Ukrainian probably because of my very limited exposure to Slovak as well.( I used to work with some Slovaks about 20 years ago) . I can't speak any Slovak but I am somehow able to understand it both in oral and written form. Unlike Slovenian 🙂 which I can only understand in written form. The way vowel accents are used in Slovenian is so uncharacteristic for my years that my brain just shuts off. I am also able to understand to some extend both Polish and Czech but only in their written form. My brain is not willing to suffer the efforts of trying to understand sounds that come out of Polish speakers.
let me clarify for you - old church Slavonic language == old Bulgarian language. The modern Russian is based on it. So the influence is in different direction :)
@@valentinbitsinandmaxx8389 The fact that you can understand Serbians but they dont understand Bulgarian is maybe because major population of Bulgaria listen Serbian music :D
As a Croat, I can say its the same the other way, but I can't speak Macedonian because I've never been laerning it. For me it is definitely the most intelligible Slavic language. I guess it can be explained by heavy Serbian influence on Macedonian in Yugoslavia.
Although I don’t speak any Slavic language, as someone who’s interested in etymology, philology, culture, etc. I have a strong feeling that Ukrainian, and Belarusian are closer to Polish (West Slavic) than Russian (East Slavic) despite those (Belarusian and Ukrainain) are written in Cyrillic and culturally they are orthodox unlike the Polish are catholic. Therefore, categorically they can be in between or cross-categorized.
I speak both in Ukrainian and Russian. I think Ukrainian is closer to Polish more than to russian. Russian is similar to Bulgarian. The core of Russian is in church - Slavonic language that no longer exist but were made by Bulgarian/Macedonian priests to spread christianity.
I am Ukranian, and I confirm, your feeling are true. I was surprised when I heard Belarusian for a first time I understood everything - most of the lexicon is the same as Ukrainian, however Belarusian have a different pronunciation or accent. In fact when the presenter in this video switched on the Belorusian Tv, i first thought the lady was speaking Ukrainian😆, and then I started to wonder why her accent is different until I realised after a few seconds it was Belarusian. And when I first was in Poland I had such a dejauvea - like I was in Kyiv or Lviv, but the signs have Ukrainian words written in Latin letters. There is definitely way more difference between Ukrainian and Russian than Ukrainian and Belarusian / Polish
@@polyglotdreams Please don't follow the Geographic designations----better to look at Linguistic ones--Keep in mind that RuZZian is an invented non-native language--- the Finno-Ugrics of Muscovy and others were forced to learn this artificially created language because Peter thought that a great Empire should have its own unique language--so INSTEAD of choosing one of the many native languages within the Empire,--or even French which most of the ruling elite spoke, the decision was made to CREATE a NEW language based on Old Church Slavonic (which was common like Latin as a canonical language instead.
Apparently, it doesn't work with all Slavic languages, but most of the neighboring languages can be learned without any effort just by consuming the content. That's true. I am Ukrainian and I understand the Polish language very well, although I have never even studied it. Czech and Slovak are a little more difficult for me, because there is much less of it in our information field, but after watching a few videos I started to understand about 70 percent of what they say. With the Belarusian language, everything is generally so easy to understand that sometimes, if I hear a song in this language, I cannot immediately understand that it is foreign, because our languages, although different, have high mutual inteligibility, not like with russian.
That's a wonderful overview! I'm Polish. I agree with the top3 recommendations no doubt. Then I think Bulgarian and Czech seem equally worthy of the 4th spot (or you can alternate with Macedonian and Slovak respectively) as they give better coverage than Slovene, which mainly only applies to Slovenia and is the most "lonely" member of the Slavic family. But those are minor nit-picks of mine :D I know it's a somewhat different topic but I can't help but mention PJM (Polish Sign Language) which is a native language of the Deaf community in Poland. It has many similarities to sign languages in our neighboring countries. A user of PJM once explained to me how Ukrainian and Russian sign languages are different but share the same root so it's possible for the users to communicate some basic information(a fully-fledged conversation is much more difficult though). I find it really interesting how you don't actually need words to see the Slavic connection, our shared culture and tradition :)
Around 20 years ago I took Ukrainian as my language in college. I was the only non-Russian major in the class. The Russian majors took Ukrainian as it has more cases and learning Ukrainian grammar made them better in their Russian. I barely remember anything, but I keep thinking to add it to my learning time.
Who do you think has easier starter point to become a polyglot like. 1. Who knows English 2. Who knows Slavic language 3. Who knows Latin family language
As a Brazilian Portuguese native speaker, Spanish and Italian are the easiest languages to learn, then French. Catalan is not hard, but it takes effort to look up for content. For example, Catalan or Valencian youtube is very weak in terms of creators and viewers. There are few good resources to learn Neapolitan or Sicilian, and those are spoken and sung languages. They are not published, not used in movies and series(with a few recent exceptions), and not used in education. I am more of a polyreader than a polyglot. I have read several books in French and in Italian, as well as a few in Spanish, a couple of books in Catalán and a theater piece in Neapolitan. If you know Spanish or Portuguese, Italian, and French or Catalán, you'll understand to a good degree almost any little spoken Romance language, specially in its written form. There's the one exception though, which is Romanian. To understand Romanian, study Romanian, and that's what I've been doing lately. The good thing about Romanian is that it can be a good introduction to Slavic languages, in the sense that it contains hundreds of words of Slavic origin.
As a religious Jew who was raised in Ukraine, I speak Russian at home, I picked Ukrainian in the streets, I learned Hebrew, Aramaic (the language of the Talmud) and Yiddish in school and currently I’m writing a comment in English 😂. Because of this languages I’m able to understand written Polish, and quite well to understand Belarusian. When I was in Germany I realised that I can understand almost half of the written words, and people around me understood me quite well when I spoke to them in Yiddish, though when they spoke to me I couldn’t understand a word 😂. Also Hebrew and Aramaic are letting me to learn Arabic on duolingo easier, because they are all Semitic languages.
@@MLiv-bn4cl In the future, learning German will be a breeze for you, then Dutch, then Afrikaans...If you study Polish, then you get Czech almost for free and so on. If you were to study Romance languages, I'd suggest you French and Spanish.
At 5:54 you put the "Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks” painting by Ukrainian-born russian painter Ilya Repin. It portrays Cossacks (Ukrainians) writing to their Turkish (by other less accepted theory to russian) enemy. While this picture is shown in your video you are saying something along the lines "300 years of russian ruling over Ukraine". If I wasn't familiar with the matter would assume that it's some russian troops who are depicted there. Might be a little misleading But overall I loved your video 🤝
Thank you for mentioning Rusyn! And yes 26:18 - it indeed can help, as for Slovak and Rusyn is is even closer than Rusyn and Ukrainian (based on the number of speakers). It's because as you can see on the map at 7:47 most Rusyn speakers live in Slovakia and except of the state language (Slovak) speak the Prešov Rusyn variant, which is very different from the one spoken in Zakarpattyan Ukraine and even sometimes hard to understand, yet Prešov Rusyn is extremely close to the Lemko Rusyn that is a codified langauge in Poland and thus spoken by Polish Rusyns and lastly - Pannonian Rusyn spoken in Serbia was codified based on a Sotak eastern SLOVAK dialect). Ironically, people oftentimes just focus on Zakarpattyan Rusyn when mentioning Rusyn, yet except of not having a proper codification (because of the Ukrainian government not officially recognising Rusyns and Rusyn language as separate) it doesn't even have that big of an amount of speakers, compared to Prešov, Lemko or Pannonian variants - all of which have proper codifications and grammatical rules and syntactically differ quite lot from Ukrainian and even from the eastern Slavic language group. That being said, saying that 90% of Rusyn is similar to Ukrainian checks out maybe only for the Zakarpattyan variant/(dialect continuum?), which is not the best sample when talking about Rusyns. If you want to compare proper standardised variants of Rusyn, I recommend the lem.fm radio, which contains Prešov, Lemko and sometimes even Pannonian variants. And I really hope our fellow Zakarpattyan Carpatho-Rusyn brothers will be able to codify their variant very soon!
@@DIMA-q2o in that case Ukrainian is a dialect of Polish...or Russian...:) you can clearly see what harm national opression - saying that Ukrainian language is a dialect of XY and that Ukrainians are just a subethnos of XY - did to Ukrainian people, so stop being stuck up in past and respect others if you yourself want to be respected. All of the countries (Poland, Slovakia, USA, Canada, Hungary, Serbia...) where Carpatho-Rusyns live as a minority recognise Carpatho-Rusyn as a separate national identity and language...Ukraine is the ONLY exception. In addition, Carpatho-Rusyn language is protected by the European charter of minority languages...so I guess go whine to them that they are protecting a "dialect" and right after that proceed to complain about how Russians and Poles considered Ukrainian just as a dialect of their language...the hypocrisy is so strong :)
@@DIMA-q2o 💯% тут повно тупих коментів від людей, що звикли ділити слов'янські мови по географічному принципу, а не по їх розповсюдженню з огляду на історичні процеси розселення людей. Вони відносять Українську мову до східнослов'янської🤦, тому вважають, що русинська - не може бути діалектом української. Але як так виходить, що географічно західні лужицькі мови найбільш схожі саме на українську?! Русини - це етнонім жителів Київської Русі, допоки московія не захопила українські землі і імперська політика не нав'язала всім назву "малороси", ВСІ українці вважали себе русинами.
Great video. Born and raised in West Bulgaria with relatives in Macedonia (Skopje, Bitola) and Serbia (Pirot). Learned Russian at school 35 years ago. Recently tried to read беларуская мова (Belarusian language) and I am pretty positive about not only understanding the context, but some of the details. Not so much with Ukrainian, but still understanding the context. I do have troubles understanding and reading Polish. Reading Polish is a pain because of the different alphabet system they are using. However I am understanding the core of the text, not much when they are speaking. Especially if Polish is spoken in a fast way.
Смешно потому что я русскоговорящий беларус но пока украинский понимаю лучше чем белорусский. В основном наверное потому что в интернете гораздо больше контента на украинском, что в сериалах что в соц сетях, чем на белорусском. Но и на белорусском достаточно, хорошо что это не как какой-то кашубский или лужицкий на котором вообще почти ничего нету.
Summed suggestions: East: Russian West: Polish South: BCMS (Also, if anyone is wondering discussion of starting southern languages is at 19:30 though there is an earlier aside around 14-15)
Great video! I am Macedonian, I speak excellent Serbo-Croat, have learned some Slovenian, understand at least 60% of Bulgarian, speak also English and German... Choosing the next one - it will, most probably be Polish 🙂
My first slavic lagnauge I'm tackling is polish. I mostly know Spanish and Italian to conversational level and currently focusing on Hungarian, Portuguese and Polish. And I feel I want to tackle czech and ukranian after russian and polish because I feel I would visit those countries more often and it'll be more useful to me.
As a Serbian born in Croatia I am surprised that you didn't mention the biggest,,difference''between two and that is Croats speak ijekavicu and Serbs speak ekavicu...everything else is pretty much same.
There are Serbs who speak ijekavica and there are Croats who speak ekavica, also both ekavica and ijekavica are considered grammatically correct in standard Serbian.
As someone who first learned to speak using a dialect of South Serbia the Čital form in Slovakian is the same in Svrljisko Zaplanjski. Out of all the West Slavic languages I understand Slovak the most - Id say even more than any Eastern Slavic language as well. Na Kralove Holi, Stoji strom zeleni! :)
Pozdrav, Posto si ucio Srpsko-Hrvatski ili BCMS nadam se da nije problem sto pisem ovaj komentar na Srpskom. Ja iskreno govorimg Engleski jezik na visokom nivou tako da ako bude trebalo mogu se prebaciti na Engleski. Uglavnom hteo bih te pitati, da li imas neke planove da napravis video o Interslovenskom "Interslavic Language" Jeziku?
Hvala ti na predlogu o pravljenju videa o interslovenskom jeziku. Trenutno nemam konkretnih planova po tom pitanju, ali ću svakako razmotriti tu ideju.
I'm here to solve this even better: LEARN INTERSLAVIC, a constructed language that all slavs can understand and is easier for learning than all of the national Slavic languages. I'm not slav but I am studying it, is a highly valuable language.
Amazing channel!このあいだ2019年いっしょにひこうきのってたですよね！Я захоплююся Вами! Bravo! I speak German, English, Polish and Japanese, but Polish seems very comfortable and familiar to me. Maybe because I was born in Lviv and my grandmother was Polish, I don't know.
No idea if anyone mentioned this yet, but Ukrainian does have the vocative case! Literary Standard Ukrainian requires it, and some spoken dialects still retain it completely. While the usage of vocative in spoken informal language is slowly fading away (mostly due to the influence of Russian), there are still situations when you would use it with people for your language to sound more natural. Hope this is at least somewhat interesting!
I am a native Polish speaker. I learnt Russian at school and then used this language a bit in conversation and reading. I confirm that I can understand other West and East Slavic languages. I don't see the Silesian as a separate language. I understand the political reasons why some Silesians claim it but if Silesian would be considered a separate language, we can also consider the Greater Polish dialect a separate language. But we know that it's not true.
Your book looks really interesting, but are there any plans for an audiobook version? I'm an L2 speaker of German and Spanish, and I'm currently studying Ukrainian, so I try and avoid books in english to make time for reading the other languages, but I do have a lot of listening time on my hands.
step 1. be born in a slavic country
Step 2 Learn Icelandic
@@FaizelMoosa-og3ylwhat? Why?
@@NehauonIceland has an enormous Slavic (mostly Polish) population
@@richardandersson7620
Do you mean Polish immigrants in Iceland?
I understood every single clip he showed with equal clarity. Yes I didn't understand a single word. Every one of the languages he showed sounds like Russian to me.
I am a Spaniard and I could speak in Russian with a Serbian guy who was speaking in Serbian ..... but we both were a bit drunk.... in that situation one can speak any language.
Lol divertido
So you understood russian and serbian? Whaat? 😂
@@meduzsazsa8490 when the Soviet Union disappeared, many emigrants came to Spain, in my village there was a bar, the owner was Lithuanian and it was the place where people from the east used to go, the frank language there was Russian, the bar was placed close to my house, I used to go there to have a coffee or in the nights to have a beer or to have dinner, I found I love some dishes from Lithuania. A couple of years later I was able to speak Russian enough to have a casual bar conversion in Russian.
Alcohol increases understandence many times! So I were speaking with a drunk Germanian for a long time using the only phrases: "I don't understand" and "Ich verstanden nicht". And we both were looking like two old chums if to see from the side 😅
@@joseamategarcia9276 Jolín, ¡qué bueno! Молодец!
I am from Hungary. I am almost native in Bulgarian, my paternal ancestors were gardeners from Bulgaria. I studied in Russian school. I understand 95 % of Macedonian, 70 % of Belarussian, 60 % of Serbian-Croatian-Bosnian -Montenegrian and Ukranian, 50 % of Slovenian, 30 % of Czech and Slovak, 20 % of Polish. Understanding in writing is better, for example written Ukranian is easier for me than spoken, same with Polish.
Excellent... BTW... I love Hungarian
Macedonian is just a Bulgarian dialect, so that's that.
KOSOVO JE SRBIJA!
@@standardoilofnewjersey4260 Albanian is not Slavic.
@@teodorivanov4558 OK. This is a political question. You can make any dialect a language, and any languages into dialects.
“I met many polish people among the way and they were very surprised to hear that I’m a Japanese citizen”
Also me, the viewer :0
宜しく
@@polyglotdreams😮😮😮
Wherever I go, people ask me the same question: what was it like growing up Chinese? And I always answer, Growing up Chinese was very weird for me, because no one around me was Chinese, and neither was I.
@@polyglotdreams ja som si po pozretí videa o podobnosti slovinčiny, slovenčiny a chorvátštiny myslel, že ste (asi) zo Slovinska. To bolo ale moje prvé video od Vás a keď ste svoj pôvod v tomto videu vysvetlili, bol som tiež prekvapený. Super videá, vďaka!
@@polyglotdreams You should know that Kajkavian is actually a dialect of Slovene language and not of Croatian language despite what Croat nationalist claim.
It’s great Tim that you’ve decided to start your channel, you’ve got some knowledge to share
Glad you think so!
Your passion really convinced me to watch this video until the end and it has inspired me to continue learning Polish!
Fantastic thanks for telling me
This is so unique, that you can do the whole review including all the Slavic languages. Salute! I really admire how knowledgeable and understanding you are in Linguistic. 🙏
Thanks so much... it feels wonderful to be appreciated 👏
I like this style of videos very much. I only had some russiant school and vistided Poland and Chechoslovakia (Tschechosslowakei) as a kid. But I always liked the sound of the languages. Maybe I go bavk to russian and the cyrillic script tonot lose everything completely
@@undekagon2264Radio Garden allows you to listen to any station in the world and save favorites list
If you've not played Russian on Clozemaster now might be the time.
Amazon Russian flash cards
Word scrambles word searches crosswords
@undekagon2264 all the best ... and thanks
Man you're a legend :)
I still think that the easiest language to learn for an alien (from ground up not knowing any) would be Macedonian
No gramatical cases
No pronunciation exceptions
No "Slavonic" or silent letters (except maybe Dz and Dzh)
3 genders yes, but distinguished by a noun's last letter
This is the first "Slavic languages" video I've seen where Slovak is talked about more than Czech, almost always its the other way around. We Slovaks often get overlooked, or confused for Slovenians.
Slovak is very special.
Polish here. I love Slovak language. It sounds beautiful. I've learned it for one year, so I'm not fluent or anything, but I love it. ❤
@@Marta_z_Dabrowy I am fond of Slovak too
słowacki jest najbardziej bliski prasłowiańskiemu bardziej niż polski , polski miał wpływ kulturowy na białoruski i ukraiński dlatego dość duża ilość wspólnych słów . Jjak byłem w Słowenii to młodzi ludzie nie rozumieli jak mówiłem po chorwacku/serbsku ale jako Polak ich mowa była dla mnie podobna do słowackiej :) . Nie jestem znawcą ale to nie przypadek że Słowacja jest mylona z Słowenią , może były późniejsze migracje? Mieszkańcy okolic Krakowa w Polsce dawniej byli nazywani Chorwatami gdyż była wtórna migracja z Chorwacji .
@@polyglotdreams Slovak it's just when Ukrainian tries speak czech.. :)
As a Polish native speaker, it always amazes me that I find Slovak much more intelligible than Czech even if these two languages are so similar to one another.
Czeski ma trudniejszą dla nas fonetykę, może pewien wpływ ma także "melodyka" czeskiego.
@@Emeel---X Większy wpływ ma tutaj też to, że słowacki ma podobniejszą do polskiego morfologię. Odmiany przez przypadki rzeczowników i odmiany czasowników przez osoby są o wiele podobniejsze między polskim i słowackim niż polskim i czeskim.
For some reason being a person who speaks serbocroatian as mother tongue, Slovak seems to be easier to understand more than almost any other Slavic language
That's true. For me (being Polish too) the easiest to understand have always been Slovak and Ukrainian (plus Russian which I learned at school).
Čeština je totiž víc ovlivněná Němčinou než Slovenský jazyk ;)
I came back 2 weeks ago from Poland, I loved it, though I learned some words before heading there, I wanted to see which slavic language is worth it and I won't lie: I will keep learning Polish, the difficulty is what makes it fun in my opinion, thanks for explaining the slavic languages, greetings from México :)
All the best to you on your new journey into Slavic languages
@@polyglotdreamshow much languages do you know fluently(to have a complex conversation)
Muy bien, amigo. Yo soy polaco y aprendo tu idioma. Aunque no siempre es fácil- me encanta. Que disfrutes también tu aventura con mi lengua. Saludos desde Polonia 🇵🇱
are you single?
A curio: Slavic nasal vowels was common in proto-Slavic and round (“bulgarian”) glagolic script has got characters for them. Nowadays they only exist in polish.
That's interesting... I didn't know that.
The oldest forms of Cyrillic script have these characters as well.
Of course, you don't. You know ow nothing about Bulgarian as demonstrated in this video, except for Yugoslav proganda. This is not serious scholarship about Alavic languages. You know nothing about Glagolitc and Cyrillic. Your level is worse than Wikipedia
@@polyglotdreams
@@RositsaPetrovarjp7
He didn't say he knew anything about Bulgarian though, did he? But yeah, he spent more time talking about a minor Polish dialect, spoken by 100k people and then all he said about Bulgarian was that it does not have cases and that it's a good stepping stone if you want to learn Macedonian or something like that. I guess it's not really that offensive but it's strange. Especially if he is really interested in Slavic languages as a whole as he claims.
@karczameczka
The Glagolitic script was not exactly Bulgarian. It was created by the Byzantians Cyril and Methodius initially for a state called Great Moravia. It wasn't adopted in Moravia because of the Roman church opposing the influence from Constantinople. That's why Western Slavic countries use the Latin alphabet. The actual alphabet created in Bulgaria was the one that followed the Glagolitic and yes, it's the Cyrilic alphabet.
I really love this kind of content. I enjoyed every minute. I lern polish and felt in love with Slavic languages. Would love the see more like this, cause I am absolutely interested in language science.
Thank you so much. More is yet to come. Did you watch the video about the East Asian cultural sphere concerning Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, and Korean?
As a Russian speaker which knows a little bit of Belarusian and Ukrainian actually Polish is really easy and I actually love Poles and their language
Fantastic.. I am very pleased to know that.
I feel russian is much easier than polish.I learn it without books.
Controversial... Both of these languages have many different difficulties. Russian has lots of exceptions and so on... As a russian speaker, I can say Russian is very difficult even for native speakers :)
@@antons6545hahah I may be wrong.As a polish I had russian at school.So guess I cant be objective.I think that nations with non slavic languages know better which one is easier.🙂
@@antons6545 it depends on what the speakers native language is to begin with. i speak both polish and russian fluently since i was a child and i always found russian harder because i didnt use the same alphabet often however i think alot of people would find polish grammar much harder.
As someone from Bosnia I can confirm that Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian are all just different official names/standards for the same language.
They are a product of not just modern nationalism, but also historical divisions. Afterall, we don't have any single unifying name for the language, only the local country names.
Interestingly, most of us just say "naš" (which means "our (language)") when we're referring to our language in everyday life, and especially when we're meeting someone from "our" countries in a foreign land like Germany where many of us emigrate to.
Thanks for pointing that out.
Thank you for your honesty about this. Most people from ex-Yugoslavia are too nationalistic and get too irrational about this topic.
@@ICXCTSARSLAVY well, there is a problem that if people from ex-Yugoslavia agree that the language is the same, there are a great multitude of people from one particular nation that then openly say that language is their own and since it's the same throughout the language proves that all those different nations (both historically, culturally and religiously) are of their nation, thus all these lands are also of their nation, and call the others apostates of their nation...
Were it not for that problem, it would be easier for the others to not be too nationalistic and irrational ;)
Imagine if for some reason the was a conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina and as a result Herzegovina will become independent. What will they call their language? Herzegovinian? Ahah 😂
@@gamermapper we had a Monty Python type of comedians from Sarajevo (Top Lista Nadrealista - TLN) that did a sketch in the late '80's where they presented 6 mutually unintelligible languages, being:
Serbian
Croatian
Bosnian
Herzegovinian
Montean (Gorski)
Negrian (Crnski)
and joked about having simultaneous translators for people to communicate :D
th-cam.com/video/DztrX5dXmxU/w-d-xo.html
I’m a native speaker of Polish and I have to say that the easiest way to understand other Slavic languages is to learn a very interesting artificial language called Interslavic - at least for native Slavs, not sure if it would work with non-Slavic speakers. I’m not very good at understanding other Slavic languages or even the varieties native to Poland such as Kaszubian or Silesian but experiencing the Interslavic speech was a mind-blowing experience. Picture this: I’m on holidays in Croatia and some dude comes up to me and wants to sell me a cruise or something. I’m not interested so I tell him to leave me (in English because I find it easier lol). Instead of leaving me be this guy asks me where do I come from, and immediately starts speaking a weird mixture of Russian, Croatian, Polish, probably Czech and I don’t know what else! And I understood 99% of what he said! I was able to understand all the details about the cruise, prices, discounts, places it visits, time schedule, the boarding point, whether lunch was included, what else was provided- without actually knowing most of the languages this Interslavic speech was based on. Needless to say I was so amazed by this experience that I bought what he was selling just to thank him for the opportunity to learn about this interlinguistic project :D I think we Slavs should get to know that Interslavic thing, it helps a lot with communication:)
Yes... Interslavic is very easy to understand... quite amazing 👏
The interesting question is: 'was the cruise worth it?' Czy rejs byl z tego wart, czy nie?
@@polyglotdreams - maybe produce a video on your take on Interslavic? while the idea sounds great, and some of the decisions, I find it highly confusing, including what _is_ really interslavic nowadays ? It seems like the concept keeps changing...? Is it now - really in the core - Church-Slavonic - with extending the vocabulary - by using shared slavic vocabulary?
I speak Polish and Russian, and have studied some Bulgarian and some Serbian. I can indeed communicate with any Slavic speaker if both sides are interested in communication; but how to really approach InterSlavic?
@@kobikaicalev175 Interslavic should be taught in all majority Slavic countries. The problem with Slavic nationalities is they can be chauvinistic. While it's easy for someone who speaks one Slavic language to learn another, politics usually get in the way. For example, Russians think other Slavs should learn Russian because Russians are the most numerous of the Slavs. Other Slavs view this attitude as Russian attempts at dominance. Interslavic facilitates communication among Slavic national groups without anyone feeling bullied or exploited.
Hello Tim, I really enjoyed searching this video.
I started with Russian many years ago but didn't get to a very high level. Since then, I studied Croatian and then studied Polish. I found Polish and Russian the most useful for me as I worked in a shop where there were lots of Polish and Lithuanian people. Polish is my best Slavic language because of my exposure to it.
I then went on to learn some Ukrainian in 2022. I found it relatively easy because of my Polish and Russian. Now, I just started learning Czech as I'm going to the Polyglot Gathering in Prague in May
Hope to see you there.
Thanks for the great video. and for your passion for languages.
Great... thanks I will see you there
As the famous Croatian writer Predrag Matvejević once said, "The Serbo-Croatian language is the language that Croats call 'Croatian' and Serbs call 'Serbian'."
Fantastic overview, sir!
THANKS SO MUCH
Šta preporučuješ od njega da se pročita? :)
Значит мне не показалось, что сербский и хорватский звучат одинаково. Интересно.
@@V3G4N01разлика је само у нагласку, остало је 99% исто. Разлике су више регионалне него етничке.
In general, the Russian language is more connected with the languages of the South Slavs, since the Church Slavonic language came from them and we have many words with two spellings, for example the word Град And Город
That is an interesting proposition.
Correct.
Russian evolved as mainly a written imperial language, which had one of its principal origins in the religious texts written in Churchslavonic (which in turn had its origin in old Bulgarian/Macedonian).
This is why any Russian who was never exposed to Bulgarian language, will understand some 95-99% if given a Bulgarian book to read, but much less than 50% if listened to spoken Bulgarian.
Try it out, it's an interesting and funny exercise.
@@eugenecrabs8622я как русский человек , могу подтвердить , если македонец , что то напишет , я это пойму , довольно легко 🙂
@@eugenecrabs8622not true. As a russian speaker i have to learn bulgarian to understand it, and it has different grammar more similar to english in some aspects. Most words share common roots, so you can guess the meaning in a lot of words but still nowhere enough to understand 95%. Also, many words have simialr sounds but different meaning. I found other slavic languages more similar in terms of grammar for sure
@@amnbvcxz8650 don't tell me that you cannot read a Bulgarian book without understanding 95% of it.
Thank you for a nice introduction to slavic languages. Lepo delo. Pozdrav iz Slovenije
Thank you for your comment. I just 💯 absolutely love Slovenia 🇸🇮
Thank you very much. I'm Bulgarian and have learned Russian at school (it was compulsory back then). I have wondered what other Slavic language it would be useful to know and thanks to your video I have chosen Polish 😊 I admire how brave you are to jump in this quite political and sensitive topic.
I am very pleased to know that ... thank you so much for sharing.
Thank you for choosing Polish 😀
In Poland we were forced to learn Russian at schools too.
It's never a good thing to be forced to do something even if it's something as important as foreign language.
Luckily I still remember most of Cyrillic alphabet 😀
and you picked the Hardest to learn from the entire globe xZ
A Wednesday child 😅
And today people are forced to learn English.
I had exactly this intuition: that speak one of the three languages of each sub-group, you could perfectly communicate with every Slavic-speaking folks (at least, have simple conversations). Myself, speaking ok Russian and rather broken Serbian/Montenegrin, I could already grasp some words in Polish conversations or newspaper and I could communicate with Bulgarians when I was in Sofia last summer.
This video encouraged me to start Polish. It's kinda far on my lanuages waiting list so I'll have to be patient... But I'll do it for sure one day!
Hvala puno/spassiba/merci!
Awesome... that is what I hope for... Slaves appreciating all the variations.
Polish is a bunch of amaziness! Totally cute and adorable language full of surprises. If you're a native slav speaker, you'll sooner or later come to the point where you start understanding your own language the way better than before only by learining Polish.
dziękuje, Ďakujem, Děkuji, Дякую
@@polyglotdreams By the way Slavs and Slavic is political term invented by Katerina the Great for russian empire expansion 250 years ago, just so you know.
*dziękuję
what a video man, fantastic
Much appreciated!
15:45 not 550.000 (spoken), the text correctly says 50.000. Other German sources count as little as 20.000 to 30.000 speakers. Upper Sorbian (in southeast Saxony, is closer to Czech) is "endangered of extinction". Lower Sorbian (closer to Polish, located further north, in south Brandenburg) is considered a "seriously endangered of extinction" language because it is only spoken in very few families by the middle and younger generations.
Thanks for the input.
Linguistically it doesn't make sense that not both are closer to Polish. May I ask where you found that information?
7:19 One thing to note is that the country name is Belarus and the language name is Belarusian (with one s) but not “Bela-russian”. This is important because otherwise it sounds as another version of russian, which is not the case. From historical perspective and language genesis, Belarusian is a successor of Rusian [roosian] (called after the medieval state of Rus’) just as Ukrainian.
I’m sure that author knows all of these facts. And many thanks for explaining the history of Ukrainian language for the English-speaking audience.
Yes... thanks. I know it was a typo
No, you don't need to take it too seriously. This distinction is by and large a forced nationalistic shibboleth. Don't waste your time on these and thanks for the terrific video!
@@michaelyaroslavtsev2444
Nonsense!--The Kremlin purposefully tries to BLUR the two DIFFERENT words--Rus' (roosh) and RuZZian in order to linguistically and culturally genocide the Belarus'ian and Ukrainian people by pretending that Muscovy (which changed its name in 1721 to "Rossiya" is heir to ancient Rus' (Ukraine and Belarus').
Belarus' is Belarus' NOT Belarussian!
@@polyglotdreams
The Kremlin purposefully tries to BLUR the two DIFFERENT words--Rus' (roosh) and RuZZian in order to linguistically and culturally genocide the Belarus'ian and Ukrainian people by pretending that Muscovy (which changed its name in 1721 to "Rossiya" is heir to ancient Rus' (Ukraine and Belarus').
Belarus' is Belarus' NOT Belarussian!
Современный русский, это не тот язык на которром говорили в Руси. Они кардинально отличаются.
Omg, giving a list of the most spoken/applicable language of each branch of the family tree is so helpful, thank you :) this is what I’ve been trying to figure out
You're so welcome!
I'm an American who first learned Russian close to fluent, then learned Polish to an intermediate level.
Now I'm living in Montenegro for a few months and thinking about starting to learn Serbian, hence why I'm watching videos like yours.
Good to know we're on the same page as to which Slavic languages to learn and in which order. haha
Exactly... all the best to you.
I sincerely happy to meet you and your channel. Appreciate so much!
As a Bulgarian I understand 99% Russian but it’s difficult to speak, because of all the cases, I can’t remember which case to apply at which time. But is very easy to understand. The words are practically the same…
BG „човек”, - Ru „человек”,
БГ “хляб” - Ру “хлеб”
Бг “небе” - Ру “небо”…
The cases are a big challenge.
I am russian, learning bulgarian now, and I want to thank you for removing cases, otherwise it would be impossible 😅. Cases is something you learn with mother's milk. They are extremely hard to learn for adults even if you have them in your native language
Because the language of moscowites is a dialect of old bulgarian
@@serged5689 I believe that the Bulgarian language lost the cases during Roman occupation so it is probably to Rome that you should direct your thanks!
@@michaelmckelvey5122Roman occupation!?!? Which centuries!?
After 1992. I suddenly became polyglot , who speaks three languages and all of them are my mother language. Sad and funny story, isn't it.
Yes... for sure
I was born a Slav, but I learned so many new things. Big thanks. It's very motivating
Fantastic video. This is the most in-depth and clear video I’ve seen on this. Thank you!
Glad you enjoyed it! Thanks so much for the appreciation ☺️
this video is full of anti-scientific lies, check the information🫤
@@polyglotdreams Najlepsze wideo o jezykach slowianskich jakie kiedykolwiek widzialem.
I am a Polish native speaker who has been studying Russian dance childhood. I might say this: when I listen to Ukrainian or Belarussian I quite a lot from the conversation. The między knowledge of Polish and Russian helps a lot. I know both, the Cyrilic and Roman alphabets and this helps me with written Bułgaria n or Croatian 😊 Thanks to Cyrilic alphabet I can even read signs in Geek 😊
That's awesome... fun isn't it
Интересно насколько сложно освоить русский поляку или наоборот. Насколько сложно вам было?
никаких проблем. просто хватит слушать радио "говорит Москва" 5-6 лет ежедневно
@@Nowherenear-w1d Поляку русский освоить гораздо легче, чем русскому польский.
@@supermind65536 Можете сравнить количество поляков освоивших русский, с количеством русских освоивших польский.
Ahoj, Hi - thank you for very usefull video on slav languages. What is the name of "nazi" movie? when you talked about difficulty of Polish - where Grzegorz tells hism name to officers :D
Děkuji.
Sorry, I can't recall the name at this moment.
The movie is titled "Jak rozpętałem drugą wojnę światową". It lasts almost 4 hours but it's worth watching.
Hey dude, you sound like the perfect target audience for Interslavic. It's a constructed, semi-naturalistic language meant to be intelligible to any Slavic speaker and contains features and vocabulary from West, East and South Slavic branches, as well as being etymologically conservative and phonologically "middle-ground" when it comes to the living Slavic languages.
As for the BCMS language - that's one funny situation. Politically they're considered the same language, but in reality it's the Shtokavian, Chakavian and Kajkavian dialects that are different from each other - much more so than those national "languages", all of which are based on Shtokavian. For that reason I just use the term "shtokavian language" when I talk about BCMS.
Yes... Interslavic is quite easy to understand for most Slavic speakers. Spot on about BCMS.
English is better understandable for me as Czech than some interslavic. Problem with interslavic is that you still need at least some experiences with other slavic languages, for example it uses DA for yes and you just have to know it's yes in other slavic languages, there are many similar examples. I can kind of understand it, but it's very uncomfortable to read it and sometimes it needs some time to get it. The best interslavic in these days is just English. 😀
@@Pidalin That's because you have studied English. Imagine understanding English in like 85% without ever having to learn it
@@SaturnineXTS Ok, but you are growing up surrounded by English, kids born after like 2010 already speak English maybe even better than their native langauges. I am not saying it's literally a good thing for your culture, but it will make communication in the future definitely easier.
True. Croatian 3 different dialects are more different that one of the dialects (shtokavian) from the rest of BSM. The shtokavian became the main dialect during the 19th century when it got codified as the main language, and one of the reasons then was purely political, in order to get a southern interslavic language as it was different also from Serbian at the time.
I learned Russian and Czech, and found that while they help me understand some Polish, it is still hard to follow. Surprisingly, Czech helped me understand a lot of Slovene (besides Slovak, obviously). As you said, the South Slavic languages are otherwise a big blank for me, and I always wondered which to learn. You and me being around the same age, I like the idea of Serbo-Croatian from the old-timer textbooks we grew up with. You've convinced me that should be the best choice. Great video!
Thank you so much for sharing your experiences. I have read that Slovak and Slovene have the same origin.
It makes sense that Czech helps you understand Slovene if you look at history. Apparently Slovene has gone through the least changes in the last few centuries and before the hungarians settled where thery currently liver the Czech and Slovene lands were connected by slavic speakers
Slovene has a lot more shared history with czechoslovakian language than with most of other south Slavic language until fairly recently. It is fairly fragmented in terms of number of dialects, to the point where several are hardly mutually intelligible, when spoken in a really archaic/traditional way, presumably because of our geography and varied neighbouring influences through the centuries.
Considering that the first slovene-speaking country (carantania) encompassed a big part of modern day Austria and even some Hungary, historical Czech-Slovak-Slovene dialect continuum is pretty understandable.
Its about 'practice' and exposure - if you learn Czech&Russian as non-native speaker, then if you are exposed to Polish only ocasionally, obviously you would understand little. ....
....But it would be very different after a month just watching Polish TV one or two hours a day.... after a while you would start to decode 'similar but different' stuff you and that allows you to decode spoken language/sentences as a whole (speaking is something completely different of course).
I have similar experience with Ukrainian ...as a native speaker of Czech, I learned Russian ..... and after the start of the war I started to watch stuff in Ukrainian on youtube ...... at first i did understand little, but after few hours of listening to UA, many things started to 'click' (these patterns of 'similar but different' compared to either to russian or czech) and I now basically understand everything in Ukrainian when I watch a video
After studying Czech and Polish, I realized that these languages have a lot of false friends. Mám jístotu že nevíš co znamená "pevnost". A classical example is "Szukam dzieci w sklepie." Gramatically they are quite similar though.
Bulgarian here. Thank you for this extensive information and very interesting video!
Mistake: Ukrainian has 7 cases and Slovenian 6 (vocative)
Thanks... I stand corrrected Клѝчний відмίнок
You could even argue that there are vestiges of vocative in Russian, too (see a video by Микитко Сын Алексеев).@@polyglotdreams
Years ago there was a joke about the new names in Croatian, like: овца = вълнодаен травоядник
Polish may have more native speakers, but Slovak is truly a central and kind of more neutral basis for Western Slavic languages. Is also an inroad to Serbian, Croatian, etc. Of all, Slovak gives the learner a basis to break into nearly all Slavic languages.
Pravda!!!
Jako Polak mogę się tylko z tobą zgodzić . Sądzę że Rosjanin szybciej zrozumie Słowaka niż Polaka.
I made a similar that comment about Slovak, but still Polish has many more speakers and helps you also with Kashubian, Silesian and Sorbian.
@@polyglotdreams You are right, but basically all Kashubian or Silesian speakers use Polish as second language (adding this lovely melody of Kashubian or Silesian to non-melodical Polish)
I used to work with a Croatian and he told me that his language was very close to Bulgarian.
What a fascinating video, thank you for sharing, I have really learnt something both new and valuable today.
I'm very pleased to know... thanks
In Ukraine we do have vocative - кличний відмінок as 7th case. I won't refer to someone by just друг, подруга, мама, тато, жрець etc., but will call by друже, подруго, мамо, тату, жерче. The vocative used to be delited by russian and replaced just by nominative. But after restoring the independence we restores the vocatice. ☺️
Interesting... thanks
Vocative is an amazing case-Serbian and Croatian have it. I think English has it when we call out to someone Oh Susan!
💯. Наприклад: Петрові, Павлові
@@ТимофійЛещенко wrong example: what you listed is a dative case.
@@eugenecrabs8622 yep.my mistake
As a Slav, I could tell you within the first 10 seconds of this video what those 3 languages would be!
The most popular) no more
Excellent, I just spoke about this subject with two polish people today, and they guessed it would be Russian. After that, they thought maybe Polish, but they couldn't think of a third one.
Clearly it had to be a south slavic language, and Serbo-Croatian has the most numbers and the most territory@@polyglotdreams
I speak all of those 3 languages and I say personally that it is true, however with Bulgarian, I struggle. I would also struggle with Slovenian, but that is luckily not the case, as I speak Slovenian too.
My first thought was that it would be Polish, Russian and Bulgarian. Serbo-Croatian as third would be my second thought.
What an amazing video! Very well explained, structured and with examples.
This of course encourages me to keep learning languages, and now I know a proper sequence for understanding most of them.
Claps!
Awesome, thanks for sharing.
As a Polish person raised in Silesia close to the Czech border, who apart from French, German and English in school learned by himself a bit of Russian and Ukrainian, who lives for 10 years in Bulgaria and speaks the language, I can say that I understand most of any written text in every Slavic language, but Slovenian :D It's somehow so different than the rest, sounds a bit like Czech with some balkan vocabulary.
My suggestion of top 3? Russian, Serbocroatian, Slovak - because it's easier to learn than Polish, and Polish can be a fourth one. With these Bulgarian will be easy to learn, unless you didn't learn English before, because the gramar is more similar to it than to the rest of Slavic languages.
I have to disagree because Polish is such a beautiful language ☺️
In my opinion, the Slovenian language sounds very similar to Latvian, of course not in the lexical sense, but in the way it sounds
Im am slovenian. We have like 5 strong dialects within our language in such a small country
@@polyglotdreams Sorry, as a Slovak, I would agree with @Kajkes in this one. Polish uses extra awkward unnecessary letters somewhat similar to French, which distract from hearing the words or the message. They are harder to understand down south than the Slovaks are. Also, there are many Slovak villages spread out in Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia from 200-300 years and locals understand each other better, but there are no Polish villages there that I know. I also agree with some commenters that Slovenia is more different from other Slavic languages, having visited Ljubljana myself, and could not understand much.
@@Cyclonut96 Dude, we dont ask to be understand. Awkward? For me your language is awkward. .Our language is unique among other slavic ones plus we are the 2nd largest slavic nation and speakrs of language.
This was a very informative, interesting video! I have recently started learning Slovene due to an interest in music from there. It has been quite a challenge as my first Slavic language.
That's great! Challenging at first.
Your unique XPs much appreciated.
Q) Which of the south slavic is the most closest to Russian in case I currently HAVE TO learn one of them before POSSIBLY learning Russian later in life.
Q) And which one, (same as above) in the case I am a native English speaker ? Or is the answer the same for both.
tyvm 🙏
Great video, just wanted to mention that unlike mentioned in 23:27, Ukrainian also has 7 grammatical cases, vocative exists too (Клична форма)
Yes.. thanks my mistake
And Slovenian doesn’t have vocative, so 6 cases only.
Neither Slovak has the vocative
Very nice overview. Just a minor note - native Slovak speaker would say "Čítal som knihu/čítala som knihu" with a slightly different word order and omitting the personal pronoun as the person is immediately obvious from the verb suffix.
"Ja som čítal/čítala knihu" has a slightly different meaning putting an extra emphasis on the person rather than just declaring someone has read a book.
Yes, thank you.
The same is the case in BCMS
It's the same in BCMS
Zdravo! I was watching your other video on methods on learning languages and I wanted to ask you on this slavic page if you have a system to learn all the constantly changing endings of Slovene. I can speak english, german and cantonese, but apart from german and it's cases, none really help with the multitude of ending changes. Moj mož je slovenec and I can no longer understand our children which is spurring me on. Any tips appreciated!
That is difficult... all I can say is look at the charts often and make example sentences using each one.
Small correction: Ukrainian and Rusyn didn’t lose vocative case and use it quite actively
Yes... my bad
Lots of people in my surrounding, who are native Ukrainian speakers, are actually dropping vocative case a lot in their speech. While it is present on paper, in the urban environment, where Russian was a dominant language until recently, Ukrainian variation was also influenced.
@@myhal-bavyt sure but still it is not completely lost as in Russian and Belarusian. Poles also occasionally seem to drop vocative forms in favor of nominative
@@valentinezaretsky4788 of course is not lost, but its usage varies on the place and the speaker. I believe it is very common in rural areas and less common in urban contexts. But things might change in the next years due to the Russian language fading out in Ukraine.
@@myhal-bavyt
You might be misinterpreting Surzhyk with Ukrainian!---Ukrainian definitely HAS the vocative case--RuZZian does not--Surzhyk (mix) may or may not!
I got the next one for you - Mezduslovjanski, this is owesome artificial project, this language is understandable for every slavic speaker.
Yes... I agree, but few people speak so you can learn it to help you understand all the Slavic languages.
Plz recommending apps for learning Slavic languages.
If you are interested in learning Slavic languages, I highly recommend Ling, my favorite app to learn and review languages.
ling-app.oneli...
Great video!
It manages to be succinct and informative.
Thanks so much!!!
Excellent video
Thank you very much!
Well man you speak so many languages. Respect for this. Thanks for this video and greetings from Bulgaria.
I appreciate that! Greetings from Japan.
Czy był to polski klip filmowy ze „Stawki Większej Niż Życie”?
Nie jestem pewien, czy to był klip filmowy z polskiego serialu „Stawka Większa niż Życie”. Jeśli masz jakieś konkretne szczegóły dotyczące klipu, takie jak sceny czy postacie, które się w nim pojawiły, mogę spróbować pomóc w jego zidentyfikowaniu. O ile mi wiadomo, "Stawka Większa niż Życie" to kultowy polski serial telewizyjny z lat 60., który opowiada o przygodach polskiego szpiega Hansa Klossa podczas II wojny światowej.
Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz jest z filmu "Jak rozpętałem II wojnę światową"
Carpatho-Rusyn speaker here. Nice to be featured in such a detailed video :D
Молодець, гарний говір
@@DIMA-q2o ого, маєш класний малороскій діалект вялікорускага
@@myhal-bavytтакого не існує😂
My pleasure 🙏
Great video, thank you!
Glad you liked it!
@@polyglotdreams ❤️ You have inspired me, after I had started out with Polish
Every Belarusian that I meet in Poland say that nobody speaks Belarusian in Belarus.
Sad...
People don't speak Ukrainian in most parts of the Ukraine too despite discriminatory practices of the regime against the Russian language. It's a bit like Irish in Ireland: people claim to know it, to love it even but with the exception of few symbolic phrases normally prefer to communicate in English.
@@xxxyyy8779what regime? I live in Ukraine (Dnipro, more like the eastern part) and you are talking nonsense. I hear Ukrainian everywhere. We all know it.
@@xxxyyy8779 what you are saying is nonsense. not sure you have ever been to Ukraine at all.
@@xxxyyy8779 totally wrong. people in Ukraine speaks ukrainian, like 75% ukrainian language everywhere in Ukraine. 98% Western Ukraine, 70% Eastern Ukraine.
This video's basis is exactly the question I've been pondering for a couple of years!
As a sidenote, my first language was Polish. I can understand written Croatian relatively well, and one time I extensively used Croatian sources for a university paper! Prior to that, I had had zero previous exposure to it. Fun anecdote. :)
Thank you so much for sharing that with me.
What a wonderful man and charismatic learner! It's a pleasure to listen to! ❤
Slovak is also known as the Esperanto of Slavic languages as it is well understood by all Slavs
For the most part, yes... but there is Interslavic.
@@polyglotdreams ,... except that Slovak is a living, official language, the interslavic is an academic one, in a textbook.
not a surprise, Slovakia is right in the middle geographicaly
That is not up to Slovak to say, but up to other Slavic language speakers.
Actually I know Russians and Poles whom I tested speaking Slovak and did not catch all that I said..
Serbo-Croatian is a large and diverse language. It has very different dialects. Some might be very different from one another, in fact even closer to Slovene than to standard Serbo-Croatian. They could be as different as Russian and Ukrainian. However the thing is that these dialects are not official languages. And the official languages of current Yugoslav states (BTW, I wish Yugoslavia was still existing) (Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, Montenegrin, what next, Herzegovinian? Metohijan? Dalmatian? 🤔) are actually all based on the same dialect, Štokavian, therefore it actually doesn't make sense to call these different languages. But if they actually did use a different dialect (like Kajkavian, Čakavian or Torlakian), it actually would. This is why, in my opinion, Macedonian and Bulgarian being separate langauges makes kinda more sense.
Not really. The example you are talking about is the most extreme one, and its Croatian spoken in the Zagorje region, which is only a very minuscule percentage of the population. All other regions speak the same language.
Dobrý večer, pozdravujem Vás zo Slovenska! Ďakujem Vám za toto skvelé video. (Cheers from Slovakia Sir)
Thanks so much... 宜しくお願い致します
Bielarusian have two (or actually three) standards of writing: with both cyrylic and latin script. The third standard is more of a historical curiosity: its arabic alphabet. Yes, arabic alphabet was use to write Bielarusian language: by tatars living in Grodno region of Bielarus and Podlasie region of Poland.
It also has two literary standards, Taraškievica and Narkamaŭka. Fun fact, so does Ukrainian but seems like they've completely abandoned Skrypnykivka today.
@@gamermapper Parts of Skrypnikivka are slowly being reintroduced like using strong G in imported words instead of usual H, pronouncing words of greek origin with T instead of F for "TH", and using Ye Instead of E for latin loanwords where "je" is used there. And in general using direct phonological import instead of adaptation for local phonetic palette.
Still, it's only visible on radio and on some tv channels (TET used to go all in on Skrypnikivka, but after few years gave up and only some parts got remained).
Most of it sounds kinda ok, but some things like "proyekt" instead of "proekt" kinda irks my ears.
Totally agree with this video!! I've learned quite a bit of Serbo-Croat, CZ and Russian. Just some extra points from my side. On cases: Slovak and Slovene, I believe do not have Vocative. When it comes to BCSM, Kajkavian and Cajkavian are out of that standard, and are probably better classified as separate languages from BCSM. You will hear some Kajkavian and Cajkavian influence in local Croatian speech in many areas, kinda like you'll hear Bavarian hints or Koelsch hints in local Standard German. For language learning, I would take Slovak over PL, just because Slovak is easier, and nicer to hear, it would be good enough to understand PL, UKR, and even, with BCSM, Slovenian. CZ is tougher than SK. I was able to communicate with Bulgarians and Macedonians, just using Serbian, with Upper Sorbians, Slovaks and Poles, using CZ. A knowledge of RUS with some CZ/SK goes a long way to catch most of Ukrainian and Rusyn. Polish only really comes in handy enough in case you need to communicate in Belarus to back up the Russian. I just don't like the sound of Polish or it's writing, but hey, personal preferences, hehe. Unfortunately, Sorbian is dying, with probably only less than 50,000 speakers left. Although I speake German fluently, I would make it a point to speak CZ with Sorbian speakers so they could show its use to outside speakers! WOnderful video!!
Thanks so much for your interesting input.
Often, when selecting a language, the language selects you. Ex, if you have a Serbian partner, or a Polish girlfriend, get relocated to Bosnia--you take that as a start, and it will end up useful way beyond that.@@polyglotdreams
Positive on lack of vocative in Slovene. It might have existed historically and might show up in random isolated phrases, but generally it's neither taught neither used. I'm not sure about all dialects, though.
As a Slovene I find it interesting, that aside from Kajkavian, which is really closely related to Slovene, I can understand Čakavian much better than Štokavian or Serbian, especially, once one gets used to various Slovene dialects. Although even Serbian is not that hard to understand with intermittent exposure - our generation (post YU) were still able to study from exclusively Serbian and English textbooks in uni in one class.
I'm a Croatian and I find all Slavic languages ugly to hear compared to Romanic languages and English, even though the vocabulary is very, very rich in literature. Many different words with same meaning. Expecially because many words in Croatian can be told slavic based and latin based.
To me the most beautiful Croatian dialect is spoken in Dalmatia (čakavica, ikavica).
@@juranalinaric6007 I find Croatian-Serbian in all its dialects very melodious, yet clean and emphatic. Russian sounds very sweet. Czech, Slovak and Sorbian have a good rythm and are very clear. Polish, however, I don;t like the phonetics, very slushy and fast, and Bulgarian seems kinda flat and with many ambiguous vowels.
Does he say at 11 minutes and 6 seconds that he is a Japanese citizen?
This would be an awesome series!! :) please continue and do Germanic next and then bantu! :)
I plan to do that, and i also concentrate on more languages in Asia. Thanks for your support.
What do you think about Interslavic?
It is easy to understand and makes a better candidate than Esperanto for Slavic speakers.
É muito gostoso ver sua paixão pelas linguas! Estou adorando seus vídeos e tem me animado para estudar mais. No momento estou tentando ficar proficiente em ingles, e aprender o básico do russo. E se eu continuar no gás, depois gostaria de saber alemão haha. Grande abraço do Brasil! E obrigado por compartilhar tanto conhecimento.
Clozemaster
Muito obrigado pelo seu apoio e pelas palavras gentis! Fico extremamente feliz em saber que meus vídeos têm sido uma fonte de inspiração para você continuar seus estudos de línguas. Sua dedicação em aprimorar o inglês e começar a aprender russo é realmente admirável, e tenho certeza de que você também terá sucesso no alemão se mantiver essa paixão e determinação. Lembre-se, cada nova língua é uma nova janela para o mundo. Grande abraço e muito sucesso na sua jornada linguística! Continue assim e obrigado por fazer parte da nossa comunidade de entusiastas de línguas!
Eu adoro português. É meu segundo linguagem (after French, before German)
My native tongue is English.
Bom Dia ❤️
Also, there is no such thing as "Bosnian". The ethnicity that changed its name from Muslim (in terms to ethnicity) to Bosniak, (old term for someone from geographical region of Bosnia), so they should call it Bosniak, not Bosnian, and also this artificial term is rejected by the majority of population in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Christians, but this fake term is constantly repeated by westerners as if it was something real. As for what is called Serbo-Croatian in linguistics, its origins are clear to everyone that knows a bit of real history. Serbo-Croatian is a literary Serbian language made and standardised as literary language by Serbian linguist Vuk Karadžić, shtokavian dialect of Herzegovina and most of Serbia, and this standard Serbian language was adopted by some Austri-Hungarian citizens (Croatian original language and literary standard is chakavian, not shtokavian) as their own, which would soon become a source for many linguistic and ethnic machinations by Austria-Hungary, creating an issue between Croats and Serbs that never existed before. To see the term BCSM is really sickening, it just shows how the west is using false regional differences to divide us and make us look different, the false differences they themselves created and keep promoting.
Thanks for your detailed input... it is controversial, and others may also offer well developed arguments. It is best leave the emotions out.
Ovde stvarno nisu u pitanju nikakve emocije nego ozbiljno poznavanje istorijskih činjenica bez kojih je nemoguće istinski sagledati i razumeti temu kojom ste se bavili u ovom videu, koji je inače odličan. Osim što potvrđujem sve što je @Raznosac napisao, imam još par napomena za Vas. Ne znam da li ste na Vašim putovanjima imali prilike da primetite da u Srbiji svi podjednako koriste i azbučno (takozvano ćirilično) i latinično pismo. Rođena sam u Srbiji i srpski je moj maternji jezik, a sve primere jezika koji su u ovom videu mogla sam prilično dobro da razumem, naravno lakše je ako se sporije izgovaraju, a ako je zapisano to onda još dodatno olakšava i svejedno mi je da li je npr latinicom pisan Poljski tekst ili azbukom (ćirilicom ) Ruski ili Bugarski.
Stranci uglavnom ne mogu da izgovore tri samoglasnika SRB zajedno pa ubacuju između vokale i tako od Srbi nastane reč Sorabi i to onda strancima deluje kao da su različiti pojmovi.
Vaše interesovanje i ljubav prema tzv slovenskim jezicima je za poštovanje i zato Vam predlažem da ako imate želju da bolje razumete sličnosti, razlike, nastanak i sve u vezi grupe slovenskih jezika odvojite vreme i za proučavanje istorije svih krajeva koje naseljavaju narodi koji govore te jezike, a verujem da bi Vam bile veoma interesantne knjige profesora istorije koji se bavi arheolingvistikom - prof.Radovan Damjanović "Srpsko-srpski rečnik".
Well technically speaking , all the dialects in Bosnia , most of Serbia and most of Croatia are Shtokavian , so if anything the language can be called Shtokavian language. I said most of Serbia and most of Croatia as Serbia also has Torlakian dialects that gives way to Bulgarian language and Croatia has Kajkavian dialects that gives way to Slovenian Language 🎉❤
This is fantastic! Full of great insights, thank you!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Yeah, ideal for J.J.Talkin book. But not scientific. Maybe sci-fi at most.
@@georgidimitrov6054 Explain
Dzięki, było ciekawie. I z obrazkiem UAM. Good luck.
Dziękuję bardzo
I’am a native macedonian speaker. I can understand 100 percent of serbo-croatian or bulgarian, and can speak the languages relatively good, which is not that surprising. What surprised me the most is how much I can understand russian (around 60 percent and that number rises if they talk slower) although I have never studied the language, nor I have been exposed to russian media, culture etc. I understand russian much better than slovene, even though macedonian and slovenian are in the same south slavic group, which makes no sense to me. Someone mentioned that it could be explained by the old church slavonic language… When it comes to the south slavic languages, it’s worth mentioning the Torlakian (shopski) dialect, which is a transitional form between serbo-croatian on one hand and macedonian-bulgarian on the other. It’s spoken mainly in south serbia, northeastern part of macedonia and northwest bulgaria. The relationship between the macedonian and bulgarian language is hot topic. I can say that they share very similar grammar and the difference is largely lexical and idiomatic. From my experience, I think that the bulgarian language is heavily influenced by the russian lexicon, and that is not surprising considering that they were part of the Eastern block for 50 years. Conversely, the macedonian language, as part of non-aligned and pro-west oriented Yugoslavia, has adopted a lot of German, French and English words. And for me, as a south slavic speaker, the toughest language, definitely is polish. I can’t understand almost anything, with the exception of the word K…A, but surprisingly the slovak language is much more intelligible to my south slavic ear
Thanks... those are very interesting observations!
@@polyglotdreams As a Bulgarian native speaker from the South-Western part of Bulgaria I can confirm 100% what carli2302 wrote. I can understand 100% of the language(s) spoken on either side of Bulgarian-Macedonian border plus I understand about 85-90% of BCMS although I have never studied it. I've also noticed that speakers of BCMS have hard time understanding Bulgarian( unlike Bulgarians most of whom are able to understand BCMS ) which make me think that you are wrong about suggesting Learning BCMS as the language of South Slavic group in order to be able to understand all Slavic languages. I've learnt Russian for a short period of time as well. Not long enough to be able to learn to speak it grammatically correct ( I have absolutely no knowledge of how to use the cases properly ) but somehow I am able to communicate with Russian speakers without any problems. I've noticed that I can understand Belorussian quite well and I am able to understand about 65-70% of Ukrainian probably because of my very limited exposure to Slovak as well.( I used to work with some Slovaks about 20 years ago) . I can't speak any Slovak but I am somehow able to understand it both in oral and written form. Unlike Slovenian 🙂 which I can only understand in written form. The way vowel accents are used in Slovenian is so uncharacteristic for my years that my brain just shuts off. I am also able to understand to some extend both Polish and Czech but only in their written form. My brain is not willing to suffer the efforts of trying to understand sounds that come out of Polish speakers.
let me clarify for you - old church Slavonic language == old Bulgarian language. The modern Russian is based on it. So the influence is in different direction :)
@@valentinbitsinandmaxx8389 The fact that you can understand Serbians but they dont understand Bulgarian is maybe because major population of Bulgaria listen Serbian music :D
As a Croat, I can say its the same the other way, but I can't speak Macedonian because I've never been laerning it. For me it is definitely the most intelligible Slavic language. I guess it can be explained by heavy Serbian influence on Macedonian in Yugoslavia.
Happy to see that your channel is boosting so fast!
Me too! Thanks so much for the support!
Although I don’t speak any Slavic language, as someone who’s interested in etymology, philology, culture, etc. I have a strong feeling that Ukrainian, and Belarusian are closer to Polish (West Slavic) than Russian (East Slavic) despite those (Belarusian and Ukrainain) are written in Cyrillic and culturally they are orthodox unlike the Polish are catholic. Therefore, categorically they can be in between or cross-categorized.
You could make that argument, but normally their classified as East Slavic languages.
I speak both in Ukrainian and Russian. I think Ukrainian is closer to Polish more than to russian. Russian is similar to Bulgarian. The core of Russian is in church - Slavonic language that no longer exist but were made by Bulgarian/Macedonian priests to spread christianity.
I am Ukranian, and I confirm, your feeling are true. I was surprised when I heard Belarusian for a first time I understood everything - most of the lexicon is the same as Ukrainian, however Belarusian have a different pronunciation or accent. In fact when the presenter in this video switched on the Belorusian Tv, i first thought the lady was speaking Ukrainian😆, and then I started to wonder why her accent is different until I realised after a few seconds it was Belarusian.
And when I first was in Poland I had such a dejauvea - like I was in Kyiv or Lviv, but the signs have Ukrainian words written in Latin letters.
There is definitely way more difference between Ukrainian and Russian than Ukrainian and Belarusian / Polish
@love_for_travel thanks so much for sharing your experiences
@@polyglotdreams
Please don't follow the Geographic designations----better to look at Linguistic ones--Keep in mind that RuZZian is an invented non-native language--- the Finno-Ugrics of Muscovy and others were forced to learn this artificially created language because Peter thought that a great Empire should have its own unique language--so INSTEAD of choosing one of the many native languages within the Empire,--or even French which most of the ruling elite spoke, the decision was made to CREATE a NEW language based on Old Church Slavonic (which was common like Latin as a canonical language instead.
Apparently, it doesn't work with all Slavic languages, but most of the neighboring languages can be learned without any effort just by consuming the content. That's true. I am Ukrainian and I understand the Polish language very well, although I have never even studied it. Czech and Slovak are a little more difficult for me, because there is much less of it in our information field, but after watching a few videos I started to understand about 70 percent of what they say. With the Belarusian language, everything is generally so easy to understand that sometimes, if I hear a song in this language, I cannot immediately understand that it is foreign, because our languages, although different, have high mutual inteligibility, not like with russian.
Yes for speakers of one or two Slavic languages usually with exposure we begin to understand other Slavic languages quite naturally
Yes you can learn a lot just through exposure to comprehensible input in other Slavic languages when you know one or more Slavic languages
That's a wonderful overview! I'm Polish. I agree with the top3 recommendations no doubt. Then I think Bulgarian and Czech seem equally worthy of the 4th spot (or you can alternate with Macedonian and Slovak respectively) as they give better coverage than Slovene, which mainly only applies to Slovenia and is the most "lonely" member of the Slavic family. But those are minor nit-picks of mine :D
I know it's a somewhat different topic but I can't help but mention PJM (Polish Sign Language) which is a native language of the Deaf community in Poland. It has many similarities to sign languages in our neighboring countries. A user of PJM once explained to me how Ukrainian and Russian sign languages are different but share the same root so it's possible for the users to communicate some basic information(a fully-fledged conversation is much more difficult though). I find it really interesting how you don't actually need words to see the Slavic connection, our shared culture and tradition :)
The order if the additional ones is quite debatable as you point out. Thanks so much for the insights about sign language.
Around 20 years ago I took Ukrainian as my language in college. I was the only non-Russian major in the class. The Russian majors took Ukrainian as it has more cases and learning Ukrainian grammar made them better in their Russian. I barely remember anything, but I keep thinking to add it to my learning time.
Go for it!
A very thorough and precise understanding of Slavic languages exposed here !
Who do you think has easier starter point to become a polyglot like.
1. Who knows English
2. Who knows Slavic language
3. Who knows Latin family language
For total number of languages - who knows Slavic languages.
As a Brazilian Portuguese native speaker, Spanish and Italian are the easiest languages to learn, then French. Catalan is not hard, but it takes effort to look up for content. For example, Catalan or Valencian youtube is very weak in terms of creators and viewers. There are few good resources to learn Neapolitan or Sicilian, and those are spoken and sung languages. They are not published, not used in movies and series(with a few recent exceptions), and not used in education. I am more of a polyreader than a polyglot. I have read several books in French and in Italian, as well as a few in Spanish, a couple of books in Catalán and a theater piece in Neapolitan. If you know Spanish or Portuguese, Italian, and French or Catalán, you'll understand to a good degree almost any little spoken Romance language, specially in its written form. There's the one exception though, which is Romanian. To understand Romanian, study Romanian, and that's what I've been doing lately. The good thing about Romanian is that it can be a good introduction to Slavic languages, in the sense that it contains hundreds of words of Slavic origin.
As a religious Jew who was raised in Ukraine, I speak Russian at home, I picked Ukrainian in the streets, I learned Hebrew, Aramaic (the language of the Talmud) and Yiddish in school and currently I’m writing a comment in English 😂.
Because of this languages I’m able to understand written Polish, and quite well to understand Belarusian. When I was in Germany I realised that I can understand almost half of the written words, and people around me understood me quite well when I spoke to them in Yiddish, though when they spoke to me I couldn’t understand a word 😂. Also Hebrew and Aramaic are letting me to learn Arabic on duolingo easier, because they are all Semitic languages.
@@MLiv-bn4cl In the future, learning German will be a breeze for you, then Dutch, then Afrikaans...If you study Polish, then you get Czech almost for free and so on. If you were to study Romance languages, I'd suggest you French and Spanish.
At 5:54 you put the "Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks” painting by Ukrainian-born russian painter Ilya Repin. It portrays Cossacks (Ukrainians) writing to their Turkish (by other less accepted theory to russian) enemy. While this picture is shown in your video you are saying something along the lines "300 years of russian ruling over Ukraine". If I wasn't familiar with the matter would assume that it's some russian troops who are depicted there. Might be a little misleading
But overall I loved your video 🤝
Thank you so much for pointing that out.
Козаки це українці
@@DIMA-q2o Я саме це й сказав
Ukraine has never existed.
@@alexbrown2401 right, right, but apart of that make sure not to eat dirt, buddy, ok?
Good video.
Thanks
Thank you for mentioning Rusyn! And yes 26:18 - it indeed can help, as for Slovak and Rusyn is is even closer than Rusyn and Ukrainian (based on the number of speakers). It's because as you can see on the map at 7:47 most Rusyn speakers live in Slovakia and except of the state language (Slovak) speak the Prešov Rusyn variant, which is very different from the one spoken in Zakarpattyan Ukraine and even sometimes hard to understand, yet Prešov Rusyn is extremely close to the Lemko Rusyn that is a codified langauge in Poland and thus spoken by Polish Rusyns and lastly - Pannonian Rusyn spoken in Serbia was codified based on a Sotak eastern SLOVAK dialect). Ironically, people oftentimes just focus on Zakarpattyan Rusyn when mentioning Rusyn, yet except of not having a proper codification (because of the Ukrainian government not officially recognising Rusyns and Rusyn language as separate) it doesn't even have that big of an amount of speakers, compared to Prešov, Lemko or Pannonian variants - all of which have proper codifications and grammatical rules and syntactically differ quite lot from Ukrainian and even from the eastern Slavic language group. That being said, saying that 90% of Rusyn is similar to Ukrainian checks out maybe only for the Zakarpattyan variant/(dialect continuum?), which is not the best sample when talking about Rusyns. If you want to compare proper standardised variants of Rusyn, I recommend the lem.fm radio, which contains Prešov, Lemko and sometimes even Pannonian variants. And I really hope our fellow Zakarpattyan Carpatho-Rusyn brothers will be able to codify their variant very soon!
That information is so fascinating 👏 thank you.
the so-called East Slavic languages are anti-scientific and outdated nonsense, linguists talk about Central Slavic and peripheral Slavic languages.
Русинська один з діалектів української
@@DIMA-q2o in that case Ukrainian is a dialect of Polish...or Russian...:) you can clearly see what harm national opression - saying that Ukrainian language is a dialect of XY and that Ukrainians are just a subethnos of XY - did to Ukrainian people, so stop being stuck up in past and respect others if you yourself want to be respected. All of the countries (Poland, Slovakia, USA, Canada, Hungary, Serbia...) where Carpatho-Rusyns live as a minority recognise Carpatho-Rusyn as a separate national identity and language...Ukraine is the ONLY exception. In addition, Carpatho-Rusyn language is protected by the European charter of minority languages...so I guess go whine to them that they are protecting a "dialect" and right after that proceed to complain about how Russians and Poles considered Ukrainian just as a dialect of their language...the hypocrisy is so strong :)
@@DIMA-q2o 💯% тут повно тупих коментів від людей, що звикли ділити слов'янські мови по географічному принципу, а не по їх розповсюдженню з огляду на історичні процеси розселення людей. Вони відносять Українську мову до східнослов'янської🤦, тому вважають, що русинська - не може бути діалектом української. Але як так виходить, що географічно західні лужицькі мови найбільш схожі саме на українську?!
Русини - це етнонім жителів Київської Русі, допоки московія не захопила українські землі і імперська політика не нав'язала всім назву "малороси", ВСІ українці вважали себе русинами.
Great video. Born and raised in West Bulgaria with relatives in Macedonia (Skopje, Bitola) and Serbia (Pirot). Learned Russian at school 35 years ago. Recently tried to read беларуская мова (Belarusian language) and I am pretty positive about not only understanding the context, but some of the details. Not so much with Ukrainian, but still understanding the context. I do have troubles understanding and reading Polish. Reading Polish is a pain because of the different alphabet system they are using. However I am understanding the core of the text, not much when they are speaking. Especially if Polish is spoken in a fast way.
Thanks so much for sharing your experiences with Slavic languages
Смешно потому что я русскоговорящий беларус но пока украинский понимаю лучше чем белорусский. В основном наверное потому что в интернете гораздо больше контента на украинском, что в сериалах что в соц сетях, чем на белорусском. Но и на белорусском достаточно, хорошо что это не как какой-то кашубский или лужицкий на котором вообще почти ничего нету.
Thank you for this very informative video! Just a small note: when referring to Ukraine, it’s correct to say 'Ukraine' without the article 'the' 😊
You are right. Thanks for pointing that out! I was there in Soviet time's.
Summed suggestions:
East: Russian
West: Polish
South: BCMS
(Also, if anyone is wondering discussion of starting southern languages is at 19:30 though there is an earlier aside around 14-15)
THANKS
Great video! I am Macedonian, I speak excellent Serbo-Croat, have learned some Slovenian, understand at least 60% of Bulgarian, speak also English and German... Choosing the next one - it will, most probably be Polish 🙂
AWESOME... I just live Slavic languages and cultures.
How do the collective West implement "divide et impera" policy among the Slavic peoples?
"If you put 100 black ants and 100 red ants in a jar, nothing happens.
But if you shake the jar hard, the ants will start killing each other. The reds will think of the blacks as their enemies, and the blacks will think of the reds as their enemies.
The real enemy is the one who shakes the jar.
That's what happens in human society.
So before people attack each other, we should think about who shook the can!".
© Otto von Bismarck
Do you know Bosnian language?
@@bosnjakizbosne7172
Ne, on govori samo crnogorski.
Ali to nije problem.
Covjek moze da nabavi crnogorsko-bosanski rjecnik.
@@kirrausanov Ja sam pitao njega, ako tebi treba bosansko-engleski rijecnik rado cu ti dati.
I just bought your book. I don’t think I’ve ever bought a rather expensive book so quickly after just hearing you talk for 1 minute
The thing that you are a Japanese citizen is really the most surprising
Yes
I thought from south Africa Afrikaans speaker
My first slavic lagnauge I'm tackling is polish. I mostly know Spanish and Italian to conversational level and currently focusing on Hungarian, Portuguese and Polish. And I feel I want to tackle czech and ukranian after russian and polish because I feel I would visit those countries more often and it'll be more useful to me.
Awesome... all the best in your quest
@@polyglotdreams for learning is building vocabulary the most important thing to study first instead of grammar or accent?
Thank you for your hard work 💜
Thank you for your support 🙏
As a Serbian born in Croatia I am surprised that you didn't mention the biggest,,difference''between two and that is Croats speak ijekavicu and Serbs speak ekavicu...everything else is pretty much same.
I didn't have enough time in that video to go into those details
Bosnian, Serbian, Croatian is absolutely same one language.
There are Serbs who speak ijekavica and there are Croats who speak ekavica, also both ekavica and ijekavica are considered grammatically correct in standard Serbian.
As someone who first learned to speak using a dialect of South Serbia the Čital form in Slovakian is the same in Svrljisko Zaplanjski. Out of all the West Slavic languages I understand Slovak the most - Id say even more than any Eastern Slavic language as well. Na Kralove Holi, Stoji strom zeleni! :)
That's very interesting... thanks.
Pozdrav, Posto si ucio Srpsko-Hrvatski ili BCMS nadam se da nije problem sto pisem ovaj komentar na Srpskom. Ja iskreno govorimg Engleski jezik na visokom nivou tako da ako bude trebalo mogu se prebaciti na Engleski.
Uglavnom hteo bih te pitati, da li imas neke planove da napravis video o Interslovenskom "Interslavic Language" Jeziku?
Hvala ti na predlogu o pravljenju videa o interslovenskom jeziku. Trenutno nemam konkretnih planova po tom pitanju, ali ću svakako razmotriti tu ideju.
I'm here to solve this even better:
LEARN INTERSLAVIC, a constructed language that all slavs can understand and is easier for learning than all of the national Slavic languages. I'm not slav but I am studying it, is a highly valuable language.
How do you study it? I can't find any sources. Please share
Certainly, many Slavic speakers can understand Interslavic, but it doesn't mean you will be able to understand all the Slavic languages.
Есть церковнославянский язык, который является чем-то средним между всеми славянскими языками
most useless "language" ever
just learn Russian
Amazing channel!このあいだ2019年いっしょにひこうきのってたですよね！Я захоплююся Вами! Bravo!
I speak German, English, Polish and Japanese, but Polish seems very comfortable and familiar to me. Maybe because I was born in Lviv and my grandmother was Polish, I don't know.
Are you in Japan now ?
Very good video, thank you!
Thanks 🙏
No idea if anyone mentioned this yet, but Ukrainian does have the vocative case! Literary Standard Ukrainian requires it, and some spoken dialects still retain it completely. While the usage of vocative in spoken informal language is slowly fading away (mostly due to the influence of Russian), there are still situations when you would use it with people for your language to sound more natural. Hope this is at least somewhat interesting!
Yes, thank you... I overlooked that.
@@polyglotdreams No worries! Thank you for your video, it's one of the best I've seen on the subject!
I am a native Polish speaker. I learnt Russian at school and then used this language a bit in conversation and reading. I confirm that I can understand other West and East Slavic languages.
I don't see the Silesian as a separate language. I understand the political reasons why some Silesians claim it but if Silesian would be considered a separate language, we can also consider the Greater Polish dialect a separate language. But we know that it's not true.
Your book looks really interesting, but are there any plans for an audiobook version? I'm an L2 speaker of German and Spanish, and I'm currently studying Ukrainian, so I try and avoid books in english to make time for reading the other languages, but I do have a lot of listening time on my hands.
Yes.. there are audiobooks, too... now just English, Italian, and Chinese. But French and Spanish are coming soon.