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Three questions about Slavic languages. | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| LittleKey Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5733 days ago 146 posts - 153 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Japanese | Message 1 of 14 10 August 2008 at 1:01pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Hi, i've been learning Spanish, and a little bit of farsi, but i've been wanting to try out a slavic language to see what they're like. i'm studying so many at one time because i'm not sure what languages i want to learn, so i'm testing multiple ones. So, my first question is, what is the easiest slavic language to learn (for a native English speaker). Secondly, how many slavic languages are there? The only ones I know of are Russian and Polish. Third, which do you think would be the best one to learn, like, the most useful one. Thank you very much for your help =).
(oh, and on a side note, when using Pimsleur, how many lessons could i take in a day? should i limit myself to one, or could i do more in a day?) Edited by LittleKey on 10 August 2008 at 1:11pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Ham Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5770 days ago 21 posts - 21 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 2 of 14 10 August 2008 at 1:18pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I believe the most common slavic languages are Russian, Polish, Czech/ Slovak, Slovene, Bulgarian, Croatian/ Serbian/ Bosnian/ Montenegran, Macedonian, Ukranian and Belurussian. Whilst I have not realy studied any I believe Slovene and Bulgarian have some unusual features, and polish spelling uses quite alot of consonant groups for sounds, which are represented simpler in the others. Hope this is of some help.
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| ElfoEscuro Diglot Senior Member United States cyworld.com/brahmapu Joined 6070 days ago 408 posts - 423 votes Speaks: Portuguese, English* Studies: Japanese | Message 3 of 14 10 August 2008 at 3:23pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I don't think any of the Slavic languages are significantly easier than the others to learn. If I had to guess on the easiest, I would say Ukrainian.
You can find a list here
The obvious choice is Russian. It's the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages, and the largest native language in Europe. It's applied as a means of coding and storage of universal knowledge — 60–70% of all world information is published in English and Russian languages. Over a quarter of the world's scientific literature is published in Russian. Russian is also a necessary accessory of world communications systems (broadcasts, air- and space communication, etc).
I've never used Pimsleur, but I believe they recommend doing 1 lesson per day. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| TDC Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6702 days ago 261 posts - 291 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, French Studies: Esperanto, Ukrainian, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Persian | Message 4 of 14 10 August 2008 at 5:50pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I wouldn't go anywhere near calling Ukrainian the easiest.
Ukrainian has a lot of irregular noun changes, moreso it seems than Russian. It also has a 7th case. Also letter mutation depending on what the following letter is. Also, from what I've heard from my students here in the Ukraine, nearly everyone says that Ukrainian is harder than Russian for them. Not that Ukrainian isn't cool though :) From what I've seen I'd say Bulgarian might be the easiest because they've lost all those cases. If you're planning on learning a Slavic language, I'd advise you to learn Russian. It's the biggest and has the most resourcees and material. Also, once you learn Russian, you'll find that you have considerable transfer to other Slavic languages. From my own perception (apart from Ukrainian/Belarussian) Bulgarian seems the closest and thus easiest to understand, with Serbo-Croatian not too far behind. Polish is also quite understandable and pleasant to listen to. As for Pimsleur, it probably depends on your level. If you're more advanced and you're getting 95% of the answers right, you may very well be able to do more than one a day, but you'd probably be better off working with something else for those 30 minutes instead. Such as working with Assimil. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Eduard Decaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5806 days ago 166 posts - 170 votes 2 sounds Speaks: Dutch*, NorwegianC1, Swedish, Danish, English, German, ItalianB1, Spanish, Serbo-Croatian, French Studies: Portuguese | Message 5 of 14 11 August 2008 at 11:53am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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An advantage of Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian (Serbo-Croatian) is that one writes as one speaks. As far as I know, some of the Slavic languages don't have this feature, while others do. When it comes to 'general usefulness', I'd go for Russian. After that, you could consider to learn another Slavic language. Russian would then serve as a good base.
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| jody Senior Member United States Joined 6019 days ago 242 posts - 252 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Bulgarian | Message 6 of 14 12 August 2008 at 8:46am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Bulgarian is VERY phonetic, which is helpful. And as was mentioned, there are no cases or declenations. I have heard from many people that Bulgarian might be the easiest Slavic language. But its usefulness is VERY limited. Unless you plan on living in Bulgaria, I would focus on a more widespread language like Russian or Polish.
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| Sennin Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 5815 days ago 1457 posts - 1759 votes 5 sounds | Message 7 of 14 12 August 2008 at 9:11am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Bulgarian spelling is phonetic, compared to English. It's not more phonetic than Russian (Is that possible? ;p). Unfortunately there are some instances where vowels mutate. Also distinguishing the sounds ъ/a, о/у, ф/в, ио/ьо, ц/тс is something that causes trouble even for native speakers (me included ;p).
Another tricky part is the definite article. Some Russians never get the definite article right (in spite of having lived in Bulgaria for a decade. ) I wouldn't say Bulgarian is a particularly hard Slavic language but I'm not sure it's the easiest either. I wonder if it is possible to determine any comparative difficulty for languages that are so closely related. As for global/international significance, I suspect Russian is the only one that has any. The other Slavic languages have regional significance so picking one of them is really something related to the countries that you are interested in. Edited by Sennin on 12 August 2008 at 9:28am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| jody Senior Member United States Joined 6019 days ago 242 posts - 252 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Bulgarian | Message 8 of 14 12 August 2008 at 9:26am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I do not speak Bulgarian, although I have dabbled in it a bit. So correct me if I am wrong. The vowels in Bulgarian may mutate, but not near as much as in Russian. The sounds you indicated above are real mutations, but are barely different from one another. These are more like stresses, in my opinion. However, there are many words in Russian that will cause problems if you do not mutate the vowels properly. Stressed vowels sound VERY different from unstressed vowels.
And you're right about the definate article. That's tough. As Sennin (and others) have said, I would not really focus on the difficulty of the languages. They're all fairly tough, but learnable. :) I would decide which country/countries you are interested in and go with their language. Or go with Russian if you want to a "universal" one. Other Slavic languages will come much easier after you learn Russian. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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