Easiest Slavic language for an English/Romance speaker?

Guest   Tue May 20, 2008 10:12 am GMT
What is the Easiest Slavic language for an English speaker or a Romance language speaker?
Guest   Tue May 20, 2008 10:16 am GMT
Bulgarian. No cases at all.
Guest   Tue May 20, 2008 10:20 am GMT
I wouldn't be too sure about that:

<<
Bulgarian verbs are the most complicated part of Bulgarian grammar, especially when compared to other Slavic languages. They are inflected for person, number and sometimes gender. They also have lexical aspect (perfective and imperfective), voice, nine tenses, five moods and six non-finite verbal forms. Because the subject of the verb can be inferred from the verb ending, it is often omitted. As there is no infinitive in the contemporary Bulgarian language the basic form of a verb is its present simple tense first person singular form.
>>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgarian_verbs
Joel   Tue May 20, 2008 10:30 am GMT
in my experience Romance+English speakers have an easier time with understanding verb rules. When you make them decline Nouns, pronouns, and adjectives; that's when you get a class full of frightened stares.
Guest   Tue May 20, 2008 10:33 am GMT
>>Bulgarian verbs are the most complicated part of Bulgarian grammar, especially when compared to other Slavic languages. They are inflected for person, number and sometimes gender. They also have lexical aspect (perfective and imperfective), voice, nine tenses, five moods and six non-finite verbal forms.<<

Only aspect will be hard but this exists in all the slavic. Verbs in Romance languages are also "inflected for person, number and sometimes gender"; they also have voice tenses, moods, non finite verbal forms.
Güest   Tue May 20, 2008 11:58 am GMT
As far as I know, Macedonian doesn't have any cases, either, but there are many more resources to learn Bulgarian than Macedonian.
Guest   Tue May 20, 2008 12:24 pm GMT
Bulgarians say that Macedonian is Bulgarian. In fact these languages are more like dialects.
Warnow   Tue May 20, 2008 1:48 pm GMT
I guess Bulgarian & Macedonian is like Indonesian & Malaysian, which in a narrow sense are dialects of the same language.
JLK   Tue May 20, 2008 5:15 pm GMT
I would say Russian simply from the perspective that there are many more quality resources to learn it. Learning another Slavic language after Russian is a breeze.
SteroidMonster   Wed May 21, 2008 9:07 am GMT
What branch is more difficult in general, the West branch (eg Czech, Slovak), East branch (Russian, Ukranian etc) or South branch (Serbian, Bulgarian)?
Guest   Wed May 21, 2008 12:34 pm GMT
Macedonian.
(much easier to pronounce, compared to Bulgarian)
Warnow   Wed May 21, 2008 1:21 pm GMT
Probably Macedonian is the easiest one, unfortunately there's a lack of resources.
JLK   Wed May 21, 2008 2:01 pm GMT
<<Macedonian.
(much easier to pronounce, compared to Bulgarian)>>

The man asked which was the easiest Slavic language, not dialect...
Guest   Wed May 21, 2008 2:54 pm GMT
Macedonian has a different writing system, which makes it easier then Bulgarian.
Skippy   Wed May 21, 2008 3:15 pm GMT
Bulgarian doesn't have cases, but that in and of itself doesn't make the language easier...

Anyway, could someone rank them from easiest to most difficult? Would Russian be harder than Czech? Polish harder than Serbian? etc.