Why do Slavic languages have less exposure than others?

Hutch   Mon May 07, 2007 10:39 pm GMT
Slavic languages seem to be isolated and less known than other language families. Why is that?
ii   Mon May 07, 2007 11:00 pm GMT
For the exception of Russia, many of Eastern European countries were ruled by foreign nations (Germany, Austria, Ottoman Turks, Russia, etc), so they never really formed powerful and unified states that could exert influence around the world.
Linguist   Tue May 08, 2007 7:12 am GMT
Slavic languages aren't isolated at all if you mean linguistic aspect and they are known very well, and they have been studied well like any other languages, but yes, they are not so popular among learners because of weak Slavic states and probably because of archaic and complicated grammar.
furrykef   Tue May 08, 2007 7:33 am GMT
There's no such thing as archaic grammar. Grammatical constructions might be archaic in specific languages (for instance, "thou art" is archaic English), but if another language uses the same construction all the time, it's not archaic in that language.

- Kef
Linguist   Tue May 08, 2007 11:41 am GMT
well, yeah I agree, that for a certain language a certain construction can't be archaic because it uses it, but I called Slavic grammar "archaic" in comparison to majority of other european languages, AFAIK verb aspect exists only is Slavic languags while all other Indo-European languages has lost it.
furrykef   Tue May 08, 2007 6:04 pm GMT
Could have fooled me.

(The above sentence right there uses the perfect aspect.)
Linguist   Thu May 10, 2007 11:57 am GMT
In Slavic languages such things are rendered by ONE word, moreover "can" is a modal verb and this construction is not what I ment.

Pisat' - to write
Napisat' - perfect (to write)
Dopisat'/dopisyvat' - to write till the end, to end writing/imperfect
Ispisat'/ispisyvat' - to write on all paper which you have/imperfect

So?
furrykef   Thu May 10, 2007 1:26 pm GMT
> moreover "can" is a modal verb and this construction is not what I ment.

Did you mean "have"? The perfect aspect was expressed by "have fooled" (infinitive mood, perfect aspect); "can" doesn't come into play there.

I have to admit that so far I'm not really convinced that the Slavic perfect aspect is particularly difficult, although it's possible that I just haven't seen enough yet.

- Kef
Linguist   Thu May 10, 2007 5:33 pm GMT
>>Did you mean "have"? The perfect aspect was expressed by "have fooled" (infinitive mood, perfect aspect); "can" doesn't come into play there.

No, I ment "could", if it doesn't mean anything here, then why did you use it? OK, it just confused me a bit... but anyway, Germanic and Romance languages are analithical in this respect, because you need "auxilary" verbs for expressing past/present/ future perfect, Slavic languages just need one word which changes depending on the sence. This feature was also in Proto-Indo-European language, even Latin, Greek, Sanskrit couldn't save it. That's why Slavic languages can be called "archaic" sometimes. Also cases for nouns/adjectives/pronouns/numerals and lexicon which looks like PIE much more then one of any other IE language (exept Baltic ones which are close to Slavic group).
furrykef   Thu May 10, 2007 10:37 pm GMT
> No, I ment "could", if it doesn't mean anything here, then why did you use it?

Because without it I wouldn't have expressed the thought that I wanted to. I was going to say that anyway and after I wrote it I realized it did use the perfect aspect. ("Could have fooled me!" is a common expression for "I don't believe that." It expresses incredulity.)

- Kef