what's your favourite Slavic language?

Frances   Tue Oct 18, 2005 12:14 am GMT
Ed - its not very hard to take things personally here and especially the cultural sensitivities that exist in the Balkans and considering what I know my family has personally experienced and still is experiencing. You should know better that it is a very touchy subject and people (including myself) find these issues very sensitive.

"Hash" is my terminology and used here to mean something "inferior" (or more widely "botched up", "messy", "disfigured", "mutilated" etc).

"And let's not forget that when you said <<Bulgarian - like a Kiwi to an Australian's ears. >>, I didn't go bananas on you."

Bizaare vowels, that's what I notice about Bulgarian and that's what an Australian hears in a Kiwi's accent. Otherwise, I don't mind Bulgarian and find have curiously listened to it before.
Stefaniel P Spaniel   Thu Oct 20, 2005 4:48 pm GMT
"Listened to it curiously?"

I have barely heard any Bulgarian or Macedonian, but I had a look at a book on Bulgarian and its grammar is too easy. Its not fair. Get some proper declensions in there.
Ed   Thu Oct 20, 2005 11:26 pm GMT
<<I have barely heard any Bulgarian or Macedonian, but I had a look at a book on Bulgarian and its grammar is too easy. Its not fair. Get some proper declensions in there. >>

Most of the declensions in Bulgarian (and Macedonian) were lost a long time ago, but there are a lot of other features not present in the rest of the Slavic languages. For example, there's a non-witness mood which is used when one is not sure tht the action happened, or heard about it from someone else. This gives all the verbs in every tense an extra conjugation. In addition, we have definite and indefinite articles, and other unique features. I don't think that the presence if cases is the only factor determining the relative difficultness of a grammar. And one definitely needs more than just a look at a book in order to make that determination.
Drew Ward   Thu Nov 10, 2005 4:25 am GMT
Hi Forum,

I was doing some work on the historic roots of Polish Month names. I wanted to especially reply to drunkie's post regarding the similarity between Polish and Croatian month names.

Both Polish and Croation (and Czech too) are closely related to OCS - Old Church Slavonic. Although not the father of all slavic toungues, it was the first written slavic language. It was adapted by two greek-speaking slavic monks from what would eventually become Croatia (to be specific, I believe the area was what is now the country of Macedonia). These two brothers formed what was called Glagolitic. The purpose was to create a language that would allow the slavs to learn the christian faith in a language closest to their native toungue. This was revised over time with various inputs including Bulgarian, and Latin. The eventual result was OCS. Because this was the original language used in the churches of the slavic areas of central europe, and the calender generally focused on religious activities, ocs based names could be seen to easily cause similarities in month names.

The month names in these languages differ from those of most later developing cultures. Russian, german, and for that matter most regional languages use a derived latin calendar of the Roman Empire which entered their culture through the then more established and structured catholic church (the church was still fairly weak and disorganized when ocs was created). Croatian, Czech, and Polish draw the names of their months from functional terms from OCS.

Since I'm working on it right now, I'll use Polish as the example:

Stycze? (January) is from a verb form meaning to meet (the meeting of the years).

Kwiecie? (April) is from kwiecie meaning blossom (the month when things blossom)

Lipiec (July) is from the word for Linden tree, which bloomed in july and was sacred in these cultures.

Sierpie? (August) comes from Sierp, the word for sickle (the month of the harvest).

Grudzie? (december) comes from gruda which means frozen ground (thus, the month when the ground is frozen).

I hope this helps.

--Drew
Drew Ward   Thu Nov 10, 2005 4:27 am GMT
Hi Forum,

I was doing some work on the historic roots of Polish Month names. I wanted to especially reply to drunkie's post regarding the similarity between Polish and Croatian month names.

Both Polish and Croation (and Czech too) are closely related to OCS - Old Church Slavonic. Although not the father of all slavic toungues, it was the first written slavic language. It was adapted by two greek-speaking slavic monks from what would eventually become Croatia (to be specific, I believe the area was what is now the country of Macedonia). These two brothers formed what was called Glagolitic. The purpose was to create a language that would allow the slavs to learn the christian faith in a language closest to their native toungue. This was revised over time with various inputs including Bulgarian, and Latin. The eventual result was OCS. Because this was the original language used in the churches of the slavic areas of central europe, and the calender generally focused on religious activities, ocs based names could be seen to easily cause similarities in month names.

The month names in these languages differ from those of most later developing cultures. Russian, german, and for that matter most regional languages use a derived latin calendar of the Roman Empire which entered their culture through the then more established and structured catholic church (the church was still fairly weak and disorganized when ocs was created). Croatian, Czech, and Polish draw the names of their months from functional terms from OCS.

Since I'm working on it right now, I'll use Polish as the example:

Styczen (January) is from a verb form meaning to meet (the meeting of the years).

Kwiecien (April) is from kwiecie meaning blossom (the month when things blossom)

Lipiec (July) is from the word for Linden tree, which bloomed in july and was sacred in these cultures.

Sierpien (August) comes from Sierp, the word for sickle (the month of the harvest).

Grudzien (december) comes from gruda which means frozen ground (thus, the month when the ground is frozen).

I hope this helps.

--Drew
JakubikF   Thu Nov 10, 2005 5:28 pm GMT
Hi Drew Ward. I've got a question to you. Are you a native polish speaker? If not can you speak Polish or do you learn Polish?
Guest   Thu Nov 10, 2005 7:30 pm GMT
Sorry jakubik, but no, I'm not a native Polish speaker. In fact, I'm just yet another poor language-deficient American. I taught English in Wroclaw Poland for a year, but really didn't have much luck leaning Polish there, as I had had no previous exposure to a slavic language.

I'm currently studying Polish and hope to complete about 3 semesters of independent study in it before i finish my Masters Degree in Linguistics. My other language experience is mainly in German and Spanish with a bit of dabbling in Russian and Latin.

I don't really favour the idea that one language is more beautiful than the next, but I must say that I think Polish is a very elegant language from a culture which is so often sold short for their contributions to society.

Just curious, why do you ask?

--drew
JakubikF   Thu Nov 10, 2005 10:28 pm GMT
I see. I asked you about that because I'm Polish and I could say it's a nice suprise for me that anyone can be intereseted in Polish. It's because I always think that languages such as German, Spainish, French or Russian are more popular to study. What's more I'd like to offer "a contact" to you with polish native speaker. But if you were in Poland, you know any native speakers for sure, don't you?
Drew Ward   Fri Nov 11, 2005 3:08 am GMT
Actually, I really have no contacts left in Poland. It's been about two years since I was there, and pretty much everyone I knoew has moved away. I would surely enjoy getting to know a native speaker. I must warn you that it will probably be another six months before I could hold any sort of a conversation. But, I do hope to return to teaching in Poland eventually, so I'm always looking to make more contacts there.

Please email me if you'd like: dward1@tulane.edu

cheers,

drew
fidelloz   Thu Dec 01, 2005 10:11 am GMT
if we talk about learning. I can offer u talking with me a native polish speaker , so that we both will something to gain. U - fluency in polish , me - pleasure.
Hit me up anytime on :
msn : fidelloz@hotmail.com
mail : slawomir_hamann@vp.pl
skype: fidelloz


cheers :>
DryGene   Mon Dec 12, 2005 1:09 pm GMT
Hi Forum,

It's been a pleasure to have discovered such a place where people meet to talk about languages. I guess, it's part of certain phenomenon: people involved in cross-cultural activities or living in multi-cultural environment tend to seek (and, luckily, find) their kin who speak the same language. By "language" I mean spirit/aspirations/code of conduct that we try to adhere to.
I may be a bit elated as any novice, so I'll cut the niceties and answer the Question of the thread: My favourite one ? It's difficult for me to decide as I don't know properly any of the Slavic languages except my native Russian. But, I feel 'warm' (whatever that means...) towards each of them.
Finally, I must confess about what prompted me to write (couldn't help it):

To Linguist: your good education somehow did not translate into better cultural sensitivity. I am proud to be Russian, too, but your attitude was somewhat condescending. Admit it!

To Francis: In the heat of the argument, perhaps, you haven't noticed that you started that little fire. Im sure the passions no longer fly high and U and Ed are good friends by now.

Hope that someone will read this 'message in a bottle' . Anyway, very best regards to you all. And, yeah, I want to be part of your circle.

Gennady
Russian (I prefer to be a 'Rossianin' if you know what I mean)
Moskovskaja Oblast
Drunkie   Mon Dec 12, 2005 3:29 pm GMT
Thank god there are still some sensible Russians around, not just Linguist and Real Deal types.
Phil   Mon Dec 12, 2005 8:19 pm GMT
You speak a really good english
DryGene   Tue Dec 13, 2005 2:32 am GMT
Thank you all for the compliments (as far as they go.. :-P ). Thing is that ... ghm ! ... I am not particularly young (not too old though!) Must have gained some experience by now.

There are many more 'sensible' Russians around than it is customarily believed. Which is true of any nation, I am sure.

I am still looking around this new virtual place with a fair degree of curiosity. Before I learn how to start a new thread, I'd suggest that we talk about local placenames (or, was there such a discussion on toponimy?)

Like, I am curious to know if Ljubliana means sth. It sounds so nice to any 'slavic' ear...

In exchange, I can say that, in the past 10 years Ive been living in Mytischi (Мытищи). The second syllable is stressed.
The word is a slightly modified form of Mytische (Мытище) - first syllable stressed - and that's a place for collecting " мыт " (obsolete) i.e. customs tax.
Time of origin: sometime in 15th century AD (said he doubtfully...)

Cheers

Gennady
Drunkie   Tue Dec 13, 2005 7:23 am GMT
"Myto" (мито) is still used in Ukrainian meaning customs fee.
As far as Ljubljana is concerned, some information is available here: http://lingvoforum.net/index.php/topic,2691.0.html