Mutual intelligibility among Slavic Languages

Dryankola   Sat May 05, 2007 2:53 pm GMT
Yes, which languages do you think are the most mutual intelligible? I think they are Czech and Slovak or Russian and Ukrainian, but the former is dominant, I think, right?
Hutch   Sat May 05, 2007 3:00 pm GMT
One could also say that Bulgarian and Macedonian are more mutually intelligible than the ones you've mentioned.
superdavid   Sat May 12, 2007 2:40 pm GMT
From my understanding, Russian and Belorussian are mutually intelligible. So are Russian and Ukranian.
Hutch   Sat May 12, 2007 2:46 pm GMT
I know that Bulgarian and Russian are very close, but are they mutually intelligible as well?
darko   Sat May 12, 2007 6:04 pm GMT
I am serbian native speaker, and I can say that the serbian and all other south slavic languges are very mutually intelligible, onley with Bulgarian could be a little problems.
But Polish is somehow the most different, serbian speaker cant understand even a word from Polish
Hutch   Mon May 14, 2007 12:25 am GMT
I once had a conversation with a young woman from the Czech Republic. She stated that Czech and Slovak are mutually intelligible and that the main differences between the two languages is that Slovak has somewhat of a Hungarian inflluence, and Czech has more of a German and Latin component. Darko, is Czech and Slovak mutually intelligible with your native Serbian?
Aleksei   Thu May 17, 2007 11:01 am GMT
I am a native Russian.
I can say that Russian is almost mutually intelligible with the Belorussian language, because they have very similar pronunciation and vocabulary (however, it is very difficult for a native russian without prior experience in Belorussian to understand it in written form, because the spelling rules differ very significantly).
It is a little bit more difficult for a russian to understand Ukrainian, because they differ in pronunciation and the Ukrainian.
It is also interesting, that both belorussians and ukrainians can understand Russian without any significant effort, whereas Russians have to make efforts some efforts. It is also very important what level of education a particular russian have (because both Ukrainian and Belorussian widely use such forms and words that have already disappeared from the modern everyday Russian, but are used in classic literature and some official texts, so they higher level of education a particular russian has, the better he may understand the Ukrainian and Belorussian).
darko   Thu May 17, 2007 11:23 am GMT
yes Czech and Slovak are mutually intelligible with Serbian but many words have different meaning in those languages
Guest   Thu May 17, 2007 12:40 pm GMT
Who cares? they're all ugly anyways.
Linguist   Thu May 17, 2007 4:56 pm GMT
however, it is very difficult for a native russian without prior experience in Belorussian to understand it in written form, because the spelling rules differ very significantly).

Лёха, are you kidding on people, written Belorussian looks like олбанский so people understand it perfectly LOL