The Slavic Languages and What Makes Them a FAMILY

This video is all about the Slavic Language family, one of Europe`s major language families.
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[mympearl]

I am Japanese and I understand 0% of Russian, 0% of Polish, 0% of Czech, and even less of other Slavic languages

[Vladimir Petrovic]

Have some Rakija and you'll understand them all...

[Mira Aleksic]

Sam(u)raj - allein in paradies

[Mikołaj Bądzielewski]

Nani???

[Bulgaria]

As bulgarian I can understand 0% japanese language!

[Hz]

ikura with bottle of vodka?

[Łukasz Banasiak]

I am Polish but spent a week in Moscow. When coming back I heard very weird Russian at the airport. After few seconds I realized that it was actually Polish. In one week I totally oriented my mind to a different melody of language... and forgot my own :)

[majsTTer]

Ja jestem Słowakiem i powróciłem z pracy studenckiej z Wrocławia. I tak w domu mówiłem, że to je pekné miasto (po słowacku mesto). A wybierając się dzisiaj na wycieczkę, to szukałem zamiast cestovného poriadku "rozklad jazdy." Jeszcze szczęście, że nie zapomniałem użyć słowa hľadať (szukać), bo šukať u nas to ruchać.

[Арсений Корчевский]

For me polish accent of russian sounds the most beautifull

[Emil Pavlov]

amazing story my friend but it only confirms that all slavs are brothers and we should treat each other like that

[Jaydn Hill-Jones]

Hey man I don’t blame you, Polish still catches me off guard. And I’m not even Polish 😂

[МОТИВАЦИЯ СПОРТ УСПЕХ И ДЕНЬГИ]

I'm Russian.I can understand Belarusian by 95%.Ukrainian by 40%.Polish and Czech by about 8%, Serbian by 40%, Bulgarian by 65%.

[StarDustGachi]

The same story, but i managed to learn Ukrainian language and it helped me a lot to learn more about all slavic languages. It feels amazing.

[Narapati C. Sharma]

It is illusion. Polish is closer to Russian than Bulgarian. Pronunciation, grammar, even swearing in Polish are similar to Russian.

[Agon V]

Can u take the Serbs back please ?

[Elizabeth Brower]

My dad was Ukrainian American and he could understand Russian and some polish too

[Narapati C. Sharma]

@Agon V it is impossible, sir. We can't understand that nation. They have very weird grammar despite the many words that are similar. Fortunately, many Serbs know Russian.

[Mario Mušić]

Ja sam Hrvat i radim sa turistima. Sve Slavene se može razumjeti ako govore pomalo. 80% do 90 riječi je razumljivo,možda 10 do 20% jezika treba naučiti.

[lina la]

hi! i'm russian and i agree with you. btw, understood your comment without translation ;)

[polo]

se strinjam

[Jakub]

ja som rozumel 100% toho a ja som czechoslovak

[Szczerbcowa Rękojeść]

Ja też rozumiem każde słowo :D.

[quick906]

Ja sam Bosanac i ništa te ne razumijem.

[Stepan Leonov]

I'm Russian and I have a friend from Bosnia. We use English to communicate, so we never really tried to see how much we would understand from our respective languages. But one day she came to Russia and naturally she heard a lot of Russian. I also heard quite a bit of Bosnian when she talked to her mom on the phone. We agreed that we could at most understand some words, but the meaning was lost almost completely, so like 10-20% probably is intelligible both ways

[GuyHeadbanger]

I am German and learned Russian. When I hear people speak Bosnian, is sounds somehow cute to me, I cannot explain why. It is somehow softer and more tender then Russian.

[Антон Антошин]

​@GuyHeadbanger learnt*

[Acácio Luan Stocco]

Jestem z Brazylii. Uczę się polskiego i bardzo lubię mówić po polsku. :-)

[Przemysław Data]

Very good, bardzo dobrze, múy bien (if you understand some spanish), I'm Polish and I'm really glad seeing, that non-Polish people learn and like speak my language that for the majority of the world is the hardest language to learn. Jestem Polakiem i naprawdę się cieszę, widząc jak ludzie nie będący Polakami uczą się mojego języka, który większość świata uznaje za najtrudiejszy do nauki.

[Halina ILKIEWICZ]

wspaniałe! skąd zamiłowanie do polskiego?

[Acácio Luan Stocco]

@Halina ILKIEWICZ, mieszkam w Kurytybie, miasto z polskimi rodzinami. Chcę jechać do Polski w czerwcu. :-)

[Halina ILKIEWICZ]

@Acácio Luan Stocco wspaniale...najlepszy sposób nauczyć się języka

[Vivido De Isla]

Obrigado 💪🏻

[RL89pl]

Im Polish native speaker and with vodka im understanding 100% of every slavic language and vice versa XD

[Narapati C. Sharma]

You can't because you have only wódka and not vodka. We alone have true vodka. Actually, the true Russian name for this drink is "chlebnoje wino", and we mistakenly use Polish name for our drink.))))

[Bulgaria]

@Narapati C. Sharma Rakia on the Balkans beat vodka in Eastern Europe

[Alexander Parshin]

@Bulgaria It's from turkish Raki? Turks got you hard bro...

[Bulgaria]

@Alexander Parshin Rakia is the most traditional alcohole drink on the Balkans! Balkans countries drink more rakia than Turkey!

[RwEpNcA]

@Narapati C. Sharma горілка лучше звучит чем хлебное вино...

[magnetiaPL]

Cześć! I'm from Poland and last year I had the trip to Prague with my friend. We had no problems understanding what we needed from Czech, really. At the train we had a long conversation with some Czech people about multiple topics including history and politics and we were able to talk. Sometimes because of misunderstandings we had to stop and explain to the other side something in other words, but generally we could communicate. We had a lot of fun because Poles think that Czech language sounds funny. Believe me, if you are Polish native, you can't stop laughing when you hear some Czech words! And how did our new Czech friends comment this? They said Polish was funny for them in the same way. And what is more surprising: some people I know who also had been in Prague, had absolutely opposite opinion: Czech is so different from Polish that they understood nothing! I wonder why different people can have so different feelings about that. Me and my friend met during our university studies - we graduated from polish literature and language. Maybe plenty of books read in your life (also some literature written in old Polish from middle ages) makes your vocabulary wider and helps in understanding other Slavic languages? Or our knowledge about Old Church Slavonic help us to understand Czech better?

[Nikola Bornová]

There is also possibility that Poles understand Czech better than Czechs Polish. I don't remember how exactly is this paradoxical thing named, but it is also true for the Scandinavian languages (some of them understand better to others than vice versa - it's weird). p.s. Poles love Ivan Mládek, Czechs love Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz :-))

[Maria Castañeda]

Czesc, Thanks you

[slouberiee]

As a Czech, I can confirm that Polish language sounds very funny to us.

[Just Wondering]

I know it might be late and you won't see this comment, but I still have to add to this. I think it really depends on where you live. I live in Silesian region (Czech part) and a lot of Poles understand Czech here. The whole Silesia I dare to say understands each other without any real trouble. But when I traveled to Gdaňsk, Gdynie and basically that region up north, I was completely lost in translation. Poles didn't understand me anymore. If I wouldn't have my GF with me as my quick translator, I would be lost completely :D Ofc I mostly understood them, but they did not understand me.

[magnetiaPL]

@Just Wondering If you come from Silesia, that's obvious that you understand a lot of Czech, because the Silesian is a mixture of Polish, German and Czech, isn't it? But I come from surroundings of Bydgoszcz and now I live in Krakow. I have no idea about dialects, I speak only classical Polish :)

[David S.]

I'm Polish and I'm learning Russian, and I can tell you that they're actually pretty similar (of course except for the alphabet), after a couple of lessons I could already kind of understand her.

[Ethan Clark]

It

[Liam J]

@Ethan Clark Sounds pretty normal to me as an Aussie hahaha

[2garin Veselo]

Не врешь?)

[Quirktart]

@Ethan Clark within Slavic Grammer words that are gendered are refered to with her and he instead of it when the subject is given. This is a grammatical change, if you spoke Russian and used it in this case it's be grammatically wrong

[Project X]

I'm from Serbia and I have the most difficult time understanding west Slavic languages such as Czech, Slovak and Polish although Slovak is the least difficult out of three. Macedonian is really easy to understand both spoken and written and Bulgarian is a bit more difficult than Macedonian. Slovenian is also somewhat understandable and Russian is understandable to me but that's because I studied Russian in school. I wonder if it would be the same if I haven't been learning it. I haven't heard a lot of Belarus and Ukrainian so I can't judge although I assume Belarus is pretty similar to Russian. And of course we understand Croatian perfectly clear, there are only some minor differences in vocabulary and dialects and of course alphabet but Serbia uses both cyrillic and latin so it's not a problem. Love for all my Slavic brothers ❤️

[Issa Vis Island]

SlavoBulgarians🇲🇰 using the Greek name of Macedonia 🇬🇷 for their origin. Macedonians 🇬🇷 we are Greeks speaking the Greek language of Alexander and Macedonians. It was Alexander and Macedonians 🇬🇷 who spread Hellenism and their Greek language and made it the Lingua franca of that time. Greek language of Macedonians 🇬🇷 have nothing to do with the Bulgarian language of fyrBulgarians🇲🇰. Thnx. Greets from Thessalonike 🇬🇷 Macedonia 🇬🇷 Northern Greece

[#CCFF00]

@Issa Vis Island 🤣🤣🤣

[Irena Mladenovic]

@Issa Vis Island 😂😂😂😂

[Issa Vis Island]

@Irena Mladenovic Salute peaceful Irena (your Greek name means peace✌️) ✌️from Alexander's sister city Thessalonike🇬🇷 (which slavs call solun. Why??) Macedonians 🇬🇷 we say Thessalonike SlavoBulgarians 🇲🇰 say solun. Who's the Macedonian and who's pseudomacedonian?✌️

[Issa Vis Island]

@#CCFF00 Ask SlavoBulgarians 🇲🇰 why they call Alexander's sister ThessaloNike as solun

[Olivia Petrini di Monforte]

Yes! My late husband spoke Croatian, and he could have conversations with Russians, Poles, Slovaks, Ukranians, Slovenians...he claimed the only Slavic language he could not fudge was Czech. He understood it, but could not reply.

[Polský Prodavač]

If he could reply to slovaks, then he could to czech. It is more close than russian and belarussian…

[SchafInDerBar]

Yeah you're right

[chábr]

But czechs understand coratian without problem

@Polský Prodavač it isnt

[Andrej Kvasnica]

@Polský Prodavač He could reply to czechs in slovak language and the older ones will understand. Czech youth is not able to understand slovak anymore, they are not exposed to the slovak culture and language enough since the cz/sk split anymore.

[Geronimo]

I am just a French speaker passing through.. I just wanted to know that Slavic languages are so interesting... guys you are awesome. Keep it up

[Fil'my i serialy ukrajins'koju]

Did you know that Russians are not Slavs, but the Golden Horde)

[Lana Del Rey Stan🍂🌼]

@Fil'my i serialy ukrajins'koju что за бред😭😭😭

[Srdjan Basaric]

@Fil'my i serialy ukrajins'koju Better golden Horde than Golden Nazi.

[Sanja Anđelković]

Izvinjavam se u ime slovenske braće 😊 Ovo je familijarno zadirkivanje 😉 Slovenska braćo, ponašajte se pristojno pred gostima 🤗

[Oyasuna Chan]

Slavic time! : Tea Belarusian : чай (čaj) Bosnian : čaj Bulgarian : чай (chaĭ) Croatian : čaj Czech:čaj Mcedonian:чај (čaj) Russian:чай (chay) Serbian:чај (čaj) Slovak:čaj Slovenian:čaj Ukrainian : чай (chay) Polish:... Czech:No,NO YOU DON'T Polish: *BREATHES IN* Polish: HERBATA! Rest of family: You rebelious little shit...

[Robertosław Iksiński]

But "kettle" in Polish means: "czajnik", not: "herbatnik" (biscuit ;)

[Юрий Митрофанов]

Russian: чай (chaĭ)

[Oyasuna Chan]

Юрий Митрофанов Sorry :---:

[Black Rose]

Same with 'Włochy; when others have Italy/Italia.

[WtC]

It's Serbo-Croatian, not "Bosnian", "Croatian", "Serbian"

[Margarita Danova]

Я русская. Понимаю лучше всего белорусский, украинский и болгарский, дальше польский. С чешским было очень мало опыта. В целом же мне кажется, что пара-тройка уроков и несколько недель активной практики - и я начну себя довольно уверенно чувствовать в любом славянском языке. Только путаться в них стану - так же, как когда путала похожие слова и, например, формы местоимений в итальянском и французском, когда изучала оба языка одновременно.

[Liberte Fraternite]

I'm Serb and I can perfectly understand Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin (this exists??!) languages (=100% written and spoken language). Politics has given (and still giving) them different names, without real reasons. Langfocus, I' ve just realized that you have great videos about languages, thank you!

[Annurissimo 10]

I don't think I have ever heard anyone include Montenegrin as a separate language. But sure, let's make the biggest name of a language in the world. Serbo-Croatian-Bosnian-Montenegrin

[zoran djipanov]

@Annurissimo 10 it would be great if we could just call it south Slavic and be done with the whole ordeal… and every nation can have their dialect…

[Lady Boss SheDevil]

Greetings from Bulgaria,neighbour.. 😊

[Macko]

@zoran djipanov yesss and we could even use their own name for the word "south" to make it more appealing to the natives!

[Nataniel Garro]

Understanding different Slavic languages ​​depends directly on the knowledge of one's own language and vocabulary. For example, in Russian there are basic words to describe a thing or phenomenon, but there are also synonymous words that are not used very widely in Russian, but in other Slavic languages, they can be basic. If a person knows Russian or Ukrainian well, knows a lot of synonymous words, then he will have no problems understanding another Slavic language.

[HeroManNick132]

Bulgarian is the same. It has many synonyms that are nearly the same as Russian but rarely used like instead for "бумага" (we have it as word but we barely use it nowadays) and instead we use "хартия" more often (this word comes from Greek btw) and we have "папирус" which is like "an ancient paper for writing." And so on.

[Anatoly Repin]

@HeroManNick132 In Russian we have both хартия and папирус words as well, but they used only for historical purposes.

[Wojciech Krotoszynski]

Oh man you NEED to do an episode on the Interslavic language ......it's just amazing. You have an experiment where south, west and east Slavs are on a call and a guy tells them what to draw in Interslavic - they all draw the same scene with similar details.

[Ellary Rosewood]

I hope to see you do a video on Bulgarian soon! I just started learning in and have been finding it so interesting, especially how it's so different from the other Slavic languages. 🇧🇬

[HeroManNick132]

А македонският не е ли и той различен като знаеш колко тези два езика си приличат? И според повечето чужденци, изглежда че е като руски диалект, но не е българският е създаден преди руския. :) Иначе ти откъде си?

[Ellary Rosewood]

@HeroManNick132 I'm originally from the U.S., but have been living in Tbilisi, Georgia 🇬🇪 for a while. Planning on going to Bulgaria when I am able. ☺️

[HeroManNick132]

@Ellary Rosewood Nice!

[Demixx]

Slavic culture and history is amazing. We have so much to offer and we should put the political differences aside and work together :) I love every single Slavic country, we are all simply great

[Purple Elemental]

Work together is also politics

[Leonard Burdek III]

I'm an American whose family name comes from my great grandparents that came here from Galicia about 1900. They settled in an area of Detroit where Poles, Czechs, Slovaks and Ukrainians settled so I heard these languages while growing up. About two years ago I began to study the histories of my family who are Poles, Czechs and Slovaks. The conclusion I have come to is we are all the same family, it's those in charge that divided us!

[haroon marikar]

i am seeing this in 2022 april . ya grusna

[Rodrigo Martins O.S.]

Things have changed quite a bit... huh.

[Ivaylo Yurukov]

The cyrillic alphabet was incepted during the First Bulgarian Empire in the literary school of Preslav by the scholars Naum of Preslav and Clement of Ochrid. The Cyrill and Methodios (yes, with "O" instead of "U" because he was greek) script's name is Glagolitic. Source: wikipedia

[Sergii]

I know Russian and Ukrainian languages. The rest of the languages ​​are as follows: Belarusian sounds like Ukrainian, everything is clear but it has only a completely different accent (it seems that someone learned the Ukrainian language, but at the same time completely ignored the phonetics, i.e. the pronunciation of words), but Serbo-Croatian is vice versa. The pronunciation seems Ukrainian (a Ukrainian accent is clearly heard), but the words are only far from similar and the meaning escapes, even if I listen attentively. Slovak surprised me with that, if you listen attentively, it is very similar to Ukrainian. Polish is also understandable, if you get used to pshek and rzhek sounds. Bulgarian sounds like Russian, is understandable, especially if you discard the ending and substitute the ending from Russian, but there are some incomprehensible words. Moreover, Bulgarian pronunciation is close to Russian but with tender additions (because of a lot of soft sounds ti instead of ty, etc. and because of articles ata, which are recognised as caring suffixes by a Russian speaker). Macedonian is similar to Bulgarian, but it is more difficult to understand, sometimes you have to listen attentively, and sometimes it does not help. Church Slavonic is very similar to Russian and is understandable except rare words. Of course, I understand that it seems to me as "understandable" can occur wrong interpretation, and the real picture will be worse. But that was the impression. And what is yours?

[Sergii]

Being a Ukrainian from the Eastern part of Ukraine with Russian and Ukrainian native proficiency (but Russian prevailing), I am not so free in understanding Polish. Moreover Slovak seemed to be even more understandable than Polish.

[Владимир Косарев]

As a native Russian speaker, I personally found that West Slavic languages (particularly Polish and Slovak) were easy to understand and their grammar was somewhat similar to Russian. Nevertheless it took me good 3 days to finally realise, that I started understanding some Polish. They use a lot of words which are considered very old fashioned in Russian language. Now I can understand Ukrainian and Belarusian better, because I have some knowledge of Polish. Czech is very difficult to understand. Bulgarian isn’t as easy as one might think, although it uses the same alphabet, but they tend to understand us better, than we do them. Btw Paul, I think that “funny introduction” which you chose for the video about Slavic languages only represents “South Slavic” culture, it sounds very Balcan.

[Selgan 99]

It goes both ways, for example the word for a loved one in polish is kochany/kochana, but an older version is luby/luba which is very similar to russian lyubov,

[kolokolchik1]

@Selgan 99 in Ukrainian we use both, neither is old fashioned (любий, кохана)

[Boris]

I'm Ukrainian and I can understand 95% of Belarusian. Russian is my second language, so I use it with the same frequency as Ukrainian. But when I tried to speak Ukrainian to Russians they hardly understand 70-80% of what I've said. Also I studied Czech to B2 and it was not difficult at all, because the paterns are really very-very similar in Czech and Ukrainian. Slovak language is something between Czech and Ukrainian, so I can understand it too. I can understand 50-60% of spoken Polish and 90% of written form. South Slavic languages are more difficult to understand to me. But in general, when I read some text in any Slavic language, I will understand the idea for sure

[Lilia Ilinova]

Me, too!How lucky we are! 🙂

[alskdjva]

Nice video! There is seventh case of the word "bottle" in Polish, vocative: butelko. Greetings to all, especially the Slavs :)

[Mr. Sidious]

Śmieszne było by mówić do butelki ;)

[Krzysztof Marynowski]

I'm from Poland and I can communicate with Slovak and Czech without a problem. With Bulgarian and Russian is little more difficult but is not impossible.

[Феникс Великий]

Просто убираем из польского пшепшепше и получаем примерно украинский)

[Purple Elemental]

@Феникс Великий усё далёка ня так проста

[Stuart Morrow]

I get such mixed messages on this. For instance Darek from Let's Polish claims there's little intelligibility.

[Milen Gerganov]

Perhaps you're one of few polish people who has no problem learning other slav languages. I live with different polish people for the last 4 years and none of them understands me when I start speaking Bulgarian. On the other side I had a Polish girlfriend, and for about 4 months I learned around 1000 polish words and I do not include the ones that are similar to their bulgarian equivalents.

[Ann G]

Czeski i slowacki łatwiej mi zrozumieć, ale ukraiński i rosyjski to jakaś inna historia, niby słowanski ale nie do zrozumienia poza pojedynczymi słowami.

[Rodelle🪆]

I'm Korean, and I love the slavic languages! Currently, I'm learning Russian♥️🇷🇺

[m.]

Bulgarian (Slavic) here! i wanna learn Korean so bad but it’s going to be really hard :( good luck with the Russian tho!

[Rodelle🪆]

@m. благодаря Maggie! Good luck to you too! 🇧🇬🇰🇷♥️

[Drew Bieber]

КНДР или Южная Корея?

[Shaho Azizi]

I'm kurdish from Iran... me too :))) I love russian for no reasons!! Maybe because It's familiar with my native language. a small similarity in pronunciation and similarity in some words.

[Vladimir Trajanovski]

One remark, around 5:15 in the video you say that one of the writing systems used by Cyril and Methodius was the Cyrillic script. But they did not use that script, since it was developed after their death, in the First Bulgarian Empire, by some of their disciples. Cyril and Methodius devised the Glagolitic script which was the first written Slavic standard.

[T. R.]

In Croatia glagolitic script was used till 1810. Croats were using 3 written standars: glagolitic, cyrillic and latinic. Also Croats were only western christians using his own language in liturgy instead latin. The oldest known written Croatian glagolitic documents from 9th century are today in Kiev museum (hope that this stupid war in Ukraina will not destroy it). Lot of French kings were put hands on "Texte du sacre" in Reims during king's inagurations, that book is Croatian glagolitic liturgy book from 1483.

[Helios8170]

As an English speaker, I'm oddly fascinated by how much of a basic vocabulary is shared across the Slavic languages. I'm practicing Russian, but I'm playing a Czech-produced game called "HROT" (which I believe means "pike" or "stick") and being able to read the Latin scripts is so helpful. I noticed that the words for "friend", "work", "honor", "meat", etc. all had very similar pronunciations and spellings. It's also absolutely bonkers watching the Slavs in the Balkans argue about their language differences, just another reason I find the place so, um... interesting.

[HeroManNick132]

Bulgarian and Macedonian have quite different vocabulary compared to the rest.

[Radovan Moucha]

HROT precisely means the tip of something sharp, for example, the tip of a sword, knife, arrow, stake, etc

[Bulletproof Cupid]

I can easily communicate with the members of the same language group as mine. In my case Russian is my native language. As for other groups, Polish language is more understandable than Czech. Belorussian and Polish share many common words. Pronounciation does matter. Bulgarian is quite understandable for Russians since both languages have pretty similar vocabulary.

[Maria Zverina]

I am Czech (well Czechoslovakian) by birth. For those of us growing up in Czechoslovakia, both Czech and Slovak were commonly present and mixed (TV, newspapers, etc). This means they both felt native - even though now I suspect it's a case of close languages where code switching happens as people growing today find it harder to parse Slovak. Having picked up bit of Russian, I find amost all Slavic relatively easy to "gist" - except Macedonian and Bulgarian. With those two there is some intelligibility but far less compared to Slovenian and SerboCroat. Suspect it's the Turkic influence. The other thing to note is that often the intelligibility will happen because the word in other language is similar to slang or archaic form. Or it's a false friend - however there is a link of some sort. E.g. ovoce (fruit) Czech овоще 'ovosche' (vegetable) Russian. Most languages are easier to parse in written form. However there are times where Polish/Ukrainian make sense in spoken form - for me this doesn't happen in the other Slavic languages.

[HeroManNick132]

Май забравяш другият параметър, че тези два езика няма падежи, а опредителни членове, която е нетипично за славянските езици и може би затова те затруднява. Относно за турцизмите, аз бих казал, че сърбите, босненците най-много употребяват. Руснаците и те също например като с думата ,,лошадь," която не е славянска даже.

[Vikkis]

Slovaks and Czech can understand each other on about 99,9 %. It is mainly due to many similarities and shared TV channels and a fact that we were one country some 23 years ago. But you can usually communicate with other Slavs speakers pretty well.

[heimdall1973]

+Vikkis TV, yes... I remember many cartoons from your area I watched in 70s and 80s. Ceskoslovenska televizija Praha and Ceskoslovenska televizija Bratislava. I think the best one was A je to. Really funny! The great thing about it was also that there were no language issues for non-Chech-Slovak (or even non-Slavic). There was no talkong or narrating, the characters' expressions and the background music told everything.

[Marianne Houskova]

my mother language is Czech/slovak, but since i live in norway i can hardly talk czech (i dont speak slovak at all)😂 i talk better english than i speak czech. i can understand everything, but i cant speak so good. anyway: my grandparents are from slovakia and when they talk to me i mostly understand everything, but some words are harder than others. i think it would be easier for me to understand them if i could talk better czech. 😂😂

[Dominika Domaczaja]

Marianne Houskova So you understand Slovak and you can speak Czech, Norwegian and English? ;)

[Marianne Houskova]

+Dominika Domaczaja heh, I actually speak norwegian, english, Czech and german as well. I also understand slovakisc, swedish, danish, a little russian and some words in spanish😊

[Dominika Domaczaja]

Marianne Houskova that is amazing! ☺

[ZeLeninovo mäsové rizoto]

I'm Czech, and aside from Slovak, which I'm fluent in (outside of a certain group of dialects...), I understand written forms of Polish, upper Sorbian, Slovenian and Rusyn, plus some Croatian dialects, by around 95%+, and I can usually deduce the rest. I have a slightly harder time with lower Sorbian, Kashubian and Silesian, which are maybe 85-90% depending on the context. Ukrainian, Belarusian and the Serbo-Croatian languages I can generally understand 75-80% of, though having to read cyrillic means I am much slower. Russian is complicated, given that I've been exposed to it from a relatively young age (joys of early post-communism entertainment), but outside of that it's about 70% I have not actually seen Macedonian outside of insults, but I can't understand Bulgarian much, spoken or written - though the latter has more to do with me having a problem with even reading their cyrillic rather than not understanding, with the only example I've ever "bothered" to decipher being intelligible at around 50%. As for spoken, it greatly varies on the speaker, dialect and circumstances, but in normal conversation it generally stays about 50% pure understanding and 75% deduction outside of the 90s group (which I can communicate with without much issue, especially as I am generally aware of false friends like szukat), and Bulgarian and presumably Macedonian, which are at about 30% overall, 45-50% when speaking slow enough.

[Nick Name]

Rusyn language is a dialect of Ukrainian!

[alvazir]

As a Russian native speaker I also know Ukrainian as the second language. And it gives me opportunity to understand Belarusian by 90%, Polish by 75%, Czech and Slovak by 55-60%, Serbo-Croatian by about 45-55% and Bulgarian by 50%.

[Michal_MC]

For me as a Pole Slovak is the easiest. When I listen to news in Slovak radio I understand 90%.

[Prima - Mghrbiss]

And Slovenian?

[Demetrio Tozzi]

@Michal_MC Ukrainian and Slovak are also very close

[ajdrag]

I did a real estate transaction with a gentleman who came from the Czech Republic. He had a very heavy accent. My native language is Polish. As we walked to the attorney's office we started a conversation. He spoke in Czech, I spoke in Polish, and somehow we were able to understand each other. The words were different yet familiar and we could make out what the other was saying. Surprising.

[Wonwhere Wonwhere]

Я русская. Из опыта моих контактов с другими языками славянской группы (белорусский, украинский и польский) проще всего было общаться в Белоруссии. Мы спокойно разговаривали и не было слов, которые бы мы не поняли. Некоторые слова звучали необычно, но с пониманием проблем не было. С пониманием украинского на слух есть проблемы, однако это достаточно легко исправляется если мы общаемся не устно, а письменно, но это определенно тяжелее, чем в случае с белорусским. Самым тяжелым для понимания оказался польский, так как я слышала знакомые слова, однако несмотря на знакомое звучание они значили не то, что значат в моем языке.

[Malus :::]

Slovak here, understood 70%, didn’t learn Russian 💪 in spoken form I would have more difficulties though azbuka doesn’t make it fast to read

[Jevgenij Krivosejev]

@Malus ::: well as I have Russian as mother tongue and I did work with Polish people, I can speak and understand Polish a little. It helped me a lot when I have spent few days in Praha. At least waiters did understand me talking in Polish and I did understand them talking in Czech. Anyway when it comes from discussions about beer to working questions, English is the language of choise :)

[kolokolchik1]

@Jevgenij Krivosejev choice 😉

[Spadar]

А вы ўпэўнены, што з вамі беларусы па-беларуску размаўлялі, а не па расейску? Я проста цяпер вучуся ў Варшаве і ў нас ёсьць людзі з Расеі, але калі я з імі размаўляю па-беларуску, то ў ніх даволі часта паўстаюць цяжкасьці з перакладам, бо на слых ім не звыкла васпрымаць тыя словы, што я ім кажу.

[Arii Ski]

It’s not only the language that makes is a family …it’s the ethnicity

[Antonio Kowatsch]

I'm a Slovak and can speak/understand Polish and Russian (mostly because two of my best childhood friends were Russian and Polish). I do have my difficulties with Croatian though. While I can understand most of it they have certain words which are completely different.

[Ante Vukovic]

AntonioKowatsch can you understand this : "Ja sam iz Hrvatske."

[Antonio Kowatsch]

Eggyruptor _ Yes, I can :-)

[Ante Vukovic]

AntonioKowatsch Can you send me a sentence on Slovakian?

[Antonio Kowatsch]

Eggyruptor _ Sure: "Som Slovak a som na to hrdý"

[Ante Vukovic]

AntonioKowatsch "I am Slovakian, and I am on a hill" I am not so confident I got it right.

[Lunalyka Vitone]

I’m Russian native and learning Czech language currently, I can say it allows me to understand most of Slavic languages easily

[Pavel Sanda]

I an Czech, I learnt Russian and watched Polish TV as a child. I can confirm your experience. My wife is Slovak and 8 years younger than me and she does not understand either Polish or Russian, but her Czech is almost perfect.

[BOJIDAR]

I am a native bulgarian speaker, which is part of Southern Slavic Language Family. I can understand very good (85-90%) the Southern Slavic LF languages. I can also understand very good Russian and Belarussian (75%). Czech and Slovak I can understand 60%. Polish and Ukrainian I can understand 30%.

[Iva Kaderková]

I think the ability to communicate with other slavic language speakers increases during life as one broadens their native language vocabulary and gets exposed to the other languages. My 5 year old and 3 year old kids can't understand hardly anything in Slovak while most adults can understand well over 90%. As I tried to teach them to understand Slovak, I realised that nearly all of the words are at least slightly different from the general Czech and many words are completely different. A Czech speaker who understands Slovak had to have learned the general differences in grammar and pronunciation as well as a bit of completely new vocabulary (some of which is present in Moravian dialects). I think if Czechs were more exposed to Polish, they could understand it nearly as well as Slovak. I'm originally from Bohemia (western part of Czechia) but I've lived in Silesia (NE part of Czechia) for over 15 years now. When I lived in Bohemia, I couldn't understand more than 40% of what was said in Polish but after being exposed to silesia dialect for so many years, I can now understand up to 70% or more (depending on the polish dialect). My friend who speaks ponašimu (an in-between dialect/language of Czech, Slovak, Polish and German) says she can understand up to 70% of Ukrainian but I can only understand about 50% maybe a bit more depending on the subject. The funny thing is that the more Ukrainian I hear, the more I understand because I figure out the suffixes and that there are a lot of /i/ vowels where Czech would have /e/ or /o/ there are two qualities of /i/ while Czech only has one but silesia dialect kept the distinction.... To conclude the more dialect of your native language you know and the more other slavic languages you're exposed to, the easier it is to understand the rest.

[Anton Minchev]

I am Bulgarian and in my way till now i’ve got the opportunity to live in few slavic countries ( 🇨🇿 🇵🇱 🇸🇰). So based on my experiences with different slavic groups I could say that i have no problem to understand and read about 80% of any Slavic languages and speak on 80-90% few different of Bulgarian slavic languages.Generally depends of the person but a slavic person could learned easy some deferent from his native slavic language for a few months. He will speak pretty enough as to have fully understanding with the other guys.

[claudianowakowski]

I just re watched this video after your recommendation at the end of the Bulgarian video. I found this video very informative. I can see how you have made many improvements over the years. Your content has always been high quality.

[LadyGagaFairy s Tutorials]

I'm Czech. I understand almost all Slavic languages pretty good. For me the easiest one might be Slovakian (I understand like 98%) and than learn Russian, so I can also understand eastern slavic languages. Plus I live very lose to Poland, so I can speak Polish almost fluently.

[INTERNATIONAL]

Same here

[Mumon K]

THAT was my question! I went to Prague a few times, and I swear, Czech and Slovak looked very similar; I'm of Slovak ancestry but I have relative in Prague.

[Євгеній Панасенко]

Learning Russian doesn't help understand Ukrainian or Belarusian

[wBacz]

Czesi i Polacy! Przejmujemy ten kanał!

[Prox (Lavi)]

Hezky pěkně 😂💪🏻

[Josef Hrůza]

The interesting thing is that understanding seems to be a bit one way. For example polish people have a much harder time understanding czech than czech people have understanding polish. And I also find that a small bit of training goes a long way to increase one's understanding of a similar language. I started out understanding maybe 40% polish but it quickly went up to ca 80% after just weeks of learning.

[Gregory Gogolev]

From my own experience, I can say that people of Slavic origin with analytic mind are able to understand better other Slavic languages than people without such ability. As to the Russian language, it has too many borrowings from many other languages and because of that many native slavic words are less usable today, but they still do exist and it is good and useful to know them and then it is easier to speak and understand other Slavic speakers.

[Adriane Little]

I’m born Slovak . When I was 9 years old, My family immigrated to Canada .I was fluent in Slovak, and have remained so even though I speak English a majority of the time. I Can understand many words from all Slavic languages , the most are in Czech , and then in Polish. Many words are identical .. only a difference in accent… of course many are completely different. Written is another story because Slovakia does not use the Cyrillic Alphabet . For the Slavic languages that use the Latin Alphabet … my comprehension is about the same as for spoken. I could probably make my way quite nicely in any Slavic country as a tourist. I worked in Lithuania for a while. Although Lithuanian sounded Slavic to my ears, the language itself is not Slavic at all. I was a bit confused when I first arrived . Because Lithuanian sounded so familiar, I tried asking for common things in Slovak. To my surprise … many people would understand me … turns out that there are a lot of Polish and Russian speaking people living in Lithuania.( I hadn’t known that Lithuania and Poland had a common history ) . Anyway, I had a great time, and got along quite nicely because most Lithuanians know some Polish .

[The Truth Is Right]

In learning Ukrainian (my family language), I find Belarusian to be the closest, with Russian a bit further. But, they are only partially mutually intelligible, with many differences in vocabulary and pronunciation (especially word stress), however, there is the benefit of having essentially the same grammar. Polish and Czech have some similarities to Ukrainian and the word stems are often cognates but the pronunciation is so divergent (especially in Czech) that recognizing them is tricky, and the grammar being a bit different it is also a bit more challenging than hearing Russian or Belarusian (which when cognates are shared, they tend to be more in tact). My family speaks a dialect from Western Ukraine which also means sharing slightly more lexical similarity with Polish. South Slavic languages are also similar but it depends on the language. Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Bosnian I find the most distant, with Serbo-Croatian and Slovenian being closer.

[HeroManNick132]

Bosnian is literally Serbo-Croatian lol.

[Demetrio Tozzi]

Belarusian is indeed the closest

[holerst]

Born in Czechoslovakia I do speak polish and bulgarian only because I used to live with polish and bulgarian people.Plenty of words are the same but sometimes with different meanings.I would say that the main thing is to learn the way how they speak and not the language its self.(of course you need to learn few extra words)

[Cats Cats]

I'm studying in Bulgaria right now, and learning Bulgarian is interesting while also being difficult. I'm originally Indian and I've noticed surprising similarities between my native language from the Dravidian language family(called malayalam) and Bulgarian.

[Michal K]

Some time ago, in this thread, an Iranian guy gave us a riddle, I quote: I'm Iranian and I wonder how many persian words in this text you slavic people recognize? "Madar be man iz miz shesh mysh dad".

[Lechosław]

Sanskrit is similar to Slavic languages, Polish in particular.

[Kirill Tischenko]

Becauce our ancesty had with Indo-Iranians Commonwealth in the past called "Scytho-Sarmatia". We have more simular words with Indo-Iranians then with other languages called "indo-european", even more than with Baltic. Also share with Indo-Iranians not only many same worlds, but also some cases of grammar - thet's about numerals, they are same. I leaned a little Avestian. So I think Dravidian languages have some simularities with Slavic, because of Aryan invason and conquest. But the Aryans are from our Eastern European origin. Also to me, billingual Ukranian who speaks both Ukranian and Russian , knows some Polish and laern Serbo-Croatian I can tell all these languges are sumular, but Bulgarian have got many differences from another Slavic languages in grammar. It's hard to understand this language, espeseally aurally.

[Lechosław]

Do you know of Ignacy Pietraszewki who translated "Zend Avesta" into Polish and French in 1858's. He considered Avestian, which is old Persian simply a proto-Polish language ?---pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignacy_Pietraszewski

[Kirill Tischenko]

No, I don't heard about this scienetist. Thank you for information.

[M Vulkov]

Cool video. To summarize it about slavic languages, the story is more or less like this: as you said there was a Proto-slavic language. It was relatively unchanged for a very long time. Its main feature was the use of many, many cases, protecting the lexical aspect of the language and that is why the slavic languages sound so similar. Later on, due to political reasons, the influence of other languages was used to define more and more different laguages, based on these influence. Even Romanian was very "slavic", but now it is almost completely Romanized. Bulgarian and the other language which you mention together with it were on the opposite, more under Latin influence, but they became more slavic with the time and so on. This has happend with every single "Slavic" laguage, leaving no room for hate and superiority, because all of them are so much artificially changed, so please do not be haters, guys. And also every of them keeps a different old feature of the Proto-slavic, which is not found in the other current official slavic laguages. It is difficult to comment and make a video on such a topics, so as we say in our Slavic language "Bravo". 😀 good job and keep making interesting and accurate videos!

[Jose Arellano]

Of Slavic languages I have learned Russian for a few years now. And I am also interested in Bulgarian and am considering Slovene. The Slavic languages are so close to each other. I can tell the words for bridge, winter, raspberry and sky, to name a few, are the same or very similar to each other among the Slavic languages.

[HeroManNick132]

As much as close are they, they are different too and they have some false friends that may embarrass you like "jaszczurka" is lizard in Polish but in Bulgarian same pronounced "яж чурка" means "eat dick." xD

[Anatoly Repin]

@HeroManNick132 In Rissian "Я ж чурка" means "I am just a dummy"

[Bex Deptford]

As a speaker of Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian I understand at least 60 percent of all of them, especially if written, Polish is the most difficult if spoken, while Czech is the cutest to me due to their long vowels that make it sound very sing-songy 😀

[HeroManNick132]

Щом харесваш чешкия, значи същото се отнася до словашкият език, нали?

[Aleksandr Barybin]

Я русский с польскими корнями. Понимаю практически все славянские языки, но это, пожалуй, ввиду повышенного интереса к ним. Без изучения для обычного русского человека остальные славянские языки не так просты для понимания. Но если начать изучать, то и балтийские языки оказываются не такими сложными и имеют множество общего со славянскими.

[quartz]

Если писать на латинице по русски, то все станет намного понятние

[Georgi Mihov]

I’m Bulgarian and can easily read and understand almost everything in Serbian, but when I tried to have a conversation with a cab driver in Belgrade I was really clueless what he was saying. 🤷🏻‍♂️ I think that goes for all Slavic languages - reading them is one thing, understanding spoken language totally different.

[Hubert Bieniek]

Being Polish allows me to talk with Czechs and Slovaks (even though those languages are really similar it's easier to communicate with Slovaks) without any bigger troubles. There are some word-traps like droga. In Polish it means 'a road' and in Slovak 'drugs'. Frajer and frajerka in Polish mean 'looser' and in Slovak they mean 'boyfriend/girlfriend'. It's actually easier to communicate in our languages than in English

[Istina Vaker]

We also say droga for drugs and frajer/-ja for boyfriend/girlfriend in Macedonia

[Andrey Losikhin]

It's very interesting because in Russian frajer means someone who's never been to jail. This word is widely used among prisoners as a peace of slang.

[najgauner]

Im of the opinion frajer comes of the gernan freier, meaning a free man, a whorehouse visitor and in someaustrian dialects boyfriend. Clearly for polish it would mean loser as its bordering with germany( and they defined freier as a whorehouse visitor) . Slovakia and the Czechs are bordering with austria therefore definig freier as boyfriend. And russians somehow caught this word from germanic and defined frajer as a man who was free of jail, a free man. You often hear interchanges between slavic and german as these folks lived together for centuries. Ja som Slovak.

[Damir Ilic]

In Croatian frajer is cool man. But just in slang. Not in standard language. There is no frajer in stndard Croatian. Droga is drugs. But thos are "false friends". Nothing important.

[najgauner]

yes actually theres a czech/slovak word coherrent for droga, dráha meaning path. For example theres the train company České Dráhy. The only reason we dont speak it out the same way is a vowel/consonant shift.

[Anjali Devi]

3:03 The degree to which language families are mutually intelligible interests me. Super interest. I've heard about mutual intelligence amongst Romance languages. Thank you so much for the great content!

[Anjali Devi]

I'm half Italian half Venezuelan, and still Italian is more difficult for me. And spoken French? I'm a lost cause!!

[Dempsey McLean]

Great video as always, Paul. Would be great to one regarding Serbo-Croatian 😁

[Radoslav Liptak]

I am Slovak and i can understand 100% Czech.

[Dancho Konstantinov]

I am bulgarian and I can better understand Slovak than Czech language .

[Mr. шашлычок]

Can we text together and some speak together in Discord? I from Belarus, I would like talk about differents in our languages

[Dima boiko]

@Mr. шашлычок hope you will find more similarities, than you can see at the first glance.

[Виктор Заболотний]

@Mr. шашлычок I'm ukranian who lives in Slovakia. I tell you, that you can understand Slovak or Czech easly, just need time to concentrate.

[Andraž Logar]

Lol

[A Phrog]

I’m still relatively a beginner with Russian (I’m going into my fourth semester of Russian language classes), but I find that reading Ukrainian tends to be pretty easy even if some of the letters differ!

[HeroManNick132]

Lol you should try Bulgarian.

[Arina Komarnitska]

Ukrainian here, bilingual. I can definitely communicate with any other Slavic language speaker. I get about 80% of written Polish and Bulgarian, almost 100% in Belarusian. I get around 60% of slowly spoken Polish, Bulgarian, Slovac, and Croatian. Also smth like 60% of written Croatian and Slovac. Around 50% Czech. I believe being bilingual also helps though.

[Дмитрий Великий]

Not certainly in that way. Ukrainian is actually two languages. There is Western Ukrainian, which is closer to Polish and German, and there is Eastern Ukrainian, the so-called "Surzhik". a rural dialect of the local population, which is closer to Russian, it is also spoken in the southern rural regions of Russia. Now Western Ukrainian is becoming "classic" Ukrainian.

[Vladimir Kamensky]

@Дмитрий Великий кому ,ты, объясняешь. она даже не сказала насколько она понимает русских.

[Vlad Shapran]

@Дмитрий ВеликийWhat you wrote can't be more wrong. Standard Ukrainian is based on Poltava dialect, which is a Left-Bank Ukraine (=Eastern Ukraine). Surzhik is not a language or even a dialect. It is a rural speech based on Ukrainian grammar, phonology and vocabulary with a Russian lexical superstrat (due to 350-year long Russification).

[i p]

Greetings from Bulgaria! Great channel Paul, I found it a couple of hours ago and already watched most videos. As a great language geek myself I am really impressed by the accuracy of the vids. Just one small correction - Cyrillus and Methodius didn't create the Cyrillic script, they developed the Glagolithic one, the Cyrillic developed later but tbh getting too detailed here would have been an overkill so maybe it's good you omitted the details here.

[Dora_Enjoyer]

I'm Russian and I can understand Bulgarian and Belarusian very good. I can also understand Ukrainian, but I know many Ukrainian words. I can understand Polish, but only in written form. It's strange because poles write szsc and it's hard. For example Russian is меч(mech) and it mean sword. Polish is miecz. I read mietsz, but I understand just about, what it mean. And poles say mietsh, but if somebody says it too fast I don't understand. And I was talking with a friend from Croatian. We have many similar words, but many of them not used in Russian. For example Russian is глаз(glaz)( it mean eye) and Croatian is oko and you can see this in old Russian books. But grammar is very different. For example we don't use "be", but crоats use.

[HeroManNick132]

Око и очи се употребяват във всички славянски езици, освен вашия. Може и да я имате като дума, но повечето нормални руснаци не я употребяват често, нали? Сигурен съм, че ,,меч" при вас се произнася като (мьечь) - по-меко, спрямо българското ,,меч"

[Milana S.]

@HeroManNick132 У нас, русских, "очи" и "око" считаются устаревшими словами, которые теперь для нас больше ассоциируются с классической русской поэзией. Сейчас мы используем эти слова только в составе фразеологизмов (например, "свет очей моих", "беречь как зеницу ока", "око за око", "в мгновение ока").

[Lilia Ilinova]

@HeroManNick132 И в руския:"Очи Чёрные"

[Lilia Ilinova]

@Milana S. Да, както в българския думите "лес", "пес" и др.Сещам се също за думата "хлОпак", която имаме и в българския език като "хлапАк". Знам, че на руски думата "жаба" е "лягушка", но в изрази и идиоми се употребява и архаичната за руснаците дума "жаба" (напр. "жаба давит за...кого нибудь") Украинската и полска дума "мова" е останала в българския като "мълва" и глаголите "мълвя", "промълвя".Сръбската дума "сретен"= "щастлив" е останала в българския само в антонимите "несрета", "несретник", които имат архаично звучене.Думата "доба" ние използваме само в израза "по късна доба".Моя състудентка от Полша веднъж каза:"Тази бутилка е пуста." Да, смешно звучи на български, но все пак се разбира, че бутилката е празна. 🙂

[S B]

Глагол "быть" в русском языке опускается в настоящем времени, но он никуда не исчез в будущем/прошлом времени (буду/будет/будут.., был/была/было..) "Лев - царь зверей"! Также мы можем сказать "лев есть царь зверей"! Это не ошибка! Просто в сербо-хорватском употребления глагола быть обязательно!

[Little fish]

I know Polish, and in primary school I had a friend who was chech. Despite some odd word differences we could understand each other pretty much exactly. Some languages are more similar than others, most of them are not.

[Иван]

I'm bulgarian native speaker and I can understand more than 95% of russian, just because when I was a child my grandfather was watching the russian TV every day. From serbian I can understand about 75%. From czech, slovak and ukrainian I can get about 40%. From polish almost nothing, even when trying to read it. Polish is the most distant member of the slavic family from my point of view.

[Daniel Malinkov]

How about Macedonian?

[Иван]

@Daniel Malinkov Macedonian dialect is my mother tongue. But it's not a language 🤣

[Daniel Malinkov]

So you have been brainwashed then by the bulgarian propoaganda if u think Macedonian is not separate language,, I'm Macedonian and i can understand Bulgarian to some degree, but i can't write it or speak it. so it's different, maybe bulgarian is not a language, maybe is some macedonian dialect from Pirin Macedonia.

[Иван]

@Daniel Malinkov My family emigrated in the 1913-1920 from Kostur, Lerin, Kukush, Morartsi. This is now Aegean Macedonia in Greece. And because they were bulgarians they came to Bulgaria. And our dialect is different to both Pirin Macedonian and the "Standart Macedonian". The closest dialect to Kostur/Lerin is in the Ohrid area.

[Pavel Sanda]

I am Czech and I understand Slovak almost 100 %, Polish 80-90 %, Russian 70-80 % (I learnt Russian at school years ago). As for South Slavic languages i find Slovenian the easiest to understand and Bulgarian the most difficult to understand.

[carolina rapper]

As for me, Russian, I understand Czech the least of all slavic languages. I only catch a few words.

[Lilia Ilinova]

But you will surely understand the Bulgarian word "влак" = train because it is the same in Czech.🙂

[Tomemo 12]

Im from Slovakia and I can fluently communicate with anybody from CzR ...I've tried to understand Russian, Polish, Ukrainian and Macedonian and I could always figure out what's the topic, I could roughly get their questions. I think the basic words and phrases in Macedonian are pretty close to Czech language.

[Roman O]

I'm from Belarus. Speak both Belarusian and Russian. I moved to the Czech Republic few years ago. And the amazing thing of our Slavic group is that we can easily learn other Slavic languages. So, after like only 9 months living in CZ I was able to understand everything and speak fluently. Great channel!!

[John Davies]

Thank you for a fascinating, cogent ,informative , and pedagogical review of Slavic Languages. ♦️♦️♦️

[Alan Potter]

I am half greek half bulgarian. When I was 11 my dad and I stopped at a Slovenian gas station/cafeteria on our way to Austria. He told me to speak bulgarian to the bartender while making my order. The bartender understood everything. Years later I still keep traveling through Slovenia for various reasons and I'm always blown by how similar our languages are, even though Slovenia is more Austrian than Slavic, if you looked closer.

[HeroManNick132]

Нормално, та нали всичките тези езици са произхождали от един език и знаеш кой е той!

[Natallia Hardzei]

Hi! I'm Belarusian, if using UN definition of mother tongue then for me it's Russian, some periods in life I was bilingual but the Belarusian is often passive I tried understanding some Polish (after getting used to it I can understand a lot, but not if they are fast. As for written, it takes time to imagine Cyrillic instead of Latin letters, but after that it looks just as Belarusian), Bulgarian (in written form and basic topics I can guess almost everything), I tried other languages too little, so they need time to get used to Though I was surprised to find with Macedonian people a lot in common, considering how far they are. In childhood in Belarus I couldn't understand neighbouring Polish and sometimes even Ukrainian (which I now understand as very close) was difficult, so I thought Slavic people were more distant from each other than it really is

[Demetrio Tozzi]

Hi from Ukraine. I can understand 95-99% of belarusian both spoken and written, despite that I've never learned it and I can't speak it myself (especially without using ukrainian way of spelling). That's how close we are.

[alsj]

I am Polish. The only Slavic language I can communicate fairly well in is Slovak. Maybe even Russian, but only because I had to read it in school. I find the South Slavic and East Slavic languages more "authentic" than the West Slavic ones, or at least Polish. In Polish, many fine Old Slavic words have been replaced by Latin, for example. They remain in literature but not in everyday modern language.

[HeroManNick132]

That is the issue when people because of the Catholicism and not adoppting as well the Cyrillic alphabet because of this main reason we get everyday further from our roots. Also what about Czech?

[SlimToDressRU]

Interestingly, German also have these cases for nouns 🎉 but their nouns' genders were a mess and there is no way to understand them, just to memorize (unlike Russian (and Latin languages) where you can look at the end of the word and detect it's gender).

[pd209458]

As a Polish I can say: 1. Your ę ą is really good, nearly native. 2. I can understand lots of written Czech and Slovak and have a simple conversation with mutual understanding. 3. I've been learning Russian long time ago so I can understand some and read Cyrillic but for average Pole It's hard to understand spoken Russian - some words, sometimes general idea, but even if some words have common origin their pronunciation often have shifted so much that it's impossible to guess without former study. 4. For most Polish people Ukrainian language sounds just like Russian because of the accent and some "melody" of the speech, but I've heard from both Poles and Ukrainians that the vocabulary is really similar to Polish 5. I've never had much contact with southern Slavic languages. I have a friend who is half Bulgarian and I read his Facebook posts in Bulgarian (I know Russian Cyrillic) but usually I don't understand a word. I suspect he uses lots of slang in his Bulgarian tho.

[Bulgaria]

The Cyrilic my bro was made by Bulgaria! The inventors of Cyrilics are Kiril, Methody and their students Kliment Ohridski, Naum, Angelary and ect. Kiril and Methody was called "the Solun's brothers" Solun was town from The First Bulgarian kingdom. Kliment Ohridski is from Ohrid that was also town by The First Bulgarian kingdom and later became a capital during time of Simeon the Great. Present days Solun finds in Greece and Ohrid finds in Macedonia, but the inventors had slavic names that doesn't make them greek ones!

[Nikola Bornová]

Also the speed of speaking is extremely important :-) As a Czech, I can roughly understand Polish if they talk to me slowly like I'm demented. :-D But if they speed up to a normal pace, it changes almost to giberish for me (similar with Serbian/Croatian/Slovenian). Slovak language is clearly understandable for Czechs (it basically sound like softer, nicer Czech but the differences aren't too big).

[cedmelancon]

I’m French Canadian and these ę and ą sound to me like « in » and « an » in more of a Paris French accent.

[Sohrab Solheim]

I've always wanted to learn Polish but now that you explained the nouns being affected by cases, I am rethinking it, either way, a great video

[HeroManNick132]

Well, if you want something to happen - don't give up!

[Marika Schimonová]

I am Czech and I can understand 99% of Slovak, but other slavic languages around 10-20% (just a few words in sentence/general idea). I learnt some russian for 2 years in high school as voluntary subject, so it improved my understanding, but it doesn’t come naturally. Our language almost dissapeared and was reinvented and was also influenced by german.

[nigga 🏳️‍🌈⃠]

Lol did even listen to polish

[Downed Crane]

I'm Russian. After watching some bloggers I can understand Belarusian spoken up to 90% and also I can read it. Surprisingly, the best way to read Belorussian for me is to pronounce literally everything and then listen to myself. Ukrainian text is harder to understand, but after some practice it is clearly possible. Spoken Ukrainian is hard to understand without the subtitles Bulgarian text have a lot of literally similar words, this is enough to understand general meaning of the text. I also can understand Church Slavonic to some extend

[Carpathian Girl]

I have had the opportunity of researching Eastern catholic records from the 1700s. The numbering system is based on glagolitic letters. The Cyrillic text also includes Greek letter inclusion such as omega lower case (resembles a w) and theta as well as some old Cyrillic letters that are no longer used. Very challenging to decipher for Al English speaker.

[Mokebe]

I'm Polish and by the way that I learn Russian in school and have been to Croatia about 6 times for summer holidays I am able to speak these languages on a "communicative" level, I would say, and it has come to me really easily, because many words sound and are written similarly. Czech and Slovak are also quite understandable for me, but they sound a bit funny, because many words are like a diminutives for the our versions :D

[Teodor Totev]

Regarding the Cyrillic script (5:13) - Cyril and Methodius actually created a script called Glagolitic alphabet. You can check it in Wikipedia - it looks totally different from Cyrillic. Cyrillic script was created later by the students of Cyril and Methodius.

[airvlad777]

I agree. However, this script existed thousands of years before C&M. Check out the Vincha culture, which stretched from today Serbia into Croatia, Romania and Bulgaria. 24 characters out of today's 30 in Serbian or Bulgarian or Macedonian Azbuka are the same.

[Lászlo Bánk]

Hi! I'm a half of Hungarian and a half of Ukrainian so the theme of languages is very actual and interesting for me. First of all I'd like to say thank you for the great content! Russian people barley can understand Ukrainian, although Ukrainian can completely understand Russian, but that's only because of the USSR in which the Russian was the official language. For Ukrainians the Belarus sounds like different dialects of the the very same language but taking by different synonyms. For example: "flag" in Ukrainian "prapor" (прапор) and in Belarusian "stiag" (стяг) which also exist in Ukrainian as a synonym. I was talking with people from Poland and after only a quarter of hour we could easily understand each other. Also I met Serbian people. With them was easier to speak English or some of them spoke a little bit of Hungarian.

[Johnny Parallax]

same in russian - prapor = flag, stiag = flag

[Alex Belyaninov]

I’m Russian-American whose second language is Russian. My American mother and I did a trip to Slovenia last year. While we were at a cafe to get something to eat, our server (a Macedonian) spoke Slovenian to us and didn’t know English. I had an easier time picking up on what he was saying than my mom since I grew up speaking Russian. Although the server and I understood the gist of what we were saying, it wasn’t enough to have a full on conversation in Slovenian and Russian. The biggest plus behind this story though is knowing one Slavic language is very useful for picking up on others. The closest languages I could understand are Ukrainian and Belarusian, although not 100 percent. I heard Bulgarian a few times, and I found I could pick up on it because it’s similar to russian despite being a southern Slavic language. I could understand bits and words of the western Slavic languages and some of the Serbo-Croatian family, but not enough to have a conversation.

[Dan R]

I am Czech and Ukrainian (and speak their respective languages) and have found several similarities in a lot of the Slavic languages like Slovak, Belarusian, Polish, and others. Not so much of the Balkan-Slavic languages but still can somewhat understand it

[David Pavlas]

I can communicate with serbs, bosnians and croats to a certain degree, but it can still prove to be quite difficult. I am from Slovenia, and to me, the slovene language seems a lot easier compared to other slavic languages spoken in the region. I can only vaguely understand russian, belarusian, ukrainian and polish, though.

[Kyrill]

Thank you for your respectful brief treatment of the history of Sts. Cyrill and Methodius. I've seen other channels/teachers make passive aggressive remarks about the canonized status of those great Apostles to the Slavs, for example. Keep up the good work!

[Bartosz]

As a Pole i can communicate with Czechs and Slovaks pretty well. Additionaly, after short discussion with Russians and Ukrainians i could understand like 60% of what they were talking about. In my opinion, it's easier for us to communicate in our native languages than trying to use english, even if we know it well (accent differences are way to hard to deal with).

[Yvonne Marshall]

I am a Polish speaker. My mother used to speak to her friend in Polish and her friend answered her in Ukrainian. Personally I find Russian easier to understand than Ukrainian, but maybe it's because I have had more exposure to Russian. I noticed that I can understand a few words in Serbian and Croatian. It helped when I got lost in Belgrade! I asked someone how to get to the port in English and he answered me in Serbian. All I needed to understand is "most" or bridge and pravo or prawo for bridge!

[CarlaSVernon]

does polish have a V? I find the use of W neat.

[sonias kolada]

so im a ukrainean native speaker and i live in that part of Ukraine where most of the people are bilingual(i live in Dnipro).We speak ukrainean and russian.So i obviously understand both of those languages and also i can interact with belorussian,czech and polish people.

[KatarínaSK]

As a Slovak, I didn't have to learn Russian or Polish to understand it, I was listening to it and quickly got new words, in about two days. The only problem was to learn azbuka which isn't a problem anymore😊

[KatarínaSK]

Question: Which Eastern Slovak had made the subtitles🤣🤣

[Владимир Косарев]

Yes, same here, I just had to listen to Polish and Slovak speakers for a few days. To me Slovak and Czech sound the best amongst other Slavic languages.

[KatarínaSK]

@Владимир Косарев thank you❤❤ to me Russian sounds the best

[andrewshed]

I am a Ukrainian american and I can speak, read, and understand Russian pretty well (My families language) wouldn't say I was fluent but I am more than comfortable carrying out a conversation and have improved my reading substantially. Because of the similarities in our languages, I can make out some Ukrainian (written and heard) but cannot speak a word back. Same with Belarussian and even less with Polish (Except numbers, they seem to be the same in Russian/Polish) . Czech and Slovak go completely over my head (Sounds like muffled Polish to me ) and as per the south slavic languages, I can make out a word or two, and can read if it is cyrillic, but that's the extent of my knowledge. I am interested in learning Ukrainian, in solidarity with the land my family came from, so hopefully my existing proficiency in Russian will be of assistance in that.

[HeroManNick132]

Do you understand Bulgarian?

[Hermann Teuer]

Just a tiny addition: The Sorbs in Germany have the luxury of two distinct standard languages, Upper Sorbian in Saxony and Lower Sorbian in Brandenburg. Both are comparably well intelligible for each other like other Western Slavic languages between themselves, though, maybe even better because both have very strong German influence and all speakers also speak German as a 1st or 2nd language.

[Abigail T]

Bulgarian is my second language (after English) and I learn Russian which makes understanding other Slavic languages a lot easier. Despite both my Russian and Bulgarian being far from perfect, I find it amusing listening to Macedonian and Serbian. I tried learning some Bosnian and Polish and there is obviously many words in common. Russian cases have helped me with my understanding of Polish too...

[Danica Dabic]

Serbian and Bosnian are the same language.

[rightwingreactionary]

@Danica Dabic Bulgarian and Macedonian are the same language.

[Lilia Ilinova]

@rightwingreactionary Македонците употребяват думата "користене" = "използване", която е останала в българския само в думите "корист", "користна цел", което е пак същото, но с известен оттенък.

[Karolina]

I am Polish and I can say that Czech and slovakian arę quite easy to understand. Until late 90s almost everybody used to learn Russian at school that's why it's do popular and It used to be lingua franca on this part od Europę. Hawever, for younger generation it's practically ununderstendable, You can hardy understand anything unless you learn it. Thank you for interesting videos 😊

[HeroManNick132]

What about South Slavic languages, Ukrainian and Belarusian?

[Marie Dědková]

Czech is very very similar to Slovak. We can have a normal conversation (it's because Czech Republic and Slovakia were the same country until 1993). It's a bit difficult with other Slav languages but it's understandable.

[Ivan Ivanov]

Quite a long time ago I had to make a tour to a group of foreigners here in Russia. I was speaking Russian and there was an interpreter to translate what I was saying. Right at the beginning I had a strange feeling because their language sounded really familiar to me but somehow I couldn't figure out what it was and what was being said. So I asked them who they were, and it turned out they were Czech. In short: without the interpreter I couldn't be able to communicate with those fellow Slavs. Sure our languages are relative but still very different. To the degree of very little mutual intelligibility (to me at least).

[Michał Janek]

Hi! Interesting video. Since I'm coming from Poland I can answer your first question. Obviously the easiest communication is within west-slavic family. Speaking with somebody from Slovakia is really similar to having conversation with Polish guy/girl. Funny situation is with Pol/Czech conversation. For Poles Czech language is ... funny and opposite the case is the same. We sound to each other like we would speak with "small words", in Dutch for example you can say "ik drink een bier" (I drink beer) or also "ik drink het biertje" (I drink small beer). Conversation with Ukrainians is ok, definitely easier than with Russians. Again with Russians will be easier in my experience than with all south Slavic languages. If once you would like to go back to Slavic languages (despite video about Russian) maybe it is good thing to underline meaning of the word Slavic. It is coming from "word", all Slavs "understand words", in a sense understand each others. Another example of this situation is how we call Germany in Polish language - Niemcy which comes from word "niemy" - dumb, mute but here it means that they cannot speak our language(s) so they are "muted". Best regards

[Carpathian Girl]

So the Hungarian word for German, " Nemet" must have been borrowed from the Poles?

[Эренцен Боронкинов]

I’m Russian. I’ve been in Serbia and Montenegro. Wonderful countries. My English level is not really good but English was much easier to communicate there. At touristic places of course.

[Matt Bunney]

1. I'm a native English speaker, but in an attempt to connect to my roots I've tried learning Macedonian (my mum is fluent). I've also spent a whole learning German in a classroom context, which probably helped with the learning process. I found Macedonian very easy to pick up. Macedonian grammar is very simple and straight forward, and the lack of case and presence of articles make it easy (as you were saying), so I'd definitely recommend that to people who are looking for a Slavic language to learn but don't want to wade through case endings. 2. This is a little left of field, but recently I read "a Clockwork Orange". The author created an English slang using many Russian words, but I was surprised that from my very limited Macedonian knowledge I could pick a lot of slang up without consulting the index for the definitions. Also watching your Russian video, a lot of the basic vocabulary is recognisable. Love your work Paul, keep it up :)

[Каран Аргеадски]

Did y o u finally learn Macedonian language? Поздрав од Македонија 😊

[Boris Gabriz]

as a slovak i feel i could communicate 99% with a czech

[executor]

I'm Russian. For me, the most difficult Slavic languages are Czech, Slovak and Slovenian, and the easiest for me are Ukrainian, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Serbian.

[Alexandra Vykhrystuk]

Why not Croatian?

[Nadya]

I'm russian. It's rather easy for me to understand written forms of all the slavic languages.I have no problems in comprehending most written Ukranian, Belarusian, Bolgarian, Serbian, Macedonian materials and i find it more difficult to understand written Polish and Czech, though there are so many similar words in Polish and Russian they mean different things and it's a bit difficult to read these languages with their weird letters and letter combinations.:D Maxim Gorky, famous russian writer, wrote in one of his stories " I found it hard to live in Poland. The people there are false and cold-blooded. And I could not speak their snake-like tongue that does nothing but hiss. Why do they hiss? God gave them a snake-like tongue because they are so false." I'm not trying to offend anyone and I don't think the Polish are bad people, just a quote and sometimes the Polish language sounds like hissing but I like it! In a few years i want to start learning Polish. I'm studying Swedish and Chinese at the moment.(I'm a linguistics major) I would say that East and South slavic languages are as close to each other as Swedish and Norwegian are and West and East slavic languages are as close to each other as Danish and Swedish are