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

[@vladimirpetrovic9380]

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

[@miraaleksic2077]

Sam(u)raj - allein in paradies

[@mikoajbadzielewski3396]

Nani???

[@teodortodorov1662]

As bulgarian I can understand 0% japanese language!

[@TheRifild]

ikura with bottle of vodka?

[@oyasunachan4225]

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...

[@Robertoslaw.Iksinski]

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

[@user-kc2ey6vl7w]

Russian: чай (chaĭ)

[@oyasunachan4225]

Юрий Митрофанов Sorry :---:

[@blackraven5389]

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

[@wtc5198]

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

[@ukaszbanasiak4787]

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 :)

[@majstter7420]

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.

[@Alaric596]

@@majstter7420 Забавно,но смысл я понял or Belarusian Пацешна, але сэнс я зразумеў(Paciešna, alie sens ja zrazumieŭ)

[@user-cm3ib4cp1o]

For me polish accent of russian sounds the most beautifull

[@emilpavlov6656]

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

[@PapaSwall]

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

[@user-kq2ke4nl2w]

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

[@stardustgachi8191]

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.

[@Vantus82]

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

[@agonv7812]

Can u take the Serbs back please ?

[@elizabethbrower3191]

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

[@Vantus82]

@@agonv7812 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.

[@natanielgarro506]

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.

[@anatolyrepin4743]

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

[@projectx5154]

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 ❤️

[@issavisisland9870]

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

[@hash-CCFF00]

@@issavisisland9870 🤣🤣🤣

[@irenamladenovic8160]

@@issavisisland9870 😂😂😂😂

[@issavisisland9870]

@@irenamladenovic8160 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?✌️

[@issavisisland9870]

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

[@wojciechkrotoszynski5459]

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.

[@MarigoldWendy]

this song is in Interslavic. When I first heard it I had an impression they sing my language but for some reason I do not know all the words kzbin.info/www/bejne/Y2HCe5WggdJqqMk

[@user-nf3kz9ee2n]

I am a Korean and I am currently learning Polish. It is a challenge for me, but I think it is so systematic and beautiful-sounding. I’m looking forward to learning other slavic languages as well

[@tomslastname5560]

Once you get proficient at Polish, I recommend learning Cyrillic, it will open the door to learning a bunch of other slavic languages because you will recognize many words that have the same root as in Polish, just with a slightly different suffix or something like that. You would probably understand at least 30 or 40% of Russian and Ukrainian. And if you can read Polish then you can automatically understand probably 40 or 50% of Czech and Slovak already. I am personally less familiar with the Southern Slavic language family, but if I'm not mistaken they're a bit closer related to Western Slavic than Eastern Slavic.

[@acacioluanstocco3488]

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

[@przemysawdata6246]

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.

[@halinailkiewicz6146]

wspaniałe! skąd zamiłowanie do polskiego?

[@acacioluanstocco3488]

@@halinailkiewicz6146, mieszkam w Kurytybie, miasto z polskimi rodzinami. Chcę jechać do Polski w czerwcu. :-)

[@halinailkiewicz6146]

@@acacioluanstocco3488 wspaniale...najlepszy sposób nauczyć się języka

[@patrick_albert_golinski]

Obrigado 💪🏻

[@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.

[@radovanmoucha2224]

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

[@mariomusic3058]

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.

[@linala9600]

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

[@gvirupot]

se strinjam

[@jakubgrabec3008]

ja som rozumel 100% toho a ja som czechoslovak

[@szczerbcowarekojesc3313]

Ja też rozumiem każde słowo :D.

[@quick906]

Ja sam Bosanac i ništa te ne razumijem.

[@alexbelyaninov724]

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.

[@oliviapetrinidimonforte6640]

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.

[@polskyprodavac3598]

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

[@Michalovce_Soldier34]

Yeah you're right

[@chabr1783]

But czechs understand coratian without problem

[@user-uz6si1ze6l]

@@polskyprodavac3598 it isnt

[@4ndrej]

@@polskyprodavac3598 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.

[@locturui]

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.

[@user-xb7rt8ci7m]

​@@GuyHeadbanger learnt*

[@TunahTak]

Use interslavic or slovio to talk with her.

[@anastassiosperakis2869]

It seems the slavic languages are far more similar when WRITTEN than when SPOKEN. (about twice as similar!)

[@Mir_v_takt]

​@@anastassiosperakis2869 agree Я Русский, украинский легко понимаю, но когда кто-то говорит, то наченаю паниковать I am Russian, I understand Ukrainian easily, but when someone speaks, I start to panic I hope translated correctly)

[@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.

[@VladimirTrajanovski]

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.8386]

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.

[@georgimihov2690]

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.

[@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!

[@rodelle7499]

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

[@anoriginalname]

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

[@rodelle7499]

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

[@drewbieber1399]

КНДР или Южная Корея?

[@sergeyshurygin6463]

@@drewbieber1399 ты дурак или да?

[@shahoazizii]

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.

[@nikola6619]

I think this two words will be 100% understandable in all Slavic languages: SLAVA RODU !!

[@PLKartofel]

Glory to... the lineage? Race?

[@radoslavliptak3842]

I am Slovak and i can understand 100% Czech.

[@danchokonstantinov6735]

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

[@Mr-bm7sk]

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

[@dimaboiko3124]

@@Mr-bm7sk hope you will find more similarities, than you can see at the first glance.

[@Hersonets]

@@Mr-bm7sk I'm ukranian who lives in Slovakia. I tell you, that you can understand Slovak or Czech easly, just need time to concentrate.

[@andrazlogar861]

Lol

[@johndavies1336]

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

[@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.

[@RumanischBursche]

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.

[@selgan9968]

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,

[@dzvinochok123]

@@selgan9968 in Ukrainian we use both, neither is old fashioned (любий, кохана)

[@ilijanacro]

when I am drunk, I understand them all. From the heart.

[@ZeLeninovoMasoveRizoto]

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.

[@nickname325]

Rusyn language is a dialect of Ukrainian!

[@user-ui9xg3yq1v]

@@nickname325 Русини живе у Србији тј. Војводини од 17. века, досељени из Закарпатја. Тад нико није знао за термин Украјина, украјински. Зато не једи говна, у лажи су кратке ноге.

[@mc-not_escher]

My family is from Slovenia, but I’m second-generation American-Irish/Slovenian and am quite fluent in English (father was from the Pennsylvania-Dutch area and mother was from Slovenia). I’m learning Slovenian to bring myself back to my roots. Great video! Najlepša hvala!

[@adrianelittle3759]

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 .

[@alexgabriel5423]

Great Clip Congratulations for such an interesting and brief but very informative clip.

[@sibashishP]

im currently creating a slavic conlang, and im trying to watch videos that might help me do so, including slavic history. great vid!

[@sheilahmercer1637]

Thanks for the cool Slavic stuff ❤

[@rosenberry9150]

Hi, I'm not Slavic, i just love your videos! Keep the goods up LangFocus!

[@alanpotter8680]

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!

[@guilhermejanuario3035]

thanks for the good summary & details

[@SerenityMusic3]

Thank you for this information ❤

[@goranvuksa1220]

I am Serbian and was working with Macedonians for over an year, with daily communication (written and spoken) using Skype and emails. It took us some 2-3 days before we could understand each other perfectly in 99% of the cases, with me using only Serbian and them using only Macedonian. Now I have a question, how do researchers determine when each branching occurred when there were no written forms of the language at that time?

[@anjalidevi7168]

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!

[@anjalidevi7168]

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

[@cinnabun117]

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!

[@ijyoyo]

Great Information, thank you!!

[@firemrmystik]

да кто такой этот ваш Славик и почему о нем говорят за рубежом

[@konung5]

@Ian 🤣 'Slavik' in Russian/Ukranian/Belorusian ( and other slavic languages) sounds like a diminutive form of "Slava", which is a short version of several Slavic names like that mean "glory of ..." : Vladislav - "Own glory", Borislav - "Fight for glory", Rostislav - "Multiply / grow Glory", etc. Google Translate doesn't do well with jokes :)

[@antonminchev1989]

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.

[@MariaZverina]

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.

[@mvulkov4057]

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!

[@Lou-uj6my]

Liked and subscribed because of the quick slideshow of cool awesome Slavic stuff.

[@GarotodaPortela]

I like your example with bottle, Paul. So here is another example from Slovak, which has 6 cases, vocative is only used for a few words like man, brother, mother, father. In Slovak bottle is fľaša (different etymolgy, flask). Singular: (jedna) fľaša; (bez) fľaše; (k) fľaši; (vidím) fľašu; (o) fľaši; (s) fľašou; Plural: (dve) fľaše; (bez) fliaš; (k) fľašiam; (vidím) fľaše; (o) fľašiach; (s) fľašami. What you see in brackets are so-called case questions (literal translation), which help you determine the case. Nominative: who? what? Genitive: without who/what? Dative: I give to who/what? Accusative: I see who/what? Locative: about who/what? Instrumental: with who/what?

[@thebolschoiluka]

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

[@downedcrane7165]

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

[@sergii2945]

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?

[@sergii2945]

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.

[@quoranquesa9560]

You right about Belarusian and Ukrainian. As a native Belarusian, I can assert it. Nevetherless, some words sound the same but mean completely different things.

[@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)

[@jeremyphilipjohnpenrice462]

Thank you for sharing. Jeri.

[@juulian1306]

Thanks for including Sorbian!

[@MiasChannel100]

love your vids! would be awesome to see a a more in-depth vid on the balkan languages

[@hamedbarmakhshad3737]

I like your videos before watching them. You're awesome man 👍👍👍

[@Langfocus]

Haha, you predict the future! :D I'm glad you like them.

[@hamedbarmakhshad3737]

@@Langfocus So true 👍👍 your channel is becoming a great archive for Linguists and every single language enthusiast 💯

[@pavelkotsev1542]

Very nice video! Thank you! I am Bulgarian and I think the numbers are quite optimistic 80% Russian - that might be someone from the older generation who has studied it at school as it's been compulsory pretty much all around the eastern block. I don't think young people get even 50%. I've studied a tiny little bit of Russian but I cannot get 80%. I could get the idea if it's written or it's a video with the subject being displayed or if there are many international words in the text(written or spoken). However, if a Bulgarian has never studied at least a little bit Russian then it'd be quite difficult for them to get the idea. As you explained the grammar is quite tricky and that's actually enough to make pretty much all the words sound as some conundrum :D A super common opinion in Bulgaria is that Macedonian is the same language as Bulgarian. Absolutely not the case! They are super close and we can easily understand each other, especially people living close to the borders. However to pretend that we get 100% is absolutely not true. Take two random people, who live as far away as possible in those otherwise small countries, and it's gonna be obvious that it's not 100% Polish - this one sounds the most different to me. 40% ... I don't know. 40% is not enough for me either way :D it does feel like 0 :) Serbian and Croatian - well, when I travel I can relatively easy get along with conversations about accommodation, groceries, directions, etc. if it's face to face. Much, much, much harder on the phone. Overall, the older generation used to speak Russian for obvious reasons. The newer generations do communicate in English. It just makes much more sense to study the widely spoken language ;) Once again thanks for the great video :) it's always nice to see a native English speaker interested in our languages, 'cause you know, we know it's only us who speak 'em :)

[@HappyLittleBoozer]

I'm Polish and have had a very interesting experience in regards to slavic language cross-intelligibility. I was eating dinner with a Slovak mate and his mother. I've spoken many times with him in English before and it was our go-to language, but his mother didn't know it, so I tried speaking Polish to her. She understood me pretty well and I could get her speaking in Slovak as well, we were able to hold a pretty decent conversation. My firend was dumbfounded at that because he could understand only single words from me at best; I ended up having to repeat a lot of what I said in English so he could understand me too.

[@tomslastname5560]

I was born in Poland and that was my first language. For part of my time in Poland I lived with my grandma in a little rural village right next to the Belarusian border. The dialect spoken there was like Polish but with a very heavy Eastern Slavic accent (in fact, at first I believed everyone there spoke Russian until my grandma explained that it just sounds like that). There was some shared vocabulary with Russian, Belarusian, and Ukrainian as well. It's probably a dialect that's half-way between Polish and Belarusian or something like that. After moving to Canada I would watch the Ukrainian and Russian programs on CFMT every weekend (a multi-lingual TV station out of Toronto that had programming in various languages) and was basically able to understand the gist of what was being said, especially if it was someone speaking in a western Ukrainian dialect or something like that. We also had a friend of the family who was Slovakian, and we were able to have whole conversations just by him speaking to me in Slovakian and me speaking in Polish.

[@quoranquesa9560]

Because they spoke the dialect of Belarusian but don't want to accept it (because want to be real Poles). The similar thing is in the Wilno district of Lithuania. There they have spoken (till the second part of the 20th century) the pure Belarusian till the moment when they started to learn Polish at schools.

[@arinakomarnitskaya4545]

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.

[@user-rt8pc4hn8o]

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.

[@vladimirkamensky8371]

@@user-rt8pc4hn8o кому ,ты, объясняешь. она даже не сказала насколько она понимает русских.

[@vladshapran5000]

@@user-rt8pc4hn8oWhat 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).

[@uBaH_BG]

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.

[@danielmalinkov1030]

How about Macedonian?

[@uBaH_BG]

@@danielmalinkov1030 Macedonian dialect is my mother tongue. But it's not a language 🤣

[@danielmalinkov1030]

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.

[@uBaH_BG]

@@danielmalinkov1030 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.

[@danielmalinkov1030]

@@uBaH_BG So you are Macedonian, not bulgarian, just brainwashed for 100 years by the bulgarian state, кај си бре Егејче :D

[@laszlobank4485]

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.

[@johnnyparallax7321]

same in russian - prapor = flag, stiag = flag

[@margaritadanova4764]

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.

[@McLatysh]

В случае с болгарским понимание его письменной формы русскоязычными очень сильно зависит от стиля и регистра текста, если текст более официален или научно популярный, то понимания больше, как люди пишут на бытовом регистре, то понимание наоборот затруднено максимально, в более официальных текстах одновременно много церковнославянских слов в обоих языках и болгарском, и русском, в болгарском высокого стиля есть и заимствования из русского разного происхождения. Польский, очень сложно понимать из за обилия специфических звуков и ударения, потом в польский заимствования в основном шли через немецкий или непосредственно из немецкого, в русский в основном от Византии и кочевников, есть слова полностью совпадающие, есть о значении которых я могу догадаться, есть совсем не понятные, есть ложные друзья переводчика, кстати русский и польский в некоторых моделях объединяют за отсутствие фрикативного и фарингального "г" и иногда отсутствие третьей и второй палатализации, удивительно, но всё это есть у ближайших родственников русского языка: украинском и белорусском, а в русском и польском наоборот нет. Понимание украинского и белорусского я бы не рассматривал, языки в их литературных вариантах были буквально заново сконструированы в самом конце 19в и начале 20в, практически как перед этим чешский, никто никогда именно так на них не говорил, все носители говорят на той или иной версии тросянки/ суржика (уничижительность этих названий не совсем понятна, потому как это и есть их нативный природный язык, так тут говорили всегда), в зависимости от региона или даже конкретного населенного пункта, у русского для литературного всё таки есть реальные носители из московской и питерской губерний и множество вокруг них, они именно в реальной жизни говорили практически на русском литературном, который не стоял на месте и постепенно эволюционировал, хотя конечно же говоры есть и у русского тут никто не спорит. Я сам немного носитель не совсем литературного говора, точнее вторичноакающего, и если вы не слышите разницы с акающими, то внутри России её все прекрасно слышат (а потому что безударное "о" даёт чуть не рандомно от краткого "о" до не открытого "а", но никак не "шва/ъ" и не полного "а", потом словечки когда-то имелись одновременно и южнорусские и севернорусские, на месте их среднерусских, ну да, отдельный язык не слепишь, да никому и не надо

[@evelynmedranorubio2004]

Обожаю славянские языки ❤️

[@2madgamer]

I don’t see any other comments from Ukrainians so I’ll leave one. I grew up in Chicago in the US with a Ukrainian-speaking family and here we have two types of Ukrainians: the ones who speak old Ukrainian, and the ones who only speak Russian. As there are a lot of Polish and Russian people in Chicago, I have noticed that old Ukrainian seems to actually be closer to Polish than it is to Russian. Except for the alphabet of course. Слава Україні

[@TURBOBLU-fx6mn]

Yes you are correct, I also grew up in a Ukrainian speaking family and I find polish extremely similar and much closer than Russian. Героям Слава 🇺🇦

[@alerausm]

May be your 'old ukranian' (WTF???) language is west dialect from Lviv? So its understandable, because Lviv is Poland. Западный суржик такой же украинский язык как и восточный. Героям слава ;-)

[@illya.ruslanovichshevchenk4106]

Так, українська ближча до польської і про "східнослов'янські мови" - це міти, придумані росіянами. Прочитайте мій коментар під цим відео, який пояснює. Спокіюю сюди: South Slavic languages is right I thing but with North everything is complicated. There was Ruthenian language, ancestor of East Slavic Languages except for russian. Ruthenian was spoken in Rus` (present-day Ukraine and Belarusia), but the language of religion was Old Church Slavonic. Russian is not really an East Slavic language, it is a CONSTRUCTED language and was created in 1661, it is a mixture of Old Church Slavonic (South Slavic Language) and Ruthenian (North Slavic language), and it was influenced by Finno-Ugric. So, devide SLs into: South, North except for russian, and russian as a constructed and mixed language

[@alerausm]

@@illya.ruslanovichshevchenk4106 да не слушайте вы политиков (Грушевский и Бандера тоже политики) Слушайте лингвистов, они могут реставрировать даже древний индоевропейской, а на то что проследить откуда украинский и русский взялись. Не нравятся российские или украинские - читайте европейских или американских.

[@illya.ruslanovichshevchenk4106]

@@alerausm Не розумію, до чого тут політики. Про те, що українська блужча до польсткої - лінгвісничний факт. А політиками вигадані "східно-слов'янські мови"

[@josearellano203]

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

[@anatolyrepin4743]

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

[@gerganapanayotowa3339]

Bulgarian here 🙋 Once again - great work ! Браво ! :) I would only like to say that the pronunciation of the abbreviation ЖП was a bit off, but that is a very particular case. Also, as you can imagine, döner is not typically bulgarian. Have a tarator instead (healthier as well) ;) Again, great job ! ♥️

[@HeroManNick132]

Тя се извини в коментарите между другото.

[@slayer3272]

as a ukrainian I can say that after 250ml of horilka(vodka) I can understand every slavic language

[@ariiski4501]

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

[@dora_enjoyer3847]

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"

[@milanas.4824]

@@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").

[@liliailinova4092]

@@HeroManNick132 И в руския:"Очи Чёрные"

[@liliailinova4092]

@@milanas.4824 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. 🙂

[@SB-fw3yr]

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!

[@TerezatheTeacher]

Czech person here, Czechs and Slovaks understand each other's languages almost perfectly. It's easy for me, a Czech person, to read a book in Slovak. A book in Croatian was more difficult but mostly intelligible. A woman from Poland insisted on us talking Polish and Czech toghether. She understood my Czech. I did not understand her Polish. It can't be that I'm stupid language-wise, I teach languages for a living. As a Czech teenager, I managed some basic strained communication with a Ukrainian teenager. Last year, I helped a lost Slavic woman find a shop, but I only understood she wanted "products" (was looking for a shop), said that it was "stifling hot" that day and didn't know where the "entrance" was. I managed to make her understand that I'd take her there, that it was indeed stifling hot, that we'd be there soon and where the entrance was. I'm still not sure which language she was speaking, I'd guess Ukrainian or Russian.

[@shyzunk]

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.

[@borisgabriz1675]

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

[@carpathiangirl8460]

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.

[@Chris-op7yt]

in polish (and others) the cases of the word support correct interpretation. so, sort of, part of the grammar. this is unlike english, which can often have multiple meanings in a sentence. Slavic languages also use lots of intonations in conversations. only tv newsreaders speak a mostly non-tonal way, so as to be a neutral reader. In polish conversation, for instance, you can ask a question with tones of surprise, or tonality of happy surprise, or distrusting surprise, etc.

[@user-so7cq5jo7i]

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.

[@vladimirnikolskiy]

It should be understood that the Czech language was recreated by scientists, since German was a business and everyday language after the Habsburgs ruled these lands. That is, Czech was spoken only by rural residents who did not even know how to write. There was no single Czech language. There were many dialects. The first Czech grammar was written on the basis of a collection of dialects by the linguist Joseph Dombrowski. The next generation of linguists, led by Joseph Jungman, compiled a five-volume dictionary, digging through all the surviving literature in the Czech language for the XIV, XV and XVI centuries. The Latin alphabet has been adapted to the Czech language, and both Slovak and Croatian scripts are now "working" on its basis. However, something similar happened with the Russian language, only instead of German we had French. For example, in Leo Tolstoy's most famous novel "War and Peace" - more than 450 thousand words. Of these, almost 700 are German words, and more than 15 thousand are French. Dozens of scientists and poets were engaged in reforming, one of the most important - Lomonosov and Pushkin.

[@trollopofdeptford]

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?

[@as.34-zo5em]

Can a foreign learner of Serbian easily understand and communicate Croatian and Bosnian?

[@brendabrown5419]

As a child living in SYDNEY, and Wonderful Polish Family looked after my Sister and Myself in School Holidays while Mum and Dad worked, always Hard Workers,all of the Slavics, Australia,of course Yugoslavian was always spoken in the Home. We were very multi - cultural particularly Slavics, where we were living. I could understand peices of conversation of other Slavic Languages and grasped the conversations. After watching this Video it all makes sense. I think the Children of Slavic backgrounds,should know their Heritages. It would explain a lot of what could possibly puzzle them within their characteristics. Perhaps some Education in the School Systems could be introduced in Australia about their Ancestors. God Bless. 🇦🇺🇷🇸☦️

[@dme3907]

I understand a couple words and sentences in polish. But I am on some a grind to learn it. Slowly but surely.

[@MasiukA]

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.

[@PUARockstar]

Belarusian is indeed the closest

[@evelynmedranorubio2004]

​@@HeroManNick132Haha I agree with you

[@karolina8723]

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?

[@jpgrygus]

true. my Polish mother could make conversation with people from other Slavic languages (Serbian, Ukrainian, Czech etc)listening to the conversation was entertaining.....like a whole new different language.

[@iangray7410]

This is a very helpful (if not overwhelming ) introduction to the Slavic languages. My birth father was from the former Yugoslavia, and as a teenager, he sired me with another teenager, here in Canada. I never met either, as they weren't permitted to marry. My physician son had his DNA reported by 23 & Me, and told me that my father's family might be from Bosnia/Herzegovina. So here I am, 70 years old, curious about the stuff of my genetic make up, wondering about these languages. This is invaluable to me. Thank you ! And if you ever happen to visit Toronto, come on by for some waffles and maple syrup. Not to mention some Bluegrass music, a genre in which my wife is a Nashville-certified star.

[@gregorygogolev5707]

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.

[@youreinsample]

I am from Silesia, where (some) people speak Silesian, also, of course, I speak Polish as native. Without any preparation, more or less I could have communicated with Slovaks and a bit worse with Czechs (native), cause there are Czechs who speak Silesian and although it's a different dialect I can still understand it perfectly. After spending some time on learning etymologies of some vocabulary, some archaic Polish words, learning Russian alphabet and having in mind one simple trick - it became much easier to understand other Slavic languages, especially when written. I mean, if I know that Polish suffix -ć is replaced with -t in eastern languages, that for example h and g are the result of language evolution, that similar sounds are written in a different way and so on, it's really easy. The same I have with German languages' family - I speak English as well as German, when I read in Danish or for example Dutch, mostly I can understand the context - the same rule as above.

[@HeroManNick132]

The Russian alphabet is Bulgarian. Stop spreading propaganda

[@youreinsample]

@@HeroManNick132 1. I don't care 2. I meant Russian, because it's used by Russians and not that it was invented by them 3. Bulgarian is a bit different than Russian and I learnt Russian alphabet not Bulgarian 4.HeroManNick - Batman is a hero. This nick belongs to Batman. Batman does not care about Bulgars - stop spreading propaganda!

[@HeroManNick132]

@@youreinsample Seems you are Bolshevik, am I right?

[@SB-fw3yr]

@@HeroManNick132 Когда больше нечем гордиться, такие высказывания: "the Russian alphabet is Bulgarian" становятся обыденностью! Лучше следи за тем, чтобы ты и твои сородичи не стали писать на латинице, цыган!

[@HeroManNick132]

@@youreinsample Yes or no

[@INNOCENTWIZZARDS]

The cyrillic script was created in the First Bulgarian Empire. Cyril and Methodius created another script called Glagolitic

[@irishpsalteri]

Orthodox worship has helped with mutual understanding greatly. I chant for a Serbian group and they still use it.

[@lazarlol4132]

I'm Serbian. 100% Croatian, Montenegrin, and Bosnian. 90% Slovenian, Macedonian, and Bulgarian. 50% Slovakian, Czech. 45% Polish, Ukranian, Russian, Belarusian.

[@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?

[@alfredskorjanc3446]

One correction. There is No Serbo-Croatian and Croatian-Srbian lenguage. This are two separate languages. Croatian use latin leters " abeceda ", and we have Croatian grammar and Serbian use chirilic letters " azbuka " and have serbian grammar. Name azbuka got from old croatian glagolitic , a ( az ) b ( buki )... Don't use names Serbo-Croatian, or Croatian-Serbian it isnt correct! It was name for 2 legal languages in former Yugoslavia.

[@HeroManNick132]

Serbian uses both Cyrillic and Latin alphabet, Croatian only Latin alphabet because of their religion. The division between Serbian and Croatian are few words like British and American English or like Hindi and Urdu. Like if Americans say ''soccer'' and Brits ''football'' same thing for Serbs and Croats. Serbs say ''фудбал/fudbal'' while Croats say ''nogomet.'' British and American English also have slightly different grammar like EU and BR Portuguese but they are not separated languages, right?

[@meduzsazsa8490]

​​​@@HeroManNick132bro differences between croatian and serbian are the same as differences between any other two languages - one nation has one word, while the other nation has the other word. And that is the core to all differences between croatian and serbian, but also other languages, like serbian and bulgarian, norwegian and swedish, portuguese and spanish etc Differences between english and american are literally : "what is this sport?" "I have an idea, lets call it soccer". Because of geographic distance and because they are "modern", Americans create new words, but that's not the similar to croatian and serbian. Croats don't say "mrkva" instead of "šargarepa" because they wanted to change the word to sound better, or Serbs don't say "vazduh" instead of "zrak" because they wanted to be "modern" and randomly create a new word, they developed these differences because they are 2 nations speaking 2 languages

[@HeroManNick132]

@@meduzsazsa8490 I wonder how in Croatian and Slovenian ''zrak'' became ''air'' because it's so odd. In Bulgarian ''zrak'' means a small trail of light a.k.a. beam, poetic form or eyesight. In some dialects we use it as ''ghost'' as short form of ''prizrak.''

[@meduzsazsa8490]

@@HeroManNick132 for a trail of light, we say "zraka" and "to radiate" is zračiti. I don't know how we got the word zrak either

[@gabriellabonanno3725]

Very interesting video!

[@borishagadissyan9535]

Cyrillic was not created by Cyril. It was only named after him. Scriptures were not translated into "Old Church Slabonic". They were translated into 9th century Bulgarian. As the translations remained largely unchanged (unlike the living languages of the countries that used the translations) that 9th century Bulgarian was later called by these countries "Old Church Slavonic".

[@airvlad777]

This language existed before Bulgarians came to Balkans, mixed with local Serbian population and adopted the language as theirs. Unfortunately, it was too hard for Bulgarians to adopt all grammatical cases.

[@borishagadissyan9535]

@@airvlad777 No, they did not even try to adopt "cases". Who in their right state of mind would adopt "cases"? So you say there were Serbs in the 7th century ? Maybe even Comrade Tito was there? :)

[@airvlad777]

@@borishagadissyan9535 I am not a fan of Tito or Georgy Dimitrov. Take a look outside Bulgarian written opinions. Take a look at the genetic research, archeology and history books written by some, who may be independent, even some Romans, like Plinius the Elder. Interestingly enough, you have Armenian last name.

[@borishagadissyan9535]

@@airvlad777 So does Pliny the Elder mention anything about Serbian population on the Balkans?

[@airvlad777]

@@borishagadissyan9535 Yes.

[@novemberrain9916]

the thing about slavic languages is that words are similar, sometimes even the same but they mean completely different things

[@HeroManNick132]

It can be said for any language branch. Heck take for example ''hell'' in English vs in other Germanic languages. But for example words like ''arm, hand'' are understood by almost everyone.

[@vitalyrybin5645]

It's a myth that every Slavic language speaker can understand all other Slavic languages. Partly due to that fact there is the project called 'Slavic esperanto' - artificial language created on the basis of different slavic languages comparison and selecting forms that are mostly commonly used in different slavic languages. That language was used in a movie about WWII - and yes, that language is quite understandable by different slavic languages native speakers. Besides, I'd like to note in your video you've forgotten about 2 other Eastern Slavic languages: Rusyn (Lemko's language - nation living in Carpathian mountains in Ukraine, Poland and Slovakia) and Polessian (Polesie region situated in Poland, Belarus, Ukraine and Russia)

[@HeroManNick132]

Well, it's the same thing for a Romance speaker even and for Germanic it's self-explanatory, especially if you are American and knowing how English is the furthest from all Germanic languages but it became the international language. The reason for misunderstanding in Slavic or any language from different families is the language evolution of each one. Slavic languages often borrowed words from their neighbours and some words may or may not exist in other ones. Also not to mention archaic words that in some languages are used but in some are not. And the worst part are the false friends which can make sometimes the conversation really awkward and inappropriate for the other speaker. Also the grammar can play huge role, especially knowing how Bulgarian and Macedonian lack of cases and have no infinitive forms that can make other speakers struggle bit more, because of the grammar. It's true that at least Interslavic is trying to unite every Slavic language, because all Slavic language share a common root and common words, even though they evolved with time, like every other languages. But still Slavic languages evolved the least because their evolving started less than 1500 years ago.

[@ivayloyurukov6202]

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

[@philldonn705]

Methodius was 100% Roman most likely with slavic background. Greek ethnicum was notion of the past in those times.

[@tatjanavelkova5814]

24 veka od FILIP KRAL do 1913 ---- SOLUN MAKEDONSKI GRAD . KIRIL i METODIJ SE MAKEDONCI, rodeni pred 12 veka vo Solun.

[@MrAlexturno]

As an a native speaker in deep Ural-Russian language, find many understandable folk words in ancient Sanskrit: Agni - ogni - fier s veda - vedati - to know science guir - govori- to talk dodashi - daesh dash - to give shiva - zhiva - life kalla - skalla - rock loab - lubo - love modu - meda - honey naba - nebo - sky nagnaga - nag(male) naga (female) - naked nava - nova - new padi - padi tuda - get the way to.. Chara - oCharava..- beauty shivshe - zhivshiy - lived shrada - strada - suffering.. etc

[@sofivuk2119]

I want to learn all the slavic languages, and after watching this im even more keen since now i know it wont be as hard as i thought.

[@user-sf4wd6de3f]

😈

[@terryvassileva]

i think we definitely overestimate how much we can actually understand from other slavic languages.... it's not a concrete percentage, it's just making an educated guess every time and maybe getting the jist or the main point of the content

[@kfl611]

I never knew any of this? Thanks for posting. I wonder what types of food they all enjoy that they have in common.

[@HeroManNick132]

Just bring some vodka or rakija and there you go.

[@worldclassyoutuber2085]

pierogi

[@BlueMinistr]

I am Ukranian, i can understand 95% of belarusian language, they are very similiar, also because my native language russian(i am from the east) i basicly know russian so not a problem to understand. Now, because of the war, i moved to Slovakia, after just two monthes i can speak(a little) and read, also because of similiar, now i can also understand czech's language really a little bit. I read bulgarian once, it most similiar to russian language, although it an south slavic language. I found that with russian language you will not understand that much other slavic languages, but because of soviet union most people will understand you.

[@spgc239]

With such knowledge could learn Interslavic (Междусловjанскы). Should be easy for you

[@BlueMinistr]

@@spgc239 I want try in the future, because it sound interesting

[@nenadphilipovich9138]

Hi, native Serbian speaker here. With no problem I can understand Macedonian/Bulgarian and Russian, it's one of the easiest to understand and what I had difficulty with are West Slavic languages until I went there. Once in Poland, I could grasp the conversation even though I couldn't participate. Easiest was Slovak, we talked to locals in Serbian and understood each other very well. I was little in Czech Republic but that wasn't the issue, we could still understand the language. You can find Slavic Translation somewhere on the internet and see how much different words are in every language. I think with some effort, one Slavic speaker could master all Slavic languages. Respect and love to everyone!

[@HeroManNick132]

Словенският език труден ли ти е за разбиране, спрямо останалите от бившата Югославия?

[@lunalykavitone7602]

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

[@pavelsanda3149]

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.

[@calzabbath]

I am Argentine of partial Russian descent. Aside from a few words my knowledge of the language is zero, though I have been able to decipher some loose words based on my knowledge of English, Spanish, Italian and French, all of them distant cousins of the Slavic languages as the video clearly states. I think the most important barrier is not the vocabulary or pronunciation but the different alphabets, which imply an extra step in the learning process.