What Makes Each of the Slavic Languages Unique (Russian, Polish, Ukrainian, and more!)

This video goes through all the traits shared among most Slavic Languages, as well as the linguistics of what makes each of the languages unique, including Russian, Polish, Ukrainian, Czech, Serbian, Croatian, Bulgarian, Slovak, Slovene, Belarusian, Bosnian, Montenegrin, as well as lesser known ones like Rusyn, Silesian, Kashubian, and Sorbian!
Special thanks to Iry for providing examples and audio clips for Russian and Ukrainian, Aizu for providing examples and audio clips for Polish, Mamutinda providing examples and audio clips for Czech and Slovak, and Hijerovit for providing examples and audio clips for Serbo-Croatian
0:00 Intro
0:25 General traits
3:50 Russian
5:55 Ukrainian
7:02 Rusyn
7:40 Belarusian
8:30 Polish
9:40 Silesian
10:16 Czech
11:45 Slovak
12:28 Slovene
13:25 Serbo-Croatian
14:57 Bulgarian
16:19 Macedonian
17:21 Old Church Slavonic
17:59 Kashubian
18:19 Sorbian
18:53 Outro

[Niep]

Being Polish and having played League of Legends in Czech, I strongly believe that mutual intelligibility is by far the best feature of Slavic languages.

[Marcin Dżamroga]

Why did you play LoL in Czech?

[Matidal]

@Marcin Dżamroga Why did he play LoL in first place

[Acoustica Voiska]

​@Matidal Asking the real questions

[Perkwunos]

@Morgoth honestly if you're educated in medieval literature, you will understand Polish if you're Russian and vice versa 10x easier. Every time i play CSGO and have Russians in my team I can piece things together really quickly.

[Fernando R]

​@Morgoth BS! I understand like 80-90% of Russian, while speaking Polish native and fluent Czech!

[iorn]

Yeah I'm Polish, I went to Czech on holiday and we spoke Polish and everyone understood us. We mostly understood Czech but a few words were different. Everyone understood one another. xd

[Hol Horse]

yeah, everything is pronouced similiarly even though the writing seems literally impossible to learn

[iorn]

@Hol Horse Yeah I mean there are a few words different like fries

[Albert Vega]

didnt know they were THAT similair,cool

[Lucken]

for example I understand most of polish, but I know many people that dont understand shit in polish. It changes throuout regions and also education I guess xd

[iorn]

@Lucken yh xd

[Dusan Pavlicek]

Hi, thank you for the video. I'm Czech, I was born in Czechoslovakia and I have to say Czech and Slovak languages were never considered the same language. They were (and still are) considered "mutually intelligible" but definitely not the same. It was that way because everyone was exposed to both Czech and Slovak on a daily basis, mainly on TV, in books etc. so people generally understood the other language but they generally couldn't actively speak it without mistakes, they would instead often come up with made-up words or phrases that would only "sound Slovak" to them but that were not truly Slovak 😉 I had a similar problem when I had to study Russian as a kid at school (before the Velvet Revolution in 1989), sometimes I wasn't sure if I used a genuine Russian word or if I only accidentally made something up in my head that sounded vaguely "Russian" to my Czech ears 😁(since both languages use similar words here and there).

[Гармонист]

Я хочу получше разобраться. Поэтому мне интересно: почему Чехословакия распалась? Во времена Чехословакии язык был один?

[Tom an]

@Гармонист Jak už bylo řečeno výše, jazyky byly dva a díky tomu se Češi naučili rozumét slovenštině a naopak. A dodnes lze v Česku používat slovenštinu jako úřední jazyk.

[Гармонист]

@Tom an Боже мой. Я читал очень медленно и понял каждое твоё слово, которое ты написал. То е Чешкий?

[HeroManNick132]

@Гармонист Да, чешки е. Само в чешкия има буквата ''ř'' и като цяло единственият език, който го има тази буква.

[tomasmalin]

@Гармонист Československo se rozpadlo z rozhodnutí našich politiků. Slováci jsou dost nacionalističtí, Češi mají rádi svůj klid. Máme každý svou mentalitu.

[baginatora]

As a bulgarian, I can only say to those who want to learn our language "Thank you for your interest and sorry for making it difficult for you."

[kucapaca]

Especially nodding must be a suicidal effort ;)

[чонки юки]

​@kucapacathat whole nodding thing is a myth mate

[AnneSilverBlade]

това важи включително и за самите нас 😁

[Roman Rudenko]

Why difficult? You guys have no noun declension

[all I say is written by ai]

@Roman Rudenko literally made it the easiest Slavic language by doing that

[ColinOnion]

I’m a Taiwanese who have learned English, French, Japanese and Czech (and my native language: Taiwanese and Mandarin of course). By far, Czech is the hardest one to me. However, Czech people are very friendly to foreigners like me who are learning Czech! Not like in some countries people would be mean to you if they sense your accent, Czech are patient to beginners most of the time! That’s a crucial reason for me to keep on my Czech learning given that it’s really a hard language to me.😊😊😊

[HeroManNick132]

So at this point you just learned Slovak, haha.

[Jaga]

I think Czechs are generally very impressed with anyone who decides to learn the language voluntarily :D

[Роман Романн]

Lol, I'm Russian, and i also have learned Czech :D It wasn't so hard, I even can pronounce the words like Czechs do :)

[Fiodor0]

If you know Czech they You can easly master polish too ;) You will learn how some words have absolutly the opposite meaning in both countries :D

[ColinOnion]

@Jaga That's true. One of my Czech friends even told me if he wasn't Czech, he would not have learned Czech.🤣🤣

[David]

Hi Serbian here!!! I just wanted to say something that might be interesting to those who dont speak serbian or croatian. Our language' s letters have all unique sounds they make and we add those sounds together to make words, meaning we know when we hear a word for the first time how to spell it (that is also the reason why we dont compete in spelling bee as kids). The important Serbian writer Vuk (or Wolf in English) Karadžić, who perfected the Cyrillic alphabet and added new letters, said: "Write as you speak, read as it is written." P. S Sorry if I have a few spelling mistakes.

[Ivelin Kamenov]

Bulgarian speaker here, that woul've made my childhood way easier!!! Поздрав!!!

[David]

@Ivelin Kamenov That is one of the few things we have easier, but unfortunately there are some other stupidly complicated things that don't need to be. Поздрав

[iascailt]

And then there’s Russian with worlds like «счастливый» where you have to ignore the first half of the word and say something completely different

[Herr Wolf]

Important clarification: This is only the case in the Serbian language, not Croatian. Croatian literary language was standardized by Ljudevit Gaj in the Shtokavian dialect, and according to him foreign words are written as they are in their native language if they cannot be adapted to the Croatian phonetic system and made into loanwords.

[Иван Апостоловић]

​@Herr Wolfonly proper nouns from other languages are written like that in croatian

[Aleksandra Petrovic]

I'm Serbian, and I live in Spain where at one point I enrolled in Spanish classes. The teacher was part Serbian, so he was also able to explain to me specific Spanish grammar rules that got many students confused. He pointed out how Serbian has been heavily influenced by Latin grammar (due to being part of the Roman Empire) so we incorporated some grammatical structures, which the Russian and English students in the class were not able to comprehend (like reflexive verbs or those two different futures). I normally translate from English to Spanish in my head, but my teacher told me that it is better to translate from Serbian as the grammatical structure is more close to that of Spanish.

[Vergesser Forgetter]

It was after the collapse of the Roman Empire that the Serbians came, but yeah they mixed with Latin speakers probably.

[Keira Lumineux]

Russians also have all those different tenses, but nobody explain at school how do they form. 4 future tenses as well :))

[Kora Na]

Guys can you please stop with all those vague accusations of Russian language not having this or that. Every time you are just being wrong. At least give us an example of what you mean. So that Russian people can tell if they have something or not because I am willing to bet that Russian language has it...

[WALDEMAR WOJNICKI]

"Reflexive verbs" are COMMON in any given Northern Slavic language (W and Eastern) also - Reflexive verbs DO EXIST in German, and they Used to Exist - in Old English (befor Norman Conquest)

[Marble]

How did your teacher think Serbian was influenced by Latin because of the land now known as Serbia had been part of the Roman empire, given that Serbia and Serbians appear on that land almost half a Millennium after the Latin Romans sent away and Serbian as a language even later? One could argue that Serbian has some common features with Latin speaking countries today. But that's because it's surrounded by countries, which are part of the Balkan Sprachbund.

[Jasombee]

For something unique to Slovak, someone already mentioned the rhythmic shortening, which is a rule that forbids two long syllables directly after each other. Long syllables are any syllables containing á, é, í, ó, and ú, as well as the four officially recognised diphthongs: ia, ie, iu, and ô (/uo/). The letter Ô is also unique to Slovak, and emerged after a reform which merged the /uo/ diphthong. Some examples of rhythmic shortening in Slovak (in contrast to Czech, which lacks this rule): Láskam (to the loves) - incorrectly láskám (this would be Czech) Skákanie (the jumping) - as opposed to the incorrect skákánie and the Czech skákání ĺ and ŕ are also considered long syllables: Tŕň (thorn), kĺb (joint). Other than the rhythmic shortening, Slovak also has a very extensive list of special words we call vybrané mená (lit. selected words). You see, in Slovak, the i and y vowels are read the same phonetically as /i/, but they have very distinct (and very annoying) grammatical role in words. They are called the the ‘soft i’ and the ‘hard y’. The soft i, if placed after a hard consonant (d,t,n,l), causes the consonant to soften. This is done in order to avoid writing too many unnecessary soft marks ◌̆. Additionally, the vowel e also works as a softener. De, te, ne, le, di, ti, ni, li would be pronounced /ďe, ťe, ňe, ľe, ďi, ťi, ňi, ľi/. For the record, seeing it written this is generally an eyesore and generally a very hard faux pas when it comes to standard Slovak writing. How does this connect to the selected words? Well, they are words which are specifically written with the hard y, and I’ve heard they are remnants from the past, so generally very old slavic words that simply had to be denounced into this category in order to preserve their original pronunciation. Examples: bylina (herb), umyť (to wash), rytier (knight) There’s lots of stuff I’m omitting, because Slovak grammar is giving everyone, including middle schoolers and middle aged mothers on Facebook very real nightmares, but that is the gist of it. Hope you liked my infodumping, and if not… well, just be happy you don’t have to learn Slovak in Slovak primary schools. Yeesh. I am still traumatised.

[Marel Sheesh]

som Slovak ale po slovensky neznam.rozlisit dva a dve je pre mna nemozne ale matura bola za 1 taze pohodaaa

[Hors3G1rl]

@Marel Sheesh ''neznam'' je skor polske slovo ako slovenske, radsej povedz ''neviem'', ale az na to s tebou plne suhlasim xD

[XxkevinXx]

How does slovak eastern dialect compare with its own language and other languages influenced by?

[DEMONRaziel]

@XxkevinXx The "eastern" dialect is a collection of dialects - there are actually 6 slightly different ones - Abov, Gemer, Saris, Spis, Horny (upper) and Dolny (lower) Zemplin. All of these have some, sometimes significant, distinctions and they are influenced by different languanges (i.e. Hungarian, German, Ukrainian, or Polish). There are some minor distinctions even within regions from town to town, but long story short - some words are vastly different to the point of being illegible to the native Slovak speaker who is not at all familiar with the given dialect. That being said, the western dialects are also diverging from the proper Slovakian, but they tend to be more alike Czech or Polish and thus are more legible to the official language. The official language is based on the Central Slovak dialect, so the dialect used in this region is heavily overlapping with the proper/official language by default (again, there are distinctions between regions and even towns, but they are significantly less pronounced in the central retions, than with the eastern/western dialects).

[Lwów]

beka z ciebie

[Toronto Boy]

As a Russian native-speaker, I'd like to add that in addition to French borrowings, we have many words from German. Byustgalter (Büstenhalter), Bukhgalter (Buchhalter), Galstuk (Halstuch), Parikmakher (Parückmacher = Friseur), Schlagbaum, Buterbrod (Butterbrot), Lager' (Lager), verstak (Werkstatt), lozung (Losung), soldat (Soldat), shtraf (Strafe), Kurort (Kurort) etc. It happened to us because of the Empress Yekaterina II who was from Germany and encouraged German immigration to Russia. In fact, Germans was a significant ethnic minority in USSR. After its demolition they were enabled to leave for Germany and a lot of them did. But their presence is still reflected in out language. Thank you for video!

[HeroManNick132]

We have some of these words too in Bulgarian "лагер, солдат/солдатин, лозунг, курорт" Actually "солдат" is from Italian, not German.

[Bonus Karma]

На самом деле из-за революции в России и появилась неприязнь Германии к России, потому что в то время в царской семье было весьма много людей с немецкими корнями из-за развитых связей с Европой со времен Петра 1 и как раз таки любви к Германии у Екатерины 2, можно сказать во времена ее правления почти все строительство жилого и культурного сектора было направлено на привлечение германцев к жизни в России.

[Iridescent Tea]

For Slovak language you may add letters as "ô" which a believe is pretty unique and when compared do some other slavic languages, also "ä". There's also a rhythmic law/rule meaning two long syllables cannot occur consecutively (which includes also those with ia/ie/iu/ô ) although there are minor exceptions here and there, ofc. That's just from the top of my head, I may add some more, if I remember to :)

[Kamikadze WWII]

and Slovak language have longest alphabet

[Matej S]

He didn't really make his homework for Slovak language. And I'm even ignoring his claim that Slovak and Czech were considered to be the same language.

[ShyGoldfish]

It was pretty annoying to hear him pretty much say that Slovak and Czech are completely same and completely left out everything. There are many differences which makes Slovak language different and wonderful in it's own way just like for any other language, I can't see why he ignored it but whatever. 😄

[Dodo LP]

I agree, he definitely didnt make his "homework" on Slovak langage

[SkiFi Sk Music]

also these: ď ť ň ľ ;)

[ESC Lucia Slovakia]

Interesting video. Just a note - even in times of Czechoslovakia, Czech and Slovak were not considered as one language. For some time, the official language was the virtual "Czechoslovak language", which had two varieties: the Czech one and the Slovak one. It didn't mean that they were one language though. Things were written in both languages, not only one. Both languages were present everywhere, because they were not the same language. The so called Czechoslovak language was nonexisten, it was an artificial name. Just like the Czechoslovak nation was artificial, nonexistent and created only to convince the world powers that both nations were actually one, that needed to have its own country. It was a trick.

[Rory Chivers]

I know this is a dumb question that probably has a million different nuanced reasons, and subject to opinion, but what exactly was the motivation for Czechoslovakia to be considered a single unitary country? The concept of a multi-ethnic state isn't exactly strange to me, the UK is basically an amalgamation of Celts, Saxons, Danes and wannabe French Norsemen... I'm just curious why this specific state came to be.

[Hana Korejtkova]

@Rory Chivers They wanted to have their own state, to separate from Austria-Hungary. To achieve that, they needed to prove the majority of people living here are of one nationality. That wasn't possible, as there were Czechs, Germans, Slovaks, Hungarians... Once they established a Czechoslovak nationality, they could add Czechs and Slovaks and voila, numbers are much better!

[beth12svist]

Plus there were probably some seeds for it in that in the early stages of the national revival(s) in the first half of the 19th century, they did work closely together, before the Slovaks went "hey, we're our own nation, thanks for the ideas, we'll take it from here." (Roughly speaking.) For example, Slovak Protestant churches used to use (I think they don't anymore) a 16th century Czech Bible translation (the Kralice Bible), so the connections have been there for a long time (since the time of Great Moravia really, it straddled the current political border). But the two countries have a lot of separate history, more than the common one in the long run, so that wins out both politically and in terms of overall culture.

[ESC Lucia Slovakia]

@Rory Chivers Not a dumb question at all. I agree with both answers people have already give you. Actually, one of the first plans for Czechoslovakia was to create a country similar to the UK, with autonomy for Slovakia. Slovaks and Czechs were allies, close nations with quite different history. Czechs wanted their old Bohemian kingdom back, Slovaks wanted autonomy in Hungarian kingdom. The WWI was the opportunity for the nations in Austria-Hungary to become independent, but to create two small countries Czechia and Slovakia was scary - Slovaks were afraid of Hungarians, Czechs were afraid of Germans, so in Czechoslovakia they both would be stronger together. But because there were much more Germans then Slovaks in Czechoslovakia, the politicians created the idea that Czechs and Slovaks were actually one nation that needed to live in one country. Even if Germans were the second biggest ethnic group, Czechs together with Slovaks, as "Czechoslovaks", were the majority and could have the right for their own country.

[Daniel Koucky]

Not true, in the first constitution of Czechoslovakia, there was written "Czechoslovak language", same as "Czechoslovak nation". But technicaly they were two different languages, the reason why they wrote that that way was to make us a majority in the country, Czechoslovaks could over number local Germans and to make them minority.

[mihanich]

double negative is more like typical for Slavic languages in general not just individual Slavic languages

[Jedo Wampo]

English also has a double negative( we DONT need NO education), but this is not a literary form.

[Ondřej Matějka]

@Jedo Wampo "we DON'T need NO education" these phrases are super confusing for me in English, I always have to think about that like 5 minutes, also even in Czech langauge, it's better to not use double negative if you can avoid that which you mostly can, sentence will be much more clear then.

[Algirdas LTU]

I just didnt notice that rnglish doesnt really have them bc they were a normal thing for me and i didnt really think abt it

[Ondřej Matějka]

@Algirdas LTU That's one of the first things which English teacher says to you in school - you can't use double negative in English, but from what I see in texts even from native speakers, it's not really true.

[Jedo Wampo]

@Ondřej Matějka Ukrainian language loves double negatives, although often it is enough to say simply жодний(žodnyj) , but...

[Vlad]

I'm romanian and I love slavic languages. I am glad we have slavs as neighbours and that they influenced our language and culture, it would not be the same with it.

[Greg G]

first person ever who said that they are glad having slavs as neighbours :D

[Vlad]

@Greg G I mean it. Romanians like all slavs, except for russians, for obvious reasons.

[HeroManNick132]

@Vlad Well, but most Romanians the patriotic ones don't want to be mixed with Slavs though...

[MartaVdz]

@Greg G We as Czechs are quite lucky, I've read several German and Austrian comments saying that Czechia is their favourite neighbour. I was actually quite touched when an Austrian guy commented that we're the neighbouring country Nr. 1 for him. We don't cause any problems, I suppose that's why.

[kucapaca]

@HeroManNick132 Why would they? Their language is of Latin origin after all, so no chance to mix them. But we do like Romanians too, because they also have beautiful women, just like the slavic ones.

[Alex Milchev]

For anyone who is also a nerd here are some interesting facts about the Bulgarian language. One that is often ignored, especially by foreign linguists but it's called Present Historical Time. It describes past actions in the present tense and it's mostly used, as the name suggests to describe historical actions. Example: България е основана през 681г. (Bulgaria was founded in the year 681.) Where we use the present е основана, instead of the past е била основана. What you described as evidentially is actually more complex and it refers to a lot of different tenses Past Complete Time is used to describe actions that have certainly finished before the moment of speaking. Past Incomplete Time is used to describe actions that have started in the past but the speaker is unsure if they have finished in the present. Past Uncertain Time is used to describe past actions which have been completed in an uncertain moment in the past but we can observe the result. Past Preliminary Time is used to describe actions that were completed before other past actions or a given moment. Then there are also the future tenses called Future Time, Future Preliminary Time, Future Time in the Past and Future Preliminary Time in the Past. Future is pretty self-explanatory. Future Preliminary time is used to describe a future action that will happen before another future action or a given future moment. Future Time in the Past is used to describe actions that would've happened in the past but didn't. It's considered a future tense because of the grammar used. Future Preliminary Time in the Past is used to describe actions that would've happened but didn't because of a specific actions or reason. It's a bit hard to understand if you don't speak the language. Another cool thing is the doubling forms, where a word has two official ways to be written or pronounced. Example: обеци, обици(earnings) Also I promise I won't bother you too much with dialects, mostly because Bulgarian dialects are a hundred times more complex than the language but I wanna mention that on top of regional dialects we have professional dialects used by people working in specific professions. They could range from people just using certain words such as Tricker dialect, used by professional criminals, to having a mixture of foreign and Bulgarian accents and grammar such as Computerdjiski dialect, to having artificially created accent specific for those professions, which is the case for actors, news presenters and PSA announcers. That accent is called Proper Speech and it was made to be the most comprehensible way to speak the language. Lastly even though old Bulgarian is considered a lost language (thanks Turks) from the little we could uncover it was very similar to Old Church Slavonic, to the point some linguists consider them the same. That also makes sense due to historical reasons and here comes a slight correction. The Glagolic was created with Slavs in mind and during Christianation Bulgarian churches originally adopted the Glagolic so they don't preach in Greek, but since Bulgaria was a multiethnic state Glagolic proved too hard for non-slavs so a simplified version of the Glagolic was created called the Cyrrilic by one of Cyrril and Methodius's students called Kliment of Ohrid.

[Marble]

Old Church Slavonic is not similar to Old Bulgarian, it WAS Old Bulgarian. Its disappearance from daily use is not related at all to the Turks. It had evolved to Middle Bulgarian long before they even arrived on the Balkans.

[Rayna Tumbeva]

The Cyrillic was certainly not created by Clement. Clement just created a simplified version of the Glagollic. The earliest definite evidence of Cyrillic being used that we have is from Pliska around the time of Clement's death. Additionally, the literary school in Ohrid was among the last ones to start using it, a lot after Clement's death, which wouldn't make sense if he created it. But the earlier you go into Bulgarian and Balkan history in general, the more arguments and asserted misconceptions there are.

[чонки юки]

Your description of Past Incomplete Time is incorrect. It refers to an action that has happened in the past before the moment of speaking but it has not been finished then and therefore continues to happen in the past before the moment of speaking.

[F]

One thing worth mentioning about Russian is that a lot of nouns have a form with a different suffix, in order to indicate that the nouns is small or “cute.” For example, “дорога”(road) would be changed to “дорожка” if you want to indicate that the road is small. Or “куб”(cube) would be changed to “кубик” for the same reason.

[Joseph Brandenburg]

Kubek means "mug" in Polish. Kinda similar to that last one ("Kubik" I guess).

[Spaghetti is Yummy.]

Oh, those Exist in Serbo-Croatian aswell! I think that they're called "Umanjine" and "Uvečina." I really like them tbh!

[aurelije]

​@spaghettiisyummy.3623 it is called diminutive and augmentative. And there is also pejorative.

[Spaghetti is Yummy.]

@aurelije THERE'S AN ENGLISH WORD FOR IT? :O

[aurelije]

@spaghettiisyummy.3623 those are linguistic terms but they originate from Latin. Similar to names of cases: Nominative, Genitive... we don't say imenski, rodni... we are not like Russians that say everything in their language

[lmancz]

the research that went into this is insane! One thing I would point out as Czech, "čau" is used as very informal, you'd say that to your friends not in a shop etc. At the end of the video, the goodbyes in all the languages are formal, Czech equivalent would be "Nashledanou" literally - wishing we see each other again / until we see each other again (which is the exact same meaning in most of the other languages too). Fun fact, you'd end a phone conversation with a similar "Naslyšenou" which replaces "see" for "hear"

[Petra Lichka]

A petition to make „čau“ a formal greeting please, as my italian heart would be very happy about that.

[lmancz]

@Petra Lichka isn't it the same in Czech (and others) as in Italian though? Dobrý den / Nashledanou x Čau vs Buon giorno / Arrivederci x Ciao

[Void]

Good point and "Na shledanou" is two words.

[lmancz]

@Void sorry, my bad

[MYH10]

The Polish goodbye used ("Na razie", which literally translated means something like "as of now", "so long" would probably be a good English equivalent.) is also a highly informal one. The formal version is "Do widzenia." ("till seeing")

[Sviatoslav Stock]

I speak Ukrainian, Russian and Polish, hence I lived in Slovakia using mix of them to communicate with people, who don't speak English. Worked really well. I just said the same word in a different language, hoping it would resemble the same meaning in Slovak. I remember word "paradajki" - tomatoes, which totally differ from any known by me language. Hence, yes, it is true, knowing 1 or several you can understand and read in others. For me personally, Belorussian, Bulgarian, Serbian and Slovak are the easiest one to understand and Slovenian is the hardest one.

[HeroManNick132]

Щом разбираш български и сръбски, значи няма да са ти проблем останалите като хърватски, босненски, черногорски и македонски, нали?

[Pavle Kovacevic]

@HeroManNick132 croatian, bosnian and montenegrin are serbian

[HeroManNick132]

@Pavle Kovacevic And Macedonian is Bulgarian

[Sviatoslav Stock]

@HeroManNick132 absolutely agree, maybe I just never actually saw them, as I never been in balcan country outside of eu

[Rüdiger Nassauer]

In Austrian German that´s "Paradeiser" for tomato. I am from Germany but I know that word. I just do not know if it is still very much used in Austria who speak their German language very close to ours.

[opa laa]

Ahaha I am Bulgarian and your description of its dubitative mood made me laugh out loud with pure joy. Very good description! The customary way we describe it to foreigners is "Бил съм се бил напил", which translates as "I was drunk, ALLEGEDLY". p.s. Now that I think about it, that statement is actually grammatically wrong, because it's doubly dubitative, so to speak.

[No u]

We just build different

[Vlajd]

Бил съм се бил напил, българска класика хаха

[mihaella t.]

@Vlajd бил съм се бил напил и съм се бил бил

[Georgy Georgiev]

Минало свършено незапомнено време хахах

[DramaticCrossroad]

да не забравяме и всички наставки... допоизпонапихме се (колективно завършено на започнато минало време)

[LingoLizard]

Corrections: Czech and Slovak were only *officially* considered to be one Czechoslovak language between 1920-1938, but afterwards considered to be different languages, even while Czechoslovakia was still around. The majority of people in Belarus *probably* don't speak Belarusian natively, but a majority of people think of Belarusian as their mother tongue, which is why so many people put it as native Old Church Slavonic has been attested since the 800s, the 9th Century, NOT the 1800s 5:35 should be плаваю instead of палаваю 11:18 “vskétat” should be “vzkvévat” 13:00 these all mean ear, not eye, eye is “oko”

[Tibia Demon]

"vskétat" at 11:18 should be "vzkvétat"

[Alek Szewczyk]

13:00 - "uho" means 'ear', not 'eye'. 'eye' is "oko"

[TRXCKMAN MUSIC]

Can you do next one on finnic languages?

[Hatake Kakashi]

Old Church Slavonic was devised around the 16th century on the basis of the Old Bulgarian language invented in the 9th century (very often identified as the same language).

[Dwarow 2]

@Hatake Kakashi Also as the official spoken Russian language from 862 to the Soviet language reform in 1923

[AlexEEZ]

hi as a bulgarian, thank you for complimenting our flag, I agree it looks pretty nice and I'm proud to live in the country that uses it :)

[Dangermanq]

macedonia better

[AlexEEZ]

@Dangermanq when did I ever mention macedonia mate

[Dangermanq]

@AlexEEZ i mean you mentioned bulgaria (which we owned)

[AlexEEZ]

@Dangermanq why do you gotta start this for literally no reason at all when you could've easily just minded your own business I didn't say anything negative about macedonia to begin with, the whole "macedonia used to "own" bulgaria" is a-whole-nother story which I honestly don't care about

[AlexEEZ]

@Dangermanq I appreciate your country as much as any other, I'm just proud to live in my own.

[osasunaitor]

As a learner of Russian and Polish and general enthusiast of Slavic stuff, I got to say that this video addressed most of the issues I found with each specific Slavic language when travelling or learning them. What a great summary and with a touch of humour, I admit I was pausing it every few seconds to read the examples on the screen haha

[Bojan Stare]

You should keep to try itt deeper. That it is just schratch on the surface. You are welcome in Slavic world.

[osasunaitor]

@Bojan Stare thank you my dude

[Bojan Stare]

@osasunaitor You are welcome any time.

[Igor Malusevic]

Hello, i am Serbian. Its not Seta moje majke (My Mothers sorrow) but Tuga moje majke. Seta is word for reflecting some good memories best comparison is feeling nostalgic. On the other hand Tuga is literal sorrow, for example loss of someone or something or sorrow when you left your country to live somewhere else where is better source of income. Also we in Serbian have also double negation like Ja ne znam ništa "I dont know anything" similar to Russian.

[Bojan Stare]

Double negation is also present in Slovene language too. Jaz ne vem nič. 🙂 Or I know, that I don`t know all.

[kucapaca]

@Bojan Stare You meant "I know that I don't know anything".

[Ines Hvala Dolenc]

​@Bojan StareMore like, I don't know nothing.

[Bojan Stare]

@Ines Hvala Dolenc Yes, that`s right. MY mistake.

[educat1on]

as a slav, i find western languages very simple, like in english imperative is the same as infinitive, the words dont have tens of forms of how you can use them in sentences

[pebkac]

As a Slovene, it's very interesting to hear that our vowels are the most complex, that's something I'd never considered before. Especially in written text, they usually look simpler than in other Slavic languages. We only use a,e,i,o,u, and only rarely add accents when it's necessary to disambiguate between similar-sounding words.

[Zigonce]

Baje je še najbolj zafrknjeno.

[Žiga Bizjak]

Slovenščina je pomojem še najbolj zajeban slovanski jezik.

[Filip Štěpánek]

Czech and Slovak were deffinitely not considered the same language during the existence of Czechoslovakia. Also, Czech might be somewhat significantly influenced by latin, but its often striking when other Slavs talk to the Czechs how many archaic words the language presserved that even other slavic languages lost long time ago. Deffinitely true about the German infuence tho, Czechs always appreciated the short and easy German expressions, they make our rztrdrzzrtd conversations easier.

[A. N.]

I'm a Bulgarian and lived in Czechia(don't jump about this name - it was always called like that in BG, finally it's normal in English too :D ) for about 4 years. Slovak is a lot easier on the ears to me. Written they are the same(as in neither seems harder or easier), but the Slovak pronunciation was a lot easier to grasp. Definitely not the same language. I need like 3 words to be able to tell which one is which, despite not being fluent in either. I've witnessed how easy it is for you both to communicate with each other. In my opinion these are the closest pair of languages if we don't count the ex-yu ones as separate. One question though - do you have to adjust a bit your speech when talking to a Slovak? As in speak slower, pick specific expressions that you know he/she will understand as opposed to ones you'd know are uniquely cz? This is what I do when talking to macedonians/other ex-yu. I end up speaking some frankenstein :D

[Jan Slavík]

@A. N. So as a Czech I would say we can talk with Slovaks in a normal way as we would with other Czechs. I'm from a generation that was born after the split of Czechoslovakia, so we weren't really exposed to the Slovak media, but we can still understand them in 95% of cases. When there is a communication problem it's usually the Slovak person that uses a synonym or even the Czech word, because their TV shows and movies are very often played with Czech dubbing. For example one time my friend told me to jump over that "peň" over there, and I was like what, so she just said the Czech word "kmen" which means tree trunk. I've never heard "peň" in my entire life up to that point but she knew the exact Czech word for it 😆

[Ada Pieńkowska]

@Jan Slavík ha, it is exactly the same word in Polish, just written differently, 'pień'. I have noticed that people exposed to one additional Slavic language have it easier to pick up familiar words in others. Both my sister and my mother studied Russian (they never got very good at it) and they had it easier to understand both Czechs and Slovaks than I and others who never studied any Slavic language did. So it might also be that Slovaks are surrounded by other Slavic countries, are a small country, so they might be exposed to them. Because most Slovaks I have met could understand Polish pretty well.

[Filip Štěpánek]

@Ada Pieńkowska totally. I they might be the most able to understand other Slavic languages from us all. They grow up watching Czech TV programs, they have an enormous variety of dialects in their own language so they pick up many archaic Slavic words there and so on. And it's still quite normal to study Russian there, wheres in CZ people usually don't want to have anything to do with anything Russian other than Tolstoy and other classical authors...

[Bob]

@A. N. "finally it's normal in English too". As a native speaker of English I can tell you that we very rarely use the name Czechia. It's hard to explain but it just sounds weird to our ears. There is also the point that we resent outsiders dictating to us which words we should and shouldn't use in our own language. I'll say Czechia if Czechs stop saying Anglie when speaking to each other in Czech and replace it with something of our choice. Ingland?

[Philosopher]

There have been attempts to create a so-called Interslavic "medžuslovjansky jezyk" language. It is the closest thing I have seen, heard, and, most importantly, understood so far, although the language is not used in practice. But if it were to start being used... that would be a game changer.

[Ahimtar HoN]

The ending at 19:09 is funny since both Czech and Slovak have Čau and Zbohom (Sbohem in Czech). However "čau" means "bye", while "zbohom" means "farewell", so it seems like you are telling us a casual goodbye followed up by "we'll never talk to you again" :D

[Petr Fedor]

And more literal translation of sbohem is "with God"

[Mariusz Kozłowski]

Do you really say „z bogiem” in the most atheistic country in the world?

[dvome]

@Mariusz Kozłowski Yeah, it is becoming less usuall, but even I as atheist sometimes use it.

[Ahimtar HoN]

​@Mariusz Kozłowski It lost most of it's religious connotation. There are multiple words like this, e.g. chvalabohu "thank god", preboha "oh god", bohužiaľ "godsadly"(?)...

[Zbyněk Čáp]

@Mariusz Kozłowski we are saying Proboha (for the God,) Ježíšikriste (oh, Jesus) a Šmarjápanno (shortened Jesus & Maria virgin) too. Cultural relict... ;)

[natt]

Let's be honest now, we all came here to see our native language, right? Pozdrawiam Polaków :)

[Johann Ingvarsson]

An interesting but little-known fact is that Russian also has a past conjugation. It works on the principle "bylo" + verb in the past tense. Ja bylo podumal, Ja bylo sobralsia uhodit', etc. So it's worth saying that Slavic idioms are very close to each other, so the historical differences between languages ​​were much smaller than between literary standards now. And many dialects with their own special features, for example, the Russian dialects of the region of Novgorod and Pskov, as one of the most special Russian dialects. They are not considered separate languages, but in many ways they differ more than other East Slavic languages.

[MartaVdz]

This phenomenon also exists in Czech and was still in use about 100 years ago, but it's considered strange and archaic now

[Bojan Stare]

@MartaVdz Slovene languageis archaic, so we use the same past tense. 🙂

[Pasza_dem]

Exactly, It's preserved in speech, but in literature it's mostly abandoned, cause it sounds kinda "uneducated", bullshit for me.

[Aleksander Oleksy]

In Polish dialect we also have Poznański (Poznań area / maybe even wider Wielkopolska) which is very influenced by German and can be hard to understand at times if you don't know the dialect, as some of the words have no clear connections to the main Polish language.

[Fly Fly]

Hi, I'm a native speaker of Russian, from Belarus, but can speak Belarusian too. The Belarusian part was very accurate, except there was a small mistake. The majority of people don't speak Belarusian natively, but a majority of people think of Belarusian as their language, which is why so many people put it as native. Similar to Ukrainian, g is pronounced ɣ, not g. The Russian new vocative case can also be used for non-kinship terms, like names. For example Оля (Olia) is said as Оль (Ol') sometimes.

[Kora Na]

👍

[The Rodian]

звательный падеж есть ещё в анахроничных словах. Например: отче, боже, княже, друже и т.д

[Georgiy Kireev]

@The Rodian Да, но про него в видео всё сказано

[Vergesser Forgetter]

Belarussian still has the W sound, written as Y with an apostrophe above, something rare so up north. In Russian it tends to be either "L" or "V" instead. seems like this is a common round about mutation, as in Serbian it is the opposite, the L changes to W.

[Murdo]

Man, I am so sad about the state of Belarusian. Easily the most beautiful of the eastern slavic languages. At least in my eyes.

[Markus Miekk-oja]

Wow, an informative video about the slavic languages that actually mentions *all* the living slavic languages and not just those who are national languages! Kudos!

[Březník]

"Nation" or "language" are very relative and fuzzy terms. There are no strict criteria for considering a dialect as a separate language or an ethnicity as a separate nation, and even if a nation or language has a clear identity, it is difficult to determine what else belongs to them and what does not.

[Magmasky]

Very cool video, learning the history of slavic languages and why some words are different in other languages really makes it easier to further understand the languages. Thank you very much for making it, greetings from Bulgaria 🇧🇬

[Kae_]

From my experience as a czech, slovakian and czech were not considered one language but they are *very* similar. Czech and Slovakian people can speak and understand each other without having to learn the other, no problemo. Many of our KZbinrs make colaborations with Slovakian KZbinrs and both of them speak their native language in the video and both sides understand them

[HeroManNick132]

Slavs in a nutshell: West Slavs: Czechs: Ah, what a beautiful day with my bros to relax! Slovaks: Me too bro, we are so similar that we are basically like a brother and sister! Czechs: Yes, that's right. Also we love to make fun of Polish! Poles: Hey, stop making fun of mine language, you are the ones who speak funny! Polish, Czech, Slovak: Haha! You are so funny, ah! Kashubian, Silesians, Sorbs: Are we forgotten again? Poles, Czech, Slovak: Oops! Sorry, haha! Kashubians, Silesians, Sorbs: *sigh* Polabs: Ugh, guys help me! All: We are sorry we can't help you, you are already a dead language! Polabs: 😠 The Balkans: Serbs: You all speak Serbian, just admit it! Croats: Over my dead body, we speak Croatian and you speak Serbian! We are not the same! Bosniaks: Shut up, you all speak Bosnian! Bosnian dictionary is the oldest and Serbs didn't have any literature until recently. Montenegrins: What is going on guys? Can't you leave us, we are trying to sleep, I don't care what language you are speaking! Bosnian, Serbian, Croatian, Montenegrin - same thing, now leave us alone! Bulgarians: Macedonian is a dialect of Bulgarian! Macedonians: Shut up, we are not Serbs, Greeks, Bulgarians, Albanians! We are Macedonian and speak a different language from you, Bulgars! Bulgarians: Pfft, what you'll say, brainwashed people by Tito! Macedonians: We were since Alexander the Great, while you came from Central Asia! We are older than you and everyone else in Europe! Bulgarians: Yeah, yeah! Fairy tales, you'll realise it soon or later that you've been manipulated to betray your land! Slovenes: *smh* My South Slavic friends are quarreling again, glad I'm more closer with Austria and Italy than the Balkans. Cheers! East Slavs: Ukrainians: Russians are not Slavic and never they were! They are Mongols and Finno-Ugrics, Turks but not Slavs at all! Russian: Shut up, hohols! Ukrainian and Belarusian are just village dialects of Russian, admit it! Belarusians: Hey! But you are right, Russian is much better than Belarusian! Ukrainians: 🤬 Rusyns: Do we count? Ukrainians: No, you are just Ukrainians who speak a Ukrainian dialect!

[Tatratram]

As a native speaker of Croatian, I think that the pluperfect is used more than the aorist or imperfect. All of these can be (and usually are) replaced with the normal past tense. Pluperfect is used only in some compound sentences when it is necessary to distinguish a specific meaning from the set of meanings simple past tense can convey. The aorist is used in some semi-fixed phrases, usually to imply the finality of the action and the imperfect is just straight up dead. Usage of aorist and imperfect tenses is considered "stylistically marked". For the vocabulary differences between standard Croatian and other standards, Croatian went through several linguistic purism movements over the last 150-ish years, which reflects in the vocabulary. In most cases where the vocabulary differs, you will see that Croatian has a word made of Slavic roots (sometimes a neologism, sometimes not), where as Serbian and the others will use a loanword, like in the examples for "carrot" and "history" in the video.

[kosher&halal]

that's usually the best part of Croatian language even during 90ties it tended to go to far. last Croatian word I heard, "sebić" for selfie, i love it :)

[djdjukic]

I would like to confirm the statement about pluperfect, aorist and imperfect tenses as being true for standard Serbian. Also, there is sometimes a distinction in Serbian between the common word, such as šargarepa (carrot) being a loanword (in this case, from Hungarian) and the synonym predominantly used in scientific register (in this instance, the science being botany - and the word being mrkva). Those scientific words are often identical to standard Croatian or similar to Croatian-style neologisms. Other such examples are mushroom (Sr. pečurka/Cr. and Sr. formal gljiva), aircraft (Cr. zrakoplov, Sr. formal vazduhoplov - the common variant being the more narrow in meaning avion-airplane).

[Shane C.]

All very true!

[Tatratram]

@kosher&halal I wish YT would notify me of replies to my comments. My favourites are "osjećajnik" (emoji) and "susramlje" (cringe (noun)).

[half_plastic23]

​@Tatratramhej, izazor *mic drop* 😂😂

[JT Cloud]

A pretty interesting video. As a native speaker of the Russian language, I find all the other Slavic languages quite interesting and fascinating. It is interesting to me that despite the fact that both Ukrainian and Belarusian are part of the same language branch as Russian, I find Ukrainian much easier to understand when it is both spoken and written. When it comes to Belarusian, the way it is written just scares me :D :D. I find it much easier to understand the spoken language than the written one. However, when I learn new words from both of these languages, I do not somehow treat or interpret them as separate languages as I do with English or Finnish, which feel foreign. Somehow the Slavic languages that are closer to Russian feel like"the same" language to me, but I never confuse them with Russian, more like an extension of the language if that makes sense. With the Slavic languages outside of the East Slavic group, I find the Slovenian language to be fascinating and beautiful. Like some of the cool features that it has grammar-wise. The Bulgarian language is a funny one for me... I have a bunch of Bulgarian friends and sometimes when I am tired and reading their exchange in Bulgarian, I get stuck of why I am reading words that look Russian, but not fully understanding the context until the realisation kicks in that I am reading in Bulgarian :D. Overall, I find the Slavic languages really interesting and it is always so much fun to learn what similarities and differences exist between Russian and all the other Slavic languages. Thank you for the video!

[HeroManNick132]

Biggest nightmare for the Russians ''Ъ'' especially seeing the word ''пъдпъдъкът.''

[JT Cloud]

@HeroManNick132 Haha, what a lovely word :D Based on how it sounds to me, I would write it as пыдъпыдыкыт ))

[HeroManNick132]

@JT Cloud It's pronounced the same unstressed O (closed A). I know in Russian it can become a schwa sound, despite not many Russians realise that. We lack of the ''Ы'' sound, except in some words that kinda it exist as ''тъй, въй'' They don't mean ''ты, вы'' however. Before 1945 it used to be written as ''пѫдпѫдъкътъ''

[JT Cloud]

@HeroManNick132 Thanks for clarifying! I listened to the pronunciation of that word via Google Translate a couple of times and somehow I cannot pick up the unstressed O/A sound. Maybe the quality is not great or the sound is not that familiar to me, I honestly hear the "ы" sound 🤔. Does it sound like it is pronounced correctly to you if you also try Google Translate?

[HeroManNick132]

@JT Cloud ''Ъ'' is similar to ''Ы'' yes but ''Ы'' is hard ''И'' while ''Ъ'' is hard ''A'' that it's pronounced with close mouth like how У is closed version of O or how you say ''rubber'' for example. It's hard to explain to Russian speakers because you don't realise that you have it. Like for example ''хорошо'' sounds like ''хъръшо'' (if it was spelled in Bulgarian it would look like that) just like how ''союз'' is ''съюз.'' Most Slavic languages limited their schwa sound to ''Р'' or ''Л'' like in the Ex-Yugoslavia languages for example ''Србиjа'' or ''џентлмен'' Usually in Czech and Slovak use ''R/L'' as vowel so there is the only time where you can notice it makes the ''schwa'' sound. Polish surprised me because 1 Polish friend explained me that it has no schwa sound at all but Kashubian for example has ''schwa'' sound - ''Ë'' (like Albanian and Luxembourgish). The unique about Bulgarian and Kashubian is that they are the only Slavic languages which have separated letter for ''schwa'' sound, while others don't.

[HBon111]

I'm a Czecho-Canadian and I love anything to do with slavic linguistics. It was a great video! Thank you.

[Hunteractually]

It must be interesting to be a part of both countries. I supoose you live in Canada, right?

[aesthetic Клет]

I'm Czech born raised in Germany and I love discovering comments from people globally having the same roots as me. All the best to you 💙♥️🤍

[HBon111]

@Hunteractually Yeah, in Canada. I don't know about interesting. There isn't a huge Czech community like there is for other groups (Poles and Russians especially). But it's surprising how often you'll bump into Czechs and Slovaks on the street.

[Tomasz Dobrowolski]

@HBon111 You should mention ukrainian comunity in Canada.

[Daselsdis]

This makes me wonder how would this look with latin languages, great video, very informative, I'm trying to learn russian, and this showcases a lot of stuff I needed

[Vicente Chen]

I still remember the last time I was sitting on a mini van in Chiangmai, north Thailand, people beside me seemed came from one of the Slavic country, and also I heard some words that seemed to be Polish. After they passed the form to me for the accident insurance, I was quite happy to find out that their nationality was really “Poland”. This lead to some small talk, and while they said they came from Warsaw, I blurted out “Warszawa” in Polish pronunciation which a big smile, but instantly freaked out those four people who came from their capital😅 It turned to a nice trip, and they even let me try to pronounce their name printed on IC for a small quiz haha. Language exchange is always interesting, there’s always chances to meet someone who you can chat with by using the familiar language to you.

[Артём Коваленко]

Русских субтитров не было, поэтому я как истинный любитель хардкора включил украинские и начал переводить и с украинского и с английского языков однавременно.

[Артём]

Используй Яндексовский браузер, у него великолепный голосовой перевод.

[LRed13]

Выбор поистине просвещённого ценителя славянской лингвистики

[Славянский]

@semen semenov Пойду попью кумыса и попрактикую горловое пение. Спасибо что напомнил!

[Андрій]

@Славянский Ну як похлебав трохи, прийнявся до коренів?) Є в мене на роботі один фіно-угр самий натуральний, з Урала, так він по нашому краще шпрехає, чим росіяни по своєму.

[Анна Хлыбова]

@semen semenov но русский язык является частью именно восточно-славянской языковой группы (финно-угорские языки и тюркские относятся не просто к другим группам, но целым иным языковым семьям.) русский - 100% славянский язык с некоторым влиянием тюркских и финно-угорских языков, но все еще славянский. что касается национальности, тут уже немного другой вопрос

[LostTraveller]

I am Polish and i remember playing with my cousin in slovak or some other slavic language and we understood almost everything except some of the words looked and sounded funny to us like "kilof" (pickaxe) becoming "krompac" or "jagody" (berries) becoming "bobule"

[Yuriy Nasretdinov]

Thanks for such a detailed analysis! I never thought I'd say something like this, but I would really appreciate a longer version of this video with the same content but with more time to appreciate each language and the details :)

[J]

There was also a very interesting Polаbian language in what is now northern Germany. This language died out in the 19th century, but a lot of information about it remains. It had a lot of German borrowings and sounds and it sounded very interesting.

[Um Melófilo]

Do you mean Sorbian?

[[ɾɐ.'dʲːɔˑn]]

@Um Melófilo I think he means Polabian or Slovincian language

[J]

@Um Melófilo No I'm talking about the polabian language

[Um Melófilo]

@J I see.

[Maciej N]

Polabian was not Polish. It was closer to Sorbian than Polish.

[Fairy C Rat]

I think you should definitely do the same for Indo-Aryan languages! Although there are so many potentially distinct ones that you should probably stick to the largest ones.

[martin kullberg]

I'm making a slavic conlang as hobby, and I discovered after a while I tested it, that the sounds are a bit like a smooth polish/ slovenien language , I think. What makes it unique is that I eroded the case system to only genitive, there are "the" words but they adfix,and had tried to get rid of the moast clusters ,and there are many romance and other loans , the name is "jezí martienchi "

[Jerry Noruega]

Fantastic video. I'd love to see an update on Kashubian and Lower/Upper Sorbian languages ❤️

[Eldnsay]

I'm a native Slovenian speaker, found this video by chance. I'm not a huge fan of languages, but maaaan, this is so in depth, you clearly put so much work into this I cannot even comprehend the scale. Amazing job! I can't say I understood everything, I don't even know how I can use what I saw today irl. Maybe I'll revisit this someday. It's also interesting to hear the English translations for our languages's particularities. For the one part I understood... you need to work on better translations, "uho" in Slovenian is ear, not eye XD

[Geography Trivia]

In Czech we have the same word, just pronounced "ucho" = uho ("Ch" Vs Slovenian "H") Joke: in Czechia we eat a tons of sauces with meats and dumplings. At primary school, they try to save on money UHO = *Univerzální hnědá omáčka" Universal brown sauce = generic = tastes the same as any other 😅

[Maka Qsas]

Andraz Sturm nevem

[Je Zeus]

Andraz Sturm uho in oko lahko nekomu, ki ni native speaker, zvenita precej podobno.

[not glory]

Čist res in a je sam men Mal čudn da se lahko po slovensko pogovarjamo k ns ostali ne zastopajo XD ampak pol je pa ta gumb nakonc komentarja 'translate to english' 😅 😅 adijo moji frendi

[śmieszny fan]

In Polish "ucho" is ear

[Molarcos old acc]

There's a dialect of Bełarusian, which is considered by many as a language. It is spoken in Palieśsie, the southern part of Belarus

[beister]

"Ne" and "Не" working pretty same in every slavic language, you can use almost for every word in sentences, but there are differencies in writing like Czech writes it together "nebudu" and for example russian writes "не буду", meaning same

[Kora Na]

In Russian language you can ignore for the most part those separations. As there is almost no distinction between those variants (only in grammatical sense), just a specific grammatical rule which gives more flexibility to mean a specific thing in a written sentence. i. e. you can construct a perfectly legal Russian word like "nebuduvshik" meaning someone who always says "ne budu" or even "Nebudka", there's one word that actually exists like "nezabudka" ( ne - za - bud - ka), which is a name of a flower which translates to "not forgettable" and that name has been used in classical literature quite often. You can write "небуду" - "nebudu" in Russian together , and everyone would understand it's meaning in a sentence. But it would just be grammatically incorrect.

[Mariusz Kozłowski]

Nie będzie, nie będę ;)

[Непо Нял]

@Mariusz Kozłowski, hey, bro. Could you tell me, please: how do negative sentences work in Polish? Like, an english sentence "I've never been to there" translates into a russian one as "Ja nikogda nie byl tam" literally "I've never not been to there". Is it the same story to your language?

[Mariusz Kozłowski]

@Непо Нял in Polish it’s “Nigdy tam nie byłem” which translates directly to “Never there no was”. We skip “ja” as it’s obvious from the ending of “byłem” that it’s about yourself. You can add „ja” in the beginning to emphasize that You wasn’t there in the answer to someone who says “I was there” and ask’s you: “and you?”.

[Mariusz Kozłowski]

Generally you just add “nie” before the verb.

[Aleksej Kolomenskih]

4:27 Vocative case in Russian is also present as a stylisation tool. Words put in this case, such as DRUZHE, BRATE or KAZACHE are used to refer to certain time in literature and cinema. Also some words in vocative case are used in certain sociolects. 4:32 Neo-vocative case in Russian are also used with pretty much any name, if one is long enough to be put in a case.

[AnaLennyja]

I'm from Slovenia and I'm happy to see our language being analysed in this video.

[Jakub Piatkowski]

Salutations are weird in Slavic languages. Czechs say "Ahoy!" even though Czechia is landlocked. Poles say "Dzień dobry", which literally means "Good day", even though no day is ever good in Poland ;)

[Meta Morphosa]

"Dobry den' " in russian, even though every day in Russia is worse than in Poland))

[Jakub Piatkowski]

@Meta Morphosa Fair point

[HeroManNick132]

@Jakub Piatkowski In Bulgarian sometimes we use ''Добър ден'' for ''Hello'' but that is quite formal to use it with your friends but totally normal to use it on the news or in shopping.

[Jakub Piatkowski]

@HeroManNick132 Yeah - it's a realtively common formal way of saying hello in many Slavic languages. My comment was just a recent installment in a long-running tradition of Poles and Czechs mocking each other's vocabulary (combined with the sterotype of Poland being more gloomy of the two) ;)

[fica11]

@HeroManNick132 So you sometimes lie, because there is no good day in Bulgaria

[Marcelo Cortez]

I speak Spanish natively, but I like so much slavic culture. To me it's interesting in both negative and positive sides. I'm trying to learn russian nowadays. I hope someday I could visit at least one slavic country in my life. Я люблю русский❤ Greetings from El Salvador!

[HeroManNick132]

You think Russian will help you the most? Why not Interslavic

[Nobody Burgen]

@HeroManNick132"You think the most spoken language will help you? Why not a language no one speaks natively?"

[HeroManNick132]

@Nobody Burgen That might change. Interslavic is more mutually intelligble to Slavic people than Russian. Russian is only to Ex-USSR countries useful and to some older people who have learnt Russian at school, otherwise Russian is not that useful anymore, but still it's the most spoken Slavic language, even though Russians speak Old Bulgarian. Heck even Slovak is more clearer and understandable to most people compared to Russian.

[Yeicon]

Slovak speaker here. Thank you for the well-made video (although the speed and amount of information is quite overwhelming). I'd say the diphthong "ô" is pretty characteristic of Slovak, as well as the crazy perfective/imperfective verb aspects. Also, I appreciate you calling the language "Slovak" instead of "Slovakian" which I often hear from some people.

[jasperware]

as someone who can understand russian and ukrainian from my parents and older family members but not speak it well, i felt really called out by some of the example sentences lol i always thought slavic languages can communicate more humor/meaning and i think it might be in part because of multidirectional verbs and such. thank you for explaining grammatical ideas and the differences between the languages! (i often get the two above confused TuT) now im motivated to learn them better :)

[Everything’s fine TT]

I always thought it could communicate less because it has less words describing specific emotions or things than English

[MartaVdz]

@Everything’s fine TT Things, yes; emotions, not. English is more psychological, it has more abstract nouns describing emotions and society phenomena than my native Czech. But Czech has adjectives and verbs describing emotions that English doesn't have. Off the top of my head: "predposrany" (plus diacritics that I don't have in my phone). That's just untranslatable. Literally, it means something like "sh*tted on himself in advance", i.e. "a bit cowardly, afraid of confrontation, frightened even before something happens, unable to stand up for himself or anyone else". There's also a weasel-like and what-will-I-get-from-it quality about the meaning. We only use it regarding politics or relationships. Btw, the number of one-word expressions doesn't determine the language's ability to express. Czech has poignant phrases for some phenomena, where English has words. Off the top of my head: "I was only standing on one leg and that leg wasn't even mine" is the equivalent of the English word "jam-packed". Or, "he allows wood to be chopped on him" means something like "pushover". On the whole, English is better at describing abstract concepts and Czech is better at describing specific physical actions, also those interconnected with relationships and emotions. I enjoy motivational books and abstract concept-based humour in English (like Yes, Minister), and stories and satirical op-eds in Czech.

[Adam Herčík]

As a Slovak, there were some slight innacuracies in Czech and Slovak. We don't have exactly the same vowels, outside of the the standard 5, Czech also has a reduced i while Slovak doesn't. Slovak also has ô as a diphthong /uo/ and a vowel ä /ae/. As someone else already said, Slovak has the rule of rhytmic shortening which means two long syllables can't follow, with some exceptions. Also, the part about a common Czechoslovak language is just straight up incorrect, the languages have been different for like a century and Slovak was codified (final codification, there have been two before already, but this one is in use to this day) as a seperate language in 1843, which was way before Czechoslovakia was even an idea. The only reason why Czechoslovak was ever even considered one nation was political to even form Czechoslovakia because Western nations would be less willing to break up an unstable multinational country like Austria-Hungary if the result was another potentially unstable multinational country like Czechoslovakia.

[Frith Barbat]

Also, Japanese also distinguishes distance in its pronouns. Once you learn it, it seems mind-boggling not to have, for example, a single word for "That over there near you" (sore) vs. "This here near me" (kore) and "That over there away from both of us" (are). In Japanese these pronouns can refer not only to objects, but also to events, mind-states/attitudes etc. It's very useful in presenting and manipulating perspective in your speech.

[popularmisconception]

Nice vid. Slovak has 4 basic noun inflectional paradigms for every gender and a lot of sub-paradigms and is a hell for foreigners to learn. Slovak, being in the center of the Slavic area, has features of all groups and a very high dialect diversity, with eastern Slovak being influenced by Polish and Rusyn, having stress on second-to-last syllable, and western-most Zahorie dialect being basically a form Moravian (which is another language you did not mention, since Moravian is seen as a dialect of Czech which you should not mention in Brno) and has highest mutual intelligibility with all Slavic languages. At least from the Slovak point of view. Another unmentioned Slavic language is Obodrite, which is extinct but attested and was spoken on the northwest baltic coast in present-day eastern Germany near borders with Denmark and was influenced by Germanic languages, as well as Ilmen Slavic, which was the language of Republic of Novgorod from the lake of Ilmen which is attested on ~8yo boy's school doodles and homeworks from 12 century (not kidding, search Onfim) and was assimilated by Muscovite Russian but could be perhaps considered an influence on Pomor dialect of Russian, the northernmost Slavic language spoken in Archangelsk and Murmansk. And of course the Goral langue which could be classified as a northern Slovak dialect but also as a south Polish dialect and not many people speak it today. Slavic languages are really one big linguistic continuum.

[cimbalok]

An interesting project would be to list words in the Romanian language that have Slavic roots. I speak Slovak and Polish (and can fake my way through Serbian, Bosnian and Croatian) but when I was learning Romanian I was amazed to discover that I understood the words with Slavic roots (dragoste, slab, treaba, etc.) but had to look up most of the ones with Latin roots. Romanian also has words derived from Dacian, an ancient language that was extinct by the 4th C AD. Thank you for posting.

[Tohi_CZ]

Im from Czechia, and i love learning things about other slavic languages. Also i love that lot of foreigners when they try to pronouns something in czech it sounds so weird. As its lot of time said that Czech is very hard language, i think the grammar is harder than the language itself

[michal kedrigern]

stačí dialekty Praha, Plzeň..i Ústí n. L....nemluvě Olomouc, Třebíč, Brno.. a Ostravaci..když dojedou na fotbal:) zajímavé jsou oblasti Mikulov/Hodonín..Veselí n. M..se Slováky ze Špiše, východně od Popradu, je to těžší si popovídat..ale dá se to, když mluví pomaleji..je to drsný kraj:)

[Schody]

East Slavic 3:50 Russian 5:55 Ukrainian 7:03 Rusyn 7:41 Belarusian West Slavic 8:30 Polish 9:40 Silesian 18:00 Kashubian 10:19 Czech 11:45 Slovak 18:20 Sorbian South Slavic 12:29 Slovene 13:27 Serbo-Croatian 14:58 Bulgarian 16:19 Macedonian 17:21 Old Church Slavonic 17:52 Church Slavonic

[Yamisa]

Дзякуй

[Schody]

@Yamisa Proszę

[花火]

OCS and modern neomuscovite CS both belong in the south slavic category btw

[Schody]

@花火 thanks, now I edited it.

[Axel Alexson]

Edit: somehow my comment fell under the wrong comment. Fixing that now.

[LOL Science]

My native language is from the Slavic tree (Russian) and I already knew our grammar yet this still made my head hurt with how complicated everything is 😅

[Da Lena]

Silesian is in itself a group of dialects and it's pronounced /saɪˈliːʃiən/ with a penultimate syllable accent and three syllables altogether,. It's closer to Old Polish than the Polish that's spoken nowadays. You mentioned ą/ę as a feature and Silesian tends to get separated into 'om/em', there's a lot of cool vowel transformations and they change from city to city or even among the districts. Aside from the very obvious German influence, a lot of grammar and words are borrowed from Czech to the point that there are false friends homophones between Polish and Silesian, same as with Polish and Czech. Though there's currently no agreed upon orthography or alphabet as in recent years it's been used as a spoken, secondary language at home while Polish is taught at schools so it's been in decline and gained an unsophisticated reputation. Lately, there is a resurgence of it and shops and restaurants have started having menus in it, there's books translated to it and written in it and it's been turned into a point of regional pride (and merchandise).

[Pyrochemik007]

It used to be a territory of czech kings, but Habsburgs gave it to Germany, respective Prussia. Even Kraków used to be a czech city. Living under Prussia united the locals with the rest of Polish citizen. Stalin offered this territory to Czechoslovakia, but president Beneš refused the offer, saying the redrawing borders would lead to future conflict.

[Jakub W.]

@Pyrochemik007 Lower silesia was for the majority of modern history under polish influence with some czech implications, you're talking about upper silesia, which in fact was quite mixed, most of the time it was german and czech influence, but there were periods of time where it was under polish influence and lots of ethnic poles were settling down there, so it's fair to say that silesian is mix of those three languages - german, czech and polish with obvious german listing, since german influence was the strongest

[Martin]

@Pyrochemik007 Yeah, Kraków was a czech city till like end of X century. So long enough to not being really important. Silesia is different case

[Wojciech Janota]

There's also a dialect from Śląsk Cieszyński (Tešínskie Slezsko), where there's much more similarities with Czech, than in upper Silesian one (co hanysy godają). It's rather common for people from here to drive to Czechia and vice versa and i haven't had any issue communicating, granted I know our regional dialect and some words are common with Czech ones. There are many school extracurricular activities that teach that dialect, as only the generation of my grandparents uses "naszo godka" at home. I think it's more socially acceptable for people from upper Silesian to speak Silesian than for us to speak our dialect, at least that's how I see that

[Koulematon]

There is a huge decline in Silesian. Sad, but true fact is that it is spoken in majority by uneducated elder physical workers, because it is a language they have learned at home and at work. Most of the young Silesians grew up listening to two languages (personally I don't recognise Silesian as a language, didn't grew up with a real rural Silesian). At home, in neighbourhood everyone speaks Silesian. Polish is the language in schools, newspapers, tv, internet etc. Also some elders tend to prefer speaking Polish than Silesian. That is the cause of the huge decline. Nowadays, when you ask a young Silesian to speak some Silesian language he will speak Polish that sounds exactly like Silesian but with some German words, making you think it is 100% a dialect.

[Mrozon15]

Im from poland and i know that people from other countries that learn polish struggle with pronoucing these letters:ę,ą,ń,ć,ś,ł,ż,ź apart from those ó is easy its like an u but used in certain words like Łódź , Dół, also i think niedźwiedź (bear) is hard to learners

[Thamiri Vonjaahri]

Fun fact: If you recall Life of Bryan, there is scene, where he improperly writes "Romanes, eunt domus" on the wall and is punished by passing centurion to correct it to "Romani, ite domum", which sounds extremely similar to Slavic version of the phrase. Czechs would say "Římané, jděte domů"

[matthiasEK]

I really like that you talk about Silesian which is often overlooked in language videos about Slavic languages

[vetrenyy]

I don't know why, but I just become so happy every time slavic languages get attention and their time to shine! I'm russian myself, I don't have any problem understanding ukrainian most of the time, little less I understand belorusian. The next i'd say would be serbo-croatian, but all the others sound unfamiliar, especially czech. Czech sounds so beautiful, I'd say it's the prettiest slavic language, but I can't understand a word they say

[Keira Lumineux]

I was so surprised and amased when found out Inter-slavic language - all slavic people understand 90% of it!

[VikingGeorge]

@Keira Lumineux I understand 100% of it but oh well. I'm Bulgarian so that's obvious. Also Russian people should theoretically have no problems understanding Bulgarian at almost 100%, and vice versa. Excluding false friends like гора-лес (Bulgarian also has лес, but it's so to say obsolete) and гора-планина (yep, very different word). But generally speaking, they are 95% intelligible. Except Russian is a little easier to learn. Not so much because our verb system is hard but okay, Russian has less exceptions than Bulgarian (in general). Also we haven't truly lost our cases. You can see remants of the genitive case in our father's names and last names, as well as other words that we consider "adjectives". We still have all the other 5 cases. But they're called adjectives because not every single word keeps them. Just see how many exceptions we have. You're gonna feel even worse. :D

[tim es]

Russian seems to be a low dynamic, "phlegmatic" language, unlike fast Western or South Slavic languages, its dynamics resembles Orthodox Church songs.

[NGrey]

As Serbian, i can say that Slovakian is very easy to read, and just little harder to listen, Polish is not understandable to me, and Russian is around 50% that I understand. South slavic languages are all very similar and if you know older versions of Serbian, pre communistic Yougoslavian reformes to flaten the differences between Serbian and Croatian dialects you can very easy understand Bulgarian and Macedonaian. If you grow as spoled city dweller using flat accentuation and slang, you will hav no idea what people are saying if you move 100km away from your city.

[Pietelt]

For poles it’s understanding czech, but that’s it

[Dykwiaornot]

Very informative. It would be interesting to make a followup video about the Interslavic Language. Or maybe talk about it in a presentation of constructed languages?

[Paprikalu]

There is also mix of slavic languages! Its called Po naszymu and it is formed from. Czech, Polish and german language. It somehow takes the grammar from all these languages and is different in every city.

[FishikK]

Góral. Shame that it wasn't mentioned.

[JaneCorriage]

Isn't it just variety of Silesian? People call Silesian "po naszymu" here too

[Paprikalu]

@JaneCorriage i guess. It is also called Gwara Cieszyńska , po naszymu, gwara, dialect... :D

[Audi Audi]

I'm from Slovenia. I like that you talk about this languages. Good job!👏

[Bob]

Informative and interesting video. Mostly your research is excellent but I feel I must point out that Czech and Slovak have never been considered the same language. Mutually comprehensible with a bit of practice or study but not the same language.

[Mariah gessiger]

Eu estou amando este canal. Me encanta aprender sobre idiomas.

[Polina Friz]

Idk why but when Slavic languages get some attention I become so happy :D Such a cool video❤

[Иво Ковачев]

Аз не знам нищо. БГ

[kasiaisfine]

Great vid! I loved it and thanks to it I found out about a lot of tiny features I haven't heard of before. Greetings from Poland 😉

[sasik225]

Wow you made a really good work! You even mentioned Rusyn, Silesian, Kashubian, Sorbian and Old Church Slavonic - WOW :D I am czech and I have to correct few things: 11:19 - vskétat should be vzkvétat czech has one diphtong in its alphabet and it is CH ... more slavic languages has this unique sound but I haven`t seen it nor in the general traits neither in czech diphtongs. But again - you made really good job, most of the people wouldn`t even consider speaking about Rusyn or Sorbian or Old Church Slavonic. Fun fact - did you know that you can download old church slavonic keyboard to your phone? 🤪

[Maryna Krautsova]

I'm native speaker of Belarusian and Russian, and I speak Czech as well. That's a great video, and I really appreciate the work done by the author. It must have taken an effort, and the result is impressive. I was fascinated by it and recommended to my friends who study linguistics. I would like to add about Belarussian that we have a unique among Slavic languages semiconsonant 'ў' pronounced like 'w' in "cow", which is often used instead of 'л' or 'в' in similar words in Russian, e.g. воўк - волк (wolf), леў - лев (lion).

[HeroManNick132]

Do you understand Slovak too?

[Maryna Krautsova]

@HeroManNick132 If Slovaks don't speak too fast, yes))) Slovak language has much more similar words to Belorussian than Czech and Belorussian/Russian

[Seapot]

I am from Poland from the silesia region and im so glad you mentioned silesian! although i wouldnt consider it a diffefent language, just a dialect.

[Helgi Ingvarsson]

I consider you a dialect of your parents

[heymayday]

@Helgi Ingvarsson wtf

[Helgi Ingvarsson]

@heymayday aint i technically right

[michal kedrigern]

Dolni Slask? Krkonoše-Jizerské hory? Skl. Poreba? Jelenia Gora?

[Lingwistyczny Punkt Widzenia]

@Helgi Ingvarsson No, you are not. A dialect is not a product of two different languages, but a variety of one language. Your comparison sounds more like a pidgin language or even a creole.

[Andrija Žuža]

You forgot to mention the most important thing Serbo-Croatian language. It’s one of few lenguages that use the system for writing “Speak how it’s written”. Which means -every letter is one sound-

[HeroManNick132]

You can't say the same to Slovenian though, even though Macedonian kinda it is but it's less phonetic because of Bulgarian.

[Žiga Bizjak]

​@HeroManNick132Slovene here and yes you can it is very phonetic with the only exeception being l sometimes turning to v

[HeroManNick132]

@Žiga Bizjak What about ''e'' when is unstressed becomes a schwa sound? Also seems only Slovenian, Slovak and Ukrainian sometimes changes ''v'' into ''w'' sound.

[Tomasz Garbino]

As a sidenote: #1 Czech isn't the only Slavic language to form past tense with participles. In fact it's a common mean to talk about the past in most of them, even though in some grammarian traditions they're referred to just as "past forms" (That's the case of Polish for example, in which the participle has fused with the present tense forms of the verb "to be" which obscures it's origins). #2 Continuing the past tense vein, I am not so sure if it's apprpriate to translate "snědl" as "eaten" since the former is an active participle and the former a passive one (the actual equivalent would be "sněden") #3 The arguments for analytic nature of Slovene also apply, either partially or fully, to all Western Slavic languages. #4 Also, again about Western Slavic languages - perfective verbs can be derived from the imperfective ones *and vice versa* in all of them, not just in Slovak (or Czech). I'm not super familiar with the other branches but I wouldn't be surprised if it applied to the East and South Slavic languages as well.

[Kora Na]

#4 on your last point can you elaborate please? I am sure that it is the same in all Slavic languages, but without an example it's hard to understand what you are talking about.

[Ondřej Matějka]

Snědl is "he ate" in English, eaten is sněden as you correctly said.

[Veronika Müllerová]

Here is the difference between the aspect and the tense. Most Slavic languages only use aspects. The exceptions are Bulgarian and Serbian, where the imperfect tense is also used. Old Czech used the imperfect tense too, which expressed a progression of action, and the aorist, which expressed a completed action. The imperfect tense had the endings -ie- and -á- and the aorist -e- and -a-. Example Imperfect tense "před starými těmi Aristotiles sedIEše, jenž tehdy králév mistr bIEše." Today, using only the imperfect aspect "před staršími seděl Aristotelés, jenž byl tehdy královým učitelem - before the elders sat Aristotle, who was then the king's master." "Ta rytieře prosIEšta sv. Petra, aby z města postůpil. - Ti rytíři prosili sv. Petra, aby opustil město. - The knights begged St. Peter to leave the city." Or, "Vida to lev, že pan ležIEše, žalostěmi velikými zařvÁše. - Jakmile uviděl lev, jak jeho pán leží, tak velmi žalostně zařval. - When the lion saw that his master was lying down, he roared with great sorrow." Aorist "KázA uzel rozvázati i počE ten mák zobati. - Přikázal rozvázat uzel a začal ten mák uzobávat. - He commanded the knot to be untied and began to take the poppy."

[WALDEMAR WOJNICKI]

Yeah - it's worth to remind people that Polish Past Tense is a "composite" (with "to be" mobile operator) tense. Also - "past perfect" not yet "completely dead" - athough "dying".. (unlike Aorist).

[Tomasz Konstanty Maluszycki]

@WALDEMAR WOJNICKI in my experience past perfect is doing fine in Polish.

[8o86]

3:08 "Speakers of one language can often get a gist of a conversation spoken in another language." Czech/Slovak speaker here. In case of Polish, what we get is the full conversation plus something extra.

[AnnaEmilka]

I'm Polish and can confirm it's similar the other way round. We might not understand all, but we know what is going on and it sounds very funny to us 😂

[krxsmy]

@AnnaEmilka we also think your word for "finding" is funny

[AnnaEmilka]

@krxsmy oh yes I know

[bendr251]

@krxsmy Szukamy dzieci w sklepie ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

[0Ne]

@WolfRam XX You've got some? I'd be more than happy to help you ;) haha

[City Chris]

Fantastic video! Would you ever consider making a video on Baltic languages?

[Václav Krpec]

Just to clarify: Czech and Slovak were indeed considered 2 forms of "Czechoslovak" language between 1920 and 1948, but they were always very distinct, _different forms_ (or different languages). Czechoslovak language is just a legal term; there isn't and wasn't such an actual language. While mutually intelligible, you do need a bit of getting used to one another. I was born in Czechoslovakia in late '70s, I am Czech and I was very used to hearing Slovak. Thus, I have no problem to understand Slovak or even speak it. But my children, who didn't hear it on daily basis, did have trouble understanding it when we went to a hike in Slovakia and they only later got accustomed to it by listening to Slovak KZbinrs.

[Mila Me]

As a native Russian speaker and bilingual Ukrainian speaker (I would even say Ukrainian and Rusyn), I have to admit that learning Slovak now would be much more difficult for me without knowing Ukrainian and Rusyn. Because many sounds that I naturally understand thanks to Ukrainian simply do not exist in Russian. And I want to add that the Slovak language sounds very nice to my ear, like something at the same time familiar, but with added spice haha :)

[JT Cloud]

Could you please explain the challenges that Russian speakers face when attempting to learn Slovak, without the advantage of knowing Ukrainian or Rusyn? I have a friend who is fluent in Russian, Latvian, and English, but I am unsure how much Latvian or English can aid in the acquisition of Slovak. In your perspective, what would be the most challenging aspect? Additionally, do you believe it would be easy for a Russian speaker to learn the vocabulary related to everyday tasks such as shopping or going to the doctor?

[Rosá la Gacha 🔮🌹]

As a bulgarian I can admit that our language and culture are beautiful

[HeroManNick132]

Само македонците могат да ни завиждат. 😂

[ARMY and language lover fangirl on YouTube]

Yep.

[Rosá la Gacha 🔮🌹]

@HeroManNick132 prav si

[Fizzletrie]

the bulgarian section was so funny! I admit, our language is pretty difficult :)

[HeroManNick132]

Всичките славянски езици са сложни, но най-сложният си остава полският.

[Непо Нял]

@HeroManNick132 , I'd say that article-system singlehandedly makes Bulgarian the hardest slavic-language to learn for other slavs. I'm a native russian speaker and articles in English are such a pain for me, tbh:)

[colin afobe]

@HeroManNick132 not if you are Pole :)

[HeroManNick132]

@Непо Нял Northern Russian dialects unironically have articles as well too lol. Which work the same as the Bulgarian ones. From all things that Russian struggle the most I noticed is pronouncing "Ъ" properly and not like "Ы" which in Bulgarian only 2 words have the "Ы" sound which is made by "ЪЙ" - "тъй, въй" I think Kashubian is the other Slavic language that have the "schwa" or "Ъ" as letter and it is written like your "Ё."

[HeroManNick132]

@colin afobe You used autotranslate, don't you? 😁

[Салат Оливье]

As for a russian, this reminds me about what hell of a mess the slavic languages are and how hard it is even for many natives to use correctly I would even say that the "Russian language"(it's literally named this way) is one if not THE most hard subjects to actually master in school And whilst this is quite easy to convey your thoughts and intentions clearly using russian even neglecting most of the rules, using it perfectly really is quite a challenge for the most Great vid btw, really did a hard work on it

[Александр]

наверно это придумано специально для борьбы с шпионами)

[Bkuu]

You should do a similar video with Finnish,Estonian and Hungarian since they are apart of the same language family(Hungarian being less so)

[greengorillah]

You have managed to include an enormous amount of information in a single clip here. I appreciate it is a lot of work as well. Still the tempo is too fast for me. I think you should perhaps make separate videos for each language or include only global info.

[Lingva Viro]

I support your channel. I really appreciate your sharing your info with us about linguistics. :D

[mr__coyote]

As a native Bulgarian speaker it looks the least scary to me :D I also like to find parallels with English very often (makes it very easy). In a strange way there are a lot, but sometimes "in reverse", if this makes any sense :D

[Алексей Приходько]

Awesome video! That's really surprising how much I didn't know about my own language! Some corrections for the russian part: 4:25 "Стой" rarely means "Stand!' and it usually means something like "Stop!" 4:47 Prepositional and locative cases are basically the same, or at least I haven't ever heard people distinguishing between them 4:50 Present tense transcription is a bit of a mess, it's more like "ja - lutšaja učenica v svojom klasse" Also worth noting that the letters я, е, ю, ё don't make the j sound most of the time (they only do so after other vowels, at the beginning of a word and after ъ and ь) The quality of the video is really fascinating, you definitely deserve way more subs

[Craftah]

btw "svojom" is actually pronounced "svajom"

[Spellweaver]

"Стой" can be properly translated as "halt".

[Jody Palm]

"Stand" would be either Вы стоят or ты стоишь, yes?

[Spellweaver]

@Jody Palm I stand - я стою. You stand - ты стоишь/вы стоите. He/she stands - он/она стоит. They stand - они стоят. We stand - мы стоим. To stand - стоять. Stand (imperative) - "стой"/"стоять".

[Baltu Lielkungs Gunārs Miezis]

Id argue stoj even means stay more often than stand. I mean I had never heard it used as stand.

[Silver Star]

Im happy you mentions some lesser known languages like Rusyn, I recently learned about those and the peoples speaking them and it's pretty interesting.

[eiramram]

And I'm sad they're not united as they were in 1919-1939.

[Shelbii]

I'm polish and one time i went on a student exchange to Slovakia and no one besides me could speak English so we just used our own languages and somehow we understood eachother, and the best part is that the teacher coudn't understand Polish so we were just chatting about games for the Nintendo Switch, trying to hold back laugher🤣

[Liz Learns Serbian]

This was a really incredible video. I really can't believe you managed to condense it into only 20 minutes! Скидам капу! 🙇‍♀

[wojtekpolska]

10:10 In history class, i learned a lot of Poles (especially from the regions where they speak silesian) went to Texas, to work in the oil industry. some important ways to refine oil were invented in Poland, which caused many people to move to Texas and start working there. at that time Poland also was experimenting with oil, tho i dont precisely remember the details. so basically, very high work opportunities caused many workers to move to Texas

[Олена Завальна]

As a Ukrainian I really like the fact that I can easily understand the Belarusian language even though I have never learned it and Belarusian speakers can understand Ukrainian as well. But it doesn’t work the same with other languages. I speak Polish and Russian as well but they can’t understand me when I speak pure Ukrainian. So it just proves the fact that Ukrainian and Belarusian are very similar languages (not Ukrainian and Russian as it’s usually said)

[slvaltva *]

Personal experience can't be considered a proof

[Олена Завальна]

@slvaltva * It doesn’t. I said it proves the fact and the fact is that Belorussian is the most similar language to Ukrainian

[slvaltva *]

@Олена Завальна as i already said, it can't be a proof for anything, as it is a personal experience

[Олена Завальна]

@slvaltva * You read inattentively again. The fact that Ukrainian and Belorussian are very close is true and proved by many linguists and my personal experience just proves it as well.

[slvaltva *]

@Олена Завальна Your personal experience can't be proof of anything, I can literally say same shit about different languages, and it wouldn't be a proof. How the hell did I read inattentively? You literally said "My personal experience is a proof", I said "No, it can't be", and you said "Well you read it inattentively, there are many proofs and my experience is a proof as well" Here's what you said in the og comment "I speak Polish and Russian as well but they can’t understand me when I speak pure Ukrainian.(you describing your personal experience) So it just proves the fact that Ukrainian and Belarusian are very similar languages (you saying it's a proof of something)" that's all you said. And in your last comment you are saying, to quote "my personal experience just proves it as well", - so you are literally saying your personal experience is a PROOF, but it can't be! How hard can it be to comprehend this? I am not saying there are no other proofs, I am not saying you should give other proofs, I am saying your experience is not a proof and you are saying "well there are other proofs" even tho it has literally nothing to do with the og convo

[Nick]

As a Slavic person natively speaking the Bulgarian language and trying to master Old Church Slavonic, some real good stuff man 😎

[Vergesser Forgetter]

That can be pretty hard, the change from Old Church Slavonic to Modern Bulgarian is unseen in any other Slavic language. lmao it was the fault of that Bulgar-Slayer, many Greek features (like Definite Article) started pouring in. If I ever learn Russian well enough I would like to see how it would feel to learn a Slavic language without the case torture honestly

[WALDEMAR WOJNICKI]

Is there "Dual Number" in OCS ?? And if so - is it only in Nouns (and adjectives) and Numerals - or in Verbs too (conjugation person/number/gender/time) ??

[Nick]

@WALDEMAR WOJNICKI Yes, both in nouns and verbs.

[Bojan Stare]

@Nick So Slovene language is present OCS. Even Bulgarian student told me, that we speak as Bulgarian iun middle ages - OCs maybe?

[Zayne Svarovsky]

After the first Russian state, the Kievan Rus', got destroyed by the Mongols, Western Rus' was colonized by the Poles and they forced Polonozation onto the languages of Western Rus', that later developed into modern day Belarusian and Ukrainian. While the language in Eastern and Northen Rus' (modern day Russian) continued its development with a heavy Old Church Slavonic influence. So Bulgarian and Russian have preserved their OCS origins.

[Tobias Koran]

11:19 laughed my zadek off. Although this is very accurate, there are just so many words with large consonant clusters that we don't find them difficult and if you don't learn to pronounce everything perfectly as a child, people will just shake their heads for themselves every time you forget your v in čtvrtek (Thursday) Also the word vskétat is spelled wrong, it should be vzkvétat. The pronunciation in brackets is transcribed correctly. Not that we use it as often as čtvrtek though.

[Kialeru]

As a belarusian speaker I really enjoyed the video but I would like to add some corrections: Belarusian language has two main variants of orthography: modern one (Narkamaŭka) and classic one (Taraškievica), both are equally used and both have their own differences in spelling and writing. For example the word orthography would be "артаґрафія" (artagrafija) in Taraškievica and арфаграфія (arfahrafija) in Narkamaŭka or the same for a word philosophy: філязофія (filiazofija) or філасофія (filasofija). So the absence of a vocative case in belarusian is just partially true, because it is used in the classic variant and some use it in the modern one as well: "Пане-Гаспадару!" instead of пан and гаспадар, "Хлопча!" instead of хлапец/хлопец "Браце!" - брат "Мікалаю!" - Мікалай and so on Anyway, thanks for the video, it`s quite difficult to find information on this topic and it`s always nice when your language is mentioned somewhere :)

[Just for fun]

Isn't Г in Belarusian/Ukrainian ''H'' like Czech and Slovak like ''CH'' is Х?

[Kialeru]

​@Just for fun Г makes [ɣ] sound in belarusian and is written as H here, my bad) I`ve corrected

[Just for fun]

@Kialeru That's what I was wondering? I knew these languages particularly don't have G or it's extremely rare to spot it unlike other Slavic languages.

[Rankava Kava]

Belarusian songs is absolutely awesome for my heart, melodic nice language

[Vladyslav Pidlisnyi]

@Just for fun Ukrainian is, Belarusian isn't

[Järvi]

One of the more interesting things about Central South Slavic (what is called Serbocroatian) is that it displays different areal features within the continuum. For example, the deeper southeast you go the less people use verbal infinitives, lack of infinitives is a Balkan sprachbund feature.