While the grammar is different from english, there is a significant amount of vocabulary overlap and pronunciation similarity. Intelligibility of czech and slovak is around 82%, and varies from 7095% depending on the dialect. It may be orthography, morphologylexicon, or phonetics. These mutually intelligible languages will make you do a double take. Its important to note that mutual intelligibility is highly subjective. It is not true at all that ukrainian and russian are mutually intelligible, as. University of groningen mutual intelligibility in the slavic.
The mutual intelligibility is partial and perhaps asymmetric, but one can often discern the meanings of the majority of the words in a sentence, and correctly infer the grammar. These mutually intelligible languages will make you do a double. Oct 23, 2019 unfortunately, the mutual intelligibility test does not always lead to clearcut results. Pdf in the present study we tested the level of mutual intelligibility between three west slavic czech, slovak and polish and three. Pdf mutual intelligibility between west and south slavic languages. The basic missiontask of the czechpolish forum is to support both current and new common initiatives. Mutual intelligibility of languages in the slavic family. May 28, 2014 mutual intelligibility hovers at around the 90% mark both ways, with a very slight advantage held by the slovaks in understanding czech.
Languages understandable to englishspeakers without learning. N2 in the globalized world we live in today international cooperation is extremely important, but not all europeans can speak english very well. It is commonly believed that all slavic languages are fully mutually intelligible, which implies that they are close. Last voicesson sesler robert lindsay mutual intelligibility of l. Were testing polish czech mutual intelligibility by playing a guess a person game. On the romance languages mutual intelligibility alina maria ciobanu, liviu p. The strength of foreign accent in czech english under. Languages of the world department of computer science. Mutual intelligibility between speakers of four related language varieties spoken in the northern half of the island of pentecost in vanuatu raga, suru kavian, suru rabwanga and suru mwerani is. T1 mutual intelligibility in the slavic language area. Mutual intelligibility in the slavic language area 66 3. Hes the site administrator and i am waiting for him to give me some site tools i need to help administer the site. I spent the first 6 years of my life in ukraine and grew up speaking russian and english russian was the main language of ukraine back then, these days i dont speak it natively anymore but i still know my fair share of russian.
Czech and polish are incomprehensible to serbocroatian, but serbocroatian has. Also, there is an article on wikipedia called mutual intelligibility, and it has a nice list of mutually intelligible languages. The question then becomes which features and which adaptation procedures one needs to consider. Pasha is helping me test polish ukrainian mutual intelligibility. Russian has quite poor intelligibility with slovak maybe 15% and basically zero intelligibility with czech.
The measurement of mutual intelligibility between west. Article pdf available in russian linguistics 393 november 2015 with 973 reads. As an example, the polish, czech, russian, and bulgarian forms of the. Crc 1102 project c4 models for mutual intelligibility march, 2015 1416. Pdf mutual intelligibility of languages in the slavic. These mutually intelligible languages will make you do a. Orthographic and morphological correspondences between. Are slovak, czech, and polish all mutually intelligible. This type of com munication is called receptive multilingualism and our tourist is quite familiar with it. How can the mutual intelligibility between closely related languages be measured. Full text views reflects the number of pdf downloads.
However, russian is only 74% mutually intelligible with spoken belarusian. Mutual intelligibility among the slavic languages by robert lindsay the mutual intelligibility mi of the languages of the slavic family is an interesting topic because many are mutually intelligible to one degree or another. Mutual intelligibility in the slavic language area research. Pdf mutual intelligibility between west and south slavic. Mutual intelligibility between west and south slavic languages. Slavic language mutual intelligibility finnish, interesting. Czech,slovakandpolishandthreesouthslaviclanguagescroatian,sloveneand. Im a native speaker of both these languages, so i will try to compare it for you. In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. Factors explaining intelligibility a model of intelligibility. At the same time when russian kids are growing up they read a lot of russian fairytales collected and written down in 19th century which have a lot of common slavic.
Bengali, gujarati, hindiurdu, marathi, nepali, punjabi, possibly with a parallel to either the romance or slavic families with which i have some familiarity. I am curious if anyone can help me understand the extent of mutual intelligibility between some of the major indoaryan languages eg. Not sure about other languages, but russian and ukranian are very mutually intelligible. Instead of similarity, we could also use the inverse concept of distance, in which case, the greater the distance between two languages, the smaller their degree of mutual intelligibility. Mutual intelligibility and surprisal in slavic intercomprehension. Ruthenian is an interesting language that few have heard of. Between sources, you might find some claiming that two languages are mutually intelligible, while other sources claim those same languages arent. In 1966, einar haugen referred to this type of communication as. Their mutual intelligibility varies greatly, both between the dialects themselves as well as with other languages. Czech, slovak, polish, croatian, slovenian and bulgarian on the level of lexicon, orthography. Mutual intelligibility in slavic language specific languages. It is like a mixture between polish, ukrainian and eastern slovak. Thus scots english may at first be quite unintelligible to speakers of the various varieties of standard american english, and vice versa. Mutual intelligibility between slavic languages happier.
Jason needs to get off his lazy ass and help me with the site. Mutual intelligibility wikimili, the best wikipedia reader. Intelligibility of russian with ukrainian is considerably lower possibly on the order of 70% mostly. First of all, once you make yourself aware of mutually intelligible languages, you. Mutual intelligibility among the slavic languages beyond.
Sep 18, 2015 in the present study we tested the level of mutual intelligibility between three west slavic czech, slovak and polish and three south slavic languages croatian, slovene and bulgarian. Pdf mutual intelligibility of languages in the slavic family robert. Having a large body of recognizable vocabulary is a necessary condition for mutual intelligibility, but it is nowhere near sufficient. Oct 22, 2010 the explanation is that the modern russian language moved away from its eastern slavic brothers belorussian and ukrainian and its western slavic cousins polish, czech etc. In our project, we focus on modeling the mutual intelligibility of related slavic. Languages as a base for modeling of mutual intelligibility. Jun 03, 2009 the czech children dont speak slovak, only few words which are the same, but they couldnt translate a czech text to slovak the reason why all slovaks can speak czech is the television in czechoslovakia the tv was in both languages, but after they separated the czech rep. Mutual intelligibility between closely related languages in europe pdf. Orthography in language modeling of mutual intelligibility. Dinu faculty of mathematics and computer science, university of bucharest center for computational linguistics, university of bucharest alina. This thesis explores mutual intelligibility in the slavic language area how to measure it, how to predict it and how to increase it. Another thing that could have thrown off my bulgarian friend is that czech has undergone a particular set of vowel shifts since the days of old czech or protoslavonic where a and u tended to change into e or i. Degree of mutual intelligibility between indoaryan languages.
Mutual intelligibility in slavic language specific. How mutually intelligible are the various slavic languages. Intelligibility problems are mostly on the czech end because they dont bother to learn slovak while many slovaks learn czech. This blog post is available as a convenient and portable pdf that you. Orthographic and morphological correspondences between related slavic languages as a base for modeling of mutual intelligibility andrea fischer, klara jagrova, irina stenger, tania avgustinova, dietrich klakow, and roland marti. Russian, belarussian and ukrainian were not among the languages. It is sometimes used as an important criterion for distinguishing languages from dialects, although sociolinguistic factors are often also used. Intelligibility of czech and slovak is 82% and varies from 7095% depending on the dialect. In this slavic languages comparison video, we do polish vs. But again, this is a separate discussion from mutual intelligibility. Since then, slovak has been disappearing from the czech republic, so the younger people dont understand slovak so well. Mutual intelligibility between closely related languages in. Mutual intelligibility between west and south slavic languages 63 1. This advantage is exposurerelated and would be completely erased by one evenings worth of conversation, i should think.
The results show that in most cases, a division between west and south slavic languages does exist and that west. It is sometimes used as an important criterion for distinguishing languages from. True, given enough time and goodwill, mutual intelligibility can be achieved without too much effort. In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which. The west slavic languages are close enough for their speakers to use their mother tongues when communicating with each other. The mutual intelligibility of l2 speech studies in second. Kajkavian has higher mutual intelligibility with slovene than the national varieties of shtokavian, while chakavian has a low mutual intelligibility with either, in part due to large number of loanwords from venetian. Czech is nearly as hard as polish and is probably not worth your time and effort. I find the poles are also more easygoing and friendly, and the czechs tend to be a bit snobbish and standoffish. Moldovan does, however, have more foreign loanwords from russian and. Mutual intelligibility and surprisal in slavic intercomprehension incomslav project c4 investigates the relation between information density, encoding density and grammaticalisation in a crosslinguistic perspective, focusing on intercomprehension within the family of slavic languages. As noticed, there are several aspects by which linguistic distances ld between a certain pair of languages may differ. In the present study we tested the level of mutual intelligibility between three west slavic czech, slovak and polish and three south slavic languages croatian, slovene and bulgarian.
1439 92 466 934 394 1463 1204 1074 226 903 892 1317 1501 311 55 1368 256 1426 1083 1504 218 1431 809 2 1167 1133 1339 485 434 1361 132 141 951 816 1356 1403 120 1126 1466 242 149 108 1197 1079 132 123 298