I am a Spaniard and I could speak in Russian with a Serbian guy who was speaking in Serbian ..... but we both were a bit drunk.... in that situation one can speak any language.

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Lol divertido

@meduzsazsa8490

3 ай бұрын

So you understood russian and serbian? Whaat? 😂

@joseamategarcia9276

3 ай бұрын

@@meduzsazsa8490 when the Soviet Union disappeared, many emigrants came to Spain, in my village there was a bar, the owner was Lithuanian and it was the place where people from the east used to go, the frank language there was Russian, the bar was placed close to my house, I used to go there to have a coffee or in the nights to have a beer or to have dinner, I found I love some dishes from Lithuania. A couple of years later I was able to speak Russian enough to have a casual bar conversion in Russian.

@FSKRadmin

3 ай бұрын

Alcohol increases understandence many times! So I were speaking with a drunk Germanian for a long time using the only phrases: "I don't understand" and "Ich verstanden nicht". And we both were looking like two old chums if to see from the side 😅

@vitiachao9765

3 ай бұрын

@@joseamategarcia9276 Jolín, ¡qué bueno! Молодец!

As a Polish speaker I learn russian and Ukrainian just by watching videos in these languages. It's enough for me because there is a sufficient similarity between Polish and these languages and I don't need textbooks or lists of words. I acquire both languages spontaneously, simply memorizing some words and phrases I hear. When it comes to everyday speech, at the moment I could understand almost all in Ukrainian and about 80% in russian. That means I could understand people inteviewied in streets and the news without much effort.

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

That's a great and enjoyable way to learn.

@user-mu1pr5ng3b

3 ай бұрын

Я русский, понимаю почти всё по-украински. По-белорусски где-то 75%. По-польски, к сожалению, не больше 20%.

@Marcin-vn4kk

3 ай бұрын

​@@Maria_Nizhny_NovgorodI think the fact that we use different letters is the most challenging thing. All the rest is simply too similar.

@lordwiadro83

3 ай бұрын

Me as a Polish speaker, I cannot even tell a difference between Ukrainian and Russian, they sound the same to me. So congratulations, you must be a language genius.

@gamermapper

3 ай бұрын

@@Marcin-vn4kk and learning an alphabet is actually incredibly easy. In one week you can know all the letters. I don't get why this aspect is so overblown. I mean, I've learned the Japanese hiragana and katakana in 5 days. Even tho o don't understand anything in Japanese, at least I can read it. Slavic people who use the Latin alphabet can learn Cyrillic even easier, it's much less new characters than Japanese syllabery.

“I met many polish people among the way and they were very surprised to hear that I’m a Japanese citizen” Also me, the viewer :0

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

宜しく

@DonHrvato

Ай бұрын

​@@polyglotdreams😮😮😮

@BorisBoris-sl1sf

Ай бұрын

Wherever I go, people ask me the same question: what was it like growing up Chinese? And I always answer, Growing up Chinese was very weird for me, because no one around me was Chinese, and neither was I.

step 1. be born in a slavic country

This is the first "Slavic languages" video I've seen where Slovak is talked about more than Czech, almost always its the other way around. We Slovaks often get overlooked, or confused for Slovenians.

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Slovak is very special.

@ms-ht1cj

3 ай бұрын

Polish here. I love Slovak language. It sounds beautiful. I've learned it for one year, so I'm not fluent or anything, but I love it. ❤

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

@@ms-ht1cj I am fond of Slovak too

@pawelbunio9524

2 ай бұрын

słowacki jest najbardziej bliski prasłowiańskiemu bardziej niż polski , polski miał wpływ kulturowy na białoruski i ukraiński dlatego dość duża ilość wspólnych słów . Jjak byłem w Słowenii to młodzi ludzie nie rozumieli jak mówiłem po chorwacku/serbsku ale jako Polak ich mowa była dla mnie podobna do słowackiej :) . Nie jestem znawcą ale to nie przypadek że Słowacja jest mylona z Słowenią , może były późniejsze migracje? Mieszkańcy okolic Krakowa w Polsce dawniej byli nazywani Chorwatami gdyż była wtórna migracja z Chorwacji .

@derkov

2 ай бұрын

@@polyglotdreams Slovak it's just when Ukrainian tries speak czech.. :)

As a Russian speaker which knows a little bit of Belarusian and Ukrainian actually Polish is really easy and I actually love Poles and their language

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Fantastic.. I am very pleased to know that.

I am from Hungary. I am almost native in Bulgarian, my paternal ancestors were gardeners from Bulgaria. I studied in Russian school. I understand 95 % of Macedonian, 70 % of Belarussian, 60 % of Serbian-Croatian-Bosnian -Montenegrian and Ukranian, 50 % of Slovenian, 30 % of Czech and Slovak, 20 % of Polish. Understanding in writing is better, for example written Ukranian is easier for me than spoken, same with Polish.

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Excellent... BTW... I love Hungarian

@teodorivanov4558

3 ай бұрын

Macedonian is just a Bulgarian dialect, so that's that.

@standardoilofnewjersey4260

3 ай бұрын

KOSOVO JE SRBIJA!

@maxvalbircahang

3 ай бұрын

@@standardoilofnewjersey4260 Albanian is not Slavic.

@maxvalbircahang

3 ай бұрын

@@teodorivanov4558 OK. This is a political question. You can make any dialect a language, and any languages into dialects.

As someone from Bosnia I can confirm that Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian are all just different official names/standards for the same language. They are a product of not just modern nationalism, but also historical divisions. Afterall, we don't have any single unifying name for the language, only the local country names. Interestingly, most of us just say "naš" (which means "our (language)") when we're referring to our language in everyday life, and especially when we're meeting someone from "our" countries in a foreign land like Germany where many of us emigrate to.

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Thanks for pointing that out.

@ruralsquirrel5158

3 ай бұрын

Thank you for your honesty about this. Most people from ex-Yugoslavia are too nationalistic and get too irrational about this topic.

@z000ey

3 ай бұрын

@@ruralsquirrel5158 well, there is a problem that if people from ex-Yugoslavia agree that the language is the same, there are a great multitude of people from one particular nation that then openly say that language is their own and since it's the same throughout the language proves that all those different nations (both historically, culturally and religiously) are of their nation, thus all these lands are also of their nation, and call the others apostates of their nation... Were it not for that problem, it would be easier for the others to not be too nationalistic and irrational ;)

@gamermapper

3 ай бұрын

Imagine if for some reason the was a conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina and as a result Herzegovina will become independent. What will they call their language? Herzegovinian? Ahah 😂

@z000ey

3 ай бұрын

@@gamermapper we had a Monty Python type of comedians from Sarajevo (Top Lista Nadrealista - TLN) that did a sketch in the late '80's where they presented 6 mutually unintelligible languages, being: Serbian Croatian Bosnian Herzegovinian Montean (Gorski) Negrian (Crnski) and joked about having simultaneous translators for people to communicate :D kzread.info/dash/bejne/dq6o1LpulLvTqLg.html

This is so unique, that you can do the whole review including all the Slavic languages. Salute! I really admire how knowledgeable and understanding you are in Linguistic. 🙏

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Thanks so much... it feels wonderful to be appreciated 👏

@undekagon2264

3 ай бұрын

I like this style of videos very much. I only had some russiant school and vistided Poland and Chechoslovakia (Tschechosslowakei) as a kid. But I always liked the sound of the languages. Maybe I go bavk to russian and the cyrillic script tonot lose everything completely

@OzkAltBldgCo-bv8tt

3 ай бұрын

​@@undekagon2264Radio Garden allows you to listen to any station in the world and save favorites list If you've not played Russian on Clozemaster now might be the time. Amazon Russian flash cards Word scrambles word searches crosswords

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

​@undekagon2264 all the best ... and thanks

@viktorarsovski1685

3 ай бұрын

Man you're a legend :) I still think that the easiest language to learn for an alien (from ground up not knowing any) would be Macedonian No gramatical cases No pronunciation exceptions No "Slavonic" or silent letters (except maybe Dz and Dzh) 3 genders yes, but distinguished by a noun's last letter

I am Slovak and for me, these Polish nasal sounds are a nightmare. Even we are both West Slavic languages, but when we talk about the pronunciation, the Italian or Spanish are easier for me. On the other hand, we understand each other because many words are quite similar, but Polish pronunciation is so weird, other Slavic languages are OK.

@Kyojuruzi

3 ай бұрын

Ale co ty mówisz oprócz akcentu i tego że kilkana słów jest innych da się dogadac

@user-uu4kz8sr5i

3 ай бұрын

В каком роде "кошмар"? Что сложно произносить или звучит неприятно?

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Chápem, že poľská výslovnosť môže byť pre vás výzvou, ale pre mňa je to práve to, čo milujem na učení sa poľštiny. Západoslovanské jazyky majú svoje jemnosti, a aj keď sa môžu zdať náročné, práve v týchto rozdieloch nájdem zábavu a vzrušenie. Je fascinujúce vidieť, ako sa naše jazyky líšia a zároveň prelínajú, najmä v takých oblastiach ako fonetika a výslovnosť.

@marians7364

3 ай бұрын

@@user-uu4kz8sr5i Polish language is not phonetic. It is not normal and typical, that one letter you can pronounce in many ways. Such as: "ą", "ę", and you also use nasal sounds that are not normal (for most languages). When you have languages that use more sounds and pronunciations for one letter (Polish, English) it means that they are not sure how to write it and in past they just copied those words from another language, but didn't know how to deal with it.

@jansoltes971

3 ай бұрын

​@@KyojuruziJa też jestem Słowakiem i uważam, że on całkowicie przesadza. Słowa takie jak „koszmar” są zupełnie niestosowne.

I really love this kind of content. I enjoyed every minute. I lern polish and felt in love with Slavic languages. Would love the see more like this, cause I am absolutely interested in language science.

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Thank you so much. More is yet to come. Did you watch the video about the East Asian cultural sphere concerning Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, and Korean?

I am a Polish native speaker who has been studying Russian dance childhood. I might say this: when I listen to Ukrainian or Belarussian I quite a lot from the conversation. The między knowledge of Polish and Russian helps a lot. I know both, the Cyrilic and Roman alphabets and this helps me with written Bułgaria n or Croatian 😊 Thanks to Cyrilic alphabet I can even read signs in Geek 😊

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

That's awesome... fun isn't it

@user-kg4fr9jr7v

2 ай бұрын

Интересно насколько сложно освоить русский поляку или наоборот. Насколько сложно вам было?

@funthomas-nh8ci

18 күн бұрын

никаких проблем. просто хватит слушать радио "говорит Москва" 5-6 лет ежедневно

A curio: Slavic nasal vowels was common in proto-Slavic and round (“bulgarian”) glagolic script has got characters for them. Nowadays they only exist in polish.

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

That's interesting... I didn't know that.

@andreitopala8502

2 ай бұрын

The oldest forms of Cyrillic script have these characters as well.

@RositsaPetrovarjp7

2 ай бұрын

​Of course, you don't. You know ow nothing about Bulgarian as demonstrated in this video, except for Yugoslav proganda. This is not serious scholarship about Alavic languages. You know nothing about Glagolitc and Cyrillic. Your level is worse than Wikipedia ​@@polyglotdreams

@IvanRakilovsky

2 ай бұрын

@@RositsaPetrovarjp7 He didn't say he knew anything about Bulgarian though, did he? But yeah, he spent more time talking about a minor Polish dialect, spoken by 100k people and then all he said about Bulgarian was that it does not have cases and that it's a good stepping stone if you want to learn Macedonian or something like that. I guess it's not really that offensive but it's strange. Especially if he is really interested in Slavic languages as a whole as he claims.

@IvanRakilovsky

2 ай бұрын

@karczameczka The Glagolitic script was not exactly Bulgarian. It was created by the Byzantians Cyril and Methodius initially for a state called Great Moravia. It wasn't adopted in Moravia because of the Roman church opposing the influence from Constantinople. That's why Western Slavic countries use the Latin alphabet. The actual alphabet created in Bulgaria was the one that followed the Glagolitic and yes, it's the Cyrilic alphabet.

Thank you very much. I'm Bulgarian and have learned Russian at school (it was compulsory back then). I have wondered what other Slavic language it would be useful to know and thanks to your video I have chosen Polish 😊 I admire how brave you are to jump in this quite political and sensitive topic.

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

I am very pleased to know that ... thank you so much for sharing.

@krzycho751

3 ай бұрын

Thank you for choosing Polish 😀 In Poland we were forced to learn Russian at schools too. It's never a good thing to be forced to do something even if it's something as important as foreign language. Luckily I still remember most of Cyrillic alphabet 😀

@XTheOneCat

3 ай бұрын

and you picked the Hardest to learn from the entire globe xZ

@fire8209

3 ай бұрын

A Wednesday child 😅

@gamermapper

3 ай бұрын

And today people are forced to learn English.

I came back 2 weeks ago from Poland, I loved it, though I learned some words before heading there, I wanted to see which slavic language is worth it and I won't lie: I will keep learning Polish, the difficulty is what makes it fun in my opinion, thanks for explaining the slavic languages, greetings from México :)

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

All the best to you on your new journey into Slavic languages

@Manueltion15

3 ай бұрын

@@polyglotdreamshow much languages do you know fluently(to have a complex conversation)

@awbinn3377

2 ай бұрын

Muy bien, amigo. Yo soy polaco y aprendo tu idioma. Aunque no siempre es fácil- me encanta. Que disfrutes también tu aventura con mi lengua. Saludos desde Polonia 🇵🇱

As a Slav, I could tell you within the first 10 seconds of this video what those 3 languages would be!

@censord6960

3 ай бұрын

The most popular) no more

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Excellent, I just spoke about this subject with two polish people today, and they guessed it would be Russian. After that, they thought maybe Polish, but they couldn't think of a third one.

@Kinotaurus

3 ай бұрын

Clearly it had to be a south slavic language, and Serbo-Croatian has the most numbers and the most territory@@polyglotdreams

@RichieLarpa

3 ай бұрын

I speak all of those 3 languages and I say personally that it is true, however with Bulgarian, I struggle. I would also struggle with Slovenian, but that is luckily not the case, as I speak Slovenian too.

@r.t.5767

3 ай бұрын

My first thought was that it would be Polish, Russian and Bulgarian. Serbo-Croatian as third would be my second thought.

Slovak is also known as the Esperanto of Slavic languages as it is well understood by all Slavs

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

For the most part, yes... but there is Interslavic.

@Cyclonut96

2 ай бұрын

@@polyglotdreams ,... except that Slovak is a living, official language, the interslavic is an academic one, in a textbook.

@fiddlersgreen2433

Ай бұрын

not a surprise, Slovakia is right in the middle geographicaly

@zeljkopopovic2662

Ай бұрын

That is not up to Slovak to say, but up to other Slavic language speakers.

@polyglotdreams

Ай бұрын

Actually I know Russians and Poles whom I tested speaking Slovak and did not catch all that I said..

In Ukraine we do have vocative - кличний відмінок as 7th case. I won't refer to someone by just друг, подруга, мама, тато, жрець etc., but will call by друже, подруго, мамо, тату, жерче. The vocative used to be delited by russian and replaced just by nominative. But after restoring the independence we restores the vocatice. ☺️

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Interesting... thanks

@frostflower5555

3 ай бұрын

Vocative is an amazing case-Serbian and Croatian have it. I think English has it when we call out to someone Oh Susan!

@user-wi4tn1yd6z

3 ай бұрын

💯. Наприклад: Петрові, Павлові

@eugenecrabs8622

3 ай бұрын

​@@user-wi4tn1yd6z wrong example: what you listed is a dative case.

@user-wi4tn1yd6z

3 ай бұрын

@@eugenecrabs8622 yep.my mistake

I had exactly this intuition: that speak one of the three languages of each sub-group, you could perfectly communicate with every Slavic-speaking folks (at least, have simple conversations). Myself, speaking ok Russian and rather broken Serbian/Montenegrin, I could already grasp some words in Polish conversations or newspaper and I could communicate with Bulgarians when I was in Sofia last summer. This video encouraged me to start Polish. It's kinda far on my lanuages waiting list so I'll have to be patient... But I'll do it for sure one day! Hvala puno/spassiba/merci!

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Awesome... that is what I hope for... Slaves appreciating all the variations.

@ZalupaTv

2 ай бұрын

Polish is a bunch of amaziness! Totally cute and adorable language full of surprises. If you're a native slav speaker, you'll sooner or later come to the point where you start understanding your own language the way better than before only by learining Polish.

@pawelbunio9524

2 ай бұрын

dziękuje, Ďakujem, Děkuji, Дякую

@Dolph681

2 ай бұрын

@@polyglotdreams By the way Slavs and Slavic is political term invented by Katerina the Great for russian empire expansion 250 years ago, just so you know.

@Paolo-gj7ip

6 күн бұрын

*dziękuję

Hello Tim, I really enjoyed searching this video. I started with Russian many years ago but didn't get to a very high level. Since then, I studied Croatian and then studied Polish. I found Polish and Russian the most useful for me as I worked in a shop where there were lots of Polish and Lithuanian people. Polish is my best Slavic language because of my exposure to it. I then went on to learn some Ukrainian in 2022. I found it relatively easy because of my Polish and Russian. Now, I just started learning Czech as I'm going to the Polyglot Gathering in Prague in May Hope to see you there. Thanks for the great video. and for your passion for languages.

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Great... thanks I will see you there

Great video! It manages to be succinct and informative.

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Thanks so much!!!

Hey dude, you sound like the perfect target audience for Interslavic. It's a constructed, semi-naturalistic language meant to be intelligible to any Slavic speaker and contains features and vocabulary from West, East and South Slavic branches, as well as being etymologically conservative and phonologically "middle-ground" when it comes to the living Slavic languages. As for the BCMS language - that's one funny situation. Politically they're considered the same language, but in reality it's the Shtokavian, Chakavian and Kajkavian dialects that are different from each other - much more so than those national "languages", all of which are based on Shtokavian. For that reason I just use the term "shtokavian language" when I talk about BCMS.

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Yes... Interslavic is quite easy to understand for most Slavic speakers. Spot on about BCMS.

@Pidalin

3 ай бұрын

English is better understandable for me as Czech than some interslavic. Problem with interslavic is that you still need at least some experiences with other slavic languages, for example it uses DA for yes and you just have to know it's yes in other slavic languages, there are many similar examples. I can kind of understand it, but it's very uncomfortable to read it and sometimes it needs some time to get it. The best interslavic in these days is just English. 😀

@SaturnineXTS

3 ай бұрын

@@Pidalin That's because you have studied English. Imagine understanding English in like 85% without ever having to learn it

@Pidalin

3 ай бұрын

@@SaturnineXTS Ok, but you are growing up surrounded by English, kids born after like 2010 already speak English maybe even better than their native langauges. I am not saying it's literally a good thing for your culture, but it will make communication in the future definitely easier.

@z000ey

3 ай бұрын

True. Croatian 3 different dialects are more different that one of the dialects (shtokavian) from the rest of BSM. The shtokavian became the main dialect during the 19th century when it got codified as the main language, and one of the reasons then was purely political, in order to get a southern interslavic language as it was different also from Serbian at the time.

Fantastic video. This is the most in-depth and clear video I’ve seen on this. Thank you!

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Glad you enjoyed it! Thanks so much for the appreciation ☺️

@nataliya6093

3 ай бұрын

this video is full of anti-scientific lies, check the information🫤

Happy to see that your channel is boosting so fast!

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Me too! Thanks so much for the support!

That's a wonderful overview! I'm Polish. I agree with the top3 recommendations no doubt. Then I think Bulgarian and Czech seem equally worthy of the 4th spot (or you can alternate with Macedonian and Slovak respectively) as they give better coverage than Slovene, which mainly only applies to Slovenia and is the most "lonely" member of the Slavic family. But those are minor nit-picks of mine :D I know it's a somewhat different topic but I can't help but mention PJM (Polish Sign Language) which is a native language of the Deaf community in Poland. It has many similarities to sign languages in our neighboring countries. A user of PJM once explained to me how Ukrainian and Russian sign languages are different but share the same root so it's possible for the users to communicate some basic information(a fully-fledged conversation is much more difficult though). I find it really interesting how you don't actually need words to see the Slavic connection, our shared culture and tradition :)

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

The order if the additional ones is quite debatable as you point out. Thanks so much for the insights about sign language.

As a Polish person raised in Silesia close to the Czech border, who apart from French, German and English in school learned by himself a bit of Russian and Ukrainian, who lives for 10 years in Bulgaria and speaks the language, I can say that I understand most of any written text in every Slavic language, but Slovenian :D It's somehow so different than the rest, sounds a bit like Czech with some balkan vocabulary. My suggestion of top 3? Russian, Serbocroatian, Slovak - because it's easier to learn than Polish, and Polish can be a fourth one. With these Bulgarian will be easy to learn, unless you didn't learn English before, because the gramar is more similar to it than to the rest of Slavic languages.

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

I have to disagree because Polish is such a beautiful language ☺️

@times4937

3 ай бұрын

In my opinion, the Slovenian language sounds very similar to Latvian, of course not in the lexical sense, but in the way it sounds

@jernejahcin1960

2 ай бұрын

Im am slovenian. We have like 5 strong dialects within our language in such a small country

@Cyclonut96

2 ай бұрын

@@polyglotdreams Sorry, as a Slovak, I would agree with @Kajkes in this one. Polish uses extra awkward unnecessary letters somewhat similar to French, which distract from hearing the words or the message. They are harder to understand down south than the Slovaks are. Also, there are many Slovak villages spread out in Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia from 200-300 years and locals understand each other better, but there are no Polish villages there that I know. I also agree with some commenters that Slovenia is more different from other Slavic languages, having visited Ljubljana myself, and could not understand much.

In general, the Russian language is more connected with the languages ​​of the South Slavs, since the Church Slavonic language came from them and we have many words with two spellings, for example the word Град And Город

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

That is an interesting proposition.

@eugenecrabs8622

3 ай бұрын

Correct. Russian evolved as mainly a written imperial language, which had one of its principal origins in the religious texts written in Churchslavonic (which in turn had its origin in old Bulgarian/Macedonian). This is why any Russian who was never exposed to Bulgarian language, will understand some 95-99% if given a Bulgarian book to read, but much less than 50% if listened to spoken Bulgarian. Try it out, it's an interesting and funny exercise.

@DimaDobry888

3 ай бұрын

​@@eugenecrabs8622я как русский человек , могу подтвердить , если македонец , что то напишет , я это пойму , довольно легко 🙂

@amnbvcxz8650

Ай бұрын

@@eugenecrabs8622not true. As a russian speaker i have to learn bulgarian to understand it, and it has different grammar more similar to english in some aspects. Most words share common roots, so you can guess the meaning in a lot of words but still nowhere enough to understand 95%. Also, many words have simialr sounds but different meaning. I found other slavic languages more similar in terms of grammar for sure

@eugenecrabs8622

Ай бұрын

@@amnbvcxz8650 don't tell me that you cannot read a Bulgarian book without understanding 95% of it.

This video's basis is exactly the question I've been pondering for a couple of years! As a sidenote, my first language was Polish. I can understand written Croatian relatively well, and one time I extensively used Croatian sources for a university paper! Prior to that, I had had zero previous exposure to it. Fun anecdote. :)

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Thank you so much for sharing that with me.

Thank you for a nice introduction to slavic languages. Lepo delo. Pozdrav iz Slovenije

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Thank you for your comment. I just 💯 absolutely love Slovenia 🇸🇮

I learned Russian and Czech, and found that while they help me understand some Polish, it is still hard to follow. Surprisingly, Czech helped me understand a lot of Slovene (besides Slovak, obviously). As you said, the South Slavic languages are otherwise a big blank for me, and I always wondered which to learn. You and me being around the same age, I like the idea of Serbo-Croatian from the old-timer textbooks we grew up with. You've convinced me that should be the best choice. Great video!

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Thank you so much for sharing your experiences. I have read that Slovak and Slovene have the same origin.

@WPope

3 ай бұрын

It makes sense that Czech helps you understand Slovene if you look at history. Apparently Slovene has gone through the least changes in the last few centuries and before the hungarians settled where thery currently liver the Czech and Slovene lands were connected by slavic speakers

@zagrizena

3 ай бұрын

Slovene has a lot more shared history with czechoslovakian language than with most of other south Slavic language until fairly recently. It is fairly fragmented in terms of number of dialects, to the point where several are hardly mutually intelligible, when spoken in a really archaic/traditional way, presumably because of our geography and varied neighbouring influences through the centuries. Considering that the first slovene-speaking country (carantania) encompassed a big part of modern day Austria and even some Hungary, historical Czech-Slovak-Slovene dialect continuum is pretty understandable.

@letecmig

2 ай бұрын

Its about 'practice' and exposure - if you learn Czech&Russian as non-native speaker, then if you are exposed to Polish only ocasionally, obviously you would understand little. .... ....But it would be very different after a month just watching Polish TV one or two hours a day.... after a while you would start to decode 'similar but different' stuff you and that allows you to decode spoken language/sentences as a whole (speaking is something completely different of course). I have similar experience with Ukrainian ...as a native speaker of Czech, I learned Russian ..... and after the start of the war I started to watch stuff in Ukrainian on youtube ...... at first i did understand little, but after few hours of listening to UA, many things started to 'click' (these patterns of 'similar but different' compared to either to russian or czech) and I now basically understand everything in Ukrainian when I watch a video

@dymytryruban4324

2 ай бұрын

After studying Czech and Polish, I realized that these languages have a lot of false friends. Mám jístotu že nevíš co znamená "pevnost". A classical example is "Szukam dzieci w sklepie." Gramatically they are quite similar though.

It's amazing that you show I Love Languages channel. Her channel truly is amazing!!! 🥰

15:45 not 550.000 (spoken), the text correctly says 50.000. Other German sources count as little as 20.000 to 30.000 speakers. Upper Sorbian (in southeast Saxony, is closer to Czech) is "endangered of extinction". Lower Sorbian (closer to Polish, located further north, in south Brandenburg) is considered a "seriously endangered of extinction" language because it is only spoken in very few families by the middle and younger generations.

@polyglotdreams

Ай бұрын

Thanks for the input.

Very nice overview. Just a minor note - native Slovak speaker would say "Čítal som knihu/čítala som knihu" with a slightly different word order and omitting the personal pronoun as the person is immediately obvious from the verb suffix. "Ja som čítal/čítala knihu" has a slightly different meaning putting an extra emphasis on the person rather than just declaring someone has read a book.

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Yes, thank you.

@ExYU99

2 ай бұрын

The same is the case in BCMS

Your passion really convinced me to watch this video until the end and it has inspired me to continue learning Polish!

@polyglotdreams

Ай бұрын

Fantastic thanks for telling me

What an amazing video! Very well explained, structured and with examples. This of course encourages me to keep learning languages, and now I know a proper sequence for understanding most of them. Claps!

@polyglotdreams

Ай бұрын

Awesome, thanks for sharing.

It’s great Tim that you’ve decided to start your channel, you’ve got some knowledge to share

@polyglotdreams

22 күн бұрын

Glad you think so!

As a Bulgarian I understand 99% Russian but it’s difficult to speak, because of all the cases, I can’t remember which case to apply at which time. But is very easy to understand. The words are practically the same… BG „човек”, - Ru „человек”, БГ “хляб” - Ру “хлеб” Бг “небе” - Ру “небо”…

@polyglotdreams

Ай бұрын

The cases are a big challenge.

@serged5689

26 күн бұрын

I am russian, learning bulgarian now, and I want to thank you for removing cases, otherwise it would be impossible 😅. Cases is something you learn with mother's milk. They are extremely hard to learn for adults even if you have them in your native language

@nameless3191

32 минут бұрын

Because the language of moscowites is a dialect of old bulgarian

This was a very informative, interesting video! I have recently started learning Slovene due to an interest in music from there. It has been quite a challenge as my first Slavic language.

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

That's great! Challenging at first.

i dont think ive been this engrossed in a youtube video in a very long time, incredible video thank you so much for sharing your knowledge! anymore content related to the slavic languages (especially regarding political history as you seem to have an interest in that?) would be fantastic if you are willing to make more (and if there is already some I apologise, I am new to the channel) as a non-native slavic language speaker you have greatly inspired me, I am very glad I have found your channel

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Thank you so much for that positive input. As you can see the history is very controversial, so i will do some more later, but i need to let it cool for a while before getting into more deeply. Welcome 🙏 to the community.

Wow, excellent presentation! This topic is well known to me but I stayed all the way because of your presentation. I subbed because you inspired me. I wish you all the best in your journey through life!

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Awesome, thank you! Welcome to the community!

I’am a native macedonian speaker. I can understand 100 percent of serbo-croatian or bulgarian, and can speak the languages relatively good, which is not that surprising. What surprised me the most is how much I can understand russian (around 60 percent and that number rises if they talk slower) although I have never studied the language, nor I have been exposed to russian media, culture etc. I understand russian much better than slovene, even though macedonian and slovenian are in the same south slavic group, which makes no sense to me. Someone mentioned that it could be explained by the old church slavonic language… When it comes to the south slavic languages, it’s worth mentioning the Torlakian (shopski) dialect, which is a transitional form between serbo-croatian on one hand and macedonian-bulgarian on the other. It’s spoken mainly in south serbia, northeastern part of macedonia and northwest bulgaria. The relationship between the macedonian and bulgarian language is hot topic. I can say that they share very similar grammar and the difference is largely lexical and idiomatic. From my experience, I think that the bulgarian language is heavily influenced by the russian lexicon, and that is not surprising considering that they were part of the Eastern block for 50 years. Conversely, the macedonian language, as part of non-aligned and pro-west oriented Yugoslavia, has adopted a lot of German, French and English words. And for me, as a south slavic speaker, the toughest language, definitely is polish. I can’t understand almost anything, with the exception of the word K…A, but surprisingly the slovak language is much more intelligible to my south slavic ear

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Thanks... those are very interesting observations!

@valentinbitsinandmaxx8389

3 ай бұрын

@@polyglotdreams As a Bulgarian native speaker from the South-Western part of Bulgaria I can confirm 100% what carli2302 wrote. I can understand 100% of the language(s) spoken on either side of Bulgarian-Macedonian border plus I understand about 85-90% of BCMS although I have never studied it. I've also noticed that speakers of BCMS have hard time understanding Bulgarian( unlike Bulgarians most of whom are able to understand BCMS ) which make me think that you are wrong about suggesting Learning BCMS as the language of South Slavic group in order to be able to understand all Slavic languages. I've learnt Russian for a short period of time as well. Not long enough to be able to learn to speak it grammatically correct ( I have absolutely no knowledge of how to use the cases properly ) but somehow I am able to communicate with Russian speakers without any problems. I've noticed that I can understand Belorussian quite well and I am able to understand about 65-70% of Ukrainian probably because of my very limited exposure to Slovak as well.( I used to work with some Slovaks about 20 years ago) . I can't speak any Slovak but I am somehow able to understand it both in oral and written form. Unlike Slovenian 🙂 which I can only understand in written form. The way vowel accents are used in Slovenian is so uncharacteristic for my years that my brain just shuts off. I am also able to understand to some extend both Polish and Czech but only in their written form. My brain is not willing to suffer the efforts of trying to understand sounds that come out of Polish speakers.

@gecattaa

2 ай бұрын

let me clarify for you - old church Slavonic language == old Bulgarian language. The modern Russian is based on it. So the influence is in different direction :)

what a video man, fantastic

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Much appreciated!

very well made video. keep it up🔥🔥🔥

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Thanks... I will keep doing my best...

Polish may have more native speakers, but Slovak is truly a central and kind of more neutral basis for Western Slavic languages. Is also an inroad to Serbian, Croatian, etc. Of all, Slovak gives the learner a basis to break into nearly all Slavic languages.

@zlatolek5626

3 ай бұрын

Pravda!!!

@jankowal8871

3 ай бұрын

Jako Polak mogę się tylko z tobą zgodzić . Sądzę że Rosjanin szybciej zrozumie Słowaka niż Polaka.

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

I made a similar that comment about Slovak, but still Polish has many more speakers and helps you also with Kashubian, Silesian and Sorbian.

7:19 One thing to note is that the country name is Belarus and the language name is Belarusian (with one s) but not “Bela-russian”. This is important because otherwise it sounds as another version of russian, which is not the case. From historical perspective and language genesis, Belarusian is a successor of Rusian [roosian] (called after the medieval state of Rus’) just as Ukrainian. I’m sure that author knows all of these facts. And many thanks for explaining the history of Ukrainian language for the English-speaking audience.

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Yes... thanks. I know it was a typo

@michaelyaroslavtsev2444

3 ай бұрын

No, you don't need to take it too seriously. This distinction is by and large a forced nationalistic shibboleth. Don't waste your time on these and thanks for the terrific video!

What a fascinating video, thank you for sharing, I have really learnt something both new and valuable today.

@polyglotdreams

Ай бұрын

I'm very pleased to know... thanks

Thank you! I Took Russian in school (& I followed it up later w/ the study of Church Slavonic), then I started getting into Polish, & I bought books on Bulgarian (but haven't had time to get into this one too much, yet), & I was thinking of learning Serbo-Croation or Slovene; this video 1) confirmed that I happened to have gotten into some of the most useful ones already, & 2) helped narrow down any of my possible options for further studies in the Slavic languages.

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Fantastic... I am pleased that it has been so helpful.

Totally agree with this video!! I've learned quite a bit of Serbo-Croat, CZ and Russian. Just some extra points from my side. On cases: Slovak and Slovene, I believe do not have Vocative. When it comes to BCSM, Kajkavian and Cajkavian are out of that standard, and are probably better classified as separate languages from BCSM. You will hear some Kajkavian and Cajkavian influence in local Croatian speech in many areas, kinda like you'll hear Bavarian hints or Koelsch hints in local Standard German. For language learning, I would take Slovak over PL, just because Slovak is easier, and nicer to hear, it would be good enough to understand PL, UKR, and even, with BCSM, Slovenian. CZ is tougher than SK. I was able to communicate with Bulgarians and Macedonians, just using Serbian, with Upper Sorbians, Slovaks and Poles, using CZ. A knowledge of RUS with some CZ/SK goes a long way to catch most of Ukrainian and Rusyn. Polish only really comes in handy enough in case you need to communicate in Belarus to back up the Russian. I just don't like the sound of Polish or it's writing, but hey, personal preferences, hehe. Unfortunately, Sorbian is dying, with probably only less than 50,000 speakers left. Although I speake German fluently, I would make it a point to speak CZ with Sorbian speakers so they could show its use to outside speakers! WOnderful video!!

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Thanks so much for your interesting input.

@JorgeGarcia-lw7vc

3 ай бұрын

Often, when selecting a language, the language selects you. Ex, if you have a Serbian partner, or a Polish girlfriend, get relocated to Bosnia--you take that as a start, and it will end up useful way beyond that.@@polyglotdreams

@zagrizena

3 ай бұрын

Positive on lack of vocative in Slovene. It might have existed historically and might show up in random isolated phrases, but generally it's neither taught neither used. I'm not sure about all dialects, though. As a Slovene I find it interesting, that aside from Kajkavian, which is really closely related to Slovene, I can understand Čakavian much better than Štokavian or Serbian, especially, once one gets used to various Slovene dialects. Although even Serbian is not that hard to understand with intermittent exposure - our generation (post YU) were still able to study from exclusively Serbian and English textbooks in uni in one class.

Great video, just wanted to mention that unlike mentioned in 23:27, Ukrainian also has 7 grammatical cases, vocative exists too (Клична форма)

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Yes.. thanks my mistake

@igorsajn6246

3 ай бұрын

And Slovenian doesn’t have vocative, so 6 cases only.

@LukasTinkl

2 ай бұрын

Neither Slovak has the vocative

Thank you for mentioning Rusyn! And yes 26:18 - it indeed can help, as for Slovak and Rusyn is is even closer than Rusyn and Ukrainian (based on the number of speakers). It's because as you can see on the map at 7:47 most Rusyn speakers live in Slovakia and except of the state language (Slovak) speak the Prešov Rusyn variant, which is very different from the one spoken in Zakarpattyan Ukraine and even sometimes hard to understand, yet Prešov Rusyn is extremely close to the Lemko Rusyn that is a codified langauge in Poland and thus spoken by Polish Rusyns and lastly - Pannonian Rusyn spoken in Serbia was codified based on a Sotak eastern SLOVAK dialect). Ironically, people oftentimes just focus on Zakarpattyan Rusyn when mentioning Rusyn, yet except of not having a proper codification (because of the Ukrainian government not officially recognising Rusyns and Rusyn language as separate) it doesn't even have that big of an amount of speakers, compared to Prešov, Lemko or Pannonian variants - all of which have proper codifications and grammatical rules and syntactically differ quite lot from Ukrainian and even from the eastern Slavic language group. That being said, saying that 90% of Rusyn is similar to Ukrainian checks out maybe only for the Zakarpattyan variant/(dialect continuum?), which is not the best sample when talking about Rusyns. If you want to compare proper standardised variants of Rusyn, I recommend the lem.fm radio, which contains Prešov, Lemko and sometimes even Pannonian variants. And I really hope our fellow Zakarpattyan Carpatho-Rusyn brothers will be able to codify their variant very soon!

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

That information is so fascinating 👏 thank you.

@nataliya6093

3 ай бұрын

the so-called East Slavic languages are anti-scientific and outdated nonsense, linguists talk about Central Slavic and peripheral Slavic languages.

@user-gw6mm3hh2y

2 ай бұрын

Русинська один з діалектів української

@user-kh6lb4xf6v

2 ай бұрын

​@@user-gw6mm3hh2y in that case Ukrainian is a dialect of Polish...or Russian...:) you can clearly see what harm national opression - saying that Ukrainian language is a dialect of XY and that Ukrainians are just a subethnos of XY - did to Ukrainian people, so stop being stuck up in past and respect others if you yourself want to be respected. All of the countries (Poland, Slovakia, USA, Canada, Hungary, Serbia...) where Carpatho-Rusyns live as a minority recognise Carpatho-Rusyn as a separate national identity and language...Ukraine is the ONLY exception. In addition, Carpatho-Rusyn language is protected by the European charter of minority languages...so I guess go whine to them that they are protecting a "dialect" and right after that proceed to complain about how Russians and Poles considered Ukrainian just as a dialect of their language...the hypocrisy is so strong :)

@slotos

2 ай бұрын

Language distinction is inherently tied to a political process. Ukrainian Rusyns are predominantly content to be a part of Ukrainian nation and for them the distinction is not critical, as long as they can talk and create using the language as they learned it since childhood. A Ukrainian coming to Slovakia and claiming that Rusyn is a dialect of Ukrainian would be a tone deaf stupidity, because there’s a clear political will for recognition there. And frankly, Ukrainian Rusyn variants could easily influence standard Ukrainian development, with the current drive to ditch Russian influences. Splitting is not the only fate for languages, after all. PS: There was a Russian funded campaign to attempt to rile up a “DNR” situation in transcarpathia around Rusyn language. It failed, but left an imperial aftertaste. As a result, Ukrainians without a taste for linguistic nuances can react to attempts to distinguish Rusyn and Ukrainian… aggressively.

I'm an American who first learned Russian close to fluent, then learned Polish to an intermediate level. Now I'm living in Montenegro for a few months and thinking about starting to learn Serbian, hence why I'm watching videos like yours. Good to know we're on the same page as to which Slavic languages to learn and in which order. haha

@polyglotdreams

19 күн бұрын

Exactly... all the best to you.

É muito gostoso ver sua paixão pelas linguas! Estou adorando seus vídeos e tem me animado para estudar mais. No momento estou tentando ficar proficiente em ingles, e aprender o básico do russo. E se eu continuar no gás, depois gostaria de saber alemão haha. Grande abraço do Brasil! E obrigado por compartilhar tanto conhecimento.

@OzkAltBldgCo-bv8tt

3 ай бұрын

Clozemaster

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Muito obrigado pelo seu apoio e pelas palavras gentis! Fico extremamente feliz em saber que meus vídeos têm sido uma fonte de inspiração para você continuar seus estudos de línguas. Sua dedicação em aprimorar o inglês e começar a aprender russo é realmente admirável, e tenho certeza de que você também terá sucesso no alemão se mantiver essa paixão e determinação. Lembre-se, cada nova língua é uma nova janela para o mundo. Grande abraço e muito sucesso na sua jornada linguística! Continue assim e obrigado por fazer parte da nossa comunidade de entusiastas de línguas!

@danielsykes7558

3 ай бұрын

Eu adoro português. É meu segundo linguagem (after French, before German) My native tongue is English. Bom Dia ❤️

My first slavic lagnauge I'm tackling is polish. I mostly know Spanish and Italian to conversational level and currently focusing on Hungarian, Portuguese and Polish. And I feel I want to tackle czech and ukranian after russian and polish because I feel I would visit those countries more often and it'll be more useful to me.

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Awesome... all the best in your quest

@cond.oriano4945

3 ай бұрын

@@polyglotdreams for learning is building vocabulary the most important thing to study first instead of grammar or accent?

I’m a native speaker of Polish and I have to say that the easiest way to understand other Slavic languages is to learn a very interesting artificial language called Interslavic - at least for native Slavs, not sure if it would work with non-Slavic speakers. I’m not very good at understanding other Slavic languages or even the varieties native to Poland such as Kaszubian or Silesian but experiencing the Interslavic speech was a mind-blowing experience. Picture this: I’m on holidays in Croatia and some dude comes up to me and wants to sell me a cruise or something. I’m not interested so I tell him to leave me (in English because I find it easier lol). Instead of leaving me be this guy asks me where do I come from, and immediately starts speaking a weird mixture of Russian, Croatian, Polish, probably Czech and I don’t know what else! And I understood 99% of what he said! I was able to understand all the details about the cruise, prices, discounts, places it visits, time schedule, the boarding point, whether lunch was included, what else was provided- without actually knowing most of the languages this Interslavic speech was based on. Needless to say I was so amazed by this experience that I bought what he was selling just to thank him for the opportunity to learn about this interlinguistic project :D I think we Slavs should get to know that Interslavic thing, it helps a lot with communication:)

@polyglotdreams

2 ай бұрын

Yes... Interslavic is very easy to understand... quite amazing 👏

Omg, giving a list of the most spoken/applicable language of each branch of the family tree is so helpful, thank you :) this is what I’ve been trying to figure out

@polyglotdreams

22 күн бұрын

You're so welcome!

Also, there is no such thing as "Bosnian". The ethnicity that changed its name from Muslim (in terms to ethnicity) to Bosniak, (old term for someone from geographical region of Bosnia), so they should call it Bosniak, not Bosnian, and also this artificial term is rejected by the majority of population in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Christians, but this fake term is constantly repeated by westerners as if it was something real. As for what is called Serbo-Croatian in linguistics, its origins are clear to everyone that knows a bit of real history. Serbo-Croatian is a literary Serbian language made and standardised as literary language by Serbian linguist Vuk Karadžić, shtokavian dialect of Herzegovina and most of Serbia, and this standard Serbian language was adopted by some Austri-Hungarian citizens (Croatian original language and literary standard is chakavian, not shtokavian) as their own, which would soon become a source for many linguistic and ethnic machinations by Austria-Hungary, creating an issue between Croats and Serbs that never existed before. To see the term BCSM is really sickening, it just shows how the west is using false regional differences to divide us and make us look different, the false differences they themselves created and keep promoting.

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Thanks for your detailed input... it is controversial, and others may also offer well developed arguments. It is best leave the emotions out.

I got the next one for you - Mezduslovjanski, this is owesome artificial project, this language is understandable for every slavic speaker.

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Yes... I agree, but few people speak so you can learn it to help you understand all the Slavic languages.

Thank you for your hard work 💜

@polyglotdreams

2 ай бұрын

Thank you for your support 🙏

Great video, thank you!

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Glad you liked it!

@ewaa37911

3 ай бұрын

@@polyglotdreams ❤️ You have inspired me, after I had started out with Polish

I'm from Belarus, I speak Belarusian and Russian. We have both these as the state languages. Unfortunately, I rarely see anybody speaking Belarusian... Also I can understand Ukrainian because I have watched LOTS of Ukrainian TV shows and have Ukrainian pals. And now I'm studying at the Polish university.

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Yes, it is very unfortunate.

Around 20 years ago I took Ukrainian as my language in college. I was the only non-Russian major in the class. The Russian majors took Ukrainian as it has more cases and learning Ukrainian grammar made them better in their Russian. I barely remember anything, but I keep thinking to add it to my learning time.

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Go for it!

I speak Russian fluently and I worked 6 years in a Polish company so I learned polish there. And im married to a Serbian woman and there have intermediate knowledge of Serbian, which is the perfect mix to understand all Slavs to at least 60-70%.

@polyglotdreams

10 күн бұрын

Fantastic!

I've been learning Russian the last year or two, and have wondered whether it would let me branch into other Slavic languages later. I have such a better understanding of its relation to al its linguistic neighbors now after this video. Guess it'll be Polish for me next! I landed here after stumbling on your video about the CN/KR/JP/VT crossovers. What a great channel! I've just subscribed!

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Thank you so much for your support. I love the Slavic languages so I continue to work on them as often as I can and visit the Slavic nations... going again in May.

@anatoliypankevych4853

3 ай бұрын

It won’t. Everyone understands russian , because of the russian occupational politics, but russians , knowing only their language, understand no one. There’s literally little similarities in real life languages between pussian and other Slav languages.

@DeadnWoon

3 ай бұрын

Russian was widely studied in the times of the USSR in all European USSR-controlled/allied countries. Given that, if you know Russian language, at least lots of old enough people in those countries would be able to communicate with you. It doesn't mean they will be glad to speak or hear Russian (due to political, nationalist, ideological reasons), but sure Russian is the most useful one. As for branching into, the cases are the same and case endings are similar more or less. The same three grammatical genders. Basic vocabulary is often the same, as well. More or less the same sounds.

@sandwichbreath0

3 ай бұрын

@@DeadnWoon Excellent!

@DeadnWoon

3 ай бұрын

@@sandwichbreath0 In some situations, Russian gets useful in the most unexpected places. For example, there's an American sci-fi writer Robert Sheckley who wrote tons of great short stories and several memorable novels. He is largely forgotten in the USA, but is considered a cult, legendary classic in the USSR and post-Soviet countries like Russia, Ukraine, etc. You can easily find 90+% of his works in Russian (for free in the internet libraries or for adequate money on paper), but hardly so in his native English. I think, Polish will definitely be a good choice, too. A very rich culture, songs, poetry.

Who do you think has easier starter point to become a polyglot like. 1. Who knows English 2. Who knows Slavic language 3. Who knows Latin family language

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

For total number of languages - who knows Slavic languages.

@RogerRamos1993

3 ай бұрын

As a Brazilian Portuguese native speaker, Spanish and Italian are the easiest languages to learn, then French. Catalan is not hard, but it takes effort to look up for content. For example, Catalan or Valencian youtube is very weak in terms of creators and viewers. There are few good resources to learn Neapolitan or Sicilian, and those are spoken and sung languages. They are not published, not used in movies and series(with a few recent exceptions), and not used in education. I am more of a polyreader than a polyglot. I have read several books in French and in Italian, as well as a few in Spanish, a couple of books in Catalán and a theater piece in Neapolitan. If you know Spanish or Portuguese, Italian, and French or Catalán, you'll understand to a good degree almost any little spoken Romance language, specially in its written form. There's the one exception though, which is Romanian. To understand Romanian, study Romanian, and that's what I've been doing lately. The good thing about Romanian is that it can be a good introduction to Slavic languages, in the sense that it contains hundreds of words of Slavic origin.

@MLiv-bn4cl

3 ай бұрын

As a religious Jew who was raised in Ukraine, I speak Russian at home, I picked Ukrainian in the streets, I learned Hebrew, Aramaic (the language of the Talmud) and Yiddish in school and currently I’m writing a comment in English 😂. Because of this languages I’m able to understand written Polish, and quite well to understand Belarusian. When I was in Germany I realised that I can understand almost half of the written words, and people around me understood me quite well when I spoke to them in Yiddish, though when they spoke to me I couldn’t understand a word 😂. Also Hebrew and Aramaic are letting me to learn Arabic on duolingo easier, because they are all Semitic languages.

@RogerRamos1993

3 ай бұрын

@@MLiv-bn4cl In the future, learning German will be a breeze for you, then Dutch, then Afrikaans...If you study Polish, then you get Czech almost for free and so on. If you were to study Romance languages, I'd suggest you French and Spanish.

@gee8883

3 ай бұрын

​​​​​@@MLiv-bn4clBuharim jews speak uzbek ( Turkics) , Tajik( iranic) Russian ( slavic) and Hebrew/ Arabic ( for religious teaching ) and Chinese ( Tungan) for business , recently many learning English. Central asians jews grew up learning totally unrelated languages and somehow managed to sound native in many.

Although I don’t speak any Slavic language, as someone who’s interested in etymology, philology, culture, etc. I have a strong feeling that Ukrainian, and Belarusian are closer to Polish (West Slavic) than Russian (East Slavic) despite those (Belarusian and Ukrainain) are written in Cyrillic and culturally they are orthodox unlike the Polish are catholic. Therefore, categorically they can be in between or cross-categorized.

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

You could make that argument, but normally their classified as East Slavic languages.

@DANKARPENKO

3 ай бұрын

I speak both in Ukrainian and Russian. I think Ukrainian is closer to Polish more than to russian. Russian is similar to Bulgarian. The core of Russian is in church - Slavonic language that no longer exist but were made by Bulgarian/Macedonian priests to spread christianity.

@love_for_travel

3 ай бұрын

I am Ukranian, and I confirm, your feeling are true. I was surprised when I heard Belarusian for a first time I understood everything - most of the lexicon is the same as Ukrainian, however Belarusian have a different pronunciation or accent. In fact when the presenter in this video switched on the Belorusian Tv, i first thought the lady was speaking Ukrainian😆, and then I started to wonder why her accent is different until I realised after a few seconds it was Belarusian. And when I first was in Poland I had such a dejauvea - like I was in Kyiv or Lviv, but the signs have Ukrainian words written in Latin letters. There is definitely way more difference between Ukrainian and Russian than Ukrainian and Belarusian / Polish

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

@love_for_travel thanks so much for sharing your experiences

Well man you speak so many languages. Respect for this. Thanks for this video and greetings from Bulgaria.

@polyglotdreams

Ай бұрын

I appreciate that! Greetings from Japan.

This would be an awesome series!! :) please continue and do Germanic next and then bantu! :)

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

I plan to do that, and i also concentrate on more languages in Asia. Thanks for your support.

Great video. Born and raised in West Bulgaria with relatives in Macedonia (Skopje, Bitola) and Serbia (Pirot). Learned Russian at school 35 years ago. Recently tried to read беларуская мова (Belarusian language) and I am pretty positive about not only understanding the context, but some of the details. Not so much with Ukrainian, but still understanding the context. I do have troubles understanding and reading Polish. Reading Polish is a pain because of the different alphabet system they are using. However I am understanding the core of the text, not much when they are speaking. Especially if Polish is spoken in a fast way.

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Thanks so much for sharing your experiences with Slavic languages

@gamermapper

3 ай бұрын

Смешно потому что я русскоговорящий беларус но пока украинский понимаю лучше чем белорусский. В основном наверное потому что в интернете гораздо больше контента на украинском, что в сериалах что в соц сетях, чем на белорусском. Но и на белорусском достаточно, хорошо что это не как какой-то кашубский или лужицкий на котором вообще почти ничего нету.

Excellent video

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Thank you very much!

Very good video, thank you!

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Thanks 🙏

A few years ago I went to work to Alaska, for the 1st time, at one of the many seafoods processing plants located over there. My expectations were, that I was going to be working among Hispanics and Americans. Inwardly, my jaw dropped when I quickly realized that over 80% of the hired workforce during that season, were people from former Yugoslavia and former Soviet Satellite States of the Eastern Bloc. Long story short I was fascinated and so, me wanting to learn Serbian I ended up picking up Russian because is the most accessible language to practice through the entertainment that is easily available and also because two different Ukrainians (A guy I've met while I was in Alaska, the other, a woman I've met while I was back home), suggested that should learn Russian first. Now I am doing just that and once in a while I roam around these types of videos.

@polyglotdreams

10 күн бұрын

Great... Slavic languages are fascinating

Yep, I can vouch as someone who lives near one of Tim Keely's job experiences (I looked at his public CV provided through one of the links) that there are a lot of people of Polish descent in metro Detroit. Paczki Day is still very popular around here. As a side note unrelated to the video, there is a lot of interest in Japanese from the Millennials and Gen Z around here. Thanks for the video, Tim! 情報が役立って、見るのが楽しかったです。2月に入って、またロシア語の勉強をしようと思っています。

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Thanks so much. i lived in White Lake Township while working for GE.

@krzycho751

3 ай бұрын

I've seen Paczki Day (or fat Thursday) being advertised in Massachusetts as well 😀 I'm glad you call it Paczki Day! How one can translate pączki as donuts? It's completely different thing 😉 Donut looks like a pączek of someone who believes that the earth is flat, with some dough stolen from the center! 😉

@chrisbunka

3 ай бұрын

@@polyglotdreams Yep. White Lake is still very much around today as it was then.

@chrisbunka

3 ай бұрын

@@krzycho751 I call it Paczki because all of our supermarkets around here call it that. Although not as prominent as perhaps 100 years ago, you can still see remnants of Polish influence around here, such as a Polish Cultural Center near the Japanese meetup I go to. Definitely many people with Polish family names!

Apparently, it doesn't work with all Slavic languages, but most of the neighboring languages ​​can be learned without any effort just by consuming the content. That's true. I am Ukrainian and I understand the Polish language very well, although I have never even studied it. Czech and Slovak are a little more difficult for me, because there is much less of it in our information field, but after watching a few videos I started to understand about 70 percent of what they say. With the Belarusian language, everything is generally so easy to understand that sometimes, if I hear a song in this language, I cannot immediately understand that it is foreign, because our languages, although different, have high mutual inteligibility, not like with russian.

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Yes for speakers of one or two Slavic languages usually with exposure we begin to understand other Slavic languages quite naturally

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Yes you can learn a lot just through exposure to comprehensible input in other Slavic languages when you know one or more Slavic languages

Hey, thank you for the very detailed analysis of the slavic languages and which ones to learn in order. Eventhough I am half Bulgarian I haven't found great motivation in studying it and rather opted for Russian since Bulgarian is a rather unique language and has a small amount of native speakers. Additionally I only need it very rarely. I generally have preferred learning the languages that have a very big amount of speakers (Chinese, Russian, French, Spanish) but maybe your video will help me to at least start studying the basics of Bulgarian as this would make my mother quite happy as well.

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

That's a great idea. Russian will help you a lot in improving your Bulgarian.

As a native speaker of Ukrainian and Russian + intermediate speaker of Serbian, basic Czech, etc I would definitely recommend to learn Ukrainian not Ruzzian out of all Eastern Slav.langs. Ruzzian stands aside of other Slavic languages. There are far more similar elements in Ukrainian syntax and vocabulary with all surrounding langs - creating you a much more effective way to understand all Slavic langs. From life experience Ukrainian speakers learn Serbian/Czech/Polish much faster than ruzzian speakers who barely understand or do not even try to understand Ukrainian or any other local language.

@polyglotdreams

Ай бұрын

But we are looking for contrast when taking the approach of learning 3 or more Slavic languages.

Ukrainian has a vocative case, although it's not often used in practice today.

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Yes... thanks

@MarcLeonbacher-lb2oe

2 ай бұрын

Not often used? Is the vocative replaced?

@daftduck7385

2 ай бұрын

​@@MarcLeonbacher-lb2oenah it's not

@dymytryruban4324

2 ай бұрын

Slovak doesn't have vocative case any more.

Amazing summary for Ukrainian/East Slavic native. I came to the same conclusions by spontaneous understanding Polish, and other languages becoming intelligible. So far, South Slavic are a bit more challenging. Small fix, Ukrainian had Vocative case

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Fantastic... and yes, my mistake about the vocative case.

Dobrý večer, pozdravujem Vás zo Slovenska! Ďakujem Vám za toto skvelé video. (Cheers from Slovakia Sir)

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Thanks so much... 宜しくお願い致します

Excellent video, thank you.

@polyglotdreams

2 ай бұрын

Glad you liked it!

Mistake: Ukrainian has 7 cases and Slovenian 6 (vocative)

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Thanks... I stand corrrected Клѝчний відмίнок

@Kinotaurus

3 ай бұрын

You could even argue that there are vestiges of vocative in Russian, too (see a video by Микитко Сын Алексеев).@@polyglotdreams

As someone who first learned to speak using a dialect of South Serbia the Čital form in Slovakian is the same in Svrljisko Zaplanjski. Out of all the West Slavic languages I understand Slovak the most - Id say even more than any Eastern Slavic language as well. Na Kralove Holi, Stoji strom zeleni! :)

@polyglotdreams

2 ай бұрын

That's very interesting... thanks.

As a Belarusian, I can add, that there are 2 versions of the Belarusian language: Narkamaūka and taraškievica. Narkamaũka was created during the Soviet era to make Belarusian more similar to Russian. The official dictionary was built on the base of Narkamaūka. Taraškievica has fewer similarities with Russian, with different pronouns in many words. Also, the Latin alphabet has an important part in the Belarusian language and history and if the Vilnius University was not closed during the Russian Empire time, Belarusian would be based on the Latin alphabet

@stavfurman5311

2 ай бұрын

And please, do not use red and green flags, Belarusians hate it. It's a flag of the Lukashenko regime. Our historic flag is white red white, it's also a flag of free and democratic Belarus

@polyglotdreams

2 ай бұрын

Yes... thanks, I didn't get to those details due to the length of the video.

@olegshtolc7245

Ай бұрын

@@stavfurman5311 литвина порвало. Сейчас бы 800тыс оппозиция за всех решала наш флаг

@sergiygryadushkin3056

Ай бұрын

@@olegshtolc7245 Hahaha. And he wrote this, of course, in russian. LOL

@olegshtolc7245

Ай бұрын

@@sergiygryadushkin3056 а что, мне нельзя писать на русском? Какое-то новое правило в гайдлайне ютуба?

Hey, Tim - super elaborate presentation! As someone who finds Slavic languages fascinating and is yet to acquire one, I was curious of from your years of experience which one you have found the easiest to study in terms of the language itself (disregarding the abundance or lack of resources). I surmise Macedonian is the simplest as, based on what I've read, it is a highly simplified form of Bulgarian that was meant to heighten mutual intelligibility with the neighbouring Serbs, thus compromising much of Bulgarian's complexity similarly to how creoles develop, albeit to a lesser degree. Of the languages that have full case systems, though, I am of the impression that in practice Slovak would probably be easiest as it is basically as if to be a Czech dialect that was simplified (much as in the comparison of Macedonian to Bulgarian) and influenced by elements of Croatian, characterising it as probably the most "central" among the Slavic languages as you mentioned in the video. On the other hand, it seems on paper that BCMS could be the easiest as it contains less exhaustive nominal declension patterns and slightly fewer phonemes, albeit with the caveat that the phonemic stress is less predictable, making proper pronunciation more complex. Across even the regional Štokavian standards alone, vocabulary also simultaneously consists of differences between common words themselves as well as in whether they it adopts the Ekavian, Ijekavian, or Ikavian variant. For example, standard Serbian and standard Croatian may differ in both regards, while Serbian and Montenegrin more or less overlap in vocabulary but still differ in the use of Ekavian and Ijekavian, respectively. Though the actual barrier this presents to conversation is very minor, it can still be an annoying feature to contend with for a foreign learner in terms of confident speech, especially if one mixes up words between different varieties and always second-guesses whether they should pronounce or write them one way or another based on observations of the usage around them that will change if moving from place to place. Moreover, grammatically speaking, BCMS appears to have certain minor nuances that do not exist to the same extent in Slovak, such as greater morphological alternation within inflectional paradigms in addition to a more intricate verbal system and particle usage. Colloquialisms and other informal patterns of speech also seem be in heavier use, which can be another obstacle to learners only acquainted with a textbook standard. Essentially, I view Slovak to be heavier yet more robust and concise in its grammar, whereas BCMS is simpler upfront though clouded by greater ambiguity and possibility in expressing the same idea. I would love to hear your opinion on this and which language (whether one of these two or another one) has been the easiest for you personally.

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Serbo-Croatian was new and exciting for me in 1997 when I rode a bicycle along the Adriatic Coast, so I would have to say that was easiest for me

Great video! I am Macedonian, I speak excellent Serbo-Croat, have learned some Slovenian, understand at least 60% of Bulgarian, speak also English and German... Choosing the next one - it will, most probably be Polish 🙂

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

AWESOME... I just live Slavic languages and cultures.

@kirrausanov

3 ай бұрын

How do the collective West implement "divide et impera" policy among the Slavic peoples? "If you put 100 black ants and 100 red ants in a jar, nothing happens. But if you shake the jar hard, the ants will start killing each other. The reds will think of the blacks as their enemies, and the blacks will think of the reds as their enemies. The real enemy is the one who shakes the jar. That's what happens in human society. So before people attack each other, we should think about who shook the can!". © Otto von Bismarck

@bosnjakizbosne7172

3 ай бұрын

Do you know Bosnian language?

@kirrausanov

3 ай бұрын

@@bosnjakizbosne7172 Ne, on govori samo crnogorski. Ali to nije problem. Covjek moze da nabavi crnogorsko-bosanski rjecnik.

@bosnjakizbosne7172

3 ай бұрын

@@kirrausanov Ja sam pitao njega, ako tebi treba bosansko-engleski rijecnik rado cu ti dati.

It’s Belaroosian, not Belarusian. Old Russian and old Ukrainian were much more similar centuries ago. Ukrainian was morphed due to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth domination. Hence why it’s slightly more similar to Polish than Russian. Russian also morphed due to the adoption of German, French and English.

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Yes, that was a type of by the editor. Thanks for your input.

@nik205

3 ай бұрын

Армянин что ли? Первый раз такую армянскую фамилию слышу - Беларусян. Змагары на все пойдут лишь бы отечество подешевле продать.

@alexbrown2401

2 ай бұрын

what old ukrainian? Nobody heard about Ukraine or the ukrainian language 150 years ago.

@sergiygryadushkin3056

Ай бұрын

@@alexbrown2401 have you ever tried to read books? maybe you will learn something new...

@koroborro

Ай бұрын

@@alexbrown2401 боже, яке кончене)

Great video. It's interesting to come across a foreigner who studied at my uni almost half a century ago.

@polyglotdreams

2 ай бұрын

That's awesome!

Dzięki, było ciekawie. I z obrazkiem UAM. Good luck.

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Dziękuję bardzo

I wanted to say that this was the first time I listened to a scientific analysis with such interest. Well done!

As Macedonian I would argue :) We Macedonians can understand anyone from Bulgaria to Croatia without a problem. But all of them, including Bulgarians have truble understanding us ;) After all, Ohrid is in Macedonia, isnt it? ;)

@polyglotdreams

2 ай бұрын

Thank you for sharing your experience.

@PerdoSanchez-st8ib

17 күн бұрын

Да бе, да. Македонския е просто един диалект с добавени сръбски думи. Какъв проблем имаме за да го разбираме?

Bielarusian have two (or actually three) standards of writing: with both cyrylic and latin script. The third standard is more of a historical curiosity: its arabic alphabet. Yes, arabic alphabet was use to write Bielarusian language: by tatars living in Grodno region of Bielarus and Podlasie region of Poland.

@gamermapper

3 ай бұрын

It also has two literary standards, Taraškievica and Narkamaŭka. Fun fact, so does Ukrainian but seems like they've completely abandoned Skrypnykivka today.

@PavelSikun

2 ай бұрын

@@gamermapper Parts of Skrypnikivka are slowly being reintroduced like using strong G in imported words instead of usual H, pronouncing words of greek origin with T instead of F for "TH", and using Ye Instead of E for latin loanwords where "je" is used there. And in general using direct phonological import instead of adaptation for local phonetic palette. Still, it's only visible on radio and on some tv channels (TET used to go all in on Skrypnikivka, but after few years gave up and only some parts got remained). Most of it sounds kinda ok, but some things like "proyekt" instead of "proekt" kinda irks my ears.

Russian is my native language. Serbo-Croatian was my major at the Slavic languages department, Polish was the second foreign Slavic language. Though I know Polish poorly, it helps me with other languages. Now I can understand on a very high level any Slavic language. Czech and Slovak to a lesser extent, but others... But I must say I now speak Serbian as a native, so the Southern branch is really easy. The Eastern is easy too for obvious reasons (all the things that are different from Russian in Ukrainian and Belarusian basically come from Polish). Slavic languages are the best❤

@polyglotdreams

Ай бұрын

Thanks for sharing your experiences and insights.

You know what is good. Congratulations!

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Thanks so much

I'm here to solve this even better: LEARN INTERSLAVIC, a constructed language that all slavs can understand and is easier for learning than all of the national Slavic languages. I'm not slav but I am studying it, is a highly valuable language.

@theoldmoneyss

3 ай бұрын

How do you study it? I can't find any sources. Please share

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Certainly, many Slavic speakers can understand Interslavic, but it doesn't mean you will be able to understand all the Slavic languages.

@milakarneeva

3 ай бұрын

Есть церковнославянский язык, который является чем-то средним между всеми славянскими языками

@lukebruce5234

Ай бұрын

most useless "language" ever just learn Russian

No idea if anyone mentioned this yet, but Ukrainian does have the vocative case! Literary Standard Ukrainian requires it, and some spoken dialects still retain it completely. While the usage of vocative in spoken informal language is slowly fading away (mostly due to the influence of Russian), there are still situations when you would use it with people for your language to sound more natural. Hope this is at least somewhat interesting!

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Yes, thank you... I overlooked that.

@Georgnac

3 ай бұрын

@@polyglotdreams No worries! Thank you for your video, it's one of the best I've seen on the subject!

At some point I'll have to study a few Slavic languages, even if it means only reading one the colloquial language books and completing the Duolingo course and some other app, besides watching movies and listening to songs, watching videos, etc... My three would be Russian, Polish or Czech, and Croatian or Serbian (I'd probably get books from both though). I'd try to dedicate at some point at least 2 years to learn Russian, or at least some 400 hours. Then, I'd like to adventure myself with the other languages while continuing studying Russian. Considering I already know several languages to a degree, I'd only focus on one Slavic language to take it to intermediate level. As to the others, I'd be fine with being able to understand well and be able to speak them reactively. If ended up studying more languages my order would be more or less Russian, Polish, Croatian, Czech, Macedonian and Slovak. If my levels were B1+ in two of them, A2 in another 2, and A1 in the last two, at this point, I'd expose myself to authentic content in almost every Slavic language to at least become a great Slavic ear.

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

AWESOME plan

Hee..While I don't remember much because it was decades ago, I studied Russian for 3 years, Polish for 2 and now I'm teaching myself Croatian for an upcoming trip. Glad to see I did it in the right order!

@polyglotdreams

Ай бұрын

Yes... great choices

Serbo-Croatian is a large and diverse language. It has very different dialects. Some might be very different from one another, in fact even closer to Slovene than to standard Serbo-Croatian. They could be as different as Russian and Ukrainian. However the thing is that these dialects are not official languages. And the official languages of current Yugoslav states (BTW, I wish Yugoslavia was still existing) (Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, Montenegrin, what next, Herzegovinian? Metohijan? Dalmatian? 🤔) are actually all based on the same dialect, Štokavian, therefore it actually doesn't make sense to call these different languages. But if they actually did use a different dialect (like Kajkavian, Čakavian or Torlakian), it actually would. This is why, in my opinion, Macedonian and Bulgarian being separate langauges makes kinda more sense.

@imperfect2517

2 ай бұрын

Not really. The example you are talking about is the most extreme one, and its Croatian spoken in the Zagorje region, which is only a very minuscule percentage of the population. All other regions speak the same language.

So, I'm a native speaker of Russian and Ukrainian, regularly hearing Serbian, and as per this video, most easy for me was Slovak language. Should I learn more, if I already know English?)

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Sure, why not learn most of the Slavic languages.

@jeanivanjohnson

3 ай бұрын

if we are talking about any circumstance(region) it's best to know english, french, russian, spanish, chinese and arabic. i already know russian and english so i have been learning french for more than a year. i also sometimes learn spanish and german, but french is my main goal, cuz it is widespread in every continent basicaly, like english, just with smaller numbers. it's also the most widespread romance language in europe and africa, french cinema and literature is very significant, france is one of the 3 great powers in europe along with russia and UK and since i live in europe it makes more sense to learn french than chinese, arabic or even spanish which has more importance in the americas than anywhere else. when i start learning non-european language, chinese would be my first choise even if it's the most difficult of the 6

You're so good!!

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Thank you!!

In my opinion, similarity between languages is overstated as a means of learning them. I learned german and polish at home, and some russian. Russian in school just seemed like polish with a load of palatalisation at first, but after I got to A2, it became wicked hard. You can communicate in a sort of pidgin or switch to a middle ground if you're linguistically aware, happened with ukrainians a lot to me. But speaking a different language might even be harder if you speak a very close one. Again an example. I speak at least one language from the large european groups (so, excluded greek albanian and hungarian). Learning dutch, I realised that it has the same logic and similar lexicon to german, but has unique cultural and phonetic features that make it quite hard to actively speak - my understanding is near a B2, but my active speaking is like, really basic. Same with knowing french and learning occitan, corsican and italian. I understand a lot automatically, but can't actually speak any of them properly, except for some REALLY basic standard italian. That's because the similarities trick you into the same brain department and therefore you'll have issues keeping them apart.

@polyglotdreams

3 ай бұрын

Passive knowledge is very useful, but it can be difficult to become actively fluent.

@pascalbaryamo4568

2 ай бұрын

@@polyglotdreams yup, only have real fluency in English and French besides my native languages. Any advice for improving past that b1-b2 gap without seeing native speakers regularly?