Thanks for watching! How similar you find Slavic languages?

@titangarg44

3 жыл бұрын

I think they are like Portuguese and Spanish but slavic and by the way, I like your videos. Love from India and god bless you.

@obedthemagnificent7128

3 жыл бұрын

Dude!! Some of the names of the months are in Afrikaans or rather the accent you used in Russian. That's how we pronounce them in Afrikaans😮😮😀😀😁😁

@consensus688

3 жыл бұрын

I knew they were different but no idea how they were

@danielavargas2340

3 жыл бұрын

very similar. west ukrainian to slovak. also vocabulary russian and polish and czech. at least to my ears :) Paul from Langfocus knows everything about languages and its origin, history, because i think he has PhD in linguistics.

@ppzav

3 жыл бұрын

not really... I'm Polish. I can understand some of Ukrainian when it's spoken slowly. It's much easier when I see it in writing. But when they start speaking really fast.....forget it!!!! LOL That being said Ukrainian is easier to understand than Russian

This shows that Paul does extremely thorough research for his videos

@Ellary_Rosewood

3 жыл бұрын

Paul is the best. He's usually my first go to channel when I want to find information on a language. ❤️

@nikgeo8690

3 жыл бұрын

True...i wonder whether he works together with linguists or historians from the countries he is talking about...

@fweenoe9501

3 жыл бұрын

@@nikgeo8690 he does, a friend of mine's cousin provided information about/ audio-fragments for a language he spoke about in one of his videos. Edit: i don't think he's a linguist or historian but just a guy whom is enthousiastic about the language.

@Krystaliine

3 жыл бұрын

Maybe it’s just a sign of my lack of education and, as a Litovka, bias, but I always supposed that Ukrainian maintained the vocative case because of Ukraine’s long history with Lithuania.... but Belarus also had ties to Lithuania, and they dropped their vocative case, so... 🤷‍♀️ Also, as a longtime independent learner of Russian with a persistent interest in Slavic languages in general, your reaction video made me very happy! Most of your comments were things I also thought when watching the Langfocus video, and whatever you said that I missed was very helpful! So thank you!

@Krystaliine

3 жыл бұрын

(I NEVER leave comments on videos. Its either the lack of sleep or how moved i was while watching this that’s to blame!)

Vlad: tells us a bit of history Video: says the same thing in the video Vlad: :0 how- *internal happiness* he's actually adorable

@vladkast

3 жыл бұрын

Yeah, I wanted even to cut that out, but decided to keep

@ssall3879

Жыл бұрын

Okay that is actually cute

As Belarusian speaker, I can confirm that Ukrainian and Belarusian share more similarities, than Belarusian-Russian or Ukrainian-Russian pairs. It is due to sharing of more common and recent history through Grand Duchy of Lithuania. However it is important to note, that intelligibility doesn't mean ability to speak other language. I speak both Russian and Belarusian for the same reason as you speak Russian and Ukrainian, and I also have learnt Polish and can speak it fluent enough, with this base I understand Ukrainian pretty well (e.g. to watch movie), however I cannot speak Ukrainian.

@stepovyk01

3 жыл бұрын

Yes it`s true! I`m native speaker of Ukrainian and Russian and one day I just became interested in Belarusian. I learned an alphabet which has only 4 differences and I watched some videos to understand the way that Belarusians speak to catch some main points of their pronounciation. I downloaded one classical book in Belarusian which is called 'Paleskiya Rabinzony' and finaly, I started reading. I was so surprised how it`s easy to read in this language, how it`s similar. But I don`t know how would I read it if I hadn`t known Russian. Because Belarusian alphabet has only 2 differences from Russian. I learned Belarusian just from one book. Now I can speak fluently. And I think if you have learnt Polish and now you can easily pronounce this 'o' in unstressed syllables you will learn Ukrainian very fast, as I dealed with Belarusian. So try to learn the alphabet, to listen to some TV programms and read one book in Ukrainian if you are interested))

@oleksandrbyelyenko435

3 жыл бұрын

As a Ukrainian I easily read books in Belarusian. And understand the speakers, but cannot speak it myself.

"It's the Rus. The Kievan Rus." "Are they vikings?" "'I dont think so,' said the Kievan Rus." "Okay, fair enough."

@vMufasa

3 жыл бұрын

history of the entire world reference?

@intothevoid3719

3 жыл бұрын

So glad I wasn't the only one.😂

@LyonHall1

3 жыл бұрын

smart man

@DerShinkansen

3 жыл бұрын

Is it weird that I read it in bill wurtz voice :D

@Matt-sw5bn

3 жыл бұрын

@@vMufasa I guess XD

"How does he know?" Langfocus Paul does NOT mess around. In fact, these are two of the languages he knows LESS about - you can tell because he didn't record his own audio in them. In his videos about Hebrew, he records his own audio, and he probably knows more about Hebrew than most native speakers.

@mayanlogos92

3 жыл бұрын

Because he studied it. But how can one pronounce words in a language without trying to mislead even though he can know sth of this words... But he also studied Arabic but in the video where he compared Arabic (MSA I guess) with Hebrew he used google for Arabic... Well... anw Heb doesn't have vocal there but Arabic does...

@GeorgiosMichalopoulos

3 жыл бұрын

His video on Modern Greek is very good too. I didn´t like that he used the terms perfect/imperfect (instead of perfective/imperfective) when talking of verbs, but other than that the info was accurate and above all balanced.

@mayanlogos92

3 жыл бұрын

@@GeorgiosMichalopoulos ăm.. idk about Greek but the most languages ik about have those aspects at verbs...

@GeorgiosMichalopoulos

3 жыл бұрын

@@mayanlogos92 My comment was about the terminology. Verb aspects in general is a huge topic.

Paul studied linguistics so that's why he knows a lot about languages, but more importantly, he does humungous amounts of research for his videos. I'm a speaker of Mandarin and Cantonese, and I was absolutely impressed by his video on the Chinese Languages and another one on the comparison between Mandarin and Cantonese. He was incredibly accurate, or at least I don't remember any errors in the videos.

There's a situation like Surzhyk between Portuguese and Spanish speakers called "portuñol" (português+español) when trying to communicate with each other.

@yurasokil3095

3 жыл бұрын

there're different "gradations" of surzhyk. Some ppl use mostly ukrainian words and just few russian here and there and vice versa, but the most ear-bleeding is Central Ukraine where it's more like Russian words with ukrainian-ish pronunciation, and it's also 50/50 ukrainian and russian words.

@b6983832

3 жыл бұрын

People identifying themselves as Poles living in Vilnius region, Lithuania, often speak a mix of Belarusian, Polish and Russian, with some Lithuanian influence, which is extremely hard to understand for a speaker of standard Polish. It is not even the same as Trasyanka spoken in Belarus. Those people are mostly fluent in standard Polish and Russian, and there is a lot of code switching depending on the situation. Mixed language they speak among each other is hard to understand even by native Polish, Russian of Belarusian speakers.

@mattbrown482

3 жыл бұрын

As an English speaker that has learned Spanish through school, and Romanian in my free time [thanks, O-Zone] I've had an experience similar to that recently. I can't speak Portuguese, but I know a few words, and I can understand it fairly well. I was helping a gentleman at work who only spoke Portuguese and a little bit of Spanish, and I found myself speaking Spanish while throwing in one or two Romanian words with the small amount of Portuguese I've managed to intuit; and it was such a surreal experience. He understood me well enough not to be lost, and I feel like I understood the vast majority of what he was saying because of context. Mutual intelligibility is a crazy thing.

@SuperHectortilla

3 жыл бұрын

And some dialects between portuguese and spanish make a weird mix that can easily be understood.

@gupta__g

3 жыл бұрын

In India, most people living in big cities (me included) have the habit of speaking a mix of English and Hindi while talking, its knows as Hinglish over. We usually start of a sentence in english and then proceed to hindi after a few introductory words.

as a german, it’s super interesting to hear how similar ukrainian is to german! i never knew that. not just the vocabulary he mentioned in the video but also pronounciation of letters like H/h and I/i

@vladkast

3 жыл бұрын

It’s funny that you describe me the first sound as H to me 😊

@sporluck

3 жыл бұрын

Galicia had German settlers when it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Then you toss in Yiddish.

@SkyLene

3 жыл бұрын

@@sporluck interesting! Thank you

@stephenbrand5661

3 жыл бұрын

@@sporluck Yeah that's why Lvov was/is(?) also known as Lemberg.

@kamilszadkowski8864

3 жыл бұрын

@@sporluck Well yeah, but most of these loan words got there earlier with Polish migration and polonisation of Ruthenian elites in the XVI century.

As a hobbyist linguist, I'll just say that most of what you were surprised to hear him know would be common knowledge to anyone who studied linguistics at a college level (if their focus was on this particular group of languages)

@vorobyovmichael

3 жыл бұрын

Yeah the thing about Paul though is he has this level of knowledge on like all the worlds languages though. Guess he just reads up on it well though.

@toxic_narcissist

Жыл бұрын

ok

Back in the day, Polish used to differentiate between voiced and voiceless 'h', just like Ukrainian. Remainders of this are still present in Polish orthography, where voiced 'h' (equivalent to Ukrainian г) is written as h (samo ha), while voiceless 'h' (equivalent to Ukrainian and Russian x) is written as 'ch' (ce-ha). Interestingly enough, 'g' (equivalent of Ukrainian ґ and Russian г) is also present in Polish phonology, unlike other major West Slavic languages (Czech and Slovak), where it is absent, having shifted to voiced h (written as h).

@user-rk5ib2on3h

3 жыл бұрын

We using ґ most off all in new borrowed words, in old borrowed words this letter step by step becomes г. And of course we dropes it when we write.

I'm from western Ukraine and I also consider both Ukrainian and Russian to be my native languages (purely based on the fact how good I natively know them), though I speak Ukrainian in life. I was raised in a Ukrainian speaking environment and picked up Russian from watching TV (most of Ukrainian TV was Russian speaking until 2014). And that's how the majority people in a Ukrainian speaking environment learned Russian (post 1991, when Russian wasn't required to be taught in schools anymore). Similarly those who were born in a Russian speaking environment, learned Ukrainian in school and from whatever Ukrainian you could find on TV. As much as Ukrainian and Russian are similar, the reason why Ukrainians can understand and speak Russian and not vice versa is because Ukraine was saturated with the Russian language, even past the collapse of USSR. It really has little to do with the fact that the languages are similar. I would say that Belarusian is in fact a lot more similar to Ukrainian. I was able to completely understand it without ever hearing it before, but I can't speak it.

@user-fu8fk3lc5c

3 жыл бұрын

Idk I'm from east and we usually picked up ukrainian from TV bc it was full of Ukrainian cartoons and so on..... now it's hard to find channel with cartoons in ukrainian and it's influenced children (especially from the west) too much, sadly :(

@toddperman8265

3 жыл бұрын

Are you glad that Ukraine has turned more to the EU and away from Russia and Putin? As an American I am curious .

@OlyaSavyak

3 жыл бұрын

@@toddperman8265 Absolutely. It has been only like a few hundred years in the making.

@toddperman8265

3 жыл бұрын

@@OlyaSavyak I hope that the Ukrainians will be united and prosperous within the protections of the EU.

@yuriysvyatenko6393

3 жыл бұрын

@@toddperman8265 we don't need EU so much, but we really need NATO

"I'm not a professional" well, your beard is pro that's for sure! :D

@IceMetalPunk

3 жыл бұрын

I'm pretty sure 2020 has created a large number of new beards.... at least mine has grown more than ever before since I've been forced to work from home for the past 9 months 😂

@vladkast

3 жыл бұрын

hell yeah it is!

@Arnuuld

3 жыл бұрын

@@IceMetalPunk 9 months god damn, thats brutal. I do some shady stuff in my basement for extra cash flow but I still manage to shave my face and ballz :D

It is the same for Polish 😆 That is why Slavic languages are so hard to learn by foreigners. All of the different suffixes to remember 🤣

@nikitaberejnoy4359

3 жыл бұрын

and it's cool to be native speaker cause you could make very interesting constructions that makes language more wealthy

@murdpower

3 жыл бұрын

as a Portuguese native watching this video i can see why that Slavic language is extremely difficult to learn. very similar of complexity in Portuguese. Another thing i find interesting is, at least in Portuguese, the portuguese language that is teached in schools is very formal and a bit far how real people interact with each other. So is very noticable when some foreign learned the language by speaking with natives or just in school.

@nikitaberejnoy4359

3 жыл бұрын

@@murdpower the same with Finnish.

'Why he say to work' Because 'работать' is infinitive form of the verb, and coressponding infininitive in English is 'to work'

@lhommet423

3 жыл бұрын

when 2 verbs follow each other, the segond becomes infinitive. Some meaning of буду can be: will have", will take and so on.. so работать infinitive form

@NN-qv7if

3 жыл бұрын

He probably confused the word 'work' for the noun 'work', he didn't immediately notice the infinitive :)

vladkast guy isn't one of those annoying youtubers who constantly yell at the camera or just make shallow reactions. He's chill and his commentary adds content. just subscribed

I think both videos may give the false impression that Ukrainian is almost or basically half Polish and half Russian. Actually, Ukrainian, as ALL Slavic languages, variously selected vocabulary and grammatical conventions independently mostly from their Common Slavic parent language. So cognates should not always be confused with borrowings. Slavic languages fall onto a spectrum from northern Russian to Sorbian to Bulgarian. They are not merely amalgams of each other. In spite of differences, each is substantially a separate child of a single parent.

@SashaNox

3 жыл бұрын

thank you man, wanted to write this. because while watching I had an impression that 'UA is just a mix of POL and RU' which is not the truth.

@pgruszewski

3 жыл бұрын

Not from what Paul says, but from what Vlad say - yes. He messes this up a bit. Luckily, the diagram Vlad showed (kzread.info/dash/bejne/Z6Bpxbpucduog8o.html) explains it better: U. and R. come and developed from Old East Slavic. So they both have a common predecessor closer to the predecessor they have with P., which developed from Old Wes Slavic. You're right here - it's better to study the diagram to recognise what came from where, then make a 'faux pas' and annoy some Slavic speakers. There is only one cure to that - medžuslovjansky/меджусловјанскы/slovianski. Imagine the potential!

@vladkast

3 жыл бұрын

I don’t understand how people even could think that cuz I gave a clear picture of all Slavic countries in it. In any case, that wasn’t my intention

As a western Ukrainian, I think we have the weirdest dialects. My great grandma spoke with an entirely different grammar, and any passersby from Kyiv that came to visit had a very hard time understanding that type of speech. Moreover, when you get into the villages up in the mountains, even someone like me wouldn't be able to understand what the people are saying. For example, if you want to say "you would have done this if you didn't procrastinate" in standard Ukrainian you would say something like this: "ти б це зробила, якби не барилася" or just "ти булa б це зробила, якби не барилася", but my great grandma (and many people still alive today) would have said: "ти би-с була тo зробила , якби-c сі не ґуздрала". If she was instead referring to herself instead of the female "you', she would have said: "я би-м була тo зробила, якби-м сі не ґуздрала". In standard Ukrainian, you would only have to substitute the "ти" for "я", without the subsequent lil grammatical quirk. I've always found this fascinating

@DeadBuddy01

3 жыл бұрын

Сi? Вперше чую

He kbows because he's a very competent linguist and does his research.

not knowing either language, they seem to be extremely similar

@nikitaberejnoy4359

3 жыл бұрын

as much as german and old English, i think its pretty accur comparing

@alex_6911

3 жыл бұрын

@@nikitaberejnoy4359 No it is not cuz English has lost alot of it's Germanic roots. Old English with German will do better

@nikitaberejnoy4359

3 жыл бұрын

@@alex_6911 but I said exactly the same

@alex_6911

3 жыл бұрын

@@nikitaberejnoy4359 No you didn't clarify if it is old or modern English...

@nikitaberejnoy4359

3 жыл бұрын

@@alex_6911 haha I did, just read it again

We in Slovakia say “hovoriť” as well.

"Не пойду, - завтра работаю".

@gigachad01488

3 жыл бұрын

не піду - завтра працюватиму

@SameerKumar-jf5mi

3 жыл бұрын

🤣🤣

As a Canadian born Ukrainian (parents from Odessa), I have no idea which words are Ukrainian and which ones are Russian, but I only know the padeji in Russian (because my parents made me go to Russian school every Sunday so I would be literate). I thought growing up that I spoke Russian, until I went to Russia and they all asked me what part of Ukraine I came from and gave me weird looks. Pretty sure when I speak with my parents, it’s all surjik. Sorry 😬

@Giguv05

Жыл бұрын

Sounds like you got best of both worlds :D

You keep asking "how did he know that?". It's called research. The history has been documented.

Very fun and informative hearing about your culture and language. Watching all the way in Solomon Islands 🇸🇧

Dude, i'm loving your channel. As a 1st generation Ukrainian-American who unfortunately never learned the language, I appreciate these videos.

@vlkt282

2 жыл бұрын

It's never late to start

awesome vid Found your channel the other day and really like your commentary!

How does he know? Research, research, research!

The best way to explain a case system to English speakers: pronouns. He/She/it are Subject case, Him/Her/It are Object case, His/Hers/Its are Possessive. Russian/Latin/Romanian/etc. does that to every noun and they have more cases.

Hey, I'm French but from an Ukrainian family (all my grandparents were from Western Ukraine, Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk) and i speak fluently ukrainian (but not a very good one i make mistakes and lack some vocabulary). When people ask me about the two languages i always compare it to roman languages : spanish french and italian are very similar but still different languages and we can't understand each other without learning the other language. I can speak ukrainian but i can't fully understand russian, i can grab part of setences or some words but never full conversations. I love the langfocus channel, Paul's videos are always super interesting, you should check his video about sound similarities between slavic languages and portuguese, it's quite surprising !

@krystynaoldakovska2233

3 жыл бұрын

Чудове пояснення! Great explanation!

@SashaNox

3 жыл бұрын

так, саме так. просто це - слов'янська сім'я. от і є сохжі речі. але це не мікс мов або повністю запозичена мова, вона розвивалася сама по собі ще до російської.

I love LangFocus. I love that you reacted to his video.

@angeladaley

3 жыл бұрын

I only know two phrases of Rusyn and I'm told they are very similar to Ukrainian. One is "Ya te dam po dupa". Basically, "I'm going to give your butt" or "I'm going to smack your butt," I was a kid so you can imagine why I learned that phrase. X-)

@garymcgregor5951

3 жыл бұрын

Ditto!

@user-kt4lg3tk8m

3 жыл бұрын

@@angeladaley This is a Western Ukrainian dialect. The whole west of Ukraine says this way: "Ja te' dam po dupi". There is only one dialect word, it is a word "te". The word "te" is a truncated word "tebi" or "tobi".

@angeladaley

3 жыл бұрын

@@user-kt4lg3tk8m Baba was from Horodok, Lviv Oblast. Family name was Prislipskaya.

@user-kt4lg3tk8m

3 жыл бұрын

@@angeladaley You may be interested family history research ridni.org/karta/%D0%9F%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%81%D0%BB%D1%96%D0%BF%D1%81%D1%8C%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B9?lang=english ridni.org/karta/%D0%9F%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%81%D0%BB%D1%96%D0%BF%D1%81%D1%8C%D0%BA%D0%B0?lang=english In the Ukrainian language, this surname has two versions, male and female.

In Serbian "сварити" means "to digest" and "недеља" means both "Sunday and week"!

This is mostly english spoken video, so naturally my brain switched to "english mode" and I had this kinda strange moment when the "milk" was discussed. I was like ooh malako, moloko, what a curious name for milk, I wouldn't.... Czekaj, noż k**wa "mleko"...

@annapmark536

3 жыл бұрын

English 'milk' is also related to all of them, words just tend to lose or switch or change their parts as they go

B-but суржик helps russian and ukrainian speakers understand eachother better

@TheIvasyl

3 жыл бұрын

No it doesn't, because there's no need for it. Everyone in Ukraine is fluent in both.

@TheIvasyl

3 жыл бұрын

But you should never be ashamed of speaking in суржик.

@Juan2Soto23

3 жыл бұрын

@@TheIvasyl yeah is more usefull Суржик specially in some places like Київ(Киев someone will get confused) i have friends from ukraine and i asked them what language do you speak ? And they told me we prefer Суржик(Сумах , Харків , Київ , etc) is a form of the dialect , but in western ukraine the Суржик is not used a lot of 50/50 is more influenced by Ukrainian so the proportion 70% ukrainian /30% russian. My great grandfather was ukrainian 😁

@HaeikeVraeik

3 жыл бұрын

Understand each other in equally despising surzhik, lol

@kon_radar

3 жыл бұрын

@@TheIvasyl суржик is somehow like Bavarian in Germany, or Silesian in Poland - I guess. Never heard of суржик. As a Pole I started to learn Russian. In the past I have watched many Austro-Bavarian movies broadcast in TV in Vienna.

As a Russian speaker with Ukrainian parents, I often find myself using some Ukrainian words without even knowing they are Ukrainian, like жменька (a little bit), its still a shame though because I don't actually speak Ukrainian, it takes immense effort to understand full Ukrainian sentences, I usually get a few words or some of the context, but often those false cognates trip me up and make me think it was about something totally different.

@Manar657

3 жыл бұрын

(I was born in New York, and parents only taught me Russian)

@damekkoDark

3 жыл бұрын

oh, I thought it's russian slang word tbh. Then again, I grew up pretty close to ukraine

@Manar657

3 жыл бұрын

@@damekkoDark 😂 nope, none of my Russian friends from Petersburg Moscow or deeper knew it, they would use горсть

@damekkoDark

3 жыл бұрын

@@Manar657 both are used but in a different situations, at least in the south

@Manar657

3 жыл бұрын

@@damekkoDark maybe maybe, it’s hard to split the two apart sometimes given how much influence they both have in many places around Ukraine, especially around Kiev

My cousin from Iran is attending university in Kiev, and now speaks both Ukranian and Russian fluently!

@Berehynya

3 жыл бұрын

Mike M The capital city of Ukraine is Kyiv.

@dimademusenko1699

3 жыл бұрын

Yea, Ukrainian capital is “Kyiv”

@DeadBuddy01

3 жыл бұрын

Did he live in a dorm? That might be the reason. Or maybe he had teachers who taught them in different languages.

I am French and I’ve learned Russian (I consider myself as almost fluent in Russian). Since I know Russian and I wanted to widen my knowledge about slavic languages I tried Ukrainian and Polish. My Polish teacher told me I do the exact same mistakes in Polish just like a Russian native speaker would do, but nevertheless, I get that : Ukrainian and Polish are really similar and knowing Russian helps A lot cause they are objectively very similar. About my learning of Polish language: I’ve learnt in one month more than a French or an English native speaker can learn in one year just because I know Russian.

That was a great advertising for nativlang channel. As I often noticed, he goes deeper into analysis then everyday speakers do, but tiny mistakes can be pointed by natives speakers. You asked how he knows so much? Serious scholars know how to select the best source of information. The history of languages is fascinating. Knowing what words have been borrowed to which language help fight back the grammar police who often show too much confidence.

@YaShoom

Жыл бұрын

We call these "grammar-Nazi", you can never prove anything to them, even if you know.

Love your commentary on this video. Well done. Really interesting perspectives.

@vladkast

2 жыл бұрын

Thanks. I hate this video though 😅

I speak 5 different languages including English, fluent in 3, and Langfocus is where I learned more about my languages lol 😅 Paul is so knowledgeable and yeah, it blows my mind how extensive his research is! Great channel! By the way, I would love to learn how speak Russian but it’s a language I’m so intimidated to learn. It is a beautiful language and I wouldn’t want to butcher it. I could listen to a native Russian speaker, speak all day! 🙏🏽😊

Ohh hey I watch his channel too 😊

I would say я не могу пойти, потому что завтра я работаю

@DeadBuddy01

3 жыл бұрын

Мне кажется много "я" не? Второе можно опустить так как по контексту в принципе понятно кто

He is a linguist so it makes sense he could tell the difference between [a] and [ɑ]. [a] is produced in the more front of the mouth while [ɑ] is produced in the back of your throat. Also, I am now subscribed. This is fun to see a fellow slav on KZread

As someone learning Latin and Greek, the endings of nouns changing with the case makes perfect sense to me, and English not having that confuses me, at times.

19:19 I'm russian and this phrase sounds pretty good to me. Nothing to change in it except that I can be omitted.

@antongerasimov2298

3 жыл бұрын

I absolutely agree with you. Sentence is grammatically correct.

As someone who took a year of russian, and regularly hosts Visiting Scholars from Ukraine I found this so interesting! The Ukrainians always talk about growing up learning both languages and the culture of soviet union verse post soviet union. But this video was very informative, and very helpful in making things more clear!

This was super interesting as a reaction video. I've been following Paul for a few years and he is so thorough! Just listening for this short while, I think I will learn Ukrainian easier than Russian, as my native language is Afrikaans (from the Western-Germanic line) and Ukrainian has more loan words from German, which is easy to pick up. Also, Ukrainian sounds a bit "softer", and the phonics are more similar to the Germanic languages.

@YaShoom

Жыл бұрын

And what exactly is in Ukrainian soft?

14:29 but in English you can also say both ways: "this is illegal" and "that is illegal" depending on the context

I loved this video! Can you do a reaction to the Ecolinguist's videos on Interslavic? It's supposed to an artificial language that can be understood by many Slavic languages. I'm curious how much you can understand it.

The sentence with "work" sounds weird because people rarely say it like that, a more natural way would probably be "Я не пойду, у меня завтра работа" or "Я не пойду, я завтра работаю". "Потому-что" is clearly excessive and shouldn't be there and the grammar with "буду работать" , tho techically correct, is not usually used in this context. "буду работать" to me at least sounds like you're a freelancer\have your own project and you decided that you're gotta work tomorow and not on any other day also declining the offer, which is just not a very common situation.

@YuriyNasretdinov

3 жыл бұрын

I agree. That last sentence just looks like a more direct translation from English which is probably why it sounds weird to you. I would also say "Я не пойду, я завтра работаю" or something like this, or even "Я не могу, завтра работать" :).

@spider.monkey.ninja.assassin

3 жыл бұрын

"..мне завтра на работу"

@IllyaKonakov

3 жыл бұрын

That sentence could be less weird if Paul would have used the verb «смогу»: «Я не смогу пойти, потому что завтра буду работать».

Hello, I'm from India and like you I was also very surprised to see how accurate this channel is... when he made videos on Indian language... That's why this is my go to channel for learning about languages... Btw I'm liking your reactions because it adds something new to the original reacted video... Cheers ✌️❣️

22 minutes of Vlad being shocked by Paul's knowledge

We have dialects/accents in Russian, the Southern (from the Southern parts of Russia obviously) has Ukrainian h-like pronunciation of "Г" (g) letter, words and some other patterns of Ukrainian language. That had considered completely normal before some, you know, events happened in 2014 and some people fell for propaganda and decided to switch to more central/standard Russian pronunciation which is kind of cringe. And, of course, people who live near Ukraine usually have a better understanding of Ukrainian, although, Surzhik is not wide spread, I think. And there is the Northern dialect which, by the way, does not reduce o to a, and pronounces moloko and other words how it spelled, but this dialect, unfortunately, is dying quite fast.

@user-kt4lg3tk8m

3 жыл бұрын

Assimilated Ukrainians live in the Kuban and Eastern Slobozhanshchina, so you can hear the Ukrainian language substrate there. The Novgorod language was widespread in the north of present-day Russia. Now this language is destroyed, only the substrate remains.

@autemniaequinoctius2030

3 жыл бұрын

@@user-kt4lg3tk8m Don’t forget Belgorod, Voronezh, even part of Kursk oblast’, also Taganrog and Rostov,

@autemniaequinoctius2030

3 жыл бұрын

because most of the territories of southern russia have Ukrainian ethnic roots

@user-kt4lg3tk8m

3 жыл бұрын

@@autemniaequinoctius2030 Yes, you are right.

@ianhomerpura8937

Жыл бұрын

@@autemniaequinoctius2030 it's the same region where Khruschev and Brezhnev came from iirc

Being originally from South West of Russia which borders Ukraine, we also have a very mixed Russian (like, a lot of words, expressions, pronounciation is "borrowed" from Ukrainian), which is pretty cool. Thank you for the video, it was entertaining to watch!

I watched the video from Langfocus when it came out, so it’s super cool seeing a native speaker comment on it. I went to Ukraine twice about 10 years ago and loved it. I had similar questions about the similarity of Ukrainian and Russian since most everyone that I came in contact with spoke both languages. I’m loving this channel for sure!

Paul's channel really is amazing, it's good to see him getting props.

I can not lie, you were suggested to me like a day ago and I’m so appreciative of it. I definitely subscribed (even though we know you’re a spy 😉🤣joking I promise!)

@mayanlogos92

3 жыл бұрын

Lol... this came in my suggestion

@DeadBuddy01

3 жыл бұрын

Ukrainian spy? That's new)

Суржик - это просто транзитный диалект, нормальное явление, когда один язык географически плавно перетекает в другой. И да, Langfocus - отличный канал, Павел очень тщательно подходит к подборке фактов для видео. Твои реакции просто песня!

@YaShoom

Жыл бұрын

Я тоже так подумал. А Автор странно выразился - сам говорит, что не имеет негатива к этому и тут же говорит, что мол не над так делать. Я не вижу ничего несовместимого между украинским, белорусским и русским языками, что бы языки нельзя было взаимнообогащать.

I am a a native (American) English speaker. English, though a Germanic language, lost gendered nouns and the neuter gender (it) and most verb conjugations , centuries ago. The two languages I sturdied, Spanish and French, though they have gendered nouns and and fully conjugate verbs, like all Romance languages, do not use the neuter gender. To me the thought of learning a language with the neuter gender (like in Latin, German or Slavic languages) sounds so much more complicated. It breaks my brain. 😉

This was a really interesting video. I love learning about languages. I thought I was cute when you made the sounds when he was talking about the different letters 😆.

8:48 some Belarusians also pronounce говорить as Hovorit’ instead of Govorit’

We call sugar "sukar" also, here in Ethiopia which I thought was our own Amharic(Our official language) word till now

@GreenJeepAdventures

3 жыл бұрын

Spanish has a similar sounding word for sugar- azúcar, which also sounds similar to the French word sucre.

@Weeeeeeeeeg

3 жыл бұрын

I think the original word was arabic, and Arab traders introduced the word and sugar around the world

@doraspoljar697

3 жыл бұрын

@@Weeeeeeeeeg basically all words I know for sugar are derived from arabic

@Ahmad_Farghaly

3 жыл бұрын

@@doraspoljar697 this actually right arabic has influence on spanish vocabulary words like olive, sugar ,rice etc and thats how we say it exactly and i think the pronunciation in Ethiopian is a little different but thats how it's said if you wrote it in english "Sukar" and this is in arabic "سكر"

@kelnmiirkageoni1667

3 жыл бұрын

Hey Kyrgyzstan here, we have a similar word for sugar and it is "sheker"

Whenever you explained something, I would nod my head and say "mhm" as if I was in class lol This was super informative and cool! I learned German in high school, so it was interesting to see the influence on Polish and Ukrainian languages

I am finding all the different accents in the UK very difficult to understand, so watching this makes it easier to understand your two languages. I speak Australian English.

Great reaction! Love langfocus. Ecolinguist is a pretty good channel too. He does language intelligibility experiments and it's fun to play along 😊

Love the videos, super interesting and entertaining! You also look like a celebrity but I can't place who

@vladkast

3 жыл бұрын

Denny devitto?

@eoghansmith7253

3 жыл бұрын

@@vladkast it just clicked! Jamie Dornan!

@vladkast

3 жыл бұрын

Tf? He’s 10, I’m in my best days 6 at most haha

Very, very interesting! Thank you for highlighting this channel. I find this interesting because my Great grandmother, who was Slovak, often said that she could understand Russian, but couldn’t speak it. Yet, she sang Ойся Ты Ойся all the time! 🤣

@johan.ohgren

3 жыл бұрын

There's a difference in learning lyrics and being able to speak. Even I know some lyrics in russian, but I only understand some words of it. And I can't speak it except some phrases.

He is a linguist so it makes sense he could tell the difference between [a] and [ɑ]. [a] is produced in the more front of the mouth while [ɑ] is produced in the back of your throat

I wanted to learn Russian at some point and watched some videos, ended up watching the one that you reacted to here, and all I felt was frustration so I just gave up learning Russian 😆

@russelljfawcett

3 жыл бұрын

Don't give up. Russian us a beautiful language but it does require a structured approach to learn. The conjugations are especially frustrating because in English we never really explore the metalinguistics of our own language and even though we have many of the same things in English they are much more scattershot because of the many different influences. Interestingly, learning Russian helped me understand English better.

@930903

3 жыл бұрын

@@russelljfawcett I actually am preparing myself to start learning Russian for real this time, well, not now exactly, I need this pandemic to be over so I would have some free time to learn😬 🤞

@SashaNox

3 жыл бұрын

Learn Ukrainian instead :) it's more ancient and cool.

I speak Russian and every time I see a Ukrainian TV show or something, I can't literally understand everything, but I can understand everything enough that there are no misunderstandings.

I took Russian in highschool and then had the opportunity to teach English in Kiev a few years after I graduated. I remember my first impression was that Ukrainian sounded Russian with a weird accent to the vowels. It was definitely easier to read the Russian alphabet for me because I was never exposed to the vowel differences in Ukrainian in a structured manner so a lot of it was guessing and mumbling vowel sounds to get "close enough". All in all I like both languages and found this video highly informative and entertaining.

14:30 As for me, both of them sound proper. But I’d use “це(tse)” as an equivalent of “this” and “то(to)” as an equivalent of “that”. E.g., if I see a guy crossing a road on a red light right in front of me, I’d use first case (це незаконно). When I hear about my uncle driving drunk last weekend, I’d use second case (то незаконно).

14:30 In Slovak: To je nezákonné. (То є незáконнé.)

@RoScFan

3 жыл бұрын

slovak with cyrilic?

@ClifffSVK

3 жыл бұрын

@@RoScFan Problem?

@DeadBuddy01

3 жыл бұрын

In terms that I know Polish reading a little bit and ukrainian language, Slovak seems pretty similar)

Doesn't the word robot come from rabotat, meaning worker? And стул sounds very similar to German 'Stuhl' (chair) as well.

12:10 Let me help you. This is called declension, when a languages makes words change forms based on their function in a sentence (subject, object, recipient, location, tool, owner, etc.), which is referred as "case." Declension is also applicable when talking about adjectives that need to conform to gender, case, and grammatical number of the noun it modifies. When verbs change form, that's called "conjugation."

I read something once, which said that Russian and Ukrainian were very mutually intelligible, so the 62% lexical similarity was surprisingly low to me too. But then I look at French and Italian, which have the highest lexical similarity -- 89% -- among the five major Romance languages, but which are definitely not the most mutually intelligible among them. As an example, there is a video by Ecolinguist, on KZread, in which Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese speakers listen to a French speaker and try to guess a word that he describes to them in French. They all have a bit of difficulty understanding what the Frenchman says, but when they talk to each other, it's as though they are talking to their own cousins. So, I guess lexical similarity is not the only factor that determines mutual intelligibility.

@seneca983

Жыл бұрын

One thing to take into account is that this percentage number is probably not weighted based on the frequency of the words. It might be that there are more similarity in often used words.

I’m trying to learn Polish and these different cases get me every time, always shock myself when I use the correct case ending on the first go lol

@Morrov

3 жыл бұрын

I have a friend here in Poland, he's an Armenian, born in Russia, who lived in Ukraine for a while, and he's been speaking Polish for around 10 years. He still gets some of the cases wrong lol

@Pidalin

3 жыл бұрын

@@Morrov Ukrainians here in Czechia speak still Russian or Ukrainian after 10 years. :-D

@Morrov

3 жыл бұрын

@@Pidalin same here, but that obvs doesn't apply to all of them. A lot of them did go through the effort to learn the language enough to communicate. Those who didn't basically rely on google translate, or only talk with older people who might know Russian, so it's a pain both for them and for the locals One thing that annoys me is how they always try to speak Russian instead of Ukrainian... Ukrainian is still quite distant from our languages, but it certainly is closer than Russian lol

@vladkast

3 жыл бұрын

My brother has lived in Czech Republic for 3 years now - barely knows a few words lol

@Pidalin

3 жыл бұрын

@@Morrov Yes, I said it in different comment here, when they don't speak Czech, I am more happy when they speak Ukrainian than Russian, but many of them just speak Russian only. Some sentences in Czech and Ukrainian are almost same, so speak Russian to us is really complicating things.

I wish I could, but surzhyk is my everything xD

As a Georgian who can also speak Russian (but doesn't on principle), I can def understand most of Ukrainian but it would be IMPOSSIBLE to construct a sentence in it. Never knew that was called asymmetric intelligibility. V cool 👏

@mike20809

3 жыл бұрын

Do they suffer in Russia from your not speaking?

This is fucking interesting to me. The actual video and what you had to add. Really enjoyed watching this!

So basically, Slavic languages (Russian, Ukrainian, Polish) are similar in the same way that romance languages (French, Spanish, Italian) have many of the same or similar words and even grammar, they are not even close to the same language. Is that right?

@vladkast

3 жыл бұрын

I would say so

@vladprus4019

3 жыл бұрын

Yes. It is also good to keep in mind those three groups of Slavic languages: West, East, South. Languages within one group could be analogues to Spanish and Portugal for example. Or Italian and Sicilian.

@DanSolo871

14 күн бұрын

I would argue Slavic languages are similar in the way Germanic languages are with Eastern and western branches and one with northern and the other southern. All Italic languages except for Latin, became extinct. Then Latin spread into western Europe where Celtic and Germanic tribes were and made Latin the main tongue. Dialectal change gave us Romance. However, like the Romance languages, Slavic languages have Church Slavonic, which plays a liturgical role like Latin.

oh man, i just watched that video yesterday! i myself was born in ukraine and honestly didnt even realize some of the words are "Ukrainian" or "russian" as both were used interchangeably where i grew up(I now understand it's bc russian was required as main language in school when i was born, 1990) so some of the words he differentiated as Ukrainian or Russian were both used as synonyms... i've lived in usa since 2000 so i can barely still speak ukrainian, but remember many words he says as synonyms vs russian/ukrainian... Edit: im from Vinnitsa(west ukraine, about 4hrs SW of Kiev) so i've always identified Ukrainian as my native tongue...

@sodinc

3 жыл бұрын

так и появляется суржик, думаю

We learn this in school. Not everything, teachers don't mentioned the Lithuania and Polonia Commonwealth. I learned its existence thanks a movie with Tony Curtis and Yul Brynner

This is much like I thought it was. As a Finn, there's swedish, danish and norwegian that are almost the ssame, but has some distinctive differences. Slavic countries seem to have a similar setup. I have no idea how Finland sounds like none of those languages, while being surrounded by them. Estonian and finnish could be maybe categorized like that, but the meanings of our words, while almost the same, have entirely different meanings. Nice vid!

Now I remember why I stopped studying linguistics.

my russian relatives hardly understand me, if i speak ukrainian, so yeah languages are different.

@user-bn1ob5rd9i

3 жыл бұрын

Если ты будешь тараторить, то да, будет сложно

@nicolasiden4074

3 жыл бұрын

@@user-bn1ob5rd9i та навіть якщо буде повільно розмовляти ви мало що зрозумієте

@user-bn1ob5rd9i

3 жыл бұрын

@@nicolasiden4074 смотря какая тема разговора😉

@danya6565

3 жыл бұрын

@@nicolasiden4074 а у меня подруга украинка учится в чешской школе и не понимает от слова совсем чешский, хотя у нее родной язык украинский.. так что засунь свое высказывание подальше. люди все разные и каждый воспринимает все по разному.. я с легкостью понимаю как украинский так и польский, хоть и не углублялся в изучение этих языков... а я русский... что ты на это скажешь, брехун??

@nicolasiden4074

3 жыл бұрын

@@danya6565 до чого тут чешська взагалі?

This is fascinating to a linguistics major. The phonetics are opening brand new views on BOTH languages and the Slavic and Romance language families as a whole. Mind. Blown. Thank you!

"WUT! How does he..?" The Internet. He knows because the Internet.

Folks who took Latin in as cool would understand the vocative, etc. noun declensions, since Latin is full of them. It would probably still be hard for me to learn Ukrainian or Russian, even though I had Latin class in High School.

@SashaNox

3 жыл бұрын

Well, that's because they're not Latin-based...yep. Only some vocabulary possessions, not not the language family. Slavic languages are different

I understand that Ukrainian is supposed to take heavily from Polish but it sounds more like Czech to me. Especially with "to ye" like in Czech. To je dobrý. Or perhaps it's just because I'm learning Czech that I see the similarities more easily.

@vladkast

3 жыл бұрын

I don't understand how you came to conclusion that Ukrainian language is Heavily took from Polish, but, I mean, okay... guess I know Polish now

@TGoKovenant

3 жыл бұрын

@@vladkast what I meant was all the vocabulary he was listing that came from polish towards the beginning. And you also said that, especially in Western Ukraine, there's a lot of polish influence. Or did I completely misunderstand you? English borrowed a ton of words from French but I can't speak French. I just thought the similarities to Czech were interesting.

@vladkast

3 жыл бұрын

Yeah in the west it’s like close to the polish border it’s like complete different dialect, I wouldn’t understand those people, proper Ukrainian has obviously maybe some borrowed words from polish, or German or whatever, but it’s normal for any language

@user-kt4lg3tk8m

3 жыл бұрын

Yes, it's true. Although Ukrainian has a few percent more common vocabulary with Polish than with Czech, this is where the similarity ends. Meanwhile, Ukrainian, Czech and Slovak are much more similar in phonetics ("h" instead "g" etc.) and basic vocabulary.

@Pidalin

3 жыл бұрын

Some phrases in Ukrainian are more close to Czech, but accent is still eastern slavic, very far from Czech accent.

I enjoyed the additional comment you added to the “on or Ha”. I watch people talk about English and say you probably don’t hear the difference. Because I’m a native English speaker, it’s clear as day. One example is how most people pronounce can and can’t. The negative version in the English language we basically remove the t without realizing it. It is so obvious to me between the two. So it is cool to hear your example that I can hear a slight difference but I know I would struggle to hear it on its own in a sentence.

So many interesting angles to this video. Just two specialized things that I would like to share. In English, when we say “go to work” it is not an infinitive as in “you have got to work harder” but rather a situational noun, as in “go to the office”. Compare “this is how I dress when I’m at work / at the office”. There is a large village in Northern Ireland called *Ahoghill* - as I learned the name from my father, the “h” is pronounced at it is in England, but the “gh” is like the Ukrainain г.

Я понял, что за ошибка Правильнее сказать "я не Смогу пойти, потому что завтра работаю/буду работать"

@antongerasimov2298

3 жыл бұрын

что за чушь? Здесь нет никакой ошибки. Можно сказать и "(завтра) я не могу пойти, потому что завтра я буду работать. И этот вариант ничуть не хуже.

@makesometrash

3 жыл бұрын

@@antongerasimov2298 да, так можно сказать. Но если слушаешь фразу вне контекста (без заходной мысли или фразы), то создается впечатление, что она сконструирована неверно. Сказать и правда можно и так, и так, а слово "ошибка" я употребил просто, чтобы не растягивать мысль.

"Женщина, что сидит на стуле" Easy.

@SameerKumar-jf5mi

3 жыл бұрын

🤣🤣🤣

@chelseasmile4476

3 жыл бұрын

это так не работает)

Fun that you found langfocus!

Watching your videos and learning more history and geography made me realize that the countries' borders (specially in older regions like Europe, Asia and Africa) are really just there to determine where your taxes will go and what laws you must follow, but in reality languages, customs, people and just overall nations and cultures are not bound by these separations and are a lot more diverse and hard to separate easily into a map

Я так і не зрозумів різницю між на і на :)

Не по-русски это было. Русский сказал бы: "..., потому что завтра работаю."

@DeadBuddy01

3 жыл бұрын

Все же мне кажется мы используем "потому что" в основном при ответе на вопрос "почему?" А так вставлять его в предложение без надобности слишком лениво)

@minochenkovatn

3 жыл бұрын

@@DeadBuddy01 Вопрос "почему?" остался за скобками. Они сразу на 17:39 начали отвечать в примере. И получилось криво. Парень это почувствовал, но не понял как исправить.

In Arabic, only masculine & feminine, so we struggle at first with neutrals in German & Russian.

Some of the features that mentioned as "distinctive" in standard Russian and standard Ukrainian also present in some Russian dialects. For example fricative Г sound is present in southern dialects and in northern dialects unstressed vowels are not reduced.

@vexillonerd

3 жыл бұрын

Russian doesn't have dialects. It has accents.