People in belarus speak more than just belarusian listen. Belarusian and south slavic bulgarian, macedonian, serbian languages for. University of groningen mutual intelligibility in the slavic. The belarusian language has 80% mutual intelligibility with ukrainian, 75% with russian and 41% with polish. Microsoft word mutual intelligibility of languages in the slavic family. About how they needed better sources for the mutual intelligibility of scots and english, i personally speak both with a good level of fluency and can say for a fact that they both have a decent level of mutual intelligibility, but scots still has many relations to german, gaelic, icelandic and on. Polish has also heavily influenced the ukrainian language, so theres also some. In this video, we test slavic languages mutual intelligibility again. In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort.
In some cases it is hard to distinguish between mutual intelligibility and a basic knowledge of other language. There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility among belarusian, russian, and ukrainian languages. Polish is related to those languages, but it belongs to the west slavic group. Ukrainian is spoken by a minority of belarusians, though there is high mutual intelligibility between this language and the official languages.
In belarus, of course russian is still like an official language. In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which. Within east slavic, the belarusian language is most closely related to ukrainian. Russian and ukrainian are two different languages from the same language family. Modeling the impact of orthographic coding on czechpolish and. This thesis explores mutual intelligibility in the slavic language area how to measure it, how to predict it. Belarusian for someone with an intermediate to advanced skill level with russian for the purposes of this, lets say someone who understands 8090% of russian news broadcasts without watchingusing the visual aids on screen that provide context clues, would it be easier to learn ukrainian or belarusian and reach the same skill. Are russian, ukrainian, and belorussian mutually intelligible. Lexically, the closest language to ukrainian is belarusian 84% of common vocabulary, followed by polish 70%, serbocroatian 68%, slovak 66% and russian 62%. Orthography in language modeling of mutual intelligibility. Due to the overlap between belarusian, russian and ukrainian. However, ukraine and belarus both share borders with poland and their national languages are thus obviously closer to polish a western slavic language than russian is.
If not, how long would take someone competent in russian to learn either of the other two. Its closer anyway to polish and ukrainian, than to russian. Mutual intelligibility is a continuum that is, a gradient concept, marked by degrees of intelligibility, not by sharp divisions. Adopting russian as the primary language and treating belarusian.
These mutually intelligible languages will make you do a. Nevertheless, belarusian still holds a prominent position in belarusian society as a symbol of belarusian identity and nationalism. In the present study we tested the level of mutual intelligibility between three west slavic czech, slovak and polish and three south slavic languages croatian, slovene and bulgarian. Is there any degree of mutual intelligibility between these three, similar to say spanish and portuguese. Belarusian is 100% intelligible to me, except for some rare words, but i dont know every word in russian or ukrainian either. The results show that in most cases, a division between west and south slavic languages does exist and that west. For example, standard ukrainian and standard belarusian are said to have a degree of mutual intelligibility and standard ukrainian and standard russian are also partially mutually intelligibility but not as much as ukrainian belarusian. Mutual intelligibility wikipedia republished wiki 2. Crimean tatar, gagauz, turkish and urum partially and asymmetrically. Publishers pdf, also known as version of record publication date. There is no formal distinction between two distinct languages and two varieties of a single language, but linguists generally use mutual intelligibility as one of the primary factors in deciding between the two cases. Belarusian always spells the merged sound as a, but russian uses either a or o, depending on the underlying phoneme. A famous soviet movie come and see was set in byelorussian ssr, but for viewers sake they didnt use pure belarusian language and resorted to a kind of mixed russian belarusian speech, because nobody except belarusians themselves would have understood pure belarusian. If you mean, whether ukrainians can understand belarusian language yes, we can.
Are ukrainians and belarusians mutually intelligible. Mutual intelligibility between closely related languages in europe pdf. Many belarusian and ukrainian speakers have extensive knowledge of russian and use it as a second language or lingua franca, or even as a first language in public or at work. Along with white russian belarussian, the language of belarus, they constitute east slavic, one of three branches of the slavic family. Ukrainian, russian, belarusian, and rusyn have a high degree of mutual intelligibility. Russian belongs to the family of indoeuropean languages, one of the four living members of the east slavic languages alongside. Mutual intelligibility is a situation in which two or more speakers of a language or of closely related languages can understand each other. These mutually intelligible languages will make you do a double take. This blog post is available as a convenient and portable pdf that you. University of groningen mutual intelligibility in the. By contrast, in ukraine, there are still distinct russian and ukrainian language.
Archive how closely related are ukrainian and russian. To some extent, russian, rusyn, ukrainian, and belarusian are all mutually intelligible, effectively forming. Russian is spoken by the majority of adults in the cis, and has served me well wherever i have traveled in the former soviet union. Mutual intelligibility among slavic languages antimoon forum.
Belarusian, ukrainian, russian and polish share a high degree of mutual intelligibility. I think they are czech and slovak or russian and ukrainian, but the former is dominant, i think, right. Its important to note that mutual intelligibility is highly subjective. How mutually intelligible are the various slavic languages. Pasha is helping me test polish ukrainian mutual intelligibility. Russian is also 85% mutually intelligible with belarusian and ukrainian in. Ukrainian is a quite distinct language, bordering on mutual intelligibility with russian. Mutual intelligibility wikimili, the best wikipedia reader. How to distinguish languages and dialects mit press journals.
Not sure about other languages, but russian and ukranian are very mutually intelligible. Mutual intelligibility of languages in the slavic family. Ukrainian sounds just like russian to me, and i heard that it is very similar to belarusian more so than russian and belarusian. It is the official language of belarus, along with the russian language. Well, nearly 90% of belarusians speak russian as their first language. Instead of similarity, we could also use the inverse concept of distance, in which case, the greater the distance between two languages, the smaller. Yes, which languages do you think are the most mutual intelligible. So in essence, there is spoken mutual intelligibility between all slavic languages but that can range from the 80% of czech vs slovak to the 5% of polish vs bulgarian. They have a lot in common, but there are number of things that make them different.
Ukrainian is an eastern slavic language like belarusian which hardly anybody speaks natively and russian. Mutually intelligible project gutenberg selfpublishing. Ukrainian is most mutually intelligible with belarusian but also has some mutual intelligibility with russian. Mutually intelligible languages or varieties of one language. Between sources, you might find some claiming that two languages are mutually intelligible, while other sources claim those same languages arent. But again, this is a separate discussion from mutual intelligibility. Pdf mutual intelligibility of languages in the slavic.
West polissian or west polesian is a ukrainian dialect spoken in belarus and. I spent the first 6 years of my life in ukraine and grew up speaking russian and english russian was the main language of ukraine back then, these days i dont speak it natively anymore but i still know my fair share of russian. I myself can understand basic ukrainian and polish with my basic russian. Its too hard to distinguish the fricatives in polish, so its mostly unintelligible to me. The group is represented by speakers of east slavic languages.
Mutual intelligibility in slavic language specific. Belarusian language policy in the context of linguistic human rights pdf. Belarusians who were raised in foreign countries, usualy dont understand russian at all, except for some similar vocabulary. The subject of this poster is the influence of mutual intelligibility on the lives of east slavic migrants living permanently in poland. Slavic languages all have some degree of mutual intelligibility. Belarusian has 80% mutual intelligibility with ukrainian, 75% with russian, and 41% with the polish language. Mutual intelligibility among the slavic languages by robert lindsay the. Factors explaining intelligibility a model of intelligibility. Having a large body of recognizable vocabulary is a necessary condition for mutual intelligibility, but it is nowhere near sufficient. Using them for modeling the orthographic mutual intelligibility should help us. It is sometimes used as an important criterion for distinguishing languages from dialects, although sociolinguistic factors are often also used.