Results from,566 participants were analyzed for the 70 withinfamily combinations of speaker. The results show that in most cases, a division between west and south slavic languages does exist and that west. The main dialects of croatian,serbian, montenegrin and bosnian are apparently mutually. Under colonialism, thailand was an independent kingdom, but laos was under french rule. Maybe in a very basic level you can pick up some words or even some small phrases. Finally, we demonstrated that despite the high linguistic similarity, speakers of serbian and croatian. These mutually intelligible languages will make you do a. In addition, the differences between the slavonic dialects are so great that. Measuring crosslinguistic intelligibility in the germanic. It is the official language of serbia, coofficial in the territory of kosovo, and one of the three official languages of bosnia and herzegovina. From psycholinguistics and computational modeling we know that lg proc. Its often said that all slaviclanguages are mutually intelligible with each other. Mutual intelligibility between west and south slavic languages 63 1.
It is commonly believed that all slavic languages are fully mutually intelligible, which implies that they are close. Introduction in the 1990s, after the fall of communism, the main language of yugoslavia, serbocroatian, has disintegrated into three or four standards. It is sometimes used as an important criterion for distinguishing languages from dialects, although sociolinguistic factors are often also used. This thesis explores mutual intelligibility in the slavic language area how to. Mutual intelligibility between closely related languages. Bulgarian macedonian serbian russian belarusian upper. University of groningen mutual intelligibility in the. Russian has a quite high degree of intelligibility with bulgarian,possibly on the order of 75%. The two endpoints, slovene and bulgarian, are not mutually intelligible, but the transitions from serbian croatian to macedonian and bulgarian to macedonian are gradual and mutual intelligibility is high. Macedonian is closely related to and shares a high degree of mutual intelligibility with the bulgarian and serbian languages.
I have serious doubts about the mutual intelligibility between slavic languages. Lexical and orthographic distances between germanic. Spanish,yielding20languagepairsandslavic bulgarian,croatian,czech,polish, slovak,slovene,i. Slavic languages descend from protoslavic, their immediate parent language, ultimately deriving from protoindoeuropean, the ancestor language of all indoeuropean languages, via a protobaltoslavic stage. In addition, it is a recognized minority language in montenegro, where it is spoken by the relative majority of. Bosnian is one of three such varieties considered official languages of bosnia and herzegovina, along with croatian and serbian. Mutual intelligibility among slavic languages antimoon forum.
Is the difference as far apart as the germanic languages, or. But true mutual intelligibility,it seems,is way far from that. Macedonians closest relative is bulgarian,with which it has a high degree of mutual intelligibility. Mutual intelligibility among the slavic languages by robert lindsay the mutual intelligibility mi of the languages of the slavic family is an interesting topic because many are mutually intelligible to one degree or another. How can the mutual intelligibility between closely related languages be measured. These mutually intelligible languages will make you do a double take. Mutual intelligibility between west and south slavic languages. Mutual intelligibility in slavic language specific. Mutual intelligibility of languages in the slavic family. But again, this is a separate discussion from mutual intelligibility. Mutual intelligibility in the slavic language area 66 3. It is also an officially recognized minority language in serbia, montenegro, north macedonia and kosovo. For example, could a russian and a bulgarian understand each other just talking their native languages. Pdf mutual intelligibility of languages in the slavic family robert.
Either there are no reliable sources on mutual intelligibility or the people working on this article have no way of accessing them. To what extent are different slavic languages mutually. In fact, uygur probably differs less from turkish than some dialects within germany and italy,for example. Note how close both czech and slovak are to polish and slovenian. The question then becomes which features and which adaptation procedures one needs to consider. Pdf mutual intelligibility between west and south slavic. In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which. Mutual intelligibility among the slavic languages beyond. Factors explaining intelligibility a model of intelligibility. Orthography in language modeling of mutual intelligibility.
Bosnian, croatian and serbian shtokvakian of course can understand each other. Are serbian and russian mutually intelligible languages. How mutually intelligible are the various slavic languages. Ussr divided the central asian turkic speech communities into separate languages. Pdf mutual intelligibility between west and south slavic languages. During the protobaltoslavic period a number of exclusive isoglosses in phonology, morphology, lexis, and syntax developed, which makes slavic and baltic the closest related of all the. Serbs speak much faster than russians, and an average russian wouldnt understand a word of serbian when they speak, because its just too fast, ev. Mutual intelligibility of languages in theslavic family. Crc 1102 project c4 models for mutual intelligibility march, 2015 1416. We therefore expect crosslanguage intelligibility between slovene and croatian to be asymmetric and in favour of serbiancroatian. Mutual intelligibility chart for the slavic languages. Pdf in the present study we tested the level of mutual intelligibility.
Bulgarian and macedonian surely appear to be separate languages, as far apart as polish and slovak. Having a large body of recognizable vocabulary is a necessary condition for mutual intelligibility, but it is nowhere near sufficient. The modern south slavic languages form a continuum of a series of mutually intelligible dialects. Nadia is helping me test polish bulgarian mutual intelligibility. Czech, slovak, polish, croatian, slovenian and bulgarian on the level of lexicon, orthography. Bulgarian and macedonian are mutually intelligible between 80% and 90%, as are czech and slovak. Its important to note that mutual intelligibility is highly subjective. Dialects, that is, can be regarded as subdivisions of a particular language. Hes the site administrator and i am waiting for him to give me some site tools i. Between sources, you might find some claiming that two languages are mutually intelligible, while other sources claim those same languages arent. Mutual intelligibility wikimili, the best wikipedia reader.
Russian has a quite high degree of intelligibility with bulgarian, possibly on the order of 75%. Cannot measure mutual intelligibility many languages fail the test of mutual intelligibility standard languages and governments impact what is a language and what is a dialect. Macedonian sounds also pretty mutually intelligible with serbian to me. 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. If i were to decide, i would limit the article to an explanation of the term mutual intelligibility, give one or two examples and simply delete all the rest of it. 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. Prior to the codification of standard macedonian, macedonian dialects were described by linguists as being either dialects of bulgarian or serbian. University of groningen mutual intelligibility in the slavic. Mutual intelligibility of slavic languages yahoo answers. Orthographic and morphological correspondences between. In the present study we tested the level of mutual intelligibility.
Mutual intelligibility and surprisal in slavic intercomprehension. The whole issue concerning mutual intelligibility between serbian and bulgarian revolves around the pronounciation. Note also how close serbian is to slovenian and macedonian. Mutual intelligibility means two people can understand each other when speaking. In a cloze test both texts and individual words are. If written down there can be some mutual intellegibility, spoken hardly any. Bosnian is one of three such varieties considered official languages of bosnia and herzegovina, along with croatian and serbian, and also an officially recognized minority or regional language in serbia, montenegro, and the republic. Pdf mutual intelligibility of languages in the slavic.
Not sure about other languages, but russian and ukranian are very mutually intelligible. Within this research program, a largescale webbased intelligibility test is performed, including cloze tests and word translation tasks. Torlakian considered a subdialect of serbian old shtokavian by some has a significant level of mutual intelligibility with macedonian and bulgarian. English czech polish bulgarian russian preliminary results. After the breakup of yugoslavia, serbocroatian, defined as the common language of serbs, croats, bosniaks and montenegrins, officially split into three mutually intelligible languages serbian, croatian and bosnian. Serbian is a tonal language, plus the accent on the syllables is fixed especially in 2 slb words which makes it a very predictable language. Dialectology, obviously, is the study of dialect and dialects. If you become fluent in serbian, than youll also be fluent in croatian and vice versa.
In answering this question, i will honour a soviet tradition that i always hated starting a book, an article, a lecture, whatever, with a citation from marx or engels. Last voicesson sesler robert lindsay mutual intelligibility of l. Serbian cpc je, srpski jezik belongs to the south slavic group of the slavic branch of the indoeuropean language family. Measuring crosslinguistic intelligibility in the germanic, romance. But the reason for that maybe cause in southeastern serbia we speak the prizrentimok dialect which is kinda similar to macedonian, but also bulgarian. In this video we are testing polish serbian mutual intelligibility. Mutual intelligibility between closely related languages in europe pdf.
Instead of similarity, we could also use the inverse concept of distance, in which case, the greater the distance between two languages, the smaller their degree of mutual intelligibility. The ukranian language shares some vocabulary with the languages of the neighboring slavic nations, most notably with polish, slovak in the west and belarusan, russian in the north and the east. 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. Slavic language mutual intelligibility best, people. There are conflicting reports about the mutual intelligibility of turkic languages, but still, they differ much less among each other than say,the germanic or romance languages.
416 1022 359 1216 1060 511 216 1513 1469 1008 77 1228 771 133 1153 422 817 1334 956 1066 287 1156 145 1365 405 931 395 812 1023 117 169