How intelligible are Slovenian and Russian to each other?
Posted by sjedinjenoStanje@reddit | AskBalkans | View on Reddit | 114 comments
Posted by sjedinjenoStanje@reddit | AskBalkans | View on Reddit | 114 comments
CrnaGoraBih@reddit
I love Slovenia but dislike Melania and her current country America.
left2die@reddit
Slovenian is barely intelligible with itself.
There are some usual Slavic vocabulary similarities. We share some words for certain foods, plants and animals, but that's about it.
Snirion@reddit
Well that amounts to 1/4 of vocabulary.
scp_euclid_object@reddit
This table is bad. As a Ukrainian I know that Belarusian language in fact closer to Polish than Ukrainian. Also similarity of Ukrainian and russian is too high. That is the source of it? What those percentage means? Vocabulary similarities? Then its wrong.
wowoweewow87@reddit
Ofc its bad it also says Macedonian and Bulgarian 95% similarity. I met some Bulgarian colleagues last week for the first time and we could only understand each other for the most basic things, we had to switch to English for the rest of the convo. I would say 70% similar, 95% is an overstatement.
Both_Storm_4997@reddit
So the Ukrainian is similar to Polish at the rate 70% and at the same time to Russian at 70%, but Polish and Russian rate is 20%. Something is wrong with this math
Malgus1997@reddit
Most Belarusians I know are more capable of understanding Ukrainian (and vice versa) than russians are either. I don’t believe this is that accurate. And if Slovak and Czech are the basis for 95%, then not a single East Slavic language should be in the 80s for each other, 70s is the highest they can reasonably be with that measure.
Pit-trout@reddit
What’s the source for this, and what do the percentages actually mean?
asdf152@reddit
Hmm, similarity between Bulgarian and Serbian is 75 percent, why then I have a hard time to understand somebody speaking in Serbian?
Snirion@reddit
Sometimes more similarity works against ineligiblity. A lot of 'false friends' makes understanding even worse.
StrudlEnjoyer@reddit
How the hell is Bulgarian more similar to Slovene than Serbian/Croatian?
Unhappy-Ad-7705@reddit
Balkan patois .. I speak Bulgarian in Slovenia and Slovakia and people understand me
StrudlEnjoyer@reddit
But that doesn't explain how it's marked as more similar to Slovene than Croatian. Also interesting how you were understood in Slovenia, I listened to a couple Macedonian conversations a couple times and understood only a few words, it was really hard to pick up where a word begins and ends, harder than in Slovak for example. But to be fair, I only know a little Croatian, probably less than the average Slovene, so I can't really help myself with the knowledge of their vocabulary which is more similar to Bulgarian/Macedonian.
ZeddPMImNot@reddit
Interestingly enough my husband says sometimes more similarity is worse. He speaks Russian, but listens to a lot of Ukrainian news on the war and says it breaks his brain because of the differences. Vs when he hears a word in polish he says oh neat that word is similar enough that I know it means this in Russian but because it is so different I guess it doesn’t freak his brain out. I always thought it was interesting.
Oddly enough he loves to point out the similarities between Russian and French due to the French royal courts influence on the Russian royal court in the past.
WavingShark@reddit
75% Serbian and Bulgarian? And 60% Serbian and Slovenian?
Snirion@reddit
More or less. But you would surprised how unintelligible that is.
velesevvv@reddit
I thought i learned Slovenian because I could talk with people in Ljubljana. Some people from Ptuj tried talking to me and I had an aneurysm
ernestbonanza@reddit
I was dead drunk in a bar in İstanbul, and I started to have a conversation with some Slovenians in English with Russian accent. It just happened naturally.
Arktinus@reddit
Wait till you talk to someone from Murska Sobota. 😅
cikeZ00@reddit
Tell me about it 😭
sergejdeblue@reddit
You would know more than me. I am Macedonian, but I lived in Ljubljana for a few years and took courses in Slovenian (Slovene?). Since I do know Serbo-Croatian and, at the same time, Bulgarian is close to Macedonian, I’d say that Slovenian is the most similar to Russian (in the Balkans) except the alphabet. It seems to be that this is due to the grammatical cases. One would think that Serbo-Croatian should be then closer, but it seems to me Slovenian has more similar vocabulary as well. Bulgarian and Macedonian don’t have cases, so they are the furthest away linguistically. I might be wrong though.
ConsciousFractals@reddit
Given that Old Church Slavonic, which was sometimes called old Bulgarian, had cases, I’m surprised that Bulgarian and Macedonian don’t. An interesting rabbit hole for me to go down.
Jedopan@reddit
Is Slovenian similar to Slovakian?
left2die@reddit
Slovakian is probably the closest non-South Slavic language, yes.
But then again, Slovakian is kind of close to everyone due to their geographic centrality.
Jedopan@reddit
Well, then Slovenian is not intelligible with Russian at all. I can understand Czech, Slovakian, Ukrainian or even Serbian. But Russian? Naaaa. They have a lot of their own vocabulary and even if words are the same they have completely different meanings (at least that's the case between Polish and Russian). I mean come on! They call pies собака
Stefanthro@reddit
I would have thought Bulgarian would be due to the influence of old Church Slavonic on Russian. Interesting perspective
KonstantinVeliki@reddit
To me it just sounds like how small kids talk in Serbo-Croatian.
K-Hunter-@reddit
Sounds enough to have a good time to be honest
PomegranateOk2600@reddit
I mean, you can't talk too much when your mouth is full
BalkanViking007@reddit
Cat = çáțüǧọũłü in türǩïę?
TranslatorLivid685@reddit
Actually as a Russian I can understand like 7 out of 10 words when reading Slovenian.
Many words are very similar and you easily can gues it even if it's a bit different. Unfamiliar words are easy to gues within the whole context.
But everything becomes much more complicated when you do not read, but hear a lively and fast speech.
The brain often does not have time to process the flow of sounds:)
CmdrJemison@reddit
Despite Serbia most Balkan countries don't side with Putin.
deepeddit@reddit
Nek' si zakačio srbe. Ko jebe temu.
Majestic_Bus_6996@reddit
Maybe she knows Russian ? It's not that rare of a language
Opp0site-Researcher@reddit
Well Russian was in large part subject as foreign language in former Yugoslavia.
hudabuba@reddit
Yugoslavia was not one the best of terms with USSR after the 2nd World War, so Russian was never widely taught in Slovenia. My parents were never taught the language, I wasn't either.
Unhappy-Ad-7705@reddit
in large part ?
No
Ha55aN1337@reddit
70 years ago… not when she went to school. Noone speaks Russian in Slovenia.
Opp0site-Researcher@reddit
Well I was referring to the 1970s and 80s still at the time Russian as subject was as common if not more common than English or French, not 1950s?
Arktinus@reddit
My parents were born in the 70s and they didn't have Russian in school. Not even my grandma who was born in the 50s. They had English and Serbo-Croatian.
A linguist professor did, though, I think, but she was 83 when she died a few years ago.
Ha55aN1337@reddit
Not in Slovenia, no. People learned serbo-croatian, english, german, italian, … bit we really do not have many russian speakers. Not at her age.
RomanMSlo@reddit
Russian is taught in a few Slovenian gymnasia as a third language, but those are exceptions to the rule. I'm pretty sure that Mrs. Trump does not speak Russian.
Ha55aN1337@reddit
She didn’t even bother to learn the second language… the one they speak in the country where she is the first lady. Like… she is married to a president of a country that uses a language she can barely speak… I so ashamed she is from here, honestly.
LicksHousePlants@reddit
Her English is fine.
Ha55aN1337@reddit
For a person living in Sevnica, yes. For the wife of the American president, living in the US for 30 years… horrible.
LicksHousePlants@reddit
I’m American, English is my native Language. I understand every word she says just fine. I don’t think when she Married Trump 20 years ago she predicted she’d be First Lady one day.
Ha55aN1337@reddit
It’s one thing to understand her, it’s another to give the country you live in enough respect to learn it better than she did. Kids in Slovenia sprak better than her at 10-12.
dcell1974@reddit
I'm American, English is my native language. Her English is terrible for someone who has been in the country for 20 years and came here relatively young. Honestly, I don't why they want to come here if they refuse to assimilate.
LicksHousePlants@reddit
Your sarcasm isn’t very subtle my friend.
mihecz@reddit
Maybe in some obscure schools but definately not in large part.
Opp0site-Researcher@reddit
As someone who started elementary in 1990. I remember that Russian classes were as large as French one.
mihecz@reddit
In that case "former Yugoslavia" should be replaced with "Serbia".
Opp0site-Researcher@reddit
Well no, maybe SR Serbia only, before communism I suppose Franch was prevalent and nowadays English and German are.
Denturart@reddit
You seem to forget that Yugoslavia was very federalised. Each republic was in charge of it's own school system. Slovenian school system was very different from the Serbian one.
left2die@reddit
Definitely not in large part. It's way behind English, German and even Italian.
My grandpa was thought Russian in school, but then Tito and Stalin decided they didn't like each other anymore and it stopped being thought.
Opp0site-Researcher@reddit
Ok wasn't aware of this but still is such a waist IMO. As I learned Russian and French before English and Russian was particularly useful at Faculty for reading maths scientific papers... As useful as English when it comes to statistics and analytics if you ask me.
Denturart@reddit
Maybe it was prevalent in Serbia. Because in Slovenia I don't know anyone (from my relatives or their friends) born after 1940 who had Russian in elementary or high school. Everyone was thought some Serbo-Croatian in elementary school and then english/german/french in highschool.
Hephaestus-Gossage@reddit
Yes, and she got a genius visa into the US for her exceptional talents, including speaking 11 languages fluently, so it's highly likely her Russian is excellent. Or maybe she just gives amazing head. I don't know.
toros_of_tmutarakan@reddit
You can dislike Donald Trump without pouring a misogynist bucket of crap on his wife. She actually worked someplace not owned by her family unlike him and his.
He is not the one who gave her that visa initially, in fact it would have been under Clinton ot W adminustratjons, at the latest..USA thought modelling was important enough.
Stealthfighter21@reddit
Because interpreters don't exist or what?
sjedinjenoStanje@reddit (OP)
I guess it depends on what you take "engage with somebody directly" to mean.
WolandWasHere@reddit
Or maybe putin would have to learn Slovenian
S-onceto@reddit
Well, that would still count as directly.
HelloThereItsMeAndMe@reddit
Can't he also speak English?
DickPillSoupKitchen@reddit
Can she?
PomegranateOk2600@reddit
Probably Putin doesn't like Threesomes
Jazzlike-Egg-1774@reddit
Sounds like Putin found a new way to stall the US in its weak attempts to make him end the war in Ukraine.
Narrow-Meringue3953@reddit
Would
scuberl@reddit
Donnie is a pure Genius!
Austerlitz2310@reddit
Reading other slavic languages is even easier to understand. Except Polish... Absolutely mind goes blank on Polish
Staralfur_95@reddit
I'm Polish and until Polish was the only Slavic language I knew, I had problems understanding other Slavs beyond the obvious basics. When I learnt Czech, I immediately started to understand everyone. I recently came back from Croatia and was able to understand 90% of written Croatian for a week and quite a lot from spoken.
Polish is just so different it doesn't really help to unlock other Slavs, it's like a single location DLC.
bad_russian_girl@reddit
I think the more Slavic languages you learn , it becomes easier to understand others.
sjedinjenoStanje@reddit (OP)
It's their spelling (I speak Polish). Pretty much everything that gets a tiny-v (č, š, ř) in other Slavic languages is just followed by a Z in Polish (cz, sz, rz); pronunciation is either identical or very close.
Useless_or_inept@reddit
Hopefully this will help?
Emirovskii@reddit
Wtf is ř
sjedinjenoStanje@reddit (OP)
In Czech it's pronounced like R and Ž mixed together (nearly impossible for non-Czechs to pronounce correctly). The equivalent in Croatian is kind of like RJ/RIJ
RZ in Polish is pronounced like Ž (no R whatsoever in the pronunciation).
River: řeka (Czech), rzeka (Polish, sounds like žeka), rijeka (Croatian), etc.
Austerlitz2310@reddit
Wait, so how does one pronounce a regular r?
sjedinjenoStanje@reddit (OP)
I think the standard trilled Slavic R, like in ruka (I'm assuming pronounced the same in Czech as in Croatian).
kouyehwos@reddit
Yes, Polish „r” can be trilled although 90+% of the time it’s just a tap (not that most people would notice the difference).
A number of Polish dialects still preserved rz (=ř) even 50 years ago, and it may still exist in a couple obscure villages but definitely very rare.
Also it seems Poles in Ukraine sometimes merged rz -> rż instead of the Standard Polish rz -> ż.
Emirovskii@reddit
Sounds very unusual indeed. I speak Bosnian, and we definitely have many weird letters like ć, č, đ, dž, etc, but rž seems on another level 😄
sjedinjenoStanje@reddit (OP)
I've been told by Czechs that not even all of them can pronounce it correctly 😂
Arktinus@reddit
Polish might seem dauting at first, but reading it is rather easy once you know which digraphs form which sounds, just like in German or French, all of which are consistent in their orthography, unlike English.
GayReforestation@reddit
Putin sliding into Melanias DMs?
Atvishees@reddit
It's like English and Dutch. So, not very.
Agitated_Custard7395@reddit
Putin speaks English, he can probably write in English too, or even have someone else write in whatever languages
Open-Dot1750@reddit
I think trump is 2 much of a retard (also putin is too, fuck them both), but maybe melania isnt so she can do something.
sjedinjenoStanje@reddit (OP)
Supposedly both speak German, too.
tipoftheiceberg1234@reddit
Distant, but not as distant as other pairs of Slavic languages. Depending on the context and speed of the speaker, a Slovenian could get up to 30-40% of what a Russian speaker was saying on a good day.
More distant pairs include:
Russian and Polish
Polish and Bulgarian
Those two pairs understand each other even less than Slovenian and Russian.
Written language combined with oral language can boost intelligibility significantly
Ha55aN1337@reddit
Not at all, really. Probably like english and german. Some words will be similar, but not really.
tipoftheiceberg1234@reddit
No not as distant as English and German at all. Portuguese and Romanian maybe or Dutch and Swiss German
7elevenses@reddit
More similar than English and German. Perhaps like Spanish and Romanian.
General_Ad9178@reddit
Slovenian are more German then Russian
Final-Nail376@reddit
The country looks like a smaller Austria. Smaller hills and very tidy looking. It's like a point where slavic tribes meets the germanic ones and they forged a sexy alliance.
reriser@reddit
According to Pootin, they’re probably the same language
Though granted, I do understand most at least
sjedinjenoStanje@reddit (OP)
All Slavs must unite under Mother Russia!
MrDDD11@reddit
At the rate Putin is going all Slavs will unite against Mother Russia. Then we will end up with Slavia and both are going to claim they are the only legitimate Panslavic state.
Bro_said@reddit
How about we unite all Slavs but under the “New” Turkish Empire 👉👈🥹
Maybe then I could visit Schengen visa free?
PoliticalWaxwing@reddit
It's not the 19th hundreds anymore.
AogamiBunka@reddit
Language is all the same when you're sucking cock.
SabziZindagi@reddit
She's trying to quit her job as Trump's FSB handler
zoranss7512@reddit
I bet they understand each other perfectly, sexual attraction doesn't need words.
sjedinjenoStanje@reddit (OP)
I take it he likes tall women lol
GlitteringLocality@reddit
As a Slovenian who lived in Russia, very little. If I had not been with a native speaker I would probably never got out. Hahahaa.
Illustrious_Bed2937@reddit
She very likely learned Russian in school. Russian, French and English were the three languages taught in Yugoslavian schools
Some-Cartographer398@reddit
She is couple of years older then me and in Slovenia, which was then part of Yugoslavia we were thought English, German or Italian if you were living near the border. Other languages were only thought in University, depending what were you studying.
1000Zasto1000Zato@reddit
All Slavic languages are very similar to each other. We have a universal language called Interslavic which is 90% understandable among all Slavs
rasnac@reddit
Sooo, Putin slipped into Melanias DMs?
shogunlazo@reddit
As Romanian and french
bunaciunea_lumii@reddit
Just engage with him Melania. You'll then have engaged with 2 of the most powerful men of the planet. Truly an achievement and I am sure none of the two would say no to polygamy.
SpartanKing76@reddit
Putin is totally fluent in English and German.
medved76@reddit
lol hardly at all
chunek@reddit
Not very intelligible, to the point where when listening to it, it is hard to notice where a word begins or ends. Reading is much easier, some words can be understood and sometimes the rest can be deciphered if the context is clear. But it has to be in latin script.
PreWiBa@reddit
I can only speak for Bosnian, but i think that, apart from the knowledge of cyrillic, Slovenian is similar.
It's enough to understand the gist of a written document (if you know cyrillic), but not to really communicate properly.
bosquelero@reddit
I can't understand russian. Just cyka blyat