Mutual Intelligibility of Slavic Languages

[Methmatician]

I can speak if I spend a bit of time there (let's say after 2 weeks), but I'm scared because of the accent.

What do you mean by that? Are you afraid that you'll have an accent when speaking Serbo-Croatian?

[cocoNN]

What do you mean by that? Are you afraid that you'll have an accent when speaking Serbo-Croatian?

In my opinion Serbo-Croatian language is more flowy language and even if some words are almost the same, the pronunciation is different. So I would say Slovenian is closer to West Slavic languages when it comes to pronunciation.

[TheGoldenSon]

I can understand Bulgarian and Serbo-Croatian quite easily, but find Slovenian and East and West Slav languages difficult to understand.

Not even Slovenes understand Slovenian language, they just make up as they go.

[Rugevit]

I can understand east Slavic languages and Polish. I maybe able to understand other Slavic languages if I am exposed to them. Some people were telling about difficulty understanding Slovenian. I can understand some written Slovenian.

[Rugevit]

New paper on lexicostatistical analysis of Slavic and Baltic languages published few days ago. http://journals.plos.org/plosone/art...e.0135820.s008

Slovenian is an interesting case. Authors could not create a model to fit Slovenian among south Slavic languages using different algorithms. Slovenian was coming among west Slavic languages. Although, it was quite different to west Slavic languages.

This what the author wrote

3.2. The case of the Slovenian language

Modern Slovenian belongs to the South Slavic clade according to the traditional classification of Slavic languages (Sussex, Cubberley, 2006). However, significant linguistic similarities between Slovenian and West Slavic lects have been observed earlier in number of studies.
See, for example, on specific ties between Slovenian and West Slavic (e.g., Slovak) or even on support of the mixed South/West origin of Slovenian, e.g., Bezlaj, 2003, Sobolev, 2000, Bernstein, 1961, Stieber, 1972, Lekov, 1958. 19
Likewise, the Slovenian (Ljubljana koine and literary Slovenian) wordlist, available in our study (see sources below), possesses a substantial number of both South Slavic and West Slavic lexical matches (cf. similar observations in Novotná and Blažek, 2007: 195). Such a mix introduces enough incompatible characters into the input matrix to make the calculation of robust trees impossible. Due to this reason we have deliberately excluded Modern Slovenian from the current analysis. We suggest that one of the possible scenarios is that Slovenian is historically a West Slavic language being influenced by neighboring Serbo-Croatian during the last millennium. To demonstrate specific ties between Slovenian and South Slavic, on the one hand, and West Slavic, on the other, we calculated a set of NeighborNet phylogenetic networks (Bryant, Moulton, 2004; Makarenkov et al. 2006: 89–90) of Balto-Slavic languages with the use of SplitsTree4 software from the binary matrix described above; the non-parametric bootstrap test was performed with 10 000 pseudoreplicates in each case. Two additional taxa were introduced into the original dataset: Slovenian and Modern Demotic Greek, the latter as an outgroup
for the Germanic-Balto-Slavic clade.

• Slovenian Ljubljana (Ljubljana koine): compiled by A. Kassian. Sources: Field records by K. Ogrinc, summer 2014.
• Modern Demotic Greek (Athens koine). Sources: Evdokimova, A., Kassian, A. 2014. Annotated Swadesh wordlists for Modern Demotic Greek, based on field records of 2006. In: G. Starostin (ed.). The Global Lexicostatistical Database. Moscow/Santa Fe: Center for Comparative Studies at the Russian State University for the Humanities; Santa Fe Institute. Available: http://starling.rinet.ru/new100

This is how Slovenian was paired.

[Rugevit]

Slovenian is an interesting case. Authors could not create a model to fit Slovenian among south Slavic languages using different algorithms. Slovenian was coming among west Slavic languages. Although, it was quite different to west Slavic languages.

Further commentary on Slovenian language from this paper


Three networks without Slovenian (Fig. H–J in S2 File) reveal the same major clades of Balto-Slavic languages as phylogenetic trees do (Fig. B–G in S2 File) irrespective the outgroup used. Incorporation of Slovenian into network analysis reveals following: Slovenian appears to be an independent branch of Slavic languages which is nearly equally close to West and South Slavic, but distant from East Slavic (Fig. K–M in S2 File), thus supporting the putative mixed nature of Modern Slovenian. Further lexicostatistical investigation of Slovenian dialects, such as in progress in the GLD project, are needed to elucidate the place of Slovenian among Slavic languages.

[black hole]

East Slavic languages, and obviously Polish language as well.. Serbo-Croatian is also easy to understand. Bulgarian is grammatically not the closest to us, except the words

[Jana]

New paper on lexicostatistical analysis of Slavic and Baltic languages published few days ago. http://journals.plos.org/plosone/art...e.0135820.s008

Slovenian is an interesting case. Authors could not create a model to fit Slovenian among south Slavic languages using different algorithms. Slovenian was coming among west Slavic languages. Although, it was quite different to west Slavic languages.

This what the author wrote





This is how Slovenian was paired.

To further complicate it, Slovanian is closest to Kajkavian Croatian (spoken in the northwest fo the country) which is difficult to understand for standard Croatian speaker.

[katniss]

To further complicate it, Slovanian is closest to Kajkavian Croatian (spoken in the northwest fo the country) which is difficult to understand for standard Croatian speaker.

Kajkavian is difficult to understand for Albanian speakers like you are.

[Rugevit]

Can someone post some text in Kajkavian?