Czech, slovak and polish are related both genetically and typologically they are. West slavic mutual intelligibility skippy wed may 14, 2008 9. Jan 20, 2019 yes, polish is closer to ukrainian and belorussian than the distance between czech and ukrainianbelorussians. Orthography in language modeling of mutual intelligibility. Mutual intelligibility and surprisal in slavic intercomprehension incomslav project c4 investigates the relation between information density, encoding density and grammaticalisation in a crosslinguistic perspective, focusing on intercomprehension within the family of slavic languages. Mutual intelligibility between slavic languages happier.
Like other slavic languages, czech is a fusional language with a rich system of morphology and relatively flexible word order. Swedish danish mutual comprehension 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100. If a language is an official language in more than one country, we only included the variety from the country with the largest number of speakers. 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. Reading polish with czech eyes or how russian can a. Neither of us studied each others languages before. University of groningen mutual intelligibility in the slavic. Is polish more similar vocabulary, sound to the east. These mutually intelligible languages will make you do a double take. There are more false friends in polish and czech langauge. English czech polish bulgarian russian preliminary results. The strength of foreign accent in czech english under adverse listening conditions. They are thought to descend from a protolanguage called protoslavic, spoken during the early middle ages, which in turn is thought to have descended from the earlier protobaltoslavic language, linking the slavic languages to. Jun 03, 2009 the slovak language has been influenced by many languages, including czech, polish, and german.
Most likely we can capture up to 12 of their vocabulary and rethink the rest to understand the meaning of the speech. Degree of mutual intelligibility between indoaryan. Czech and polish have some intelligibility, but its hard to say how much possibly on the order of 40%. Pdf mutual intelligibility between west and south slavic. Czech is closely related to slovak, to the point of mutual intelligibility to a very high. This is a polish and czech lesson based on slavic languages mutual intelligibility phenomena. Its important to note that mutual intelligibility is highly subjective.
The intelligibility of polish and russian is very low, maybe on the order of 510%. Polish and sorbian also differ quite considerably from czech and slovak in upper registers, but nontechnical and lower register speech is readily intelligible. May 14, 2008 west slavic mutual intelligibility skippy wed may 14, 2008 9. Mutual intelligibility between west and south slavic languages8 abstract. The levenshtein distance between two languages or dialects is often used as a yardstick against which empirical research can be measured, using tools to check. Cieszyn silesian is a transitional dialect, located roughly at the midpoint of a dialect continuum connecting the czech, slovak and polish languages. In this polish czech conversation, we compare polish and czech vocabulary related to pets. These mutually intelligible languages will make you do a. Yes, polish is closer to ukrainian and belorussian than the distance between czech and ukrainianbelorussians. Mutual intelligibility wikipedia republished wiki 2. This thesis explores mutual intelligibility in the slavic language area how to measure it, how to predict it and how to increase it. Some mutual intelligibility occurs with spoken rusyn, ukrainian, and even russian in this order, although their orthographies are based on the cyrillic script. Mutual intelligibility among the slavic languages beyond.
Feb 06, 2017 from what i have heard anecdotally, not as mutually intelligible as slovak and polish. Polish minority in the czech republic wikimili, the free. I am a casual student of czech with no fluency whatever, but i find that my very small vocabulary and grammar knowledge is almost as useful in comprehending every western and. Corpora and quantitative data in slavic languages pdf. Are slovak, czech, and polish all mutually intelligible. Mutual intelligibility wikimili, the best wikipedia reader. Spoken by over 10 million people, it serves as the official language of the czech republic. I would honestly say they are dialects of the same language. Richard is a czech youtuber and hes helping me with. These mutually intelligible languages will make you do a double take its important to note that mutual intelligibility is highly subjective. If two languages, a and b, are mutually intelligible and are closely historically related, linguists say that a and b are dialects, a is a dialect of b, or b is a dialect of a all of these statements are equivalent. It is sometimes used as an important criterion for distinguishing languages from dialects, although sociolinguistic factors are often also used. Sep 18, 2015 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.
Spoken by approximately 5 million people as a native language, it serves as the official language of slovakia and one of the 24 official languages of the european union slovak is closely related to czech, to the point of mutual intelligibility to a very high degree. Orthographic and morphological correspondences between. We are testing here to what extent polish and slovak are. To what extent are the different branches of the slavic. Russian eastslavic is generally perceived to be closer to polish than to czech, while each of them is quite distant from bulgarian southslavic. Since ive been back in the us, i have had only two opportunities to ever use czech, whereas polish or russian is easy to find speakers of here. Hes the site administrator and i am waiting for him to give me some site tools i need to help administer the site. Pdf modeling mutual intelligibility between slavic. Degree of mutual intelligibility between indoaryan languages. Czech is nearly as hard as polish and is probably not worth your time and effort. To what extent are polish, czech and slovak languages.
Pdf mutual intelligibility of languages in the slavic. The results show that in most cases, a division between west and south slavic languages does exist and that west. Mutual intelligibility and surprisal in slavic intercomprehension incomslav project c4 investigates the relation between information density, encoding density and grammaticalisation in a crosslinguistic perspective, focusing on intercomprehension within the family of. Mutual intelligibility between closely related languages similarities to. How mutually intelligible are the various slavic languages. As indicated, slovenian and polish are from different subgroups of slavic languages south slavic and west slavic respectively. Mutual intelligibility in the slavic language area. For the most part mutual intelligibility is highest between indoaryan languages that are of the same branch, that is, descended from the same ancient vernacular. Croatian slovene bulgarian czech slovak polish participantsnativelanguage croatian 74. Czech and polish both westslavic appear to be very close languages. It is expected to be intelligible to speakers of these languages. The mutual intelligibility of slavic languages as a source.
In contrast, as to the mutual intelligibility of contentfunction words and various styles of material, di. In this chapter we tested the level of mutual intelligibility between three west slavic czech, slovak and polish and three south slavic languages croatian,slovene and bulgarian. Tania avgustinova, dietrich klakow, and roland marti. The mutual intelligibility of l2 speech volume 28 issue 1 murray j. University of groningen mutual intelligibility in the. This study reports on the results of a listeningtask experiment concerning the intelligibility of czech, polish and slovak to students of the sorbianlanguage secondary school in bautzenbudysin, germany. In this video we im testing how much czech can i understand as a polish speaker. Apr 06, 2019 mutual intelligibility among the slavic languages. The results show that in most cases, a division between west and south slavic languages.
The mutual intelligibility of l2 speech studies in second. I met a bosnian woman last week and talked to her about serbocroatian, she said she actually understands even czech and slovak much better than slovenian. Mutual intelligibility between west and south slavic. Some linguists use mutual intelligibility as a primary criterion for determining whether two speech varieties represent the same or different languages.
It is commonly believed that all slavic languages are fully mutually intelligible, which implies that they are close. Translation for mutual in the free englishpolish dictionary and many other polish translations. As such, spoken danish and swedish normally have low mutual intelligibility, but swedes in the oresund region including malmo and helsingborg, across a strait from the danish capital copenhagen, understand danish somewhat better, largely due to. 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. Czech is closely related to slovak, to the point of mutual intelligibility to a very high degree. As a czech just having to return from poland vacation, these two languages are not mutually understandable. In this paper, we investigate mutual intelligibility of two selected pairs of slavic languages czech and polish, both using the latin alphabet.
Jason needs to get off his lazy ass and help me with the site. The slovak language has been influenced by many languages, including czech, polish, and german. I am a pole, i have never learnt the other 2 languages in a formal way, but over the years i have had much exposure to them and i can communicate at lea. As such they are not mutually intelligible actually spoken czech and polish are not very mutually intelligible, yet they are in the same group. Croatian slovene bulgarian czech slovak polish participantsnativelanguage croatian 43. Czechpolish hansen 1987 spanish portuguese coseriu 1988, jensen 1989, zeevaert2002. The mutual intelligibility of l2 speech studies in. You can download the pdf with all the slavic mutual. Accounting for mutual intelligibility of lexis availability of lexical alternatives leads to asymmetric intelligibility. This advantage is exposurerelated and would be completely erased by one evenings worth of conversation, i should think. 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. Mutual intelligibility between closely related languages. They are thought to descend from a protolanguage called protoslavic, spoken during the early middle ages, which in turn is thought to have descended from the earlier protobaltoslavic language, linking the slavic languages to the baltic. These two languages are related, but i cannot speak czech to polish and expect that he will understand me.
The analysis focuses on the question of whether the knowledge of sorbian enables the comprehension of other slavic. Most dialects of czech and slovak are mutually intelligible. Mutual intelligibility between closely related languages in. In contrast, as to the mutual intelligibility of contentfunction words and various. Polish czech conversation our pets slavic languages. Bulgarian and russian, both using the cyrillic alphabet by establishing orthographic correlates, taking into consideration historically.
In the prospective thesis, we seek to quantitatively model the mutual intelligibility between the language pairs bulgarianrussian and czechpolish at the orthographic as well as phonological level. The slavic languages, also known as the slavonic languages, are indoeuropean languages primarily spoken by the slavic peoples or their descendants. Generally, the hindustani languages have a higher degree of mutual intelligibility with punjabi, gujarati, sindhi, and the rajasthani languages like marwari than the other ia. Polish forum is to support both current and new common initiatives within the civil societies of both countries. Between sources, you might find some claiming that two languages are mutually intelligible, while other sources claim those same languages arent. Northern germanic languages spoken in scandinavia form a dialect continuum where two furthermost dialects have almost no mutual intelligibility. Mar 01, 2018 in the prospective thesis, we seek to quantitatively model the mutual intelligibility between the language pairs bulgarianrussian and czech polish at the orthographic as well as phonological level. The mutual intelligibility with other dialects of polish is generally higher.
Jul 23, 2009 as a czech just having to return from poland vacation, these two languages are not mutually understandable. Orthographic and morphological correspondences between related slavic languages as a base for modeling of mutual intelligibility andrea fischer, klara jagrova, irina stenger, tania avgustinova, dietrich klakow, and roland marti saarland university, collaborative research center sfb 1102. Mutual intelligibility of languages in the slavic family. Even though poland borders both czechia and slovakia, i have heard that poles and slovaks, on average, get along better linguistically than poles and czechs. May 28, 2014 mutual intelligibility hovers at around the 90% mark both ways, with a very slight advantage held by the slovaks in understanding czech. I find the poles are also more easygoing and friendly, and the czechs tend to be a bit snobbish and standoffish. In this video you can listen to a bilingual conversation in polish and slovak. The two varieties have a long history of interaction and mutual influence well before the creation of czechoslovakia in. Languages of the world department of computer science. Dec 10, 2016 in this video you can listen to a bilingual conversation in polish and slovak. But we did not test the mutual intelligibility between, for example, spanish and czech or between portuguese and polish. Modeling mutual intelligibility between slavic languages pis. Mutual intelligibility between west and south slavic languages. Czech, historically also bohemian, is a west slavic language of the czechslovak group.
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