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Ask-A-Linguist - Message details
Subject: Similarities Between Russian and Western Slavic Languages
Question:
My wife and I both speak Russian and are moving to The Czech Republic in September to teach English. My wife will apply for her PhD in Slavic languages in the coming years and needs a second Slavic language in order to do so. My questions are as follows:

1. How close is Russian to Czech i.e. does knowing Russian provide a significant advantage in the learning process?

2. How close are Czech and Polish? IF one knows Czech and Russian, can one grasp Polish with relative ease?

3. How close are Croatian and Czech? If one knows Czech and Russian, can one pick up Croatian with relative ease?

Thank you very much for your time in answering my questions.

Sincerely,
Matthew Dame

Reply:
Zdravo Matthew, Polish I know nothing, well, next to nothing, about so I'll add very little about it to Professor Fielelholtz' comments. His comments about "levelling" are interesting and I think pretty close -- I hadnt thought of Slavic languages in that way before. I think Bulgarian might be even more "levelled" than Serbocroatian (about which see below.). I'll add a few comments about particular kinds of things to watch for. 1. The West Slavic languages have, all of them I think, developed a fixed word stress, or "accent". But it's fixed differentially. In Polish it's generally on the penultimate syllable but in Czech and Slovak, it's on the first syllable. But you're going to find stress, "udarenija", a lot easier in Czech that in Russian where those things'll get you! 2. You'll find an extra noun case (padezh) in Czech -- a full vocative. So in Russian only a couple of nouns have a vocative currently in use Bog 'God' but Bozhe 'O God', and Gospodj 'Lord' but Gospodi 'O Lord', in Czech every noun, and more importantly for you, every name, has a vocative form. Surnames as well as given names. So a Mr. Vane^k will be addressed as Vanku. Zhena 'woman' has the typical Slavic feminine vocative form Zheno and pan 'gentleman' again the typical Slavic masculine vocative, pane. There are a couple of sounds to listen for and learn in Czech that you dont have in Russian. One is the syllabic fricative r as in Smrz. This r is very consonantal however in words like Dvor^ak. The other sound to listen for is the voiced "h", as in Prahe. 3. Also with respect to noun cases, the animacy~inanimacy distinction you know from Russian occurs in Czech to. In Czech, any living animal, or at least higher order animal, is grammatically animate if it's in the masculine gender, and it has not only a different accusative (as it does in Russian) but a different dative and locative (unlike Russian). In Slovak however, only male humans rank as grammatically animate. 4. In verbs, one thing that will strike you is that a lot of verbs have the 1st person singular ending in -m. Dam 'I give'. (v. Russian daju.) Myslim 'I think.' Slovak has even more of these than Czech -- cf pishi in Czech, ja pishu in Russian, but pishem in Slovak and Serbocroatian. Also, in Czech you get a fully conjugated "subjunctive~conditional form of 'BE'. In Russian, the subjunctive~conditional has become an invariate particle by. But in Czech it's bych, bys, ... bychom (if we...) and so on. 5. But my colleague is right when he says that what'll help and confuse you most is Russian! Czech is more conservative generally than Russian, especially in the lexicon. Where Russian has borrowed, say from French, Czech has often invented a term of its own, and not necessarily just a loan translation either. Also, Czech has kept some old common Slavic terms that a number of other Slavic languages have replaced with loans. An example is the names of the months. Knowing Russian wont help a bit there. The double aspect system is essentially the common Slavic one in both languages though so that will help. "Croatian" you also ask about. Actually, there is no Croatian as such. And no "Serbian" and no "Bosnian" and no "Montenegrin" as such. There is one language, Serbocroatian. There are dialect differences but these do not in general coincide with the ethnic groupings. Virtually all speakers of Chakavian (chak = 'what?) are Croats and almost all speakers of Kakavian (kak = what?) are Croats. But most SC speakers say shto for what? and a shtokavian speaker could be a Croat, a Bosniak, a Montenegrin, or a Serb. In another major dialect division ikavian (mliko = milk, cf Russian moloko, Czech mlak, I think), ijekavian )mlijeko, or ekavian (mleko), an ikavian speaker is most likely a Croat, an ekavian speaker most likely a Serb, but a jekavian speaker could be a Croat, a Serb, a Bosnian of any religion, or a Montenegrin (Crna Gora). Serbocroatian and Slovenian are certainly a bit closer to Czech, and more particularly to Slovak, than are Macedonian and Bulgarian. Indeed, the Southwest Slavic languages and West Slavic might not be sharply differentiated were it not for the over a milinium separation between them caused by Hungarian (and German and maybe Rumanian/Dalmatian) movements into those areas. 1. Syllabic /r/ is available in in Serbocroatian as in Czech and Slovak but not strongly fricativized. Srpski, for instanace. Serbocroatian has a fixed stress as do the West Slavic languages, but it's a little more complicated. In general, the stress moved forward, i.e. toward the front, one syllable in SC. So it sounds a little more like Czech stress only different. But in SC, there is a long~short and rising~falling pitch pattern. There are not all that many minimal pairs or minimal quadruplets, words different only in the vowel length and rising or falling stress but there are a few. gra``d 'hail' (short falling) v gra^d 'city' (long falling) are two. 2. Vocative case will again in Serbocroatian be the most noticeable thing about noun declensions as contrasted with Russian -- a full use. One gets used to hearing it quickly and if you converse a lot, it'll become second nature. (There's a full vocative in Ukranian too, by the way.) 4. In verbs, Serbocroatian is more like Czech and Slovak than Czech and Slovak are. Here the 1st person singular -m ending is generalized to almost all verbs. The only common verbs that get the -u ending are m`ogu 'I can' (short rising stress) and h`ocu 'I want'. But it's pishem 'I write', putujem 'I travel' -cf Russian put' 'path'. 5. Watch out again for vocabulary. Russian helped me tremendously with SC but also confused. Many words are Common Slavic but took a somewhat different path, as the put' but putujeti mentioned above. Oh yes, and the final -i in Russian infinitives palatized the preceding t and then dropped. Not so in SC -- it's still there. And some words are just different -- Russian ja ne ponimaju 'I dont understand' is in SC "ne razumem". And that brings us to a major difference -- two in fact -- in conversational usage. 5.1. In Russian, one normally uses the personal pronouns even where, as in most instances, there is a verb agreement suffix that indicates the person and number of the subject. But in Serbocroatian, these are normally not used. Thus their use is emphatic or contrastive. Ne razumem = I dont understand. Ja sam ne razumem. = I dont understand. I dont any West Slavic language so I dont know what the situation is there -- Ive been told that Polish is rather more like SC than Russian.

5.2. Serbocroatian has the ubiquitous Slavic 'yes' word, da. But they dont use it much. It is much more common to find the following.

Da li molite sa putujete (E) or Molite li putujeti 'Do you like to travel?' Molim. 'I like. Dali razumejete. (E) Razumejete li? (W) 'Do you understand?' Razumem. 'I understand.' In this respect, SC is very like the Celtic language Welsh, except that Welsh doesnt even have a word 'yes'. Note one further thing that makes Serbocroation not like the West nor the East Slavic languages but very much a Balkan Language Area language. The use of a full subordinate conjugated verb instead of an infinitive. 'I like that I travel.' Now, infinitives are common in the West and very uncommon in the East. So a person who almost never usese them is very possibly a Serb and one who almost always uses them is very likely a Croat. But both forms are found all over and it is a matter of gradual shift in preponderance of usage rather than an abrupt isoglos as best I am aware. So, good luck and schastlivogo puti! (Oh yes -- those -ogo genitive endings are phonetically [ogo] -- not [ovo] as in Russian. Universitete Cincinnti (Eastern SC) Sveuciliste Cincinnati (Western SC) (cf Russian ucit'(s'a) Dept of Anthropology.

Reply From: Joseph F Foster    click here to access email
Date: May-23-2006
Other Replies:
  1. Re: Similarities Between Russian and Western Slavic Languages James L Fidelholtz    (May-23-2006)
  2. Re: Similarities Between Russian and Western Slavic Languages Susan Fischer    (May-23-2006)
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