

Slovianski-language that a Slav should be able to learn in 7 days - yread
http://steen.free.fr/slovianski/index.html

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tome
This looks like the Interlingua of slavic:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlingua>

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FlorinAndrei
Whoa. My native language is in the Romance group, and I could pretty much
muddle through a paragraph of Interlingua with no help. I think the
comprehension level was about 90%.

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andr
I am Bulgarian and I find that very hard to read. Much harder than Russian or
Serbian. Many of the phonemes could be simplified to be made more universal.
It feels very influenced by Polish, though, so I'd probably be easier for
Central Europe Slavic countries.

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dchest
I'm Russian, and I can read and understand about 90% of their sample texts. It
reminds me Serbian (though I don't know it or any other Slavic languages, and
I've read more Serbian and Macedonian than any other Slavic language, so maybe
there's a bias because of this).

BTW, Bulgarian is harder to read for me than Serbian or Macedonian.

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kmuzykov
Yep, totally agree. I'm Russian too and language is completely understandable.

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ph0rque
Same here... it feels like Ukranian to me, but the only Slavic language I know
is Russian.

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DuncanIdaho
<quote> As in all natural Slavic languages, nouns in Slovianski have three
grammatical genders (masculine, feminine, neuter) and two numbers (singular,
plural). </quote>

That's not true - Slovenian has three numbers: singular, dual and plural.

But then - Slovenian is maybe not a natural Slavic language?

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dchest
Wikipedia says that Proto-Slavic language (the proto-language from which
Slavic languages later emerged) had dual. But it was lost in every Slavic
language except for Slovene and Sorbian:

 _Of the living languages, only Slovene and Sorbian have preserved the dual
number as a productive form. In all of the remaining languages, its influence
is still found in the declension of nouns of which there are commonly only
two: eyes, ears, shoulders, in certain fixed expressions, and the agreement of
nouns when used with numbers._

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_(grammatical_number)#The_d...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_\(grammatical_number\)#The_dual_in_the_Slavic_languages)

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pavlov
Does anyone know of a similar artificial language to unify the Scandinavians?

Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and Icelandic are similar enough that it should be
possible to create a language that could be passably understood by all
speakers -- call it "skandiska"...?

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danh
A linguist would probably say that Scandinavia already has a common language,
and that Swedish, Norwegian and Danish are mere dialects of the same
Scandinavian language. They are considered different languages mainly for
political and historical reasons, but since they are mutually intelligible
(with the possible exception of drunk Danes) "Scandinavian" is really a single
language from a linguistic perspective.

Icelandic is a different story, of course. Thankfully, though, the Icelandic
speak English rather well...

~~~
mseebach
Danish and Norwegian are dialects, Swedish qualify as a separate language.
"Nynorsk" ("New Norwegian") is a new language designed specifically to qualify
as a new language, mainly for political reason (Norway was a colony of
Denmark).

~~~
danh
That all depends on your definition of "language". For most linguists, all
that matters is mutual intelligibility. For others, a language is a "dialect
with an army and a flag", i.e. a political construct.

A Swedish person like me most of the time have no trouble at all understanding
spoken Norwegian, and reading both bokmål and nynorsk is quite easy. Spoken
Danish requires some effort and getting used to, but it is still quite
possible to have a conversation.

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gacek
For me (Polish) it is very understandable, but if I were to say what it seems
like - I would say that it is like Slovak/Czech with some Russian (mostly
verbs).

However, these are the three slavic languages I had most contact with. I can
speak some Russian and I can recognize Slovak and Czech (but I wouldn't be
able to tell one from the other). And I guess this might be similar for other
slavic HN readers - they might speak one or two extra languages, they might
have had contact with two or three more. This means that similarities
described here ("sounds like ...") will be greatly influenced by the level of
contact between nations.

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lmkg
One of the values of Esperanto is as a learning tool for Western European
languages--according to one study, students with 1yr Esperanto + 3yr French
instruction speak better French than students with 4yr French instruction.

Since I am about to start learning Bulgarian, I am particularly interested to
know if this language has similar properties with respect to Slavic languages.
Obviously since it's only been around since 2006 there isn't a comparable
4-year study, but even anecdotal evidence would be appreciated.

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pvg
This is pretty silly given that if you teleported any slav living in the range
of Gdansk to Podgorica and Ljubljana to Ekaterinburg, it would probably take
them a couple of weeks to gain enough proficiency to buy groceries. Hilarious
misunderstandings will undoubtedly occur but if you take out the severe
outliers like Bulgarian and Macedonian, this is about as useful as another
hole in the head. Russian serves reasonably well as a Slavic lingua franca, in
the few marginal cases such a thing is needed to begin with.

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tosiabunio
Surprisingly easy to understand for me (I'm Pole). Interesting idea.

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idlewords
Co do języka, to nie mam wiele do powiedzenia /bo przecież kieliszek wódki i
każdy się doskonale porozumie/, ale cieszy mnie niezmiernie, że mamy tu tylu
słowian...

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pavel_lishin
My biggest problem with understanding some Slavic languages (I'm a native
Russian speaker) is the fact that I'm not sure how some of these consonants
and vowels are pronounced. j, ż, ę, etc.

~~~
idlewords
I think only Vietnamese is more of a disaster than when it comes to
shoehorning a language into the Latin script.

I used to have a script that Cyrillicized Polish, for the benefit of my
Russian speaking friend, who found it made it possible to half-understand
things.

This might help: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJI6JDAxUd4>

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mootothemax
I'm English and have lived in Poland for the past five months, and I _like_
this! As much as I'm enjoying the challenge that Polish presents, the grammar
doesn't half kill my head sometimes. That and I'm still finding my natural
inability to roll my Rs embarrassing in public ;)

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rimantas
That's funny. I am fluent in Russian and can read/understand and speak some
Polish and that text is understandable as-is. So at least one way it works
really well.

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yread
...and a non-slav in 30 days

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eleitl
I could read that with no problems.

~~~
FlorinAndrei
What's your native tongue?

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JoeAltmaier
I'm surprised that Klingon wasn't considered sufficient - it has been around
since 1979.

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jerf
Generally speaking, a language where every phrase contains the connotation "I
am barely refraining you from killing you where you stand", excepting the
phrases that flat-out contain "I am killing you where you stand", are not the
best languages for international human peace and brotherhood.

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philwelch
Amazing fact: After most of the Klingon-speaking scenes in Star Trek, the crew
had to wipe spittle off the respective actors' faces.

