Ok /lang/, I'm learning German and want to learn a slavic language, question is, which one?
I know the basics about slavic languages, bulgarian and macedonian are intelligible, croatian/serbian/bosnian are nearly identical, with some basic differences, and czech and slovak are intelligible.
I know that the obvious choice is Russian due to the home country's affluence in the world, but everyone learns Russian.
Poland doesn't suck too badly, but could be better, so its language isn't a terrible choice.
Which one would I learn to get the most in-the-middle language, so that if I wanted to, learning the other ones would be easier than say learning Czech, then trying to learn Bulgarian?
I want to learn one because I enjoy the way they sound, I just don't know which one to learn.
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Anonymous2010-01-09 23:02
Learn Spanish
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Anonymous2010-01-10 5:29
Learn Slovak. It's pretty useless but it's usually considered the middle-language of the slavic languages and it's at least quite close to Czech and certainly not the hardest slavic language you can learn. I know Czech and can easily understand about 90% of written Slovak, listening comprehension is a bit harder though. Serbian/Bosnian/Croatian is a good choice too since it's somewhat more useful and also shares many similarities with Bulgarian/Macedonian, Slovene and to a lesser extent Russian.
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Anonymous2010-01-10 7:54
Learn Czech.
1. The Czech Republic isn't a medieval, xenophobic, genocidal conservative Christian hellhole (lol Serbia)
2. The Czech Republic has a working economic model and a very high standard of living (its HDI is 0.903, making it 36th in the world, and the highest of all Slav countries), unlike some other countries (lol Russia)
3. The Czech Republic has a decent reputation (unlike Poland)
4. It is beautiful and historic (unlike the Ukraine)
5. It is in a great location in the middle of Old Europe (unlike, say, Bulgaria (enjoy your Turks!))
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Anonymous2010-01-10 8:17
>>4
You fucking homoczech. How dare you compare your cowardy country to Poland. You can only hide and make friends with everyone. Maybe we are not liked, but at least we are one of view nations whose hooligans can fight on equal terms with British hooligans. The only good thing of your country is women (sexy) and legalization of drugs.
>>1
Learn the language you actually can, and it probably isn't Polish. No language will give easy access to all slavic language - they are in three distinct groups.
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Anonymous2010-01-10 22:30
Thanks. It was boiling down to either Czech or Polish, and I don't particularly like the throat-bleeding, tongue-mangling phonetics of Polish, so sounds like Czech it is!
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Anonymous2010-01-11 7:57
>>6 Yeah, Polish is not for weaklings, and Czech is actually quite easy. I would even learn Czech if there were more of them.
Those languages are not so hard if you concentrate on vocabulary instead of grammar. The grammar will come with time if you listen and read intensively.
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Anonymous2010-01-11 19:15
Slavic languages are easy at any rate, 'cuz they are Indo-European (unlike some other popular choices).
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Anonymous2010-01-11 19:35
>>10
That makes them easy only for native speakers of indoeuropean languages.
Learn Ukrainian, 90% of Ukraine(50 millions)people speak it. Ukrainian is somewhat like the mix between polish and russian languages with own constructed lexics. Ukrainians are able to comprehend polish and fluent in russian(obviously because of soviet heritage and prevalence of russian culture there).
>>14
For english natives learning any language seems tough, as they think that everybody speaks their language and that is enough to learn a view sentences to speak given language.
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Anonymous2010-10-21 21:20
English is Indo-European you tards.
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Anonymous2010-10-21 22:52
OP, protip:
Listen bits of many Slavic languages - at least three langs:
one East Slavic [Ukranian, Russian...],
one West Slavic [Czech, Polish...],
one South Slavic [Bulgar, Croatian...]
You don't care a shit for affluence, so you want to learn for the fun, right? So, learn the one sounds cooler for you :D
And, you know, if you learn a lang from one branch [East/West/South], it'll become very easy to learn another one from the same branch - and to some extent, from other branches too.
>>16
10 is probably talking about Japanese and Mandarin.
>>20
I know you're trolling, but go check Wikipedia.
Indoeuropean family include
Germanic [English, German, Dutch],
Italic [Osco, Umbrian, Latin and its descendants],
Indo-Iranian [Farsi, Hindi, Pakistanese],
and LOT MORE LANGUAGES.
They're all related, most of them are in European and Indian subcontinents, so the family is called "Indoeuropean" for a reason.
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Anonymous2010-10-22 13:44
>>18
Works different for different people, I'm guessing OP just want a fun language to learn from his/her post.
None. Fuehrer Adolf Hitler considered them worthless we should do the same. Don't let these so called Slavic neo-nazis try to trick you and retcon history.