Theory is hard, but speech is easy. Don't scare people with grammar. For example, I'm Slovak and I never use "Ľ" in speech, instead I always say normal "L". And there are many of those things. Grammar was invented by humans (mostly in the 19th and 20th centuries) to make language more difficult. People speak simply.
Thank you for your comment Marian! :) Grammar is intended to show the rules of a language to make it comprehensible. As you mention, you can have variation of pronunciation but there has to be a standard version to help people communicate effectively. Also for pragmatic educative purposes since learners need a guideline to a language. Grammar is the natural internal structure of a language and could be scary :D
Since long ago I wanted to learn Russian and I wasted too much time trying to find shortcuts and also trying to find out which was the easiest slavic language for someone who speaks various romance and germanic languages, all in order to not having to study too much. In the end my own shortcut was to read outloud in Russian for some months, no matter how much I couldn't understand. What I gained from that was to master the cyrillic alphabet, fluency at reading, achieving familiarity with each and every word, comfortability while reading the language, improvement of my listening skills since I listen to myself while reading, and connections between words. Now the learning is easier because I only have to give a meaning to the thousands of words in Russian that are already in my head. Now I can understand quite a lot of written and spoken Russian and I don't care too much about the cases. If you speak normal russians will understand you.
Thank you very much for your interesting comment! The hardest part for learning a Slavic language is the beginning and adaptation to a different pronunciation and Grammar system. After getting used to that, it will be way easier to start learning another Slavic language and cases usually take the longer to adopt. Good luck with your Russian language learning process! :)
You forgot to mention that not all Slavic language use cases at all, despite all of them have some. For example Bulgarian and Macedonian don't use (except for the only noun case that survived - vocative, which is no longer present in some) and we simplified with definite articles, despite case leftovers can be traced and only accusative and dative case remain but in pronouns only. And also both of them lack of infinitive form and use da + verb conjugation instead of infinitive forms. Infinitive forms are actually harder to spot but some words from infinitive changed into adjective like for example ''мити'' in Bulgarian which used to be the infinitive form of ''да мия.'' And the unique part of both Bulgarian and Macedonian that they are the only Slavic analytic languages, while the rest are syntetic. They may look the easiest to learn but be prepared at the verb tenses which if not it's one of the most complicated ones like we have 9 verb tenses. Despite the declentions became easier compared to the other Slavic languages, still the verb conjugations are harder than the rest of Slavic languages. Take it example like Italian how it has very complex verb conjugations and the rest of Romance languages so Bulgarian and Macedonian have Romance grammar but that's due to the high influences of Greek and Romanian which both of them had like 5 reforms after 15th century. 1:58 in Bulgarian and Macedonian it's similar how Slovak works except we don't use infinitive forms but we use da + verb like how Serbian also uses, except they still have the infinitive form. BG: да ку̀пя MK: да ку̀пам BG: да купу̀вам MK: да ку̀пувам BG: да накупу̀вам MK; да наку̀пувам Also at 0:56 South Slavic languages lack of Ы sound, despite some archaic dialects may still have them but by Standard we no longer use Ы sound, just like how South Slavic languages lack of fricative Г/H sounds like Polish. So I would say some have easier pronunciation and phonetics than others. For example Serbo-Croatian languages and Macedonian have the easiest pronunciation, while Russian and Polish have the hardest, especially knowing how Russian is the least phonetic Slavic language, while Polish has still the ancient nasal vowels with hyper palatalization that Russian doesn't have that extreme as people say, which makes it Polish probably the hardest to pronounce Slavic language. South Slavic languages are the easiest in pronunciation (except maybe Bulgarian and Slovenian are bit more challenging, because they keep some archaic features), while Serbo-Croatian and Macedonian have 1 letter, 1 sound pronunciation and no consonant pairs like ch in Czech and Slovak to distinguish the fricative h with the regular ch sound (the only exception are the Latin version of the letters љ, њ, џ are written as 2 letters instead of 1 and if you count that every other Serbo-Croatian variant, except Montenegrin write сj/sj and зj/zj instead of being 1 letter, inspired from the Polish alphabet - з́/ź с́/ś. Also South Slavic languages have barely any palatalization which makes it also easier to pronounce. So Slavic languages vary a lot. In terms of usefulness the most useful ones imo are Russian (for being the most spoken one), Polish (for understanding the nasal vowels and as well Ukrainian and Belarusian better), Slovak (for being the Slavic esperanto with a clear pronunciation that can be understood by almost anyone and it helps with Czech's pronunciation), Serbo-Croatian (better Serbian since it uses both Cyrillic and Latin alphabet unlike Croatian and it's the most spoken variant in Ex-Yugoslavia) and Bulgarian (because of the unique grammar that helps understanding Macedonian better). And then the rest by knowing these 5 but maybe for 6th I would put Slovenian, despite the complex dual number case system, still great to understand Sorbian languages better). Interslavic is also great to learn as well if you don't want to learn 6 Slavic languages.
Wow! Thank you vary much for the detailed and insightful explanation. 😊 For sure there are many variations among all Slavic languages which we might include in another video. About the cases in Bulgarian language, we thought they are still used in pronouns. Is this true? Ďakujeme 😊
If you don't use them properly, people won't probably even understand what you are saying People will understand partially, but often not fully, it will just sound like that: If your doing not using they proper, person want not probable even understanding what your say Pronounciation could be hard, but it just depends on how many languages do you know, but at least in slavic languages you know how a word is pronounced when looking at it the first time(trait which English or Chinese doesn't have) when you will learn how 25 letters and 5 diagraphs are pronounced In Slavic languages there is a LOT of Germanic, Romance and Greek roots Much more than in most other languages, that are not Greek, Germanic(especially English and German) or Romance Verb aspect-in English it exists, but just instead of learning 2 forms of each word(if you know the 2 forms you can probably use it easily in all 3 times), you learn the universal construction for each tense(I've bought(kúpil som?/kupiłem PL)vs I was buying(kupoval som?/kupowałem PL) The suffixes and prefixes exist in English as well, often they just are used as a separate part of sentence(nakúpiť is na(on)+kúpiť (to buy), in English you have really many situations when you add out, on, un-, with to a word and it changes the meaning, to stand vs to withstand vs outstanding) Cases are indeed problem(unless you speak German(idk if nordics have cases, if have then max 4, because old Germanic and old English had 4), Latin or Baltic language, especially the irregural nouns, Polish is supposedly the hardest about those out of all Slavic
Thank you very much for your nice comment! :) You are absolutely right! The more languages a person knows, the better the spectrum of understanding. We have seen that even cognates might help, but until a certain extend where cases variation and pronunciation difficulties become a truly communicative barrier. Then, a good advice would be to learn languages from different language families so we have more chances to understand and associate words from different origins.
All very true statements. I've been working on Russain for a bout a year now. I still sound like a toddler when I speak it due to my limited vocabulary and other issues. But, progress! I've been using Duolingo as a base and then supplementing with listening to a lot of Russian Music and watching Russian TV and movies. It's amazing how often I hear a word that I don't know, and I use google translate to look it up and *poof* new word! Though, remembering them all. That's another story. The gender system is odd, but easy enough to understand. Cases still get me, but they make sense. But, I love the bit about post and ongoing! As you used in your example, купи and купила. These just make sense. Thank you for the video!
Thank you very much for your interesting and detailed experience! :) Using a combined system as you are doing it (Duolingo, music, series) is the best way to keep you motivated and progressing. We would add finding a conversation partner even from basic levels since this real interaction gives confidence. We are very happy you found our video interesting. We will upload soon a video about the finished and ongoing actions. Hopefully it will help you as well. :)
@@linguarteOfficial : I have a friend who also speaks Russian whom I see once in a while. That is helpful, but my confidence is still not very strong. Though, last week I ran into a woman working at a big box store that spoke it as well. We had a short chat which was great. I was wearing a hat with Russian text on it which sparked the conversation. The main reason I wear it.
Zgadzam się - aspekt to naprawdę trudne dla mnie jako Niemiec :) Jeśli chodzi o polski, dodałbym jeszcze, że liczebniki są szczególnie trudno do nauczenia się :(
Ooh, that's what I'm talking about!😱 For me, a Hungarian, who sepaks a uralic language, it's difficult to understand Slavic grammar rules, also words. Not talk about prefixes, endings etc. But when I started to learn new words, and training rules with writing, helped me a lot! ❤️🇸🇰🇭🇺
Thank you very much for your comment! Many of our students have faced the same situations. Writing is a good strategy to memorize the words. Check out this video where we give other advices on how to learn Slavic languages: ruclips.net/video/J5pi6GgS_k0/видео.html
For sure Hungarian is a challenging language to learn with its own difficult grammar. Our favourite is the Hungarian system of noun cases and endings. :)
You are right! This is by far the hardest things to get when learning. Most people we know they have learned just by context repetition. But don't give up, you can do it! 💪💪
I'm a native Czech speaker but I can also fluently speak Slovak too because I'm bilingual, and also I can speak English and that's all, so other Slavic languages would not be hard for me
Thank you for your input! :) Slovak and Czech language are very close. For sure you would find many similarities with small differences in other Slavic language.
it's not aggressive, but objective. I did not watch it, I thought it was pointless and discouraging to those wishing to learn our languages, and I also couldn't help but cringe when you put the stress at wrong places for some most basic English words!
@@MyApps-uf1dz So you are saying you didn't watch the video but you are criticizing its content? That sounds objective. Thank you again! You can watch this as well: ruclips.net/video/ncKyrylYuL8/видео.html
I watched enough to think it's awful, the only thing I like in this video is your, indeed, very pretty face! Maybe you can focus on actually teaching some of your language and not philosophising and telling people how difficult it is :)
Theory is hard, but speech is easy. Don't scare people with grammar. For example, I'm Slovak and I never use "Ľ" in speech, instead I always say normal "L". And there are many of those things. Grammar was invented by humans (mostly in the 19th and 20th centuries) to make language more difficult. People speak simply.
Thank you for your comment Marian! :) Grammar is intended to show the rules of a language to make it comprehensible. As you mention, you can have variation of pronunciation but there has to be a standard version to help people communicate effectively. Also for pragmatic educative purposes since learners need a guideline to a language. Grammar is the natural internal structure of a language and could be scary :D
great video ☺️
Thank you very much for your nice words! We are happy you enjoy our videos! :)
Since long ago I wanted to learn Russian and I wasted too much time trying to find shortcuts and also trying to find out which was the easiest slavic language for someone who speaks various romance and germanic languages, all in order to not having to study too much. In the end my own shortcut was to read outloud in Russian for some months, no matter how much I couldn't understand. What I gained from that was to master the cyrillic alphabet, fluency at reading, achieving familiarity with each and every word, comfortability while reading the language, improvement of my listening skills since I listen to myself while reading, and connections between words. Now the learning is easier because I only have to give a meaning to the thousands of words in Russian that are already in my head. Now I can understand quite a lot of written and spoken Russian and I don't care too much about the cases. If you speak normal russians will understand you.
Thank you very much for your interesting comment! The hardest part for learning a Slavic language is the beginning and adaptation to a different pronunciation and Grammar system. After getting used to that, it will be way easier to start learning another Slavic language and cases usually take the longer to adopt. Good luck with your Russian language learning process! :)
You forgot to mention that not all Slavic language use cases at all, despite all of them have some. For example Bulgarian and Macedonian don't use (except for the only noun case that survived - vocative, which is no longer present in some) and we simplified with definite articles, despite case leftovers can be traced and only accusative and dative case remain but in pronouns only. And also both of them lack of infinitive form and use da + verb conjugation instead of infinitive forms. Infinitive forms are actually harder to spot but some words from infinitive changed into adjective like for example ''мити'' in Bulgarian which used to be the infinitive form of ''да мия.''
And the unique part of both Bulgarian and Macedonian that they are the only Slavic analytic languages, while the rest are syntetic. They may look the easiest to learn but be prepared at the verb tenses which if not it's one of the most complicated ones like we have 9 verb tenses. Despite the declentions became easier compared to the other Slavic languages, still the verb conjugations are harder than the rest of Slavic languages.
Take it example like Italian how it has very complex verb conjugations and the rest of Romance languages so Bulgarian and Macedonian have Romance grammar but that's due to the high influences of Greek and Romanian which both of them had like 5 reforms after 15th century.
1:58 in Bulgarian and Macedonian it's similar how Slovak works except we don't use infinitive forms but we use da + verb like how Serbian also uses, except they still have the infinitive form.
BG: да ку̀пя
MK: да ку̀пам
BG: да купу̀вам
MK: да ку̀пувам
BG: да накупу̀вам
MK; да наку̀пувам
Also at 0:56 South Slavic languages lack of Ы sound, despite some archaic dialects may still have them but by Standard we no longer use Ы sound, just like how South Slavic languages lack of fricative Г/H sounds like Polish.
So I would say some have easier pronunciation and phonetics than others. For example Serbo-Croatian languages and Macedonian have the easiest pronunciation, while Russian and Polish have the hardest, especially knowing how Russian is the least phonetic Slavic language, while Polish has still the ancient nasal vowels with hyper palatalization that Russian doesn't have that extreme as people say, which makes it Polish probably the hardest to pronounce Slavic language.
South Slavic languages are the easiest in pronunciation (except maybe Bulgarian and Slovenian are bit more challenging, because they keep some archaic features), while Serbo-Croatian and Macedonian have 1 letter, 1 sound pronunciation and no consonant pairs like ch in Czech and Slovak to distinguish the fricative h with the regular ch sound (the only exception are the Latin version of the letters љ, њ, џ are written as 2 letters instead of 1 and if you count that every other Serbo-Croatian variant, except Montenegrin write сj/sj and зj/zj instead of being 1 letter, inspired from the Polish alphabet - з́/ź с́/ś. Also South Slavic languages have barely any palatalization which makes it also easier to pronounce.
So Slavic languages vary a lot. In terms of usefulness the most useful ones imo are Russian (for being the most spoken one), Polish (for understanding the nasal vowels and as well Ukrainian and Belarusian better), Slovak (for being the Slavic esperanto with a clear pronunciation that can be understood by almost anyone and it helps with Czech's pronunciation), Serbo-Croatian (better Serbian since it uses both Cyrillic and Latin alphabet unlike Croatian and it's the most spoken variant in Ex-Yugoslavia) and Bulgarian (because of the unique grammar that helps understanding Macedonian better). And then the rest by knowing these 5 but maybe for 6th I would put Slovenian, despite the complex dual number case system, still great to understand Sorbian languages better). Interslavic is also great to learn as well if you don't want to learn 6 Slavic languages.
Wow! Thank you vary much for the detailed and insightful explanation. 😊 For sure there are many variations among all Slavic languages which we might include in another video. About the cases in Bulgarian language, we thought they are still used in pronouns. Is this true? Ďakujeme 😊
If you don't use them properly, people won't probably even understand what you are saying
People will understand partially, but often not fully, it will just sound like that:
If your doing not using they proper, person want not probable even understanding what your say
Pronounciation could be hard, but it just depends on how many languages do you know, but at least in slavic languages you know how a word is pronounced when looking at it the first time(trait which English or Chinese doesn't have) when you will learn how 25 letters and 5 diagraphs are pronounced
In Slavic languages there is a LOT of Germanic, Romance and Greek roots
Much more than in most other languages, that are not Greek, Germanic(especially English and German) or Romance
Verb aspect-in English it exists, but just instead of learning 2 forms of each word(if you know the 2 forms you can probably use it easily in all 3 times), you learn the universal construction for each tense(I've bought(kúpil som?/kupiłem PL)vs I was buying(kupoval som?/kupowałem PL)
The suffixes and prefixes exist in English as well, often they just are used as a separate part of sentence(nakúpiť is na(on)+kúpiť (to buy), in English you have really many situations when you add out, on, un-, with to a word and it changes the meaning, to stand vs to withstand vs outstanding)
Cases are indeed problem(unless you speak German(idk if nordics have cases, if have then max 4, because old Germanic and old English had 4), Latin or Baltic language, especially the irregural nouns, Polish is supposedly the hardest about those out of all Slavic
Thank you very much for your nice comment! :) You are absolutely right! The more languages a person knows, the better the spectrum of understanding. We have seen that even cognates might help, but until a certain extend where cases variation and pronunciation difficulties become a truly communicative barrier. Then, a good advice would be to learn languages from different language families so we have more chances to understand and associate words from different origins.
All very true statements. I've been working on Russain for a bout a year now. I still sound like a toddler when I speak it due to my limited vocabulary and other issues. But, progress!
I've been using Duolingo as a base and then supplementing with listening to a lot of Russian Music and watching Russian TV and movies.
It's amazing how often I hear a word that I don't know, and I use google translate to look it up and *poof* new word! Though, remembering them all. That's another story.
The gender system is odd, but easy enough to understand. Cases still get me, but they make sense. But, I love the bit about post and ongoing! As you used in your example, купи and купила. These just make sense.
Thank you for the video!
Thank you very much for your interesting and detailed experience! :) Using a combined system as you are doing it (Duolingo, music, series) is the best way to keep you motivated and progressing.
We would add finding a conversation partner even from basic levels since this real interaction gives confidence.
We are very happy you found our video interesting.
We will upload soon a video about the finished and ongoing actions.
Hopefully it will help you as well. :)
@@linguarteOfficial : I have a friend who also speaks Russian whom I see once in a while. That is helpful, but my confidence is still not very strong.
Though, last week I ran into a woman working at a big box store that spoke it as well. We had a short chat which was great.
I was wearing a hat with Russian text on it which sparked the conversation. The main reason I wear it.
@Xpurple Keep up with the motivation! The confidence will be stronger the more you practice! 👊👊
Zgadzam się - aspekt to naprawdę trudne dla mnie jako Niemiec :) Jeśli chodzi o polski, dodałbym jeszcze, że liczebniki są szczególnie trudno do nauczenia się :(
Ďakujeme za komentár. :)
Ďakujem 🌹🌷🌺
You are very welcome as always! :)
Ooh, that's what I'm talking about!😱
For me, a Hungarian, who sepaks a uralic language, it's difficult to understand Slavic grammar rules, also words. Not talk about prefixes, endings etc. But when I started to learn new words, and training rules with writing, helped me a lot! ❤️🇸🇰🇭🇺
And Hungarian is difficult to understand for every not Hungarian person on earth... 🤔🤔😅😅
I mean imposiible not difficult... 😅😅
Thank you very much for your comment! Many of our students have faced the same situations. Writing is a good strategy to memorize the words. Check out this video where we give other advices on how to learn Slavic languages: ruclips.net/video/J5pi6GgS_k0/видео.html
For sure Hungarian is a challenging language to learn with its own difficult grammar. Our favourite is the Hungarian system of noun cases and endings. :)
Slovenčina= Ťažký jazyk
Maďarčina= Ťažký jazyk tiež😁
What are you talking about! Slavic languages, hard? I was one year old when I learned Slavic language. 😉
Thank you for your comment! What Slavic language did you learn? 😊
@@linguarteOfficial Actually I learned two... Serbian and Slovak, since I am from a mixed marriage :)
@cryptoinvader3161 That's amazing. It means you have a very good insight on how Slavic languages work comparing Serbian and Slovak. 😊
By far the most complicated and confusing this about learning Russian at uni was verbs of motion. Why can't they just "go"?!
You are right! This is by far the hardest things to get when learning. Most people we know they have learned just by context repetition. But don't give up, you can do it! 💪💪
Ahoj from Texas, y'all.
Ahoj from Slovakia :)
Oh my god i won't ever make it. The closest to an european language here is the arcaic french, Creole.
Don't give up! We know many successful stories of speakers learning Slavic languages.
I'm a native Czech speaker but I can also fluently speak Slovak too because I'm bilingual, and also I can speak English and that's all, so other Slavic languages would not be hard for me
Thank you for your input! :) Slovak and Czech language are very close. For sure you would find many similarities with small differences in other Slavic language.
maybe you learn most basic English first and then make nonsense videos about other languages?
Wow! Thank you for the aggressive comment! ;) We hope you enjoyed our video! Ďakujeme!
it's not aggressive, but objective. I did not watch it, I thought it was pointless and discouraging to those wishing to learn our languages, and I also couldn't help but cringe when you put the stress at wrong places for some most basic English words!
@@MyApps-uf1dz So you are saying you didn't watch the video but you are criticizing its content? That sounds objective. Thank you again! You can watch this as well: ruclips.net/video/ncKyrylYuL8/видео.html
I watched enough to think it's awful, the only thing I like in this video is your, indeed, very pretty face! Maybe you can focus on actually teaching some of your language and not philosophising and telling people how difficult it is :)
@@MyApps-uf1dz Thank you for commenting again! 😄 Continue enjoying our videos! (or philosophy?) 😅