What are the likeness between these languages? And what are the differences? Can a russian understand a Bulgarian like a German can understand a Dutch or a Brazilian can understand a Spanish?
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What are the likeness between these languages? And what are the differences? Can a russian understand a Bulgarian like a German can understand a Dutch or a Brazilian can understand a Spanish?
Not that I have any clue on the subject, but I heared there is a significant difference. They don't have any new letters or such, but read this bulgarian text:
Европейският парламент, чиято легитимност се основава на всеобщо пряко гласуване на всеки пет години, придобива все по-голямо влияние и правомощия чрез редица договори. Тези договори и най-вече Договорът от Маастрихт от 1992 г. и Амстердамският договор от 1997 г., превръщат Европейския парламент от асамблея с чисто съвещателен характер в законодателен парламент, който упражнява правомощия, сходни с тези на националните парламенти.
Some words are easily recognized... but it isn't very straight forward, is it?
Here is the translation:
The European Parliament, which derives its legitimacy from direct universal suffrage and is elected every five years, has steadily acquired greater influence and power through a series of treaties. These treaties, particularly the 1992 Maastricht Treaty and the 1997 Amsterdam Treaty, have transformed the European Parliament from a purely consultative assembly into a legislative parliament, exercising powers similar to those of the national parliaments
In my opinion these two languages are very close. There are some differences in grammar, but I used to have almost no trouble reading technical literature in Bulgarian. I think I could read fiction as well if I spent let's say a month on learning a little more of the grammar and some vocabulary. I have a Bulgarian dicitionary somewhere, which lists so called false friends of a translator, i.e. the words that have the same spelling in both languages but completely different meaning... Having said all that, understanding spoken Bulgarian is a different topic altogether. I can't understand a word :) Although to tell you the truth I heard it spoken only on a few occasions...
You can compare some stuff here.
http://www.travlang.com/languages/
Very close? Don't be silly.Quote:
Originally Posted by MikeM
Russian and Belorussian, yes very close.
Russian and Bulgarian... not really.
Well, Old Church Slavonic which is what Russian evolved from, was the language of (what was then) Bulgaria.
They are both Slavic, so there is going to be similarity.
But there are major differences. For exmaple, Bulgarian has articles which decline. Nouns don't decline (I think).
Bulgarian belongs to the Southern Slavic languages:
Eastern Slavic:
Russian
Ukrainian
Belorussian
Western Slavic:
Polish
Czech
Slovak
Upper Sorbian
Lower Sorbian
Casubian
Polabian
Southern Slavic:
Croatian
Serbian
FYR Macedonian (Bulgarian)
Bulgarian
Slovene
Bosnian (Serbian)
My 2 cents. Being a Russian native speaker one can read Bulgarian and understand approx. 75-80% of words which is enough for understanding a main idea of a text. But no way a Russian native speaker can understand spoken Bulgarian without learning the language.
Bulgarian, like English, has a very complex system of verbal tense, unlike Russian. Nouns and adjectives are very similar because of the Slavic ancestry.
For example, if you take a sentence like
John saw him do it.
You get several Bulgarian possibilities for "saw"
1) I absolutely vouch for this statement
2) John told me he did, but I'm not sure.
3) John told me he did, but I doubt it.
all these expressed in the verb. That's about all I remember about my Bulgarian verbs (I actually did study Bulgarian at the University of Chicago!)
I second it. :DQuote:
Originally Posted by Vesh
I asked because I have a friend going to Bulgaria next year and since he has no chance finding any Bulgarian teacher around here he asked me to teach him Russian.
Since his knowledge in both languages is null I think it will be helpful to him to learn at least the cyrillic alphabet and some basic sentences.
As for the pronounce: is it equal to Russian's?
How difficult would Polish and Czech be for somebody who already speaks Russian? I'm fairly sure that they aren't mutually intelegible with Russian, but how much work would be needed to speak one?
[fixed dumb typo]
Here's a sentence in Polish:
Forum jest instytucją prywatną i niezależną, z kt
Well for the most part.Quote:
Originally Posted by Souljacker
Ъ in Bulgarian is an ultra short vowel, or schwa, like the final a in Banana.
Bulgarian is Български. As far as I know, there is no reduction of vowels (e.g. O) as there is in Russian.
Bulgarian has less soft consonants. E is hard, as is И i think.
Please tell me you didn't think Polish and Czech could be mutually intellible with English. That sort of stupidity should encure the death penalty.Quote:
Originally Posted by Darobat
[quote=chaika]Here's a sentence in Polish:
Forum jest instytucją prywatną i niezależną, z kt
Well that was a dumb typo. Let me change English to Russian right now.Quote:
Originally Posted by TATY
[quote=chaika]niezależną
wsp
"працуя" более-менее понятно (благодаря тем же соседям) -- "работая". А вот что такое "вспол"?
"Вспул" = "пол" (в смысле, половина).
Well, here's my 7 cents worth. (Seven cents, not two, because I'll probably type on and on without any particular point in mind.)
I have been back and forth between Russian and Bulgarian. I have a Bulgarian wife, who is not motivated to teach me her language. I know a few words, but not very many. Because of the severe lack of resources for an American to learn Bulgarian, I gave up and decided to try Russian instead. My opinion is that they are "similar" languages, with "almost" the same alphabet, and many words that are the same. Or at least almost the same. Some of the differences that I have found are as follows. Some of these have already been mentioned, but here's my thoughts:
1) Russian has a letter (and a sound) not found in Bulgarian. "ы". And, as somebody said, the "ъ" is quite different.
2) Bulgarian does not seem to have the vowel reduction found in Russian. Perhaps they are shortened very slightly, but not to the extent in Russian.
3) The "ь", or "soft sign" in Russian seems to be absent in Bulgarian.
4) Bulgarian does use the present tense of the verb "to be", where Russian does not.
5) As somebody mentioned, the nouns in Bulgarian are not deflected (or whatever that word is) to indicate their place in the sentence. But they do have definate articles, in the form of suffixes on the ends of the nouns.
In conclusion (FINALLY!), Bulgairan and Russian are "similar", but indeed completely different languages.
Disclaimer: I suck at both Russian and Bulgarian, I'm just telling you what I know. Please correct me if I'm wrong about something. Now, wasn't that completely useless to you all?
I'll add a couple of cents onto Platinum's post to make an even dime :)
My girlfriend is Bulgarian, and like Platinum, I have elected to stick with Russian (I was learning Russian before I met her) because there just aren't enough resources here to learn Bulgarian.
For the most part, she can understand about 90% of spoken Russian, but she can't (won't) speak it because she isn't sure of the word differences between the two languages. If I ask her what a Russian word means, she will tell me without thinking, but she can't do it in the oposite direction (usually)
Also, like someone else said, the verbs are relatively similar, but with different endings. For instance,
Ya znayu = Az znam
Ya govoryu = Az govorya
Overall, I think the best comparison would be a person that speaks Portuguese listening to someone speaking Spanish. They can understand, but wouldn't be able to speak it very well.
-Fantom
Good, that's what I thought you meant.Quote:
Originally Posted by Darobat
Notice Bulgarian Аз = I
is found in Азбука. (Аз = I in Old Church Slavonic also)
Hmmm, Spanish and Portugues are considerably closer to each other than Russian and Bulgarian.Quote:
Originally Posted by fantom605
so what does бука mean? read?Quote:
Originally Posted by TATY
I understood everything. No problem for a native speaker of Russian.Quote:
Originally Posted by kalinka_vinnie
[quote=chaika]Here's a sentence in Polish:
Forum jest instytucją prywatną i niezależną, z kt
Of Latin and Greek origin. English is not the source of most international words.Quote:
and most of the clearly understood words (forum, private, institution, media) seem to be pretty much international (english origin?)
And also, Bulgarian does not have verbs in the "infinitive" form. Verbs are listed in the dictionary under their "Аз" form (a.k.a. "я"). This is not difficult, but I find it kinda annoying.
From Wikipedia:Quote:
Originally Posted by kalinka_vinnie
1. Until approximately 1900, mnemonic names inherited from Church Slavonic were used for the letters. They are given here in the pre-1918 orthography of the post-1708 civil alphabet.
Since most of the old names are obviously native words, it has been argued that reading the list in the traditional order produces a kind of paean to the art of language, or a moral instruction:
аз буки веди I know letters
глаголь добро есть "To speak is a beneficence" or "The word is property"
живете зело земля "Live truly (on this) earth" or "Live truly Earth (people on the Earth)"
иже и како люди мыслете "which, whereof you think as human beings," or "As you think like human beings"
наш он покой "(is for) that tranquility of ours [our]" or "It (the word) is our peace"
рцы слово твердо say the word firmly
ук ферт хер цы [from this point onwards the meaning is very obscure]
червь ша ер ять юс
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_alphabet
So буки probably means "letters"
Yeah, I agree, I just meant if a comparison would have to be made, that is the one I would make.Quote:
Originally Posted by TATY
-Fantom
Yes, it doesQuote:
Originally Posted by pisces
so азбука, means, litereally, I letters?
kalinka, so abc literally means "a bee sea"? ;) Or maybe 2748 - ABC(hex) = 2748 (dec)...
No :)
I was just wondering, since Аз meant 'I', maybe бука meant 'read'
but 'I letters' doesn't make sense :)
Polish and Czech are really close, Czech sounds really funny to me though, it reminds me of a little kid talking with his pre mature grammer and the way they say stuff sounds very funny to me.
I'm trying to learn Russian and its still pretty hard to get things down. I think Russians maybe able to understand Polish/Czech better than a Polish/Czech understanding Russian.
Words in Russian are a little more fast paced and light sounding I guess you can say as in Polish (and other close languages to Polish) it isn't really that fast, words seem to be spoken slower.
A lot of old style words are really close, and a lot of words that aren't used in Polish but in Russian make sense. Also a lot of small words stay close to the same because there really is no room to change. For example "kot" is used in a lot of slavic languages for "cat"
Like for example, Goodnight.
Ukrainian - dobranich.
Polish - Dobranoc. you can take the word apart. Dobra = good noc = night.
Czech - Dobrou noc
Russian - Spokoynoy nochi. Its interesting that in Russian they changed it to "Peaceful Night"
Slovanian - Dobr
"Я упал в любовь." - A guy I know who emigrated when he was 4. :lol:Quote:
Originally Posted by djmihow
аз буки веди => я буквы знаюQuote:
Originally Posted by kalinka_vinnie
Remember, the order of words in Russian (and perhaps in other Slavic languages) is not so strict and important as in English and is used to put accent on some words. Or maybe in Old Slavonic this order was normal, I don't know.
There is a nearly extinct Russian verb "ведать" which means "to know". But there are widely used words which are derived from it (заведовать, осведомляться, сведения etc).
Буки is an old version of буквы.
Азбука is just a literal translation of "alphabet".
BTW, Dobroy nochi sounds ok to me.Quote:
Originally Posted by djmihow
I am not sure that "веди" means "I know." IIRC, in Old Slavonic, 1st person sing. from "ведати" was "вемъ", т.е. I know = "азъ вемъ". "You know" = "ты веси".
German and Dutch is a better comparison IMO.
Or French and Spanish maybe.