Thread: Russian x Bulgarian

Originally Posted by Darobat

Originally Posted by TATY

Originally Posted by Darobat

How difficult would Polish and Czech be for somebody who already speaks Russian? I'm fairly sure that they aren't mutually intelegible with English, but how much work would be needed to speak one?

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.

Well that was a dumb typo. Let me change English to Russian right now.

Good, that's what I thought you meant.

Notice Bulgarian Аз = I
is found in Азбука. (Аз = I in Old Church Slavonic also)

Originally Posted by fantom605

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

Hmmm, Spanish and Portugues are considerably closer to each other than Russian and Bulgarian.

Originally Posted by TATY

Notice Bulgarian Аз = I
is found in Азбука. (Аз = I in Old Church Slavonic also)

so what does бука mean? read?

Originally Posted by kalinka_vinnie

Some words are easily recognized... but it isn't very straight forward, is it?

I understood everything. No problem for a native speaker of Russian.

[quote=chaika]Here's a sentence in Polish:

Forum jest instytucją prywatną i niezależną, z kt

and most of the clearly understood words (forum, private, institution, media) seem to be pretty much international (english origin?)

Of Latin and Greek origin. English is not the source of most international words.

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.

Originally Posted by kalinka_vinnie

Originally Posted by TATY

Notice Bulgarian Аз = I
is found in Азбука. (Аз = I in Old Church Slavonic also)

so what does бука mean? read?

From Wikipedia:

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"

Originally Posted by TATY

Originally Posted by fantom605

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

Hmmm, Spanish and Portugues are considerably closer to each other than Russian and Bulgarian.

Yeah, I agree, I just meant if a comparison would have to be made, that is the one I would make.

-Fantom

Originally Posted by pisces

So буки probably means "letters"

Yes, it does

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

Originally Posted by djmihow

I find it very interesting how language changes as people move away from their homeland, I think its cool how people change their language and it always interests me when I hear another slavic language that I don't know and I try to figure out what their saying sometimes.

"Я упал в любовь." - A guy I know who emigrated when he was 4.

Originally Posted by kalinka_vinnie

No

I was just wondering, since Аз meant 'I', maybe бука meant 'read'
but 'I letters' doesn't make sense

аз буки веди => я буквы знаю
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".

Originally Posted by djmihow

Russian - Spokoynoy nochi. Its interesting that in Russian they changed it to "Peaceful Night"

BTW, Dobroy nochi sounds ok to me.

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.