# Forum General General Discussion  Russian x Bulgarian

## Souljacker

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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## kalinka_vinnie

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

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## MikeM

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...

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## djmihow

You can compare some stuff here.  http://www.travlang.com/languages/

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## TATY

> 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...

 Very close? Don't be silly. 
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)

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## Vesh

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.

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## chaika

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!)

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## Lampada

> 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.

 I second it.   ::

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## Souljacker

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?

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## 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 Russian, but how much work would be needed to speak one? 
[fixed dumb typo]

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## chaika

Here's a sentence in Polish: 
Forum jest instytucją prywatną i niezależną, z kt

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## TATY

> As for the pronounce: is it equal to Russian's?

 Well for the most part. 
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.

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## TATY

> 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.

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## adoc

[quote=chaika]Here's a sentence in Polish: 
Forum jest instytucją prywatną i niezależną, z kt

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## Darobat

> 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.

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## translationsnmru

[quote=chaika]niezależną
wsp

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## Scorpio

"працуя" более-менее понятно (благодаря тем же соседям) -- "работая". А вот что такое "вспол"?

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## translationsnmru

"Вспул" = "пол" (в смысле, половина).

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## Platinum

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?

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## fantom605

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

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## TATY

> 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.

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## TATY

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

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## TATY

> 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.

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## kalinka_vinnie

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

 so what does бука mean? read?

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## VendingMachine

> 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.

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## VendingMachine

[quote=chaika]Here's a sentence in Polish: 
Forum jest instytucją prywatną i niezależną, z kt

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## VendingMachine

> 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.

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## Platinum

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.

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## pisces

> 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"

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## fantom605

> 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

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## translationsnmru

> So буки probably means "letters"

 Yes, it does

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## kalinka_vinnie

so азбука, means, litereally, I letters?

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## JJ

kalinka, so abc literally means "a bee sea"?  ::  Or maybe 2748 - ABC(hex) = 2748 (dec)...

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## kalinka_vinnie

No  ::   
I was just wondering, since Аз meant 'I', maybe бука meant 'read'
but 'I letters' doesn't make sense  ::

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## djmihow

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

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## BlackMage

> 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.   ::

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## pisces

> 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".

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## JJ

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

 BTW, Dobroy nochi sounds ok to me.

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## translationsnmru

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".

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## TATY

German and Dutch is a better comparison IMO.
Or French and Spanish maybe.

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## fantom605

Spanish and French?  I don't see many similarities at all...  Spanish and Italian, however are pretty close.  I can recognize a lot of Italian words that I see just based on my knowledge of Spanish, but I can't do much when it comes to French. 
 -Fantom

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## Biancca

I recognize a lot of Spanish words based on my impressive and vast knowledge of French   ::  
They are in the same language family anyway.

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## TATY

> Spanish and French?  I don't see many similarities at all...  Spanish and Italian, however are pretty close.  I can recognize a lot of Italian words that I see just based on my knowledge of Spanish, but I can't do much when it comes to French. 
>  -Fantom

 My Spanish friend says he understands French.

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## Spiderkat

> My Spanish friend says he understands French.

 I doubt it, unless he studied French. What do you mean by he understands? He can understand when someone talks or can guess when he reads something?

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## djmihow

Isn't Romanian and French Close? Closer than General Spanish is to French?

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## Spiderkat

> Spanish and French?  I don't see many similarities at all...  
> ...

 Actually many words have the same roots but that's it and doesn't necessary mean that I can understand Spanish.

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## chaika

*translations.nm.ru*, my hat's off to you, calling upon your skills at OCS; I could hardly believe my eyes when I read your post. 
One small error, though, which I determined immediately as I pulled up my Paul Diels, Altkirchenslavische Grammatik, (1963, 2. Auflage) and looked it up. The infinitive is (I don't have a yat' here so I'll use ě), вěдěти, 1.sg. вěмь. (мягкий знак) 
Also, noone mentioned it, probably because it's only males here who might recall this word, but we have the word ведьма. Ведь значит The Knower, согласишь?? (I do know what it means.) 
доброй ночи!

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## chaika

kalinka_vinnie - азбука is closest to ABC. Actually the OCS word is буки that's the name of the letter, even though it seems to be plural. 
Anyway, memorize this phrase, which "everyone" knows: аз да буки а там науки. 
(носители рус. яз. пож исправьте, если ошибаюсь.) 
and pices reminded me
>Азбука is just a literal translation of "alphabet". 
What do you think might be the origin of the English word "alphabet". Might it be alpha beta αβ Hmmm. or alef bet? As I heard it from my former wife, her high school (in Chicago) ball game cheer was: alef bet gimmel dalet. Man, oh man, are we solid!

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## kalinka_vinnie

ok, I see now. аз means 'A' and not necessary 'I' and буки means 'B', just like Alphabet is alpha beta, the two first letters. 
I just got confued with the аз = 'I' thing...  
I'm cool!   ::

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## Spiderkat

> ...
> What do you think might be the origin of the English word "alphabet". Might it be alpha beta αβ Hmmm. or alef bet? As I heard it from my former wife, her high school (in Chicago) ball game cheer was: alef bet gimmel dalet. Man, oh man, are we solid!

 This is from an etymology dictionary.  

> 1567 (implied in alphabetical), from L.L. alphabetum (Tertullian), from Gk. alphabetos, from alpha + beta, the first two letters of it, from Heb.-Phoen. aleph, pausal form of eleph "ox" + beth, lit. "house;" the letters so called because their shapes resembled or represented those objects. The Greeks added -a to the end of many Heb.-Phoenician letter names because Gk. words cannot end in most consonants.

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## Triton

> Isn't Romanian and French Close? Closer than General Spanish is to French?

 Not really. Romanian is closer to Italian rather than French.

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## TATY

> Originally Posted by TATY  My Spanish friend says he understands French.   I doubt it, unless he studied French. What do you mean by he understands? He can understand when someone talks or can guess when he reads something?

 I expect written, because in French they don't pronounce half the letters in a word...

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## TATY

In Ukrainian they have: 
Алфавіт - from Greek alpha, beta
Азбука - from Old Church Slavonic az, buki 
Абетка - from Ukrainian a, be,

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## TATY

> kalinka_vinnie - азбука is closest to ABC. Actually the OCS word is буки that's the name of the letter, even though it seems to be plural. 
> Anyway, memorize this phrase, which "everyone" knows: аз да буки а там науки. 
> (носители рус. яз. пож исправьте, если ошибаюсь.) 
> and pices reminded me
> >Азбука is just a literal translation of "alphabet". 
> What do you think might be the origin of the English word "alphabet". Might it be alpha beta αβ Hmmm. or alef bet? As I heard it from my former wife, her high school (in Chicago) ball game cheer was: alef bet gimmel dalet. Man, oh man, are we solid!

 But, if you look at the whole alphabet: 
Г is called глаголи
Д is called добро
Е is called єсть 
etc. 
The names have meanings.

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## Spiderkat

> I expect written, because in French they don't pronounce half the letters in a word...

 Sorry but you're wrong. Who told you that?

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## Platinum

> Originally Posted by TATY  I expect written, because in French they don't pronounce half the letters in a word...   Sorry but you're wrong. Who told you that?

 What do you mean he's wrong?  In saying that they don't pronounce half the letters in a word?  That's right, as far as I'm concerned.  For example, the -eaux ending, that sounds like "oh".  
And just count to ten: 
un
deux
trois
quatre
cinq
six
sept
huit
neuf
dix  
Most of those have more than one useless letter.  (not that english is any better, but anyway)

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## Spiderkat

> What do you mean he's wrong?  In saying that they don't pronounce half the letters in a word?  That's right, as far as I'm concerned.  For example, the -eaux ending, that sounds like "oh".  
> And just count to ten: 
> ... 
> Most of those have more than one useless letter.  (not that english is any better, but anyway)

 As you know almost all the words come from Latin or/and Greek and have a reason to have such spellings. Let me explain these you've mentioned above. But I agree some letters are silent, which by the way does not mean useless at all, and he quite exaggerated saying half the letters are not pronounced.  :: 
Here's some simple explanations.  
un - the n is needed because it becomes une, also u+n creates a nasal sound and comes from _unus_ in Latin
deux - the silent x is needed and pronounced for words made of it (deuxi

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## Platinum

[quote=Spiderkat] 

> What do you mean he's wrong?  In saying that they don't pronounce half the letters in a word?  That's right, as far as I'm concerned.  For example, the -eaux ending, that sounds like "oh".  
> And just count to ten: 
> ... 
> Most of those have more than one useless letter.  (not that english is any better, but anyway)

 As you know almost all the words come from Latin or/and Greek and have a reason to have such spellings. Let me explain these you've mentioned above. But I agree some letters are silent, which by the way does not mean useless at all, and he quite exaggerated saying half the letters are not pronounced.  :: 
Here's some simple explanations.  
un - the n is needed because it becomes une, also u+n creates a nasal sound and comes from _unus_ in Latin
deux - the silent x is needed and pronounced for words made of it (deuxi

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## Spiderkat

> Ha ha ha!  Tu-shay back in my face!  By the way, that "tu-shay", or "too, sheey" or whatever....that sounds French also.  How do you spell it?  
> ...

 You spell it "touch

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## TATY

> Originally Posted by TATY  I expect written, because in French they don't pronounce half the letters in a word...   Sorry but you're wrong. Who told you that?

 You take people to litterally.
When I say "they don't pronounce half the letters", I don't actually mean half. 
But there are lots of unpronounced letters (e.g. at the end of words). 
Basically, I was saying, French isn't a phonetic language, so even though a French word may look like a Spanish word, a Spanish person may find it difficult to understand.

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## TATY

[quote=Platinum][quote=Spiderkat] 

> What do you mean he's wrong?  In saying that they don't pronounce half the letters in a word?  That's right, as far as I'm concerned.  For example, the -eaux ending, that sounds like "oh".  
> And just count to ten: 
> ... 
> Most of those have more than one useless letter.  (not that english is any better, but anyway)

 As you know almost all the words come from Latin or/and Greek and have a reason to have such spellings. Let me explain these you've mentioned above. But I agree some letters are silent, which by the way does not mean useless at all, and he quite exaggerated saying half the letters are not pronounced.  :: 
Here's some simple explanations.  
un - the n is needed because it becomes une, also u+n creates a nasal sound and comes from _unus_ in Latin
deux - the silent x is needed and pronounced for words made of it (deuxi

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## Spiderkat

> No. 
> huit is not pronounce het. Firstly, H is silent in french. 
> It sounds more like *уйт* 
> six - the x is pronounce. Sounds like *сис*

 Just wanted to say that the h is either mute or aspirated.   
les hommes, h is mute and you pronounce "layzom"
les h

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## Spiderkat

> You take people to litterally.
> When I say "they don't pronounce half the letters", I don't actually mean half. 
> But there are lots of unpronounced letters (e.g. at the end of words). 
> Basically, I was saying, French isn't a phonetic language, so even though a French word may look like a Spanish word, a Spanish person may find it difficult to understand.

 I agree, some of them are unpronounced (mute is the right term) but needed especially when comes the writing or reading part otherwise you wouldn't be able to understand the words. 
Here's an example, "col" and "colle" are pronounced the same way but have two different meanings. 
And I agree also, French isn't a phonetic language but once you know the rules of pronounciation and I would say 'you read what you see', which is not the case in English for example.

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## Platinum

> huit is not pronounce het. Firstly, H is silent in french. 
> It sounds more like *уйт* 
> six - the x is pronounce. Sounds like *сис*

 That's actually a pretty good idea, using Russian letters to show pronounciation.  Not that we're trying to learn French here, but trying to use English letters to explain how a word is pronounced is pretty useless.  Like I said, I think French is a weird language.  BUt English is probably more insane.

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## Biancca

> Not that we're trying to learn French here

 
Aber ich!

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## jbblack

So, kind of going back on topic here, I have a friend that is originally from Bulgaria.  She doesn't know that I am learning Russian, but I really could benefit from working with someone that knows the language.  If I remember right, I think she speaks Russian too, but am not absolutely certain. 
I would like to learn from her (Bulgarian too, after my Russian skills have gotten up to par), but do not want to unintentionally insult her.  It seems that I read somewhere that some people do get insulted over the subject (though I don't know why exactly).  Is this the case?  If so, how should I ask in order to not be offensive?

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## MalenkayaKatinka

> un (yeah, all letters are pronounced)
> du (not like doo, but more like the first two letters of "done")
> twa
> katr (I've heard it with the "r" so lightly pronounced that it's barely there) 
> sank (all the letters are pronounced)
> six (I don't know about that)
> set 
> het
> nef
> ...

 In 'un', all the letters are not pronounce, more like "uh" but nasalized. If you  raise your tongue to the back of the mouth so air can't pass through, you can make the proper sound.  
'Deux' is not pronounced as the first two letters "done". I'm not sure how to write it linguistically yet.   ::  If you say "uh" again and then round the mouth, you'll make the sound. (Technique I learned in linguistics to pronounce sounds   ::  ) 
In 'quatre' the "r" is pronounced, though not in the way it is in Russian. It's a rolling of the "r" in the back of the throat.
 In 'six' the "x" is pronounced the same as the "s". sees (not the English "sees" though) Using the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) it would be "sis". "i" is pronouced "ee". Same with 'dix'. 
Huit is not pronounced "het". It's pronounced more like "wheat".
Neuf is pronounced with the 'eu' sound in 'deux'. 
Why are you discussing a language you know nothing about?   ::   
Here is a link with all the number pronunciations.  http://french.about.com/library/begin/bl_numbers.htm

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## MalenkayaKatinka

Italian and Spanish are more alike. Spanish cannot be understood if you know French. I have been studying French for 6 years and when I was in Miami in a hotel, I couldn't understand the cleaning lady.   ::  Although another girl who claims she knows French (which I doubt) said she could understand it (which I also doubt). 
Portugese is similar to Spanish. If you know Portugese, it's easier to understand Spanish than the other way around. If you know Spanish, you can understand Portugese, but it's a little harder. I know this because my friend's father, who's fluent in Spanish because he's from Panama went to Portugese one time and told me he could understand them, but needed them to speak slowly so he could understand. To conduct business, he spoke Spanish and they spoke Portugese. So it's obviously possible.

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## chaika

I took 4 years of Spanish in high school. 
4 years later after college I had to take a reading exam in French. Just a little brush up over the summer with Palmeri & Milligan French for Reading Knowledge and I was able to pass the exam. 
Jeez, I just pulled that book down off the shelf. The last time I read it was 40 years ago. omigod. Time to take a load to the used book store.

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## MalenkayaKatinka

Chaika- 
It's one thing to read. It's another thing when you hear the words in conversation. It's a lot more difficult to understand. Reading comprehension is always higher than conversational comprehension. Speaking is also the last that falls into place when learning a language.

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## Spiderkat

Exactly. Just need to learn the alphabet and the rules of pronunciation and you can read what's written in a lot of different languages. But what's the purpose of taking a reading exam if you don't undertand what your read?

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## Platinum

> Why are you discussing a language you know nothing about?  p

 Because it's fun.  And because I *CAN*!   ::

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