Russian & Belarusian

General discussion about learning languages
Bluepaint
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Russian & Belarusian

Postby Bluepaint » Fri Mar 16, 2018 7:50 pm

What is the level of mutual intelligibility between these two?
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Speakeasy
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Re: Russian & Belarusian

Postby Speakeasy » Fri Mar 16, 2018 8:08 pm

Results from a quick Google search:

Belarus Digest - Are the Belarusian and Russian languages very similar?
https://belarusdigest.com/story/myths/are-the-belarusian-and-russian-languages-very-similar/

Quora - How big is the difference between Russian language and Belarusian language?
https://www.quora.com/How-big-is-the-difference-between-Russian-language-and-Belarusian-language

The Linguist - Similarities & Differences Between the Slavic Languages
https://blog.thelinguist.com/similarities-differences-slavic-languages

Word Reference - Distinguishing Ukrainian & Belarusian from Russian (upon hearing)
https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/distinguishing-ukrainian-belarusian-from-russian-upon-hearing.1131535/
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Dragon27
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Re: Russian & Belarusian

Postby Dragon27 » Sat Mar 17, 2018 11:21 am

Belarusian is one of the closest (the closest?) languages to Russian, but it's still not easily comprehensible. Especially for someone who had zero experience with the language. Here's how a typical person (who doesn't speak Belarusian) would react to a question in Belarusian: YouTube video (they just say "I don't understand, speak in Russian, please"). This is in Belarus, btw.
A famous Soviet movie "Иди и смотри" (Come and See) was set in Byelorussian SSR, but for viewer's sake they didn't use pure Belarusian language and resorted to a kind of mixed Russian-Belarusian speech, because nobody (except Belarusians themselves) would have understood pure Belarusian.

I've studied Polish and it gives me huge advantage in understanding Belarusian, because these two languages have a lot of common vocabulary, so I can understand not too fast Belarusian speech with not too much trouble :) (and I think I can do better with more practice).
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Kamlari
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Re: Russian & Belarusian

Postby Kamlari » Sat Mar 17, 2018 1:13 pm

If you know Polish and Russian, you'll be able to understand a lot of Belarusian and Ukrainian. I've listened to some audiobooks and understood them without too much trouble.
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William Camden
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Re: Russian & Belarusian

Postby William Camden » Sat Mar 24, 2018 4:20 pm

It is pretty close - as with Ukrainian, it is probably the Polish vocabulary present in the language that would make it hard for a Russian to understand.
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