If you know one Slavic language well, how easy is it to learn others?

[Irena]

Here are some questions that I have:
- Is Ukrainian more similar to Russian (same group) or more similar to Polish (neighbouring country)? I read that Ukrainian might have vocabulary in common with Polish, while Russian vocabulary is a bit different. This has something to do with Old Church Slavonic.
- Are the West Slavic languages more or less mutually intelligible (Czech and Polish)? I imagine a native Polish speaker would not need much study to understand Czech (to speak would obviously require more)
- my understanding is that Serbo-Croat-Bosnian is more or less the same language, and that Macedonian and Bulgarian are really close and mutually intelligible. True?

I'm no expert, but I do speak three Slavic languages: Serbian (natively), Russian, and Czech. So, one per branch. I'd say it's like this.

Czech and Slovak and mutually intelligible with just a little bit of practice. Czech and Polish aren't. When I look at a Polish text, I find that I understand most of the words, but I don't understand sentences. I find this intriguing enough that I'm considering learning Polish. If I do this, I'll report on what it's like to learn Polish as a fourth Slavic language and second West Slavic one. As for Ukrainian: I find it a bit easier to understand than Polish, but the same basic issue (understanding words, struggling with sentences) remains.

The various branches of the language formerly known as Serbo-Croatian are mutually intelligible with very little issue (they're closer than Czech and Slovak, and far closer than Czech and Polish), as long as you stick to the more or less standard varieties.

Macedonian and Bulgarian are very close, but Macedonian has a fairly large amount of Serbian vocabulary, whereas Bulgarian has more Russian vocabulary. I'm not entirely sure, but I think they're about as close as Czech and Slovak.

[AroAro]

- You’re right, Polish and Ukrainian share quite a lot of vocabulary whereas Russian uses completely different words (for example “socks” are “skarpetki” in PL-UK but “noski” in RU, “paper” is “papier”/”papir” in PL-UK but “bumaga” in RU and so on). I remember watching once a “Russian with Max” video and he also has the same impression. However, for me it’s not easy to understand spoken Ukrainian.
- More or less, yes, based on my experience Czech is super easy at beginner levels but the two languages start to differ considerably at more advanced levels and lose quickly their mutual intelligibility. Slovak however remains more or less intelligible at all levels.
- Regarding Bulgarian and Macedonian, I sometimes stumble upon some tweets in Macedonian and I wouldn’t guess they’re not in Bulgarian if not for a different spelling system adopted by Macedonian, so yes, they’re very close.

[dylan413]

Learning Ukrainian after Russian was extremely easy. The grammar has very few differences. It's mainly about learning new vocabulary. When I visited Lviv a couple years back my Ukrainian was extremely rusty and admittedly I felt like I was basically just speaking Russian but replacing some of the words and changing up some of the endings. My Ukrainian was far from ideal, but communication was more or less completely fluid. I understood them and they understood me without any issue.

Still, I don't think that they are mutually intelligible to the degree that many Russian speakers claim. I think a lot of them confuse Ukrainian with Surzhyk, which is spoken by a lot of people in Ukraine. It's basically just a mixture of Ukrainian and Russian. I have never taken a stab at learning other Slavic languages, but I will say that Bulgarian is somewhat intelligible and sometimes I can understand a little of what my Serbian friends are saying when they are talking amongst themselves. I don't think it would be terribly hard to learn these languages either, but it would require some serious study. Polish sounds and looks crazy to me, but I'm sure a little effort would clear up a lot of the mystery.

Obviously, it's slightly different for me due to the fact that Russian isn't my native language, but I've spoken it every day for years and there is virtually nothing I can't talk about in Russian comfortably that I would feel fine discussing in English. I used to speak Ukrainian much better, but after years of neglect it's not that great.

[Iversen]

I'm still a beginner in Ukrainian, but knowing a bit of Polish and Slovak plus some Russian makes it relatively easy to understand written texts in Ukrainian. The real problem is to activitate it. I only own a dictionary, not a grammar - but there are some tables in WIkipedia so I have made some green sheets (alpha version). I have written a few sentences in it in my log, and I may do that again soon - although the outcome may come down to Ukrainian morphology plus Russian syntax plus the content of my dictionary with its random sprinkling of Polish (and Slovak) words mixed with things that look like Russian, but are spelled differently.

The real problem is that I haven't heard enough Ukrainian to really understand the spoken version, and to get my head spinning that's not enough - and no spin, no thinking and no thinking no speaking anytime soon. And yes, Denmark is full of Ukrainian fugitives, but I haven't met any of them. So for the moment I'm just chugging along studying the written version of the language.

[Saim]

- Is Ukrainian more similar to Russian (same group) or more similar to Polish (neighbouring country)? I read that Ukrainian might have vocabulary in common with Polish, while Russian vocabulary is a bit different. This has something to do with Old Church Slavonic.

It is more closely related to Russian, and is also structurally closer on the whole. But it's lexically closer to Polish, or at least Standard Ukrainian and the western and central dialects are. I'm not sure about the eastern dialects, they may be lexically closer to Russian, but they've mostly given way to Russian and surzhyk as far as I understand.

You're right that Russian has a layer of OCS (and therefore South Slavic) vocabulary that for the most part doesn't exist in Ukrainian, whereas Ukrainian is full of Polonisms that don't exist in Russian.

- Are the West Slavic languages more or less mutually intelligible (Czech and Polish)? I imagine a native Polish speaker would not need much study to understand Czech (to speak would obviously require more)

Slovak is a bit easier for Poles than Czech is. Both still have a fair bit of unique vocabulary compared to Polish; a lot of the formal terms are quite different. I get the sense that written Ukrainian and especially Belarusian would be more transparent for Poles than Czech or Slovak if it were not for Cyrillic.

- my understanding is that Serbo-Croat-Bosnian is more or less the same language, and that Macedonian and Bulgarian are really close and mutually intelligible. True?

Yes on both counts.

The four Serbo-Croatian standards are all based on the same dialect, and are for the most part structurally identical. There is a fair bit of regional variation but it doesn't map neatly to ethnic or national borders.

Standard Macedonian and Bulgarian are based on different dialects (Macedonian is subsumed entirely within the western bloc of Bulgarian dialects, whereas the Bulgarian standard is mainly based on the eastern bloc, even though Sofia is traditionally within the western area), so there is some minor variation in terms of morphology and sound changes. Macedonian's formal register has modeled itself on that of Serbian and Bulgarian has lots of Russian loans, as Irena mentioned.

Standard Slovene has also been influenced by Serbian, but not quite to the same extent as Macedonian.

[Iversen]

You're right that Russian has a layer of OCS (and therefore South Slavic) vocabulary that for the most part doesn't exist in Ukrainian, whereas Ukrainian is full of Polonisms that don't exist in Russian.

That could explain why I found Bulgarian relatively easy from the first time I tried to read it. I have once studied a text that without reservations claimed that Old Church Slavonic really just was an old version of Bulgarian - and Bulgarian scholars seems to stick to that version of the history. The famous monks Cyril and Methodius actually worked in Greater Moravia, which was a kingdom that comprised modern Czecha and Slovakia, but Old Church Slavonic was outlawed there in 865 by order of the pope, and therefore the later developments happened on the Balkan peninsula, with Bulgaria as the focal point. And from there OCS apparently migrated to Russia. But then you may wonder why Ukrainian didn't get the same layer of OCS as Russian. One reason could be that when the Kievan Rus got christianized their theological connections went to Konstantinople/Byzans rather than to Bulgaria. But how did OCS then skip across Ukraine to Russia without leaving at least some traces along the way??

The Polish influence on Ukrainean could have something to do with the fact that a combined Polish-Lithuanian kingdom once stretched far into modern Ukraine, and at least Galizia must have been under a heavy influence from Polish during that time.

[stelingo]

In my personal experience, after learning French and Spanish I found other Romance languages a lot easier to pick up than Slavic ones , after studying Russian. I often read BBC Russian, and can understand the articles fairly well. When I try and read BBC Ukrainian a lot of it remains incomprehensible, although textbook Ukrainian is fairly easy. I would agree with others that Czech grammar is more difficult than Russian, and Polish even more complicated.

I dabbled in Croatian a couple of years ago and found it really easy to pick up, at least up to A2 level. It was a lot of fun. When I was in Split taking a city tour my guide was amazed I was able to understand the inscriptions in one of the churches. He called me a Slavic brother.

Here's a couple of fun videos to watch:

https://youtu.be/Sk-XuU4kRzE

https://youtu.be/Ad0OisgcPc4

[vonPeterhof]

But then you may wonder why Ukrainian didn't get the same layer of OCS as Russian. One reason could be that when the Kievan Rus got christianized their theological connections went to Konstantinople/Byzans rather than to Bulgaria. But how did OCS then skip across Ukraine to Russia without leaving at least some traces along the way??

It's not that it "skipped" Ukraine, but that the later developments in the interplay between the church language and the vernacular language in the different parts of the East Slavic area led to very different results. Kyiv was still the main political and cultural center of the East Slavic lands back when OCS first arrived there, and there are still traces of that, for example in the fact that the fricative pronunciation of г in the Russian version of Church Slavonic persisted long past the point where the Moscow koine stuck with the stop pronunciation (the fricative even survives to some extent in modern standard Russian pronunciations of words like Бог and Господи). Plus there were still lots of Church Slavonicisms in at least some registers of the Ruthenian written language that was used in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

One of the factors explaining the difference in the modern languages is the influence of Polish, which apparently replaced Church Slavonic as the main source of abstract and higher register vocabulary in Ukrainian (and Belarusian) at some point. This may also be supported by the fact that the Rusyn language, which most Ukrainian linguists consider to be a group of Ukrainian dialects that developed mostly without the influence of Polish, supposedly preserved much more OCS vocabulary than any Ukrainian dialects to the north and east of the Carpathians.

Another factor is that Ukrainian didn't have an equivalent phenomenon to what Russian historical linguistics refers to as "the Second South Slavic Influence/Influx", which is basically when deliberate attempts were made to "purify" the Moscow version of Church Slavonic of accumulated divergences between it and the Bulgarian version, which was seen as more authentic (while Cyril and Methodius did originally design OCS for use in Greater Moravia, they were mostly basing it on the Slavic dialects they were familiar with in Thessaloniki, so the claims to the language being essentially "Old Bulgarian" or "Old Macedonian" do have some basis). The lasting effects of this phenomenon are apparently still being debated, but I think the very fact that there were attempts to keep the South-East Slavic connections alive long after the initial point of contact is significant, especially in light of the fact that it took until the 18th/early 19th century for Russian writers to start treating Church Slavonic as a separate language and not just a higher/more archaic register.

[dylan413]

Have a look at the old HTLAL thread Slavic Language Family Learning Sequence. In the very last post, Theodisce says:

If I was to draw a conclusion, I would say that 100 hours of listening to a language is a solid foundation upon which to build your knowledge, provided you already have a decent command of a Slavic language.

This post is excellent regarding its clear analysis of the different challenges and advantages of each Slavic language, but I think Russian is the best choice for almost anyone studying a Slavic language for the first time. Maybe if someone's family is Polish or if they are marrying someone from Bulgaria it's better to choose a language other than Russian, but I wouldn't recommend someone who finds grammar difficult to start with Bulgarian or for someone who wants a slightly easier time acquiring vocabulary to start with Czech. At least for me, maintaining motivation is the key. No other Slavic language compares to Russian in regard to the amount of content and overall general usefulness of the language. If the fact that Russian grammar is slightly more challenging than Bulgarian grammar is going to trip them up starting with Bulgarian, I don't think they'll have a shot at learning Bulgarian without getting bored by the lack of resources and content in the language. I've lived in Azerbaijan for the past two years and I profoundly regret not having gone with Turkish first despite the fact that Azerbaijani language surrounds me every day. The lack of resources in Azerbaijani and interesting content in the language makes it so much more challenging to keep up the minimum level of motivation necessary to continue progressing. If I had gone with Turkish, I think things would be completely different.

[Irena]

Have a look at the old HTLAL thread Slavic Language Family Learning Sequence. In the very last post, Theodisce says:

If I was to draw a conclusion, I would say that 100 hours of listening to a language is a solid foundation upon which to build your knowledge, provided you already have a decent command of a Slavic language.

This post is excellent regarding its clear analysis of the different challenges and advantages of each Slavic language, but I think Russian is the best choice for almost anyone studying a Slavic language for the first time. Maybe if someone's family is Polish or if they are marrying someone from Bulgaria it's better to choose a language other than Russian, but I wouldn't recommend someone who finds grammar difficult to start with Bulgarian or for someone who wants a slightly easier time acquiring vocabulary to start with Czech. At least for me, maintaining motivation is the key. No other Slavic language compares to Russian in regard to the amount of content and overall general usefulness of the language. If the fact that Russian grammar is slightly more challenging than Bulgarian grammar is going to trip them up starting with Bulgarian, I don't think they'll have a shot at learning Bulgarian without getting bored by the lack of resources and content in the language. I've lived in Azerbaijan for the past two years and I profoundly regret not having gone with Turkish first despite the fact that Azerbaijani language surrounds me every day. The lack of resources in Azerbaijani and interesting content in the language makes it so much more challenging to keep up the minimum level of motivation necessary to continue progressing. If I had gone with Turkish, I think things would be completely different.

I very much agree with this post, except for the part I highlighted in bold. In fact, in terms of vocabulary acquisition, Czech is probably the hardest Slavic language for a Westerner to learn. Why? Because back in the 19th century, Czech revivalists deliberately purged the language of Western loanwords and replaced them with words of Slavic origin. That's how you get words such as dějepis and zeměpis for history and geography, respectively, whereas other Slavic languages (well, most of them, certainly including Russian) would use obvious loanwords. Now, it's true that Czech does in fact have the words historie and geografie, which you're welcome to use, but if you're learning Czech, you'd better know dějepis and zeměpis as well, since they are the ones that native speakers are more likely to use.

But yes, I definitely agree that Russian is by far the most obvious Slavic language to start with, unless of course the person has a compelling reason to learn something else instead. Moving to the Czech Republic would be an excellent reason to start with Czech instead. But to be honest, I pity people who have to learn Czech as their first Slavic language. There just aren't that many good resources for Czech, and so unless you already have the intuition for how Slavic languages work (especially the case system), plus a healthy vocabulary size in some other Slavic language (because that gives you a good source of cognates), it's gotta be tough. It's not impossible, obviously, but it isn't easy. There are many more resources for Russian, which allows for a gentler learning curve and therefore higher odds of success.