Re: OT: semi-OT: bilingual communication

Hello,

> Which leads me to a question I've wondered about ever since I was a
> wee lad: how mutually intelligible - if at all - are Ukrainian,
> Russian and Byelorussian?
Pretty much. Of course, if you take the peripheral dialects - i.e., say
the Arkhangel'sk dialects and the Transcarpathian Ukrainian, they won't
be intelligible. The written forms are for the most part intelligible
with little problem. Careful speech close to the literary standard is
also readily intelligible.

Of course, there are complications, such as the de-russification of
literary Ukrainian and such things, but generally, the difference
between the three is not much greater than between, say, Swedish and
Danish.

You might want to do a search in the archives for 'surzhik', which is
the transitional Russo-Ukrainian zone. The Byelorusso-Ukrainian
transitional zone in the Poles'je has *very* interesting dialects, but
unfortunately they are quickly dying out :-( not the least because of
emigration caused by the repercussions of Chernobyl'.

Pavel
--
Pavel Iosad               pavel_iosad@mail.ru

Is mall a mharcaicheas am fear a bheachdaicheas
                 --Scottish proverb

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