Re: OT: semi-OT: bilingual communication

Eamon Graham scripsit:

<<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?>>

I was interested in this question for a long time.
Here are some observations based on what I heard from many people:
- Ukrainians have no problem with understanding both Russian and Belarussian;
- most Belarussians are bilingual, so Russian is no problem for them, but I
have no data about their understanding of Ukrainian;
- Russians who live in Ukraine, more-or-less understand Ukrainian (maybe losing
some nuances if they have no opportunity to learn the language);
- Russians who live in Russia, don't understand Ukrainian at all!
That's no wonder, beacause according to estimates by Prof. Tischenko, Ru. and
Uk. have only about 3/4 of grammar patterns and 2/3 of vocabulary in common,
and this common vocabulary is often shadowed by sound changes.
Compare:
En. -- Ru. -- Uk.
bread - khl'eb - khlib
to eat - jes't' - jisty
horse - kon' - kin' (stem in oblique cases: kon'-)
young - molodoj [m@lA"doj] - molodyj [mOlO"dIj]
Ru. has 3 noun declensions and 16 verb types;
Uk. has 4 noun declensions and 11 verb types.
Make conclusions...
---------------------------

Pavel Iosad scripsit:

<<Of course, there are complications, such as the de-russification of
literary Ukrainian and such things,>>

Phew! Rural dialects of Poltava and Kiev regions that became the base for the
literary language, were quite far from Russian long before political ups and
downs...

<<but generally, the difference
between the three is not much greater than between, say, Swedish and
Danish.>>

Agreed.

Yitzik
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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