What Makes Each of the Slavic Languages Unique (Russian, Polish, Ukrainian, and more!)

This video goes through all the traits shared among most Slavic Languages, as well as the linguistics of what makes each of the languages unique, including Russian, Polish, Ukrainian, Czech, Serbian, Croatian, Bulgarian, Slovak, Slovene, Belarusian, Bosnian, Montenegrin, as well as lesser known ones like Rusyn, Silesian, Kashubian, and Sorbian!

Special thanks to Iry for providing examples and audio clips for Russian and Ukrainian, Aizu for providing examples and audio clips for Polish, Mamutinda providing examples and audio clips for Czech and Slovak, and Hijerovit for providing examples and audio clips for Serbo-Croatian

0:00 Intro
0:25 General traits
3:50 Russian
5:55 Ukrainian
7:02 Rusyn
7:40 Belarusian
8:30 Polish
9:40 Silesian
10:16 Czech
11:45 Slovak
12:28 Slovene
13:25 Serbo-Croatian
14:57 Bulgarian
16:19 Macedonian
17:21 Old Church Slavonic
17:59 Kashubian
18:19 Sorbian
18:53 Outro

[NiepKiep]

Being Polish and having played League of Legends in Czech, I strongly believe that mutual intelligibility is by far the best feature of Slavic languages.

[mihanich]

double negative is more like typical for Slavic languages in general not just individual Slavic languages

[iorn]

Yeah I'm Polish, I went to Czech on holiday and we spoke Polish and everyone understood us. We mostly understood Czech but a few words were different. Everyone understood one another. xd

[Philosopherius]

There have been attempts to create a so-called Interslavic "medžuslovjansky jezyk" language. It is the closest thing I have seen, heard, and, most importantly, understood so far, although the language is not used in practice. But if it were to start being used... that would be a game changer.

[DusanPavlicek]

Hi, thank you for the video.
I'm Czech, I was born in Czechoslovakia and I have to say Czech and Slovak languages were never considered the same language. They were (and still are) considered "mutually intelligible" but definitely not the same. It was that way because everyone was exposed to both Czech and Slovak on a daily basis, mainly on TV, in books etc. so people generally understood the other language but they generally couldn't actively speak it without mistakes, they would instead often come up with made-up words or phrases that would only "sound Slovak" to them but that were not truly Slovak 😉
I had a similar problem when I had to study Russian as a kid at school (before the Velvet Revolution in 1989), sometimes I wasn't sure if I used a genuine Russian word or if I only accidentally made something up in my head that sounded vaguely "Russian" to my Czech ears 😁(since both languages use similar words here and there).

[baginatora]

As a bulgarian, I can only say to those who want to learn our language "Thank you for your interest and sorry for making it difficult for you."

[CommonCommiestudios]

Proto-Slavic: *azъ
Bulgarian: Az
Slovene: Jaz
Everyone else: Ja
Bulgarian: Why are you all looking at me, I'm not the weird one

[MMMM-kioi]

Only Slavs can understand the following sentence: "Can you please translate me to the second page of the street."

[LingoLizard]

Corrections:
Czech and Slovak were only *officially* considered to be one Czechoslovak language between 1920-1938, but afterwards considered to be different languages, even while Czechoslovakia was still around.
The majority of people in Belarus *probably* don't speak Belarusian natively, but a majority of people think of Belarusian as their mother tongue, which is why so many people put it as native

Old Church Slavonic has been attested since the 800s, the 9th Century, NOT the 1800s
5:35 should be плаваю instead of палаваю
11:18 “vskétat” should be “vzkvévat”
13:00 these all mean ear, not eye, eye is “oko”

[stanbatakarata]

Поздрав за всичси славянски братя и сестри .От Бълария.Зажалост виждам тук много хора които са изкарват повече словяни от други .Не трябва така трябва да сме едно .Въпреки различията .Да си имаме уважението едни на други .❤Ви всички .

[tiarkrezar]

As a Slovene, it's very interesting to hear that our vowels are the most complex, that's something I'd never considered before. Especially in written text, they usually look simpler than in other Slavic languages. We only use a, e, i, o, u, and only rarely add accents when it's necessary to disambiguate between similar-sounding words.

[lmancz]

the research that went into this is insane! One thing I would point out as Czech, "čau" is used as very informal, you'd say that to your friends not in a shop etc. At the end of the video, the goodbyes in all the languages are formal, Czech equivalent would be "Nashledanou" literally - wishing we see each other again / until we see each other again (which is the exact same meaning in most of the other languages too). Fun fact, you'd end a phone conversation with a similar "Naslyšenou" which replaces "see" for "hear"

[flyguy]

Hi, I'm a native speaker of Russian, from Belarus, but can speak Belarusian too.

The Belarusian part was very accurate, except there was a small mistake. The majority of people don't speak Belarusian natively, but a majority of people think of Belarusian as their language, which is why so many people put it as native. Similar to Ukrainian, g is pronounced ɣ, not g.

The Russian new vocative case can also be used for non-kinship terms, like names. For example Оля (Olia) is said as Оль (Ol') sometimes.

[IridescentTea]

For Slovak language you may add letters as "ô" which a believe is pretty unique and when compared do some other slavic languages, also "ä". There's also a rhythmic law/rule meaning two long syllables cannot occur consecutively (which includes also those with ia/ie/iu/ô ) although there are minor exceptions here and there, ofc. That's just from the top of my head, I may add some more, if I remember to :)

[alexmilchev]

For anyone who is also a nerd here are some interesting facts about the Bulgarian language.

One that is often ignored, especially by foreign linguists but it's called Present Historical Time. It describes past actions in the present tense and it's mostly used, as the name suggests to describe historical actions.

Example: България е основана през 681г. (Bulgaria was founded in the year 681.) Where we use the present е основана, instead of the past е била основана.

What you described as evidentially is actually more complex and it refers to a lot of different tenses

Past Complete Time is used to describe actions that have certainly finished before the moment of speaking.

Past Incomplete Time is used to describe actions that have started in the past but the speaker is unsure if they have finished in the present.

Past Uncertain Time is used to describe past actions which have been completed in an uncertain moment in the past but we can observe the result.

Past Preliminary Time is used to describe actions that were completed before other past actions or a given moment.

Then there are also the future tenses called Future Time, Future Preliminary Time, Future Time in the Past and Future Preliminary Time in the Past.

Future is pretty self-explanatory.

Future Preliminary time is used to describe a future action that will happen before another future action or a given future moment.

Future Time in the Past is used to describe actions that would've happened in the past but didn't. It's considered a future tense because of the grammar used.

Future Preliminary Time in the Past is used to describe actions that would've happened but didn't because of a specific actions or reason. It's a bit hard to understand if you don't speak the language.

Another cool thing is the doubling forms, where a word has two official ways to be written or pronounced.

Example: обеци, обици(earnings)

Also I promise I won't bother you too much with dialects, mostly because Bulgarian dialects are a hundred times more complex than the language but I wanna mention that on top of regional dialects we have professional dialects used by people working in specific professions. They could range from people just using certain words such as Tricker dialect, used by professional criminals, to having a mixture of foreign and Bulgarian accents and grammar such as Computerdjiski dialect, to having artificially created accent specific for those professions, which is the case for actors, news presenters and PSA announcers. That accent is called Proper Speech and it was made to be the most comprehensible way to speak the language.

Lastly even though old Bulgarian is considered a lost language (thanks Turks) from the little we could uncover it was very similar to Old Church Slavonic, to the point some linguists consider them the same. That also makes sense due to historical reasons and here comes a slight correction. The Glagolic was created with Slavs in mind and during Christianation Bulgarian churches originally adopted the Glagolic so they don't preach in Greek, but since Bulgaria was a multiethnic state Glagolic proved too hard for non-slavs so a simplified version of the Glagolic was created called the Cyrrilic by one of Cyrril and Methodius's students called Kliment of Ohrid.

Czech and Slovak were deffinitely not considered the same language during the existence of Czechoslovakia. Also, Czech might be somewhat significantly influenced by latin, but its often striking when other Slavs talk to the Czechs how many archaic words the language presserved that even other slavic languages lost long time ago. Deffinitely true about the German infuence tho, Czechs always appreciated the short and easy German expressions, they make our rztrdrzzrtd conversations easier.

[HBon]

I'm a Czecho-Canadian and I love anything to do with slavic linguistics. It was a great video! Thank you.

[beister]

"Ne" and "Не" working pretty same in every slavic language, you can use almost for every word in sentences, but there are differencies in writing like Czech writes it together "nebudu" and for example russian writes "не буду", meaning same

[Its_Boki]

As a Montenegrin, you did a very good job explaining the fundamentals of Serbo-Croatian!❤

[jasombee]

For something unique to Slovak, someone already mentioned the rhythmic shortening, which is a rule that forbids two long syllables directly after each other.

Long syllables are any syllables containing á, é, í, ó, and ú, as well as the four officially recognised diphthongs: ia, ie, iu, and ô (/uo/). The letter Ô is also unique to Slovak, and emerged after a reform which merged the /uo/ diphthong.

Some examples of rhythmic shortening in Slovak (in contrast to Czech, which lacks this rule):

Láskam (to the loves) - incorrectly láskám (this would be Czech)

Skákanie (the jumping) - as opposed to the incorrect skákánie and the Czech skákání

ĺ and ŕ are also considered long syllables: Tŕň (thorn), kĺb (joint).

Other than the rhythmic shortening, Slovak also has a very extensive list of special words we call vybrané mená (lit. selected words). You see, in Slovak, the i and y vowels are read the same phonetically as /i/, but they have very distinct (and very annoying) grammatical role in words. They are called the the ‘soft i’ and the ‘hard y’. The soft i, if placed after a hard consonant (d, t, n, l), causes the consonant to soften. This is done in order to avoid writing too many unnecessary soft marks ◌̆. Additionally, the vowel e also works as a softener.

De, te, ne, le, di, ti, ni, li would be pronounced /ďe, ťe, ňe, ľe, ďi, ťi, ňi, ľi/. For the record, seeing it written this is generally an eyesore and generally a very hard faux pas when it comes to standard Slovak writing.

How does this connect to the selected words? Well, they are words which are specifically written with the hard y, and I’ve heard they are remnants from the past, so generally very old slavic words that simply had to be denounced into this category in order to preserve their original pronunciation. Examples: bylina (herb), umyť (to wash), rytier (knight)

There’s lots of stuff I’m omitting, because Slovak grammar is giving everyone, including middle schoolers and middle aged mothers on Facebook very real nightmares, but that is the gist of it. Hope you liked my infodumping, and if not… well, just be happy you don’t have to learn Slovak in Slovak primary schools. Yeesh. I am still traumatised.