Posted: Thu Sep 28, 2006 3:47 pm Post subject: Welcome message and question
Welcome to the newly created language subforum dedicated to Slavic languages. As the previous Slavic subforum wasn’t densely populated I don’t think this one will be teemed with people. Yet I believe there will be some interested people to join in.
Thanks André for setting it up!
At the beginning a little poll: which Slavic language would you like to learn (if you had to) and why?
Welcome! I'm glad to see the part of patriotic place :wink: .
Regarding to your question about Slavic languages I'd like to learn, I can say, I'd like to acquaint myself with Russian and Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian as the representatives of each group of Slavic languages. Thus as I can quite easily understand spoken Czech and Slovak and a bit our Eastern neighbours , I can hardly understand the general sense of sentence in south Slavic group of languages (They have many false friends and Roman/Latin borrowings, that are not met in Western Slavic languages - we've got many more words from German.)
Referring to Russian, I know cyrillic alphabet (although I read it slowly, but I read :) ) _________________ "- Med tid og tålmodighet, blir morbærbladet silke.
- Mit Zeit und Geduld, wird das Maulbeerblatt Seide
- With time and patience, the mulberry leaf becomes silk"
Location: El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles del Río de Porciúncula
Posted: Thu Sep 28, 2006 9:02 pm Post subject: Re: Welcome message and question
KSa wrote:
At the beginning a little poll: which Slavic language would you like to learn (if you had to) and why?
I would like to learn Czech because I've always wanted to visit Prague and mix and mingle with the locals. I also wouldn't mind visiting Russia and Poland, so perhaps I'd be interested in learning some Russian and Polish.
Incidently, there was an article in a local magazine last week about Afrikaans now being a subject at the University of Warsaw! Considering that our countries uses to be enemies, this is great! :D
Lately, thanks to you, I've developed quite an interest in Poland, and has always been interested in Russia. So if I decided to study Slavic languages, those would be the ones. _________________ Toe ek jonk was, het ek al die antwoorde geken. Nou verstaan ek nie eens die vrae nie.
I've always been hesitating between Slovenian ans Serbian/Croatian.
Slovenian because I like the country (I don't know how I can say that, I know it so little!!!)
Serbian/Croatian because... er... I don't know :gaf2:
Sometimes I think Russian would be more useful, then cancel this stupid thought from my mind. I learn a language if I feel like it, not because it's useful :tong:
I’m a representative of the generation which had to have learnt Russian at school. I think I feel quite strong at the basic level. In fact, it’s not a great achievement since Polish and Russian share some 75% of lexical homology. I’m considering learning it again because it’s still a lingua franca in our region, I mean you can use it in Ukraine, Belarus, Baltic countries… I even remember when I was in Germany (former Democratic Republic of) two years ago I met a middle-aged guy who didn’t speak English (I don’t speak German) but we could talk in Russian! He remembered it from school.
I agree with you Losse that the Southern Slavic languages are most difficult for us to understand. On the other hand, Slovak and Czech are the easiest. When I was in Slovakia on holidays, I talked to them in Polish, they answered in Slovak and providing we spoke slowly we had no problem to understand each other. However, one must be careful because our languages are full of false friends and unconcerned use of certain words may lead to akward confusion.
Last edited by KSa on Fri Sep 29, 2006 11:43 am; edited 1 time in total
Polish orthography is daunting - it makes my head spin.
I'd like to learn Russian but that does not mean that I have no interest in the other Slavic languages. I think I'd only learn languages like Polish or Czech on a need to know basis and that is contingent upon situations where I am obliged to remove myself to Poland.
When I visited Beijing, I was told that many people above 40 learnt Russian at school. Strangely, this is mainly a Northern Chinese phenomenon. Some of my Chinese relatives in the South have difficulties stringing together an intelligible sentence in Mandarin, not to mention a language as exotic as Russian.
Our Prime Minister supposedly has a working knowledge of Russian. He took it for his GCE O levels and his father (who was the Prime Minister then) hired an attache from the Czech embassy to coach him in the language.
I said "supposedly" as I doubt that an O level background in a language would get you far. _________________ Hillary Clinton is an acquired taste which I have clearly yet to acquire.
Incidently, there was an article in a local magazine last week about Afrikaans now being a subject at the University of Warsaw!
I didn't know about Warsaw, but I do know that at the University of Wroclaw (western Poland) there is the Department of Contemporary Dutch and Afrikaans Literature.
Quote:
Considering that our countries uses to be enemies, this is great! :D
:shock: ???
Quote:
Lately, thanks to you, I've developed quite an interest in Poland, and has always been interested in Russia. So if I decided to study Slavic languages, those would be the ones
Thanks, André. I've also developed interest in SA. I have a friend who has an uncle living in SA so he is au courant with what is going on in your country. He told me recently that he was quite surprised about my knowledge about history, languages, geography and political situation in SA. :wink:
Posted: Fri Sep 29, 2006 10:02 am Post subject: Re: Welcome message and question
Elaine wrote:
KSa wrote:
At the beginning a little poll: which Slavic language would you like to learn (if you had to) and why?
I would like to learn Czech because I've always wanted to visit Prague and mix and mingle with the locals. I also wouldn't mind visiting Russia and Poland, so perhaps I'd be interested in learning some Russian and Polish.
Some people claim that Prague is the loveliest city in Europe. I've never been there so far but judging from the post cards or photographs I've seen they might not be far from truth.
Sometimes I think Russian would be more useful, then cancel this stupid thought from my mind. I learn a language if I feel like it, not because it's useful :tong:
:D Idealistic approach that I always very appreciate!
Polish orthography is daunting - it makes my head spin.
Yes, it looks so weird to me (in the sense "so different"). One may not be able to distinguish between, say, written Czech and Croatian, but they would certainly recognize written Polish (hence the wrong conclusion that Polish is a very different language). Is there a reason to that?
KSa wrote:
patriccke wrote:
Sometimes I think Russian would be more useful, then cancel this stupid thought from my mind. I learn a language if I feel like it, not because it's useful :tong:
:D Idealistic approach that I always very appreciate!
I have to confess it's easier to say when you know English :oups:
Polish orthography is daunting - it makes my head spin.
Yes, it looks so weird to me (in the sense "so different"). One may not be able to distinguish between, say, written Czech and Croatian, but they would certainly recognize written Polish (hence the wrong conclusion that Polish is a very different language). Is there a reason to that?
The unique diacritics: ż, ą, ę, and to lesser extent ć, ź, ń, ś make Polish quite easy to distinguish, I think.
Incidently, there was an article in a local magazine last week about Afrikaans now being a subject at the University of Warsaw!
I didn't know about Warsaw, but I do know that at the University of Wroclaw (western Poland) there is the Department of Contemporary Dutch and Afrikaans Literature.
Wroclaw! Yes, that's the one, although the course in Afrikaans has some connection with the University of Warsaw. Will have to check the article again. _________________ Toe ek jonk was, het ek al die antwoorde geken. Nou verstaan ek nie eens die vrae nie.
Considering that our countries uses to be enemies, this is great! :D
Why was South-Africa supposed to be the enemy of Poland???
No, I think we were too far away from each other to have been enemies :wink:
Not the people of the two countries, but the governments. There were no diplomatic or economic ties during the apartheid/communist years. The apartheid government considered all communist governments as enemies, and the communist governments considered the apartheid regime as an enemy that had to be destroyed (or at least so we were told by the government :wink: ) Communism was illegal in SA until 1992, when the Communist Party was unbanned. In fact, when De Klerk announced the end of apartheid in 1992, he stated as one of the reasons why it was possible to do so the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, which meant that there was no communist threat to SA anymore.
Come to think of it, if asked 20 years ago, I certainly would have agreed that Poland is an enemy of SA, but I can't actually recall Poland ever doing anything to us. :wink: The East Germans of course gave training and arms to ANC guerrilas, as did the Soviet Union. _________________ Toe ek jonk was, het ek al die antwoorde geken. Nou verstaan ek nie eens die vrae nie.
Incidently, there was an article in a local magazine last week about Afrikaans now being a subject at the University of Warsaw!
I didn't know about Warsaw, but I do know that at the University of Wroclaw (western Poland) there is the Department of Contemporary Dutch and Afrikaans Literature.
Wroclaw! Yes, that's the one, although the course in Afrikaans has some connection with the University of Warsaw. Will have to check the article again.
I remembered the head of the Department, Prof. Jerzy Koch, when I was browsing a South African website about Afrikaans language. It was long time ago and I can't remember exactly the site. Anyway, Prof. Koch was mentioned there among other 4 or 5 Afrikaans language specialists from all over the world. :gg2:
Considering that our countries uses to be enemies, this is great! :D
Why was South-Africa supposed to be the enemy of Poland???
No, I think we were too far away from each other to have been enemies :wink:
Not the people of the two countries, but the governments. There were no diplomatic or economic ties during the apartheid/communist years. The apartheid government considered all communist governments as enemies, and the communist governments considered the apartheid regime as an enemy that had to be destroyed (or at least so we were told by the government :wink: ) Communism was illegal in SA until 1992, when the Communist Party was unbanned. In fact, when De Klerk announced the end of apartheid in 1992, he stated as one of the reasons why it was possible to do so the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, which meant that there was no communist threat to SA anymore.
Come to think of it, if asked 20 years ago, I certainly would have agreed that Poland is an enemy of SA, but I can't actually recall Poland ever doing anything to us. :wink: The East Germans of course gave training and arms to ANC guerrilas, as did the Soviet Union.
Yes, this is what I suspected. To be honest, I don't remember any signs of overt prejudice. Of course there were the communists's voices against SA government, but people could only take it as another symptom of hypocrisy, where representatives of one political system criticize another one, both systems pursuing anti-human politics.
Yes, this is what I suspected. To be honest, I don't remember any signs of overt prejudice. Of course there were the communists's voices against SA government, but people could only take it as another symptom of hypocrisy, where representatives of one political system criticize another one, both systems pursuing anti-human politics.
Exactly, the pot calling the kettle black! :lol: :roll: I think we were much more aware of the anomosity, since communist governments had little to gain with the public by critisizing the SA govt, whereas communism was a convenient bogeyman for the SA govt. So we constantly had anti-communist propaganda here. _________________ Toe ek jonk was, het ek al die antwoorde geken. Nou verstaan ek nie eens die vrae nie.
Incidently, there was an article in a local magazine last week about Afrikaans now being a subject at the University of Warsaw!
I didn't know about Warsaw, but I do know that at the University of Wroclaw (western Poland) there is the Department of Contemporary Dutch and Afrikaans Literature.
Wroclaw! Yes, that's the one, although the course in Afrikaans has some connection with the University of Warsaw. Will have to check the article again.
I remembered the head of the Department, Prof. Jerzy Koch, when I was browsing a South African website about Afrikaans language. It was long time ago and I can't remember exactly the site. Anyway, Prof. Koch was mentioned there among other 4 or 5 Afrikaans language specialists from all over the world. :gg2:
Checked the article, it is indeed about prof. Koch. (Incidently, Koch is a fairly common Afrikaans surname!) Thanks to him, Afrikaans is also studied at the university in Poznan. According to the article, he speaks fluent Afrikaans. The Warsaw connection was simply that the city was mentioned in the article, and it irritated me that the English spelling was used, for some strange reason. :roll: In Afrikaans it's written Warschau (some also spell it Warskou)
_________________ Toe ek jonk was, het ek al die antwoorde geken. Nou verstaan ek nie eens die vrae nie.
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