Slavic languages

Agreed.

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I’m playing around with Russian on Duolingo for about 2 weeks now (trying to do this on daily basis, but I don’t always manage that though) and just today i could install Russian keyboard to use along with that Russian course. So the things are getting more and more interesting since I’ve established today that Serbian Cirilic is not even so different from Russian one and to my joy I also found out that I didn’t totally foget that script. I’m interested in how much I could learn since my native language is also slavic (Slovene) and quite some Russian words are similar to Slovene ones just the accent is prety much different though. For this matter I hardly wait SSiRussian comes out so I can really see how much I can get my Slovene language and knowledge of Serbo-Croatian into use of learning Russian also. So far it’s fun although I can’t say practically anything at all or maybe a little sentence or two …

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All this is fascinating stuff! My two-penn’orth, as one whose Russian is nowhere near as good as your (Stella & Tatjana) English. A lot depends on what you want to use the language for (apart from studying it for its own intrinsic linguistic interest). From the viewpoint of being able to read, all the slavonic languages are much closer to each other than the two branches of Celtic. If your native language uses the latin script and you’ve learned to read Russian, you can quite easily get the gist of texts in the other Slavonic languages, particularly if you’re prepared to look up a few words in the dictionary. I’ve never learned Czech or Polish, but I’ve occasionally translated chemistry papers from these languages. Speaking and understanding is a different kettle of fish!

Do skorovo, Dava

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Dava,

It sounds like we might share interests in another language which uses very stange scripts and obscure terminology like pseudo-first order, isotherms, anisotropes, polymorphs, umpolungs and vicarious nucleophiles.

Yes it seems so! Gwnes i ddysgi Cemeg a genes i weitho i Unilever (Port Sunlight) - cemeg organic. Особенно интересовался органическим xимием серного ангидридом для производства поверхно-активных веществ. Nawr dw i’n gweithio ar fy m’hen fy m’ hyn “Consultant Cemeg dywythiant a toxicology”.

Dava - Mae’n ddiddorol iawn - beth yw dywythiant a xимием yn Saesneg. Dysgais i gemeg hefyd a chemeg organig yw fy hoff bwnc. Yn awr dwi’n dal yn gweithio yn y diwydiant ac mae gyda fi fusnes yn de Cymru gyda labordai i ymchwilio a datblygu llawer o bethau gwahanol. Rydyn ni’n paratoi llawer o bethau hefyd (cemegau organig) o fusnesau fel Pharmaceuticals neu cosmetics. Dylem siarad yn fwy.

Shwmae* Toffidil

*Not sure this is how is should be spelled but this is how it appears in Heini Gryffydd’s “Welcome to Welsh” which I learned most of my Welsh from.

<<beth yw dywythiant a xимием yn Saesneg>> My Welsh is nowhere near as good as yours, but I try to write (on this forum anyway) without looking anything up. So <,Consultant Cemeg dywythiant a toxicology>> was my effort at “Consultant in Manufacturing and Toxicological Chemistry”. My Russian is much better than my Welsh, but I’d forgotten that “chemistry” is feminine, not neuter, in Russian. So it should have been органической химии - I was particularly interested in the organic chemistry of sulphur trioxide for manufacturing surfactants.

For the last 15 years of so of my Unilever time I supervised sponsored PhD students in the adran cemeg at Prifysgol Cymru, Abertawe, and I was an honorary lecturer there - my plan was to build up this connection when I took an early retirement deal, but then they decided to close the chemistry department. If they hadn’t, maybe my Welsh would now be a lot better! It was a big blow because I really used to enjoy my visits to Abertawe, including the drive down via the very scenic mid-Wales route (A483). I’ve heard that they’re now thinking of re-opening the department. Meanwhile I’m an honorary researcher at Liverpool John Moores (means I don’t have to do anything but I have an ljmu email, collaborate with the QSAR group, and give LJMU as my address on publications).

If you’re on LinkedIn &/or Research Gate I can be found under my name of David W Roberts

Yep, apparently Chemistry has made a return to Abertawe - scandalous when it went and a big campaign to stop it at the time. I never did Russian or German translations of papers - I tend to scan them and get them translated if they look interesting, although you can generally get the gist without reading any of the text, if they have enough tables and schemes etc. I have always had people around me who can speak or translate things - chinese, germans italians, French etc, although you don’t see much published in Italian.

Sulphur trioxide is not particularly nice stuff to handle from my experience, the complexes are generally better, but expensive

I would understand that as “I am Slovak” :slight_smile:

I am learning Slovak and there “I am a Slovak (woman)” would be “Som Slovenka”. (And “I am a Slovene (woman)” would be “Som Slovinka”. Just a vowel’s different…)

Som Angličan :slight_smile:

Oh, well, we’ve got a lot of (positive) quarell about that because we both - Slovaks and Slovenians are saying for ourselves that we’re “Slovenci”. If you peer into Google Translate you’d see that only one character differs from naming our languages - Slovene is “Slovenščina” and Slovak is “Slovenčina”. That’s why people from other countries often mix us. I remember even my post once travelled allover the Slovakia only to finally arrive to me to Slovenia in about a month or even more travelling around.

So, “Sem Slovenka” is totally correct in our language. We don’t say for ourselves that we’re “Slovinci” but “Slovenci” and we’re speak “slovensko” or we’re using language “Slovenščina”.

But, yes, I’ve read little something in Slovak language and established that it’s quite similar to Slovene so it might be even possible I’d learn it very quickly. :slight_smile:

When you not familiar with slavic languages, getting to know them is really a challenge, so you need some help from someone who do. For studying English with slavic languages you could check with https://buki.org.pl/korepetycje/jezyk-angielski/ to start with.