Question by : Is Russian a good gateway language to other Slavic languages like Polish and Croatian?
Such as grammar. I read that learning Russian grammar before learning the West and South Slavic languages is mush easier then vice versa.
Answers and Views:
Answer by James B
I’m learning Russian at the moment, and I’ve got many Polish friends so I can tell you the languages are very similar, sharing many words. Also Polish and Slovak, again almost the same.
Learning Russian grammar, I’m sure that would help you… But to do this, would you need to learn the Cyrillic alphabet?
Read all the answers in the comments.
What do you think?
Elayse says
learn Slovak, you will understand most of the Slavic languages
nikolay says
Previous answer introduced a bit of a confusion about Church Slavonic. CS is an old South Slavic language, a form of Old Bulgarian used in lithurgy and Bible translation. No other Slavic language can be meaningfully described as "Church Slavonic", whether East, South or with some other attribute. That said, Church Slavonic had an influence on Russian comparable to the influence of Latin on English, i.e. a lot of vocabulary and some morphology.This is why Russians can understand modern Bulgarian (a descendant of CS) rather well, especially in its written form.
Now to answer OP's question. Because of the way Slavic languages evolved, there's more or less no such thing as "easier" or "harder" as regards learning paths (Russian into Polish, or vice versa). You can only choose whether you want your complications earlier or later. Russian grammar is on the easy side as Slavic languages go, but if you get into Polish afterwards you'll be slammed with a whole set of confusing new rules and make lots of mistakes at first. On the other hand, if you struggle through Polish first (or better, Slovak, the most "middle-of-the-road" one of the Western branch and perhaps the whole family), you'll end up with a stronger mental apparatus to understand the logic behind the complexities, which will reward you with "wow, it's so much easier in Russian" moments and a better preparedness to tackle still further Slavic languages. From my own experience, it takes knowing two (out of different branches, eg. a Western and an Eastern one) to have "figured out" the Slavic family in general. No single language will get you there.
RebuildTwinTowers says
Well, Russian is an East Church Slavonic or "East Slavic" language. Other languages belonging in this are Ukrainian, Rusyn and Belarusian. They are closely related, and basically you understand Russian you shouldn't really have a problem with Belarusian or Ukrainian.
The Croatian language, is a South Church Slavonic or "South Slavic" language. It is basically the same as Serbian and Bosnian. It was once called "Serbo-Croatian". BUT Croatians DON'T use the Cryllic alphabet as Russians, Serbians and Bosnians do. They use the Latin alphabet. If anything, the old people in Croatia can read Cryllic because of the former SFR Yugoslavia.
The West Slavic languages, are Polish, Czech and Slovak. They, look different from the East and South slav languages. They DON'T use the Cryllic alpbabet either. Polish looks more idnetical to German. But isn't.
I expected a distant relationship between Russian, Croatian and Slovak. But from what people, Russians say is that they don't have trouble understanding Belarusian, Croatian, Ukrainian and Serbian. Even Polish and Czech. Because I can tell you, Russian and Bulgarian are as distant as German and Swedish. Yet, they sound REALLY similar (according to Wikipedia).
Some Russians say they have trouble with the Serbian language, because of the accents. So try familiraizing yourself with the Slavic family.
NAWAZ says
yes it is bcz most east european languages have same writing styles as well.
Allan says
Yeah, it is.