subsahara
Coldest Ice
https://forum.wordreference.com/thr...d-language-comprehension-audio-video.1250126/
I partecipanti alla discussione commentano sulla loro comprensione di brevi estratti video in diverse lingue slave.
E’ una lettura un po’ lunga e caotica, ma anche interessante.
Di sotto riporto direttamente qualche commento.
__________________________
Trance0 (utente sloveno)Hm, after having listened to the Slovak youtube links, I have altered my opinion about understanding Slavic languages. I must say I understand much more spoken Slovak than spoken Bulgarian. It all depends on the topic, but generally I understand about 30-40% of spoken Slovak, if spoken slowly even more than 50%, whereas I understand no more than 10% of Bulgarian if spoken fast.
Serbian - I understood more than 95%, the only problem presenting unknown word here and there
Croatian - the same as Serbian, over 95%
Macedonian - now this was a complete surprise, I managed to understand about 70% in one run and I wasn`t even fully concentrated! I am almost sure I would have understood even more if I`d listened to the recording more than once. In any case, I had no problem figuring out what the video was about and I also managed to understand some of the details.
As for Polish, I understand less then Slovak, but perhaps somewhat more than Czech, which I find utterly hard to understand when spoken quickly, it has a less clear pronunciation than Slovak.
.Jordi. (utente polacco)I'm suprised that the pronunciation of Slovenian is so hard, if I didn't know that it is Slovenian, in some parts I could even think that it's Portuguese or Romanian. And when talking about comprehension, yes, I understand the main meaning of these clips, but some parts are harder and unclear, meanwhile some of them are quite easy.
First clip: I'm able to understand some words, even some phrases (especially on the beggining, I think that their about a Golden Globe reward given to the serial Prison Break), but that's all(è un video in bulgaro).
These clips are the most comprensible for me, I understand about 80—90% of them, I don't if it's because weather forecasts are easy to understand in all of the languages or because Slovak and Polish are so similiar, the second clip was even easier because of the text(è un video in slovacco).
Kanes (utente bulgaro)Hmm, interesting, in the Slovenian clips I understand without problem what they are talking about, but would say generaly 70%. In Slovak, I get only some words here and there and some particles so about 10-15%. The Polish one... 5% maybe.
Texpert (utente ceco)I could translate it word for word without a single peek at the dictionary. I don't know if it's becuase these news are always the same (there's hardly any room for alternations) or due to my fair exposure to BCS. However, at the time of the stand-up my comprehension markedly fell and had to rely more on the context(parla di un video in sloveno. Con la sigla BCS intende Bosniaco/Croato/Serbo).
(…)I got 80% of it, though it dropped to much lower levels with the progression of clips(…)(parla di in video in bulgaro).
I got 95% of the news.
I was confused only by the word /kal:/ (right at the beginning),
amused by the word /chmur:/ (understood)
and somewhat confused by the /burze kwoltovne:/ expression (does it mean speedy or urgent storms?)(video in polacco).
Oscillating between 90% comprehension (narrator's voice) and 30-50% (direct interviews).
Confused by /cudownie:/ and /samodzelnosc:/ (altro video in polacco).
Diaspora (utente serbocroato)The first Slovenian video is reasonably comprehensible (65%), the second one somewhat less, I missed a lot of details. I was surprised to understand this much.
Bulgarian 65%: Written material is much easier, I understood that he was talking about the TV show, about escape and how the audience relates to it, the moderators also gave a very short bio of the actor. Though the speech was fast, and by all means more difficult to understand than Vidin-Belogradchik speech.
Slovak 15%: I could get the general topic, but could not at all get the details! I understood a few words such as "information", "good day", "peninsula". Both Slovak videos are difficult to understand and to my ears sound like Czech.
Polish 10%: Few words such as "morning" but this is even less comprehensible than Slovak.
WannaBeMe (utente serbo)I could understand:
-Slovenian about 75%- many, many words well comprehentive, in some places a little bit confused with unexpected declinsion endings. Accent sometimes totaly weird.
-Bulgarian-I was surprised with Bulgarian. I couldnt understand more than 45-50%.
Many words have been similar but more proned to Russian. I could understand words only on thier begining, it sounded to my ears like familiar words strown all around, thus very chaotic. I could only say that I thought that Bulgarian is almost the same as Macedonian. Not at all. Macedonian I understand about 80%. and I understand it much easier than Bulgarian.
-Slovak- on the other hand sounded to my ears pretty harmonic, accordant. I could understand it less than Slovenian but a bit more than Bulgarian, let me say about 65%. The only thing I should concentrate to was "h". I needed one moment to calculate :"hora" whats that? Ahhhh its gora. And so on. Pronounciation sounds like Serbian or Polish, with hard č and š but accent more like Croatian than Slovenian. It sounds nice to me, I think I am going to start learning it.
-Polish- Ufff, no mather how strong I effort myself I cant follow it, to rapid, to confusing. I could only recognise every 10th wordand common Slavic words.
-Czech-About 30%, I wonder why but it is not so comprehent to my ears as Slovak although I know these two should be almost the same. I had to strength myself to recognise the words like hora (BCS. gora) but I just cant accomodate myself to ř instead of r. And I think thats the reason I can understand written Czech much more than 30%. It sounded to me something like between Slovene and Polish.
For me the most understandable is Macedonian. And although I know that Bulgarian and Macedonian are very similar to eachother, I cannot understand Bulgarian better then Russian.
Slovak sounds OK, it is really easy to understand and to learn. And again the same situation. Although I know that Slovak and Czeck are so similar to eachother I can understand Slovak much better because Czech ř and all those umlauts ju to ji etc. are like a devil to me.
Azori (utente slovacco)I understood:
Slovenian -A difficult pronunciation and accent for my ears. In the first video, in some parts, I could understand a sufficient number of words to get the main meaning (but not the details), while some other parts were totally incomprehensible to me. With the second video it was even worse, I understood "Good evening", and the rest was like hearing a few familiar words here and there that together made no sense
Bulgarian -Just a few words (mainly those international ones -television, series, popular), overall not more than 5%
Polish -At first hearing not very comprehensible, but after I have listened to it several times, I could understand about 80% from the weather forecast, from the second video 70%
Czech -100% obviously
Serbian -too fast, about 20%. I understood the first 3 sentences. Then some words
Croatian -20-30%
Macedonian -a few words, 5% maybe
Ptak (utente russo)
How sad. I haven't understood even a word in the Czech video (maybe only two or three separate words...). But I expected that.
Polish is much more comprehensible. The excerpt itself is easier though...
Darina (utente bulgara)Polish: Hm, the map helped a lot but even without watching the video I could get the main idea. May be...
Czech:
Not better than Polish.
Slovak:
Strange but Slovak was easier than Slovene. It was somehow... I don't know how to explain it but it sounded very convenient to my ears. The pronounciation is very clear.
Slovene:
It probably depends on the topic but I could not get much.
Serbian/Croatian:
I got about 50%.
Macedonian and Russian were OK.
Darkchild (utente bulgaro)Slovenian- 60%, I can understand the main point of the video. It's sounds nice overall. It sounds like BSC.
Slovak- 15 %. I really couldn't understand much! Only a random word here and there. It sounds strange to my ears, robotic. It has some strange H sounds.
Polish- 5% I'll never understand why they use so many consonants
Czech- 15 %. Same as Slovak. I can't tell them apart.
Serbian- 70%. Overall I could get most of it. Sounds like western Bulgarian dialects.
Croatian- 50%. Interestingly enough, I couldn't understand it as well as Serbian. Maybe it had to do with the specific weather words. Otherwise it sounds a little nicer than Serbian, less stringent.
Macedonian- >95%. This was very easy. I could understand virtually everything. Here and there would be an unknown word or sometimes it might be the same word but pronounced differently. It kind of makes my head hurt though because it sounds like broken Bulgarian. Mind you, I'm from Eastern Bulgaria and the dialect here (which is the basis for the standard language) is more distant. Western Bulgarian dialects (which also drive me crazy), they sound similar to that.
Russian- 80% I've been exposed to Russian quite a lot though.
Sorbian- I didn't understand anything. It sounds very ugly to my ears - like a mix between German and French, and sometimes like a Scandinavian language.
Ukranian- 30%. Sounds like Russian but has a distinctive H sound.
Awwal12 (utente russo)Only Belarusian and Ukrainian clips sound more or less comprehensible to me (and even those not 100%). As for the rest clips listed above, it's separate phrases in the best case, and usually just some scattered words (often even of non-Slavic origin). Anyway, I cannot objectively judge basing on just some separate clips (1-2 per language), since the intelligibility may also depend on individual peculiarities, intonations, speed and even context. But the fact is that spoken Czech appeared to be almost unintelligible; Slovak, Slovenian and BCS weren't much better. Polish, Bulgarian and Macedonian seemed a bit more clear somehow.
Sobakus (utente russo)Bulgarian- 50%, Banat Bulgarian -about 40%, but I guess it's mostly due to the nature of the videos.
Slovakweather forecast - up to 90% even, had to concentrate real hard. The news report - 25% or so, couldn't catch that guy's thought most of the time.
Polishweather forecast - about 70%. The news report - 20%, the interviewees were mumbling a lot
Czech- only separate words, this is probably the hardest language for a Russian to understand indeed. Long vowels are confusing among other things, I hear 2 stresses in a single word.
Serbiannews report - 25% maybe, I couldn't keep up because the accent retraction made it hard to recognize the words instantly, I had to think them over. Also, a very hard pronunciation. Nevertheless, I got the general idea.
Serbianmovie trailer - looks like something to watch! Got about 20%.
Serbianskate park report - 10% or so, couldn't grasp almost any familiar words except for English borrowings. Then I watched it with subtitles and I think it's the grammar. The words are there, but you only hear them when you know what to look for, and you only know it when you understand the grammar =\
Croatianweather forecast - about 35%, surprisingly hard for a forecast, lots of unfamiliar words and grammar.
Macedonian- 30%, couldn't understand the interviewees.
Sorbian- maybe a bit more words than in Czech >_> Not only the pronunciation, but the actors look utterly German as well
Ilocas2 (utente ceco)I think that mutual intelligibility is only for people with some special gift or I'm not typical case.
From various Youtube videos (not those ones posted here), I understand:
Polish - 20 %
Slovenian, BCMS - 10 % (la M sta per montenegrino)
Russian, Ukranianian, Bulgarian, Macedonian - 5 %
Matko (utente croato)Slovak was the easiest from the western group.
I did understand 50% from the Macedonian video.
Russian and Belarus, 30 %.
TriglavNationalPark (utente sloveno. Del resto, con quel nome…)As a native Slovenian speaker, I can read Czech and Slovak news articles without major difficulties, even though I've had very little exposure to either language. Spoken language is a different matter, however.
Arath (utente bulgaro)Macedonian: I understand almost everything. The only problems are posed by the numerous Serbian borrowings and the shifted stress in many words. Among all the phonetic dissimilarities between Bulgarian and Macedonian, I think that the difference in stress position is the most prominent one and also the most annoying one. It's irritating to hear familiar words pronounced like that.
Russian: >85%. What I find distinctive about Russian is the pronunciation of unstressed "o" as "a" and the palatalization which is much more common than in Bulgarian.
Serbian: 50%. Although I can't tell whether the intonation is going up or down, I can definitely hear a certain melody. By the way, Serbian women always seem to have much deeper voice than women from other nationalities. I wonder if that has anything to do with the fact that Serbian is a tonal language.
Ukrainian: 35%. Similar to Russian but definitely distinct. Palatalization seems to be less common than in Russian and vowel reduction is absent.
Belarusian: 35%. Had I not known what I was listening to, I would have thought that it was Russian, and I would have wondered why I understood so little.
Slovenian: 20% Mainly individual words and sometimes short sentences. Sounds similar to Serbian, but without the melody and at some places where Serbian has "u", Slovenian has "o".
Slovak: 20% What caught my attention was the diphthong "ou" and the long vowels here and there.
Czech: 10%. Sounds somewhat less melodic than Slovak and consonants seem to be more prominent than they are in Slovak.
Polish: 5% The most distinctive feature is the various nontraditional consonants which seem so difficult to pronounce, especially when they are in clusters.
Trosheniorasi (utente bulgaro–torlacco)For me the list goes like this:
Macedonian 85%-100%
Serbian (from the southeast) 70%-85%
BCS 45% spoken 40% written
Russian 20% spoken 75% written
Slovenian 20%
Czech/Slovak 10-15%
Polish 5% (and this is after spending 2-3 years hanging out with Poles)
Serbian and Macedonian actually sound more natural to me, than eastern and even standard Bulgarian. Even though sometimes I do not understand the words I can tell the meaning of something just by the way it sounds. Russian and Bulgarian have similar vocabulary so it is easy to read, but spoken Russian sounds like mumbling to me (although so does eastern Bulgarian). Czech and Slovak are hard because there isn't a lot of common vocabulary. Polish is compleatly unintelligible to me! I hang out with Polish people quite a lot and for some reason they think that I can understand them, well I can't. I have easier time understanding all the Romance languages and even German than I do Polish. That being said, Polish does sound natural (Slavic to me), even more so than Russian, so I am assuming that it is because of the lack of common vocabulary.
I partecipanti alla discussione commentano sulla loro comprensione di brevi estratti video in diverse lingue slave.
E’ una lettura un po’ lunga e caotica, ma anche interessante.
Di sotto riporto direttamente qualche commento.
__________________________
Trance0 (utente sloveno)Hm, after having listened to the Slovak youtube links, I have altered my opinion about understanding Slavic languages. I must say I understand much more spoken Slovak than spoken Bulgarian. It all depends on the topic, but generally I understand about 30-40% of spoken Slovak, if spoken slowly even more than 50%, whereas I understand no more than 10% of Bulgarian if spoken fast.
Serbian - I understood more than 95%, the only problem presenting unknown word here and there
Croatian - the same as Serbian, over 95%
Macedonian - now this was a complete surprise, I managed to understand about 70% in one run and I wasn`t even fully concentrated! I am almost sure I would have understood even more if I`d listened to the recording more than once. In any case, I had no problem figuring out what the video was about and I also managed to understand some of the details.
As for Polish, I understand less then Slovak, but perhaps somewhat more than Czech, which I find utterly hard to understand when spoken quickly, it has a less clear pronunciation than Slovak.
.Jordi. (utente polacco)I'm suprised that the pronunciation of Slovenian is so hard, if I didn't know that it is Slovenian, in some parts I could even think that it's Portuguese or Romanian. And when talking about comprehension, yes, I understand the main meaning of these clips, but some parts are harder and unclear, meanwhile some of them are quite easy.
First clip: I'm able to understand some words, even some phrases (especially on the beggining, I think that their about a Golden Globe reward given to the serial Prison Break), but that's all(è un video in bulgaro).
These clips are the most comprensible for me, I understand about 80—90% of them, I don't if it's because weather forecasts are easy to understand in all of the languages or because Slovak and Polish are so similiar, the second clip was even easier because of the text(è un video in slovacco).
Kanes (utente bulgaro)Hmm, interesting, in the Slovenian clips I understand without problem what they are talking about, but would say generaly 70%. In Slovak, I get only some words here and there and some particles so about 10-15%. The Polish one... 5% maybe.
Texpert (utente ceco)I could translate it word for word without a single peek at the dictionary. I don't know if it's becuase these news are always the same (there's hardly any room for alternations) or due to my fair exposure to BCS. However, at the time of the stand-up my comprehension markedly fell and had to rely more on the context(parla di un video in sloveno. Con la sigla BCS intende Bosniaco/Croato/Serbo).
(…)I got 80% of it, though it dropped to much lower levels with the progression of clips(…)(parla di in video in bulgaro).
I got 95% of the news.
I was confused only by the word /kal:/ (right at the beginning),
amused by the word /chmur:/ (understood)
and somewhat confused by the /burze kwoltovne:/ expression (does it mean speedy or urgent storms?)(video in polacco).
Oscillating between 90% comprehension (narrator's voice) and 30-50% (direct interviews).
Confused by /cudownie:/ and /samodzelnosc:/ (altro video in polacco).
Diaspora (utente serbocroato)The first Slovenian video is reasonably comprehensible (65%), the second one somewhat less, I missed a lot of details. I was surprised to understand this much.
Bulgarian 65%: Written material is much easier, I understood that he was talking about the TV show, about escape and how the audience relates to it, the moderators also gave a very short bio of the actor. Though the speech was fast, and by all means more difficult to understand than Vidin-Belogradchik speech.
Slovak 15%: I could get the general topic, but could not at all get the details! I understood a few words such as "information", "good day", "peninsula". Both Slovak videos are difficult to understand and to my ears sound like Czech.
Polish 10%: Few words such as "morning" but this is even less comprehensible than Slovak.
WannaBeMe (utente serbo)I could understand:
-Slovenian about 75%- many, many words well comprehentive, in some places a little bit confused with unexpected declinsion endings. Accent sometimes totaly weird.
-Bulgarian-I was surprised with Bulgarian. I couldnt understand more than 45-50%.
Many words have been similar but more proned to Russian. I could understand words only on thier begining, it sounded to my ears like familiar words strown all around, thus very chaotic. I could only say that I thought that Bulgarian is almost the same as Macedonian. Not at all. Macedonian I understand about 80%. and I understand it much easier than Bulgarian.
-Slovak- on the other hand sounded to my ears pretty harmonic, accordant. I could understand it less than Slovenian but a bit more than Bulgarian, let me say about 65%. The only thing I should concentrate to was "h". I needed one moment to calculate :"hora" whats that? Ahhhh its gora. And so on. Pronounciation sounds like Serbian or Polish, with hard č and š but accent more like Croatian than Slovenian. It sounds nice to me, I think I am going to start learning it.
-Polish- Ufff, no mather how strong I effort myself I cant follow it, to rapid, to confusing. I could only recognise every 10th wordand common Slavic words.
-Czech-About 30%, I wonder why but it is not so comprehent to my ears as Slovak although I know these two should be almost the same. I had to strength myself to recognise the words like hora (BCS. gora) but I just cant accomodate myself to ř instead of r. And I think thats the reason I can understand written Czech much more than 30%. It sounded to me something like between Slovene and Polish.
For me the most understandable is Macedonian. And although I know that Bulgarian and Macedonian are very similar to eachother, I cannot understand Bulgarian better then Russian.
Slovak sounds OK, it is really easy to understand and to learn. And again the same situation. Although I know that Slovak and Czeck are so similar to eachother I can understand Slovak much better because Czech ř and all those umlauts ju to ji etc. are like a devil to me.
Azori (utente slovacco)I understood:
Slovenian -A difficult pronunciation and accent for my ears. In the first video, in some parts, I could understand a sufficient number of words to get the main meaning (but not the details), while some other parts were totally incomprehensible to me. With the second video it was even worse, I understood "Good evening", and the rest was like hearing a few familiar words here and there that together made no sense
Bulgarian -Just a few words (mainly those international ones -television, series, popular), overall not more than 5%
Polish -At first hearing not very comprehensible, but after I have listened to it several times, I could understand about 80% from the weather forecast, from the second video 70%
Czech -100% obviously
Serbian -too fast, about 20%. I understood the first 3 sentences. Then some words
Croatian -20-30%
Macedonian -a few words, 5% maybe
Ptak (utente russo)
How sad. I haven't understood even a word in the Czech video (maybe only two or three separate words...). But I expected that.
Polish is much more comprehensible. The excerpt itself is easier though...
Darina (utente bulgara)Polish: Hm, the map helped a lot but even without watching the video I could get the main idea. May be...
Czech:
Not better than Polish.
Slovak:
Strange but Slovak was easier than Slovene. It was somehow... I don't know how to explain it but it sounded very convenient to my ears. The pronounciation is very clear.
Slovene:
It probably depends on the topic but I could not get much.
Serbian/Croatian:
I got about 50%.
Macedonian and Russian were OK.
Darkchild (utente bulgaro)Slovenian- 60%, I can understand the main point of the video. It's sounds nice overall. It sounds like BSC.
Slovak- 15 %. I really couldn't understand much! Only a random word here and there. It sounds strange to my ears, robotic. It has some strange H sounds.
Polish- 5% I'll never understand why they use so many consonants
Czech- 15 %. Same as Slovak. I can't tell them apart.
Serbian- 70%. Overall I could get most of it. Sounds like western Bulgarian dialects.
Croatian- 50%. Interestingly enough, I couldn't understand it as well as Serbian. Maybe it had to do with the specific weather words. Otherwise it sounds a little nicer than Serbian, less stringent.
Macedonian- >95%. This was very easy. I could understand virtually everything. Here and there would be an unknown word or sometimes it might be the same word but pronounced differently. It kind of makes my head hurt though because it sounds like broken Bulgarian. Mind you, I'm from Eastern Bulgaria and the dialect here (which is the basis for the standard language) is more distant. Western Bulgarian dialects (which also drive me crazy), they sound similar to that.
Russian- 80% I've been exposed to Russian quite a lot though.
Sorbian- I didn't understand anything. It sounds very ugly to my ears - like a mix between German and French, and sometimes like a Scandinavian language.
Ukranian- 30%. Sounds like Russian but has a distinctive H sound.
Awwal12 (utente russo)Only Belarusian and Ukrainian clips sound more or less comprehensible to me (and even those not 100%). As for the rest clips listed above, it's separate phrases in the best case, and usually just some scattered words (often even of non-Slavic origin). Anyway, I cannot objectively judge basing on just some separate clips (1-2 per language), since the intelligibility may also depend on individual peculiarities, intonations, speed and even context. But the fact is that spoken Czech appeared to be almost unintelligible; Slovak, Slovenian and BCS weren't much better. Polish, Bulgarian and Macedonian seemed a bit more clear somehow.
Sobakus (utente russo)Bulgarian- 50%, Banat Bulgarian -about 40%, but I guess it's mostly due to the nature of the videos.
Slovakweather forecast - up to 90% even, had to concentrate real hard. The news report - 25% or so, couldn't catch that guy's thought most of the time.
Polishweather forecast - about 70%. The news report - 20%, the interviewees were mumbling a lot
Czech- only separate words, this is probably the hardest language for a Russian to understand indeed. Long vowels are confusing among other things, I hear 2 stresses in a single word.
Serbiannews report - 25% maybe, I couldn't keep up because the accent retraction made it hard to recognize the words instantly, I had to think them over. Also, a very hard pronunciation. Nevertheless, I got the general idea.
Serbianmovie trailer - looks like something to watch! Got about 20%.
Serbianskate park report - 10% or so, couldn't grasp almost any familiar words except for English borrowings. Then I watched it with subtitles and I think it's the grammar. The words are there, but you only hear them when you know what to look for, and you only know it when you understand the grammar =\
Croatianweather forecast - about 35%, surprisingly hard for a forecast, lots of unfamiliar words and grammar.
Macedonian- 30%, couldn't understand the interviewees.
Sorbian- maybe a bit more words than in Czech >_> Not only the pronunciation, but the actors look utterly German as well
Ilocas2 (utente ceco)I think that mutual intelligibility is only for people with some special gift or I'm not typical case.
From various Youtube videos (not those ones posted here), I understand:
Polish - 20 %
Slovenian, BCMS - 10 % (la M sta per montenegrino)
Russian, Ukranianian, Bulgarian, Macedonian - 5 %
Matko (utente croato)Slovak was the easiest from the western group.
I did understand 50% from the Macedonian video.
Russian and Belarus, 30 %.
TriglavNationalPark (utente sloveno. Del resto, con quel nome…)As a native Slovenian speaker, I can read Czech and Slovak news articles without major difficulties, even though I've had very little exposure to either language. Spoken language is a different matter, however.
Arath (utente bulgaro)Macedonian: I understand almost everything. The only problems are posed by the numerous Serbian borrowings and the shifted stress in many words. Among all the phonetic dissimilarities between Bulgarian and Macedonian, I think that the difference in stress position is the most prominent one and also the most annoying one. It's irritating to hear familiar words pronounced like that.
Russian: >85%. What I find distinctive about Russian is the pronunciation of unstressed "o" as "a" and the palatalization which is much more common than in Bulgarian.
Serbian: 50%. Although I can't tell whether the intonation is going up or down, I can definitely hear a certain melody. By the way, Serbian women always seem to have much deeper voice than women from other nationalities. I wonder if that has anything to do with the fact that Serbian is a tonal language.
Ukrainian: 35%. Similar to Russian but definitely distinct. Palatalization seems to be less common than in Russian and vowel reduction is absent.
Belarusian: 35%. Had I not known what I was listening to, I would have thought that it was Russian, and I would have wondered why I understood so little.
Slovenian: 20% Mainly individual words and sometimes short sentences. Sounds similar to Serbian, but without the melody and at some places where Serbian has "u", Slovenian has "o".
Slovak: 20% What caught my attention was the diphthong "ou" and the long vowels here and there.
Czech: 10%. Sounds somewhat less melodic than Slovak and consonants seem to be more prominent than they are in Slovak.
Polish: 5% The most distinctive feature is the various nontraditional consonants which seem so difficult to pronounce, especially when they are in clusters.
Trosheniorasi (utente bulgaro–torlacco)For me the list goes like this:
Macedonian 85%-100%
Serbian (from the southeast) 70%-85%
BCS 45% spoken 40% written
Russian 20% spoken 75% written
Slovenian 20%
Czech/Slovak 10-15%
Polish 5% (and this is after spending 2-3 years hanging out with Poles)
Serbian and Macedonian actually sound more natural to me, than eastern and even standard Bulgarian. Even though sometimes I do not understand the words I can tell the meaning of something just by the way it sounds. Russian and Bulgarian have similar vocabulary so it is easy to read, but spoken Russian sounds like mumbling to me (although so does eastern Bulgarian). Czech and Slovak are hard because there isn't a lot of common vocabulary. Polish is compleatly unintelligible to me! I hang out with Polish people quite a lot and for some reason they think that I can understand them, well I can't. I have easier time understanding all the Romance languages and even German than I do Polish. That being said, Polish does sound natural (Slavic to me), even more so than Russian, so I am assuming that it is because of the lack of common vocabulary.
