Omniglot - the blog

Slavic similiarities

Simon on 12 Dec 2006

Language and Language learning and Czech | Comments (18)

18 Responses to “Slavic similiarities”

1. Polly on 12 Dec 2006 at 7:28 pm #

   It looks like the above verbs are using some kind of verb-making ending, especially Czech. In Russian it’s жонглировать, practically the same word.

   One handy little “verb-inator” in Russian that probably has an analog in other Slavic languages is the ending “-ovat.” e.g. Blokirovat = “to Block” While I don’t know if that is “official” Russian, it was introduced to me by a native speaker.
   Conjugation of these verb types is pretty standard. And there’s nothing that comes as more of a relief in Russian than something reliably STANDARD.

2. Josh on 12 Dec 2006 at 7:45 pm #

   Thanks for the link to the site Simon. I just started dabbling in Russian and that’s a fairly useful beginner’s site!

3. BnB on 13 Dec 2006 at 7:16 am #

   The same thing happens in Latin languages (with French being somewhat different… they ALWAYS have to be different :) ).

   “We speak”:
   spanish “hablamos”
   portuguese “falamos” (I think)
   italian “parlamo”

4. prase on 13 Dec 2006 at 11:15 am #

   In fact, the correct czech endings are: žongluji, žongluješ, žongluje, žonglujeme, žonglujete, žonglují. Endings -ám, -áš, -á, -áme, -áte, -ají are suitable e.g. for the verb dělat (to do).

5. Giovanni on 13 Dec 2006 at 1:35 pm #

   BnB,
   it is “parliamo” since the verb belongs to the first conjugation (-are).

6. Ronald Kyrmse on 13 Dec 2006 at 1:38 pm #

   As I usually say, “When you know enough languages, you often get two for the price of one”. In my case, knowing Portuguese, Spanish, French and some Italian, Catalan comes practically for free (only at the moment I can’t seem to put up what little effort it takes to go the last 10cm). Galician was a pleasant surprise, as it is little more (in my view) than a possible dialect of Portuguese which happens to be a different language because it’s spoken on the other side of the frontier. A common occurrence, by the way, as witness Dutch-Flemish, Hindi-Urdu, Romanian-Moldavian, Asturian-Mirandese (there’s exoticism for you!) etc.
   Knowing German and English enables me to read Dutch [and Flemish ;-)] with… say… 80% accuracy, sometimes more.
   And so on.

7. Ronald Kyrmse on 13 Dec 2006 at 1:41 pm #

   BnB: I believe it’s “parliamo” in Italian. And in French (quite differently!) “nous parlons”. If I’m not mistaken, “falamos” is Galician too.

8. Geoff on 14 Dec 2006 at 12:47 am #

   What I find most striking is not the similarities between the Russian and Czech, but the similarities between the endings and those for Latin and Italian. Going one step further, look at Czech, Latin, Italian and German:

   I am: jsem / sum / sono / bin (oops!)
   night: noc / noctis / notte / Nacht
   two: dva / duo / due / zwei
   I: já / ego / io / ich
   you: ty / tu / tu / du

   That we have an Indo-European family is not, of course, any big news. And some correspondences are more helpful (or just plain in existence) than others. Still, just as we pick up some languages for free (Spanish for Italian, Dutch for German), if you’re learning an Indo-European language a little more removed from others you’ve studied, it’s still neat to see what words and structures you can find “on discount”.

9. Ben L. on 14 Dec 2006 at 3:23 am #

   Dutch is never free.

10. BG on 14 Dec 2006 at 4:42 am #

    Even Ancient Greek (on the end):

    I am: jsem / sum / sono / bin (oops!) / ειμι (eimi)
    night: noc / noctis / notte / Nacht / νυξ (nyx)
    two: dva / duo / due / zwei / δυο (duo)
    I: já / ego / io / ich / εγω (egō)
    you: ty / tu / tu / du / συ (sy)

    Even Finnish (Non Indo-European has similarities.
    Verb to be conjugated:
    minä olen
    sinä olet
    hän on
    me olemme
    te olette
    he ovat

11. Polly on 14 Dec 2006 at 5:34 pm #

    Even Armenian matches up with the slavic conjugations pretty closely though it’s completely unrelated to Slavic. And the pronouns “I” and “you” are similar between Latin, Slavic, and “other.”

    I am = Yes em (Ես եմ)
    You are = Toon es

    I read = Yes gu gartAM
    you read = Toon gu gartAS
    He/she reads = Ahn gu gartA

    The number 10: diez, dix, dieci, տասը(dahsuh)

    But, that’s to be expected if Indoeuropean lang’s trace back to one common ancestor. I don’t know, I’m not a historian or a linguist.

12. Tanya on 17 Dec 2006 at 1:23 am #

    Pretty interesting indeed, although the correct 1p. pl. form is жонглираме. There’s a certain similarities between Bulgarian and Greek also. For example the plural forms:

    1p. pl. отиваме (otivame) πηγαίνουμε (pigenoume)
    2p. pl. отивате (otivate) πηγαίνετε (pigenate)

    And two more things I’d like to mention about the site. Cyrillic alphabet is not equal to Russian alphabet and the Russian denomination of Cyrillic symbols is written below. Actually Cyrillic was used for the very first time in the ancient Bulgarian capital Преслав (Preslav) and subsequently spread over other parts of Eastern Europe. Later on Russia performs an orthographic reform. It’s quite interesting they’ve used some kind of runes before the change.

    I have interest in Bulgarian, Modern Greek and Norwegian exclusively and would be very happy if I find twin souls in here. Really intriguing site and blog, congrats!: )

13. Stanislav on 01 Jan 2007 at 12:53 pm #

    Czech:

    žongluji OR žongluju žonglujeme

    žongluješ žonglujete

    žongluje žonglují

14. Prvud on 02 Jan 2007 at 2:20 am #

    That is not bulgarian it is macedonian
    Blogiram, Blogiras, Blogira—-Blogirame, Blogirate , BlogirAAT( no BlogirAT)

15. Tanya on 05 Jan 2007 at 11:01 pm #

    Many linguists consider Macedonian a dialect of Bulgarian with a great deal of justification.

    No differences can be observed if talking about verb endings. Just archaic Bulgarian forms.

16. Rhin on 29 Apr 2007 at 3:34 am #

    Actually I am interested in Bulgarian and South Slavic Linguistics. However I have an advantage, I am a Bulgarian.

    And I agree about the Macedonian but I think that might have have to do with being raised to think of it as a dialect.

17. aseq on 02 Jul 2007 at 10:24 pm #

    Ronald Kyrmse said above:

    “A common occurrence, by the way, as witness Dutch-Flemish, Hindi-Urdu, Romanian-Moldavian, Asturian-Mirandese (there’s exoticism for you!) etc.”

    In this case, the example with Romanian-Moldovan is wrong. Romanian and Moldovan are 100% identical. Nobody claims any of them even being a dialect of the other, though the Soviet regime tried to fabricate words just to be different. There is one very minor rule in spelling, and that’s the only difference between them.

18. Michal Tomlein on 05 Feb 2008 at 8:36 pm #

    I’m not quite sure about this, but I heard that the Latin word for “I am”, “sum”, was originally spelled “som”, later “esom” and only then “sum”. This seems very similar to the Slovak “som” with the same meaning (Czech: “jsem”).
    Another thing which I find fascinating is the verb “to see” in Latin and Slovak (or Czech).
    EN - LAT - SK - CZ
    to see - videre - vidieť - vidět
    I see - video - vidím - vidím
    you see - vides - vidíš - vidíš
    he/she/it sees - videt - vidí - vidí
    we see - videmus - vidíme - vidíme
    you see - videtis - vidíte - vidíte
    they see - vident - vidia - vidí

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