18
votes
Accepted
Do the Belarusians understand the Ukrainian language better than Russians do?
When it goes for speaking/understanding Slavic languages, most Russians know only Russian and have practically never been exposed to other Slavic languages, especially spoken ones, while most ...
- 17.7k
16
votes
Why does Russian not vary from region to region?
First of all, it varies to some extent. People from Ural region, people from Rostov-on-Don, people from Vyatka region have quite recognisable pronunciation norms. The same with vocabulary, there's ...
- 917
14
votes
What language branch of PIE does Kartvelian belong to? (Georgian language)
Kartvelian is not part of Indo-European, and in fact is not known to be related to any other language family. Some linguists have connected it with IE as part of a proposed larger family called ...
- 10.8k
12
votes
Accepted
If Hebrew is not related to Slavic, why there are apparent sound correspondences?
Just as you cannot compare two random species today to accurately assess their taxonomy (otherwise we would conclude all crabs form a single family when they actually form at least five distinct ...
- 6,496
11
votes
Can Old Church Slavonic be considered an artificial language?
Yes, Old Church Slavonic (OCS) was an artificial language, but just in a way.
Firstly, in the 9th century, when Cyrill and Methodius devised the OCS, all the Slavic languages and dialects were so ...
- 17.7k
11
votes
Accepted
Where does the letter <j> come from to some Cyrillic alphabets?
The letter <j> is really used in some Cyrillic-based alphabets, all of them were once created either by a certain person or by a group of people, that is, these alphabets aren't a product of ...
- 17.7k
11
votes
Why are some Russian and Swedish words so strikingly similar? Два - två, по-шведски - på svenska, etc
You've mixed a bunch of words of very different origin with a bunch of quite weak and poorly defined assumptions (like no considerable interactions between Russians and Swedes).
It comes as no ...
- 917
11
votes
Is Russian the most diverged Slavic language?
Your question shows that you are unfamiliar with both Russian and other slavic languages.
To add to Anixx's answer:
Think:
misliet - misliet - misliec - misliti - misliti - mislityi - mislyati - dumat
...
- 447
10
votes
Accepted
Using Polish-inspired z Digraphs for Czech, Slovak
No, it is not acceptable and it is never done. It used to be done before the changes that appeared gradually in the 15th century, inspired by a paper most likely written by Jan Hus around 1400.
Before ...
- 1,220
10
votes
What language branch of PIE does Kartvelian belong to? (Georgian language)
Kartvelian is not only not demonstrably related (note: this is absence of evidence, not evidence of absence) to Indogermanic, but also on the same level unrelated to other Kaukasian language families ...
- 29.6k
9
votes
Accepted
How are Baltic and Slavic languages related?
If you look at the aspect system of Baltic and Slavonic languages, Baltic systems actually resemble the earlier stages of Slavonic systems (Comrie, 1976). In Lithuanian, adding a prefix to a verb root ...
- 3,411
9
votes
Accepted
The meaning of /ě/ (ѣ)
Nothing specific.
When linguists started working with Old Church Slavonic, they weren't sure exactly how the yat was pronounced (since it had shifted in different directions in different daughter ...
- 62.5k
9
votes
Why are some Russian and Swedish words so strikingly similar? Два - två, по-шведски - på svenska, etc
@shabunc has treated the other examples already, so I will say something about the bear's service: The same idiom is also present in German Bärendienst and it is traced to a fable by La Fontaine ...
- 29.6k
9
votes
Accepted
Are Germanic languages closer to Italo-Celtic languages or Balto-Slavic languages?
The best answer is: There is no consensus about this. In the big tree of Indogermanic languages there are only two intermediate groupings that are generally accepted: Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavic. ...
- 29.6k
8
votes
Accepted
Two languages have the same homonym for two meanings but different phonetics
The words utrom, morgen, mañana don't all derive from the same word in Proto-Indo-european, so that is why they are pronounced differently. As to why "morning" and "tomorrow" are sufficiently similar ...
- 80.6k
8
votes
German (-stell-) and Slavic (-stav-) languages: who was first?
I agree with czypsu that the two roots are probably not identical (though there is a theory that Proto-Germanic *staljan is not cognate with Greek stellō, but derives from *st(e)h₂- with the suffix *-...
- 23.7k
8
votes
Accepted
Where is the Slavic homeland, according to linguists, and how do they know that?
I want to point out that there are a lot of tree names in Slavonic languages with clear cognates in other branches of Indogermanic, e.g., the words for birch and ash tree—the analysis goes down to the ...
- 29.6k
8
votes
Glagolitic Ⰾ (l) is like Ⰴ (d). Is it related to Latin / Old Latin l / d lingua dingua, lacrima dacrima?
Definitely not.
The similarity of the Glagolitic glyphs is directly inherited from the similarity of the Greek letters Delta (Δ) and Lambda (Λ). Also for the Greek letter shapes there is no apparent ...
- 29.6k
8
votes
Were Iranian languages originally separated and more related to Slavic？
It has been the standard theory that Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian are a significant subgroup in IE, as opposed to Germanic, Celtic, Italic, Hellenic. Then Indic and Iranian are significant ...
- 80.6k
8
votes
If Hebrew is not related to Slavic, why there are apparent sound correspondences?
what can be done to rule out false sound correspondences when
reconstructing proto-languages
The main thing that is commonly done is to not directly compare random words from the modern languages, ...
- 80.6k
7
votes
Accepted
German (-stell-) and Slavic (-stav-) languages: who was first?
Your compound examples are mostly calques, usually from German into Slavic but in fact often ultimately from Latin or French or Italian into both German and Slavic, in the middle ages.
The calques ...
- 7,522
7
votes
What phonological process changes е to ё in Russian?
In the old Slavic languages, the sound [o] could never follow the palatalized consonants (which in those times also included the hushing consonants Ш [ʃ], Ж [ʒ], Ч [tʃ], Щ [ʃtʲ], and also Ц [tsʲ]), ...
- 17.7k
7
votes
Can Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian be considered linguistically distinct?
I grew up the in the former Yugoslavia, and the language I studied in school was called Serbocroatian, which was spoken in four out of the six republics of the union.
You were basically studying the ...
- 181
7
votes
Accepted
The Cyrillic script among the Slavic people
It is worth noting, that before the Cyrillic script there was the Glagolitic script used to write Old Church Slavonic. This is the script devised by Cyrill and Method, the Cyrillic script is a reform ...
- 29.6k
7
votes
Accepted
When did Old Slavic ЪI become Ы?
The question would be better asked as “When did the OCS ЪИ become ЪІ and when did ЪІ become Ы?” The three variants were originally used interchangeably, but later Ы took over, the most obvious reasons ...
- 17.7k
7
votes
Accepted
Historical explanations for soft/hard declensions in Czech
Balto-Slavic languages developed their own way to decline adjectives, by combining the nominal forms with the forms of personal pronouns (In Slavic *jъ, ja, je).
Many Slavic languages (e.g., Russian) ...
- 1,220
7
votes
Accepted
Are "brat" and "frater" cognates?
Yes, frater and Брат are related.
They ultimately come from the Proto-Indo-European *bʰréh₂tēr, from which indeed brat/Брат in various Slavic languages also is derived. You can see the descendants on ...
- 973
7
votes
In which Slavic languages are [h] and [x] contrastive?
These are the relevant sounds ("phones") - you may check on the following pages for which languages possess them:
a voiceless glottal fricative /h/
a voiceless velar fricative /x/
a voiced ...
- 6,958
7
votes
Is Russian the most diverged Slavic language?
You have just picked Russian synonyms that are not related to the words in the other Slavic languages that you picked. You can pick other synonyms.
Think: мыслить (myslit')
I have: я имею (ya imeyu)
...
- 6,512
7
votes
Accepted
What sound does the character 'u' in the Proto-Slavic word *bura (storm) represent?
Derksen doesn’t actually say outright what vowel notation he’s using, but he does specify what stage of Proto-Slavic he reconstructs (my emphasis):
The reconstructed etyma represent a late stage of ...
- 3,535
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