I am a Spaniard and I could speak in Russian with a Serbian guy who was speaking in Serbian ..... but we both were a bit drunk.... in that situation one can speak any language.

As a Polish speaker I learn russian and Ukrainian just by watching videos in these languages. It's enough for me because there is a sufficient similarity between Polish and these languages and I don't need textbooks or lists of words. I acquire both languages spontaneously, simply memorizing some words and phrases I hear. When it comes to everyday speech, at the moment I could understand almost all in Ukrainian and about 80% in russian. That means I could understand people inteviewied in streets and the news without much effort.

“I met many polish people among the way and they were very surprised to hear that I’m a Japanese citizen” Also me, the viewer :0

As a Russian speaker which knows a little bit of Belarusian and Ukrainian actually Polish is really easy and I actually love Poles and their language

I am from Hungary. I am almost native in Bulgarian, my paternal ancestors were gardeners from Bulgaria. I studied in Russian school. I understand 95 % of Macedonian, 70 % of Belarussian, 60 % of Serbian-Croatian-Bosnian -Montenegrian and Ukranian, 50 % of Slovenian, 30 % of Czech and Slovak, 20 % of Polish. Understanding in writing is better, for example written Ukranian is easier for me than spoken, same with Polish.

This is the first "Slavic languages" video I've seen where Slovak is talked about more than Czech, almost always its the other way around. We Slovaks often get overlooked, or confused for Slovenians.

As someone from Bosnia I can confirm that Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian are all just different official names/standards for the same language. They are a product of not just modern nationalism, but also historical divisions. Afterall, we don't have any single unifying name for the language, only the local country names. Interestingly, most of us just say "naš" (which means "our (language)") when we're referring to our language in everyday life, and especially when we're meeting someone from "our" countries in a foreign land like Germany where many of us emigrate to.

This is so unique, that you can do the whole review including all the Slavic languages. Salute! I really admire how knowledgeable and understanding you are in Linguistic. 🙏

I am Slovak and for me, these Polish nasal sounds are a nightmare. Even we are both West Slavic languages, but when we talk about the pronunciation, the Italian or Spanish are easier for me. On the other hand, we understand each other because many words are quite similar, but Polish pronunciation is so weird, other Slavic languages are OK.

A curio: Slavic nasal vowels was common in proto-Slavic and round (“bulgarian”) glagolic script has got characters for them. Nowadays they only exist in polish.

I came back 2 weeks ago from Poland, I loved it, though I learned some words before heading there, I wanted to see which slavic language is worth it and I won't lie: I will keep learning Polish, the difficulty is what makes it fun in my opinion, thanks for explaining the slavic languages, greetings from México :)

step 1. be born in a slavic country

I am a Polish native speaker who has been studying Russian dance childhood. I might say this: when I listen to Ukrainian or Belarussian I quite a lot from the conversation. The między knowledge of Polish and Russian helps a lot. I know both, the Cyrilic and Roman alphabets and this helps me with written Bułgaria n or Croatian 😊 Thanks to Cyrilic alphabet I can even read signs in Geek 😊

As a Slav, I could tell you within the first 10 seconds of this video what those 3 languages would be!

Slovak is also known as the Esperanto of Slavic languages as it is well understood by all Slavs

I really love this kind of content. I enjoyed every minute. I lern polish and felt in love with Slavic languages. Would love the see more like this, cause I am absolutely interested in language science.

Thank you very much. I'm Bulgarian and have learned Russian at school (it was compulsory back then). I have wondered what other Slavic language it would be useful to know and thanks to your video I have chosen Polish 😊 I admire how brave you are to jump in this quite political and sensitive topic.

As a Polish person raised in Silesia close to the Czech border, who apart from French, German and English in school learned by himself a bit of Russian and Ukrainian, who lives for 10 years in Bulgaria and speaks the language, I can say that I understand most of any written text in every Slavic language, but Slovenian :D It's somehow so different than the rest, sounds a bit like Czech with some balkan vocabulary. My suggestion of top 3? Russian, Serbocroatian, Slovak - because it's easier to learn than Polish, and Polish can be a fourth one. With these Bulgarian will be easy to learn, unless you didn't learn English before, because the gramar is more similar to it than to the rest of Slavic languages.

In Ukraine we do have vocative - кличний відмінок as 7th case. I won't refer to someone by just друг, подруга, мама, тато, жрець etc., but will call by друже, подруго, мамо, тату, жерче. The vocative used to be delited by russian and replaced just by nominative. But after restoring the independence we restores the vocatice. ☺️

I got the next one for you - Mezduslovjanski, this is owesome artificial project, this language is understandable for every slavic speaker.

Hey dude, you sound like the perfect target audience for Interslavic. It's a constructed, semi-naturalistic language meant to be intelligible to any Slavic speaker and contains features and vocabulary from West, East and South Slavic branches, as well as being etymologically conservative and phonologically "middle-ground" when it comes to the living Slavic languages. As for the BCMS language - that's one funny situation. Politically they're considered the same language, but in reality it's the Shtokavian, Chakavian and Kajkavian dialects that are different from each other - much more so than those national "languages", all of which are based on Shtokavian. For that reason I just use the term "shtokavian language" when I talk about BCMS.

I had exactly this intuition: that speak one of the three languages of each sub-group, you could perfectly communicate with every Slavic-speaking folks (at least, have simple conversations). Myself, speaking ok Russian and rather broken Serbian/Montenegrin, I could already grasp some words in Polish conversations or newspaper and I could communicate with Bulgarians when I was in Sofia last summer. This video encouraged me to start Polish. It's kinda far on my lanuages waiting list so I'll have to be patient... But I'll do it for sure one day! Hvala puno/spassiba/merci!

As a Bulgarian I understand 99% Russian but it’s difficult to speak, because of all the cases, I can’t remember which case to apply at which time. But is very easy to understand. The words are practically the same… BG „човек”, - Ru „человек”, БГ “хляб” - Ру “хлеб” Бг “небе” - Ру “небо”…

That's a wonderful overview! I'm Polish. I agree with the top3 recommendations no doubt. Then I think Bulgarian and Czech seem equally worthy of the 4th spot (or you can alternate with Macedonian and Slovak respectively) as they give better coverage than Slovene, which mainly only applies to Slovenia and is the most "lonely" member of the Slavic family. But those are minor nit-picks of mine :D I know it's a somewhat different topic but I can't help but mention PJM (Polish Sign Language) which is a native language of the Deaf community in Poland. It has many similarities to sign languages in our neighboring countries. A user of PJM once explained to me how Ukrainian and Russian sign languages are different but share the same root so it's possible for the users to communicate some basic information(a fully-fledged conversation is much more difficult though). I find it really interesting how you don't actually need words to see the Slavic connection, our shared culture and tradition :)

Hello Tim, I really enjoyed searching this video. I started with Russian many years ago but didn't get to a very high level. Since then, I studied Croatian and then studied Polish. I found Polish and Russian the most useful for me as I worked in a shop where there were lots of Polish and Lithuanian people. Polish is my best Slavic language because of my exposure to it. I then went on to learn some Ukrainian in 2022. I found it relatively easy because of my Polish and Russian. Now, I just started learning Czech as I'm going to the Polyglot Gathering in Prague in May Hope to see you there. Thanks for the great video. and for your passion for languages.

I learned Russian and Czech, and found that while they help me understand some Polish, it is still hard to follow. Surprisingly, Czech helped me understand a lot of Slovene (besides Slovak, obviously). As you said, the South Slavic languages are otherwise a big blank for me, and I always wondered which to learn. You and me being around the same age, I like the idea of Serbo-Croatian from the old-timer textbooks we grew up with. You've convinced me that should be the best choice. Great video!

Very nice overview. Just a minor note - native Slovak speaker would say "Čítal som knihu/čítala som knihu" with a slightly different word order and omitting the personal pronoun as the person is immediately obvious from the verb suffix. "Ja som čítal/čítala knihu" has a slightly different meaning putting an extra emphasis on the person rather than just declaring someone has read a book.

Totally agree with this video!! I've learned quite a bit of Serbo-Croat, CZ and Russian. Just some extra points from my side. On cases: Slovak and Slovene, I believe do not have Vocative. When it comes to BCSM, Kajkavian and Cajkavian are out of that standard, and are probably better classified as separate languages from BCSM. You will hear some Kajkavian and Cajkavian influence in local Croatian speech in many areas, kinda like you'll hear Bavarian hints or Koelsch hints in local Standard German. For language learning, I would take Slovak over PL, just because Slovak is easier, and nicer to hear, it would be good enough to understand PL, UKR, and even, with BCSM, Slovenian. CZ is tougher than SK. I was able to communicate with Bulgarians and Macedonians, just using Serbian, with Upper Sorbians, Slovaks and Poles, using CZ. A knowledge of RUS with some CZ/SK goes a long way to catch most of Ukrainian and Rusyn. Polish only really comes in handy enough in case you need to communicate in Belarus to back up the Russian. I just don't like the sound of Polish or it's writing, but hey, personal preferences, hehe. Unfortunately, Sorbian is dying, with probably only less than 50,000 speakers left. Although I speake German fluently, I would make it a point to speak CZ with Sorbian speakers so they could show its use to outside speakers! WOnderful video!!

Fantastic presentation. I missed one small detail: our languages reveal that most Slavs feel some sort of unity with Slavs from other countries, especially contrary to non Slavs. Correct if I am wrong. The term Slavs or the names of countries like Slovakia or Slovenia, derives from the word 'slovo' which means 'word'. So we are the people who recognise words and share the same/similar language. On the other hands, we have 'dumb'/'speechless' neighbours who don't know 'words. In Polish dumb is 'niemy', hence are western neighbours are 'Niemcy' (Germans).

I’m a native speaker of Polish and I have to say that the easiest way to understand other Slavic languages is to learn a very interesting artificial language called Interslavic - at least for native Slavs, not sure if it would work with non-Slavic speakers. I’m not very good at understanding other Slavic languages or even the varieties native to Poland such as Kaszubian or Silesian but experiencing the Interslavic speech was a mind-blowing experience. Picture this: I’m on holidays in Croatia and some dude comes up to me and wants to sell me a cruise or something. I’m not interested so I tell him to leave me (in English because I find it easier lol). Instead of leaving me be this guy asks me where do I come from, and immediately starts speaking a weird mixture of Russian, Croatian, Polish, probably Czech and I don’t know what else! And I understood 99% of what he said! I was able to understand all the details about the cruise, prices, discounts, places it visits, time schedule, the boarding point, whether lunch was included, what else was provided- without actually knowing most of the languages this Interslavic speech was based on. Needless to say I was so amazed by this experience that I bought what he was selling just to thank him for the opportunity to learn about this interlinguistic project :D I think we Slavs should get to know that Interslavic thing, it helps a lot with communication:)

Polish may have more native speakers, but Slovak is truly a central and kind of more neutral basis for Western Slavic languages. Is also an inroad to Serbian, Croatian, etc. Of all, Slovak gives the learner a basis to break into nearly all Slavic languages.

Great video! It manages to be succinct and informative.

Thank you for a nice introduction to slavic languages. Lepo delo. Pozdrav iz Slovenije

Thank you for mentioning Rusyn! And yes 26:18 - it indeed can help, as for Slovak and Rusyn is is even closer than Rusyn and Ukrainian (based on the number of speakers). It's because as you can see on the map at 7:47 most Rusyn speakers live in Slovakia and except of the state language (Slovak) speak the Prešov Rusyn variant, which is very different from the one spoken in Zakarpattyan Ukraine and even sometimes hard to understand, yet Prešov Rusyn is extremely close to the Lemko Rusyn that is a codified langauge in Poland and thus spoken by Polish Rusyns and lastly - Pannonian Rusyn spoken in Serbia was codified based on a Sotak eastern SLOVAK dialect). Ironically, people oftentimes just focus on Zakarpattyan Rusyn when mentioning Rusyn, yet except of not having a proper codification (because of the Ukrainian government not officially recognising Rusyns and Rusyn language as separate) it doesn't even have that big of an amount of speakers, compared to Prešov, Lemko or Pannonian variants - all of which have proper codifications and grammatical rules and syntactically differ quite lot from Ukrainian and even from the eastern Slavic language group. That being said, saying that 90% of Rusyn is similar to Ukrainian checks out maybe only for the Zakarpattyan variant/(dialect continuum?), which is not the best sample when talking about Rusyns. If you want to compare proper standardised variants of Rusyn, I recommend the lem.fm radio, which contains Prešov, Lemko and sometimes even Pannonian variants. And I really hope our fellow Zakarpattyan Carpatho-Rusyn brothers will be able to codify their variant very soon!

This video's basis is exactly the question I've been pondering for a couple of years! As a sidenote, my first language was Polish. I can understand written Croatian relatively well, and one time I extensively used Croatian sources for a university paper! Prior to that, I had had zero previous exposure to it. Fun anecdote. :)

É muito gostoso ver sua paixão pelas linguas! Estou adorando seus vídeos e tem me animado para estudar mais. No momento estou tentando ficar proficiente em ingles, e aprender o básico do russo. E se eu continuar no gás, depois gostaria de saber alemão haha. Grande abraço do Brasil! E obrigado por compartilhar tanto conhecimento.

Fantastic video. This is the most in-depth and clear video I’ve seen on this. Thank you!

I've been learning Russian the last year or two, and have wondered whether it would let me branch into other Slavic languages later. I have such a better understanding of its relation to al its linguistic neighbors now after this video. Guess it'll be Polish for me next! I landed here after stumbling on your video about the CN/KR/JP/VT crossovers. What a great channel! I've just subscribed!

Your passion really convinced me to watch this video until the end and it has inspired me to continue learning Polish!

In general, the Russian language is more connected with the languages ​​of the South Slavs, since the Church Slavonic language came from them and we have many words with two spellings, for example the word Град And Город

Great video, just wanted to mention that unlike mentioned in 23:27, Ukrainian also has 7 grammatical cases, vocative exists too (Клична форма)

Ukrainian has a vocative case, although it's not often used in practice today.

Zdravo! I was watching your other video on methods on learning languages and I wanted to ask you on this slavic page if you have a system to learn all the constantly changing endings of Slovene. I can speak english, german and cantonese, but apart from german and it's cases, none really help with the multitude of ending changes. Moj mož je slovenec and I can no longer understand our children which is spurring me on. Any tips appreciated!

Around 20 years ago I took Ukrainian as my language in college. I was the only non-Russian major in the class. The Russian majors took Ukrainian as it has more cases and learning Ukrainian grammar made them better in their Russian. I barely remember anything, but I keep thinking to add it to my learning time.

15:45 not 550.000 (spoken), the text correctly says 50.000. Other German sources count as little as 20.000 to 30.000 speakers. Upper Sorbian (in southeast Saxony, is closer to Czech) is "endangered of extinction". Lower Sorbian (closer to Polish, located further north, in south Brandenburg) is considered a "seriously endangered of extinction" language because it is only spoken in very few families by the middle and younger generations.

Extensive knowledge which involves linguistics, culture, politics, history and geography. Thans very much.

I'm an American who first learned Russian close to fluent, then learned Polish to an intermediate level. Now I'm living in Montenegro for a few months and thinking about starting to learn Serbian, hence why I'm watching videos like yours. Good to know we're on the same page as to which Slavic languages to learn and in which order. haha

What an amazing video! Very well explained, structured and with examples. This of course encourages me to keep learning languages, and now I know a proper sequence for understanding most of them. Claps!

Who do you think has easier starter point to become a polyglot like. 1. Who knows English 2. Who knows Slavic language 3. Who knows Latin family language

7:19 One thing to note is that the country name is Belarus and the language name is Belarusian (with one s) but not “Bela-russian”. This is important because otherwise it sounds as another version of russian, which is not the case. From historical perspective and language genesis, Belarusian is a successor of Rusian [roosian] (called after the medieval state of Rus’) just as Ukrainian. I’m sure that author knows all of these facts. And many thanks for explaining the history of Ukrainian language for the English-speaking audience.

Happy to see that your channel is boosting so fast!

I’am a native macedonian speaker. I can understand 100 percent of serbo-croatian or bulgarian, and can speak the languages relatively good, which is not that surprising. What surprised me the most is how much I can understand russian (around 60 percent and that number rises if they talk slower) although I have never studied the language, nor I have been exposed to russian media, culture etc. I understand russian much better than slovene, even though macedonian and slovenian are in the same south slavic group, which makes no sense to me. Someone mentioned that it could be explained by the old church slavonic language… When it comes to the south slavic languages, it’s worth mentioning the Torlakian (shopski) dialect, which is a transitional form between serbo-croatian on one hand and macedonian-bulgarian on the other. It’s spoken mainly in south serbia, northeastern part of macedonia and northwest bulgaria. The relationship between the macedonian and bulgarian language is hot topic. I can say that they share very similar grammar and the difference is largely lexical and idiomatic. From my experience, I think that the bulgarian language is heavily influenced by the russian lexicon, and that is not surprising considering that they were part of the Eastern block for 50 years. Conversely, the macedonian language, as part of non-aligned and pro-west oriented Yugoslavia, has adopted a lot of German, French and English words. And for me, as a south slavic speaker, the toughest language, definitely is polish. I can’t understand almost anything, with the exception of the word K…A, but surprisingly the slovak language is much more intelligible to my south slavic ear

This was a very informative, interesting video! I have recently started learning Slovene due to an interest in music from there. It has been quite a challenge as my first Slavic language.

Excellent video

It's amazing that you show I Love Languages channel. Her channel truly is amazing!!! 🥰

The thing that you are a Japanese citizen is really the most surprising

Also, there is no such thing as "Bosnian". The ethnicity that changed its name from Muslim (in terms to ethnicity) to Bosniak, (old term for someone from geographical region of Bosnia), so they should call it Bosniak, not Bosnian, and also this artificial term is rejected by the majority of population in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Christians, but this fake term is constantly repeated by westerners as if it was something real. As for what is called Serbo-Croatian in linguistics, its origins are clear to everyone that knows a bit of real history. Serbo-Croatian is a literary Serbian language made and standardised as literary language by Serbian linguist Vuk Karadžić, shtokavian dialect of Herzegovina and most of Serbia, and this standard Serbian language was adopted by some Austri-Hungarian citizens (Croatian original language and literary standard is chakavian, not shtokavian) as their own, which would soon become a source for many linguistic and ethnic machinations by Austria-Hungary, creating an issue between Croats and Serbs that never existed before. To see the term BCSM is really sickening, it just shows how the west is using false regional differences to divide us and make us look different, the false differences they themselves created and keep promoting.

what a video man, fantastic

It’s great Tim that you’ve decided to start your channel, you’ve got some knowledge to share

A few years ago I went to work to Alaska, for the 1st time, at one of the many seafoods processing plants located over there. My expectations were, that I was going to be working among Hispanics and Americans. Inwardly, my jaw dropped when I quickly realized that over 80% of the hired workforce during that season, were people from former Yugoslavia and former Soviet Satellite States of the Eastern Bloc. Long story short I was fascinated and so, me wanting to learn Serbian I ended up picking up Russian because is the most accessible language to practice through the entertainment that is easily available and also because two different Ukrainians (A guy I've met while I was in Alaska, the other, a woman I've met while I was back home), suggested that should learn Russian first. Now I am doing just that and once in a while I roam around these types of videos.

Mistake: Ukrainian has 7 cases and Slovenian 6 (vocative)

Every Belarusian that I meet in Poland say that nobody speaks Belarusian in Belarus.

Wow, excellent presentation! This topic is well known to me but I stayed all the way because of your presentation. I subbed because you inspired me. I wish you all the best in your journey through life!

Your book looks really interesting, but are there any plans for an audiobook version? I'm an L2 speaker of German and Spanish, and I'm currently studying Ukrainian, so I try and avoid books in english to make time for reading the other languages, but I do have a lot of listening time on my hands.

My first slavic lagnauge I'm tackling is polish. I mostly know Spanish and Italian to conversational level and currently focusing on Hungarian, Portuguese and Polish. And I feel I want to tackle czech and ukranian after russian and polish because I feel I would visit those countries more often and it'll be more useful to me.

Summed suggestions: East: Russian West: Polish South: BCMS (Also, if anyone is wondering discussion of starting southern languages is at 19:30 though there is an earlier aside around 14-15)

i dont think ive been this engrossed in a youtube video in a very long time, incredible video thank you so much for sharing your knowledge! anymore content related to the slavic languages (especially regarding political history as you seem to have an interest in that?) would be fantastic if you are willing to make more (and if there is already some I apologise, I am new to the channel) as a non-native slavic language speaker you have greatly inspired me, I am very glad I have found your channel

I speak Russian fluently and I worked 6 years in a Polish company so I learned polish there. And im married to a Serbian woman and there have intermediate knowledge of Serbian, which is the perfect mix to understand all Slavs to at least 60-70%.

Czy był to polski klip filmowy ze „Stawki Większej Niż Życie”?

I'm from Belarus, I speak Belarusian and Russian. We have both these as the state languages. Unfortunately, I rarely see anybody speaking Belarusian... Also I can understand Ukrainian because I have watched LOTS of Ukrainian TV shows and have Ukrainian pals. And now I'm studying at the Polish university.

Thank you very much indeed, dear Professor, for this very enjoyable video ! Your explanations are extremely clear, complete and simple to understand, in consideration of the topics you have dealt with. Thank you !

thank you for this very informative video ❤

Although I don’t speak any Slavic language, as someone who’s interested in etymology, philology, culture, etc. I have a strong feeling that Ukrainian, and Belarusian are closer to Polish (West Slavic) than Russian (East Slavic) despite those (Belarusian and Ukrainain) are written in Cyrillic and culturally they are orthodox unlike the Polish are catholic. Therefore, categorically they can be in between or cross-categorized.

Apparently, it doesn't work with all Slavic languages, but most of the neighboring languages ​​can be learned without any effort just by consuming the content. That's true. I am Ukrainian and I understand the Polish language very well, although I have never even studied it. Czech and Slovak are a little more difficult for me, because there is much less of it in our information field, but after watching a few videos I started to understand about 70 percent of what they say. With the Belarusian language, everything is generally so easy to understand that sometimes, if I hear a song in this language, I cannot immediately understand that it is foreign, because our languages, although different, have high mutual inteligibility, not like with russian.

Great video, thank you!

Thank you! I Took Russian in school (& I followed it up later w/ the study of Church Slavonic), then I started getting into Polish, & I bought books on Bulgarian (but haven't had time to get into this one too much, yet), & I was thinking of learning Serbo-Croation or Slovene; this video 1) confirmed that I happened to have gotten into some of the most useful ones already, & 2) helped narrow down any of my possible options for further studies in the Slavic languages.

I'm here to solve this even better: LEARN INTERSLAVIC, a constructed language that all slavs can understand and is easier for learning than all of the national Slavic languages. I'm not slav but I am studying it, is a highly valuable language.

It’s Belaroosian, not Belarusian. Old Russian and old Ukrainian were much more similar centuries ago. Ukrainian was morphed due to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth domination. Hence why it’s slightly more similar to Polish than Russian. Russian also morphed due to the adoption of German, French and English.

very well made video. keep it up🔥🔥🔥

1. In what order ( if any) to learn the three? Same sequence as in the video? 2.Is there a similar video for Germanic & Romance ( French, Spanish & er Romanian , Catalan..or Latin (!).)? Apropos; I met a Bulgarian who said that learning Russian was easy for him & a Macedonian who said Bulgarian was understandable to her and they spoke in gheir own languages to each other.

As someone who first learned to speak using a dialect of South Serbia the Čital form in Slovakian is the same in Svrljisko Zaplanjski. Out of all the West Slavic languages I understand Slovak the most - Id say even more than any Eastern Slavic language as well. Na Kralove Holi, Stoji strom zeleni! :)

Yep, I can vouch as someone who lives near one of Tim Keely's job experiences (I looked at his public CV provided through one of the links) that there are a lot of people of Polish descent in metro Detroit. Paczki Day is still very popular around here. As a side note unrelated to the video, there is a lot of interest in Japanese from the Millennials and Gen Z around here. Thanks for the video, Tim! 情報が役立って、見るのが楽しかったです。2月に入って、またロシア語の勉強をしようと思っています。

Hey, Tim - super elaborate presentation! As someone who finds Slavic languages fascinating and is yet to acquire one, I was curious of from your years of experience which one you have found the easiest to study in terms of the language itself (disregarding the abundance or lack of resources). I surmise Macedonian is the simplest as, based on what I've read, it is a highly simplified form of Bulgarian that was meant to heighten mutual intelligibility with the neighbouring Serbs, thus compromising much of Bulgarian's complexity similarly to how creoles develop, albeit to a lesser degree. Of the languages that have full case systems, though, I am of the impression that in practice Slovak would probably be easiest as it is basically as if to be a Czech dialect that was simplified (much as in the comparison of Macedonian to Bulgarian) and influenced by elements of Croatian, characterising it as probably the most "central" among the Slavic languages as you mentioned in the video. On the other hand, it seems on paper that BCMS could be the easiest as it contains less exhaustive nominal declension patterns and slightly fewer phonemes, albeit with the caveat that the phonemic stress is less predictable, making proper pronunciation more complex. Across even the regional Štokavian standards alone, vocabulary also simultaneously consists of differences between common words themselves as well as in whether they it adopts the Ekavian, Ijekavian, or Ikavian variant. For example, standard Serbian and standard Croatian may differ in both regards, while Serbian and Montenegrin more or less overlap in vocabulary but still differ in the use of Ekavian and Ijekavian, respectively. Though the actual barrier this presents to conversation is very minor, it can still be an annoying feature to contend with for a foreign learner in terms of confident speech, especially if one mixes up words between different varieties and always second-guesses whether they should pronounce or write them one way or another based on observations of the usage around them that will change if moving from place to place. Moreover, grammatically speaking, BCMS appears to have certain minor nuances that do not exist to the same extent in Slovak, such as greater morphological alternation within inflectional paradigms in addition to a more intricate verbal system and particle usage. Colloquialisms and other informal patterns of speech also seem be in heavier use, which can be another obstacle to learners only acquainted with a textbook standard. Essentially, I view Slovak to be heavier yet more robust and concise in its grammar, whereas BCMS is simpler upfront though clouded by greater ambiguity and possibility in expressing the same idea. I would love to hear your opinion on this and which language (whether one of these two or another one) has been the easiest for you personally.

Omg, giving a list of the most spoken/applicable language of each branch of the family tree is so helpful, thank you :) this is what I’ve been trying to figure out

Also, the map of languages spoken in Ukraine looks rather provocative than scientific. Not a single time in 10 years I heard a person speaking Polish natively in my region although I’ve been travelling a lot and I speak Polish as a foreign language. Ukrainian-speaking area spans much further to the west onto the territory of modern Poland (at least it used to be there before the WW1 and WW2 when a lot of population was forced to move in both directions of the border).

Great video! I am Macedonian, I speak excellent Serbo-Croat, have learned some Slovenian, understand at least 60% of Bulgarian, speak also English and German... Choosing the next one - it will, most probably be Polish 🙂

what a cool and fascinating video, wow!

Jak nazywa cie film który Pan puszcza, z nagraniami z wypowiedzi z różnych języków?

Bielarusian have two (or actually three) standards of writing: with both cyrylic and latin script. The third standard is more of a historical curiosity: its arabic alphabet. Yes, arabic alphabet was use to write Bielarusian language: by tatars living in Grodno region of Bielarus and Podlasie region of Poland.

Thanks Tim for the wonderful overview of all Slavic languages. To indicate where Sorbian is spoken wouldn’t it be better to use “the federal German states of Saxony and Brandenburg” instead of former DDR? The number of native speakers is likely closer to the 55000 in the subtitles than the mentioned 550000.

Very good video, thank you!

Pozdrav, Posto si ucio Srpsko-Hrvatski ili BCMS nadam se da nije problem sto pisem ovaj komentar na Srpskom. Ja iskreno govorimg Engleski jezik na visokom nivou tako da ako bude trebalo mogu se prebaciti na Engleski. Uglavnom hteo bih te pitati, da li imas neke planove da napravis video o Interslovenskom "Interslavic Language" Jeziku?

Actually, if you want to learn only one language and be able to converse with any Slav, you need to learn Interslav.

Great video. Born and raised in West Bulgaria with relatives in Macedonia (Skopje, Bitola) and Serbia (Pirot). Learned Russian at school 35 years ago. Recently tried to read беларуская мова (Belarusian language) and I am pretty positive about not only understanding the context, but some of the details. Not so much with Ukrainian, but still understanding the context. I do have troubles understanding and reading Polish. Reading Polish is a pain because of the different alphabet system they are using. However I am understanding the core of the text, not much when they are speaking. Especially if Polish is spoken in a fast way.

What a fascinating video, thank you for sharing, I have really learnt something both new and valuable today.

I am Slovak living in Slovakia. In my opinion Slovak language is a crossroad of all 3 types of Slavic langugages. Dialects in northern Slovakia are similar to Polish language (soft pronounciation - č, š, ť, ľ,), dialect in South Slovakia are similar to Slovenian and Croatian languages (hard pronounciation). And in eastern parts of Slovakia many people talk Rusin language. There is very interesting similarity between Slovakian and Slovenian languages. Both nations call their country Slovensko. In Slovenia there live Sloven(s), but in Slovakia a man is called Slovak, but woman Sloven(ka). It think, in the past we were one nation. Now there is Hungary between us. Very interesting is using letter "L" in Slavic languages. South languages use letter "U" instead of "L", e.g. vuk = vlk = volk. Polish language uses something with similar pronounciation, it is a special polish "Ł". In old dialect of Slovakia there was also used U instead of L: bou som = bol som, bucha = blcha etc. Small children, when they start to talk, often use this "U" instead of L. But In Slovakia using U instead of L is a speech error (similar like problems with R) and small children have to visit a logopedic expert to remove it. And one piece of interest. In Slovak language there is long R and long L: Ŕ and Ĺ, e.g. vŕtať, mŕtvy, vŕzgať, kŕdeľ, mĺkvy, vĺčok, hĺbka.

Amazing summary for Ukrainian/East Slavic native. I came to the same conclusions by spontaneous understanding Polish, and other languages becoming intelligible. So far, South Slavic are a bit more challenging. Small fix, Ukrainian had Vocative case

Hello, I have a question for you does philology science have a future?

It's really rare to find belorussian speaker in belarus now on the streets, normally Russian is used

What do you think about Interslavic?