Slavic languages | Are they similar and can you learn all of them? 

I'm 73 years old and I'm learning Russian because it's good mental gymnastics. I find it to be a very logical language. I can read and understand some but speaking is hard for me. But I enjoy learning and I enjoy you videos.

love from Bulgaria to all Slavic countries 🥺🇧🇬

I'm Mexican and I'm learning Serbian. It's quite tricky at some point but it's not impossible to learn it. Anyway, I still understand some things in Slovak, Czech and Russian and I've try watching videos in Interslavic Language, and it is very interesting, I can understand around a 30% to 40% of it, even when I don't speak fluent Serbian. I'm also interested in learning Slovak and Russia, but not yet, I need first to reach a higher level in Serbian. What I really like of Serbian is that people can easily speak with Croats and Bosnians without trouble. Greetings from Mexico to all my Slavic brothers and sisters!! 🇲🇽♥️🇷🇺🇧🇾🇺🇦🇵🇱🇨🇿🇸🇰🇷🇸🇭🇷🇧🇦🇲🇪🇸🇮🇧🇬🇲🇰

hello from croatia!🖐 can't believe someone from russia said that croatian or serbian are hard to learn to russians. I learn russian for two years and i found so many words that are similar to croatian. actually, russian is too easy to me. when i watch tv documentaries or news, i understand like every 4,5th word. as i said, there are many similar words with just small difference in pronouncing. we have so many similarities with russian language. ofc, we are in the same language group. Greetings from CRO!🖐🥰

I'm learning Bulgarian right now, the most difficult part is finding content to be exposed to the language constantly and when it comes to the language itself I suppose it's the vocabulary. The alphabet so far doesn't seem to be that bad! The few Bulgarians I've talked to usually ask me "why?" lol I think the country is so underrated, seems like a hikers paradise plus I love sunflower seeds and roses and they are a thing in Bulgaria so I'm sold, don't need much else, can't wait to visit. Native Spanish speaker here

You pronounced words in Serbian very nice! Greetings from Belgrade! :)

My language is Serbian. Slavic languages are similar. I understand: - Serbian / Croatian - 100% - Macedonian - 70% - Bulgarian - 60% - Slovenian - 50% - Russian - 50% (I studied Russian for several years in school) - Slovak - 40% - Czech - 30% - Polish - 20% Approximately...

I learn 4 Slavic languages right now (Russian, Czech, Polish, Slovak) And I must say, learning Russian and Polish made me understand Czech and Slovak a lot better (I am currently trying to get fluent in Czech, it goes very well)

To me, an Italian, South Slavic languages sound like an Italian trying to speak Russian (sort of). That's because their phonology is almost the same as ours, so they sound familiar and different from Russian, but words and grammar are unmistakably Slavic.

Hi Eli :) I'm from Slovakia and I´m always wondering that my Russian friends don't understand a word, but I can understand them pretty well..... if they speak slowly. The thing is that when you live in Slovakia for example, you naturally understand Czech, we were one country and even though our languages are quite different, up to nowadays when I read a book and someone asks me if it was in Czech or Slovak....I can't answer. We going for shopping in Poland because they have lower VAT and the prices are better and we go on holidays to Croatia, Slovenia, Bulgaria because Slovakia has no sea and it's really close. From each of these countries we bring some minimal vocabulary. You probably already know what I mean. When I hear "yesli" (if) from my Russian friend I wouldn't understand it at all because in Slovak it's "ak" , which is completely different......... but I automatically switch to Czech and czech word "jestli" is much closer to yesli makes sense to me immediately :) I´m think that its the same for the rest of western and southern Slavic Countries as well. .... thank you for your amazing channel , Bye! :)

I m Serbian and my favorite is Czech ( also Slovak wich I can understand more as native serbian speaker)

Some days ago a guy asked me how do I differentiate Slovak and Slovenian. "By 1 letter," I said. "How's that possible," he asked. I replied: "It's simple. Slovaks call their language slovenčina, while Slovenians call their language slovenščina."

During my first trip to Europe back in 1997, my Polish mother, younger sister and I flew into Prague then took a train to Poland after a little sightseeing in Czechia. The Czech people understood my mother's Polish fairly well thanks to linguistic similarities in the West Slavic languages.

Is it funny that I want to learn all Slavic languages one day. I am Serbian and I learned a little bit of Russian by myself, I realized that I don't even need subtitles for Russian videos anymore most of the time (I do need them when people are talking very fast tho 🤣 ). I think all Slavic languages are beautiful ♥️ love you all 💞

All three words (vrt, brk, grk) you spoke were corectly pronounced, good job Elina, hi from Serbia.

I am a Russian speaker. I was capable to communicate with people in Serbia and Macedonia. I understood them, and they understood me because of similarity of many words

Serbian is the most beautiful one to my Russian ears.

I'd like to learn them all😭

I am native speaker of the westernmost slavic language: Czech. And I learned the eaternmost slavic language: Russian. With this background, knowledge of both vocabularies and grammar on the 'extremes', I am able to 'decode' any slavic language inbetween;)

My studies include Russian, mostly because of an interest in Russian culture, but also, as you describe, as a means to learn other Slavic languages. My main difficulty now is remembering the rules as I've not used it in about 20 years, since working with the United Nations. I'll look into your channel as a way to refresh my knowledge! Thank you for posting this wonderful episode!

Slovenian getting dropped as always lol

well, if you are a foreigner and learned russian - yeah, probably czech and slovak would be a whole new world for you. But as a native russian speaker who learns czech now I must say it helps a freaking lot to speak russian. Same for slovak because they are basically the same with czech. When I moved to CZ I could already understand something when I was reading a menu in a restaurant or some street signs. Spoken language was a nightmare for quite a long time though. But once you start learning it just clicks at some point. The structure of slavic languages is the same, so intuitively I can guess the right word ending before I learn the rule. And regarding vocabulary - roughly 30% of words are the same or very similar (zub, smetana, klobasa instead of kolbasa, kochka instead of koshka). Another 50% you can guess just thinking what this word would sound like in old russian, centuries ago (thanks to classic literature), so you end up with 'usta' - lips, 'chelo'- forehead, 'zhivot'- life, 'semafor'- traffic lights and so on. And true, 20% is mostly german influence. But overall its not that different.

I am an extremely passionate language enthusiasts and Slavic languages are my “specialty “ !:) As per proficiency I speak the languages following this order .....Bulgarian, Croatian/ Serbian , Macedonian, Slovenian, Polish , Russian , Czech.......looking forward to expand my linguistic knowledge in Ukrainian &Belarusian 🙂! Thanks for your informative video :):)

Hello, from all slavic polyglot :) To speak all slavic languages? Sure, it is possible. I must say though, that for me, even from my childhood, no slavic language had a foreign sound to me. I would say sooner it was like "they speak "corrupted" version of our language. I'm glad this video and this channel got recommended to me. Cheers!

Traveled to Belgrade as it’s still open to USA passport holders. Good place to meet Russian speakers and they even had a Russian Festival (bought a St Petersburg made telnyashka there) in the pedestrian shopping area on the way to the National Museum. It’s also safer to travel as there are too many uncertainties within Russian visa process for US passports. Serbians very helpful in fostering competency in their language and could use Russian as Serbs can travel to Russia without visa.

i suspect russian speakers may have a hard time understanding a south slavic person because here in the balkans almost everyone speaks in their local dialect. we got A LOT of different dialects cramped in such a small place, and many of them are wildly different from the official language.

Ой, я как украинка, свободно говорю на украинском (так как он родной), свободно на русском (так как учила его со школы) и так же я хорошо понимаю польский и белорусский, так как много слов похожи на украинский, русский и английский.

I'm learning Czech because to me it's the most beautiful and unique language I've ever heard❤ but I always have been fascinated by Slavic cultures. Russian folk music was a huge part of my life since I was 3 years old. And since I became aware of the Czech culture I've been listening nonstop to Czech/+Moravian, Slovak and Rusyn music and been fascinated by folk music and dances from almost all Slavic cultures and tried to understand all those connections between them, especially the west Slavic ones. This is such an interesting video, thank you for doing it! And much love from my home country Germany😊❤

Thank you for your very informative video(s) ! I learnt a lot about slavic languages from you!

Hi, I am from Czechia, and I want soon make video about these differences between our slavic languages by my czech view, because as you said, we have completely different way of slavic language. You also helped me to understand more about east slavs, So I hope I will just add an other view about this interesting topic And help you to more understand West slavs :). Really nice video, Zdravím z Česka 😁 (I believe you understand this xD)

I want to learn Russian.I want to read Pushkin,Nabakov,Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.I love the sound of Russian compared to other Slavic languages and when a woman speaks Russian It is very good.I use to do Cossack dancing when I was young and my favourite story as a young boy was Peter and the Wolf which I saw at a concert.I never put all my likes together as being Russian. Now I would like to learn the Russian language. I would be able to listen to Russian radio here in Australia. I am also thinking of joining the Russian Orthodox Church. So plenty of reasons to learn this beautiful sounding language. Do svidaniya.

Your explaning of Serbian,is just great,im impressed

I'm Czech and I learned Russian for four years. I have to say that I have forgotten a lot, because in the Czech Republic I don't have such an opportunity to speak Russian every day, rather English or German, but when there is an opportunity to speak Russian, I feel that if I didn't know Russian, I would understand 5% of it.

I'd like to learn Croatian or Poland. As a Peruvian, I find these languages not only to sound beautiful to my ears, but also they are pretty exotic and brand new to my mindset. So the initial challenge would turn out to be a pleassnt rewarding task if I were to take up Croatian or Polish. I really hope I can learn one of these languages someday.

I am Croatian, and when hear Russians speaking, I recognize some of the words and they mean the same thing, but they are pronounced differently in Croatian

Hey, I'm from Bulgaria :) Thanks for the nice video! I would love to learn Russian one day! It is a very beautiful language! P.s: I love your hair!

For me as a Romanian the nicest Slavic languages are Bulgarian, slavo-macedonian, Slovak and maybe Serbo-Croatian

Very nice presentation, thank you! I’ve always been curious about the Slavic languages compared to the Russian language.

Very interesting video. I have struggled with Russian for years. It's a fascinating language and the (ordinary) people are super. You have to go there to realise what are stereotypes and what the truth is. I was fairly good at Russian for a long time, but a lack of practice is starting to take its toll. Some people said to me that as I knew Russian, it would be easy to learn Polish or Czech. I always was of the opinion that this really wasn't the case and used to say so quite strongly! As a native English speaker, I would agree with many of your conclusions. Of the other Slav languages I heard in my travels, the ones I got closest to at least getting a feel for what was going on(!), were Croatian and possibly Ukrainian, though I had thought I might have understood more of the latter than I did! I've no experience of Serbian. Anyway, enjoyed this very much. Keep up the good work.

Ели, спасибо большое за видео, как всегда. Мне очень нравится ваше обучение. :)

I'm Hungarian but I'm fluent in Russian, Slovak & Czech. I love this video.

From Balto-Slavic language groups. 🇧🇬 🇨🇿 🇭🇷 🇱🇹 🇱🇻 🇲🇰 🇲🇪 🇸🇮 🇷🇸 🇷🇺 🇸🇰 🇵🇱 🇧🇾 🇺🇦 🇧🇦

I really appreciate your incredible knowledge about the Slavic languages! You are awesome!!! I found this video really interesting; completely different and outstandingly explained by you!!! I'm a teacher of English in Argentina; are you a linguist? I really find the cirilic alphabet hard to acquire; but it's a pleasure to learn Russian!! Congratulations for this video and its content is great!! Da svidania krasiveia diebushka!

You are a gem, I am glad I prescribed to your Channel ! RUSSIA has a lot to offer the world, Thanks for sharing.

On my 4th trip to Croatia on summer vacation I noticed that I can understand speech on radio pretty well (not that I didn't do it before, it's that I never made a notion), the same goes to writings, most of which I cound understand from the beginning. After Croatia I went to Czechia where I literally couldn't understand almost a single word, it's incredible.

You are a good teacher, thank you. You also have beautiful hair.

I'm most interested in learning Croatian cause I think it has the prettiest phonology. I'm also interested in the cultural and linguistic influences the Mediterranean has had on it

I started to (sort of) teach myself Russian many years ago. Having done Latin in school, I found many correlations (not complete coincidences) between Russian and Latin inflections, which was very helpful. When I first encountered Polish (I haven’t learnt it) I noticed that nasalized inflections correspond to ‘n‘ or ‘m’ in Latin grammar, and further on study I found that these are inherited from an early form of the language close to Old Church Slavonic.

I am an American who lived in Croatian 2019-2020. I have a working knowledge of the language, but can understand some Polish. I started learning Russian a month ago and it has helped me in learning Russian. I follow Olly Richards reading style and Watch ”Russian with Max”. I also attending a Russian Baptist Church near Nashville that has helped me tremendously.

My wife is Polish, so I've been learning Polish along with my ancestral Lithuanian. What is difficult for me about Polish are all the conjugations. What is easier is the Latin alphabet which makes it easier to recognize the appropriate phoneme when pronouncing words. Same with Lithuanian. Learning the Cyrillic alphabet is problematic, but hey!, if Russian kids can do it, it's nothing sufficient exposure can't resolve, amirite or am I right?

Eli, I really enjoy your videos and you are a very well educated woman who is well traveled around the globe and knowledgeable. I think you are probably an excellent teacher and somebody I would love to learn from. If you are not a university professor already, you should study further to become one.

I'm Brazilian, my native language is Portuguese. I've been studying English since 2015 and now I'm trying to learn Russian. But the long words in Russian made me get discouraged. Great video. Thanks a lot!

If i subscribe to the russian course, what would be the set time for the group online practice (that would be good if you could put the time zone), and do people still get active on the telegram chat after the 3 weeks?

Thank you for your videos.) I am beginning to learn the Russian language and hope to eventually use it in travel to CIS countries. Hopefully I will be ready when your club starts in June. I especially enjoy your travel videos.) Btw, I am not trying to be nit picky as I understand you and that is what communication is all about, but in American, Macedonia is pronounced with a soft 'c'.

You're so lovely, Eli!! Keep up the good work!! 👏👍 Greetings from Sweden. 👋🌟

Eli, your videos are simply wonderful. I enjoy the craft of language and my greatest challenges are: a) perfectionism that makes me shy to speak and b) the ideas I wish to express are far beyond my capacity in all languages, sometime even with a considerable vocabulary in English! Languages I work on periodically include Russian, French, Guangdonghua, Spanish, German, Italian and Dutch (in order of familiarity and effort ;-) I mostly claim Russian and French as second "rusty" languages. Sending best wishes for much success, John James from Canada

i found out that i can understand so much written bulgarian by just knowing russian, feels like i can understand more bulgarian than any other slavic language (except ukrainian and belarusian of course)

Крутое и весьма познавательное видео! Но, как жительница Беларуси, хотела бы заметить, что Belarusian читается через "с" (беларусиан). Нас в школе за произношение через "ш" морально бьют, потому слух уже автоматом ловит такое)

Thank you so much, I loved this video! I love russian language and I fond of slavistics, I am learning Russian at university and I have studied polish for one year... I would really love to learn Croatian/Serbian in the future. Love this channel, greetings from Italy!!!

Thank you for the informative video I’m so interested in languages. It would be great to touch base about the languages within the Russian federation. What might be a second or other language commonly taught in school, for example? Or if you’re watching television, are there other channels that are in a foreign language and what might Be?

Linguistics say: Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, Montenegrin are one and the same language. You can give it whichever name you like but it is always the same language. Politics say: they are different languages.

I'd be interested in a video on the influence of Old Church Slavonic on Russian. Old Church Slavonic is still the liturgical language of the Russian Orthodox Church. However, my understanding is that it is much closer to Bulgarian and Macedonian since it was originally based on the south Slavic dialect that eventually became these two languages. Over time the Russian Orthodox Church has made recensions (извод) to the Old Church Slavonic texts to make them easier for Russian speakers to read, but I would still that these religious texts would have a great influence on the speakers of Russian.

As I am a native speaker of a Slavic language it is a bit difficult for me to learn other Slavic languages. There are a lot of words, that sounds the same but have totally different meanings. Úžasný in Czech is amazing but very similar word in Croatian is terrible. In Czech život is a life in Russian it is a belly and there are many and many others... I can remember a situation from the school years ago... I told my Russian friend "ty máš krásný život" which ment you have a nice life. But she understood that she had a red belly. Same words different meanings 😀

The cyrilic alphabet is the bulgarian alphabet. It was developed in the area of Preslav, Bulgaria. Also called Veliki Preslav or Great Preslav, which was the cultural center of the First Bulgarian Empire and all slavic nations. The cyrilic script was made in Bulgaria after the bulgarian Tsar Simeon I the Great replaced the Glagolitic script made by the brothers Cyril and Methodius, with the cyrilic script. Nowadays all the countries you have mentioned use the cyrilic alphabet as the main foundation of their alphabet. Furthermore the cyrilic is the 3rd official european language, also written in bulgarian cyrilic on every euro bill. Sadly you didn't mention any of this. Bulgaria deserves more credit and you all should be more appreciative and greatful.

I am attempting to learn Russian, Polish, German, and Ukrainian. There are many similarities which make them easier to learn the other. Oh, and FIRST!

Very interesting. The Cyrillic alphabet is tough to learn as is the pronunciation of words. I have a Russian friend who told me that “the Russian language is even hard for them”.

As someone who speaks no Slavic languages but is interested in languages in general, I really appreciate this breakdown. Super helpful and fascinating!

The article at the end of the word is how Swedish works, too- experiencing that helped the article on the end for Bulgarian makes more sense. Thanks for such a detailed video!

English is my native language. I've been speaking it my whole life and I still can't get it right!

You look like the Russian version of Simone Simons 🧡 beyond stunning 💙

Happy Birthday, Eli!! I hope that it is a very special day for you!!

I am interested in Czech because my boyfriend's family is from Brno. It's actually quite fun, but the declensions are so difficult. My native language doesn't have any declensions. I now understand the system of cases a bit, like when to use which case. But memorising the endings... it's hell.

I went to a youth camp thing in France in summer 1991 and there were people from all over Europe. 4 people from Poland, 2 from Slovakia, 2 from Russia. I thought Polish sounded gorgeous. I was amazed that the Poles could converse with the Slovaks. (Easily!) The Slovaks were amazed that I knew there was even such a place as Slovakia because the country was still known as Czechoslovakia, as far as I remember. I remember that Russian sounded very different from Polish, much more robust whereas Polish was light and airy. I learned quite a few rude words in Polish although the Polish people kept laughing they said I spoke their language with a Chinese accent (I am not Chinese). The Soviet Union was still going (just about) and this was the time when a coup attempt tried to oust Gorbachëv from power with Moscow full of troops. I felt really worried about my Russian friends. Anyway... Which Slavonic language do I want to speak? Russian of course! The language of Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Sholokov, Solzhenitsyn and Gazprom television.... and Siberia. I really want to go to Siberia: Tuva, Kamchatka and Yakutia. I especially want to go to Yakutia, the part where Kiun B lives, so I'll have to learn some Yakut too. I've been learning Русский for just over a month. You say the declensions are easy, Eli; but I think they're torture. All I know so far is that there's дом дома доме and большой домой... or something like that... As for Central European languages, the one I'd really go for would be Hungarian. I know it's not Slavic but it's wonderful, the language of Transylvania, Zsa Zsa Gabor and goulash. Yummy yum yum!

I studied Russian for a while. Then I tried my hand at Bulgarian. There was some common Slavic vocabulary, but some had a slightly different meaning and there were some structural differences too. It does help some, but not too much. Besides the article thing. My native Turkish was helpful for Bulgarian too though. We're neighbors, used to be under the same empire in the past, there are many common words too. Besides that, once my Russian knowledge helped me decipher one Croatian hotel website and I understood the Ukrainian street signs in Kyiv with my beginner's Russian.

I find this to be an interesting topic. And very curious about it. Thanks.

We from Balkans can understand each others without any problems 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

I am from scandinavia. And I know advanced german. it got some similar words with russian. Do wanna learn some Russian though since I got a friend from Saint Petersburg. She knows english but I wanna talk to her friends. Russian is beuitful :) really nice video by the way. Keep it up :)

On Ecolinguist there's a 30-minute conversation with a native Polish speaker and an Interslavic speaker. They seemed to understand each other well.

From the scientific and language fan points of view, the best way is to start with Old Church Slavonic (or even with its more tough ancestor Proto-Slavic) and then only go through historic changes in grammar, phonetics, vocabulary etc. There have been many attempts to create a new common Slavic language as a kind of Slavic Esperanto (because with the return to Proto-Slavic you would break your tongue and nose). From those attempts you can find up Inter-Slavic on wiki. However, I cannot imagine that without political support the semi-artificial language can flourish. From the practical point of view you can start with Serbian (I myself am Slovak). The "official" Serbian language was standardized somewhere in the middle of 19th century. Probably this is reason it has a relatively simple grammar (said relatively but posses thousand pages text-book): - you do not need to worry about tough sounds - nasals (Polish), ř (Czech), dark L (Polish), - you do not lack noun cases (which were lost in Bulgarian and Macedonian), - you are still in touch with aorist (simple past) and other tenses of Proto-Slavic, - you are not sentenced to overuse personal pronouns (Russian), - you can use both Cyrillic and Latin alphabets and the language is very close to "official" Croatian, Montenegrin and Bosnian languages, - you write as you hear (mostly), - similarly to Russian, you have to cope with the floating syllable stress (sometimes even more than one) but it is not so strong as in Russian and therefore the pronunciation is very close/almost identical to the written form (no akanie, minimally swallowed unstressed vowels, which are monsters in spoken Russian), - you can watch Kusturica's movies without subtitles. :-D My estimate is that a Slav from one nation can be fluent in other Slavic language in 3-6 months if he/she practices it daily. It is because of the common word roots, suffixes and prefixes. If we omit nowadays English, and old Latin and Greek, here are the biggest non-Slavic contributors: East Slavic - borrowings from Turkic languages, South Slavic - borrowings from Turkish, Italian, West Slavic - borrowings from German.

Thank you so much for the lesson !

I'm Macedonian and the town I live in has a dialect that when I was in the army, I had to speak official Macedonian so we can communicate with other Macedonians from other towns, they didn't understand everything I say. I am from Gevgelija which is located to the south on the border with Greece, and if I speak fast even Macedonians don't understand me.

Cool video! ❤ Also congrats on 20k subs. so proud of you 😊

I don't know which language out of these was the hardest to learn or understand. I speak Slovak and Czech and even these two languages are hard for me 😂 Otherwise I learned Serbian in maybe 3 months, but only because I was living there and half of my family lives there 😊 I love Serbia. So for me Serbian was a bonus when we traveled to Croatia...I could easier understand them. Also I kind of understand Polish, but usually when they speak slower or Ukrainian...sometimes I'd understand Russian, but I think that that's it. I also learned Azbuka which was fun! 😁

Your English is perfect! How many languages do you speak Eli and may I ask how did you start your interest in languages?

Russian and Ukrainian are the Portuguese and Spanish from the Slavic Family, They look similar but you can end up in weird situations if you don't prepare yourself.

Dear Eli.....That was all very interesting. You might touch on the Slavic minority languages such as Sorbian and Ruthenian....Thanks....Stephan in Ottawa

Russian is difficult for me. I tried learning it on Duolingo, but I quit. I’m learning French and Italian on Duolingo, but doing Spanish in school. Should I be learning multiple languages at the same time? Should I concentrate on the romantic languages before I move on to the Slavic languages?

As a Serb, I like the Russian language the most 👍

Really interesting video :) I've been learning Russian for some years now and although my level is not advanced at all, when travelling to Slovenia and Croatia I noticed how similar some common words in Slovenian and Croatian are to Russian. That being said, nobody would probably understand me if I spoke Russian to them and viceversa :D

Which slavic language to learn at first place? Practicality : Russian or Polish( my mother tongue :)) To learn with most ease: Bulgarian

My father was born and raised in Slovakia. However, he was an American citizen by birth since his father, my grandfather, was born in the U.S. My grandfather traveled around the world in the merchant marine and ended back up in Slovakia (which was part of Czechoslovakia back then). My grandfather later moved back to America with the intent of bringing my grandmother, father and uncle and aunt over. It was April 1938 when my father, the eldest, came on the S.S. Europa to America. The manifest listed him an American citizen even though he couldn't speak a word of English. Unfortunately, a few months later Hitler took over Czechoslovakia and then started WW II the next year. This effectively split the family. During the War, my father was drafted by the American Army and was sent back to Europe. By this time, Germany had surrendered and my father was assigned to the army of occupation near the demarcation line between the Allies and the Soviets. I found this video very interesting because my father would talk about his interaction with troops from other nations. Apparently, the American mess was known for having the best food and officers from other armies could eat there. Russian officers were of course allowed to eat in the American mess of which they happily partook. Polish troops, as allies, were also allow to eat at the American mess. My father would speak in Slovak to the Polish troops. He said he could understand about 50% of what they said though it wasn't real clear. As far as the Russians, he said he could understand nothing.

In fact the Bulgarian and the Russian use the same alphabet. The Bulgarian have all letters except three - [э] [ы] [ё]. For the sound [ё] we in Bulgaria use a combination of [ьо].

Very interesting. I found my very minimal Russian knowledge helpful in Czech. First as the woman counting people on the bus I could understand the numbers. Second reading a sign in the Latin Alphabet that said "starry most" I could understand as old bridge. I keep plugging away at Russian because I want to travel more in Russia and the former republics of central Asia.

I have to disagree with your statement about the number of the declinations. The russian grammar considers only three declinations, but there are more alternations (лето, море, свидание). These alternations are considered as stand alone declinations a.k.a. "vzor" (paragigm, pattern) in czech and slovak grammars. The difference of the numbers of the declinations doesn't mean that the czech or slovak grammar is more complex. It mean that they categorize declinational paradigm differently.

Russian such beautiful language. Love to learn it

You didn't mention that Slovenian has a singular, plural and a separate dual form that doesn't exist in any other Slavic language.

Pronunciation is good in Serbian-Croatian. There is also the word "grb" (coat of arms)

I'm a native English speaker learning Ukrainian, but I'm able to understand bits and pieces of Russian (I think listening to a lot of Russian music helps). Belarusian is more similar to Ukrainian but it still sounds very confusing to me because the vowels are so different.

hi Eli congratulations for your Chanel I'd watch it all the time here on Wisconsin USA