Tongue Twisters: In search of the world’s hardest language (2009)

Re:Tongue Twisters: In search of the world’s hardest languag... by qsi on Wednesday April 21, 2021 @04:08AM (#26886677)

I find Slavic languages to be less distant from one another than other major Indo-European languages. They're by no means mutually intelligible when spoken, but you can kind of get by. There's also the Interslavic [1] conlang, which is targets mutual intelligibility without much additional learning. It's surprisingly readable, but like most conlangs, I think more of a solution is search of a problem than anything.

[1] http://steen.free.fr/interslavic/

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Re:Tongue Twisters: In search of the world’s hardest languag... by Toutouxc on Wednesday April 21, 2021 @04:45AM (#26886900)

Interslavic is like 95 % intelligible for me, a Czech, and has a strong southern (ex-yugoslavian) vibe. I wonder what Poles think of it.

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Re:Tongue Twisters: In search of the world’s hardest languag... by gnosek on Wednesday April 21, 2021 @05:36AM (#26887285)

Same. It takes a little effort to read but it's understandable and it does feel Croatian or thereabouts. On a somewhat funny note, Chrome decided to translate the page in Interslavic from Czech to Polish and did a passable job.

What I find fascinating about Slavic languages is that I can speak Polish in Slovakia*, get responses in Slovak and mostly understand each other. It has basically zero chance of success in the Czech Republic to the point where it's easier to find an English speaker. I speak neither Czech nor Slovak and I cannot really distinguish them but I had this experience multiple times. In written form, both are similarly understandable to me (I can get the gist and guess the rest).

* the caveat about szukanie czegoś do picia still applies though.

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Re:Tongue Twisters: In search of the world’s hardest languag... by 0ld on Wednesday April 21, 2021 @06:31AM (#26887657)

> I can speak Polish in Slovakia*, get responses in Slovak and mostly understand each other.

i'd call slovak a "middle-slavic" language, the phonetics and the lexicon makes is easy for the other slavic spekers to understand

say, i can communicate with slovaks in ukrainian and there are no significant issues with understanding too. strangely, it doesn't work for czech. at all.

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