I can speak German, English and Dutch (which are very close Germanic languages) and also understand a bit of French and Italian. I guess I could learn their basics relatively quickly if I tried hard enough.
However, I actually need to learn Croatian, a Slavic language. This is extremely difficult for me and I make hardly any progress. The vocabulary is so different from everything else I know, I just can't remember the words. The grammar is quite challenging as well.
I did give some thought whether your native language makes it easier or harder to learn others, but all I have is anecdotal cases from my life. I wonder if there are any scientific studies on the topic.
E.g. a curious thing I noticed is the frequent complaint about Latin being very hard to learn because of the seven grammatical cases, three genders and morphology -- words just don't stay the same. As native Russian speaker I find these things absolutely normal and easy to understand, but I can image this must be a nightmare after English.
Slavic languages you mention are very curious in how different yet how similar they all are. One of the most impressive thing I saw with respect to learning languages is the Interslavic language [1]. Apparently if you speak any of Slavic languages you can understand it quite well, even though you usually are completely lost with most of the other Slavic languages. You still need to learn to speak it, but the fact that you understand foreigners with zero training just blows my mind. Feels like you awakened the memory of your ancestors of something.
I'm Polish, I've never learnt any foreign Slavic languages, but I can mostly understand Ukrainian, Belarusian and Slovak from passive exposure on a few trips.
The experience is weird - when I first went to Ukraine I couldn't understand almost anything. After a few days it suddenly "clicked" and I realized how the most common sounds and word endings relate between Polish and Ukrainian - and since that moment I basically got all the words with the same roots for free (which is like half the language). It also gave me Belarusian as a side effect :)
Of course it's not actual language speaking, I'm just understanding every other word and connecting the dots.
With Slovak it was even quicker, but somehow it hasn't given me Czech - their pronuciation is just too weird, despite the fact it's almost the same in writing :).
I'm not sure Interslavic provides much value. For me it's basically Slovak, so if you come from East Slavic language you'd probably get the same benefit spending that time learning some Slovak, and you'd then know some actual language instead of an artificial one.
There’s a surprising amount of vocabulary difference across Czech and Slovak, in addition to the pronunciation differences you mention. Pre-split everyone on both sides grew up hearing bilingual broadcasts, so they picked up the differences ambiently. I’ve heard that it’s a lot less of a given whether the younger generations presumptively understand each other these days. But I’ve also seen evidence that many still choose to engage with people / content / opportunities on the other side enough to get to solid working familiarity anyway.
This comes from limited first-hand experience and more extensive second-hand cross-generational experience. Take it as you will.
Slovak children usually grow up with Czech narrated cartoons, so they are able to understand Czech more easily. I heard that Czech children does not receive this language training for Slovak, so they have a harder time understanding Slovak language. I never "learned" Czech in school but I watched a lot of cartoons as a child (born '93) and read books in Czech so I have no problem understanding Czech language as a Slovak. I have a hard time understanding Polish though, never clicked for me.
I can confirm this is true. Czech republic is cca 2x the population size of Slovakia and its historically more developed part, so during one state union a lot of media were in czech language and it became our second language without thinking about it. Also Czechs did get a decent exposure to slovakian language.
But if there is no exposure, its becomes visible how grammar is very similar, but most words are just a bit different (very few are completely different), and pronunciation varies so much across whole region (even within given country) that its not easy or even possible to understand each other out of blue, without prior exposure.
I got some exposure to Polish TV during 80s, since commies couldn't put together more than 2-3 channels on TV and those were anyway pretty bland. I can cca understand it, but can't say a single sentence well enough. If I read polish text, I have to read it loud in my head and then I grok it easily, otherwise too much 'cz', 'w', words are too long etc and I lose meaning very quickly.
But in general Polish is a bit further away from either Slovak or Czech languages. We were and still are literal brothers (CZ and SK), extremely similar in so many regards, still see no good rational reason why we split up (of course I know real reasons, but those are nasty as are the people responsible for the split).
The US state department has some estimates of time to become proficient in target languages for English speakers. Germanic and Latin based languages take the least amount of effort:
It helps that staff are participating in these programs full-time, no other duties required.
A story I've heard first hand is that after the program, department staff can discuss diplomacy in the target language, but struggled to order a coffee!
As a dutch person i once spend 2 years in Ukraine. Hardly anyone spoke decent english there, so i was forced to learn (russian) the language. Within a year I was able to speak it moderately. Key is to focus on words only. Dont care about gramar. Its not important and will be fine later on. First learn 2000 to 3000 words and you will be able to say a lot of things.
This has been an approach I've seen used to great effect by people learning your language! My wife strings together Dutch words with English grammar (we're both American) and it's a common "mistake" that I experience when visiting a taalcafe.
Our brains are all extremely capable of moving a few words so we can understand things in context. When speaking Dutch, I'm spending a lot of time thinking about a verb, then attempting to string it together into something comprehensible.
What I also found to be almost universally true, is that if you are learning a less "popular" language (like Dutch or Ukrainian), just actually give a shit enough to learn more than "yes/no/please/thank you/my name is" will garner you a lot of good will from native speakers. Some countries get so many tourists that hearing the same 10 words butchered over and over and over and over and over again eventually starts to wear down on locals, making them jaded.
When you can walk into a room and somewhat confidently hold your ground, you become interesting and a novelty that people want to interact with. I went to a block party last weekend and spoke to most of the people there throughout the evening. Sure, everyone knew I was "foreign" and occasionally I had to ask someone to repeat something or re-word it, but that's a minor complaint for them considering the other option is to speak back to me in a language they don't have as good of control over. Despite popular belief, even in many "English friendly" countries, the normal citizens aren't actually that comfortable speaking unless they work in an environment that demands they speak English every day. This goes doubly so for older people. My next door neighbor is about 75 years old and speaks English pretty well (worked at Philips for 20+ years), but the _quality_ of our conversations went up 3x when I could understand enough Dutch for them to speak naturally to me.
All that to say, I agree with you! Vocabulary and basic grammar to get you started and then after that it's all about learning words and practice practice practice.
(As someone who has lived in different countries) Making an effort to learn "enough" of a language of the country you expect to be living in for a while is a gesture of decency. I feel that good will is justified, especially in cultures that see a lot of immigration and tourism. People try to live in a coherent society, which becomes hard if a large group of people is incapable of communicating naturally and reasonably fluently. Most Western European and Northern European people speak excellent English, but it's not nice to force a large group of people to switch to English and hamper natural communication style because somebody is slightly disrespectful and lazy.
You can get away with a lot in Dutch and especially Flemish Dutch though, because the local dialects are so strong (for being a relatively small area). Unless you look exotic, people don't always immediately pick you out as a non-native speaker.
> Key is to focus on words only. Dont care about gramar.
Absolutely! The way they teach foreign languages in school is insane. "OK, you know 20 words and can't say a thing, now it's time to learn past tense".
And before learning words, learning and practicing phonology. Then, add vocabulary while still practicing phonology. It's insane people and institutions assume one could be understood when speaking a language when its most basic building block is not acquired.
Can I ask what language you're thinking of here? When I was taking classes, the A0-A1 level class was all in the present tense for the full length of the course. We might have touched on past tense in the last lesson and most of the books I've seen for this language (Dutch), structure things as present/future tense first, and then past tense after.
These are my memories of learning English in school as a foreign language. French courses that my wife took recently also had past and future tenses in A1.
Even if it's not the tenses, still schools typically put a lot of focus on grammar and order of words but not even nearly enough into speaking. I have an suspicion that these corses are modelled after native-language programs which rightfully focus on grammar because everyone knows how to speak already. But starting from it is madness.
If you can say “subject verb noun” that’s good enough in many cases to at least get your point across.
Anecdotally, I know that I can understand people speaking English with what a school teacher would consider atrocious grammar, as long as the words are pronounced close enough to be recognizable.
As a foreigner a lot more useful to learn russian. Everybody speaks it in Ukraine. And other countries as well. Even at our university in Ukraine, russian was the main language amongst foreign students. Its sensible right now true.
As a foreigner a lot more useful to learn Russian.
Given that the state language is Ukrainian, and its overall dominance in media and culture -- there's no way this statement could possibly make sense.
Everybody speaks it in Ukraine.
This gets repeated a lot, but it's just not true. It's true that virtually everyone has some working comprehension of Russian because of earlier Soviet influences, and because the two languages are so similar (and in many parts of the country, the "Ukrainian" that is spoken is highly Surzhyk-influenced).
But realistically only about 70-80 percent of the population speak Russian fluently and comfortably. Given a choice, the vast majority would clearly prefer to speak Ukrainian (and many people have been switching voluntarily as a matter of preference since 2014; the government's mildly coercive efforts having nothing to do with this, really).
Even at our university in Ukraine, Russian was the main language amongst foreign students.
Probably because it's the only one among the two that they were able to study before coming there (and because they saw Russian as being more useful in other countries, as you say).
And even so, this applies only to certain universities in certain cities.
I spend many years till couple of months before the invasion in Ukraine. I have never met someone who doesnt speak russian. Only the elderly people have sometimes a mixed slang between russian and ukrainian. But other than that everyone speaks it. There are some hardcore nationalists connected to Bandera (pro nazi group) that refuse to speak russian, but remaining people dont care and speak both.
I have never met someone who doesn't speak Russian.
Then you haven't traveled broadly in Ukraine. And more importantly you're missing the point. The vast majority do speak and understand a reasonable amount of Russian (hence they will almost never object when you use it with them; they get that you're a foreigner and are doing the best you can) -- but they don't speak it fluently and comfortably, and it's not their preferred language in everyday use.
Only the elderly people have sometimes a mixed slang
It's more prevalent among the older set of course, but still this is just not true across the board. Surzhyk (or less pejoratively: Russian borrowings/breakings) are everywhere, though they are often subtle and it may take some training to detect them.
Part of the problem is that there are no well-defined boundaries (and there's only a barely defined notion of what constitutes "standard Ukrainian"). They're literally still in the process of cleaning up the nation's preeminent (and clearly Soviet-, if not exactly Surzhyk-influenced) dictionary.
There are some hardcore nationalists connected to Bandera (pro nazi group) that refuse to speak Russian
Now you're getting into pure BS territory.
This is obviously something you've read or something you've heard said a lot, but not something you know from direct observation.
Not a dog in the fight, at least this particular fight, but this might sound to many as "just learn the language of the oppressor". This gets thorny real quickly.
I had the same problem coming from the same Germanic/Romanic languages as you, trying to learn Finnish. It's not just the vocabulary, the whole construction and modality is often different, and it's hard to map things one on one. Then I learned Swedish, and it was just a funny dialect between Dutch and German.
Yes Finnish is way out there. We're raising our kid bilingual EN/FI, and I am really curious to know how he will align these two languages in his head, and what kinds of insights he will get. I suspect he will be a sponge for additional languages.
However, I actually need to learn Croatian, a Slavic language. This is extremely difficult for me and I make hardly any progress. The vocabulary is so different from everything else I know, I just can't remember the words. The grammar is quite challenging as well.