Bored Panda got in touch with Lisa McLendon, the William Allen White Professor of Journalism and Mass Communications and the Bremner Editing Center Coordinator at the University of Kansas. She speaks Russian and has also studied Czech, Bulgarian, Serbian, and Old Church Slavonic, plus the history of Slavic languages, as part of her Ph.D. coursework at the University of Texas in Austin. McLendon told us about what makes Slavic languages distinct from others in Europe, and what challenges they post to new students.
She explained to us that Slavic languages are a different language family. "Most people, when they think of European languages, think of Romance languages (French, Spanish, Italian, etc.) or Germanic languages (German, Dutch, and Scandinavian languages). But there are other language families in Europe, such as Baltic and Slavic, and a few languages that don’t really fit in at all—Basque and Hungarian, for example," she said.
"Then there’s the alphabet: Some Slavic languages, such as Russian, Ukrainian, and Bulgarian, use the Cyrillic alphabet, while others, such as Polish, Czech, and Croatian, use the Latin alphabet, with a few extra letters/diacritics to represent sounds that aren’t in, or aren’t represented by one single letter in, the Latin alphabet. And in terms of grammar, most grammatical features in Slavic aren’t completely foreign to Europe, though, as one example, the way the verb systems split tense and aspect is a bit different from the other European language families."
Bored Panda was curious about what challenges someone with a Slavic background might run into when learning English, as well as what would cause trouble for English speakers learning Slavic languages.
"Slavic doesn’t have articles (a, an, the) and that’s always a tricky part of English for learners whose native language lacks articles," Professor McLendon shared
"Verbs are trouble going both ways: English blends tense and aspect and uses a complicated system of auxiliary verbs. But Russian, for example, cleanly separates aspect from tense and then adds an extra layer of complexity with verbs of motion (going, coming, bringing, riding, etc.)."
The professor continued: "Pronunciation in Slavic languages tends to be much closer to spelled-like-it-sounds than in English (isn’t everything?), but Slavic languages have some sounds, such as certain palatalized consonants and the Czech ř, that are hard for native English speakers to master. Going the other way, Slavic languages lack both voiced and voiceless th (as in thin and thine), so those sounds are a bit harder to master for English learners."
Twitter user @LegoRacers2’s thread was a massive success. His post was viewed a jaw-dropping 9 million times. However, the real victory was proving that social media can be brimming with people who are happy to share their wisdom. All it takes is the right question to draw them out.
Liam, the author of the viral thread, has been a Twitter user since early 2013, and jokingly describes himself as a ‘Florida Swamp Ape.’
The reasons why people learn new languages can be as numerous as their motivations. For instance, yours truly loves French because it simply sounds awesome. But the reasons tend to fall into a few broad categories. For instance, someone might start delving into the basics of a new language because they’re moving abroad for work or an exchange program. Or they might have some new people from abroad in their social circle who they’d like to connect with on a deeper level.
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Others might choose to learn a new language because they’re bored out of their minds, crave a new hobby, or want to dust off some of the cobwebs growing in their brains. Learning anything new is challenging at first, but once you get to grips with the basics, it can be incredibly rewarding. Especially if there are some larger factors at play. Like preparing for a fun trip to Japan. Or wanting to travel across South America without an interpreter. You can forge a lot of friendships if you show the locals that you respect them enough to at least try to speak to them in their tongue.
Meanwhile, some people might decide that they want to reconnect with their cultural heritage. Say, if their relatives migrated from elsewhere decades or even centuries ago. On the other hand, some folks take up their studies not primarily out of the desire to talk to others but to understand their literature and media. There’s a lot that can be lost in translation, after all.
English, while a wonderful language that is incredibly useful to know, won’t open every door for you. And you cannot expect everyone to speak it. The more languages you’re well-versed in, the more opportunities you’ll be able to take advantage of in life. Having that kind of flexibility is incredibly useful in one’s social life, on the internet, professionally, and at school. Being a human being is all about connecting with others because we’re social creatures. So it makes sense to develop as many social tools as possible to do so.
It’s important that you’re passionate about the language and culture. Otherwise, if you feel like someone’s forcing you to learn against your will, you might run out of motivation. However, some individuals pick these languages based mainly on how widespread they are, and how impactful they’re likely to be in the future.
