One of the biggest consequences of globalization is the growth of tourism, which enables the preservation of the intangible heritage of diverse European nations. Thus, Slavic countries, more precisely those from Central and Eastern Europe, are no exception, and these countries are specific in that they represent Slavic peoples who, if they are not neighbors, find it difficult to understand each other when it comes to language.
As a standard solution, there is English, which does not work so well among these peoples – not out of ignorance, but out of the specifics of Slavic culture, which English cannot effectively explain. It is this problem that the Interslavic language can solve.
It is a zonal constructed language that is very similar to the real spoken Slavic languages in Central and Eastern Europe and builds on the traditional Old Slavonic language. Zonal constructed languages are designed to facilitate communication between speakers of a particular group and closely related languages.
The Interslavic language shares grammar and a common vocabulary with modern spoken Slavic languages in order to build a universal language tool that all Slavic peoples can understand without any or with very minimal learning. This language can mostly bring numerous benefits in the tourism, cultural and economic sectors.
What would be the benefit of Interslavic?
One of the founders of this language is Vojtjeh Merunka from the University of Prague, a professor of informatics, mathematical modeling and software engineering. branches of industry.
300 million people speak Slavic languages. Grammar is much more important in Interslavic so that one can understand verbs and cases, and that grammar is artificially Interslavic, it uses grammatical forms that are in the living language. You can see many of its rules in Serbian, Russian, Czech, and that combination is specific because it is a mathematical environment. Then it is not so difficult – some Russian, Serb or Bulgarian who does not know all the words of the Interslavic language, but knows grammar, can use letters from his language, but in Interslavic grammar,” says Merunka, and that intelligibility is what adorns this language.
He points out that the Interslavic language would bring various benefits to the Slavic peoples who could finally speak the same language, but also progress in the field of tourism, culture and business.
“Every summer, millions of Czechs, Slovaks, Russians, Poles come to the Adriatic and have to communicate with Croats and Montenegrins in English. Very few people actually understand English, it is reduced to basic terms like ‘hamburger’. I have nothing against that language.” but the problem is that people need culture, and the English language cannot effectively describe Slavic, for example, we need to talk about national costumes, culinary recipes … One Slav can describe it to another Slav even in a naive Interslavic language. It is primitive, but it is effective,” he said.
25,000 people are learning the Interslavic language
Prof. Merunka points out that there is interest in learning this language, so on Discord and other platforms over 25,000 people are learning Interslavic, while there are three thousand active speakers. Lectures are held every weekend, on Saturdays or Sundays, and the other night there were as many as 250 people in the group of listeners.
“There are Ukrainians, Poles, Serbs, Croats, Bulgarians, and now more and more Russians who were not there at the beginning. As for Eastern Europe, there are people from all countries of the former Yugoslavia,” he said.
The language has 40,000 words, and both Cyrillic and Latin are used.
“You have those special letters that the Russians don’t know ć, č, ž, đ, so then they don’t have to learn it, but also ě, which is actually ijekavica (y sound). Moreover, we didn’t invent it, it’s a letter that is in the 19th century used Ljudevit Gaj, the so-called gajevica, the first Croatian Latin writing.”
Although the language is designed to be of equal weight for all Slavic peoples, it is perhaps the most difficult for Russians and Bulgarians.
It is a problem for Bulgarians because they do not have cases, but they understand a lot. Bulgarian letters are also contained in Interslavic, but they have a problem with grammar. Russians, on the other hand, may have a problem due to their specific accent on words, their problem is with emphasis,” points out prof. Merunka.
International recognition?
There are also plans to open an online academy where people from all over the world could learn the Interslavic language, and the group of authors who founded the language also submitted a request to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).
The language has so far received the recognition of Glottologist, a bibliographic database of lesser-known languages in the world, which was first developed and maintained at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig.
“Glottologist is the first, but important step, and we succeeded in that,” Prof. points out. Merunka adds that there is interest from certain universities.
“The University of Zagreb and two from Poland are seriously interested. Specifically, in Zagreb, students of tourism and linguistics would have Interslavic as an elective language,” he says.
The Interslavic language can bring numerous benefits to the tourism sector, especially in service industries. Hotels, restaurants, museums, churches and other attractions can more easily reach the general population through flyers, brochures, menus, signs and websites written in the Interslavic language, Merunka believes in the conclusion of the interview for Euronews Serbia.
Good luck convincing the Bulgarians it is not their exclusive language.
Wow this is very interesting and it looks like they are really trying to make it an standard language.
For anyone interested, there’s a few videos on YouTube of Interslavic spoken by/to various Slavic speakers. I see it in the same category as Esperanto, so not something I expect will catch on, but it’s still pretty interesting.
very interesting
I feel like this is operating on the assumption that there is such thing as the “slavic world” which in my experience and reading does not and has never really existed. Esperanto by contrast essentially ties together all the romance languages, which are modern descendants of the Roman empire and all it’s shared history. There is really not a whole lot of shared history in the slavic speaking part of the world. Even the czechs and poles could honestly not give two shits about each other, and they have quite a lot of shared history.
Even if the language is sound, and interoperable, I don’t think it really fills a need that exists outside of perhaps a fanciful Alphons Mucha painting.
mi been learn’im Interslavic and stay ‘longa ‘im 10 years and learn too much about slavic lingos all. ‘im give yu common vocabulary knowleadge and grammar. So mi can recommend allman, go for ‘im.
“kind of sort of” understood by 300 milion, while around 5 people can actually use it themselves.
Legit, no joke, it would be more realistically convinient to just speak your language slow and loud, that usually does the trick.
Artificial international auxiliary languages are a fundamentally mistaken idea. The error that proponents of IALs make is that they think the competitor of their pet projects is the natural language called English. They reason, correctly, that any IAL made with ease of learning in mind would be easier than a natural language such as English. However, where they go wrong is that they forget the fact that the actual lingua franca of the world is *not English*, but rather the naturally arising international auxiliary language “English with Simple Phonology” which has one written form and local spoken forms like the French one, the Czech one etc. EWSP is incomparably easier than English for everyone except the English, and since the most difficult part of English is its insane phonology, EWSP is actually a very easy language in the same league as Interlingua or its predecessor, Latino Sine Flexione (produced from Latin by removing its “worst parts”). The reason why “English” remains the world language is not only geopolitical or economic, but also that it is not really true that English is the world language: EWSP is it. And no planned IAL is expected to be more than just marginally easier than EWSP, while they have drawbacks such as having a written form that is not identical with any living language, etc.
suka blin nahhui
Can I get a few example sentences? I’d like to check if I’d really understand it.
I’m kinda jealous now.
It’s a great idea for ads and tourist information but I don’t see it being used as a spoken language.
We for example have news in different languages during summer and Interslavic could be a great way to inform all the Russian, Polish, Slovak etc etc tourists at the same time with much less effort.
The main point if you’re creating a constructed language based on Slavic languages is to have neologisms instead of words that have false friends in two or more Slavic languages. Can’t be assed to read all this shit, but if they didn’t do that, don’t even bother with trying to learn it.
this is just way too complicated to make an official language. sure someone may understand it when spoken but learning would just be a mess because of the tendencies to go back to your first language.
its best for slavs to learn another slavic language which is distant from theirs. ie a pole learns serbia and vice versa. im a fluent speaker of serbian and rusyn and i can understand every slavic language w/o that many problems. never had any problems when i talked to bulgarians and slovenians in serbian and when i talked to slovaks and czechs in rusyn.
As a Serb, I’ve seen some interslavic videos and I was shocked at how well I could understand it. It is an interesting idea, but it would need a lot of time to work. Even as a Slav, it would be hard to actually learn it.
16 comments
Google Translate with a bit of touching up:
One of the biggest consequences of globalization is the growth of tourism, which enables the preservation of the intangible heritage of diverse European nations. Thus, Slavic countries, more precisely those from Central and Eastern Europe, are no exception, and these countries are specific in that they represent Slavic peoples who, if they are not neighbors, find it difficult to understand each other when it comes to language.
As a standard solution, there is English, which does not work so well among these peoples – not out of ignorance, but out of the specifics of Slavic culture, which English cannot effectively explain. It is this problem that the Interslavic language can solve.
It is a zonal constructed language that is very similar to the real spoken Slavic languages in Central and Eastern Europe and builds on the traditional Old Slavonic language. Zonal constructed languages are designed to facilitate communication between speakers of a particular group and closely related languages.
The Interslavic language shares grammar and a common vocabulary with modern spoken Slavic languages in order to build a universal language tool that all Slavic peoples can understand without any or with very minimal learning. This language can mostly bring numerous benefits in the tourism, cultural and economic sectors.
What would be the benefit of Interslavic?
One of the founders of this language is Vojtjeh Merunka from the University of Prague, a professor of informatics, mathematical modeling and software engineering. branches of industry.
300 million people speak Slavic languages. Grammar is much more important in Interslavic so that one can understand verbs and cases, and that grammar is artificially Interslavic, it uses grammatical forms that are in the living language. You can see many of its rules in Serbian, Russian, Czech, and that combination is specific because it is a mathematical environment. Then it is not so difficult – some Russian, Serb or Bulgarian who does not know all the words of the Interslavic language, but knows grammar, can use letters from his language, but in Interslavic grammar,” says Merunka, and that intelligibility is what adorns this language.
He points out that the Interslavic language would bring various benefits to the Slavic peoples who could finally speak the same language, but also progress in the field of tourism, culture and business.
“Every summer, millions of Czechs, Slovaks, Russians, Poles come to the Adriatic and have to communicate with Croats and Montenegrins in English. Very few people actually understand English, it is reduced to basic terms like ‘hamburger’. I have nothing against that language.” but the problem is that people need culture, and the English language cannot effectively describe Slavic, for example, we need to talk about national costumes, culinary recipes … One Slav can describe it to another Slav even in a naive Interslavic language. It is primitive, but it is effective,” he said.
25,000 people are learning the Interslavic language
Prof. Merunka points out that there is interest in learning this language, so on Discord and other platforms over 25,000 people are learning Interslavic, while there are three thousand active speakers. Lectures are held every weekend, on Saturdays or Sundays, and the other night there were as many as 250 people in the group of listeners.
“There are Ukrainians, Poles, Serbs, Croats, Bulgarians, and now more and more Russians who were not there at the beginning. As for Eastern Europe, there are people from all countries of the former Yugoslavia,” he said.
The language has 40,000 words, and both Cyrillic and Latin are used.
“You have those special letters that the Russians don’t know ć, č, ž, đ, so then they don’t have to learn it, but also ě, which is actually ijekavica (y sound). Moreover, we didn’t invent it, it’s a letter that is in the 19th century used Ljudevit Gaj, the so-called gajevica, the first Croatian Latin writing.”
Although the language is designed to be of equal weight for all Slavic peoples, it is perhaps the most difficult for Russians and Bulgarians.
It is a problem for Bulgarians because they do not have cases, but they understand a lot. Bulgarian letters are also contained in Interslavic, but they have a problem with grammar. Russians, on the other hand, may have a problem due to their specific accent on words, their problem is with emphasis,” points out prof. Merunka.
International recognition?
There are also plans to open an online academy where people from all over the world could learn the Interslavic language, and the group of authors who founded the language also submitted a request to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).
The language has so far received the recognition of Glottologist, a bibliographic database of lesser-known languages in the world, which was first developed and maintained at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig.
“Glottologist is the first, but important step, and we succeeded in that,” Prof. points out. Merunka adds that there is interest from certain universities.
“The University of Zagreb and two from Poland are seriously interested. Specifically, in Zagreb, students of tourism and linguistics would have Interslavic as an elective language,” he says.
The Interslavic language can bring numerous benefits to the tourism sector, especially in service industries. Hotels, restaurants, museums, churches and other attractions can more easily reach the general population through flyers, brochures, menus, signs and websites written in the Interslavic language, Merunka believes in the conclusion of the interview for Euronews Serbia.
Good luck convincing the Bulgarians it is not their exclusive language.
Wow this is very interesting and it looks like they are really trying to make it an standard language.
For anyone interested, there’s a few videos on YouTube of Interslavic spoken by/to various Slavic speakers. I see it in the same category as Esperanto, so not something I expect will catch on, but it’s still pretty interesting.
very interesting
I feel like this is operating on the assumption that there is such thing as the “slavic world” which in my experience and reading does not and has never really existed. Esperanto by contrast essentially ties together all the romance languages, which are modern descendants of the Roman empire and all it’s shared history. There is really not a whole lot of shared history in the slavic speaking part of the world. Even the czechs and poles could honestly not give two shits about each other, and they have quite a lot of shared history.
Even if the language is sound, and interoperable, I don’t think it really fills a need that exists outside of perhaps a fanciful Alphons Mucha painting.
mi been learn’im Interslavic and stay ‘longa ‘im 10 years and learn too much about slavic lingos all. ‘im give yu common vocabulary knowleadge and grammar. So mi can recommend allman, go for ‘im.
“kind of sort of” understood by 300 milion, while around 5 people can actually use it themselves.
Legit, no joke, it would be more realistically convinient to just speak your language slow and loud, that usually does the trick.
Artificial international auxiliary languages are a fundamentally mistaken idea. The error that proponents of IALs make is that they think the competitor of their pet projects is the natural language called English. They reason, correctly, that any IAL made with ease of learning in mind would be easier than a natural language such as English. However, where they go wrong is that they forget the fact that the actual lingua franca of the world is *not English*, but rather the naturally arising international auxiliary language “English with Simple Phonology” which has one written form and local spoken forms like the French one, the Czech one etc. EWSP is incomparably easier than English for everyone except the English, and since the most difficult part of English is its insane phonology, EWSP is actually a very easy language in the same league as Interlingua or its predecessor, Latino Sine Flexione (produced from Latin by removing its “worst parts”). The reason why “English” remains the world language is not only geopolitical or economic, but also that it is not really true that English is the world language: EWSP is it. And no planned IAL is expected to be more than just marginally easier than EWSP, while they have drawbacks such as having a written form that is not identical with any living language, etc.
suka blin nahhui
Can I get a few example sentences? I’d like to check if I’d really understand it.
I’m kinda jealous now.
It’s a great idea for ads and tourist information but I don’t see it being used as a spoken language.
We for example have news in different languages during summer and Interslavic could be a great way to inform all the Russian, Polish, Slovak etc etc tourists at the same time with much less effort.
The main point if you’re creating a constructed language based on Slavic languages is to have neologisms instead of words that have false friends in two or more Slavic languages. Can’t be assed to read all this shit, but if they didn’t do that, don’t even bother with trying to learn it.
this is just way too complicated to make an official language. sure someone may understand it when spoken but learning would just be a mess because of the tendencies to go back to your first language.
its best for slavs to learn another slavic language which is distant from theirs. ie a pole learns serbia and vice versa. im a fluent speaker of serbian and rusyn and i can understand every slavic language w/o that many problems. never had any problems when i talked to bulgarians and slovenians in serbian and when i talked to slovaks and czechs in rusyn.
As a Serb, I’ve seen some interslavic videos and I was shocked at how well I could understand it. It is an interesting idea, but it would need a lot of time to work. Even as a Slav, it would be hard to actually learn it.