Hi Kanshue,

my native language is Slovak which belongs to the Slavic languages family. Here you are my answers to your questions:

1) How much different is it from Russian?

It's really different. As Slovak native speaker I can understand some Russian words or can guess their meaning, but it is not enough for having a normal conversation. Also, Slovak language uses latin alphabet like English, Russian language uses Cyrillic alphabet, so reading a Russian text is impossible for me.

2) How much can people who come from two different slavic speaking countries understand each other without any help?

Slovak people can understand Czech people very well and vice versa. It means they can have discussions about everything. Also, as a Slovak I can apply for a job in the Czech Republic. Language is not a problem. I have no experience with Polish people. I think Polish language is also understandable, but not so much (at least for me). ...and regarding other Slavic languages, I have no clue.

3) Does people still use Russian in your country as a second language?

Older people (my parents) can speak some Russian, young people do not. My parents used to learn Russian when they were pupils and students.

Why are you interested in Russian language?

Vraldimir, as about 'навлезли много русизми"... that's probably true, but the opposite is also true.

An Ukrainian girl somewhere in 'answers' section of italki insisted: Russian speakers can't understand Ukrainian, though they can understand Bulgarian. Not exaclty true:) Russians can understand a good portion of Ukrainian. The grammar is pretty much the same, while the real problem is the vocbulary. Most of morphemes (roots, prefixes, suffixes) are present in Russain and are clearly recognisable (with exception for some roots, often common with Polish).

But it isn't just that we can't predict 'which root they will use to denote a given term' (as I couldn't <em>predict</em> your <em>твърдят</em>) - even knowing each morpheme in a given word, we can't often predict it's meaning.

So, I suppose: 1) tech- and professional Ukrainian would be much easier to understand. My friend claimed to understand nearly everything on a conference in Lviv 2) given the similarity in grammar and morphology it would take a litte time and effort to learn the vocabulary. If the 'learning curve' is always steep for the closely related languages, it should be especially steep in this case.

The opposite situation we have with Bulgarian. In most cases I'm able to predict the meanings: for твърдят we have 1) твердят ('they keep repeating' - the word is slightly disapproving) 2) утверждают (they state that...). The grammar is totally different though.

And... literary Russian experienced heavy influence of Old Church Slavonic which is pretty much close to Old Bulgarian. В русский язык проникло много болгаризмов:) (I hope 'проникли' is as funny for a Bulgarian as навлезли for a Russian:)).

Vladimir, да, если бы вы это говорили вслух и быстро, я бы мало чего понял...
(I'd undersand a little of [what you've said], ifyou were speaking aloud and fast)

Nonetheless, the only phrase I had a problem with was "Това лято бях с баща ми на малка почивка "
Having thought for a half minute, i guess this:
това лято = last year?
бях = was? с баща ми = with my father?
на малка почивка...=???  little vacation?

I come from Bulgaria. I can understand Macedonian and have discussions with them without a problem, but not all Macedonians have had contacts with Bulgarians and if I don't try to use words I've learned from the interactions with people, some people might give me blank face. I can understand Serbian and Russian if they speak clearly and use simple words, but I still need to do some studies since the grammar of Bulgarian and Macedonian is vastly different from the grammar of other Slavic languages - our languages are analytical like English, whereas the other use case system.

In Bulgaria Russian was mandatory to learn in the communist period and there were even normal state school where all subjects were taught entirely in Russian. Now there is definite decline in learning Russian and for example I'm the only one from my family, who can't speak fluent Russian.

From my own experience - and I knew a few Polish, Slovakian and Serbian people - the languages are quite different. I could understand just a few words from their speech, not enough to grasp the meaning. But there are 3 branches of Slavic languages - East Slavic (Russian, Belorussian, Ukrainan), West Slavic (Polish, Czeck, Slovak, Serbian), and South Slavic (Bulgarian, Slovenian), and definitely people within the same language branch understand each other better, like I do Ukrainan people, for example.