Hacker News Reader

Comment by DiogenesKynikos | Hacker News Reader

And in practice, if one Slavic language comes close to serving as a lingua franca in Eastern Europe, isn't it Russian? If you're going to learn a second language in order to communicate with people, you're going to learn a language with a large existing community - English, Modern Standard Arabic, Standard Chinese (Mandarin), Russian, French (in West Africa), etc.

View on HN

Definitely not - among other things - for social/political reasons. Russia has occupied central/eastern countries for four decades and most people prefer to be as far away from it culturally as possible.

Even though my parents' generation was all forced to learn Russian, the current generation doesn't learn it. Even if it would be practical.

Also, Russian may be easy to learn, but it won't be easier to understand than my native Polish to my Czech and Slovakian friends. Interslavic on the other hand would be understood relatively easily.

I just read a chapter from the little prince that's on the page, and I understood it almost perfectly with no training in Interslavic, just with my knowledge of Polish language.

Yes, there's strong anti-Russian feeling in several countries, but Russian is still, by far, the Slavic language with the most second-language speakers.

According to Ethnologue, there are more than 100 million Russian speakers outside of Russia. It is the primary language in Belarus and half of the Ukraine (and is known by most people in the country). Almost 7 million people in Poland know how to speak it.[1]

English is probably becoming more of the lingua franca of Eastern Europe, but still, if any Slavic language were to serve as the lingua franca, it would be Russian. It's the Slavic language with the largest international presence, and in contrast to constructed languages, it actually has a large speaker base and significant cultural heritage.

1. http://www.ethnologue.com/21/language/rus/

I think feelings tend to run negative towards the Russian government rather than Russian people. I feel that Russian and American people are more alike than we care to admit at least.

>but Russian is still, by far, the Slavic language with the most second-language speakers

Only because Russia tried to destroy the language and culture of all the nations it occupied. They forced citizens of other countries to speak Russian and not their native languages. It is only the most spoken by older generations while the younger generations of other countries are being raised in their native language.

Given enough time, the Russian language will only be spoken by Russians.

What a negative comment! The same could be said of English, which is the dominant international language because of British imperialism.

It's also, historically speaking, simply not true that Russia tried to wipe out the languages of the countries it occupied (also, liberated from the Nazis) after WWII. Russian was taught in school as a second language, but there wasn't any plan to wipe out the Polish language, for example.

> liberated from the Nazis

'Liberated' by invading first you mean. As was done in my country, among others.

The second-language speakers skew old, though. People under 30 are much more likely to speak English or German. (Not trying to say that English should be the preferred lingua franca here, just that Russian doesn't have the headstart your statistics suggest).

We're talking about Slavic languages. I've said repeatedly that English is the international language, but if it comes down to Russian vs. a constructed Slavic language, Russian is obviously more attractive, given its existing speaker base and culture.

People are arguing against you because what you claim is not as obvious as you claim.

There are many reasons why this hasn’t happened, but I think you pointed out the main one: English is the language with the largest existing community, so I think most Slavs would rather learn it as the second language, unless there’s a good reason to choose a different one due to some circumstances (eg proximity to a border, widespread business with a certain country, etc).

In Czechia, English is definitely the most reasonable L2 to learn, by far. Even for L3 I wouldn't be sure Russian is a better choice than German, which is just super useful around here.

I learned Russian basically for irrational reasons. I'm glad I did, but I can't say it is very useful.

The main problem with Russian is that Russia/the USSR have been trying to impose it as a lingua franca in Central and Eastern Europe, and failed. Most people in those countries simply won't accept it. Besides, Russian is a complex language, with lots of elements that are different from other Slavic languages. Most people who haven't learned it won't understand it either.

> The main problem with Russian is that Russia/the USSR have been trying to impose it as a lingua franca in Central and Eastern Europe, and failed. Most people in those countries simply won't accept it.

As a native of that area in Europe and having lived through some of the traces of russification I can confirm I have a strong bias against the Russian language. When I was a kid, Russian and French were the foreign languages they taught in school and after '89, everyone agreed it was best to switch Russian with English or German. Nobody there wants to learn Russian or immigrate to a Russian speaking country.

Russian is definitely way to go. Any slavic language is similar to Russian.

If you ignore the politics and that it uses an entirely different alphabet than half of the other slavic countries. I am a native Polish speaker and have trouble reading Russian text even with repeated, limited text (genealogy resources such as birth acts). I definitely don't understand most of casual Russian.

> Any slavic language is similar to Russian.

Nope.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com