By the way, is it correct that most people in West Ukraine are Ukrainian-speaking? Maybe not in Uzhhorod but in general. Are you?
I've been meaning to ask a speaker of Ukrainian how well he/she can understand Slovakian without any prior study. From what I've read, Ukrainian shares 60% of its vocabulary with Russian, 70% with Polish, 85% with Belarusian and 66% with Slovakian. Is the difference between shared vocabulary regarding Slovakian vs. Russian large enough to be noticeable?
Finnish and Estonian share 45% of their vocabulary and I can tell you that having no training in Estonian, I can often tell what a newspaper article is about but fail to grasp the gist of it not to mention most of the details. It's too much when less than half of the words you can guess and the rest are all Greek.
I'm glad to hear that.
By the way, is it correct that most people in West Ukraine are Ukrainian-speaking? Maybe not in Uzhhorod but in general. Are you?
I've been meaning to ask a speaker of Ukrainian how well he/she can understand Slovakian without any prior study. From what I've read, Ukrainian shares 60% of its vocabulary with Russian, 70% with Polish, 85% with Belarusian and 66% with Slovakian. Is the difference between shared vocabulary regarding Slovakian vs. Russian large enough to be noticeable?
Finnish and Estonian share 45% of their vocabulary and I can tell you that having no training in Estonian, I can often tell what a newspaper article is about but fail to grasp the gist of it not to mention most of the details. It's too much when less than half of the words you can guess and the rest are all Greek.
If you know Ukrainian, then you will learn Slovak easily and quickly. The Slovak language is rather more similar to Ukrainian than to Russian.