Adding New Languages (Finally!)

Dutch!!!

Then we could have Esperanto :wink:

Well there are at least 10 dutch speakers for every esperantist and they are all grouped in small areas when esperantists need convention meetings to meet each other

But we are all around the world, in every single country. And we have internet now :slight_smile:

@Mark please assure me. That means, the winner will be added in June and the rest will be added in the second half of the year, or that means that only the winner will be added?

I would absolutely love to see Polish or Czech up here.

Because of Polish origin of my parents I vote of course for Polish. It is important to concider that Poland is a very populated european country with a rich сulture and interesting literature. Moreover, Polish can be a good start to study later Russian because there are a lot of common words in both languages though they are written in Polish with usual for europeans latin letters.

My flatmate is Czech and I have also met lots of Czech and Slovaks. Czech and Slovak is almost the same language. There is a tiny percentage of different words (maybe 2%) and some differences in the pronunciation, as my flatmate said similar to the English-Scottish. Slovaks-Czechs without any knowledge of Polish they can understand 60% of it. All of the central Slavonic language speakers (at least those I have met) Polish, Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians, Serbians they don’t understand any Russian unless they have studied it or they have become familiar in some way. The exception is the Bulgarians and the reason I think is because they have almost the same alphabet with Russian and that helps.
So I think that the different language is the Russian actually (and not the Czech as it was said above).
Well, I would say Russian seem different to them only because of the pronunciation, otherwise they are all more or less similar.
From my experience (intermediate Russian, beginner Czech) I ve seen that it helps me to understand some Polish and Serbian.
If I would improve my Czech together with Russian I think I would be able to understand pretty much all the rest.

I’m down for Korean, I’ve been importing and using Lingq for Korean since August last year. It would be great to see it on here as a proper language choice to study.

I voted for Czech actually, and if there was option for Arabic I would have vote for that one.

I’d like Dutch and Arabic.

I’d like Dutch and Arabic.

I’d like Dutch and Arabic.

@KTM - Hello Konstantina

All of the central Slavonic language speakers (at least those I have met) Polish, Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians, Serbians <

Excuse me, but you are wrong Hungarian is not a Slavic/Slavonic language

I have met only 3 Hungarians and while with the two of them we didnt speak about languages, with the one that we did he said he could. Perhaps that was not because of his Hungarian but because of other experience. So I apologize if I m wrong. I have not interviewed whole nations ))) just as I said some people I ve met.

@ktm and gregloby.

I am a native Russian speaker and I had thought I would not understand Polish. The last week I was watching an armature documentary in Hebrew. It was about a very successful inventor, physicist and businessman, the founder and the owner of the concern Vishay (semiconductors). The man got his first acquaintance with phys and math through his ears, as a teen, from his uncle, with whom he was hided from the Germans in a small loft of Grodno (Hrodna?) by a Polish family. The boy, his uncle and a couple more Jews had spent there about a year, and turned out to be the only Jews of Hrodna rescued from being shot. Had they been found, the Polish family would also be shot.

So, in many scenes of this documentary this now famous man meets and speaks, with great gratitude, with those who remained from that Polish family. They speak in Polish, of course, and then the dialog is accompanied with the English subtitles. And, with the support of the subtitles, I strangely found myself listening to and understanding just Polish; it was easier to listen to Polish than to read the English subtitles. A very strange but pleasant feeling. Sorry for Off-Topic.

@KTM, OK, I only wanted to point out something interesting, I think. Even though the Hungarian language field is situated in the middle of the Slavic zone it comes from quite different language family. I did not talk about that if they, Hungarians, understand or not Russian language :slight_smile:

@Ilya, I agree, I started to learn Russian some weeks ago from beginning and I’ve found Russian relatively easy to understand while listening. However more than 25 years ago when I had to learn Russian as a second language at school I did not think that at all :slight_smile: It was just a torture. I’ve thought about that and I believe that the easiness comes mostly from a similarity between the languages than from my prehistorical experiences with Russian.

Because, as Rasana pointed out, the old polling widget allowed you to vote multiple times, I have switched it for a new polling tool. Unfortunately, this means you will all have to vote again. But, it’s better to make this change sooner rather than later. :slight_smile:

Click here to vote again, http://bit.ly/b64AL0.

@gregloby
I got what you meant. And I simply messed up my post a bit. I was gonna write that the guy could understand Czech not Russian. The reason I had left with the impression that Hungarians understand Czech was also because I was watching some belly dancing videos from a belly dance school in Hungary, I m pretty sure I read some Czech somewhere around (at least had the impression) plus lots of the names of the girls participating they seem much like Czech. Ok, I agree… Not a good way to make the conclusion that Hungarian must be a Slavic language too )))

@Ilya
Yes I agree. Well, I m not Russian but I think Russians would learn easy any of the other Slavic languages. And vice versa. It’s just that (again those people I socialize with) they don’t even want to hear about Russian. I understand that from the historical and political facts, I m not saying that they should change or whatever. I receive very hostile comments (towards Russians), at least rude when I say I learn Russian and I would like to go there.

I can see that some people would like to have the Czech language :slight_smile: I am a native Czech speaker :)) I can create some texts and add them on my websites, then you can download and put into this system…and you can learn by using LingQ :slight_smile:
Sure, it would be good to have the Czech language here…I could add my podcast direct into this system :))