Which would be the best base language to learn for communication in Eastern Europe?

Question

It seems to me that Polish,Serbo-Croat,Czech and Hungarian are fairly similar. If I were to learn just one of these as a 'base' language which of these would be the best. Or is there a better suggestion(note: I don't want to learn Russian.)

I already speak English, thanks and Spanish, Geman and French. I actually would lilke to learn a new language.

Answer 1

Hungarian is not at all similar to the others: it is closest to Finnish and Estonian.


Polish will get you by in Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Belarus and parts of the Ukraine, and in Vilnius in Lithuania.

In terms of number of people is probably the best bet if you don´t want to learn Russian.

But it is a difficult language, so allow plenty of time to master it.

Answer 2

Serbian,Croatian,Polish and Czech are similar because they're Slavic, but Hungarian has nothing to do with them-it's a Hungro-Finnish language. if you're trying to learn a Slavic language,then you can't exactly just take one as the base....Serbian and Croatian are the most similar with each other (take notice that those two peoples once lived in the same country) so you might say that if you know one of them,you know the other...they're not exactly the same but everyone in Serbia will perfectly understand you if you talk to them in Croatian, and otherwise (there is one problem though-these two peoples used to be in war with each other so you might find a resistance and difficulties when speaking Serbian in Croatia,for example).on the other hand,you can't use either of these two languages as a base for Polish or Czech - they maybe all Slavic but different groups (Serbian and Croatian are southern Slavic and took some of the Greek and Latin caracteristics while Polish and Czech are western Slavic and took some of the Germanic caracteristics...on the other hand,for example,Russian is an eastern Slavic language and has conserved more of the Slavic elements).
so to bring this to conclusion: focus on one group of languages and then think of the base language. Note that Serbian and Croatian can get fairly hard to learn because of their cases (they have seven cases - Latin has six) and their grammar and so on...the easy part is that their pronounciaton is phonetic. Serbian (not sure about Croatian) has fourteen tenses, seven cases, a bit different acentuation than Croatian... these are lovely languages, really, but also difficult. I can't say anything about Polish and Czech because i'm not familiar with them, and Hungarian,trust me has nothing in common with them.
hey,it's a first hand information, i live in Serbia

Answer 3

I was born in Bosnia and speak Bosnian (Serbo-Croatian) which has more of a mountain style accent, and is based off many languages, usings words from Turkish as well, like rahatlokum (A type of food used when drinking coffee.). I can teach you all I know if you want, I'm usually on AIM messenger which is Hacks115 if you need any help, if you decide to learn the langauge, which really isn't called Serbo-Croatian anymore.

Another thing I'd recommend, there's an artifical language, like Esperanto, that was made, it's called Slovio, you might have heard about it, it is mutually understandable by every slavic language speaker.

http://www.slovio.com/ Good luck.

Answer 4

I learnt Russian at University, but it didn't really help much when I travelled to Lithuania on business!!! I would agree that English is by far the easiest language to apply. Almost everyone in Eastern Europe speaks at least basic English. Most people have a good command of the language, and are happy to be given the opportunity to practice with a native speaker

I would just suggest that you learn the words for please, thank you etc, in the language of the country you are visiting, as a matter of courtesy.

Answer 5

I went on business to Czech Republic confident that my German would see me through. I met only one person who could speak German! And only school children spoke any English (this is a few years ago). So, it was either Czech or Russian. I know several people from ex-soviet bloc countries and they can all speak Russian, apart from the Roumanians. I know, I know, you say you don't want to learn Russian, but unfortunately for you it is the best language for the countries mentioned.

Answer 6

Polish and Serbo-Croat are good to learn but Hungarian is not slavic so you might want to stay away from it if you plan on travelling mostly in Slav countries. Another good one would be Ukrainian.
PS: Don't learn Romanian...it won't get your anywhere...other than Romania.

Answer 7

Polish, Serbo-Croatian and Czech are indeed very similar. Hungarian is ENTIRELY different from them. Polish might be the best to learn, because I suspect you would find more resources for it.

Answer 8

Why the prejudice?

Russian is the best, nearly everybody over the age of 30 has learned it at school. Drawback: different alphabet

It is the only language that has a chance to be understood in every country in Eastern Europe.

Hungarian is totally different, it is not even an Indo-European language, and the other ones are just national languages. You don't expect to be able to speak and understand Swedish because you know German, and if you would, you'd be quite wrong.

Answer 9

confident, around the time of jesus hebrew stopped being the community language of any jews, even though it persevered for use as a language of religious ritual, and apparently that for a time it became into no longer even utilized in criminal archives, scholarly writing, poetry, and such, although interior some hundred years it got here back in THAT function. apparently (although we are only studying approximately this now) that it had a small function in the middle an prolonged time as component of a secret language utilized by making use of a few ecu (german) jews, and it got here back as a actual community language on the very end of the nineteenth cent. and by the direction of the final century in british palestine/israel.

Answer 10

i agree with no 1