Comments by "1midnightfish" (@1midnightfish) on "How many languages do you speak? 100 Belarusians." video.

@wild_reader I speak English, I don't need or want another big colonial language. I'd rather contribute to Ukrainization by visiting the country with no knowledge of russian whatsoever, that way any Ukrainian who doesn't speak English will have to employ Ukrainian (as well as lots of patience) to communicate with me. My personal experience is that I always make an effort to speak my best Italian in conversations with people who speak it as an additional language, while generally I will speak English whenever I can (including with native Italian speakers in the UK). How "sensible" someone's course action is, depends on their ultimate goal
7
@verbytskyi1 Thank you, that's really clear and useful. Though I find that closeness between languages goes beyond vocabulary - syntax, phonemes, intonation are also strong indicators. After listening to lots of spoken Ukrainian (mostly YT and radio) and a fair bit of russian over the past year, I'm starting to understand how different they sound. Perhaps strangely, I'm finding more common traits between Ukrainian and Italian than between Ukrainian and English... which is not a bad thing for me, since my Italian has been "squashed" by English for most of my life, and learning Ukrainian is reviving it a little bit. One more thing to thank Ukraine for! ❤ I haven't experienced anything like what you're going through right now but I know very well what it's like when something awful crashes into your life and sends all your dreams to splinters... Remember that as a Ukrainian speaker, you will do very well at Italian whenever you start learning - I have a Ukrainian cousin who speaks it beautifully even though he only started learning it when he was 11-12 years old. Бережіть себе, друже. Україна переможе💙💛
6
@kenster8270 Those are good comparisons but I must say I was pleasantly surprised by nearly 3/4 of the sample having at least some Belarusian - it means the language is salvageable. The Basque language was brought back from much worse
6
@wild_reader I have no interest whatsoever in visiting russia, but I really want to spend time in Ukraine. Plus, I like the sounds of Ukranian much more, as a language it just agrees with me. There's also the small detail of a genocidal dictator currently trying to massacre as many Ukranians as possible, in the name of "russian world" or something
5
@wild_reader It's almost funny how peeved you are that I've decided to learn Ukranian... How would it be harder for me than learning one of the Baltic languages? Also, I never said I want to learn all "small, difficult" languages. I want a third language and I know what I am most motivated to learn. Though it has to be said, Ukrainian is far from "small"
5
@verbytskyi1 For all the trolls, there are some lovely people in this comment section ☺ Solidarity from London!
3
@Overlord734 Yes, both are spelt phonetically, but the sintax is also more flexible than in English - Italian and Ukranian are both inflected languages, and as such can afford to shuffle the various elements of their sentences in a way that English just can't (a price we pay for our relatively simple grammar)
2
Looking forward to putin's trolls and all his zombies having to watch him get dragged through a war crimes tribunal as their country descends into inevitable civil war
2
How do you know which English they learn...?
1
I don't know how familiar you are with Romance languages, but would you say that Ukrainian and Belarusian are as similar as Spanish and Italian? And are Ukrainian and russian more like Spanish and French? I hope I'm not asking an annoying question... I started learning Ukrainian last year (I'm English-Italian bilingual) and I'm trying to train my ear to the surrounding languages as well. 💙💛
1
@der1fuchs1 Дякую! 🤗
1
@encycl07pedia- You mean Ukranian and Italian? Yes, of course. But in my brain, they're juxtaposed against English (a stress-timed, almost completely un-inflected Germanic language) and the similarities keep showing up...Ukrainian sometimes translates itself into Italian in my head, it's weird. But lovely 🙂
1