Similarities Between Slovak and Croatian

Hope you enjoy this episode as the competition goes beyond just a challenge between two Slavic languages. For any feedback, please contact us on Instagram since UAclips comments can easily get missed:
Shahrzad (@shahrzad.pe): instagram.com/shahrzad.pe
Bahador (@BahadorAlast): instagram.com/BahadorAlast

I'm Polish and I just love the Slovak language! It's by far the most similar Slavic language to Polish and that's why I find it cool to learn! Greetings from Poland!🇵🇱🇸🇰

Croats used to live on the parts of Slovakia, Czech rep., Ukraine and Poland, long time ago. So it's not really strange that all of them share similar language, Horvath is popular last name in Slovakia, which means Croat (in Croatian and many other languages)

She is Slovak but she hasnt got good pronunciation. She pronounces it hard but we pronounces it softly for example: we write dieťa and telling it ďjeťa diéta meens diet in english

I am Polish and I fully understood the first Slovak sentence
In Polish it would be "Wszyscy na niego krzyczeli, ale on był niewinny."

I'm russian and i understood both of them 😀

Marko has a very stereotypical Croatian look (there are several ones). You meet very similar looking guys all over the country. It's cool that they have him in the videos.

More Croatian comparison videos would be awesome! Or Serbian. Or Bosnian... lol.

Marko was like "You will not fool me again, Plavat!" :)

Well Horvat is most common surname in Slovakia that is one more proof of strong conection. (Horvat=Croat)

I'm kazakh and I understand
100% Because I am speaking Russian language 😊
Hrvatski jezik beautiful slavik languages

"Kričati" is also word in Croatian Kaikavian dialect, and there is in standard language word "krik!" (scream!). In Croatian dialect is: "Vsi su na njega kričali, ali on je bil nevin." Between Slovakia and Croatia today is Hungary, but before Hungarians (Magjars) came cca. year 900 AD, there also lived Slavic people. It is visible in similarity of country names: Slovaks call their country in their own language: Slovensko, which is similar to the name of country Slovenia and to the name of Slavonia, what is province in northern part of Croatia.

I am in love with Slovakia 🇬🇷❤🇸🇰
Croatia is one of the most beautiful countries too 🇬🇷❤🇭🇷

I like Marko! Bring him back again please!! 👍👍

I speak Czech. I understood 100% of the Slovak girl which is normal and didnt surprise me at all but I also understood everything the Croat guy said which surprised me. I had to think a bit on his sentences but I understood them fully after thinking a bit. Im surprised she had trouble with the last sentence but Im guessing she never studied Russian which would have helped her with that one.

Great job! This video is amazing!!! I spend 8 months in Croatia last year as part of my exchange program. I started picking up the language and when I was travelling in the area, I remember how much I could pick up when we got to Bratislava!

Ma ovo je jako simpatuično! Koliko mogu vidjeti, mi s vrlo uspješno i lako možemo razumjeti sa Slovacima. U svakom slučaju, cijeloj ekipi šaljem srdačne pozdrave!

As Slovene person i understand everything (both of them) without translation. Of course Croatian as a language is a little bit more similar, there are also many words in Slovak which are more similar and pronunciation of words in Slovak is way more similar to Slovene than Croatian. Very nice video, btw, Slovak girl is beautiful, beautiful Slovenka! :)

I’m Russian and I guessed 80% of the words. Didn’t expect that.

I got almost all the words and sentences for both language. I learn Croatian first 40 years ago and now learning Slovak.

You should make a video with Polish and Slovak this time! I really love your videos and would be more than happy to see two West Slavic languages being compared, it's such a fun analysis! 🇵🇱🇸🇰❤️

In russian:
-Дитя, ребёнок (Ditja, rebónok) - Child. Word "ребёнок" usе much more often
-Пиво (Pivo) - Beer
-Ровно (Rovno) - Smoothly, Flat
"Ровно" is an adverb in russian, what comes from adjective "ровный" - smooth. This word is difficult to translate into English, if translatе it as a separate word that is not part of any sentence
-Большой/огромный (bolšoj/ogromnyj) - big, великий (velikij) - great, mighty
Ужин (Užin) - dinner
Корова (korova) - cow
Плавать (Plavac) - To swim
Живот (Život) - Stomach, Жизнь (Žizň) - Life
Забава (Zabava) - Fun/Party
Светло (Svetlo) - light, светло it's an abverb, светлый it's adjective
Ухо (Ucho) - ear
Пить (Pic) - to drink
Учитель (Učitel) - teacher
Солдат (Soldat) - Soldier
Все кричали, но они были невинны (Vse kričali, no oni byli nevinny) - Everybody's yelling, but they were innocent.
Моя бабка идёт в поезд ( Moja babka idót v pojezd ) - My grandma goes on the train
Правила игры просты ( Pravila igry prosty ) - Rules of the game are simple

Great video! And what a beautiful languages, both of them! :)

Funny thing: In Polish "modry" means also blue, but people don't use this word in general to describe blue things. Instead, they use "niebieski", "błękity" (sky blue) or "granatowy" (dark/navy blu). However, "modry" is used in Silesia, a south-west region of Poland, where people speak the silesian dialect, and there this adjective is used in the phrase "modro kapusta" which refers to red cabbage, which itself is neither blue nor red. :D

Many of the words are shared with the Bulgarian as well. That was interesting!

I would star in this if I had the money to go to Toronto(?) AND if another Athabaskan/Na-Dené speaker could be found it'd be very fun!
Not sure if you are familiar with that language family but our languages at the very basic level are very similar but more than that it becomes very difficult.
And thank you very much for these fun videos! (:

Wow! I really struggled with the Slovak ones here, even though our languages are 90% inteligable. I got bits and pieces, but some of those words are just completely different. I think if I saw it written it would be easier.
The Croatian word for "game" is more similar to Polish. Igra/Gra, but I didn't pick up on it until he said what it meant. And I understood the "force" one after he unconjugated it.

Great to see all these people together maybe world will be better one day. I studied in US and loved it. Loved all the different people from different parts of the world.

I am Polish and love both Slovaks and Croats. Well littlebit closer to Croats due to Catholic tradition. Most of the Worda I understood. Slovakian language is very close to old Polish dialect. For example "blue cabbage" we will say "modra kapusta", however blue in general is "niebieski" (I don't know where the mamę came from but Inknow in Czech this is "nebeski"). What is also unique in Polish language is that we use a lot of "w". For example Slovakian will say "Pavel" and we will say "Paweł". And oh yeah for the ones that didn't know Slavic people don't write only cyrylic. Slavic nations also do use latin alphabet.

You know, in United States I met classmates who were from Croatia and came to the US after their 90s wars. I was very surprised to find out that Croatian language was so easy for me to guess from my knowing Russian and Ukrainian. But not Serbian!

I'm Slovak and Croatian is really similar language :D but as I remember one boy said we are secret croats..no we are not :D just a lot of Slovak people live in Croatia 😂 love your video 💕

I have seen very many of videos like these when slavic languages compares to other slavic languages. And as a person that not speak any slavic language (swedish is my language) i see very many similarities. Especially when just using word for word and not whole sentences.
And also all slavic languages have to us forignes very extremly similar sounds wich makes us think slavic languages are like 99% similar😂
But for me when i have looked at slavic languages often it’s easy to see that the words comes from the same root. Sometimes it is a vowel, sometimes some letters, somtimes just pronunciation or spelling... sometimes half of the word is what tells it have the same roots... and i think that is something you not always see🤔
Sometimes you have the same words but you use them in different situasions or so🤔
But the slavic people i know says that... well they understand a lot of eachother but not as much as us foringers think.
But what i think is that slavic languages in general sounds very similar to eachother while for example romance languages or germanic languages you allways hear the differense even though you don’t know anything about the languages.

I am partly Croatian and Slovakian and I speak both languages, thanks for featuring them! 😍👏💙

The words are same in all slavic languages for things we knew back when we lived together in old country - natural things, animals, geography, body parts, life concepts, and different words for things we met and learnt after we split

Make more with Marko bratko zlatko dobro ! Or just every slavic Languages you can find 👍👍👍👍 Nice Videos

Slavs are best. You are beautiful and cool people.

as a czech i understood every slovak and croatian word, didnt know they were so similar

It's so funny to understand one part of sentence and seeing her struggling with it while she easy understands the second part and i had no idea

Haha ! You have to try to spell German words that would be so funny ! Nice greetings from Berlin , Germany ☺️

I really really like those videos, brings the world closer.

i’m romanian, and i understood like 5 percent 😁
like voinic, except voinic doesn’t necessarily mean soldier, it’s described as someone who is courageous.

There is so much that I can relate to in this vid, especially since I'm 1st generation Australian from Hrvatska and Hungary

This is funny. Im Russian and i guessed the parts of the sentences when she did not understand and guessed when he did not understand. Our "grandma" sounds like Slovak one and "game" like Croatian. And i guessed quickly the meaning of the first sentence.

I love your videos so much !
Really made my day :)

Happy to have understood her sentences :)

These two languages are actually extremely simillar!

In west Slavic languages they kind of drop letter "i" in the beginning of some words. In Polish, for example, they say gra for igra(game), or mam for imam(I have). In Czech/Slovak languages they swap "g" with "h" in some words so their word for igra is hra which kind of make sense when you put it that way.

I love your videos❤
That's some REAL stuff on UAclips❤💪🔥
How about Spanish vs Arabic.
You could take a Moroccan in your video cuz Moroccan Arabic and Spanish are even closer thanks to the Muslims conquesting the Ibearian Peninsula🙂❤
I'm really intrested in languages that's why I'm learning my 7th language this year😄🇰🇷🇯🇵🌸

I am surprised Marco did not get the first sentence! I also needed her to repeat it slower, but I got it.

It's funny how 'hra' and 'igra' sound different, but for my Polish ear both are very similar to Polish 'gra':) Plus, we normally say 'grać' but we have verb 'igrać' which means 'to play' but in a negative way, more like 'to tease'.

The last Croation sentence was for pretty easy for true Slovak speaker (Pravidlá hry sú jednoznačné or Game rules are straightforward). Word IGRA (a game) is not used in official Slovak but IHRA or its verb form IHRAŤ (to play) can be used in some parts of Slovakia

Why are these two languages so similar. Im croatian and i understand this gurl everything😊

I think, the Slovak women comen from Záhorie (region in Slovakia). He spoke with kinda dialect like the Záhorie dialect. The Slovak language are more softer. For example, she said "Ked cem ist babke, idem na vlak." the wole sentence are just with the hard letters. In "normal" Slovak it will be "Keď chcem ísť k babke, idem na vlak." and in the word "idem" the "d" is soft, cause the vowels "e, i" makes the letters "d,t,n,l" softer. Actually, the Slovak language is the most "softer" Slavic language (almost in all words is soft letter :D ).

Very interesting video
Slovak Croatian language VIVA Croatia
🙏🇭🇷🙏🇦🇱🙏☮☮🌍

As a Pole I understood like 100% of single words and 50% of sentences.

As a Croat i can say after doing a Trip to czech republik that some kind of interslavic communication is possible. Reading czech or slovak i can understand a lot but spoken westslavic languages are pretty hard to understand because of a different pronunciation

omg marko looks like a guy that you'd love to hang out with!😂

Now onto the discussion.
Standard Croatian or Shtokavian is the dialect of which the Standard Croatian, Serbian, Montenegrin and Bosnian languages are based on and are mostly mutually intelligible. The term Serbo-Croatian was a political idea created in the 50s to try to unite the diverse but similar peoples of the region, but failed miserably. Fact is Croatians always called their language Croatian and Serbs called their language Serbian, sometimes calling it “our language” or simply “Slavenski” or Slavic. During Yugo Tito and his crew worked hard to fuse the 2 languages usually at the expense of Croatian words.
However, the Croatian macrolanguage has dialects spoken by over 25 percent of the population that Standard Croatian (Štokavian) and especially Serbians cannot understand.
For instance, Čakavian Croatian which most Croats spoke before the Ottoman invasion 500 years ago is mostly not intelligible with Standard Croatian. It consists of at least four major dialects, Ekavian Chakavian, spoken on the Istrian Peninsula, Ikavian Chakavian, spoken in southwestern Istria, the islands of Brač, Hvar, Vis, Korčula, and Šolta, the Pelješac Peninsula, the Dalmatian coast at Zadar, the outskirts of Split and inland at Gacka, Middle Chakavian, which is Ikavian-Ekavian transitional, and Ijekavian Chakavian, spoken at the far southern end of the Chakavian language area on Lastovo Island, Janjina on the Pelješac Peninsula, and Bigova in the far south near the border with Montenegro.
Ekavian Chakavian has two branches - Buzet and Northern Chakavian. Buzet is actually transitional between Slovenian and Kajkavian. It was formerly thought to be a Slovenian dialect, but some now think it is more properly a Kajkavian dialect. There are some dialects around Buzet that seem to be the remains of old Kajkavian-Chakavian transitional dialects (Jembrigh 2014).
Ikavian Chakavian has two branches - Southwestern Istrian and Southern Chakavian. The latter is heavily mixed with Shtokavian.
Čakavian differs from the other nearby Slavic lects spoken in the country due to the presence of many Italian words.
Chakavian actually has a written heritage and was considered the first “Hrvatski” language but it was mostly written down long ago. Writing in Chakavian started very early in the Middle Ages and began to slow down in the 1500’s when writing in Kajkavian began to rise. However, Chakavian magazines are published even today.
Although Chakavian is clearly a separate language from Shtokavian Croatian, in Croatia it is said that there is only one Croatian language, and that is all Croatian dialects equally if very different. The idea is that the Kajkavian and Chakavian languages simply do not exist, though obviously they are both separate languages. Recently a Croatian linguist forwarded a proposal to formally recognize Chakavian as a separate language, but the famous Croatian Slavicist Radoslav Katičić argued with him about this and rejected the proposal on political, not linguistic grounds. This debate occurred only in Croatian linguistic circles, and the public knows nothing about it (Jembrigh 2014).
Kajkavian Croatian, spoken in northwest Croatia and similar to Slovenian, is not intelligible with Standard Croatian.
Kajkavian is fairly uniform across its speech area, whereas Chakavian is more diverse (Jembrigh 2014).
In the 1500’s, Kajkavian began to be developed in a standard literary form. From the 1500’s to 1900, a large corpus of Kajkavian literature was written. Kajkavian was removed from public use after 1900, hence writing in the standard Kajkavian literary language was curtailed. Nevertheless, writing continues in various Kajkavian dialects which still retain some connection to the old literary language, although some of the lexicon and grammar are going out (Jembrigh 2014).
Most Croatian linguists recognized Kajkavian as a separate language. However, any suggestions that Kajkavian is a separate language are censored on Croatian TV (Jembrigh 2014).
Nevertheless, the ISO has recently accepted a proposal from the Kajkavian Renaissance Association to list the Kajkavian literary language written from the 1500’s-1900 as a recognized language with an ISO code of kjv. The literary language itself is no longer written, but works written in it are still used in public for instance in dramas and church masses (Jembrigh 2014). This is heartening, although Kajkavian as an existing spoken lect also needs to be recognized as a living language instead of a dialect of “Croatian,” whatever that word means.
Furthermore, there is a dialect continuum between Kajkavian and Chakavian as there is between Kajkavian and Slovenian, and lects with a dialect continuum between them are always separate languages. There is an old Kajkavian-Chakavian dialect continuum of which little remains, although some of the old Kajkavian-Chakavian transitional dialects are still spoken.
Kajkavian differs from the other Slavic lects spoken in Croatia in that is has many Hungarian and German loans Kajkavian is probably closer to Slovenian than it is to Chakavian.
Nevertheless, although intelligibility with Slovenian is high, Kajkavian lacks full intelligibility with Slovenian. Yet there is a dialect continuum between Slovenian and Kajkavian. Kajkavian, especially the Zagorje Kajkavian dialect around Zagreb, is close to the Stajerska dialect of Slovene. However, leaving aside Kajkavian speakers, Croatians have poor intelligibility of Slovenian.
Chakavian and Kajkavian have high, but not full mutual intelligibility. Intelligibility between the two is estimated at 82%.
Molise Croatian is a Croatian language spoken in a few towns in Italy, such as Acquaviva Collecroce and two other towns. A different dialect is spoken in each town. Despite a lot of commonality between the dialects, the differences between them are significant. A koine is currently under development. The Croatians left Croatia and came to Italy from 1400-1500. The base of Molise Croatian was Shtokavian with an Ikavian accent and a heavy Chakavian base similar to what is now spoken as Southern Kajkavian Ikavian on the islands of Croatia. Molise Croatian is not intelligible with Standard Croatian.
Burgenland Croatian, spoken in Austria, is intelligible to Croatian speakers in Austria, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary, but it has poor intelligibility with the Croatian spoken in Croatia.
Therefore, for the moment, there are five separate Croatian languages: Shtokavian Croatian, Kajkavian Croatian, Chakavian Croatian, Molise Croatian, and Burgenland Croatian.
Serbian is a macrolanguage made up to two languages: Shtokavian Serbian and Torlak or Gorlak Serbian.
Shtokavian is simply the same Serbo-Croatian language that is also spoken in Croatia, Montenegro and Bosnia. It forms a single tongue and is not several separate languages as many insist. The claim for separate languages is based more on politics than on linguistic science.
Torlak Serbian is spoken in the south and southwest of Serbia and is transitional to Macedonian. It is not intelligible with Shtokavian, although this is controversial.
Torlakians are often said to speak Bulgarian, but this is not exactly the case. More properly, their speech is best seen as closer to Macedonian than to Bulgarian or Serbo-Croatian. The Serbo-Croatian vocabulary in both Macedonian and Torlakian is very similar, stemming from the political changes of 1912; whereas these words have changed more in Bulgarian.
The Torlakian spoken in the southeast is different. It is not really either Bulgarian or Serbo-Croatian, but instead it is best said that they are speaking a mixed Bulgarian-Serbo-Croatian language. In the towns of Pirot and Vranje, it cannot be said that they speak Serbo-Croatian; instead they speak this Bulgarian-Serbo-Croatian mixed speech.
I

We have very similar words, they have common roots

Rozumela som všetko! I love Slovak and Croatian, thank you. D’akujem
aj hvala. Great video!

Все слова понятны и даже предложения, если хорошо прислушаться и подумать.

Thank you so match, similarities between different Slavic languages are very interesting.
Please, do a footage "Similarities Between Serbian and Croatian" if it is possible, of course.

I am waiting for the same thing.... but with Romanian and other latin language

in Romanian, "vojnik" (written "voinic" and with the same pronunciation) means a strong and powerful man

I'm checking those with Polish ;) and I got most ;) the thing is some of the words sound a bit "old-fashioned"

understood pretty much everything as a russian 😎

This vid is quite funny.most of slavic languages aren't similair enough to each other to the point of understanding.i've lived in slovakia for almost two months and i had huge linguistic difficulties.i couldn't understand what the ppl around me spoke and slovakia is extremely linguistically underdeveloped so my almost perfect fluent english didn't help me at all.your cro.speaker came closer to understanding slovak than i did although i didn't try too much to understand slovak.it's too difficult bc it's not that similair at all.i have to add to this that your description is extremely inaccurate.you described serbian and croatian as different languages which is extremely laughable.the only difference btw croatian and serbian is accent and few words.both croatian and serbian are considered the same language by linguists but not by extremists in our countries bc they're mentally ill and trying to undermine our entire history.

Loved this video Bahador jan, great job! :)

I am from Russia and i understand almost everything, and understand Polisch, Ukranian and etc

It's so fun watching this as a Russian.

18:47 O cara poderia dizer que ela era mais nova que ela ia pular de alegria. 😂😂❤😂

Very interesting video. As a Russian, I understand every word used in challenge: дитя, пиво, плавать, пить, etc. They really are simililar, if not the same. But when it came to sentences… yeah, languages are very different.

The girl has an interesting accent. Always funny to watch slavic people trying to understand each other :D
goes much better with pivo

OMG, Slovak is very similar to Polish. I understood all Slovak sentences. :) But Croatian sentences were like Chinese for me.

i was in Croatia a year ago and i said "Jahoda" which means strawberry and people in Croatia say "Jagoda" and she was like what and started speakin English on me lol

Love this series in all languages! I always do this w/ my friends! Can you do Čakavski (oldest form of Croatian from the islands) & some other Slavic language! BTW my neighborhors were Persian growing up so we came up with so many simililarities, but one that was funny was “guzica” or “guza” in Croatian means ass and in Farsi “Guz” means fart 🤣🙄 coincidence I think not!

The G/H sound shift sometimes occurs in different Slavic languages, like for igra ihra

Im Russian and understand almost everything

I have been in Croatia and BIH since January, it's just starting to get easy to understand. Four months only, and it is probably going to be good for my next visit. Apart from the agreement of participles, adjectives,and nouns, it is relatively easy to learn.

From Betka's speaking I assume she was born and lives abroad. Some words with special punctuation or with the negative prefix "ne" sounded more like with serbian accent - hard instead of soft.
And Marko is very talented in languages, I guess.

Piwo kurwa piwko pogada januszek 🇵🇱🇵🇱🇵🇱🇵🇱🥟🥟🥟👐👐😀😀😍😍 So similar words I'm polish btw shoutoght to Slavs mostly Czechs you guys are most similar to our countries 🇨🇿🇨🇿🇨🇿🇨🇿😍😍😍 love to every Slavic country!!!!

Awesome video as usual!

Bulgarian here,understood all of the words :)

Literally week before I (from Croatia) visited Slovakia.

I'm from Ukraine and I understand you very well)

Do a slavic and Hindi or other Northern Indian languages like Bengali/Punjabi/Gujarati/Marathi. I bet that would be more intererting than Persian/Hindi where the words are almost directly borrowed from Persian to Hindustani because of Mughal rule in India.

I want to see some Dalmatian slang/language on here. T'would be interesting

Still waiting for the French and Persian video, that one would be interesting!

Kako je simpatičan ovaj Marko :D

MORE SLAV!!! YES.

I'm Croatian and where I live the history of my suburb is that a bunch of Slovakians came here and I am Trilingual (if that is a thing) because in my school we had slovakian too.

In Russian, we also have a word for “večera”. But in our language there is a soft “ja” instead of “a”. And the word itself is obsolete. Today we say “užin”.

I'm from Poland and I managed to guess 90% of those words.

Love to Slovakia, from Denmark, i drive through your country every year, when i visit my family in Serbia 🇩🇰🇷🇸🇸🇰

I am Bulgarian and I understood everything.

Do Czech Vs Polish or Croatian please :)

Slovaks don’t normally speak the way she does. She’s got a foreign accent and hints of accent from Záhorie. She pronounces the consonants in front of the vowels with a hard sound instead of a soft sound. For example “nevinný” - she pronounces it like nehvinny, it’s supposed to be n(y)evinný. I put the y in brackets, because it creates a soft “n”.

I'm Hungarian and I would definitely feel myself very dope in the case of all the languages.

Interesting comparation!

Seems Betka is somewhere from the region around west Slovak town Sered'. They are famous for absence of soft sounds, pronouncing extremely hard each word. Official Slovak language sounds much more softer