Writing of your language?

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

Very interesting.  Do you know if Belarusian is similar to Russian?

Yes, very much so. They're both East Slavic languages (Ukrainian is too).

[Chaszz]

Although I'm a Brit, my adopted country is Russia, where I've lived for 16 years (in two separate bursts, including five years when it was the USSR).

Russian has 33 letters, written in the cyrillic alphabet.  Despite the initial visual unfamiliarity of that to those from latin-alphabet countries, you quickly get your head around it,  and it needn't be a barrier.  The more difficult thing for newcomers is the very intensive grammatic structure of Russian, which frankly needs to be learnt academically if you're to have any chance of getting far with it.  The ray of hope, however, is that the grammar and orthography are rigorously consistent (partly as a result of several Governmental Commissions on these matters in the C19th, who streamlined spelling, removed archaisms, and standardised spelling of many words which existed in multiple spellings).  If you have the time, aptitude and determination, you can learn Russian perfectly   There's a rich literature to enjoy and savour if you manage it!  Not only the heavyweight C19th novelists (Tolstoy, Turgenev, Dostoevsky), but the delicious sophistication of the "Silver Era" poets like Balmont, Akhmatova, and Gumilev, the modern poets like Tsetaeva & Brodsky, contemporary authors like Pelevin and Vladimir Erofeyev...  the urbane wit of "Teffi", and the fabulously unhinged surrealist humour of Daniil Kharms.

Russia also has a "parallel" language, which remains unmodernised and unreformed - "Church Slavonic".  It's a medieval language which stands in the same relation to modern Russian as Latin does to modern Italian - clearly related, but vastly different.  Once the language of official scribes and archivists, nowadays it is only used for the Liturgy - but churchmen and scholars who know it well pride themselves on being able to hold modern conversations and correspondence in it.  Church Slavonic is also used in other branches of the Orthodox faith - in Bulgaria, in Serbia, in Macedonia, in Ukraine, and some other branches of the faith.


The Kiev Psalter - an example of Church Slavonic script.  Few modern Russians could read this.

Permit me as a bit of of a Russophile to add two writers to your list. Isaac Babel was a great short story writer who was tragically executed at a young age by Stalin. Mikhail Sholokov was a Communist Social Realist novelist whose books, in spite of that, are superb. His two novels about the Don River region are Quiet Flows the Don and The Don Flows Home to the Sea. These epics about Communists vs. Cossacks and farmers are among the most moving works I've ever read, and won him a Nobel. Though he is suspected of plaigarizing large parts of them, they are still very worth reading. 

[arkiv]

Ancestral country: Serbia. Country of birth: Germany.

Mishak, can you understand Croatian language?

[MishaK]

Mishak, can you understand Croatian language?

Yes, why?

[Sylph]

Ancestral country: Serbia. Country of birth: Germany.

I knew it. What a bizarre creature. A Serb born in Germany living in Chicago. Possibly a composer or perhaps a language teacher who attends CSO's concerts. So amusing.

[MishaK]

Possibly a composer or perhaps a language teacher who attends CSO's concerts.

Neither, actually. 

[Superhorn]

   There are cool you tube videos on the various Finno-Ugrian peoples and their languages,as well as just abiout any of the many ethnic groups of the former Soviet Union.
   The languages of the Caucasus are also fascinating, and the weirdest-sounding ones you've ever heard.
   Circassian and Chechen sound more like Klingon than any human language !   You can hear them on you tube also.

[rhomboid]

If you learn chinese characters, do japanese characters become easier to understand?

[karlhenning]

I knew it. What a bizarre creature. A Serb born in Germany living in Chicago.

I saw that movie!  What a prankster!  Soundtrack by Simple Minds.

[springrite]

While most Chinese words have less than 20 strokes, with most averaging maybe around 10, some words have so many strokes that most of the time people use other words in its place, just to avoid making a mistake while writing it.

Here is one of those busy busy words:

龖龖龖龖

Yes, that is ONE WORD.

Apropriately, it means wordy.

[rhomboid]

Here is one of those busy busy words:

龖龖龖龖

Thanks, can not see those characters.

[ibanezmonster]

If you learn chinese characters, do japanese characters become easier to understand?

Well, considering the 2 Japanese scripts are very easy to learn, and the fact that almost every Kanji from is from the traditional Chinese character set, yep. But the actual readings of Japanese characters will make your head explode if you ever decide to learn them. 

(On a side note, I'm glad you typed this post. I seriously almost forgot about burning that copy of XP for the guy at the Chinese restaurant- I set up his computer for him, but he needs the disc for installation of Chinese. He gave me a free meal for my work so far, but that last step was delayed and I need to do that now, so it's fair). 

[rhomboid]

Never ask a favor of someone till they have had their dinner.

[ibanezmonster]

Never ask a favor of someone till they have had their dinner.

They did. 
Once I give them the CD, it should be done, though. 

[Sylph]

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/index.htm

[ibanezmonster]

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/index.htm

You know, that was an old treasure of mine long ago that I forgot about. Thanks. 

Finished installing Chinese on the guy's computer... after he learned that I knew some Japanese, he pointed out stuff in a web page in Chinese, and asked me if I could read anything. I could only get little bits and pieces (if the characters were like Japanese, usually the meanings are the same or similar). One character, though- "机" which I said was "desk," happened to only mean "desk" in Japanese- he said the character means "machine."

I never thought to ask him which dialect he speaks. He said when he visited China, he visited an area "across from Taiwan." I'm assuming this is North of Hong Kong, where according to a map on wikipedia, is where Min is spoken. If so, there's this:

It is typically divided, on the basis of mutual intelligibility, into five to nine languages,

If someone is from that area, does it automatically mean they speak that dialect? I think I read something like dialects dying out in China, and Mandarin being the most popular dialect throughout, but I'm not sure I read that right or not... 

[eyeresist]

It is somewhat true in that English never had an Académie Française or a Rechtschreibungskommision that standardized the spellings. All words were instead left more or less in their native form, whether they came from a Germanic or Latin or Greek background. It's pretty messy.

In Britain, outsiders quickly give themselves away by pronouncing names as they are spelled.

[Sylph]

In Britain, outsiders quickly give themselves away by pronouncing names as they are spelled.

They can always check this page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_names_in_English_with_counterintuitive_pronunciations

[rhomboid]

Chinese people have a long way to learn all their writing system.

[Karl Henning]

Yes, even allowing for the fact that there are elements which are used in a number of ideograms.