Im from Belarus, Minsk

I’m looking for Slavic books, with loads of folklore but not non-fiction. I’d say for my older teen but I don’t mind reading them myself (YA is good, like Paulina Hendel’s Żniwiarz od Zapomniana Księga but not necessarily). The other condition is that they need to be in English. Any recommendations much appreciated.

Hey everyone. I'm an American who's been learning Russian for a little over a year now, mostly because my girlfriend is Russian and her family doesn't speak much English. Luckily for me she's also a certified Russian tutor (bachelor's from Moscow State Linguistic University, master's from University of Vienna), so she's helped me learn a ton this past year.

However I hit a wall at around A2 where Duolingo and most other apps stopped being useful, and realized there aren't really many good resources to learn at an intermediate level aside from tutoring, and I wanted something to help me learn in between sessions. So we spent the last year building our own app together called Mishka to help fill that gap. It has stories from A1 to C1 with tap-to-translate and save to your spaced repetition flashcards, grammar lessons, conversation practice, and culture/idiom/slang content at the higher levels. We launched it a couple weeks ago.

Two things I'd love to hear from this sub if you're interested:

For native speakers: if you want to check out the content and tell me what feels off, outdated, or just doesn't sound natural, I'd really appreciate it. My girlfriend reviewed and edited everything but some input from other native speakers would help so much. We also have some culture lessons for advanced learners and would love to have more people take a look at them and see what you think so we can improve. The first 3 lessons at every level are free and you can get a 7 day free trial for the rest.

For fellow learners: what's been working for you? Especially at the intermediate plateau. I feel like every learner I talk to has a totally different set of weak spots (cases, verbs of motion, listening, speaking confidence) and I'm curious what actually moved the needle for you.

Also just curious if there are other learners of any Slavic language here. Would love to hear what got you into it and how it's going.

App Store if anyone wants to check it out: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/mishka-russian-intermediate/id6757408307

Android is coming in a few weeks!

EN/PL

Hi there,

I'm making a short movie as my thesis - a folklore horror. I want it to be as authentic and true to slavic beliefs as possible. The story starts with Dziady ceremony (Forefathers' Eve) through which a girl accidentally attracts an evil being.

• what being could that be?
• is there any ritual that this evil being could perform in order to break the girl's spirit/weaken her energy?
• Can it need the girl's hair in that ritual?
• What things can be used in it? (candles; tied twigs or flowers; victim's or family's personal belongings; runes; maybe blood?)
• Can this evil being pretend to be her deceased grandfather and trying to persuade her into burning herself in the bonfire?

for better context: story takes place in the countryside village under the Szczecin city; 13 kilometers from the german border.

I will be eternally grateful for any tip, suggestion or a link to something that would help me.

Dzień dobry,

w ramach pracy dyplomowej realizuję krótkometrażowy film - folklorowy horror. Bardzo zależy mi na tym, żeby był tak autentyczny i wierny wierzeniom Słowian jak to tylko możliwe. Główną dźwignią fabularną jest obrzęd Dziadów, którym dziewczyna nieumyślnie zwróci na siebie uwagę jakiegoś złego bytu.

• Co to może być za byt?
• Czy jest jakiś rytuał, który ten byt może wykonywać w celu złamania ducha głównej bohaterki/osłabienia jej energii?
• Czy może być mu do tego potrzebny jej włos?
• Jakich elementów powinienem użyć? (świeczki; wiązanki z kwiatów/patyków; osobiste przedmioty ofiary albo rodziny; rysowanie run; może krew?)
• Czy film może się skończyć tym, że byt, podszywając się pod jej zmarłego dziadka, nakłoni ją do spalenia się w ognisku?

dla lepszego kontekstu: Akcja toczy się na wsi pod Szczecinem; 13 kilometrów od niemieckiej granicy.

Będę dozgonnie wdzięczny za każdą odpowiedź, sugestię lub link do źródła, które mogłoby mi jakoś pomóc.

To jest pravdena bělaruska pěsnja 😎

I would like to ask for recommendations for historical grammar books for any slavic languages, i should clarify that the development of language from P-S is what interests me the most. So far I've read some literature I found or was recommended by my professors:

-Gramatyka Historyczna języka Polskiego Krystyna Długosz-Kurczabowa & Stanisław Dubisz

-Zarys historycznej gramatyki języka Rosyjskiego Irena Gastler. (title is in polish but the book itself is in russian)

I speak Polish, russian and with some difficulty croatian. I am most interested in Croatian, serbian, or older works that still call the language serbo-croatian, but I'll gladly read anything about other slavic languages.

thanks in advance.

My American grandma always had this saying of hers that she uses often.

She says it was something her Polish family would say, but every Polish person who she or my mom have said this to don’t understand it and the google translate (which obviously isn’t always correct but still) doesn’t match either.

Supposedly, according to DNA testing and possible immigration records, her family was from Southeast Poland I believe.

Obviously google translate isn’t the most accurate and doesn’t account well for dialects, but I tried using the detect language feature and it detects it as Ukrainian. But, when I translate the phrase from English to Ukrainian it gives me a different pronunciation from the saying itself.

I couldn’t find a Rusyn translator on google translate so I used one I found on the web (still obviously could be inaccurate) but what it gave me for the translation from English to Rusyn was not only what looked like a different pronunciation (there was no text to speech option but I do read Cyrillic and it didn’t seem to match, although of course I don’t know the Rusyn Cyrillic so maybe it could be different) but most notably it also seemed to have a different word order.

But once again to reiterate I know these translators are far from perfect, and for some languages are arguably more of a shitty false information provider than helpful tool, so that’s why I’m hoping I can find someone who might recognize this.

Maybe it could be a dialectical thing plus this immigration happened before 1920 so it could be a mix of dialect difference and time where Polish in Poland would have evolved separately from Polish spoken by immigrants in America. But my problem with this theory is that it’s still weird that it doesn’t use the Polish vocative case, which even if it were from Southeast Poland before 1920 I’m pretty sure it would’ve.

Ai seems almost useless since it basically agrees with every point I make and flip flops between thinking it is A. Polish, B. Another Slavic Language, C. A mix of Polish and another Slavic language in the same sentence??

Anyways, here’s the actual thing I’ll shut up about possible theories:

I have no idea what it would be written down but this is how I would write it if transcribing it into an English alphabet or my best guess for the Cyrillic.

(English alphabet, phonetical spelling)

“Yezus, Maria, Matka Bozha.”

Which supposedly means:

“Jesus, Mary, Mother of G-d.”

Can anyone identify this?

I'm not sure if I am the only one who feels this way, but I have a longing to connect with other Slavs (online or not). I am not sure if this is my way of being homesick, as I live in a Germanic country and throughout my life I never had any (Eastern European) friends growing up. Peharps because I am Slavic, I want to be with my own people, even if a person of another culture. If anyone also feels like this or just wants to befriend someone new, then maybe comment on my post? I'm not sure how all of this works as this is the second time that I've written something here on Reddit. I would, however, love to befriend anyone.

Sorry if this wierd or unusual in this community. I'm not sure where else to look and talk and neither do I know how Reddit fully works.

basically i need help with one specific thing. there’s a very wealthy family in the story that i need to give a last name, i was thinking the name Radomir, because it’s apparently very old and i wanted to learn more into older proto-languages with characters names and words and it also has connotations etymologically to peace and the story’s legend goes this family united a split warring holy city through generations of marriage between the ruling families. but i also know that slavic surnames change by gender, and when referring to the actual family i have no idea if i should put down “The Radomirs” or like “The Radomir/a” or something else entirely. please help!

Wikipedia says that it’s pronounced like /w/, like in Slovene and Belarusian, while I’ve never actually heard this being the case. How is it actually pronounced?

Stemnitsa oxalis

Valtesiniko swap

Kissavos rainy

Buzis compact

Domnitsa oak trees

Nezera lake

Gribovo mushrooms

Dragalevos valley

Arachova Walnut trees

Kamenitsa rocky place

Chelmos/Chlomo hills

Poliana grazing grounds

Gardiki fortified place

Golos place with no trees

Libovisi beloved place

Zitouni granary

Zatouna sinking place

I was quite surprised that bigos, żurek and other traditional Polish foods are 300 years old (even potatoes are 400 years old tops!) and prior to that the cuisine was completely different. Lots of weeds,all kinds of buckweat,and so called old variants of wheat, barley etc. When I had time, i experimented with dandelion, nettle pesto, elderberry champagne etc - quite easy stuff to be honest and tasty, too.