LeSving wrote:
To my understanding it’s more like Norwegian and German, or perhaps English and Dutch
Closer than that. The Ukrainian – Belarusian – Russian triad of major Eastern Slavic languages is almost like Swedish, Danish and Norwegian, with Ukrainian occupying the place of Swedish (that is, Russian and Belarusian are quite similar, Ukrainian is less so). Just like between Scandinavian languages, the difference is mostly in very common and ancient words.
That is an excellent diagram.
Fascinating and surprising…
This is also interesting – how Russia is hardening and going ever further in the “wrong” direction to ever return to the “civilised community”:
Going to be nearer to Enver Hoxha’s Albania 
LeSving wrote:
Edit: A google search came up with this. With this map
Excellent and highly interesting map. So according to this source, Ukrainian and Russian are about as far (38 units) apart as English and Dutch (37 units). This is farther than I expected and e.g. more than Dutch and German (25) which are actually not trivially mutually intelligible.
Peter wrote:
Fascinating and surprising…This is also interesting – how Russia is hardening and going ever further in the “wrong” direction to ever return to the “civilised community”:
This was reported in German media as well. It was to be expected but is still sad. Curiously enough some Russian trolls on Spiegel.de likened this to the cadet program of the UK, which is of course silly given that that is wholly voluntary.
In Czechoslovakia, school education was full of how American imperialists were going to invade us but we never had any real fun like playing with weapons
Peter wrote:
In Czechoslovakia, school education was full of how American imperialists were going to invade us but we never had any real fun like playing with weapons
In Yugoslavia we were more afraid of Russian invasion until 70s and normalization with Russia while school education was full of how all our neighbours want a piece of our land. Border incidents with Albania and Bulgaria were quite normal while other borders were much more peaceful. However, playing with weapons started immediately in the secondary school, first with learning drawings, then later on with disassembling and assembling old Mauser-like gun and then in 3rd grade going to a shooting range.
MedEwok wrote:
Excellent and highly interesting map. So according to this source, Ukrainian and Russian are about as far (38 units) apart as English and Dutch (37 units). This is farther than I expected and e.g. more than Dutch and German (25) which are actually not trivially mutually intelligible.
These numbers measure some linguistic distance and do not directly give a measure of mutual intelligibility. E.g. Swedish-Norwegian is 16, Swedish-Danish is 21 and Swedish-Icelandic is 26. For a Swede, there is no difference in mutual intelligibility (ouch!) between (written) Norwegian and Danish. Both are quite understandable. OTOH, Icelandic is most certainly not understandable to a Swede.
Things are moving along:
Vadym Omelchenko, Ukraine’s ambassador to France, said on Friday: "As of today, numerous countries have officially confirmed their agreement to deliver 321 heavy tanks to Ukraine.
On the F16 hot topic, does anybody know how long an F16 would last against an S300 system? Surely the key is not the aircraft but all the other kit that must come with it. An F16 is not stealthy at all. Air defence suppression must be included.
Airborne_Again wrote:
OTOH, Icelandic is most certainly not understandable to a Swede.
Icelandic and global climate have more in common than ones thought 
There are more variety within Norwegian dialects than there are between “standard” Norwegian and either Swedish or Danish. Lots of Danes in Norway, and they all think they speak perfect Norwegian. To this day I have never heard a Dane speaking Norwegian, instead they speak intelligible Danish (all the words and grammar is the same between Danish and “standard” Norwegian, they just speak odd). It’s very peculiar actually. Danish children are on average much older before they can speak than any other language. This is due to the way they pronounce things.
Peter wrote:
On the F16 hot topic, does anybody know how long an F16 would last against an S300 system?
My bet is instant death. Only the F-35 would survive there, it’s the main reason it was made. Everything else has to fly below the radar. I don’t see how this will change except if starting to attack those missile batteries, and they are all in Russia.
