fuck yeah eastern europe: Archive

fuck yeah eastern europe

March 2012

14 posts

EU leaders grant Serbia candidate status →

European Union leaders have granted Serbia “candidate status”, at a summit in Brussels. Belgrade has made a series of democratic reforms and captured war crimes suspects to satisfy EU demands. It applied for EU membership in 2009. The summit came two days after foreign ministers from the 27-member bloc recommended accepting Serbia. The president of the European Council, Herman Van...

juniourr asked: I love your blog! I'm from Ireland (but living in England for uni) and I'm totally fascinated by Central/Eastern Europe and I want to learn Russian and Slovenian. I think that I reblog you the most! Keep up the good work :)

Anonymous asked: i'm Hungarian and when I hear somebody talking and it takes me a few minutes to figure out that I don't know what they're saying, I know they're speaking Finnish. It sounds so much like Hungarian -- the rhythm and the vowels and melody of speech and everything, I feel like I should be able to understand it, but I don't understand a single word. Hungarian and Finnish are...

remis asked: ayano23: languages don't need to have a common vocabulary in order to be related. If you have a good look at the Finnish grammar and then compare it to Hungarian grammar, you'll see tons of similarities (agglutination, complex case system, lack of grammatical gender, etc. Read en (.) wikipedia (.) org/wiki/Uralic_languages#Typology). Also, read the second paragraph of this: en (.)...

simplyorthodox asked: I just wanted to say that I love your blog! It's one of my favourites! :)

Millions celebrate spring in centuries-old custom... →

After the coldest winter in decades, millions of East Europeans are welcoming in the spring, following centuries-old pagan customs. People across Romania, Bulgaria and Moldova planned to take advantage of a thaw to buy and give charms to celebrate March 1, a day that symbolizes spring and hope. The day took on an added poignancy this year after weeks of bitter weather that claimed over 650...

February 2012

265 posts

Romania Revives Split Among Serbia’s Vlachs →

Romania’s unexpected move to hold up an EU debate on Serbia’s EU candidacy over the rights of the country’s Vlach minority has reignited divisions in the community in Serbia. Romania yesterday fended off criticism of its delaying tactics at the EU meeting in Brussels on Tuesday, saying Serbia must do more to protect the rights of its Vlach minority. Bucharest held up an agreement...

dziwaczny asked: Okay, so the best source I have is the 'Finno-Ugric Languages' article on Wikipedia, but I do know from a native speaker of Hungarian that it is very similar to both Finnish and Estonian. It's less to do with words and more to do with the structure of the language, as far as I can tell. My friend also says that listening to Finnish is like listening to badly spoken Hungarian in a...

sexsocialismandscifi asked: Hey, I can't find anything online about the Uralic language connexion being disproven. If anyone has any sort of source, I'd be really, really interested in reading it.

whataworldwhataworld asked: As a Polish speaker, I can actually understand Czech/Slovakian speakers (not every word but the general gist of the conversation) at about, I'd say, maybe at least 60% or more! My Russian/Ukrainian comprehension is much lower; I might understand a quarter of everything said, no more than 1/3 or so (although there are some Ukrainians I can understand better than others. Perhaps different...

ayano23 asked: Your blog is amazing and as a hungarian I am glad you would like to learn our language, which is one of the most difficult ones to learn, even for us. But I need to add that our language isn't related to Finnish. The theory failed by the end of the 20th century,because the two nations don't have common history and probably words moved to the other language when people of the two nations...

Belarus left isolated as EU nations withdraw... →

The regime of Alexander Lukashenko is looking increasingly isolated today after European Union nations took the extraordinary step of jointly withdrawing all their ambassadors from Belarus. The surprise diplomatic move came in response to yesterday’s expulsion of the EU and Polish ambassadors in Minsk. They were thrown out of the country after Brussels placed a further 21 Belarusian ...

twyrine asked: Fun piece of folklore: In Romania, the days between 1 and 9 March are called "Zilele Babelor" ("the days of old women"). They're called this because the weather is very unpredictable, supposedly like the moods of said old women. Now, thing is, everyone has a "baba", that is, one of these days is assigned to you, and the weather that day will predict how the year...

twyrine asked: (continued) If your birth day is <10, that is your baba. Otherwise, you add the digits. So people born on the 13th of the month should take note of the weather on March 4. If this was clear enough, have fun predicting your year!

Anonymous asked: Romanian is 14% Slavic according to my Advanced Romanian professor that has been teaching for 30+ years. Soo yeah...

remis asked: Um. Finland and Hungary are not by any means the only countries that speak "this kind of language," according to ilikesomuch. Off the top of my head: Estonian, Veps [Russia], Võro [Estonia], Karelian [Finland, Russia], Mari [Russia], Saami [Norway (!), Sweden (!), Finland and Russia], Komi [Russia], Livonian [Latvia] and Mordvin [Russia].

moonbutterfly asked: Romanian is not a Slavic language, it is of Latin origin, so it is not related to this language group. However, we do have a number of Slavic words in our vocabulary, but our language is similar to Spanish, Italian or Portuguese, not those spoken in Eastern Europe:)

ilikesomuch asked: related? then why are they using different words and letters to say same things? (like "kot" "mačka" "kaķis" or "кошка" for cat?) you mean the grammar is the same?

ilikesomuch asked: you're (quite) right (Polish, Hungarian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Slovenian, Czech and many others are really different as Ukranian, Lett or Russian, refered to the alphabet of course)! but not everyone know the differences between those countries!

ilikesomuch asked: i disagree with losthitsu.. some people considering countries located at the east of the Oder as slavic speakers, they don't know how different languages are, for example between Hungarian (wich is quite the only country in the world speaking this kind of language, with Finland) and Polish. The real question maybe is to determinate what country could be considered slavic or not, right?

myinnermonoblog answered: What regional language would you most like to learn? I’m trying to decide between Polish and Hungarian for next semester. Do you have any Polish experience? I can’t decide! I don’t have any Polish experience, but maybe someone else does? laressad answered: What regional language would you most like to learn? my boyfriends romanian so I’ve been trying to learn that...

melancholiac94 asked: After reading your response to unnamed idiots, I must say that I admire you :') Or at least your confrontational skills! And I love your blog. Keep up the good work!

What regional language would you most like to...

I know I should work on improving my Russian, but to be honest I really want to study Hungarian. I think it must be all the diacritical marks, they just look so cool. Also, it’s totally different from other European languages (I think it’s distantly related to Finnish and Estonian?), which is interesting.

Belarus asks envoys of EU and Poland to leave →

Belarus has asked the ambassadors of the European Union and Poland to leave, the country’s foreign ministry says. Minsk has also recalled its own ambassadors from Brussels and Warsaw, the ministry adds. The move comes after the EU announced it was imposing restrictions on 21 people “responsible for the repression of civil society and the democratic opposition in Belarus”. ...

EU foreign ministers mull granting Serbia... →

EU foreign ministers will decide Tuesday whether Serbia should finally become a candidate for membership in the bloc, with influential officials saying signs looked good after the country reached a key agreement with its former province of Kosovo. Serbian President Boris Tadic sounded a cautious note, describing himself as a “skeptical optimist,” and a handful of the country’s neighbors expressed...