Why study more than one Slavic or East European language?
Slavic languages are typically taught in one department because of their linguistic similarities; Slavic and East European languages are often affiliated with East European and/or Eurasian are studies programs, because of their linguistic, cultural, historical and political connections. Studying more than one of these languages has extra benefits. • Slavic languages are similar enough that learning one makes learning the next one much easier. Other East European languages (such as Romanian, Hungarian, or Yiddish) often share vocabulary with Slavic languages, and in some cases (such as Albanian and Macedonian) the languages share important underlying grammatical characteristcs. • Languages spoken by neighboring peoples, or languages used together in a single country or region, enrich and influence the culture, politics and writings of those places. For this and other reasons, the languages and their literatures and cultures reward comparative study. • Historians, economists, scholars of
