xBlackHeartx wrote:However, I've never really felt like it would be useful to me to learn this language, even if its claims are true. For one, I don't exactly consume Slavic-language media often (and I listen to non-English music all the time, just so we know). Also, its an ever-evolving project, which means that seriously learning it could be difficult. I mean, the current Interslavic is actually a merger between multiple other 'zonal slavic auxlangs' that were floating around in the 2000s. Which means that keeping up to pace with it could be difficult.
This is the key issue. I'm not sure how you'd go about acquiring Interslavic without already having an advanced knowledge of natural Slavic languages. What materials will you use? Will you just watch that same film again and again?
As I said, I'm constantly drawn to it because, if the advertising is to be trusted, it could allow me to understand around a dozen languages while only learning one!
That's not true at all. Slavic speakers may understand Interslavic, but that doesn't mean you'll understand all Slavic speakers all the time, especially if they don't actively accomodate their speach to be more transparent to outsiders. Remember that native speakers have massive vocabularies in their own languages and have likely been exposed to regional accents and dialects (more likely in some countries than in others, Poland is somewhat more linguistically homogenous than most other predominantly Slavic-speaking countries), this means that they may know some root or word that is uncommon in their language but very common in another (
here is an example I recently came across in Serbian) or or will be able to more accurately guess the meanings of words simply due to decades of exposure to Slavic. Even as someone who's been an advanced speaker of both Serbian and Polish for years, I see a huge difference in the transparency of other Slavic languages based on 2, 3, 4 years of reading Serbian and Polish and amassing a broad vocabulary (which is more than just "fluency").
though I recall being told in the past that if I seriously wanted to be able to understand multiple Slavic languages that I would be better off just learning Russian.
Why specifically Russian?
xBlackHeartx wrote:The Slavic world did at one time have an 'interslavic' language called 'old church slavonic'. I believe it was only used by the church though.
Old Church Slavonic isn't really any sort of "interslavic". Slavic languages had already diverged into several distinct branches by the time Old Church Slavonic arose, and Old Church Slavonic is clearly an East South Slavic language, so only Bulgarian and Macedonian could be said to be descended from it or a close relative of it. Old Church Slavonic had a much stronger influence on Romanian than on Polish or Czech.
Old Church Slavonic also heavily influenced Russian, but not so much the other East Slavic languages, which were within the Polish sphere of influence. That means that Russian might be a bit more transparent to South Slavic speakers than Ukrainian or Polish or Czech, but not much more than that.
(apparently its common online for Slavic speakers to just use the infinitive form of verbs all the time because their conjugation endings vary so widely, Interslavic actually doesn't allow you to omit subject pronouns for this reason).
I can't say I've ever observed this.
As for me, I was kinda thinking it could act as a key that makes it easier for me to learn Slavic languages. Native Slavic speakers can apparently learn each other's languages in a shockingly short period of time.
That's because they're very good at their own languages. A native English speaker can also learn French in a "shockingly short" period of time, and the more widely read you are in English the easier it'll be -- this is not necessarily true of an intermediate learner of English whose native language is Mandarin or Tamil. If you want to learn several Slavic languages you're in it for the long haul, although yes each new Slavic language does get substantially easier (but also the more languages you add the more you have to think about seriously prioritising and chose what you want find time for, but this is true of language learning in general).
As for east Slavic languages, ironnically I'm an upper intermediate in German. I wonder how much of those languages I would catch? I know I can make sense of (written) Dutch surprisingly well, though others online have said that's probably just because I happen to know both German AND English. Though strangely enough, I can't make any sense at all of written Low German (or that dialect that some Amish use anyway).
Surely you mean West Slavic languages? German does help a bit with Polish, there is a fairly substantial number of Germanisms:
szacować (to estimate, appraise),
burmistrz (mayor),
dziękować (to thank),
kac (hangover),
rynek (central square),
grunt (ground),
szyld (signboard),
handel (trade),
knajpa (pub),
drukować (to print),
rada (advice, counsil),
warunek (condition),
warsztat (workshop), and so on. That said, not all of these Germanisms are immediately obvious as some of them are quite old (such as
dziękować).
Look, all things considered, Slavic languages are globally not that hard for English speakers compared to pretty much anything you'll find if you step a few inches out of Europe or even non-IE languages within or partially within the European sphere like Hungarian, Basque, Turkish or Finnish. The complex morphology can be somewhat daunting at first but if you allow yourself to soak up the language and focus on listening, reading and growing your vocabulary, while
consulting information on cases on the side (but not trying to memorise endings and such, just consulting declension tables to make more sense out of it), eventually you'll acquire it naturally; also if you already know some German you already have a sense of cases and will likely not struggle anywhere near as much as a monolingual English speaker. If you want to learn Slavic languages just pick the one you're most interested in and start with that, there are no shortcuts.
Don't let the online circlejerk about declensions and consonant clusters intimidate you, the single hardest activity will be finding the time to expose yourself to the language and pick up vocabulary, like any other language.