I know Russian language - will it help me learn Polish?

True. All Russians should learn English and Polish anyway then no one need bother learning Russian lol.

Exactly ;)

How do you guys cope with speaking six languages? Don't you sometimes, get the words mixed up ? what a gift you have, must have photographic memories or something special to do that. :)

Hehe, don't know, when you like something, everything's possible ;)


It depends...Polish and Spanish are not the same languages so no risk ;P But between Norwegian and Swedish for example, it can happen yes, that's why we have to be careful when talking different languages (i'm a beginner in Swedish, Norwegian and German) ;)

Wow! That's amazing. It's going to take me years to get to level 1 in Polish. hehe

LoL ;) Norwegian and Swedish are easier than Polish (not German though), but i'm learning Polish too.

Czesc, Panie!

Stary Polak przed kilkoma latami opowiedzial mi 'Kazdy Polak rozumie jezyk rosyjski, ale NIKT nie to mowi.' = ('......chetnie mowi,')

Moze byc tak samo jak w Hollandii i jezyk niemiecki w zwiazku z Druga Wojna Swiatowa, nieprawda?

Co Pan mysli?
Marek

Lady in Red,

By your logic, "we", i.e. Brits and Yanks, should all be learning Russian, Polish, German, Chinese, what have you, like mad so that those groups needn't bother to learn English ---:):)!!

Or have we simply become too lazy as well as smug?

I seem to recall somwhere, that around fifty to sixty odd years ago, Brits were all learning French with a vengeance. In fact, it was common, some say, that at Oxford and other schools, it was common for those who "read law" together to inquire if a fellow classmate spoke French. The common query was "French IS your language, isn't it, old man?"

Than again, just perhaps I'm mistaken.
Marek

Vincent,

"Confused"? Hardly, being as these languages are all so different from one another, despite numerous surface similarities.

Danish may look a lot like Norwegian, but that's where it ends....cold! I practically grew up with German at home, although I never spoke it until I was just a teenager and then pursued it seriously from beginning college onward, right on into grad school. You might even say, I've had total as many years of German as large numbers of university-trained Europeans have had of English.

Marek

No, that is simply not true. Just like French is leant in English schools hardly anybody can speak French on the street so too it is with Russian in Poland. I tried to speak Russian in Poland years ago and they 9the Poles) were very helpful but it was pointless trying to get them to understand anything.

Michal,

That's partly my point. The Poles you encountered, mixed ages probably, might have merely pretended not to understand/speak/ Russian as a kind of "knee-jerk" reaction or resentment that may still persist.

I'm only guessing though, since I probably wasn't there when or where you were.
Marek

No, I think it has more to do with the level of general education in Poland.

oh so now the polish education is not good enough for you? oh realy?
some specialist you are. Comming from a trolley pusher. But dont you even start talking about polish education.
It's especialy funny that we keep talking in your language and I'm not even close to making as many mistakes as you do.

oh realy, yes you do! As for the language used, it is supposed to be in English and that is what we therefore use on this forum.

why we dont use your language michal?
oink oink oink oink oink oink oink oink oink oink oink oink oink oink!!!

I am aware of the Polish Education system, my wife's brother and his wife are both retired teachers and their son, who is a very cleaver young chap, is now an undergraduate at Jagiellonski (is the spelling right?!) University in Krakow at this very moment in time studying land surveying amongst other things.


The Russian Language is the gateway to learning so many other Eastern European languages.

hmm you are a bit right this time.
russian is simply slavian language so obviously its similar to many other eastern languages.
BUT its not realy that great of a gateway due to the cyrylic alphabet.
so it makes it very different from other slavic languages (in writing)

I like the way it is now MY language, of course, you have not worked, lived or studied overseas just like the rest of us, have you? No, of course not, you bought a phrase book and red it during a rainy afternoon last week! You must think that I am totally daft!

I bet learning the Cyrillic alphabet isn't the hardest part.


Except Serbian, Bulgarian, Ukrainian, some of the lesser known Finno-Ugrian languages. Any more?

I'd like to learn Russian, if only for the great literature.
But I really can't be bothered.
If I learnt another language, it would be Portuguese.
That way, there would be less chance of getting mixed up between the more similar Russian and Polish.

Osiol,

You're right when you mention getting words mixed up. As I posted several weeks ago, language interference is a major reason for not learning two related languages both at the same time!

Marek

You can buy all the great books and masterpieces written in English anyway.

I have two translations of Dostoevsky's 'Notes from the underground'.
They read like two very different books.
One was translated a couple of years ago, the other a few decades ago.
The translations will change, but the originals won't.

Michal,

Quote: "You can buy all the great books and masterpieces written in English anyway."

Italian proverb - TRADUTORE, TRADITORE (translator, traitor)

Marek

*At very best, a translation is a mere approximation of the given text, something of which non-speakers of the author's native tongue are usually only painfully aware!! It's always a double-edged sword. I say this too as a translator myself.

So - if I understand this right - if I learn Polish thoroughly then I may be able to understand some Czech and some Ukrainian? Is that correct? What languages are then easy to learn once learning Polish? Or does the road end there :-) ?

For example the language masculine / feminine in spanish & french are not very different making it easier to learn both languages...

read what Marek wrote about language interference. He knows what he's talking about. I tried Spanish and French and I got all mixed up. Spanish and German - no problems.

Learning similar languages is like telling two shades of the same color apart. Hard.
Learning different languages is like telling black from white. Easy.

Moonmustang,

Gender confusions are only half the problem. The real difficulty comes when actual words have completely different or even slightly different meanings from one language to the other, e.g. "pismo" in Russian = letter, in Polish "pismo" = a written work or opus. The everyday Polish word for "letter" is of course "list", which is not used in Russian! In addition, the accent or stress is not the same, cf. Russian "pisMO" vs. Polish "PISmo".

Just one of numerous examples!!

it will !! i'm russian and i can understand some polish (written polish is easier b.w. ) we are all slavic nations and it helps us to understand each other ! ; )

See? You should have studied Russian harder than you did.

I'm half russian and half german. I grew up in germany, I have no russian accent in german and no german accent in russian (my russian is very colloquial though, I know cyrillic letters, but I can hardly spell)

I have moved to the UK 3 month ago and now i'm sharing a house with a polish guy.
and i'm actually quite surprised how similar the languages are. I understand about 70-80%..sometimes even up to 90, when he is speaking polish to his friends. it depends on how fast they're talking, but I always know what they're talking about. however, when i'm speaking russian (to my mom by phone or whatever) he says that he can understand only about 1/3.

well, ok...I guess in our case it's a slightly different situation...I guess the main gap (apart from the grammar of course) is the pronunciation. I am used to hearing russian with a "western" accent, that's how my german father sounds when he speaks/tries to speak russian. polish, to my ears, sounds very similar to it. it's the same the other way round, when I'm saying something with an "eastern" accent, he most likely won't understand it, but when I "fake" a western accent on the same word, he does and in most cases we then realise that it's actually almost the same or exactly the same word.

I'm not saying that i'm able to *speak* polish, I'm not..i'm only talking about *understanding* it. and actually I don't understand written polish. I have to read it loud, then I understand some of it.

Facinating stuff Vika! Good post Thanks.

Hueg

Vika,

Did you grow up bilingually in both German and Russian? I'm asking because I grew up with German and English here in the States, what's more, I have no language interference in either German or English as well as speaking both without a detectable foreign accent.

I found though that when learning Polish, an unrelated language, I had few 'false friend' confusions as I did when learning Dutch or the Scandinavian languages which are also Germanic.

My Polish teacher cautioned me about learning Polish and Russian at the same time. I'm now glad I took her advice- -:)!!

Ruskij jezyk ne samy slozny, on tebe v mnogam pomozet... Ty jego uchi ,i vse budit pizdata!!!