just before the war the Polish/Ukrainian szlachta learned Ukrainian

Ksysia you have to prove that Ukrainians liked to be ruled by Poles or at least that polish rule was beneficial for them.(which they surprisingly claim for their Aistrohungarian rule.)Imagine for example a German telling you how much Poles strived to be ruled by Germans and what a dream it was.

Poles and Ukrainians lived in one country for 500 hundreds years. They were neighbours in thousands of villages and cities. So they local idioms were convergent. Any educated person in the Commonwealth knew Polish (maybe with exception of some Germans) so many Ruthenians knew it. And all Poles who have some interest in communicating with Ruthenians knew Ruthenian as well. There were also many Polish speaking (especially Masovian) settlers deep in Ruthenia. So there were so many lines of bilateral linguistic contacts, that both languages have many borrowings from each other.

Poles from Podolia spoke dialect which used to incorporate many loan words and linguistic phenomena from Ruthenian. And the same with Ruthenian dialects of Podolia. However it was clearly visible (or better say audible) which dialect was spoken by your local interlocutor.

However literary languages Polish and Ukrainian tend to omit some evident features borrowed from neighbours - but fortunately not effectively enough.

Even now, Poles and Ukrainians can communicate easily enough.

Read today that the new Ukranian PM promissed to...learn Ukrainian. :) Does the new president speak Ukrainian?

Cool. Thanks.

This may seem like a stupid question, but was Polish the main admistrational language of the Commonwealth?

it depended.
if subjects for example wrote a letter to the King, they wrote in Latin and in a formal form. the King wrote back in Polish, and informally. Same went for Hetmans

A bit like Copernicus then. He wrote different languages to different groups of people. I wonder how Poles would react if they had to learn Ukrainian. Us Scots have to learn English ;) ;) ;)

I usually draw similarities between the two languages in comparison to Spanish and Portuguese. On average Spanish speakers have difficulty in speaking Portuguese, while Portuguese don't experience difficulty in speaking and understanding Spanish. The same I may say about Ukrainian and Polish. Poles, on average, don't understand Ukrainan, while for Ukrainians it isn't a big deal to understand Polish. I used to work with many Polish people (more than 30) and I didn't meet a person able to understand at least 50% of my conversation. The languages share many similarities. But recently listening to Slovenian and even Macedonian programs on TV I picked easily more than 50% of the conversations, even though Slovenians and Macedonians are on the other pole of the Slavic world. Lots of words in them sounded the same, but carried other meanings, which one could figure out since it resembles some other word from your language. Let's say an invented Slovenian word "plywak", which let's say means "boat" in Slovenian. In Ukrainian "boat" is "choven", but... their word is similar to "plawaty", which means "to swim, to float" and one can easily understand what the other wants to say.


I would say 1,000 years, no - 20,000. We used to paint caves together ;)


You had me at sex, the rest wasn't necessary ;)


You missed the meaning of the expansion ;)

When you read this, consider the sources...Ukrainians are constantly portrayed as barbarians by Jewish sources, such as WikiPedia...Also, Mr. Nial Ferguson is the 'official' biographer of the Rothschild family...We also have almost identical accounts of Ukrainian peasants and Russian Orthodox Catholics being treated in exactly the same way by the Jewish Bolsheviks.

Whether these things actually happened, we cannot judge, as these are second, third, fourth hand sources...The first victim in war or revolution is truth.

Also, who is Yuryi Kirchuk?...I can find no references to his work other than Wikipedia.

I also noticed that Ukrainians in west Ukraine understand polish.

Thanks. It was the latin I was wondering about.

[quote=Nathan]

Thanks. very interesting.

You mention Macedonian; interesting slavonic language with no cases and it has an article.

Slavomacedonian is Bulgarian dialekt.Ask Bulgarians about that.The comedy is when their officials pretend to need interpreter to talk with Bulgarians.

Yes, I'd heard that. It's probably the only thing Greece and Bulgaria agree on. Of course, if they can say it isn't a language then they can say it isn't an ethnicity. therefore, no macedonian minority in greece/Bulgaria, so no human rights violations.

I once saw a book written in Serbian,(from about 1900), where the author was paid to go around Macedonia to show it was Bulgarian (paid by the Bulgarians), and finished up writing that it was Serbian. Quite funny!

You are welcome, Trevek. I didn't know about the article in Macedonian. I think it is quite a rarity in Slavonic languages.


Where are you from, king polkagamon? If you are from Poland, tell me whether you would be able to conduct business on a personal, not even state, level with a Gural or Kashub? And here we are talking about separate languages. Do Bulgarians use interpreters as well? If yes, why?

Sure - they all speak Polish.

What are you even talking about, Nathan? Górale are 110% Polish! John Paul II was
Góral, for crying out loud! My grandparents (both from my father's and my mother's
side) were Górale and I consider myself a Góral too :-), which doesn't change a fact
that in terms of nationality neither me nor any other person from my family would ever
describe himself as anything else than Polish.

As for gwara Góralska - it's perfectly intelligible for any native Polish speaker, just
as 90% of Kashubian language.

My girlfriend is Kashubian, never needed an interpreter, sorry Nathan but unlike Ukraine with its huge Russian minority Polish minorities are ethnically and culturally Polish (hence we're not facing disintegration as a state like you do) :))

you wanted to say integrated Sokrates. Ukrainian Russian minority's number is much larger then the small % of ethnic minorities in Poland, so you are probably right that Ukraine has a much less stable situation due to its make up.

Ukraine would be better off without Russian minority because it acts as a Trojan Horse for RUssian interests.
So you stated the obvious, so.....what now?

This was in reply to Nathans stupid implication that our regional minorities speak other languages or dont feel Polish, the largest problem we do have is about 2000 Silesians who want independence and thats about it.

I see, still you did not answer my question.

Torq, I am not talking about who is who, about a pope or your grandparents, for crying out loud ;) (let's all cry). I am talking about LANGUAGE or DIALECT and its understanding. You won't be able to conduct state affairs neither with Góral, nor Kashub if they spoke in their languages. This is all I was trying to convey to king polkamon in regards to Macedonian.

In Ukraine we have Hutsuls whose language or dialect I cannot understand. In school we read a book written in this language and under each page there were translations into Ukrainian.


Does she talk to you in Kashub language? I know someone who is from Gdansk and she doesn't understand when her parents talk to her uncle in Kashub.


Where did I say that they don't feel Polish, be so kind to quote, ars*hole? Don't regional minorities speak other languages in Poland? Or you think they are as limited as you, mf?

I would be able to conduct any kind of affairs with Góral easily - they speak a Polish
dialect which is 100% intelligible to Polish speakers. As for Kashubs - it might be
a slightly bigger problem but luckily they all speak Polish, so there :-)

Is she by any chance retarded? Kashubian dialect is perfectly understandable, there's a few words or phrases that might be an issue but by and large its perfectly understandable.

To put it simply its just a funny sounding Polish not a completely different language.


What question?


Nope, they speak other dialects but its still 100% Polish language.

Let see what other Polish think:




Well, Torq? I know you mastered several languages with ease and it is not a big deal for you to understand other languages or dialects, but as you see opinion of the above-mentioned people states that on average the situation in language comprehension is not such 110% or 90% sure as you try to depict :)

In the local górale restaurant here, Gazdówka, there are 3 versions. English, Polish and Góral languages. Many Poles could probably guess the góral part but some can't. It's different enough.

By GOD, Scotsman... How sure you are that I don't understand menus in gwara góralska? Is that due to your skill in Polish, eh?

And... it's not a góralska karcma, it's a flipping restaurant chain in Śląsk...

Grzybula z zerzańcami is normal mushroom soup with noodles...
gazdowka.pl/?page_id=13

what an ARGUMENT! you lot just have to be minded all the time, so that kind of trickery doesn't come through.

Ans stop this nationalism, it leads to nazizm and war.

Karczma or not, it uses Góral language which many have not encountered. My wife agrees with me and we live near the Góral areas.

I don't pretend to know or even presume your knowledge, Ksysia, that wasn't what I was saying at all. Some need it in Polish, FACT!

Nationalism, Nazism????

If you live in Sudety, and call someone Góral, take care to check if he is one. You may get some Silesians unhappy...

It's not likely that anyone in Poland would misunderstand grzybula or kwaśnica. Sorry. It only for regional ornaments, especially in RYBNIK.

No, but there are plenty of other dishes that they may not know. Don't presuppose what some people know or don't. Just know that some don't know :)

I have to agree with Seanus on this, there are highlander themed restaurants that really use "góralski" language and not the kind you mentioned Krysia - the kind that won't be easily understood by your average posh gorol from Warsaw..

Ksysia seems to think too much through her own eyes and doesn't see that there are many types that can't follow góral dialect as she perhaps can.

Official language of the Crown (Kingdom of Poland) was Latin, while in Grand Duchy of Lithuania - Old White Ruthenian sometimes called ruski or even litewski. In fact administration language in Lithuania was changed to Polish in XVII ie. earlier than in the Crown. However Polish language was used extensively even earlier but acts and records were written in Latin. Royal Prussia and Courland were using German and Latin, small principalities of Oswiecim and Zator recorded in Czech until 1560. Until 1590 there were also the Tribunal in £uck in Volhynia, which used Ruthenian.

Later in XVIII usage of Polish was getting more universal. Even Uniate Church was using Polish in administration while Old Church Slavonic in liturgy.