Czech language sounds like baby talk to most Poles. Similarities?

Thanks to my father in law, I now have Czech tv and radio. It sounds more like Russian and Serbo-Croatian than Polish does. It is decidedly weaker than Polish.

I don't know... Polish language seems pretty close to Czech, many of words are just the same in both languages and I've never needed to learn Polish to understand Poles. I speak czech they speak polish and we understand to each other.


I'd like to hear that...I've never met German who could pronounce properly any czech word. And even Slovaks have a problem with words as "kříž" or "tři".

To summarize this somehow (i mean main topic) it seems czech sound funny to Poles and I can tell you polish sound funny to czechs. I'm czech and with friends we sometimes make fun of some polish words and expressions and it's make me laugh a little when i'm speaking with some Pole. For a foreigners may polish sounds hard but for czechs I know is polish the "weak" one language 'cause in almost every word there's "š", "è", je, ja, jo, ju and poles say "ř" in funny way (for exapmle "Dworzec kolejowy")

I almost rolled in laughter when I read that as well. LOL(:


I would totally agree with that, especially the V sounding words-a lot of similarities with Russian.

Finally, Czech sounds to my both un-Polish as well as un-Czech (German!!) ears, even more sibilant than Polish (at least as regards tongue-twisters and such)-:))

What makes me laugh is not the sound of Czech in general, but the fact that Poles still think they don't need to learn it to understand it, just because they know Polish.

In that case, a little test: Translate this into Polish, in your head. No need to post the result; just tell me how easy it is "because you know Polish". Using Google Translator doesn't count. ;)


Nothing too difficult there.

Be honest: apart from parts of the third line (which still won't tell you anything about the subject, unless you know the Polish equivalent for "Sídlíště"), you're going to struggle. It's not even difficult Czech, it just tells you a little about the origin of my username, hehe.

But just because you effectively know the Czech words for tram and coffee, it doesn't mean you wouldn't need to learn Czech properly to speak or understand it.

the text is pretty easy for me - but well I am more than familiar with the Czech language - there were times in the 90's when I preferred to watch the Czech TV over Polish TV (i lived and still live in an area with good Czech TV reception - you can receive the Czech TV as far as Wrocław and Brzeg in Poland - though the quality is not that brilliant so far north)

You are so right - native Polish, went to Prague for a couple of months and thought the language would be straight damn easy. Got laughed at so many times it stopped bothering me. Even if you get the general idea of the conversation because some of the words and the melody are the same, you get trapped by "false friends" and there are so many of them!

It makes sense according to the theory that language represents mentality. I'm not saying that Poles and Czechs couldn't be farther apart, but for neighburing nations we are very different.

please check that. Czech tv went digital a couple of months ago and we lost the programme here.

You clearly have an advantage, then ;)

I showed this to a relative (native Polish speaker, who also speaks Russian) who said "I've no idea, but I think it's something to do with a place in the last century" lol :)

oh ok - I am not up to date with the changes - I haven't watched the Czech TV now for over a year as my aerial collapsed and we bought a Polsat satelite decoder - so I guess untill the Polish TV switches to digital too no Czech TV for me now (and until I fix my TV antennea and get the digital box for my TV set - btw are there any Czech satelite channels - I haven't encountered any so far on HotBird)

as for the Czech TV back in the 90's I remember watching the Champions League on the Czech TV in Wrocław's Psie Pole - I just couldn't stand the Polish commentators (anyone remember Janusz Szpakowski - Szpakowski was not the worst one actually) and Czech TV commentators made so much more sense to me - aslo paradoxically I had better TV reception from Czech transmitters where I lived (I studied in Wrocław) so watching the football on the Czech TV at home also made much more sense - then there were also Hockey World Championships - there was no coverage on Polish TV (Poles were never match for Czechs in hockey)

I got the idea what it is all about, with no prior Czech exposure. I did better than Czech->Polish google translation but worse than Czech->English google translator. The important thing to do is to try to get the sound right in your head and it starts falling into places (mostly).

yes - you are right about that - I learned the Czech language from their TV so actually mostly phonetically at first - (but then came their teletekst too)- it just takes a bit of figuring first (for a couple of months)

i imagine 20yrs ago and more that quite a few learned some czech from tv in these parts. in the days before canal + etc.

i watched it for english movies with subtitles and then later there was a childrens quiz show, which i sort of understood.

i've no idea what programmes are available on sat tv these days.

well we could receive the Czech TV as far back as early 80's (perhaps even before but I can't remember watching the Czech TV before) but then I was not able to understand most of it -

I only got any hold of Czech after we have travelled to Czechoslovakia as my father worked there for over a year - Czechoslovakia was so much more affluent than Poland (it was in 1986 when I was there first) - we brought quite a lot from the journey there (their sport shoes were great)

- my aunt also married a Czech guy from Ostrava and I visited them once in 1987 I guess (and they were visiting us before and after) (again some good shopping opportunities ;) and more grasp of the Czech language - but I only started to understand most of the spoken Czech in the 90's when i started to actually watch their TV (oh actually you could watch a lot of Czech films on Polish TV too back in the 80's (Nie ma nikogo w domu (Nikoho neni doma), Chalupari, Nemocnice na kraji mesta - so actually the Czech language grew on me for quite some time, Arabela)

I've got Jackie Chan's "Police Story" on DVD, complete with multi-actor Czech dubbing :)

When is Poland going to stop giving that one guy all the dubbing work?? lol

while I valued the Czech dubbing for a change I still think the Polish way is the better thing - for a couple of reasons:

- you get to hear the real voices of actors - I doubt most Czechs know the voice of De Niro, Brad Pitt et al.
- you get to hear real English, real accents, real sounds of the whole film (you soon enough learn to not get distracted to much by the speaker's voice - it is always delayed a bit in reltation to the actors' lines which also helps to get hold of English conversations (or any other language)

- the speaker/voiceover is much better than the undertitles because: you can follow a film not looking at the screen all the time, reading undertitles distracts from actually watching the film (you are not always able to follow the conversation for various reasons - if you could you wouldn't need the undertitles after all)- (but I still like to watch a film with undertitles from time to time for a change - I used to watch such films programmes on the Czech TV)

- speaker is much cheaper than dubbing - what do you need hordes of dubbing actors for

btw if you care to know Poland has great talent in the field of making actual dubbing - have you watched Shrek in Polish for example - most of the cartoons are dubbed and many of these are simply brilliant dubbings - I think the limited pool of dubbing actors actually helps this not hinders - mostly really tallented and dedicated people do that (or reknown Polish film actors as in the case of major animated productions (like Shrek))

I also wonder where else in the world is the Polish method also favoured over wholesale dubbing

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice-over_translation#In_Poland

What's the point of hearing a few words in the actor's real voice? The point in English is the inonation of the whole sentence which is always ruined by the lektor. If anything the lektor reinforces the pattern English words + Polish intonation that so wounds the ears of native speakers.

IME Polish audiences don't pay any attention to anything in the original that's not repeated by the lektor.

Lektor just seems like another example of Polish people being cheap and not wanting a quality product.

nb. I refuse to watch anything in English with a lektor though I can stand it in other languages (though I still don't like it).

I can understand gumishu's point, but I'm with mafketis on this one - for me, the voice-over completely spoils the film (I wouldn't need to listen to the English, and it's usually barely audible anyway). Whenever I'm in Poland, I reach for the remote when one of these films comes on.

Besides, how silly is it to always have a male actor read out the script for both male and female parts? It's just one of those crazy "money-saving" Polish ideas, which simply serves to demonstrate how much further ahead the Czechs really are ;)


You don't - it's always that same guy, isn't it? The one who also says "dziś o godzinie cztyrnastej w TVN" between programmes. lol

no it is not - if only you are a bit skilled you can follow the whole conversations - I just watched a movie ('Phone booth' or something, with Collin Farrell

) and when I listened to closely I could here the whole lines of the English text - it does not take much actually to do it - and if you want the learn English it is of great help - another question is dubbing completely ruins natural sounds of the film set - you can easily follow these with the lektor - and then again dubbing actors (voice actors) actually alter the flavour of the conversations completely - I could not get used to the artificialness of their play in many dubbed films on the Czech TV


first of the original lines are not barely audible - they are mostly readily audible - it just takes some effort to hear the whole lines ignoring the lektor (and lektor is not very invasive actually and can be actually ignored with a little effort - if something is spoiling fun of watching a film for me it is the unnaturlaness of the sounds of dubbing and the destructrion it makes on the natural sound of the film


what Polish audiences mostly do watching a film with a lektor does not bother me in the slightest - for me it is a chance to see andhear a film in its natural sound - and as I already stated you can hear the whole conversations with just a little effort (perhaps it takes some exercise I don't know I just am able to follow the whole conversations in original language of the film)

for you Czechs can be light years ahead - it don't give a damn - I like the Polish way muuuuuuuch better and so do the most of Polish TV audiences (according to studies made by Polish TVs)

and if you can follow the whole conversations in say original English (like I can) it means you also hear original male and female voices

well as for 'the quality' product - for me the Polish way is the quality product - not the dubb-all - after listening to real Arnold Schwarzenger you simply cringe when you hear some German or Czech idiot dub him

and well I don't think I am the only person to able to follow the whole original lines and sounds of a film voice-overed by a lektor - ask around here - maybe make a poll and you will find more people can do that - if this is not what you can, well?


yes - it is a valid point - some station overexploit some lektors to the point of absurdity but not TVP channels as far as I can tell - and there are better and worse lektors too, there are lektors with better voices and better skill in interpretation and there are worse in the former or the latter or both

There are a lot of myths and ignorance in all "contributions". Polish sounds also funny for Czechs, there are a lot of jokes about Polish language. The same is usual from Czech side. Do you know, that Czech and Poles understand each other perfectly until 16th century ? Probably not. Kafka IS Czech writer, because his style, humour, sense for absurd comedy is Czech, any German would never write somethig like that, however he wrote in German and was a Jew. If Prague is "german" city, what about many Polish cities in polish west with typical german architecture ? There is not comparison, because Prague looks original architectonic subject, not german. Treatment of Poles in Czechia ? I can tell many stories about total torture of Czechs in PL. Etc, etc. Czechs know and like polish films and literatuire too, some of Polkish writers are obligatory reading in Czechia. Czechs are Slavic nation, of course mixed, but who is not mixed in Central Europe, what about Polish cities as Lodž, Warszawa, mixes of Poles, Jews, Germans and Russians ?? Everythiong wants more education and empathy.

The German influence throughout the history of the Czech Republic was profound, as I'm sure you're aware. Indeed, Kafka, Meyrink and a number of others wrote exclusively in German, and not in their bilingual Czech mother tongue. This may be a phenomenon specfic to the Czechs. The Hungarian Jews, also tangentially part of the Hapsburg Empire, wrote exclusively, that is professionall, in Hungarian, not in German! Polish Jews comprised a curious entitiy unto themselves. On the one hand, many considered themselves Poles, even if their gentile brethren did not, most wrote in Polish (not German!), yet Jews from the country(side), i.e. from the various shtettls throughout Eastern Europe knew only Yiddish, often embarrassingly littlle of their "national" language, be it Polish, Russian etc... Czech and Hungarian Jews on the other hand were famously much more integrated, so much so, that the latter were considered by other Jews as the most traif or non-kosher, merrily (and openly) consuming pork and other forbidden foods with relish:-)

Czech has many German loan words, e.g. 'vigec' for 'travelling salesman' >German "Wie geht's?" etc.., as does German, "szlafrok" > Schlafrock, and so forth ad infinitum....

szlafrok is a Polish borrowing from German. The Czech word for szlafrok is... župan ;-p

Polish also had a word żupan - and it was also non-formal piece of garment resembling that of szlafrok - it was part of Polish gentry wardrobe - now the word is a song from the past just as is traditional nobleman's attire

pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%BBupan_%28ubranie%29

it looks like żupan was worn under kontusz
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kontusz
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%BBupan

Interesting, I find such diglossial issues no end fascinating:-)

Thanks,

Conversely, German's borrowed the common Slavic "Grenze", e.g. Polish 'granica', retaining the same gender, only modifying the spelling as well as the pronunciation:-)

That's right:


etymologia.org/wiki/S%C5%82ownik+etymologiczny/%C5%BCupan?viewer=code

I'm sure that "dupaèky" gets a few smiles from Polish speakers :)

Merged: Words that are the same in Czech and in Polish

Where could i find a list of words that are the same, more or less, in Polish and in Czech?
I am trying to learn both languages at the same time.

Not sure it is wise to learn 2 very similar languages at the same time. It will get confusing and you will get muddled up, using Czech words in Polish and vice versa . Learn one, then once you know it enough of it you can use that to assist you with the other.

Poles had for many centuries (after the Middle Ages) little contact with the Czech language - it changed after the second world war - I think it was starting from the seventies that youth exchanges were organised between Poland and Czechoslovakia - and this is how laska entered the Polish language

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Poles use "w" for the "v" sound unlike Czechs, Slovaks and many other Slavic speakers. For me a Slavic language usually looks very ugly written in Latin alphabet due to the carons mainly.

Somehow for me "w" fits more for a Slavic language. I also think the ż (note the dot!) looks better than the one with the Czech/Slovak ž. I also prefer cz to č. Sure for a beginner the many w's and cz's look overwhelming but carons make written text look untidy, ungainly (fussy?) somehow to me, while ć, ń, ó, ś, ź and the ż look much cleaner.

Czech and other Slavic languages using the Latin script would have looked much more beautifully written down if they used some of the Polish letters and orthographic rules such as those found in Polish. So please Poles, never adopt the Czech/Slovak etc. carons! I used to write Petržalka as Petrżalka to **** off Slovaks lol but if it used the Polish zhe it would look much better on signs.

Look even my language looks better when transliterated in Polish alphabet rather than with the more common Czech/Slovak scripts (I say more common as Serbo-Croatian languages use many of the same letters):

Wsyjaka żaba da si znae gyoła i da czete kniżki. - wider but just looks better to me.

Vsiaka žaba da si znae giola i da čete knižki. - those carons make it look too fussy