Which language is easier for Poles?

Maybe I can't write in Czech.And yes, Czech does sound funny to me but I don't lough AT them,I lough WITH them.

Lough? Krk is Krakow's airport probably. Known to Poles :)

Yup, Czechs know Polish better than the other way around. The Poles are not that strong generally when it comes to other Slavic languages.

Laugh.Happy now?

Ukrainian. Seems closest. And they have a sweet way of pronouncing their l/ł's.
Oh, wait, did I say sweet? I meant the most attrocious.

Interesting :) I couldn't ever understand why in Polish one uses £ if there is W. For instance:
£opata sounds like Wopata. You either have L or W - why mix their sounds up? ;)

You're thinking in English, Nathan. In Polish "w" is always pronounced as English "v", so writing wopata would make no sense.

Nathan, do you pronounce £ as L? I know that Poles based in Lithuania pronounce it that way. She kept saying ladny instead of ładny. It's this way in the east of Poland too, I think.

it's called "dark L"

Actually, this is Ukrainian thinking ;) We have sounds similar to L and V, but not £, which for me (I am not a linguist) is a mixture of two or even better to English W.


I try to pronounce it correctly, but it sounds a bit funny to me, as if I am not able to pronounce "L".


You know, Seanus, when I read this, I realized that is exactly how I say it :)

I really think this is the key. My Polish is still rather basic but I enjoy watching Czech and Russian (and even Serbian) films to pick up the similarities. It makes me think about the language system and rules, and then you realise that a lot of the differences are systematic and a lot of Czech and Russian is highly intelligible. My wife often doesn't need to subtitles, and thats mostly just familiarity rather than systematic learning.

I am sure that Poles in Czeszyn and Czechs in Cesky Tesin communicate without dictionary.Western Ukrainians virtually understand polish for example the ones doing business in the borders.

Spoke a little bit of Polish to a Ukrainian woman who was visiting New York the other day and she understood everything I said, yet couldn't respond in Polish. I understood her Ukrainian, yet was equally tongue-tied to say anything back in Ukrainian. She said she was from Kh'iiv, by the way-:)