Which is harder: Pole learning Russian or Russian learning Polish language?

Didn't Japan borrow it's alphabet from China? Why doesn't Japan use the latin alphabet? Wouldn't 26 letters be easier than 2000?

Isn't Russian harder than Polish due to Cyrillic alphabet?

...13 different simple past forms in Polish versus 4 in Russian ? That's very intriguing ... would you like to dvelop on this?

While I never counted to 13, just compare the following:

pol. ja szedłem rus. ja shoł
ty szedłeś ty shoł
on szedł on shoł

of course, this transliteration of cyrillic is simplified.

ja szoł, ty szoł, on szoł ... that reminds me of a once very known song in Poland:
А я иду, шагаю по Москве.

Well, China was our nearest and the only neighbour which already had developed the writing system in the eastern Asia as early as around 2nd century, so it was natural that we borrowed their system and we still didn't know there were other writing systems in other parts of the world ;)

Larning Cyrillic alphabet is is just like learning Latin alphabet, there are only 33 letters.


past tense of "go" in ru.
shol, shla, shlo, shli

past tense of "go" in pl.
szedłem, szłam, szedłeś, szłaś, szedł, szła, szło, szliśmy, szłyśmy, szliście, szłyście, szli, szły

Here is a wonderful and useful online dictionary of Polish, "Słownik odmiany wyrazów(dictionary of expression types)" which helps you find all the possible verb changes and noun reflections, plus the words derived from the verbs and nouns.

For example, you can type "chodzić" and search. You will find many word options derived from this one word. It's really fun!! ;)

teksty-piosenek.com.pl/odmiana

My God! I have never realised that I have been using all these forms in everyday life. In true fact, I was quite unaware that there were so many of them. I was like Monsieur Jourdain from the Molière's comedy theatre play Le Bourgeois gentilhomme who for years had not even realised that he was speaking in prose.

This "wikibooks" page contains a jumpstart table of False Friends of the Slavist. From here you can select pages with False Friends for any pair of Slavic languages. For example, this is a page of False Friends of the Slavist/Russian-Polish,

en.wikibooks.org/wiki/False_Friends_of_the_Slavist/Russian-Polish

Zwodnicze słowa polskie i rosyjskie, Русско-польские ложные друзья переводчика. It consists of 137 such pairs, for example:

R. дворец => Pol. pałac 'palace'
Pol. dworzec => R. вокзал 'railway station'

R. диван => Pol. kanapa 'settee, sofa'
Pol. dywan => R. ковёр 'carpet'

They also present so-called semasiological maps for all such pairs. For example, the map for Turkish divan shows that only Polish and Belarusian languages use it in a carpet sense, Macedonian does not recognize it, and all other Slavic languages use it in a sofa sense. In addition this word has secondary meaning of a talk in the three South Slavic countries: Croatia, Bosnia-Hercegovina and Serbia.

What do this three words - carpet, sofa, talk - have in common? Well the Turkish "divan" translates to Polish as "rada, sobór", council in English. So this is the place where men sit down on something soft: a sofa or a carpet; and they talk.

^^
I forgot to attach the wiki links to divan-council and divan-furniture.

Nice post. Thanks!

.... not to mention even "po-/do-/przy-....szedł/szła/szli/szły......." ad infinitum:-) It just never seems to end LOL

On a slightly humorous note, guys, my first time in Holland aka The Netherlands aka Nederland, I met my female Dutch acquaintance who by chance also spoke German (but faulty English). Thinking myself as fluent in one as the other, I blithely said "Ik geloof, ik kom klaar met je collegas!" I thought I'd said "I think I'll get along fine with your co-workers!" Instead, I said "I think I'll have an orgasm.....", momentarily confusing in my mind German 'klarkommen' = to get along with vs. Dutch 'klaarkomen' = to have an orgasm.

Luckily, she got what I meant after she finally stopped chuckling over it several minutes later:-)
While not directly related to Polish vs, Russian, the situation was mildly analogous.
LOL

Actually once you learn russian,german becomes easier because the russian and german language are both heavy with Hs and Vs.Weird stuff u learn from dad.hehe.

lol :-)))))))

That's a perfect example of possible language misunderstanding. But knowing now that "klaar" in Dutch is "fertig" in German, I would very much hesitate before making such an association between "klarkommen" and "klaarkomen" as you did.

Generally, I think that a 'Pole learning Russian' may be equally frustrated as a 'Russian learning Polish'. The "moving" stress (accent) in Russian and differences in the declinations of nouns are quite a challenge for the Polish learner of Russian.

Luckily too, the Dutch-German false friends example which I gave, I knew long before I was in Holland:-) Of Polish-Czech errors I was unfortunately less aware when I went to Prague some years back and confused Polish "stały" with its false Czech cognate.....

........ought to add, I was aware of the distinction in meaning between "klaarkomen" vs. "klarkommen", I forgot it however at the moment my memory was most in needLOL

))))))

In Polish "zapach" means "smell" (neutral, I believe), whereas in Czech, the same word, same spelling and almost same pronunciation means exclusively "stench", i.e. BAD smell!

The first obstacle are the alphabets (probably a Russian will be more eager to learn Latin Alphabet, because one can use it for many languages, rather than vice versa...) The difficult thing about Russian is the INTONATION: there are no rules, you have to learn the intonation of every word by heart, (unless it's not marked in an exercise text); but the pronounciation of words is easier than in Polish, except maybe "o" which is pronounced "a", when standing in front of a stressed sylable (that's the rule if I'm not mistaken).

The problems in Polish are totally different: intonation is easy going (rule: always on second last syllable), but due to many extra letters it's difficult to pronounce. I think the knowledge of FRENCH is helpful for pronouncing Polish nasals: ą =on, ę = en etc., whereas "£" is same like English "W"! The soft Polish letters ć,ś,ź have Russian equivalents thanks to the use of a soft (or hard) sign in Russian (which are put behind the letter. Nevertheless, the pronounciations are different, especially the hard and soft Russian "L", which are softer than equivalent Polish L and £ (nevertheless, Polish are used to write hard Russian L as £, which is not exactly the same, but is a good possibility to recognize it!). OKay, that's it :-)

May be it's so, but strangely enough to hear from Russians confessions like this : "polish melodiousness surprises me very much". ( that is musical melodiousness )

batzbatz.com/prog/81721-moonrise-souls-inner-pendulum-2009.html&s a=U&ei=3kmPUs3jDoWL4ASa-YDYBQ&ved=0CAUQFjAA&client=internal-uds-c se&usg=AFQjCNHlOeDCh_kuRj_S4waNDdqmSLpcdg

but my mum often said 'zapaszki' after she found my socks stink hehe!

I've started learning Russian after getting to an intermediate level in Polish. The pronunciation is easier and there are less extreme consonant clusters and it also seems clearer. Russian seems more expressive and thus a little bit closer to English than Polish, which uses a lower range of pitch and the mouth seems more closed.

I began to study Russian privately after having studied Polish. Russian has one fewer cases, but I found the palatalized consonants in Russian nearly impossible to pronounce as a Russian native speaker would:-) The difference between f.ex. "brat" = to take vs. "brat" = brother is still difficult to distinguish, not to mention the problems I had saying a simple word such as 'dver' = door. I must have repeated the latter twenty times in succession, but my native-born Russian teacher kept telling me that it still didn't sound authentic. Same as for Japanese "r" vs. "l", I suppose.

Only putting in my two cents before:-) Not being either Polish or Russian, my input doubtless didn't count for terribly much.

Not being harsh here, Lyzko but I often read Your posts where You type in polish and 90% of times You make very serious errors that make your Polish barely understandable. Certainly You take your time with those and it requires a lot of consideration from You. I sincerely doubt Your Polish is anywhere close to be fluent. Both spoken and written.

On topic.

I am Polish and I don't understand Russian. Of course i can understand some of the words but often even those have different meaning. I'm familiar with the alphabet, though.

As is usually the case with foreign-born learners, my errors are predominantly aspectual in nature! Declensions? Well, sure! But then more or less comparable with any Pole of average to above-average intelligence learning English after slightly under four years (..with only ONE trip to the country).

:-)

Emil Sajfutdinow. Russian speedway rider (one of the best in the world) arrived to Poland 9 years ago.

Think his Polish is very close to be fluent :P

youtu.be/rAvfRqEJ2Vo

Sasza Loktaev arrived to Poland at the age of 11. He's Russian too and rides for my home club :)

youtu.be/kSUPe4GDPDk

And there's the rub: both SLAVIC native speakers! On the other hand, German for me as a native English speaker with a background in Latin, was almost a romp in the park:-)

Well yes but i have pasted it not to show You what fluent is but more because of the title of this thread :) It wasn't personal. :) Don't think them being SLAVIC helped them a lot. Both of them live and function in Poland for a decade and both of them came to Poland as young teenagers. Aleksandr Loktaev was 11 when he came to Zielona Góra. It's just people think knowing one slavic language is a big advantage in learning Polish. Maybe Cestina and Slovenscina but eastern slavic languages aren't a huge help in this. It's my opinion of course.


Speaking fluently is just this. Doesn't matter when one originates from. There's no division into "slavic native speaker fluency in Polish" and "non-slavic native speaker fluency in Polish". You either speak fluently or not. :)

The native speaker though, always has the advantage! German comes more naturally to me as a native Anglo-Saxon speaker of English.
Russian will come easier to you as a native Pole (..your English though, is not half bad, I have to admit!).

Thanx! It means a lot to me since I'm totally self-taught.


Should be "where" :)

I really struggle when Russian is spoken. It may be just me, though. A decade ago when I were still living in Poland i met that Slovakian lorry driver that delivered materials for the company i worked for. He's asked me in Slovenscina about the nearest corner shop he could buy rolls and a yoghurt. Regardless of how similar our languages are I didn't understand a thing (WTF is "obhod"? :) ). After coming to the UK I met a lot of Slovacs and started to notice how familiar their language is. Now by mixing Polish and Slovakian (both sides) we can talk about anything. As a side note: Don't know why people think about Czech language being the same level of similarity with Slovakian. Czech is waaaaay more difficult to understand for me.


I was! Dammit! :D