Polish and Hungarian, how similar?

A, yes, people on the border would tend to understand each other - easier to get along, servive and trade - as well as deal with the law, bureaucracy, nobility, et c. When writing about the Romany of that region, during the mid 19th c., George Barrows used the term Wallachian for what looked more like Hungarian with a good mix of Polish, though tthis may have refered to the dialect of the local Gypsies, used, if so, along with their native Romany. The spelling was rather attrocious : not Polish, German, magyar or Russian, but all of the above plus maybe French ....

He could mix facts or misinterpret but there were Vlachs in Slovakia and Poland of Romanian origin ie. from Walachia. They migrated in search of new pasturages in late medieval period.

Vlachs (Wołosi in Polish) wandered along Carpatian ridge to former Poland, Hungary and even as far as to Moravia and got place to live, when villages in mountain regions emptied due to climate change and exhaustion of soils. Vlachs were granted with autonomy under the Ius Vlachonicum (Walachian Law, Prawo Wołoskie), professed Orthodox faith and spoke eastern slavonic dialects Ruthenian, which they caught during their long journey, however with many borrowed words from Romanian.

Vlachs are also numerous in the Balkans (Yugoslavia, Greece, Macedonia etc). Probably a lot spoke Slavic languages as well as Aromanian (as I believe it is called).

I have a friend in Macedonia who speaks Vlach (Aromanian) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aromanian

I saw reference to aromanian in omniglot ; I did not know ruthenian had it's own dialect, probably what Barrows meant. In the 19th c. Wallachian would be considered correct. Anyway, Pauli can use Slovak, Ruthenian or Aromanian.

There were Hucułs, Bojkos, £emkos and Szlachtowa Ruthenians on the Polish side of Carpatian ridge and Rusnaki on the Hungarian (Slovakian) side.

It was a dialectal continuum from the South-East (more Eastern Slavonic and Rumanian elements) to the West (more Western Slavonic, Hungarian, German elements, while still with East-Slavonic core).

They were always called Rusini/Rusnaki since many of them didn't undergo to Ukrainian national identity. They even preferred to go in closer ties with Moscow and apostate Greek-Orthodox denomination to Moscow Orthodox - only to protect their own way of live.

Ironically, after WW1 Polish ethnologists undertook research which showed these groups spoke a dialect of Polish, and so were Polish. After WW2, with Akcja Wisła, they had suddenly started speaking a dialect of Ukrainian!

My ex is Hungarian, didnt understand Polish..

The End.

No sane scientist could say they were speaking Polish dialect. What the ethnologist tried to do was to diminish that very fact and expose other cultural aspects as more important. And some aspects were indeed of Polish or Slovakian origin as the substratum and adstratum of £emko culture.

But there were also some nationalist politicians who wanted to protect £emkos from Ukrainian nationalist propaganda. However what they say, I think, isn't so important scientifically.

2 facts you put together don't fit together. The pretext for expulsion of £emkos was that they give shelter and support to UPA rebels, what wasn't generally true.

It was sad and unjust for £emkos.

Granted. The whole thing was an exercise in Nation Building. That's why I stress the irony of it.

No, completely on the wrong track. While she can learn to write down the Hungarian phrases, she won't be able to pronounce them correctly. Like the most basic greeting is Szia!, but Hungarians pronounce "sz" az the english "s", why polish pronounce "sz" as in english the "sh". I'm sure there are other differences as well.

a little but barley. here are to similarities i can think of..

hungarian-cabbage-káposzta
polish-cabbage-kapusta pronunciation is verry similer
with those two words and hungarian-sausage-kolbász
polish-sausage-kielbasa part of each word is in each other. pronunciatina pretty simaler for that word too.
estonian-cabbage-kapsas not verry simaler just first part. finnish-kaali - not simmiler at ALL just in the begining. estonian-sausage-vorst-like german not verry simaler at all. finnish-makkara-not simaler at all.

Finnish estonian and hungarian are fenno-urgic languages,
that means they are asiatic languages. But some hungarian is like finnish or estonian. hungarian is more of a slovak language to me because some words are simmaler. Hungarian is it's own language. It's like a micsture of all slovak and fenno-urgic languages.

“A mixture of Slavic and Finno-Ugric”, you mean.
No, it’s not.

Essentially, Hungarians CAN'T understand any group other than their own. It's NOT as with Spanish or Italian, Norwegian and Danish, Dutch and German, even Polish and Czech; Hungarian is officially termed a "language isolate", almost like Basque, Georgian and a few remaining others.

NO, a Hungarian cannot converse in his/her native language with a Finn or an Estonian, even a Khanti and Mansi speaker as well as vice versa. A Finn on the other hand CAN undertstand a conversation in Estonian, I've observed, only it's tough for them to chime in-:)

Polish and Hungarian not similar at all but cuz of centuries of neighborhood some words are nearly the same and pronunciation is similar too.

Your story would be unrealistic with the person who understand POL&HUN.

p.s.: some similarities in vocabulary

malina málna
szynka sonka
próba próba
klucz kulcs
sól só
bratanki barát
brat bátty
kapusta káposzta
olej olaj
cukier cukor
ocet ecet
francja francia
francja elegancja francia elegancia
holender holland
tancerz táncos
tanczyć tánc
papuć papucs
gratulacje gratuláció
drogi/a/ie drága
suka szuka
czereśnie cseresznye
mak mák
hymn himnusz
pomarańcza narancs
szkoła iskola
ryź rizs
kasa kása
deska deszka
kosz kosár
juhas juhász

...
regards

When I studied Polish at the Univesity of Toledo many years ago, this very question came up. The teacher, Marian Wojciechowski, stated that Polish is a Slavic tongue, Hungarian is not.

Not Really, But a little. I know both languages and a polish or hungarian person can probably understand a couple words what they are saying.

that couple of words are: 1. kapusta 2. ocet ;)

3. papryka ;)

Maybe the person knew Hungarian AND Polish? That wasn't rare right? Especially having connections from both countries

Hi,

a suggestion that can make you books back story completely valid. I am from a small Hungarian town Bekescsaba (Békéscsaba). Located near the Romaian border, so at least 150-200 kms away from Slovakia. Yet every street sign is written in Hungarian and Slovakian and there is a very strong "Tot" culture ( Tot or toth, is the name for slovaks living in Hungary). The reason for this is that in the beginnning of the 18th Century black plague completely wiped out the region thus people were offered tax free living and land from other areas of the Habsburg empire to move there, as its is a very fertile agricultural area.

My parnets moved there from elsewhere but all my friends parrents and grand parents who are from there speak "Tot" language that is very similar to current Slovakian. An other similar town is Szarvas, 45 km from Bekescsaba, that has even stronger connections to its Slovak ancestry. When my parrents moved there in the 70s they said that some older people could only speak Tot and some very bad Hungarian... they simply didnt need Hungarian. So your language background can stand on very strong basis. In both places there are kindergartens and primary schools that teach kids in both languages even now. So this way you may enforce your Polish connecetion easily. For instance that the girls ancestors moved from Slovak reagion to Poland and some distant relaives moved to those cities in Hungary. The languages are similar anyway.

This strong connection to other countries is not unique anywhere in Europe and I reccommned you research it. The reasons are normally the similar: plague, war, forced ethnic migration (jews, romani etc) Probably you will find it under Habsburg forced migration.. or sthing like that. as it was a Habsburg Empire previously (Poland probably not as far as I remember but the migrations is still possible).

+ my wife is Bulgarian. She understands croatian, serbian, macedonian, czech and slovak to a certain extent. Polish not really. So the similarities can be associated between other languages as well unless you want to make it a story about a person with Polish origin.

good luck

Regardless of what many people on this thread seem to think, there's some undeniable similarities in basic historical words that go to show how close the Poles were to Hungarians during history.

For example:
király - król - king
péntek - piątek - friday
ebéd - obiad - lunch
szablya - szabla - sword/cutlass

Or some hungarians words seem like prolonged versions of Polish words and vice versa like
palacsinta - placek - pancake
pok - pająk - spider

Polish is a fusional language, while Hungarian is an agglutinative language. Grammar is completely different. No similarity between the two languages at all, except for a few common words.

Correct, SpaceCadet!

Nonetheless from a purely linguistic perspective, both Polish and Hungarian (compared with Modern, not Old English) are synthetic as opposed to analytic languages, evidenced in their use of morphological inflections to register relationships rather than applying already existing words, e.g. Pol. Jestem na wŚI. > wieś [spelling change registers case morphology] = Hung. WidekBEN [post- vs. prepositional signal of case change] = Engl. I am IN THE country. [zero change of any forms, relationship signaled instead by the preposition "in" + definite article "the", neither of which mutate form, including the noun "country"]