Are the languages of Russian and Polish similar at all?

I think polish,russian and czech sound very pleasant to the ear.

yes , in club stood near to the speakers

I studied Russian about a decade ago, and it was very useful in Poland.

No, I didn't quite speak it, because I didn't want to be drawn into silly nationalistic debates, but I was able to understand every interesting thing that the locals were saying behind me.

Example:

"Oh! There's a Chinaman!"
"Careful. He might eat your dog!"

Well. Ten years of learning Mancunian was quite helpful when I was throwing some verbal abuses back.

It means only you are not in position to compare Russian and Polish.
We share only about 60% of vocabulary with Ruskies (75% with Slovaks) but similarity of grammatical structures is really striking.
So any "easier versus harder" classification does not make any sense.

I think we should go more to what I might describe as 'understandableness' rather than direct similarities. Mentality plays a part too. Many older Poles can easily access Russian humour. Just 3 days ago, there were jokes in Russian going around the table, being told by Poles. There was one about a train stopover and vodka which I found pretty funny. I needed the Polish translation as I only caught those words which have a closeness to Polish (even then, there are false friends like forget/remember between Russian/Polish).

To wit, and example of "Ukrainian peasant" humor (...but in English, not Polish!)

Oleg: 'Morning, Grisha! Hey, nice cow! A new one?
Grisha: Yeah, just bought it yesterday. You haven't been here for a while-:)
Oleg: Tell me, the new cow, is it from Odessa, by any chance?
Grisha: Yes, how did you guess?
Oleg: 'Cuz me wife, she's also from Odessa!

))))))

Polish and Russian have the same frequencies (if you analyse their spectra without looking at individual words, they are identical: that does not mean much in itself because that happens also with two uncorrelated languages such as Spanish and Greek). I speak Russian and right now I am in Poland and can understand quite a few things (I can even read newspapers!). Czech is also close to Polish, but I think to a lesser degree than Russian.

Table of languages significantly similar to Russian

how-to-learn-any-language.com/e/languages/similarities/russian/index.html

according to this source French is similar to English in 40%...

and French resembles Italian in 85%!!!

actually French and English are mostly based on Latin so it could be true.

well yes. But can you understand French knowing only English?

I had the same problem with:

smrad (very bad smell in Russian)

von' (vonya) (bad smell, but not as bad as "smrad", in Russian)

zapah (smell - neutral, could be bad or good)

They interchange in different Slavic languages!!

Also, urod/uroda - means pretty in some ugly in others. Opposite!


Uh, dude... there are never Olegs in Odessa stories. It really doesn't not fit, if you know what I mean.

maybe 40% is a little high but English is full of French originating words,they have just changed from the origional over the last 8 hundred years.


You can certainly fill in a few blanks,but I was taught french at school so I dont really know how much is educated guess and how much is from distant memory of dull lessons.

But as far as English is concerned you could say that for any western european(and many east asian/arabic) language . Over history English evolved from something very few of us could understand now into a rich language that canibalised other languages,but in most cases not enough words to help the other way round...

Ive said it before though,the fact Id learnt a bit of russian long before I ever got to Poland was an advantage if in nothing more than so many words being more or less the same,numbers etc(ok,jeden and adeen,and ench not ts at the end of 5), But I did often find that words I thought sounded more or less the same left people baffled if I happened to say them in a more russian accent. Ive said this before too,often I think Poles dont understand similar words in other slavic language due to the relative lack of local accents within Poland,compared say to the literaly hundreds if not thousands of accents an English speaker has to adjust their ears too. I have no problems understanding a Kiwi or an american from the deep south even though the way they pronounce most english words are far more different to my accent than a lot of the Polish/Russian same words.

Oh, I do soooo know what you mean-:)))

By the way, 'smród' in Polish also means nothing other than a stench or really bad smell!

smród in Polish same meaning


zapach in Polish same pronunciation and meaning


beauty in Polish, ugly in Russian
strana country in Russian, strona page in Polish
zazhigalka lighter in Russian, zarzygalka girl who throws up/someone who pukes in Polish lol

tydzień = day in Russian?

I think 'tydzień' has either a false or true friend equivalent in Czech as well as in Ukrainian, but I'm not sure. It's sole meaning in Polish of course is 'week'.

denʹ like Polish dzien
tydzień- nedelyu

Actually, it's still the same word (the basic meaning is the same) - well, sort of. In Russian it still has an underlying meaning of something flat, a side (of something), or something spread out and flat, so in that sense you can see the connection with the Polish word.

specifically for a book, it's "stranica"
specifically for a side, it's "storona" (here and "o" was inserted, as is often done, for example grad=gorod)

It's fascinating!


what is the meaning of "zazhigat' " in Polish?

yes Polish strona also means side


to throw up on/vomit on
There are tons of the same or similar words
Ponedelʹnik in Russian Poniedzialek in Polish
samolet in Russian samolot in Polish
można in Polish mozna/mozhet in Russian
morze in Polish more in Russian
noc in Polish noch in Russian
chleb in Polish hleb in Russian
czlowiek in Polish chelovek in Russian
uszy in Polish ushi in Russian and many many more...

oh niedziela means tydzień ;)


But still when I watch ORT I can't understand anything... ;)

yea, Voskresenʹe means Sunday


When I first started hanging out with my Russian friends i didn't understand much, you gotta sort of get past the accent, get into it, think of yourself speaking with that accent and how Polish words would sound with it, it should help you understand once you do that you'll realize that Russian is similar.

Yes the word URODA caused some amusement among my Russian girlfriends workmates when they discovered a Polish beauty magazine with the word UGLY written across the top...!

zarzygalka - no such word in Polish


How's that possible from what I remember:

Polish uroda means beauty or charm in English and krasa or krasota in Russian.

does the (correct) word contain "ryg" in the middle?
I am trying to find a similar in meaning word from Russian. I guess there's "rygat'/otrygivat'", which means "to barf".

Russians wiill tell you it's the same but with different endings?

rzygać in Polish means to puke
rzygi in Polish mean the things you had puked
obrzygany in Polish means that someone puked on you so you are obrzygany
zarzygany means that you puked on yourself or someone puked on you

simple? ;DDD

1. (Russian понедельник (poniediélnik),
Bulgarian понеделник (ponedelnik),
Polish poniedzialek,
Czech "pondělí"

Common to all slavic languages since the times of two saint brothers: Cyril and Methodius. Saint Cyril and Methodius's work in Moravia became the foundation of Slavic civilization in eastern and south-eastern Europe.

2. Slavic languages samolot/samolet for airplane represent a clear-cut case of loan-translation. Other slavic languages have other words, eg. in Serbo-Croat an airplane is called avion: a loan-shift (Latin, avis, aviarium), the same as in French.

3 mozna/mozhet

One of many words common for all slavic languages. Words of the same origin in other, non-slavic languages:

- magan - Gothic, Old High German, Old Saxon and Old English languages;
- may - English;
- mogen - Dutch;
- mögen - German;
- må - Swedish.

4 morze/more - an "originary word":

O.E. mere "sea, lake, pool, pond," from P.Gmc. *mari (cf. O.N. marr, O.S. meri "sea," Du. meer "lake," O.H.G. mari, Ger. Meer "sea," Goth. marei "sea," mari-saiws "lake"), from PIE *mori-/*mari "sea" (cf. L. mare, O.C.S. morje, Rus. more, Lith. mares, O.Ir. muir, Welsh mor "sea," Gaulish Are-morici "people living near the sea").

5. noc/noch - - an "originary word":

O.E. niht (W.Saxon neaht, Anglian næht, neht), the vowel indicating that the modern word derives from oblique cases (gen. nihte, dat. niht), from P.Gmc. *nakht- (cf. O.H.G. naht, O.Fris., Du., Ger. nacht, O.N. natt, Goth. nahts), from PIE *nok(w)t- (cf. Gk. nuks "a night," L. nox, O.Ir. nochd, Skt. naktam "at night," Lith. naktis "night," O.C.S. nosti, Rus. noch', Welsh henoid "tonight").

6. chleb/hleb

Common for slavic and german languages (present-day word brot/bread is later):
- Gothic - hlaifs
- Old Norse - hleifr
- Old English - hlaf
- Old High German - hleip
- German - leib
- English - loaf

The old English hlaf is present in today's word lord, originaly hlafweard, i.e., "one who guards the loaves," from hlaf "bread, loaf" + weard "keeper, guardian, ward."

7. czlowiek/chelovek - a word common for all slavic languages.

Probably a composite word *kil-o-woik-o-s - adult, being of mature age, of whole age. Source: Bańkowski etymological dictionaray.

8. uszy/ushi "originary word":

"organ of hearing," O.E. eare "ear," from P.Gmc. *auzon (cf. O.N. eyra, Dan. øre, O.Fris. are, O.S. ore, M.Du. ore, Du. oor, O.H.G. ora, Ger. Ohr, Goth. auso), from PIE *ous- with a sense of "perception" (cf. Gk. aus, L. auris, Lith. ausis, O.C.S. ucho, O.Ir. au "ear," Avestan usi "the two ears").

Impressive, AdamKadmon! Only mistake I've found (not that I was necessarily looking for anyLOL), is 'maegen' for German 'moegen', you wrote an umlaut-a, rather than umlaut-o. Other than that, I found this, as with many of your posts, quite informative, I must say-:))

Look! There is no mistake.