How similar are Polish and Romanian languages?

I ask this because my hair-stylist owns a salon with her dad, both of them often talk to each other in Romanian...I swear that I can understand them sometimes, like some words in Romanian overlap with Polish...is that true, or is it just my imagination?

It is possible you could notice some similarities, because the romanian language had been influenced by surrounding slavic languages over many centuries. For example the romanian word "razboi" means "war", whereas in polish the word "rozbój" means "robbery". There are quite a few words of slavic origin in romanian, however by and large it remains quite unintelligible for Poles (probably other Slavs too) as it is a romance language.

Both nations like to drink blood. Seriously.

Polish drink it with vodka.

Not much. I recognise a few archaic (now) words from Polish, but not that many.
Ulica - is the first word I came in contact that is in my language as well (for example), but in my language is almost archaic by now, remotely met in villages and it means village road - not street.

And a few other words, due to the interaction between our countries in middle ages, and later from the slavic influence that came through russian language during communism, but not significantly.

You might also understand a few words, not from having them in the Polish language, but from being universaly almost the same in romance languages, and thus being familiar with them through latin perhaps.

perhaps that's it..I do have familiarity with Latin, as well as Spanish and French..

They always find ways to steal money

They are fairly different.

Romanian is a Romance language; Polish is a slavic language.

r u moors still cutting off hands for those offences?

I love Romania.... so unspoiled and wild in many ways.... :-). I remember 2 years ago me and my friend were shocked to see how interesting Romania was compared to boring and totally orderly Hungary :-). Romania will be a hit... give it a few years and a few bln $$$ :-)

The countryside, the mountains, the beaches... It's nice.

Salaries are low, they're overhauling the legal system as well. Things are starting to look good for FDI. Now if they could just sort out that whole infrastructure thing...

My favourite "false friend" is romanian "dupa", in polish language "dupa" mean "ass".
Romanian word "dupa" is equivalent of polish word "za". For example romanian "dupa mine" mean in polish "za mną" (follow me).

I know a Romanian girl here, and she said Romanian is a Latin language with many Slavic words.

Yes, I heard that typical Romanian will understand more French, Italian, Spanish guys, opposite to them, becouse romanian lanugage sound for them more like slavic language,

Yep, Romanians who moved to Spain or Italy after they joined the European Union to work, have it much easier learning the languages than Polish people.

Very few similarities as Polish is a Slavic language whereas Romanian belongs to the Romance family of languages. However, with the internet and the multi-cultural society many words are nowadays fairly similar. Also most languages have borrowed Latin (especially Romance languages) and Greek words into their vocabulary.

As has been posted before, Polish is Slavic while Romanian is Romantic.

My best friend is from Romania and we shared a flat last year until he moved to Bydgoszcz. His father, brother and sister in law visited a couple of years ago. I waled into the kitchen where they were having a discussion in Romanian. I studied Latin for two years, I speak French and some Italian, and within five minutes I could understand almost everything they said. That's just not possible with Polish unless you speak another Slavic language.

The two languages are completely different.

You really have to be smashed up and FUBAR - to ask this question.

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I ask this because my hair-stylist owns a salon with her dad, both of them often talk to each other in Romanian...I swear that I can understand them sometimes, like some words in Romanian overlap with Polish...is that true, or is it just my imagination?

Polish and Romanian languages are not similar at all - they belong to two different linguistic groups, namely Slavic and Romance languages respectively - big (BIG, VERY BIG) difference.

it is your imagination. Don't worry about it, sometimes I swear to christ that some german dialects sound french to me:/

How similar?

put it this way I have been there a few times on business and although I speak good Polish, I could not understand a bloomin word

having said that, there are linguists who talk about the similarities between Finnish and Hungarian
try putting a Finn and a Hungarian in a room together and you will find that these similarities are largely academic

Poland and Romania shared a common border before 1939. Many people are not aware of that fact.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavic_superstratum_in_Romanian

Romanian is full of Slavic borrowings - there were even more but some were later replaced by borrowings from French and Latin

it's worth to note the the word vampire that came to English from Romanian is actually of Slavic origin - it is congate with contemporary Polish nameupiór ( and more recongizeably with Old Polish wąpiór or wąpierz)

Im Romanian and my boyfriend is Polish...
NO COMPARISON, romanian is latin with very small percentage as Polish!

I speak polish and i have a romanian friend. Yes romanian is quiet similar to polish.
examples
curvá - kurwa
ce - co
leu - lew
masina - maszyna
păianjen - pajak
and lots lots more

if anyone wants to learn romanian language, i can teach him.

No, it isn't. There are a lot of French words in English but that doesn't make them similar. If you think it does, you're sadly mistaken.

If you had read this thread from the beginning, you would know that the two languages come from completely different language families and are completely dissimilar.

Romanian was once a strange beast with overwhelmingly own Latin-inherited grammar it head more than 60 per cent of lexis coming from Slavic languages - it was actually sort of a hybrid language - the thing is after Romanian revival of the 19th century scores of those Slavic lexis has been deliberately changed to Latin or French borrowed words that have been more or less adjusted to suit Romananian phonology and morphology, most of these words had no previous history in Romanian language so were actually aritificial because they already had words for a lot of these notions (but these were Slavic in origin) - but at the moment it is exactly the Slavic parts of their language heritage that looks strange to them (although it developed naturally) - it is actually no wonder when you consider plenty of Czech language has been reconstructed or actually created in the 18th century or how the Hebrew language has been resurrected as a living language in Israel (and they both seem so natural to their speakers)

Maybe some Paddy can explain why the Israelis succeeded where the Irish failed to turn Gaelic into a living, main language. Lack of determination, national pride or what?

Gaelic is a living language. It is also an offical language in Eire, used in education and government.

Israel had the situation where there were many people coming into the country who spoke different languages and needed a lingua franca. As many/most Jews would speak some Hebrew because of its use as a ritual language then it probably wasn't too hard to start using it as a day to day and administerial language. gaelic, on the other hand, was/is competing with English which the vast majority of Irish already spoke in some degree. Also, many Irish spoke no Gaelic at all so it was harder to make whole generations suddenly start speaking it when they could already communicate with other Irish people in English.

Couple this with the probable (?) lack of interest in Gaelic following the years of degredation/persecution under british rule, leading to it being considered a rural peasant language and something to be ashamed of.

(and I'm not irish).