Polish or any Slavic language key to any other Slavic languages?

I love these tales about the intelligibility of Russian to a Polish person. I am Polish and I can assure you, I can't understand Russian. I think that most people who do just learned some Russian at school.

It's very individual. Plus it strongly depends on many factors such as person who you talk to, your own perception of the language etc.

<applauds>

and isn't it dahovy obsranec, anyway?

And let's end the "Polish is mutually intelligible with Czech" myth right now. It may be to some extent, but only to some extent. If not, then good luck trying to get some musztarda (hořèice) to go with your šunka, or ordering some herbaty (èaje) because your group didn't want kávy ;)

i heard that in Czech a squirrel is drevnyj kocur ;D

Drevny kocur :)

hehe, it's actually quite close to Polish - veverka ;)

Chinese for English speakers is possibly funnier though - one wonders whether names like Lee Ho Fook, Mong Kok and Ming Kok are serious.

Until you go to Ikea and see KRÅPP toilet seats, haha.

Having studied some Macedonian before I came to Poland I found some vocab was easier to learn/understand BUT there were also a lot of "false friends".

Example "utro" in Macedonian is "morning". "Godina" is "year". When I started with polish I kept these mixing up with "jutro" and "godzina". People got a bit puzzled when they asked me how long I'd lived in Poland and I said "jedna godzina", or being asked when I had arrived somewhere, I'd answer "jutro".

lol :)

The Czech for "on the toilet" sounds a bit like "in the West" in Polish. Strangely accurate, considering what a dump the UK has become, haha.

You could compare language families to types of key. Imagine that the Germanic languages are Chub keys and Slavic languages are Yale keys. The Slavic Yale keys will fit into the other Yale locks, but won't turn very far. English is a Chubb key which has been worn into the shape of one of those funny round keys often used for patio doors, the name of which temporarily escapes me. A small number of features of both of these other types of key can be found to varying degrees in the various Yale keys, but they still won't actually fit into any other locks than the ones for which they were designed.

When I first met Poles I tried to speak czech to them and they were always amused or laughed.I did not understand why.Then I started changing the czech words to sound more like polish for example saying mysle instead of myslim and the Poles started to understand.By this way changing of the endings you can get a 50% of communication.

I was astonshed to find out that in Karlovy Vary Czechs spoke czech and Russians answered in russian and both understood each other very well.This leads to conclusion that when communication is actually wished for financial reasons then both parts forget nationalism,do not seek interpreters and start talking mutually intelligible.

and how did you figure that out...?

Lessons in Polish from Tirowki?

I started to read some polish texts and the roots of many words are similar to czech.Many roots remain the same in russian.
With Serbs I cannot communicate at all when I speak russian or czech,they do not understand any word,but Bulgarians understand russian pretty well.

Ukrainians from west Ukraine can easily speak polish although they sometimes use peculiar words but Poles are O.K. with that.
Slovaks can understand czech and polish.Czechs from northern Moravia can also understand polish.Czechs say they can understand some serbo-croatian when they try hard and many Croats understand czech.

After nearly two years, have you found the time? Or have I left it too late?

Why do you say they're *false friends"? Does "utro" mean some different thing in Polish?

something similar to Russian 'rano utro' means tomorrow morning in Polish ('jutro rano')

and both rano and (j)utro have different meaning in Polish and Russian

the meaning of 'utro' shifted in Polish and retained it's original value in Russian and Macedonian

it shifted same wise in Czech and guess also Slovak 'zitra' = tomorrow - comes from 'utro'

btw tomorrow also developed from 'morning' as did morgen (morgen am Morgen)

'(j)utro' btw comes from the same root as latin 'austral'

One of the weirdest differences I've found in cross-linguistic vocabulary is Slovene 'beseda' = word, whereas in every other Slavic language, it's some variant of 'slowo' (Russ.), 'słowo' (Polish), 'slovo' (Croatian) etc...

It must have migrated into Slovene from some neighboring tongue-:)

In Russian 'Katorij chyas?' means 'What time is it? In Polish, 'Która jest godzina?'
'Chyas' means 'hour' in Russian, but 'time' in Polish (generically of course, not a specific 'time'/moment), for which Russian uses generically 'vremya'-:) The latter though, seems to have no phonological equivalent in Polish!

'Godzina' in Russian? Still puzzling that one out. LOL

My mum speaks Russian but no Czech, whereas I speak Czech but no Russian... so she often smiles at the "Russian" words I apparently know :) so I wouldn't be surprised if "godzina" in Russian was something like "hodiniya" or something :D

Kolik je hodin? in Czech or Koľko je hodín? in Slovak are possibly the closest Slavic equivalents to która jest godzina? in Polish, but I only know West Slavic languages, so what do I know ;)

So is in Czech I guess. Some like "cas". "c" with a "cap" above...


"God" is a "year" in Russian. "Ja sam ** godina" in Serbian is "I'm ** years old".

No,the Russians tend to pronounce h as g.For example Gitler instead of Hitler.Gamburger instead of hamburger.The Poles sometimes use g.For example godzina instead of hodina in czech.Czech:Hlava.Russian:Glava.Polish:Glowa.The Poles change the a to o because the w follows.

Russian has always more vocals.For example:Russian:Chatsiu priechat.(I want to come).In czech becomes syncopated:Chci prijet.In polish you change the ending to e and add one syllabe.However prijet does not sound good in polish.You keep the russian form:Chcie przyjechac.

Interesting responses as always! Thanks you guys:-)))))

My first language is Russian and I understand a lot of Ukrainian. I tried to read and listen to Slovakian and it wasn't a big problem also.

I think that the knowledge of Slovakian is probably the most valuble for understanding other languages. Alternatively it's the knowledge of the two exremities i.e. Czech and Russian :)

I don't think that the border between West and East groups is so sharp that West Ukrainian is not mutually intelligible with East Slovakian or Polish. The will is the key to understanding in this case.

Here is the link to another similar topic (in Russian)
Какой из славянских языков самый славянский
lingvoforum.net/index.php?topic=328.0

Yes, but it used to have the exact form wrzemię in 13th century. However 100 years later was completely unknown and misinterpreted.

For example in Holy Cross Sermons.
K niemuż gdaż człowiek grzeszny rozpamię[taję grzechy z]stąpi, to czu sam siebie wspomienie, z tajnego sirca [strumienie gor]zkich słez za grzechy wylije i to uznaje, kiegdy sgrzeszył, w kakie wrzemię sgrzeszył, kilkokroć sgrzeszył, którymi grzechy twórca swego na gniew powabił; a jakokoli to grzeszny człowiek uczyni, tako nagle sirce jego jemu doradzi, iżby grzecha ostał, swojich grzechów sirdecznie żałował i [z] świętą cyrekwią dzińsia zawołał: Veni, Domine! et noli tardare; relaxa facinora plebi tue Israel! Toć to i jeść prawda, iże idzie tobie kroi zbawiciel, iżby nas ot wieczne śmirci zbawił.


Funny question. And what is the most Germanic language?

Sure, it sounds funny. I think, the meaning is "Which Slavic language has most in common with others".


It's said to be Low German but I can't confirm it in anyway.

What do you mean by "most Germanic"???

The same as with the Slavic languages, i.e. "The one, that has most in common with the other languages". The Hanseatic League was mentioned as the reason for spreading of Low German among other languages, I recall.

But it's offtopic and I don't know if it was really so.

Yes, it was true. There are many borrowings from Low Saxon in Danish, Swedish and Polish, maybe some in English and Flemish. But it was in XII-XIV century and only in limited region.

Might have a latin/french root.


There's also the argument that it is a political thing, declaring Scots a 'dialect' rather than a 'language' somehow diminishes it and puts in under English. It's the old "the difference between a language and a dialect; a language is a dialect with a bigger army".

When I was at Glasgow Uni one lad became the first person in the uni's history to write his degree totally in Scots (apart from the papers he wrote in Gaelic). However, this was only made possible by agreeing to consider Scots as a 'variety of English'.

It's important to consider that up until the printing press each area of England and Scotland used it's own regional dialect. With the printing revolution it became more important to use just one main variety, which ended up being the Oxford dialect.

I can confirm that Polish pronunciation is close to childish Slovak or Czech. In general, children's pronunciation is somehow "softer'' and less clear, what is similiar to Polish accent. E.g. it is difficult to say "L" for little children , so it sounds more like Polish "£". It is also difficult to say "S" clearly, so it sounds more like Polish "Ś" (something between SK/CZ "S" and "Š"). The same applies also for some other cosonants.

Crow, please step up to the plate. Please show us how similar Serbian is. I was told by my tour guide that Serbian is harder than its Croatian counterpart. It would make Croatian like Czech and Serbian like Polish.

That is ONE language according to not politically correct linguists in both countries. They have more than 80 or 90 % of shared lexical fund , so...tourist guide was not informed well.

A woman tried to present her PhD thesis proving that fact few years ago in Zagreb, she was publicly humiliated for having such a blasphemous idea (but I think she proved her point).

Small differences that exist are in the direction tourist guide said. It's sounding sharper (serbian).

I was listening to Polish and I didn't understand a lot. I think I heard word osa (wasp in serbian, in Polish also?)
Maybe it's just me.