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

Well, to me Serbo-Croatian is one language. Serbians just have stronger pronunciation.

Osa is wasp, yes. Pszczoła is bee.

Pèela, I guess it sounds similar ;)

Or in SK, CZ: vèela.
Most of these differences between slavic languages are predictable and relatively well described e.g. in this old book zlatyfond.sme.sk/dielo/1246/Safarik_Slovansky-narodopis.

A Russian office mate of mine once told me that Polish simply sounds like old-fashioned or stilted, i.e. literary, Russian-:))

I speak Polish fluently and I am now a second year Russian language student. It helps a lot at first sight and also grammar will be easier for you to learn since the manner of learning is the same for all Slavic-languages. So for example with Russian you will have a advantage, I guess for Czech and Ukrainian also - these languages are more alike Polish than Russian.

Kowalski87

Did you have some problems with mixing those shared characters which are referring to different consonants in Cyrillic alphabet?

да ли ме разумеш када ти причам на српском, интересује ме пошто знаш и пољски и руски да ли ти то помаже да боље разумеш српски?

поздрав!

It's good knowing Polish if you wanna learn Czech, Ukrainian, Slovak.

It's not sad, it's a fact of life. Those who live "v selo" speak Ukrainian, and those who live in a city, speak Russian. That's how it always was, even before the Soviets.

In the Western part, the more educated Ukrainians spoke Polish back in the day.

But it always was assumed that speaking Ukrainian means "selo". It was taught (mandatory) in schools, but you know how that goes... I don't speak Ukrainian (OK, I speak, but very very badly) because I could only effectively practice it when visiting some relatives "v selo". Even my mother didn't speak it, and she was only one generation away from selo :)

I believe now that the Russian was banned from TV and newspapers, more people are starting to speak Ukrainian. So maybe things will change.

Anyhow, I live overseas now, so that doesn't matter to me anymore. Just wanted to clarify the situation.

Natasa, no I didn't, I guess.. The most difficulties I had were the pronouncal of Russian verbs and words in general, because of the changing accents - and reduction and stuff. Russian is the only slavic language which has that characteristic. Serbo-Croatian is also a beautiful language! I would love to learn it someday, and indeed I understand what you just said hehe. I have some friends from Serbia and former Yugoslavia, really great people.

Indeed, neither Polish, nor Serbo-Croatian, Czech etc.. have the vocalic reduction, shifting syllablic stress along with the extreme palatalization issues of Russian! I struggle to this day with Russian pronunciation, live in a Russian-speaking neighborhood for fifteen years as I have, even though I began to study it seriously at around the same time as Polish (..and that wasn't exactly yesterday, people!!-:)) Polish pronunciation was a piece of cake for me, the grammar was, i.e. still remains, the challenge. Russian is virtually the opposite: transparent grammar, even the verbal aspects, difficult pronuncation.

значи овде могу да користим ћирилицу и српски језик и ви ме разумете??

Јеееееееееееј :)))

Одакле сте Lyzko и Kowalski87?

Иначе не користим ћирилицу, само латиницу.

I had Russian in school, 8 years that torture lasted, and when in opportunity to talk to Russians, it was always more useful and practical to talk in Serbian and hope that they will understand me.

Difficult language for me too.

Natasha, it's quite common to speak in a related tongue when among those whose mother tongue you don't speak; French in Italy (a Romance tongue too, after all), German in Holland, Swedish in Norway, Russian in Serbia, Bulgaria, Italian in Romania etc... Sure beats having to attempt broken English with everyone else' broken English. At least in your case, Serbians of a certain age and education can actually communicate in Russian and not sound sub-human-:)

I was born and grew up in Southwestern Ukraine, grew up speaking Rusyn dialect. In school, learned Ukrainian and Russian, also read in these languages...My dad was an electrician and somehow rigged European TV stations. We got some Slavic and some Hungarian channels. I couldn’t learn much of Hungarian except simple words like hi, bye, yes, no, etc. However, Slavic languages I picked up to my parent's surprise. I don’t like how Slavonic languages are classified by areas rather than similarities. Ex Bulgarian has more in common with Russian than Russian has with Ukrainian. Despite the fact that Ukrainians often speak Russian does not mean they are more similar, the reason is that under USSR in an effort to assimilate Ukrainians they were forced to speak Russian. For someone speaking Rusyn dialect (Sub Carpathian area Ukraine) it is easier to learn Croatian or other Yugoslavian languages than Ukrainian or Russian. Interesting thing about Ukraine is that in the Western part it is common for people to be able to speak Ukrainian, Russian, Polish,Chezh, Slovakian… but on the Eastern part people can’t speak any language but improper Russian.

Many Ukrainian native speakers can understand Polish almost fluently, practically as well as Russian (I'm told).
The opposite is scarcely the case, as I soon found to my embarrassment when I asked a frustrated Ukrainian to "Proszę mówić po ukrainsku, jeśli to jest łatwiej dla pana!"

I could barely catch a single word, and if I could, it was probably a false friend anyhow lol

I agree Lyzko (if I am understanding you right).

I find if you know Polish you can understand many Slavic words/sentences from other languages.
The hardest for me is probably Russian. Can only translate a few words here and there.

But for Czech, Serbian, Ukrainian many many words are recognizable.

I am glad that you finally learned that lesson, maybe a shame that it was a hard way

Somewhere I read that the Slovak language is the gateway language to all slavic languages. I hope that helps.

The differences between Polish and Slovak are roughly comparable to the differences between the German and Swiss German dialects (75% of the vocabulary similar or the same), the Ga.p between Polish and Russian is like Spanish and Italian (55-60% of the vocabulary the same or similar) and the gap between Polish and Bulgarian is as wide as between English and Dutch (40% of the vocabulary the same or similar). The most similar to Slavic languages are the Baltic Languages: Latvian and Lithuanian, but only 3% of the vocabulary is similar. Polish has many words borrowed from German, French and English (...)

staypoland.com/polish.htm

Spanish can understand with Italians fairly well which you can't say about Polish and Russians so that's not the best comparsion.

Well, me being a croatian speaker. I would like to correct some things.
First off, someone mentioned "slovo" in croatian. Mostly we use "rijeè" or "riè" (if we are from dalmatia) for the word for "word". "Slovo" means letter. I found this quite odd compared to other slavic languages but that's how it is. Like, for the word for dictionary in croatian it is "rijeènik" whereas in russian it is slovarj, and also in other slavic languages I have seen it portrayed in a way similar to the russian way.

Also, may I correct the one who had said that "ja sam ___ godina" in croatian. This is colloquial usage, in the grammatically correct way it would be "Imam ___ godina".

Ok, done with corrections. Sada je sve toène :)

I just had a discussion with a Pole on a social network recently. This was very surprising, as I wrote in croatian (and he understood fine), and he wrote polish (which I understood fine also, other than one word which I had to look up.) I can't understand polish at all when spoken, but the written language is really easy once you get used to the unique orthography. Many words are shared. I can barely understand russian though. I know a small bit of russian since I took a small course. I also understand some ukrainian (more than my russian) since I took a course. But, Czech is really hard for me to understand. It sounds to me like a mixture of croatian and polish, but pronounced weirdly with the weird r with the haèek.

A weird thing that I saw that is different between croatian and other slavic languages is that the word "sve" in croatian is "vse" in all of the others that I have seen. I find this very odd.

I like this Polish rumour about "pigeon" = "dachowy obersraniec" :D

Some facts:
- firstly, letter "w" is using in Czech only in foreign words ;)
- true name for this flying rat is "holub" as mention Magdalena earlier
- true Czech verbatim translation of "dachowy obersraniec" would sound "střechový obesrávaè" ;)

In Czech is some analogy rumours about Polish language ;)
- taht "chamois" is Polish "koza terena" (terrain goat)
- taht "hedgehog is Polish "kaktus pochodwy" (walking cactus)
I like this jokes in Elemetary school... but correct words isn't so funny.

Also for Czechs sounds Polish language as speach of a little baby ;) We are so lucky, we can mutualy enjoy to much fun only with speaching :D I often listen Polish language in radio when is my favorit Rock station jammed by some Polish station's signal :D

I don't know what Slavic language can be be key to other Slavic languages. I think taht their affinity leads only to false impresion, that you understand other languages. Yes, you can understand a littele, but...

When Pole speak Czech it sounds horrible. And same if Czech speak Polish. If you can't it properly of course.
Personaly I adore femine Slovak voices. Slovak language is softer than Czech language and it sounds nice. But Polish language is softer too much for me :) If I was Germanic/Romance branch native speaker I'll learn Slovak language only for its sound:)

Greetings from Moravia, Czech Republic :)

What does it mean "femine". You like Slovak when spoken by a woman?


What do you mean by "soft" here?

Maybe he means "soft" in the sense of "palatalized", like certain Russian consonants for example. I'm only guessing here though, I can't get inside his head.

Personally, I find Russian at once coarser sounding, at the same time almost lazier than Polish because of it's extreme palatalization of "n", "d" and "t". When Poles chat, both men as well as women, they often sound to me as though they're chirping rather than talking:-)

well I was thinking about Russian too but as a native Czech speaker I assume he would be able to tell the difference between them two

I agree that Polish has similar words to Russian. It's a bit confusing actually because when I am talking in Russian for some time then I have a difficult time talking in Polish because I keep saying the Russian words :/

...which can sometimes lead to mildly humorous situations, such as by mistake asking your Polish friend/colleague, "Ktory czas?" instead of "Która (jest) godzina?" owing to possible language interference from "Ktorij tjas?" etc..

Wulkan
Yes, I mean taht I like Slovak language spoken by woman. Nothing against Slovak men. Maybe it's caused by my Slovak Mr. teacher of Math :D

How explain waht I mean with "soft"?:D This "softness" is only my own impression, a feeling. Unfortunately I don't understand linguistics names in order to I describe this correctly. I noticed that many Czechs from west part of republic haven't got this feeling for softness.

I comparing only Slovak and Czech, maybe Polish with this softness.
For exampl how sounds "river" or "white"
Cz. - řeka - bílý
Sl. - rieka - biely
Pl. - rzeka - biały
But it is impression of entire speach, not only one word.
I'm sorry that I'm not helpful :/

@Nomsense

You are full of ****. I live in India and am just a beginner in Russian, and I can understand quite a lot of some simple children's cartoons that I watched recently. It was amazing to realise that a native speaker would probably understand much much more (and better) than me.

*That is, children's cartoons in Polish.

There are some similarities between Polish and Ukrainian. So, I guess, yes, it will be a little easier for you to learn Ukrainian if you know Polish

We are very sorry


That deserves to be shown on the Indian television imo