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How Polish sounds to other Slavs


mafketis  38 | 10909  
19 Jul 2019 /  #31
Yes, I now think I realize why Poles find Czech childlike

AFAICT (thinking about this for a long time) it's three things

intonation (esp Prague) - long vowels in unaccented syllables give Czech a kind of sing song quality (there's more but that's enough for now)

diminutives - Czech frequently uses something like (i)cz(e)k which is a single diminutive but sounds to Poles like a double diminutive so psíček sounds like pieseczek rather than its real equivalent - piesek

Czech neologisms - lots of times the result of normal Czech word building ends up sounding funny to Poles so (to use a famous example) the Czech word for theater (divadlo) sounds like dziwadło (weirdo) to Poles (the czech root is about watching - I'm not sure if it's related to the root in dziwny or not...)

the cumulative effect of all these (and maybe a couple of other factors) mean that Czech sounds childlike and funny to Poles - Polish sounds funny to Czechs (absurdly wordy among other things) but not especially childlike.
Lyzko  41 | 9554  
19 Jul 2019 /  #32
"Wordy" perhaps, because Polish too doesn't believe in excessive compounding as does, for instance, German!
Some monstrosity bent on lingual punishment such BUNDESAUSBILDUNGSFOERDERUNGSGESETZAENDERUNGEN (Changes To The Educational Assistance Act) would be nigh impossible in any Slavic language:-)

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