Michal - | 1865 13 Sep 2007 / #31I can say for sure that Ukrainian language is definitely more close to PolisI believe I am right in saying that about eighty per cent of Ukrainian words are very similar to Russian words. I have been to the Ukraine as I spent a month in the summer time 1982 in a town called Kharkow. We flew to Moscow and then took an overnight train to Kharkow. Lovely weather during the summer time in the Ukraine.
Sidewinder 1 | 10 13 Sep 2007 / #32I wrote that Ukrainian is more similar to Polish than Russian to Polish. :)Of course Ukrainian is similar to Russian too.But I don't think you have heard many Ukrainian words in Kharkow, because Kharkow is Russian-speaking town (moreover, former governor of Kharkow region proposed to separate several regions including Kharkow from Ukraine and join to Russia when we had revolution here).There is also an awful mix of Russian and Ukrainian, called "surjik", sounds really awful (though some people who speak surjik are sure they speak Ukrainian). I can speak surjik for fun only.
Michal - | 1865 13 Sep 2007 / #33ote that Ukrainian is more similar to Polish than Russian to Polish. :)It would be expected that Ukrainian and Polish may have similarities due to geographic location.
Sidewinder 1 | 10 14 Sep 2007 / #34Well, Ukraine also borders on Romania, but Ukrainian language doesn't have many similarities with Romanian. :)BTW,about eighty per cent of Ukrainian words are very similar to Russian wordsit is just the opposite in fact. :)
Krzysztof 2 | 973 14 Sep 2007 / #35well, Michal was in Kharkov in 1982, I figure people simply spoke Russian then, with a little Ukrainina accent, that's why he thought he understands the language so well :)
Ronek 1 | 261 14 Sep 2007 / #36It would be expected that Ukrainian and Polish may have similarities due to geographic location.or maybe, JUST maybe because ukraine was simply another polish province in the Polish-Lithuanian kingdom before they got this crazy idea to separate themselves. Didnt turn out so well in the end.
Krzysztof 2 | 973 14 Sep 2007 / #37I think it's up to them to decide how it worked out, remember that remaining in the union with Poland meant partitions, WWII, communism - not really a much better fate, and if a nation suffers, they'd rather suffer for their own sakeof course we may speculate that both Poland and Ukraine would be much better off remaining in the union (one stronger state, weaker Russia etc.), but it would be just speculations
Michal - | 1865 14 Sep 2007 / #38it is just the opposite in fact. :)It was actually a Russian friend of mine who lives in Portsmouth but came from Moscow originally and then later studied with me many years ago who talked of the word similarity between the two languages. I have never made a study of it myself.
Sidewinder 1 | 10 15 Sep 2007 / #39Yes, it is Ukrainian way of pronouncing "g", though we have both "g" like Russian in our language and Ukrainian "g" which sounds like "h".So, what you have heard in Kharkow is neither correct Russian, nor correct Ukrainian.The thing is that people who move from villages to big towns, they speak Ukrainian, so when they try to speak Russian, it sounds like what you've heard.As for me, I used to speak normal Russian (without those "g", etc., btw, when I visit Russia, people there wonder I speak Russian without accent :)), but I know Ukrainian very well and speak correct Ukrainian, but use it mostly for work. Though when I visit Western Ukraine I love to speak Ukrainian and to hear good "native" Ukrainian language. BTW, Ukrainian language in Lvov sounds a bit like Polish sometimes, not only similar words, but accent too. Like they say "prosze", etc.Michal, there are sooo many really nice places here in Ukraine. In Western Ukraine - Lutsk, Lvov, small, but really great city - Kamenets-Podol'skiy... In Central region - Poltava, Northern - Chernigov, Eastern - Slavyanogorsk... Southern - Odessa, also Crimean peninsula... Oops, sorry for offtopic again. Anyway, if you will have possibility to visit one of these cities, you won't regret :)
Michal - | 1865 15 Sep 2007 / #40I only know Kharkov and the lovely countryside en route. I remember the following morning looking out through the windows of the train and it was wonderful countryside. I was only in Kharkov and it was for a month so I am not able to comment on any other place. It is quite expensive to visit Russia from England but in those days everything for us was free as we were students. I suppose that we were really lucky as the one month programme in Kharkov was followed in a later year by a five month stint in Moscow as I was also at the famous (or at least it was then) Pushkin Institute in Moscow in 1984.
billpawl - | 32 6 Mar 2008 / #41I'm far from being any sort of expert, but I do remember when I spent time in Poland having a conversation with someone, me speaking Polish and her speaking Ukrainian, and we did seem to understand each other.I once had a Polish girlfriend, who's mother told me that back in Poland they had a saying that Ukrainian was good Russian, but bad Polish.
Bondi 4 | 142 9 Mar 2008 / #42I would say that Polish is easier to learn than Russian. It could be personal, though. Back in those days "we'd been taught Russian" (i.e. it was mandatory for schools to teach it) and everyone hated the language, because we hated the 'Russkie' oppression itself. In Slavic countries, they were more successful as the language didn't sound foreign. (And, of course, language-teaching was far more less sophisticated than today in our world of the internet and multimedia.)I forgot nearly everything, but still helps me in my Polish. (Mostly basic things like numbers, names in the family tree etc., but here and there even some more difficult things just "pop in" from my forgotten Russian.) Sometimes we even joke with our "reminiscent" Russian knowledge with my Polish colleagues, ha-ha. :)There's one thing no one has yet mentioned: the sexual discriminatory nature of Slavic languages. ;o) It still does my head in that everybody and everything is either masculine or feminin or neutral in gender, plus even in plural there's a difference between a masculine and a feminine/non-masculine "they"!
Nimitta 31 Aug 2010 / #43SidewinderPolish "krawat" sounds so close to Ukrainian "krawatka" probably because it is a French word "cravate". :-) :-) :-) :-) LOLWhen I started studying French, I found out that many our long cherished Ukrainian words are actually French. Patnofli (slippers) is a French word as well as servertka. :-) And do you know that the phrase we got used to in Ukrainia "komsi komsa" is actually French "comme ci comme ca" which means so-so. There were many others. I am sure that many words you find in both Ukrainian and Polish had actually been taken form French or English or Latin long time ago.By the way, Sidewinder, South Russians (Krasnodarsk area) pronounce "g" the way we, Ukrainians, do. The same is true for some areas of Sibera. I was surprised to hear Ukrainian "g" from Russians.As for similarities between Polish and Ukrainians, I have just been to Poland. I spoke Ukrainian, yes. :-) "Do you work here, in our city? For how long?" a receptionist at a little hotel asked me. I said that I did not work in Poland. She thought I spoke Polish. :-) The languages are close enough for me to talk by phone with shop owners (about transmission for my sister's car). Yes, I had to find how transmission sounds in Polish (I knew it would be different from Ukrainian). It was something like skrinka begov (for Ukrainians sounds literally like "a little box of running" :-))Having some wits, a Ukrainian who speaks Ukrainian (not surzhik) would understand Polish and be understood by people. With an aid of a dictionary to fill in differences, I think a Ukrainian would not need anything else to learn how to speak. Writing is another thing.
Woon 2 Aug 2011 / #44You can decide for yourself:Days of week (starts from Monday, of course)ponedIłok, wiwtOrok, seredA, czetwEr, pjAtnytsia, subOta, nedIliaMonthssIczeń, liUtyj, bErezeń, kwIteń, trAweń, czErweń, łYpeń, sErpeń, wEreseń, żOwteń, łystopAd, hrUdeńSeasonszymA, wesnA, lIto, OsińTimes of dayrAnok, deń, wEczir (not wEcir - there's no directly soft ć in Ukrainian!), niczNumbersnul' (0), odYn (1), dwa, try, czotYry, pjat', szist', sim, wIsim, dEwjat', dEsiat' (10)sto (100), tYsiacza (1000), mil'jOn (1,000,000), mil'jArd (1,000,000)male - czołowIkfemale - żInkachild - dytYnason - syndaughter - doczkAparents - bat'kYfather - bAt'komother - mAty, mAtirOne example I found very characteristic: ciastko - tIsteczko. Sounds close, yet it is different in spirit!latarnia - lichtAr...
den_fcdk - | 28 13 Aug 2011 / #45For Ukrainian & Pole it s easy to understand each other.I ve met guys from Poland who didn t speak english, but UKR-PL mix was enough for a friendly talk )We have LOTS of words that are not quite similar, but SO-O-O close!Let s communicate more! )P.S. But both our nations should speak english fluently now. That s a fact. We live in a global world.& when some our (UKR) polititians talk about russian - i say: e n g l i s h - is "the must" today!
Woon 29 Oct 2012 / #46To clearly demonstrate the CONCEPTUAL difference between Polish, Russian and Ukrainian it is absolutely enough to see how the English idiom "first of all" is translated into them three:przede wszystkim (Polish)priEżdie wsiewO (Russian)andperedusIm in UkrainianThese three (translations) have common root, common roots, common meaning (before everything). Yet Polish is sibilantized, Russian is palatalized, Ukrainian is MOSTLY laconic and pleophonous.
odrzut - | 3 19 Dec 2012 / #47I'm Polish, I've never learnt Russian nor Ukrainian. I can communicate with Ukrainians no problem, but I have problems speaking with Russians, and we often fall back to English.
Vlad123 7 | 204 19 Dec 2012 / #48It is interesting that also Polish and Ukrainian share set of words which are very similar to each other (I do not want to bet if they are borrowed) there is also lot of words which are more similar between Polish and Russian than between Polish and Ukrainian.There is lot of striking similarities between Russian and Polish.For example:English - Polish - Russian - UkrainianHe - On - On - VinShe - Ona - Ona - VonaThey - Oni - Oni - VonyIt - Ono - Ono - VonoWhere - Gdje - Gdje - DeRiver - Rzheka - Reka - RichkaWife - Zhona - Zhena - Druzhyna,ZhinkaAnd many,many other. The reason why Ukrainians understand you better than Russians is because Ukrainians speak or understand Russian too.Plus borrowed words from Polish.Luckily for Ukrainians their language is language in between Polish and Russian.Therefore they have less difficulty to practice both those languages.It is interesting that Ukrainian also have some word identical to Czech.For example: zvir (beast) richka (river) djakuju (thank you) and many other...
TommyG 1 | 359 19 Dec 2012 / #49GdjeGdzieZhonaŻonaDo you speak Polish, Vlad?Oh sorry, I just checked: Znasz j. polski? A bitNot even the basics...
Zibi - | 335 19 Dec 2012 / #50Vlad123, do you reside inside or outside of MKAD? Your anti-ukrainian attitude is abhorrent. You are a just a Moskal, and please admit it.
Vlad123 7 | 204 19 Dec 2012 / #51Vlad123, do you reside inside or outside of MKAD?What is MKAD? I thought I live in Northern America...Your anti-ukrainian attitude is abhorrent. You are a just a Moskal, and please admit it.What? I`m ethnical Ukrainian and like Ukrainian language.Did I say I do not like it?But some people should know languages,and if Polish and Russian have many very similarwords that`s a fact and to deny this is laughable...Ukrainian has its own specifics,it developed not less independently than Russian or Polishand this is beauty language...
Zibi - | 335 19 Dec 2012 / #52I thought I live in Northern AmericaAre you another 90-60-90 agent from Lubianka then ?-:)
Vlad123 7 | 204 19 Dec 2012 / #53Actually,there is nothing strange in the fact that Polish and Russian languages are so similar.If you look at this genetic map of Europe it seems that Ameriracan researches believe thatgenetics of people in Eastern and Northern Poland is identical to Russians.It is marked RU.scienceblogs.com/gnxp/2008/08/31/genetic-map-of-europe-genes-va
odrzut - | 3 19 Dec 2012 / #54Vlad123: I don't know what they are speaking about. Maybe they're trolling?Not funny, anyway.
Wulkan - | 3136 19 Dec 2012 / #55Actually,there is nothing strange in the fact that Polish and Russian languages are so similar.If you look at this genetic map of Europe it seems that Ameriracan researches believe thatgenetics of people in Eastern and Northern Poland is identical to Russians.It is marked RU.I wonder what is your interest in repeating the same bullsh1t over again, whose brain are you trying to wash?
Vlad123 7 | 204 20 Dec 2012 / #56Only me?This is citation of your native Polish guy:Wiedzmin_fanEdited by: Wiedzmin_fan May 31, 10, 19:27 Reply Quote #If you run a google search for "genetic map of europe", you'll see some fascinating graphs.Also, you can look up the following papers:Nature 456, 98-101 (6 November 2008) | doi:10.1038/nature07331; Received 30 May 2008; Accepted 12 August 2008; Published online 31 August 2008"Genes mirror geography within Europe"andEuropean Journal of Human Genetics (2008) 16, 1413-1429; doi:10.1038/ejhg.2008.210"Investigation of the fine structure of European populations with applications to disease association studies".Short answer - yes, it looks like the Poles and the Russians are very close genetically.https://polishforums.com/genealogy/russian-dna-37610/This is usually those who spark ethnical hate between nations wash brains to people.I just trying to reduce unnecessary hostility between Slavic nations and make them stand together for freedom and democracy.
Zibi - | 335 20 Dec 2012 / #57I just trying to reduce unnecessary hostility between Slavic nations and make them stand together for freedom and democracy.Crap. We don't need your russian freedom/democracy. Russians like you simply do not know what those notions mean.
Wulkan - | 3136 20 Dec 2012 / #58Only me?This is citation of your native Polish guy:Yes, that's proving that there are Russian lovers in Poland, nothing else.
Vlad123 7 | 204 20 Dec 2012 / #59Principally I think that Ukrainians and Belorussians are probably genetically even closer toPoles than Russians.Quite possibly researchers mistook Russians for Ukrainians andBelorussians.Majority of Russians are maybe not that close,especially those who live inTatarstan and Karelia.