Polish/Ukrainian words similarities

A Russian once told me that listening to spoken Polish reminded them of Old Russian, likewise when a Pole was listening to Ukrainian it reminded them of older, "countrified" or rustic backwoods Polish:-)

Anything to this?

I think you are very much right.
The thing is that this year Ukraine celebrates its only 23rd anniversary of independence after more than 500 hundred years of being dependent/enslaved in different forms. So, in conditions of dependence, the use of the Ukrainian language had been either banned or restricted (with the only exception of some 50 years of East Halychyna – or you would incorrectly say East Galicia – being under the Austrian Empire and some 4 years of the German occupation of the part of the USSR in '41-44), often many Ukrainians had had to use other languages to occupy governmental any posts, change their ethnicity in documents etc. - in the result the language had not been developing much and had been used primarily in the country side. Even now, only 40% of Ukrainian citizens use it in everyday life, the majority consider it "a country side language" or are even ashamed to use it. (I think that it is no wonder – any enslaved nation usually experiences this – e.g. no more than 15% of the Irish in Eire speak their Celtic language after some 90 years of independence – please correct me if I am wrong - and it is very difficult to turn back to "your new native tongue" if your father and mother told your fairy tales or sang songs in your childhood in another language, and if this another language is more powerful, more widely used or more important in the world than yours, as English or Russian are. Another nation – Kurds – has the Kurdish language been already recognized?).

And any restricted use or non-use of any language, or if the speaking community is restricted to the country side (thank you, country side people, for having preserved the language!) results, of course, in the fact that the language stops to develop.

So, what we have in the result with Ukrainian: it is structurally much archaic and complicated, has not got rid of unnecessary endings, etc. Only one example: "tsya" (feminine for this as in "tsya kvitka" this flower - the Genetive case is then: "tsiyeyi kvitky", the Dative case: "tsiy kvitci", the instrumental case: "tsiyeyu kvitkoyoo" - which is much difficult even for Ukrainians esp. kids starting to speak. And there are other aspects, too. But it is already a long story.

The Kurds present indeed another interesting, if slightly problematic, point! Unlike the Ukrainians in the eyes of the Russian, the Kurds aren't even acknowledged as a people to contend with by the present Turkish government, as near as I can tell:-) The Ukrainian language, much as with any "minority" tongue under the Soviets, Azeri, Georgian, Chechenian, Belarussian and so on, was constantly under the (jack-)boot heel of Russian, and still was until very recently (hence all the hullaballoo over the toppling of the Sharas Shevchenko monument in Kijv several years back). Nationalism is always such a touchy subject, particularly as concerns related issues of linguistic hegemony etc,,

English - Polish - Russian

About - O - O
Messenger - Posłaniec - Poslannik, poslaniec
Conduct - Przewodzić - Prowodzit'
Inhale - Wdychać - Wdychat'
Beard - Broda - Boroda
Crucian - Karaś - Karas'
Copper - Miedź - Mied'
Blink - Migać - Migat' 600
Whisper - Szeptać - Szeptat'
Thrush - Drozd - Drozd
Glutonny - Obżarstwo - Obżorstwo
Askew - Krzywo, skośne - Kriwo, koso
Eyelid - Powieka - Wieko
Lynx - Ryś - Rys'
Plump - Pulchny - Puchlyj
Extinguish - Gasić - Gasit', tuszyt'
Hoop - Obręcz - Obrucz
Ivy - Bluszcz - Pluszcz
Warehouse - Magazin, skład - Sklad
Before - Przed - Pered
Firewood - Drwa - Drowa
Estuary - Ujście - Ustje
Guest - Gość - Gost'
Gammer - Baba, staruszka - Baba, staruszka
Male - Samiec - Samiec
Female - Samica, żeński - Samka, żenskij
Crumb - Miękisz - Miakisz

Archaic

Pupil - -renica - Zenica
Because - Bo - Ibo
As - Jak - Jako
Toung - Mowa - Molwa
Red - Czerwony - Czerwonnyj
Fount - Krynica - Krynica

Poles are very afraid to be anyhow associated with Russians:
youtube.com/watch?v=R-z9wfueMAw

I failed to mention 2 other periods favourable for the development of the Ukrainian language: 1.5 years of the Ukrainian People's Republic and approximately the same period of the Western Ukrainian People's Republic (both quickly and effectively military suppressed by other Slavic nations) and the last years of the Soviet Union period (so, I would not say that the SU period had been the worst for Ukrainian - all depended upon who had been in power in the Kremlin - and as said the last SU years had been favourable: why - a long story again, so I would name only one aspect: it was allowed, among other things, to start to use Ukrainian at industrial enterprises as a working language and many technical terms were created at that period mostly by "translating" technical terms from Russian according to the rules of word-building of the Ukrainian language, as "otmostka" → "vidmostka" (blind area), also, by finding words that had not been in use for more than 50 years, so e.g. I learnt for the first time that the Ukrainian word for a "ball bearing" was "kulkova valnytsya", which at first sounded very funny/unusual for all, or in some other ways).

I wouldn't call early USSR or RSFSR predominantly Slavic.Especially in sense of government.

Yep I'm sure it was Klingon while all the inhabitants went backpacking to India...

Yes, it is. And there is a very effective way of creating nationalists and namely this one:

Occupy/liberate (any other words for this?) a country, stay there, establish your rule there, restrict the rights of the native inhabitants including the right to use their language (as far as our topic is a linguistic one), etc. and in the end you will have: nationalists, then, if you stay longer, terrorists, and the way back (again to the normal state) may last long: decades, centuries.

But again, do not do this: the occupying country itself may suffer from its aggression, and may even collapse. And there are examples of this, aren't there? I think you can give some, will you?

Arguably nationalism, which is nothing but a display of do-it-for-the-tribe chest thumping jitterbug, has enjoyed a certain renaissance since the collapse of Soviet Union - a sure sign of, up until then, arrested evolvement in those parts... now moving on, pragmatism anyone?

Once my father told me that when he was 7 years old in one of his first days in school the teacher took children to the portrait of Soviet leader and proclaimed in pure and plain Ukrainian language: "Children,this is our everyone's beloved father - comrade Stalin!".

probably! What is with that Slavic issue that is constantly talk about? Soviets were commies, Danish pastry and so on.

Do not see your point - please explain! Was pure and plain Russian bad for praising comrade Stalin? In was location (town, village) was it?


It depends. Usually, when a country is occupied by other powers, only either Communists or nationalists fight for independence. Other forces, as a rule, collaborate with the occupiers. Examples: Vietnamese communists fighting against the French (successfully), Yugoslav communists with Comrade Tito fighting against Nazis (successfully), the Chinese communists with Mao fighting against the Japanese (successfully), Bask nationalists fighting for independence, Irish nationalists fighting the British (successfully), Kurds (referred to both as nationalists and Marxists) fighting for independence. And in the end, Polish nationalists under Kosciuszko fighting for independence. Would you describe them as displaying "do-it-for-the-tribe chest thumping jitterbug"?

very much so, right along other Tarzan wanna-be's doing similarly stupid dance routine while believing in the outmost superiority of their own steps and moves to the point where they'd kill for it...

Well, it is rather an unexpected and brave opinion.

The Advertisement on PF: "Largest collection of Ukrainian language books. Ships from Lviv". Interesting! I have not seen any ships in Lviv. Has Lviv become a port?

well, thank you for your kind words

Brave? I would say stupid.

I think the list of common words is long enough to provide an undeniable evidence that Polish and Russian are, practically, the same language.

wow... I could be sitting all day long compiling a list of common words in German and Danish (heck I could probably string a pretty long list of either identical or very similar words between English and German) yet nobody in their right mind could call these languages 'practically the same'. Russian and Polish are pretty far apart and I do know something about mutual intelligibility between languages. The correlation between Russian and Polish is nothing like, say, the similarity between Danish and Norwegian which could be argued almost the same (save the pronunciation). If you want a very similar language to Polish, go for Slovak but even then nobody would call it 'practically the same'.

FraglessPole, Mykhaylo was being sarcastic taking the **** out of Vlad who is on this forum on the mission of spreading his bigotry that Poles, Ukrainians and Russians are genetically, culturally and linguistically the same :-)

Oh, please, please, do not try to drive a wedge between us. May be this "practically the same language" was a little bit overstrained due to my being impressed by so many common words, as I have never tried to compare Russian with Polish (maybe due to the calibre of the countries: one usually compares Russia with US or China etc.), and considered that it was Ukrainian that was more similar to Polish.

But, really, what I now see is that in the future, let's call it, Fraternal Union of Slavic Nations, the transition to using Russian would be, due to this close similarity, quite painless for Poles.

I can see it now, nothing like another long list of Russian Polish word comparisons to get one's obtuseness going... which brings to a rather startling revelation as well as an urge to share a piece of advice with everyone on here: use chopsticks whenever you find yourself in a situation where you absolutely and positively need to find an answer in a puddle of your own vomit... just saying

I acctualy gave you a chance to be sarcastic but you chose to be obtuse... why?

You might be on to something here, the language assimilation in itself wouldn't be so bad as Russian does sound nicer than Polish. Neither should we be discouraged by 150 year long failed, previous attempt at just that... Cyrillic alphabet on an Ipad may just do the trick... However Poles may find themselves a wee bit miffed with other aspects Russian style of governance characterized by legendary inefficiency and corruption, combined with heavy handed central government, historically massively allergic to anything democratic and hell-bent on propagating a rather antiquated idea that the greatness of a nation stems from the number of its mountain ranges, rivers and tanks, the actual happiness of the citizens being non-issue.. well unless it became an Olympic discipline in which case we would see a whole new generation of young, genetically modified Russians with abnormal levels dopamine and serotonin in their systems ready to compete. See, my point is that all Poles need to do is hike across the border to UA or BY and see for themselves how the Russian experiment has worked on others , something inadvertently leading to their comments like ***** that!" among the young ones or "Thank God it's not us" among the older and likely more religious ones.,

Well,if you feel yourself ethnically closer to Germans go ahead I'm not going to restrain you.Though you may first ask Germans if they are going recognize you as anything close to their kin.There is quite many Germans who up to now continue claim on forums that they and any kind of Slavs are different races of people.This is where a real bigotry is.And also they make clips about Poles similar to this one:



So good luck.


I do not claim that there is only similarities,but my point was to provide comparison between Ukrainian and Polish cognates through Russian.For some reason many Poles believe that Ukrainian is kind of inferior language which just have some borrowings from Polish if there is any similarities.Some Poles say Ukrainian is part Polish part Russian.Well if it is Ukrainian, then what is Polish - part Russian, part...?

All this languages originated from the same stock and in any case have more similarities than differences.If you know Polish,Czech and Slovenian you seem able to tap easily about 90% of basic Russian dictionary.During my comparison I tried to avoid using words borrowed from non-Slavic languages.

For example such words as "kot", "czereśnia" and many others have proved borrowed history and I didn't use them.Non borrowed could be for example:

Englis - Polish -Russian

Heron - Czapla - Caplia
Furrow - Bruzda - Borozda
Harrow - Brona - Borona
Ringing - Dzwonienie, dzwon - Zwon
Millet - Proso, jagla - Proso, pszeno
Rub - Trzeć - Teriet'
Porrige - Kasza - Kasza
Tell fortune - Wróżyć - Worożyt'
Drawing - Rysunek - Risunok

And so forth.


In my opinnion Latin alphabet is hardly sutable for a Slavic language such as Polish for example the same sound in Russian is used only one character

"щ" while in Polish four characters szcz ! Latin alphabet just doesn't have enough characters to suit Slavic vocabulary.


But take in account that Western nations and Poland itself are not in any better position at least demographically and soon will attempt to convert Poles into Islam as they will become muslim countries.So?

If there will be genetically modified people wouldn't you prefer Poles and Russian also will get advantages of it (if there will be any) and not only Germans?

well it's been working for Czechs and Poles for over 1000 years, ain't broke don't fix it


where there's a smoke... believe me, Germany's been awash with Poles of less than ambassadorial qualities since the late 70's, that image won't soon disappear though it is whole lot better now given Poland's current and much improved socioeconomic standing and the unprecedented level of mutual economic ties, as in people getting to know each other in their respective fields of expertise... as for the satire, well I only hope that Polish TV skits on Germans have evolved beyond the WW2 references


ok, take a deep breath and imagine less xenophobia in you... savor it, feel that warm tingle spread inside you and then slowly exhale... see, now you're almost Polish


I really don't know what to do with this question, let alone the answer to it so I'll just pretend it is as serious as it is unrelated to reality like most of your post on here

Currently,Norwegians use two official languages Bokmål which was completely borrowed and derived from Danish and Nynorsk which is based in more original Norwegian dialects.From what I know difference between these two languages is quite big.And maybe even comparable to distance between Polish and Russian.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_language

As I know from all Germanic languages only German and Dutch may be as close as Polish and Russian.So even in basic vocabulary there is visible differences:

English - German - Dutch

I - Ich - Ik
You - Sie - U
He - Er - Hij
She - Sie - Zij
They - Sie - Zij
We - Wir - Wij
Who - Welche - Wie

And many Germans recognize that they understand quite a liitle what hear or read Dutch.Though it depends on dialect.German and Swedish or German and English are even much more distant.There maybe just few percents of very close similarities.

Nynorsk is an artificial construct based on local western dialects more reminiscent of Old Norse (and as such Icelandic as well), created in the 19th century when Norway regained its independence. Norway was a part of Denmark for close to 600 years, with its elite educated in Copenhagen and such experiencing Danish cultural hegemony - not entirely dissimilar to the territories of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth where Polish culture was the dominant one. In today's Norway nobody really speaks 100% Nynorsk even though it is taught in school, depending on where you are in Norway the spoken dialect will be a mix of both, with one, usually Bokmaal dominating percentage wise. My old time Norwegian girlfriend from the northernmost parts of Norway near Kirkenes speaks something I'd describe as 95% Bokmaal and 5% something else, which after the initial hurdle of getting my head around the different pronunciation was as easy for me to understand as my native Danish. I speak fluent Polish thanks to my Polish dad and I can tell you that it is far easier for me to understand Norwegian and even Swedish than Russian, my unadulterated lack of enthusiasm for the Russian statehood and its socioeconomic 'achievements' notwithstanding. Simply put Russian and Polish are further apart than Scandinavian languages. I'd say the distance between Polish and Slovak is comparable to the one between Danish and Swedish, Norwegian, obviously, being even closer to Danish.

I have strong suspicion that Ukrainian has at least the same proximity to Polish as Slovak and especially if we combine Ukrainian and Russian similarities to Polish together.Could you disprove it?I already provided some comparison between Polish,Russian and Slovak here.I think you never listened to Slovak language.I'm going to dissapoint you but after comparison of basic vocabulary of those languages I came to conclusion that:

1)Slovak is closer in pronounciation to Russian and Ukrainian than to Polish.
2)Polish is closer in pronounciation to Russian more than to Ukrainian or Slovak.
You probably understand a little in Slavic languages and base your assumptions on stereotypes.

I've heard spoken Slovak and was quite taken aback by how easy it was to understand, I've heard spoken Ukrainian and understood fvck-all...

I speak Slavic language and I deny all what you said above