What is the reaction of Poles to Russian?

in sixties and seventies - I said, not now.

I know what you meant, i was pointing out that Russian is still spoken by the majority of the former Warsaw Pact countries as a second language.

Thats changing though, but it is still a lingua franca

you exaggerate a great deal - like Zibi said most of us never went beyond passive knowledge of Russian and this knowledge was very limited to say the least - so no Russian was not spoken by most of the Poles and neither it is true for most other Eastern Block countries

I don't say Russian is not a lingua franca - it is in the area of the former USSR - but it never was in Poland

Well, from my experiance i have to disagree.
I visited those countries in the 90ties and still do my round trips today.
Russian will certainly get you further than English, but Slavic helps too.

Only if you chat with folks above 50.


Slavic?

Depends on the country


Oh not again, what i meant is that with Polish you get further than with English in most of these countries.

I mean Poland.

Like garlic to a vampire

What do you mean? The vampires detest garlic.

Well, than you have to look at geography, too.
For instance close to the German border i meat more people speaking German than on the Russian border.
BTW I repeatedly said that its changing, but atm in countries that are not so well developed as Poland Russian will get you further, maybe not on the ice cream counter but in business certainly.

No, it wasn't. That would mean my parents and people at their age could speak Russian but they can't although they had Russian in school. But how much do you remember from your worst subject in school? not much I guess

I had a very good russian teacher - she was born in Russia, and my russian is quite good, even now

You can have the best teacher but if you don't want to learn anything you won't.
You wanted, you learnt it, simple

you were a bright student - can you say most of your schoolmates were equally bright? - I stand by the opinion that Russian was never a lingua franca in Poland

Russian a lingua franca in Poland - the most laughable thing I've ever heard

Do you personally dislike Russian language?What language sounds beautier to you Polish,
Russian or Ukrainian?

I personally like the Russian language very much - the sound of it and the words

I can't say I dislike Russian language, it's more about the melody of the speach that is borat like, sounds backward to me.


they sound alike, can't tell them appart

I really like Rusian

I'm not sure what the OP is trying to get at with his question and having read through all the comments I think some people have presumed the OP is looking for a negative reaction to his speaking Russian in Poland ie Russian is the language of the oppressor and Poles don't want to hear it etc etc

On the other hand if it's about the understanding of the language then I would think the reaction would depend on the person and whether or not that person understood Russian. There are similarities in the language ie if a Spaniard spoke only in Spanish in Italy and vice versa then a certain level of understanding and communication could be achieved, likewise with Polish and Russian. I was in a café in Kraków in June and the people in the queue in front of me were Russian and spoke all the time in Russian. The staff mostly understood what they were saying but the Russians did seem to get a bit annoyed and frustrated when they weren't understood, very similar to how Brits react when speaking to someone whose first language isn't English. Maybe a touch of the "we used to rule you, you should understand our language" sort of attitude maybe? However I did come across many Russians in Warsaw in the days leading up to the game who were very friendly and very polite, it all depends on the person so it's unfair to generalise, even about Brits abroad ;)

I know learning Russian was compulsory at school during Communist times but just because it was compulsory to learn it doesn't mean a person was any good at it and even though someone learnt it at school doesn't necessarily mean they'll still have a good understanding of the language today.

Ukrainian is far more understandable and nicer, also because it contains little or none of that tartar/mongol vocabulary that russian language possesses. However, russian language is also okay, but more distant than ukrainian.

Oh definitely... I had Russian classes at secondary school (my school was probably the last one to have them lol). Our classes consisted mainly of reading texts aloud from our textbooks and I remember I was making cribs with phonetic transcription for other students because they couldn't even read the text as they didn't learn the alphabet lol I think I can recall one single grammatical test and it was a farse... And I really disliked the teacher, she was horrible... ;/

I enjoyed studying Russian language, I had good grades, but I remember I wanted to learn English back then, nobody wanted to study Russian at that time... However there weren't enough English teachers yet lol

And of course soon I could remember only "Kak tjebia zawód", "Spasiba" and "Haraszo" lol
It's good that at least I didn't forget the alphabet :)
Btw, some Poles regret nowadays that they didn't put too much effort in studying Russian during commie times.


It doesn't sound backward to me. It's softer and probably more melodious than Polish.


I've seen a documentary not so long ago probably on TVP Polonia or TVP Info about some Ukrainian festival in Poland and almost everybody spoke in Ukrainian there and I must admit I had to read Polish subtitles all the time so I don't know if it's far more understandable than Russian (but maybe it's because I know some Russian).

I don't know, you can compare yourself:

Ukrainian ("Przegląd ukraiński" on TVP):

Russian ("Rosyjski ekspres" also on TVP):

Ukrainian does have more words similar to Polish ones.


Ukrainian sounds like a mix of Czech and Russian lol
Dunno, there's something I like about it...

yes it's more melodic and that melody sounds backward to me

Tataro-Mongol vocabulary?Well I decided to present here pictures of faces wich in my mind is common
for ethnical Russians:

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  1056.jpg
  
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  untitled.png
  
• 
  1276738076_ekaterina.jpg
  
• 
  maria_sharapova.jpg
  

And Russians from Polish movies:

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  varshavskaya_bitva_1.png
  
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  1920_bitwa_warszawsk.jpg
  
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  0.jpg
  
• 
  images.jpg
  

Don't mind Wulkan, he's probably a russophobe - those more hardcore ones like to bring up this "Tatar-Mongol" thing lol


Mala Moskwa

Szwadron

;)

Nah, he is xenophobe in general. ;)

you failed :-) that wasn't me who wrote it:



that's why I've got a foreign girlfriend.... you also failed :-))

Which exactly movies those pictures you posted are from?When those movies were shot?


I speak Russian and Ukrainian and often I could understend up to 70% of Polish text or more,though it depends on text.
Better if somebody speaks slowly and clearly like in documentary movie and use uncomlicated literature language.Pronounciation requires some adjustment but it is not very difficult to do.It depends on text though.Often I could understand a lot,sometimes not even a general sense.Quite difficult to undersand a speach that young Polish people use in informal conversation on differen tok-shows on TV.Those who use more archaic,simple, villegers language are way easier to undestand and sometime it resumble Russian to me.Some expressions are fully undestood.For example:

``ludzka podłość nie zna granic`` or ``Nienawiść wrosła w serca i zatruła krew pobratymczą``.

So, none of you think that Russian have quite large non-slavic vocabulary? Let's start with a few: loshad' , yarlik, glaz, karaul, almaz, tyurma.