Why are some Polish people dark complected, and others very light

Get lost you darkie troll!

Any proof of that?

@mafketis
Actually I didn't notice anything peculiar about their body language, to be honest. So I guess it's not that different.
I'm not sure Hungarians are Slavic, though. Their language isn't. According to legend, their people were led there by Turul if I remember correctly ;)

On my last visit to Hungary I had a chance to visit some smaller towns and I was told about places with Slovakian and German minorities. I also met two people whose families had come from Transylvania - apparently there are some people of Hungarian origin in Romania. So I guess they're pretty mixed there, too.

I have a background in that and it's not immediately noticeable. I pointed out some of the differences to a friend who's been there often and now he clearly sees it....


Genetically, most modern Hungarians are descended from slavic and/or germanic people. Linguistically Hungarian is ugro-finnic but language =/= genetics.

@mafketis
I'm just curious. Do you think Hungarians are more expressive or tactile than Poles? That's the only thing that comes to my mind.

They walk differently for one thing (more open stance, shoulders further back) more assertive looking and at times looser (Poles are more tightly wound up and have more closed in body language and restrict movement more). That kind of thing, the individual differences are small but they add up. More than once I've recognized that a person is Polish in Hungary before I hear them say anything.

Ways of dressing (part of non-verbal communcation) are also different.

Perhaps you're more likely to notice that as a foreigner both in Poland and Hungary.
I didn't :)

Hungarians, compared with Romanians I've encountered, (in this way similar to Poles) often have blue eyes but dark hair, brown usually, and of medium to stocky build, depending on where in the country they're from. There's plenty of Roma influence in Romania which might account for the swarthiness of many Romanians as well:-)

@Maf, as to the respective languages, Romanian remains essentially a Romance tongue dating back to Caesar's time, yet with a heavy Slavic overlay as evidenced by her word stock:-) Hungarian is distantly Uralic or Fenno-Ugric with substantial influence from here Germanic and Slavic neighbors. The other language "isolate", Albanian, is Illyrian with Balkan vocabulary intermingled with non-extant ancient Indo-European root words in addition to even some Turkish admixture.

Western Hungary is a good deal.... paler than Eastern Hungary. Budapest is very mixed. Hungarians tend to be.... stockier than Poles, which I largely put down to diet (Hungarian cuisine is delicious but extraordinarily fatty and Hungarian cakes and the like are significantly sweeter than Polish cakes) it all adds up.


No. You don't understand Roman/Gypsy society. In Europe very few ever really integrate into the majority culture (outside of Spain and maybe Portugal). But many women work at some point in their lives as prostitutes so most of the mixing goes into (so to speak) the Roma. On the ground in Romania there's a higher percentage of mediterraneanish looks but a large majority could be plunked down in Poland and fit right in.


Slavic influence on Romanian is almost entirley limited to vocabulary. Grammatically it's more a Balkan language, but that's a sprachbund (areal) classification and won't be found in the language family tree...

Hungarian is a weird case. It's unlike the Germanic, Romance and Slavic languages that surround it but also very unlike its closest genetic relations (according to a linguistics professor who studied them). Grammatically it definitely has some structures that seem loaned from German or Slavic (especially in terms of subordination - very weird).

The only extant languages to which is even distantly related are Khansky (??) and Mansi, spoken in Eastern Siberia:-)

Khanty. Western Siberia.


They split apart around 200 years ago so are very distant today. Mansi is the closest, Khanty a little less so (people are now using 'Finno-Khantic' as a description. There's also Permian, Ostyak and the Samoyedic languages which split away earlier. Scholars disagree on the exact classifications. Speakers of these languages tend to have high cheekbones, fair complexions and dark hair.

Here's some pictures of Mari people, far further east in Europe than Poland, with a language closer to Hungarian. They are the only nation in Europe never to have fully embraced Christianity or any other sort of Monotheism.

Some of the faces would not look out of place in Poland or Hungary
theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2016/dec/21/europes-oldest-pagans-mari-people-ikuru-kuwajima

Misspelled the name. Thanks!

I wrote 200 years and meant 2000. There are still some similarities between some Poles and people from there in terms of looks, complexion etc. The Khanti-Mansi and the Mari El people are far more isolated in terms of DNA. Poland is a melting pot compared to them and there's much more diversity of appearance.

Many Slavic people have skin that tans easily. Including myself! My grandmother was born and raised in Poland near the border of Germany, over 100 years ago. She had a olive tone to her skin that tanned easily. I am a natural dark blonde, greenish gold eyes and I tan easily. Many Polish people in New England where I live. A lot of them have a skin tone like I do. In the area where my grandmother lived. There were Austrians, Slavic, gypsy, even Russians. Many Slavic's have that all of skin tone. It's not quite as dark as Italians. It's a different shade. It's more of a golden hue.

Some Polish do you have all of skin and some are very pale white. Do more research on what part of Portland your ancestors are from. Are they from the east? Or are they from the west? That will determine a lot.

My dad is like that and some members of his family. Most Poles are fair skinned, light eyed (usually blue, sometimes brown/green), and hair color running the gambit from almost white blonde to dark brown to a cherry red. However, there is quite a few Poles that have darker skin - and not just the Gypsies. I honestly think that this may be a remnant of the golden horde invasion into the lands and some genes remaining. Some Poles have almost like central Asian skin colored - the sort of darker golden hue you're referring to. I don't know how much research into all the different halpogroups in PL and where they originate from has been done. The most common R1a/R1a1 though is supposed to be from India/Iran areas

Often, what constitutes a so-called "Polish look", is more the bone structure of the face than anything else! Someone can have dark eyes and dark-brown hair and yet still look Polish rather than, say, French, Italian, German, or Spanish, for instance. Poles tend to have distinctively oval faces, and even the women usually have a more squarely-shaped head than certainly in Southern Europe.

Generalizations though are often just that:-)

I have seen so many different 'Polish looks' ...
Yet there are still people I see abroad that look 'Polish' to me. Judging from my own experience, I look Polish, too. And I'm not blonde (even though I was as a kid).

Ha. Dark complected Poles? Its climate, climate variations. Man, newborn Germans would have dark penis in next 50 years. Ask them why

True, but nonetheless I usually can detect the Poles from the Russians walking down the street of our neighborhood here in New Jersey!

I usually distinguish Slavic look like Polish, Chech, Slovakian. I always thought that I look Polish but my first job in UK was customer orientated and some people asked me if I was Italian...Spanish (I have brown eyes and slightly dark complexion) ....no one asked me if I was Polish. I remember one man asked me if I'm Scottish - I guess it was my accent :-)

I was taken for a Russian twice-once in London. A girl approached me speaking Russian.
Most of the time I was recognised as a Pole by fellow Poles, or Slavic by fellow Slavs.
I don't think it's about hair/eye colour or height/body built, it's more about some looks you kind of have seen and associate with Poles.

As for other nations, Italians and Brits seem to be best at it - probably due to the number of Polish tourists/immigrants there. I was surprised when it happened to me in France.

Many foreigners do tend to lump all Northern Europeans together, confusing Poles with Russians, Ukrainians etc.
:-)

There are some similarities.
On several occassions I thought someone was Polish but they turned out to be Lithuanian/Czech etc.

That though I can well understand, the Balts and North Slavs having intermarried throughout the centuries.

That is true but it depends how long you live abroad some emigrants ( with time) get more and more similar to locals.

I have friend - English- her family comes from Liverpool.

She is very pretty - Quite a few people asked her/thought that she was Polish. Not sure why...general her look ,clothes she wears...mannerism....she has zero polish roots.

this thread's retarded. people have always moved around and "intermingled." countries only exist for a while, then change shape or name or disappear. wherever the border is redrawn becomes the new nationality of the people. Polish looks? Daj spokoj. maybe slavic but other than that...

nope..quite the opposite.peoples mass movements is new thing.
in the past ,they had little "intermingling" apart from few massive invasions,such as huns or magyars,people would live separated lived for long.

and ,you mix things here.makes no sense.state disappearing doesnt mean disappearing ethnicity or culture.if you knew about genetic studies,you would know that there was very little intermixing ,even in between Europeans

pls no more libtard retardation..science and facts please next time.

The truth is somewhere in between. I also think people have always moved and that's pretty much I wouldn't talk about 'Slavic looks'. Slavs have mixed with several peoples and that pretty much affected the way we look. But depending on the nation, the influences were different.

@idem
Well, probably because she looks like some Polish women they have seen before.