Language /
Why is the Polish language so difficult? [320]
Russian for family-familia
familia is more like a family name in Russian than the family itself and Russian also have a different word for family 'sjemja' ('syem'ya') which I guess is Slavic (maybe it comes from 'seed' - compare archaic Polish 'siemię' = 'seed')
Lyzko:
True, Alex! And yet, Polish typically borrows heavily from non-Slavic word roots. Having said all that, Both Polish and particularly Czech use almost exclusively SLAVIC word roots for both the days of the week as well as the months and seasons, compared say with Russian in the case of the former.
So, in other words, Russian is easier than Polish?
Russian grammar is a bit simpler than the Polish one but it still has good couple of noun cases and comparable difficulty of verb aspects (perfective/imperfective)
Russian phonetics is a bit simpler than Polish - but hardly any Westerner masters their 'soft consonants' and most pronounce these as their plain variants (it hardly sounds Russian anymore then)
the different alphabet is not a big problem - you can read it pretty fast after some practice (I learned it almost instantly as a kid in school) - the only problem is some sounds behind the alphabet
