Is Polish amongst the best-sounding languages in the world?

To me Polish is like the French of the Slavic speaking world.
Polish sometimes sounds kind of nasally like French.

On the other hand I think Russian is like the German of the Slavic speaking world.

Russian sounds more rough than other Slavic languages.

But, I notice when Poles get excited or rowdy it starts to sound more like Russian. LOL

Or that the Yanks have no taste :)

In Britain we find the female variant especially mysterious, elusive, enticing - without the undercurrent of bored petulance that we think we hear in the Russian equivalent.

Sorry? What? Oh, it's only me then, is it?

It's so obvious that you've never been to Poland.

One minute in the company of a Pole will tell you that the general opinion is that Russian is far more melodic than Polish - hence why Easterners 'sing' in Polish.

Easterners sing in Polish?

You mean like Sasha Strunin?

I wonder if Czech sounds as silly and amusing to non-speakers of Polish?

Sounded funny to me when I lived there.

Yeah Czech really does sound crazy.

I notice when I hear Czech It doesn't sound as Slavic. I actually have trouble telling a Czech person is Slavic sometimes when I first hear them speak.

I really think Czechs must have another influence. I have wondered if there is even a Celtic influence as Celts did live in Czech Republic for a long time.

That's nice, but I would never have imagined that this hard accent can be so attractive to an Englishman (I presume that, it is more important, who the lady is....;).

Yes, it depends on the speaker. Some of you, quite frankly, do sound like James Bond villains - but that's true of most nationalities, English included :)

Again, proof that you don't speak Polish at all. It's even proof that you haven't spent any time around the Polish language - otherwise - you'd be able to hear that it was Czech straight away. It's quite an easy accent to follow if you know Polish (not as easy as Ukrainian or Slovak, but much easier than Russian or Serbian) - but you wouldn't know that, would you?


It doesn't sound "silly and amusing" at all.

Typical racist stereotype propogated by backwater peasants.

It doesn't sound "silly", but it does sound amusing to most of us. There is nothing of a stereotype in it (the word 'rasict' being completely inappropriate here), but it is the matter of a specific language similarity which make Polish people perceive the Czech language as amusing. You didn't follow the recent discussion on PF on the subject in which I quoted a once extremely popular song by Andrzej Rosiewicz with very good-natured lyrics, "Najwięcej witaminy mają polskie dziewczyny", which said:

"Czeszka tylko mnie rozśmiesza, chociaż lubię Czechów
Gdybym wydał się za Czeszkę, umarłbym ze śmiechu"

Apart from that, a once widely known TV performance engaging the top Polish singer Maryla Rodowicz and the top Czech singer Helena Vondrackova made fun of the word "laska" in a popular Czech song "To je laska nebeska" (sung by Vondrackova) which word in Czech means 'love', but in Polish means "walking stick". The performance had nothing of a "typical racist stereotype propagated by backwater peasants". No one had ever thought of it in this way.

yes it does - just think of 'do prdele' hehhe :)

I dont care what language it is as long as I hear the sweet soft sound of a nice lady :)

Using French women as an example:
Melissa Theuriau
or Alizee

rusłAna. switAnok - classic example of Ukrainian language!
youtube.com/watch?v=l8TTQEM2lek

I don't think that Czech language sounds like that because of Celtic influence. The biggest influence on Czech had German language.
In middle ages czech and polish languages were very similar, almost the same. Czech had a greate impact on polish language, especially on grammar and vocabulary (most of the words related to christianity in polish comes from czech).

Later, when Habsburgs became kings of Bohemia, German became language for nobles and czech started to be considered as peasanst language. Both languages started to mingle.

When I listen to Ukrainian singers, I feel like I'm back in Italy

Yes I agree. My grandpa speaks Ukrainian and when he talks to my mom it sounds like a song. It's so flowing. I also find Italian beautiful. Polish is okay, although not as beautiful sounding to me.

absolutely. i CONSTANTLY hear from Poles, of all ages, that czech is really funny to listen to. most of them say it sounds like polish baby talk, like little kids speaking polish.

The nice-soundingness of languages is about the most subjective of areas, like tastes in food and drink, clothing, music and human beauty.
I personally like the sound of French, Russian, and yes -- even German (especially Romantic poetry), Italian and Spanish -- those tongues are widely acclaiemd as pleasnat sounding.

Languages which I find funny sounding include Czech, Dutch and Chinese. Portuguese and Hungarian sounds strange. But I also realise Polish soundns weird and 'shishy' to many outsiders.

For me it depends almost entirely on who's speaking and the context in which they're speaking.
As others have mentioned, French and Italian sound wonderful and yeah, oddly enough German sounds good to my ear too but the best for me is Hungarian; it's such a mystery to me - I love the way it sounds!

Well...I am biased but as I have mentioned I love the sound of it when my Fiance' (soon my Mister- better learn to say my last name right!) is speaking and it's accent on his English.

It sounds so close yet different from the style of "Bohemian" my family spoke. They never identified themselves as "Czech" .
I grew up hearing Spanish, Portuguese, a lot as well with Cherokee, German and Welsh smattered. I think my mom's dad was only person with no accent.


I do agree that my Hungarian friends sound pretty too when they do quick info chats in Teamspeak

I always have to laugh when my wife and daughter describe to me (and others) what Polish sounds like to them : a series of ch-ch-ch interspersed with sh-sh-sh.

as opposed to Tagalog lol

I'm Polish, therefore I love the way it sounds. I understand how people sometimes get scared when they see stuff like "Grzegorz" or "szczebrzeszyn" and think the whole language is an extremely demanding tongue twister. Pronunciation can be difficult for foreigners sometimes, but once you learn letters like ę and ó and ą, it becomes clearer. If you're a good Spanish speaker, we pronounce some letters similarly, go based off of that. Some other languages I like are Russian, Hungarian, Belarusian, Swedish, and German.

Nig*a pliz...

I'm Polish too and I don't, weird?

"I was told Polish sounds a little like Portuguese,"

Indeed sounds like the portuguese from Portugal (which sounds completely different of Brazilian portuguese, since the last one is more inclined to Italian (south of Brazil) and French (Rio and North of Brazil) and doesnt have the "shiishh" sound of portuguese from Portugal.

Polish often sounds almost chirpy to my ears, particularly when spoken by women.

@George8600

Disagree. The Godforsaken "wałczenie" which is dominant among Polish/Lusatian language today (a similar phenomenon occurs in Serbia-Croatian) reminds me of French "chaud". Hate the way it sounds. Makes our language sound wimpy.

Especially if it is Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz. 😀

Polish certainly remains the most distinctive sounding
amongst the Slavic languages, if for no other reason,
those nasals along with the fact that modern Polish has
zero short vs .long vowels as exist in Slovene, Russian,
Croatian and Czech.