As a Pole, I personally feel a strong aversion towards the Ukrainian language (and Belarusian too) and feel worry that it has so many West Slavic borrowings to the point it's no longer intelligible with Russian. I can accept many loanwords we imported into Ukrainian but for some reason I just cannot accept the fact that they even borrowed the word "pan" (lord/mister). "Pan" is a word that defines us, Western Slavs, very much. This word is completely alien in the rest of Slavic languages, but it somewhat got into Ukrainian. East Slavs used to call us, Poles, "polskie pany" (or something like that) and now they use this word to call themselves that. Please, Ukrainians, get rid of this word and start using "gospodin" or something like that.
This word is completely alien in the rest of Slavic languages, but it somewhat got into Ukrainian
Languages always borrow from each other and linguistic trends are always changing. No language is timeless, none are unchanging.
Polish borrows words from other languages (whether Slavonic or from other groups) all the time, has done so for centuries, is doing so now, and will do so in the future, possibly at a far faster rate than before.
Please, Ukrainians, get rid of this word and start using "gospodin" or something like that.
There was time when Poles used gospodzin as well. But Russians and Serbs didn't make any claims to Poles regarding this. Everithing is changing.
Polish knights chanted Bogurodzica prior to their engagement at the Battle of Grunwald: "Bogurodzica dziewica, Bogiem sławiena Maryja! U twego syna Gospodzina Matko zwolena, Maryja" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogurodzica
Moreover Ukrainians use expression "szanownie panstwo" - a respectful community.
gospodzin (język polski) znaczenia: rzeczownik, rodzaj męskoosobowy
(1.1) st.pol. gospodarz, pan pl.wiktionary.org/wiki/gospodzin
Perhaps not quite germain, but I heard from a Russian acquaintance that immediately during early Glasnost, it was usual in Russia to hear "gospodin" and "gospozha" when referring, resp. to "Mr." and "Mrs.". This later was briefly replaced by "garazhin" for "citizen" when addressing strangers or in similarly formal encounters. Is this true?
Word for citizen in Russian is "grazhdanin", not "garazhin". It originated from Slavic word "grad" - a settlement. Russians rarely use words gospodin or grazhdanin in a daily life. More often in official use. When they need to refer to someone in public transport or supermarket they will use more comonly something like: "a man", "a woman", "a girl", "a lad", boy, oldma, etc.
Majority of Russians have no even idea what word "comrad" means. During "communist" party rule the official was "towariszcz"'. It means basically the same as in Polish, - "a fellow", "companion". But it started to gain use even before October revolution, after February revolotion, during provisionary govt.
For the majority of Europeans in general, any time before 2000 is like ancient history, so astronomically short is their memory! It's frightening really.
Recently met several Germans under thirty who only vaguely knew of (or worse, even cared about) the Fall of the Wall and the impact of the collapse of Communism. All three though had relatively well-paying banking jobs in Frankfurt aka Bankfurt or"Mainhattan", yet couldn't converse on even the lowest historical-cultural level...in English OR German LOL
To Vlad: I'm American of German-speaking descent and Polish, later Russian, I studied at graduate school in my late 2O's while obtaining my doctorate in the psychology of second language acquisition and adult pedagogy. Are you Russian or Romanian, like Vlad Tepes?
I can understand 99.9% in Ukrainian, but would have difficulty to write a story in marvelously rich Ukrainian. Probably not all people know their language well enough to express themselves in poetically rich language. So, maybe Russian slightly easier. I've read far more literature in Russian than in Ukrainian in my life.
@Vlad1234 The language isn't a barrier, it's what the language and more accurately the accent reminds of past actions (trauma)
When the Russian Federation adjusts it's geo strategy to current realities, things can move on.
Example: need for naval bases (Crimea, Kaliningrad, Marmunsk and Petersburg) was for the purpose of being able to control (apply taxes, tariff etc) and use maritime trade. Very similar to how Denmark was controlling trade in the Baltic.
Nowadays it's not as profitable as navy has become far more expensive and products from Russia has changed from valuable pelts and furs to gas, oil and precious metals.
Gas/oil transported by railway/pipes makes the need for a navy quite redundant unless such pipelines are made at sea and in harms danger due to possible sabotage. (Which useally happens via hack attacks and not by commandoes/sabotours.)
So creating schools for the purpose of promoting digital activities (digital currencies, digitally made art, digital tools, digital control of on-the-ground military vehicles/equipment, digital platforms, digital markets, creation of hardware)
Wouldn't only be groundbreaking and opens up the possibility of attracting interest but, also to recruit the best for hacking/military/intelligence purposes
Also improving infrastructure for trade from China would give a huge advantage to Russia cause of her landmass connecting China with Europe and improving it as much as possible, so as to make any other trade routes redundant and more costly compared to Russian infrastructure. Alas due to Russian paranoia and need for security a common tactic is to slowly improve it's infrastructure as to complicate possible enemy logistics
varia-course.com/how-does-polish-sound-to-foreigners-polish-pronunciation-exercises/ For Ukrainians, Polish often feels familiar due to similarities in vocabulary and grammar, but differences in pronunciation and stress patterns can be challenging. Polish sounds like ś, ć and nasal vowels (ą, ę) are unusual in Ukrainian phonetics, making them difficult to pronounce correctly. Moreover, despite many words sounding similar, there are numerous false friends that can lead to misunderstandings-such as "zapomnieć", which in Polish means "to forget", but in Ukrainian means "to remember".
The intonation and stress patterns of Polish also differ from the melody of Ukrainian speech, which may make Polish seem more monotonous. However, despite these challenges, Ukrainians often learn Polish quickly, especially thanks to their shared Slavic linguistic heritage
