Polish/Ukrainian words similarities

I believe I am right in saying that about eighty per cent of Ukrainian words are very similar to Russian words. I have been to the Ukraine as I spent a month in the summer time 1982 in a town called Kharkow. We flew to Moscow and then took an overnight train to Kharkow. Lovely weather during the summer time in the Ukraine.

I wrote that Ukrainian is more similar to Polish than Russian to Polish. :)

Of course Ukrainian is similar to Russian too.

But I don't think you have heard many Ukrainian words in Kharkow, because Kharkow is Russian-speaking town (moreover, former governor of Kharkow region proposed to separate several regions including Kharkow from Ukraine and join to Russia when we had revolution here).

There is also an awful mix of Russian and Ukrainian, called "surjik", sounds really awful (though some people who speak surjik are sure they speak Ukrainian). I can speak surjik for fun only.

It would be expected that Ukrainian and Polish may have similarities due to geographic location.

Well, Ukraine also borders on Romania, but Ukrainian language doesn't have many similarities with Romanian. :)

BTW,


it is just the opposite in fact. :)

well, Michal was in Kharkov in 1982, I figure people simply spoke Russian then, with a little Ukrainina accent, that's why he thought he understands the language so well :)

or maybe, JUST maybe because ukraine was simply another polish province in the Polish-Lithuanian kingdom before they got this crazy idea to separate themselves. Didnt turn out so well in the end.

I think it's up to them to decide how it worked out, remember that remaining in the union with Poland meant partitions, WWII, communism - not really a much better fate, and if a nation suffers, they'd rather suffer for their own sake

of course we may speculate that both Poland and Ukraine would be much better off remaining in the union (one stronger state, weaker Russia etc.), but it would be just speculations

It was actually a Russian friend of mine who lives in Portsmouth but came from Moscow originally and then later studied with me many years ago who talked of the word similarity between the two languages. I have never made a study of it myself.

Yes, it is Ukrainian way of pronouncing "g", though we have both "g" like Russian in our language and Ukrainian "g" which sounds like "h".

So, what you have heard in Kharkow is neither correct Russian, nor correct Ukrainian.

The thing is that people who move from villages to big towns, they speak Ukrainian, so when they try to speak Russian, it sounds like what you've heard.

As for me, I used to speak normal Russian (without those "g", etc., btw, when I visit Russia, people there wonder I speak Russian without accent :)), but I know Ukrainian very well and speak correct Ukrainian, but use it mostly for work. Though when I visit Western Ukraine I love to speak Ukrainian and to hear good "native" Ukrainian language. BTW, Ukrainian language in Lvov sounds a bit like Polish sometimes, not only similar words, but accent too. Like they say "prosze", etc.

Michal, there are sooo many really nice places here in Ukraine. In Western Ukraine - Lutsk, Lvov, small, but really great city - Kamenets-Podol'skiy... In Central region - Poltava, Northern - Chernigov, Eastern - Slavyanogorsk... Southern - Odessa, also Crimean peninsula... Oops, sorry for offtopic again. Anyway, if you will have possibility to visit one of these cities, you won't regret :)

I only know Kharkov and the lovely countryside en route. I remember the following morning looking out through the windows of the train and it was wonderful countryside. I was only in Kharkov and it was for a month so I am not able to comment on any other place. It is quite expensive to visit Russia from England but in those days everything for us was free as we were students. I suppose that we were really lucky as the one month programme in Kharkov was followed in a later year by a five month stint in Moscow as I was also at the famous (or at least it was then) Pushkin Institute in Moscow in 1984.

I'm far from being any sort of expert, but I do remember when I spent time in Poland having a conversation with someone, me speaking Polish and her speaking Ukrainian, and we did seem to understand each other.

I once had a Polish girlfriend, who's mother told me that back in Poland they had a saying that Ukrainian was good Russian, but bad Polish.

I would say that Polish is easier to learn than Russian. It could be personal, though. Back in those days "we'd been taught Russian" (i.e. it was mandatory for schools to teach it) and everyone hated the language, because we hated the 'Russkie' oppression itself. In Slavic countries, they were more successful as the language didn't sound foreign. (And, of course, language-teaching was far more less sophisticated than today in our world of the internet and multimedia.)

I forgot nearly everything, but still helps me in my Polish. (Mostly basic things like numbers, names in the family tree etc., but here and there even some more difficult things just "pop in" from my forgotten Russian.) Sometimes we even joke with our "reminiscent" Russian knowledge with my Polish colleagues, ha-ha. :)

There's one thing no one has yet mentioned: the sexual discriminatory nature of Slavic languages. ;o) It still does my head in that everybody and everything is either masculine or feminin or neutral in gender, plus even in plural there's a difference between a masculine and a feminine/non-masculine "they"!

Sidewinder
Polish "krawat" sounds so close to Ukrainian "krawatka" probably because it is a French word "cravate". :-) :-) :-) :-) LOL

When I started studying French, I found out that many our long cherished Ukrainian words are actually French. Patnofli (slippers) is a French word as well as servertka. :-) And do you know that the phrase we got used to in Ukrainia "komsi komsa" is actually French "comme ci comme ca" which means so-so. There were many others. I am sure that many words you find in both Ukrainian and Polish had actually been taken form French or English or Latin long time ago.

By the way, Sidewinder, South Russians (Krasnodarsk area) pronounce "g" the way we, Ukrainians, do. The same is true for some areas of Sibera. I was surprised to hear Ukrainian "g" from Russians.

As for similarities between Polish and Ukrainians, I have just been to Poland. I spoke Ukrainian, yes. :-) "Do you work here, in our city? For how long?" a receptionist at a little hotel asked me. I said that I did not work in Poland. She thought I spoke Polish. :-) The languages are close enough for me to talk by phone with shop owners (about transmission for my sister's car). Yes, I had to find how transmission sounds in Polish (I knew it would be different from Ukrainian). It was something like skrinka begov (for Ukrainians sounds literally like "a little box of running" :-))

Having some wits, a Ukrainian who speaks Ukrainian (not surzhik) would understand Polish and be understood by people. With an aid of a dictionary to fill in differences, I think a Ukrainian would not need anything else to learn how to speak. Writing is another thing.

You can decide for yourself:

Days of week (starts from Monday, of course)
ponedIłok, wiwtOrok, seredA, czetwEr, pjAtnytsia, subOta, nedIlia

Months
sIczeń, liUtyj, bErezeń, kwIteń, trAweń, czErweń, łYpeń, sErpeń, wEreseń, żOwteń, łystopAd, hrUdeń

Seasons
zymA, wesnA, lIto, Osiń

Times of day
rAnok, deń, wEczir (not wEcir - there's no directly soft ć in Ukrainian!), nicz

Numbers
nul' (0), odYn (1), dwa, try, czotYry, pjat', szist', sim, wIsim, dEwjat', dEsiat' (10)

sto (100), tYsiacza (1000), mil'jOn (1,000,000), mil'jArd (1,000,000)

male - czołowIk
female - żInka
child - dytYna
son - syn
daughter - doczkA
parents - bat'kY
father - bAt'ko
mother - mAty, mAtir

One example I found very characteristic: ciastko - tIsteczko. Sounds close, yet it is different in spirit!

latarnia - lichtAr...

For Ukrainian & Pole it s easy to understand each other.
I ve met guys from Poland who didn t speak english, but UKR-PL mix was enough for a friendly talk )
We have LOTS of words that are not quite similar, but SO-O-O close!
Let s communicate more! )
P.S. But both our nations should speak english fluently now. That s a fact. We live in a global world.
& when some our (UKR) polititians talk about russian - i say: e n g l i s h - is "the must" today!

To clearly demonstrate the CONCEPTUAL difference between Polish, Russian and Ukrainian it is absolutely enough to see how the English idiom "first of all" is translated into them three:

przede wszystkim (Polish)

priEżdie wsiewO (Russian)

and

peredusIm in Ukrainian

These three (translations) have common root, common roots, common meaning (before everything). Yet Polish is sibilantized, Russian is palatalized, Ukrainian is MOSTLY laconic and pleophonous.

I'm Polish, I've never learnt Russian nor Ukrainian. I can communicate with Ukrainians no problem, but I have problems speaking with Russians, and we often fall back to English.

It is interesting that also Polish and Ukrainian share set of words which are very similar to each other (I do not want to bet if they are borrowed) there is also lot of words which are more similar between Polish and Russian than between Polish and Ukrainian.

There is lot of striking similarities between Russian and Polish.For example:

English - Polish - Russian - Ukrainian

He - On - On - Vin
She - Ona - Ona - Vona
They - Oni - Oni - Vony
It - Ono - Ono - Vono
Where - Gdje - Gdje - De
River - Rzheka - Reka - Richka
Wife - Zhona - Zhena - Druzhyna,Zhinka

And many,many other. The reason why Ukrainians understand you better than Russians is because Ukrainians speak or understand Russian too.Plus borrowed words from Polish.Luckily for Ukrainians their language is language in between Polish and Russian.

Therefore they have less difficulty to practice both those languages.It is interesting that Ukrainian also have some word identical to Czech.For example: zvir (beast) richka (river) djakuju (thank you) and many other...

Gdzie


Żona

Do you speak Polish, Vlad?

Oh sorry, I just checked: Znasz j. polski? A bit

Not even the basics...

Vlad123, do you reside inside or outside of MKAD? Your anti-ukrainian attitude is abhorrent. You are a just a Moskal, and please admit it.

What is MKAD? I thought I live in Northern America...


What? I`m ethnical Ukrainian and like Ukrainian language.Did I say I do not like it?
But some people should know languages,and if Polish and Russian have many very similar
words that`s a fact and to deny this is laughable...
Ukrainian has its own specifics,it developed not less independently than Russian or Polish
and this is beauty language...

Are you another 90-60-90 agent from Lubianka then ?-:)

Actually,there is nothing strange in the fact that Polish and Russian languages are so similar.
If you look at this genetic map of Europe it seems that Ameriracan researches believe that
genetics of people in Eastern and Northern Poland is identical to Russians.It is marked RU.

scienceblogs.com/gnxp/2008/08/31/genetic-map-of-europe-genes-va

• 
  
  

Vlad123: I don't know what they are speaking about. Maybe they're trolling?

Not funny, anyway.

I wonder what is your interest in repeating the same bullsh1t over again, whose brain are you trying to wash?

Only me?This is citation of your native Polish guy:


https://polishforums.com/genealogy/russian-dna-37610/
This is usually those who spark ethnical hate between nations wash brains to people.I just trying to reduce unnecessary hostility between Slavic nations and make them stand together for freedom and democracy.

Crap. We don't need your russian freedom/democracy. Russians like you simply do not know what those notions mean.

Yes, that's proving that there are Russian lovers in Poland, nothing else.

Principally I think that Ukrainians and Belorussians are probably genetically even closer to
Poles than Russians.Quite possibly researchers mistook Russians for Ukrainians and
Belorussians.Majority of Russians are maybe not that close,especially those who live in
Tatarstan and Karelia.

make your mind up, you're getting lost in your own bs