Polish and Czechs

Yes, you're right but when I was in high school I had to study English and German. Now polish children have to learn English in Primary School and Gymnasium (and it's obligatory) and English and some other language they can choose in high school. Usually it's German, Spanish or Russian. Unfortunatelly Russian is very unpopular, especially on west side of Poland.

You risk death if you do that! Its a beautiful town..I did see rather a lot of Russian billboards on construction sites in the city...zeee Ruskies are taking over ;0)

Let's get real. Why should it be popular? The economical ties between our countries are pretty poor (perhaps due to political issues), hence not many Poles come to Russia (I've personally seen only one Pole from Poland in my life who came on business to Moscow). Whereas Germany is your neighbour with the #1 economy in Europe and English is somewhat of world Esperanto. I will tell you more... Russian language is not popular even in Serbia. :)

As for Polish... Here in Russia people mostly study Polish because they love it, not because they can make any use of it.


And that obviously did you good. :) Although in Russia the situation with English is getting better... so we'll probably catch up with you soon.


You probably didn't get a punchline due to my not perfect English. That implied a Czech president would do that, not me. And the town is indeed beautiful. :)

English is more of a required business skill now, like math, basic sciences... Making English obligatory at a young age gives you much better chances at being successful in the meshed global world. English allows you to work and communicate in just about every country in the world, it's just another plus. Learning another language out of love for the language is a bonus. But English, like it or not, is a must for a decent job in the global world. You probably can sleep through your English classes if you want to be a mechanic in Warsaw, or a brick layer in Ostrava...but if you want to work for a company that has a presence, or customers in any other country, English is a must.

Once French is out of the way, going to switch back to sadistic slavic languages and try to pick up Russian. I'm seeing 6 months in a village somewhere to make that happen...

I can't of course argue that what you said because it's all true. :) I just meant one shouldn't do any things he/she is not into. That's why one should have a choice.

It is hard to not to like Chechs after Arabella in the childhood and a few books by Kundera sometime later... As to 1939 and Cieszyn thing, then according to some Chechs journalist, Czechs don't care about history as much as Poles, and it is not an issue..

Languages are different, but it is worth to notice that modern literary Chechs was partially remade in XIX century with borrowings from other Slavic languages (in much part including Polish).

Last but not least, one should remember that Polish-Chechs history of neighbourhood restarted in full scale quite recently. Before 1918 there was almost no common border (at least since middle-ages) and between 45' and 90' communists regime didn't supported normal social interactions.

I think Russian sounds very nice instead of German. No metter what you say in German, it could be Christmas Wishes, for Poles it always saunds like order to shoot ;)

Russian is really beautyfull, especially in songs. There's is a band called Origa. They made soundtrack for "Ghost in The Shell", the series not film, and it was amazing.


Besides bussines things, I think we have to have some break from you, Russian boys tinkering with our east borders ;)) That's why Poles love so much Ukrainians, Belarussians or Lithuanians. Because they separate us from you :))


Most of Poles think that you have no idea where Poland is. Not mention about learning Polish.


There is a cartoon called "Futurama". In one of episodes, main characters go to museum of XX century and Bender (the robot) take a handset to hear some extinct language. And guess what he've heard ? "Bonne journée!" ;))

Shhhh!! Don't tell zhem zhe secret!

Unfortunately some of the places I will be going require French (lots of really messed up african countries...).

I have a friend who is Czech... we are rivals! He makes fun of Poland so I return the favor. I hope our national soccer team will one day beat them in a deep playoff game so I can rub it in his face! In total, we are neighbors though.

You mean the USA? There is a very good chance of that happening. If you mean Poland... well, football and Poland is always severely depressing and probably one of the major contributors to alcoholism in this country.

Wait for Tuesday. We will play with Czechs in handball at European Championships. I can't wait to see them crying after the match ;))

oh, but we _did_ beat them, not long ago!

(ok... then they beat us... doesn't matter though)

and tomorrow, we're going to beat them in handball. It's our turn now.

And I have no TV :((( I have to get one for tomorrow ;)

Try justintv, sometimes it works.

Not those who live in Czech Republic.


The poll was conducted in March 2011.
praguemonitor.com/2011/04/18/poll-roma-are-least-popular-minority-%C4%8Dr

Czechs don't have any sizeable minority anymore, the poll is about people they don't know anyway. I mean... Jews? Really? The only Jews in Czechia are Americans in Prague.

And actual contacts between Czechs and Poles are pretty sparse, despite all this pan-Slavic bullshit. It gets better, but these contacts don't develop because of Slavic ties but because both countries are part of the EU and all cross-border initiatives get heavily subsidised.

pan-Slavic movements were never very popular in Poland for political reasons...

...still the affinity of the languages just makes Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians close (closer than Germans and the English I reckon)

I don't think that applies to Poles though. The cross-border traffic between Poland and Czech Republic
is quite heavy and has been ever since I can remember (even before Czech Republic and Poland joined
the EU.) I was born in Jelenia Góra and a lot of my family members still live there, so there was a time
in my life when I would visit Czech Republic very often, and even now when I live at the other end
of Poland, I still visit our southern neighbours at least once a year.

Do Czechs like us? I don't know - they certainly have reasons to dislike us, when you look at history,
but I think that for most Czechs history is not as important as it is to Poles. I will just say that during
my numerous visits to CR (some of which lasted for a couple of weeks) I have NEVER encountered
a single sign of resentment towards myself, because I'm Polish - quite the contrary, Czechs are very
hospitable people. Of course, the fact that I was speaking Czech (or I should say, I like to think that
I was speaking Czech lol) which I consider to be the most beautiful Slavic language, helped me a lot :-)

But I can't remember seeing many Czechs in Poland, to be honest.
And the contacts in Commie times were totally different. Sure, there was some border traffic, mainly by tourists, but now the EU forces real cooperation, which was totally unknown back then. Local councils now have to work together and even hold joint meetings, schools switch pupils and teachers, kindergarden children meet, associations share work and so on. This is new.

That was my impression too - more Poles were visiting the Czech Republic than the other way around,
but still, every summer you could see many cars with Czech license plates in Jelenia Góra.


Which is a great thing, and hopefully we can keep the best possible relations with the Czechs.
Czech Republic and Poland not co-operating or being hostile to each other, just doesn't make sense.

So treat it is simply as an expression of sympathy and antipathy towards certain nations (10). The most popular in Poland (according to CBOS, 2011) are: Czechs, Slovaks, Spanish, Italians and Hungarians. Unfortunately, such polls usually are about people 'we don't know', often reflection of stereotypes and generalizations.


Polish-Czech past conflicts seem to be more important to outsiders than to Czechs and Poles. There were also good things in our common history. Why not concentrate on them?

Economically yes, as for culturally, that is a definite know: you would be quite hard pressed seeing a country that had no independence for a few hundred years as opposed to just a hundred, and most of its upper class consisting of imported Germans as culturally superior.


Or to compensate for my typo NO

I really like the country and hope to visit Prague one day. Though I am not sure if i will go out of my way to annoy their guards whilst I am there(:

I've heard Polish language sounds rather ancient, kind of eastern and uneducated to a Czech native. However, my Czech friend seemed to know very little about Poland, which is probably caused by the total lack of Polish movies, music and whatnot in the Czech Republic. Czechs have obviously never given a damn about Poland. Complete ignorance I'd say.

Czechs & Poles?

A Pole told me that in his opinion, Poles generally liked the Czechs but that Czechs generally didn't particularly like Poles that much.

Poor, religious and miserable - his words, not mine.

Yes,they already do man,it's called the visegrad's four...It doesn't work too much apart from meetings with plenty of local food and wine/beer.

I would have to say that there is a pretty good relationship between Poles and Czechs.

In fact, in my family we always speak of how beautiful Prague is, and how the Czechs have a cool, laid back nature, and their language is strangely funny to us, as we can understand bits and pieces.

Additionally, they are quite similar to us in culture, and really are our Slavic sisters/brothers.

From the industrial side, there has always been an admiration for Czechs having their own automobile company - Skoda. Which, while not a high end brand, is vastly popular in Poland and Europe as well.

My personal experience - I have some Czech friends, and we have always gotten along great - we have much in common.

We couldn't have asked for a better Southern neighbor, then our friends the Czechs.

lol exactly...

Both the Czechs as well as the Hungarians may indeed prefer English to German (or certainly Russian, for obvious historical reasons, Prague Spring, for example), yet like the Poles, both groups seem to have much more linguistic and cultural affinity to German than to English, which many may speak, but not that well-:)

Just my impression, that's all LOL

LOL! Czechs are Europes most agnostic nation, while Poles are Europes most religious nation.
And I suppose Czechs have pretty good relations with every nation of the world, since most people will agree that Prague is very beautiful.
:D