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Polish - the most similar language?

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21 messages over 3 pages: 13  Next >>
TDC
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
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Speaks: English*, Mandarin, French
Studies: Esperanto, Ukrainian, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Persian

 
 Message 9 of 21
01 July 2006 at 7:12pm | IP Logged 
Ukrainian is just Polish written in Cyrillic.

I don't think that Polish is quite that close to Ukrainian. Ukrainian is much closer to Russian. You can check out more at wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavic_languages

Polish is West Slavic and Ukranian is East Slavic.
Although the closer you get to Poland in the Ukraine, the closer the regional dialects overlap.

To compare...
Transliterated Ukrainian:
Inozemni movu absoljutno neobhidni dlja ljudej u naw chas cherez zrostajuchi mizhnarodni kontaktu iz zakordonnumu krajinamu

(Original)
Іноземні мови абсолютно необхідні для людей у наш час через зростаючі міжнародні контакти із закордонними країнами.


Edited by TDC on 01 July 2006 at 7:14pm

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Chung
Diglot
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Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 10 of 21
03 July 2006 at 5:35pm | IP Logged 
Kaszubski or Slaski :-P

For standard languages, it seems for me to be a tie between Lower Sorbian and Slovak (with Czech, Upper Sorbian and Ukrainian being rather close too).
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Arti
Diglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
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Speaks: Russian*, English
Studies: French, Czech

 
 Message 11 of 21
05 July 2006 at 1:27pm | IP Logged 
TDC wrote:


I don't think that Polish is quite that close to Ukrainian. Ukrainian is much closer to Russian. You can check out more at wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavic_languages

Polish is West Slavic and Ukranian is East Slavic.

I know all this moreover I'm native Russian, Ukraine was under Poland for so long time that Ukrainian absored increadibly many words and expressions from Polish, that statement that Polish is VERY close to Ukrainian was said by Poles, but of course it's all subjective
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Eriol
Diglot
Senior Member
Sweden
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Speaks: Swedish*, English
Studies: Portuguese

 
 Message 12 of 21
06 July 2006 at 2:50am | IP Logged 
TDC wrote:
Polish is West Slavic and Ukranian is East Slavic.
Although the closer you get to Poland in the Ukraine, the closer the regional dialects overlap.



I'm not claiming to be an expert, I have basic knowledge of just one slavic language, but from what I've read the division of the languages into west, east and south slavic is quite arbitrary and based mostly on geography and the borders that exist today. To get the whole picture you need to know the history too.

For instance, south slavic Bulgarian vocabulary is more similar to east slavic Russian than it is to Slovenian because of the common influences from Old Church Slavonic. The grammar is quite different though.


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fredomirek
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Poland
Joined 6910 days ago

265 posts - 264 votes 
Speaks: Polish*, EnglishC1, Italian, Spanish
Studies: Portuguese, Japanese

 
 Message 13 of 21
08 July 2006 at 5:43am | IP Logged 
Thank you all for help! I really appreciate it. I'll stick to the languages I have already picked for the time being, and then I'll start learning Portuguese (my third Roman language) or one of the Slavic ones you mentioned (probably Czech or some other).

Thank you!
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jesska
Triglot
Newbie
United Kingdom
Joined 6672 days ago

2 posts - 2 votes
Speaks: English*, Polish, Spanish

 
 Message 14 of 21
23 August 2006 at 5:05pm | IP Logged 
I'm a native English speaker, and I've learnt Polish from scratch. I find the following languages closest, in order:


* Ukrainian (speakers from Lvov and west Ukraine)
* slovakian (particularly in the Tatra area)
* croatian

Oddly, I find Czech difficult to understand, though I can read it quite well. Think it's the stress (on the first syllable in Czech?)

Only understand about 50% of spoken Russian, if that.

Don't know if that helps.
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Sir Nigel
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United States
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 Message 15 of 21
23 August 2006 at 6:24pm | IP Logged 
That's a very good point. My mum who grew up using Ukrainian (her parents came from western Ukraine and knew no Russian) understands about what you said you get of Russian yet she can understand more of Polish.
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munus
Tetraglot
Newbie
Poland
my.opera.com/Munus/
Joined 6770 days ago

24 posts - 24 votes
Speaks: Polish*, English, German, Russian
Studies: Swedish

 
 Message 16 of 21
23 August 2006 at 7:06pm | IP Logged 
Slovakian is much closer to Polish than Ukrainian. I have seen websites in Slovakian and Ukrainian. I understood much more from Slovakian.


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