TDC Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6925 days ago 261 posts - 291 votes 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 Senior Member Joined 7160 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds 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 Joined 7016 days ago 130 posts - 165 votes 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.
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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 Joined 6870 days ago 118 posts - 130 votes 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.
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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 Senior Member United States Joined 7108 days ago 1126 posts - 1102 votes 2 sounds
| 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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