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Polish or Russian? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Russianbear Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6776 days ago 358 posts - 422 votes  1 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, Ukrainian Studies: Spanish | Message 33 of 37 20 May 2009 at 1:43am | IP Logged | |||||
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US domination/occupation of the Middle East apparently causes resentment, too. Not sure how they feel about English in Iraq or Saudi Arabia, though.
Anyways, getting back on topic; it may be useful to just try both languages and see if one sounds more pleasant than the other to you. You can find some Russian and Polish videos on youtube. Perhaps you will like or dislike one of the languages so much that the choice will be easy to make. Edited by Russianbear on 20 May 2009 at 2:00am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Mooby Senior Member Scotland Joined 6106 days ago 707 posts - 1220 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Polish | Message 34 of 37 24 September 2009 at 12:53am | IP Logged | |||||
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One question to ask is what are you going to do do with your Polish or Russian?
If reading is one of your interests then I guess Russian could be the better choice. But for me - I am learning Polish because: * I have many close Polish friends. There are many speaking opportunities. * I prefer the sound. Russian seems a little more nasal, Polish is like fizzy water! * I don't know any Russians to talk to. * I'm just attracted to Polish people and culture. They're a long-suffering people and I can identify with this (actually, this is true for many Russians) I don't know which is more difficult, both are hard so it probably doesn't matter. If you base your decision on pure logic (maybe Russian because there are more speakers for example) you may not find this a sufficient enough motivation when the grammar difficulties kick in. What is your gut-feeling? Edited by Mooby on 24 September 2009 at 1:10am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Leopejo Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 6110 days ago 675 posts - 724 votes Speaks: Italian*, Finnish*, English Studies: French, Russian | Message 35 of 37 25 September 2009 at 2:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
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My take, if you want to study both languages:
start with Russian. 1) While the pronunciation is surprisingly different between those two languages, I'd say that once you have mastered Russian pronunciation and spelling rules, you get to intimately understand the issue of soft and hard consonants, и vs. ы, and so on, typical of Slavic languages. Then not only Polish will be "relatively" easy to get into, but you will understand a great deal of why some Polish words are written and pronounced as they are. Sure, you will still have to tackle s, ś (si), sz, c, ć (ci), cz, z, ż (rz), ź, dz, dź (dzi), dż,... If you start with Polish, you might not really intimately understand the palatalization issue, and you might take the "all consonants before an i-letter sound a bit like as pronounced with a j" as a not-so-important special rule only. 2) I'd say that - and they will bash me now - Russian has a more "archaic" feel, while Polish sounds a bit like more "modern". This said, the grammar is pretty similar, though from the little I know of them, Polish declinations look more difficult, with so many exceptions. Masculine genitive singular, anyone? This said, I personally see it easier, and more "logical", to learn Russian first and move to Polish then, than the contrary. Relative to this, Russian spelling is "older" looking while Polish more phonetic, as if they started writing quite recently (though using different letters for same sound because of grammatical reasons: ó/u). 3) even the alphabets speak for this order. It is true that Russian uses the Cyrillic alphabet, but it actually is pretty easy to learn - while Polish words and sentences are for sure not easy to read nor pronounce for a beginner. Try any number with 3, 6, 9, tens. Getting the Russian alphabet and language down, it is much easier to understand the meaning of all those double letter words in Polish, even if Russian doesn't differentiate between cz and ć for example. Now for an example of some of the points above, take the Russian word for children, дети, transcribed as deti, or more pronounce-oriented d'et'i. Both the Russian д 'd' and т 't' are heavily palatalized in this word and you might hear different native (?) speakers on your Russian audio material pronounce it differently. Polish has gone further with the palatalization and children is written and pronounced dzieci. To recapitulate, learning Russian first and Polish later is more logical and probably easier, in my very humble opinion. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| unityandoutside Diglot Groupie United States Joined 6015 days ago 94 posts - 149 votes Speaks: English*, Russian Studies: Latin, Mandarin | Message 36 of 37 11 October 2009 at 9:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
This observation seems very strange to me, considering that Polish actually has nasal vowels in its sound system and Russian doesn't 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Derian Triglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5309 days ago 227 posts - 464 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, German Studies: Spanish, Russian, Czech, French, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 37 of 37 01 June 2010 at 7:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
What's wrong with you, Wojtek? 'Pisarze' is the correct form. How embarrasing of you... 1 person has voted this message useful |
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