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Polish - Belarusian - Russian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 5131 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes  Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 1 of 9 14 May 2013 at 7:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
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How close are Polish and Belarusian, and Polish and Russian? Would a Russian understand Polish, or at least get the gist? What about a Belarusian, would she understand Polish? And is there (or was - before the second world war -) a dialect continuum between Eastern Poland and Western Belarus?
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| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 2 of 9 14 May 2013 at 11:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
For a very rough idea of percentage of lexical similarity using lexicostatistics and Swadesh lists.
More commentary here From a very rough idea of percentage of lexical divergence (possibly using lexicostatistics and Swadesh lists?) from a Ukrainian point of view. 
More commentary here See the following for more discussion: Slavic languages similarities (rather general but some posts discuss Polish and Russian) Russian/Polish: Comparison Polish or any slavic language key to any other slavic languages? Russian and other Slavic languages Russian and Polish How close to Russian is Belarusian? Polish and other Slavic languages. 14 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 5131 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 3 of 9 15 May 2013 at 5:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thanks, Chung, I knew you were going to respond :) The links are very interesting.
What about a dialect continuum between Polish and Belarusian... is or was there one? Is it in Poland, in Belarus, or in both countries? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 4 of 9 16 May 2013 at 12:13am | IP Logged | |||||
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Not sure, I think it's more common to speak either Russian, Trasjanka or Polish.
You've already got some awesome answers so I'll mostly just share my experience. My dad is Belarusian. His great-grandma was Polish and his mum (my grandma) still knows some random bits of it. I've had some exposure to Belarusian, but not much. I've always liked it, though, and when I started reading for the super challenge I immediately jumped to the same ease as my reading skills in Finnish and English. My actual comprehension is lower, but the ease is the same, possibly also because of the alphabet, although I did learn the Western one as a 4 year old. I've also found that last year's spontaneous adventure with Polish has helped me get started with Belarusian. Previously, it would just seem TOO similar and I kept on trying and failing... now I view them in a more comparative context and that helps. I see the similarities it has with Polish and I'm delighted when I see something unique to Belarusian, neither here nor there. I've seen the statement that modern Polish and Russian are not mutually intelligible. Well... Depends on how much you need to understand and whether you are a linguist or a mere mortal (hehe). More on my adventure with Polish - I reached a high level of comprehension in a matter of weeks, months at most. I've done LR, read one book using Ilya Frank's method and also did some other random learning. I've been to Poland twice (properly), and my mum was sort of able to adjust a bit, without any learning. I think it even makes Poland a more popular destination for Russians - it IS possible to make yourself understood, and it's also often possible to find someone who used to study Russian or has simply had enough exposure to understand. Finally, afaiu Polish is, or at least used to be, an important language for Belarusian catholics. I don't think there's an actual dialect continuum but obviously the closer to Poland (geographically or culturally), the more Polish words Belarusians know. Edited by Serpent on 16 May 2013 at 12:22am 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 5 of 9 16 May 2013 at 1:04am | IP Logged | |||||
For better or worse, the difficulty in this question is that linguists take as a starting point that Polish and Belorussian are distinct as reinforced by having long been classified as Western Slavonic and Eastern Slavonic*. This means that the transition from Polish to Belorussian would be interpreted as being more akin to the one seen between German and Danish (Jutish) rather than with German and Dutch. In a layman's terms the difference between Polish and Belorussian would more likely be starker or more noticeable than the experience of trying to discern the transition from German to Dutch via Plattdeutsch. Classificatory matters aside, how people speak along the border of Poland and Belorussia does sometimes resemble what you'd observe when encountering an area between two distinct languages that share a common ancestor that is not as far removed as another common ancestor. According to this short summary about Polish dialects used in Latvia, Lithuania, Belorussia and Ukraine, the ones in Belorussia, Latvia and Lithuania show influence from Belorussian (or Russian?) in the form of akanie (i.e. pronunciation of unstressed e or o as a), lengthening of stressed vowels, and use of semi-soft consonants. In addition, people using these dialects are known to construct past tense on the Eastern Slavonic model of the personal pronoun preceding the participle unlike the combination of a personal suffix with the participle (e.g. ja chodził versus standard chodziłem) On the article on this dialect in Polish Wikipedia (I take it with a pinch of salt since it's Wikipedia), the Old Belorussian (Old Ruthenian?) traits in the "northeastern borderlands" Polish dialect (Dialekt północnokresowy) are the replacement of standard palatalized n (ń) with the unpalatalized counterpart (n) and impersonal constructions consisting of the pronoun in an oblique case and a verbal noun or participle (the example used in the article is mnie już gadano). Unfortunately I can't find any examples of Polonisms in the relevant Belorussian dialects (i.e. Southwestern and West Palesyan group) but I have heard the anecdotes similar to what Serpent hints at where there are some cases of non-standard Belorussian near Poland seeming to outsiders (especially Russians) a lot more like Polish than even standard Belorussian displays. *There is some intellectual, Tomasz Kamusella (he's not a linguist but rather a political analyst specializing in nationalism) who believes that the classification of Western, Eastern and Southern Slavonic reflects political/cultural classifications (especially non-Orthodox versus Orthodox for Western Slavonic versus non-Western Slavonic) rather than any linguistic one. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Antanas Tetraglot Groupie Lithuania Joined 4813 days ago 91 posts - 172 votes Speaks: Lithuanian*, English, Russian, German Studies: FrenchB1, Spanish | Message 6 of 9 21 May 2013 at 7:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
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As a Lithuanian I might be partial, but I can testify that in present Lithuania non-Russian speakers of Slavonic languages usually can understand each other without much problems. Now, whether this means that a speaker of Belorussian and a speaker of Polish can understand each other, is an open question; because:
a) both of them usually know and b) acknowledge that they know Russian (which, in my experience, is very rare among Poles from Poland) c) both of them usually consume Russian media (for instance, TV) and in Russian (downloaded movies, software). And again, this is not the case in Poland. So, if these claims are true, it's very difficult to decide whether the so-called Polish borderline dialect and Belorussian are mutually understandable because it's already hard to find (at least in Lithuania) any speakers of either who would not know the third language i.e. Russian. I have a very good passive command of Russian. But I am unable to understand much neither of spoken Polish nor of spoken Belorussian. What concerns the written text, I fare considerably better because I have more time to guess the meaning of unknown words. But I would not dare to call it a "working knowledge". On the other hand I can hear the differences between "local" Polish and that from Poland. The absence of hard "l" is the most striking feature of Lithuanian Polish. "Włochy" is pronounced like Wlochy and not like Wwochy (standard Polish). Also, I can hear in their speech many words of Lithuanian origin, as well as those from Russian. As well as the Belorussian intonation. I believe it's a pity that these people cannot study in their own dialect/language. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5839 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 7 of 9 27 May 2013 at 12:09am | IP Logged | |||||
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Well I was recently in Western Belarus in 2011, in a fairly rural area, and I noticed that there were some signs and things in Polish. People told me that some older people in the area spoke Polish as their first language.
There were church services in Polish, for example, and you could buy post cards etc with Polish text on them. I am not sure, but I think that there is a correlation between people speaking Polish and being Catholics, while the Orthodox tend to speak Russian/Belarussian. This is sort of North Western Belarus. I actually heard some people in a grocery store speaking Polish to each other and it was obvious that they were locals and not visitors from Poland. Belarussian is not really spoken on a daily basis by the majority in Belarus. They are fighting to keep it alive, and not really doing very well. People prefer to speak IN Russian, even though they claim to love Belarussian they are not really doing much about it. Some people appear to speak a bit of a mix - I think it's a matter of education and "habitus". Some simply have a local pronounciation and swap a few words over to Belarussian . But my impression is that the language is more of a symbol than something that is likely to be a strong and living language. I asked tons of people if they could speak Belarussian because I was intrigued by the offical bilingual situation. The normal answer was that they could understand it, but not really speak. It's taught in school, but many students would rather focus their efforts on something that will give more practically useful results. One person said she could speak it and I heard her sing a song in Belarussian while others chimed in but swapped into Russian here and there. I think it's a generational thing and unfortunately it is irreversible. Other countries should take note! As for Polish; it may be that this was political in the past, but nowadays it's simply progressed so far that Polish cannot make a comeback with the young in those areas. Belarus is essentially a Russian speaking country. Finally; I could be hanged by a patriotic Belarussian for saying this, but I think it is possible that nobody really thought of Belarussian as a distinct language until a hundred or two hundred years ago. I think you could claim that it is a localised Russian. Belarus was never an independent country until now. It has always belonged to one or more surrounding neighbouring countries. The name for Belarus in many European languages is "White Russia". That said, it is a very nice independent country today with excellent people. Apparently Lukashenko said that Belarussians are "Russians with a quality stamp". Good luck to them - I had a very nice time in their young country. And yeah --- while both are Slavic languages, there is some minor overlap. But if you read Polish and Russian/Belarussian alongside each other they do not seem very similar at all. No more so than say, Swedish and German. They are quite different languages. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5057 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 8 of 9 27 May 2013 at 12:18am | IP Logged | |||||
Including Belorussian.
No, they are really similar. More similar than German and Swedish. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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