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Learning sequence -Czech,Polish,Hungarian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| lerner Groupie Germany Joined 5816 days ago 51 posts - 79 votes  Speaks: Hindi* Studies: EnglishC2, GermanC1, Spanish, Dutch | Message 1 of 8 14 December 2010 at 11:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hey guys,
I would like to learn Czech, Hungarian and Polish (rather OR). However, I don't have the faintest idea how to go about it and the language profiles on the forum aren't really of much help. Do these 3 languages have something in common or are they as different as chalk and cheese? Secondly, is there an "advisable" order which I should follow while learning that would make learning the 2nd and 3rd languages a bit easier? My aim here is not perfection in the language. I'd just like to reach a basic conversational level in a (somewhat) short period of time. I'd really appreciate your views on the matter. Cheers 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7154 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 2 of 8 15 December 2010 at 3:11am | IP Logged | |||||
Considering that I contributed quite a bit to those profiles, I'm curious how they weren' helpful to you as a prospective learner of these languages. You may also want to read them again since your question asking about whether they are similar or not seems strange (especially if you had read the profiles). Czech Hungarian Polish There's no real advisable order since what counts most is to choose a language that interests you the most. However I'll give you a big hint directed at your second question: Czech and Polish are Slavonic languages while Hungarian is a Finno-Ugric one. Learning one of Czech or Polish will make learning other Slavonic languages relatively easy because of the similarities. Having a background in any Indo-European language (e.g. Hindi, English, Polish) won't be of much help in trying to grasp concepts in Hungarian such as heavy agglutination, indefinite/definite conjugation and quite flexible word order. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Warschauer Triglot Newbie Poland Joined 5103 days ago 11 posts - 16 votes Speaks: Polish*, Russian, English Studies: German | Message 3 of 8 15 December 2010 at 12:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
Czech and Polish have much in common and usually Polish tourists in Czech Republic (or Slovakia or any Yugoslav coutry) have no problems with communicating by speaking only Polish. Hungarian is compeletely unrelated to Slavic languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7154 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 4 of 8 15 December 2010 at 5:23pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'm a little surprised on reading that Polish being that understandable in the Balkans. Croatian acquaintances have told me that they struggle mightily in grasping Polish as they seem thrown off by the seemingly endless string of cz, rz, sz, ci, si combined with the occasional nasal vowel. They have a much easier time in comparison when coming up against Slovak (less so with Czech). On the other hand, it's true that Polish tourists on average have fewer problems making themselves understood at a basic level in Czech Republic and Slovakia. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| lerner Groupie Germany Joined 5816 days ago 51 posts - 79 votes Speaks: Hindi* Studies: EnglishC2, GermanC1, Spanish, Dutch | Message 5 of 8 15 December 2010 at 6:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
I guess I didn't choose my words carefully while expressing myself. The profiles you've written describe the languages in great detail. However, I was looking more for any specific mentions of "transparency" between the 3 languages. I thought that due to the physical proximity of the countries these languages are spoken in, there might exist some sort of a "continuum" among these languages. Edited by lerner on 15 December 2010 at 6:14pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Warschauer Triglot Newbie Poland Joined 5103 days ago 11 posts - 16 votes Speaks: Polish*, Russian, English Studies: German | Message 6 of 8 15 December 2010 at 6:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
difficulties with understanding languages similar to their native tongue. But most people can communicate in Polish with no problems in these countries. I'd even say that actually Polish is more useful in Balkans than English... Especially in smaller cities. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7154 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 7 of 8 15 December 2010 at 9:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
I have found that it's common among non-specialists to overstate the importance of geographical proximity in explaining linguistic similarity. Just as many outsiders often think of Eastern Europe consisting of a mass of people who speak Slavonic languages (the generalization excludes Balts, Estonians, Hungarians, Albanians and Romanians), I've also heard it often enough that all of the languages of India must be related to each other (it ignores the place of the Dravidian and Munda languages) or that the Chinese languages, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese are related to each other. A simple generalization with modern geographical placement can yield the incorrect conclusion when compared to comparative linguistic analysis. This isn't to say that geographical proximity can never be related to linguistic proximity. Dialectal continua are a good example (e.g. transition from Gujarati to Rajasthani to Punjabi) as well as a "language-union" (Sprachbund). A well-known example of the latter is the Balkan Sprachbund with Romanian, Albanian, Greek and Bulgarian each representing different sub-groups of Indo-European but sharing similarities in grammar, syntax, vocabulary and phonology - more than would be suggested by strict adherence to the genetically-based division yielded from comparative linguistic analysis. As it relates to Czech, Hungarian and Polish in particular, Czech and Polish are related and the similarities will be readily apparent to anyone (including non-specialists) after a bit of study. Hungarian differs to the point that it is not classified as a Slavonic language like Czech and Polish. Within your experience, you can think of Hungarian differing from Czech and Polish somewhat as much as a Munda language from Hindustani. See Delodelphius' post where he compares the first article of the UN Declaration of Human Rights as expressed in several Slavonic languages. This will give a rough idea of how similar Czech is to Polish and vice-versa. See also this discussion on the similarities within Slavonic languages from earlier in the year. As a rough and ready guide to regular similarities or differences between Czech and Polish, look out for the following: 1) Polish 'g' tends to match Czech 'h' in cognates that are also reconstructed for the common ancestral Slavonic language English head Polish głowa Czech hlava English long Polish długi Czech dlouhý 2) Polish rz tends to match Czech ř in cognates that are also reconstructed for the common ancestral Slavonic language English river Polish rzeka Czech řeka English three Polish trzy Czech tři 3) Polish ą sometimes matches Czech ou English Come with me! Polish Chodź ze mną! Czech Pojď se mnou! English My friends are at home and are preparing a good supper. Polish Moi koledzy są w domu i przygotowują dobrą kolację. Czech Moji kamarádi jsou doma a vaří dobrou večeři. 4) Czech and Polish each use 7 cases: nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, locative, instrumental and vocative, and have 3 grammatical genders: masculine, feminine and neuter. In addition, the masculine is divided into masculine animate and masculine inanimate. There is however a difference in how each of Czech and Polish treat the accusative plural for masculine animate. In Polish the ending for accusative plural for masculine animate is the same as the genitive plural for masculine animate. In Czech, the case endings are distinct. 5) Czech and Polish use verbal aspect and verbs of motion to the point where there's a distinction between moving on foot and moving using a vehicle in addition to expressing duration, completeness, randomness or timing of the action. English I'm going (on foot and just once and now) to the railroad station. Polish Idę na dworzec. Czech Jdu na nádraží. English I go (on foot and every day) to the railroad station. Polish Chodzę na dworzec. Czech Chodím na nádraží. English I'm going (by vehicle and just once and now) to the railroad station. Polish Jadę na dworzec. Czech Jedu na nádraží. English I go (by vehicle and every day) to the railroad station. Polish Jeżdżę na dworzec. Czech Jezdím na nádraží. 6) There are also similarities in vocabulary (as well as false friends), and with some patience and a bit of luck Czechs and Poles can communicate with each other to a certain degree each using only their native languages. According to this diagram drawn on lexicostatistical research using Swadesh's lists of basic vocabulary, Polish and Czech vocabulary from the Swadesh lists are about 87% similar. This conclusion is quite controversial and does not apply on a wider level since the sample size used to come to the conclusion is relatively small. In addition lexicostatistics and related sub-disciplines in linguistics are treated with varying amounts of caution or skepticism by linguists in general. 7) Czech and Polish have fixed stress with Czech fixing it on the first syllable of a word while Polish fixes it almost always on the second-last syllable. Some dialects in northeastern Czech Republic are quite similar to dialects in southern Poland and this is apparent not only in lexicon, but also in vowel lengths (vowels can be short or long in Czech, but only short in Polish and certain Czech dialects) and stress placement (the dialects in northeastern Czech Republic usually place stress on the second-last syllable just like in Polish). *** Hungarian is different but coexistence with speakers of Slavonic languages has made it become somewhat similar to Slavonic languages in vocabulary. Roughly 20% of the word-roots in modern Hungarian entered from Slavonic sources. Hungarian also has fixed stress on the first syllable like Czech however it is not likely that this stress placement arose because of contact between Old Hungarian and Proto-Slavonic. However you'd be wasting your time trying to find some sort of continuum linking Czech and Polish to Hungarian. There's an abrupt linguistic division between Hungarian and all of its linguistic neighbours to the point where speaking an idiosyncratic Slavonic or Romance pidgin in Hungary will very likely draw blank stares or puzzlement. Edited by Chung on 15 December 2010 at 10:05pm 10 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Talairan Tetraglot Senior Member Spain Joined 6590 days ago 194 posts - 258 votes Speaks: Afrikaans, English*, Gypsy/Romani, Dutch Studies: Spanish, Flemish, Galician, Aramaic | Message 8 of 8 16 December 2010 at 11:11am | IP Logged | |||||
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[message deleted: irrelevant] Edited by Talairan on 17 December 2010 at 11:11am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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