Polish/Ukrainian words similarities

Hi everyone! Being Ukrainian, I can say for sure that Ukrainian language is definitely more close to Polish than Russian to Polish. Though I live in Kyiv (which is mostly Russian-speaking city), but there is no difference for me either to speak/read Russian or Ukrainian. But many Polish words really sound very similar to Ukrainian (much more than to Russian). E.g. "krawat" (hope I spell it correct in Polish) is like Ukrainian "krawatka", meaning is the same, but very similar word in Russian - "krowat' " means... "bed". And there are many other examples.

Here in Ukraine I think everyone understands both Russian and Ukrainian, it is just that historically people in Western Ukraine speak Ukrainian and in Eastern/Southern part they speak Russian. If I come to Lvov and speak Russian there, no one will kill me, the same as I can easily speak Ukrainian in Eastern part of Ukraine. Here in Ukraine the language problem is artificially created by some political entities (sorry for off-topic)...

Personally I understand Polish quite well, at least I can read and mostly understand when someone speaks to me Polish. :) And even try to speak Polish, I'm especially good in numerals.

That's pretty cool, Marek! (And osiol.)

I looked up Daniel Buncic, and he has created a wikibook of false friends among Slavonic languages: False Friends of the Slavist.

Sidewinder!

No, umiesz zrozumiec, co pisze? Jezyk ukrainski ma roznicy z samoglosami, n.pr. "nic" (wymowiony "nicz") przeciw "noc", "pozny" przeciw "pizny" itd.

Your written English though seems unusually good! Most Slavic speakers make numerous obvious usage errors, e.g. the person-tense agreement, yet you seem to make almost none of those. I'm delightfully surprised. Have you spent time here in the States, studied or visited the UK??

Marek

Pewnie, ze rozumiem :)

No, I haven't spent time neither in the States, nor in UK. Actually, I speak English much worse than write :(

You should remedy that, Sidewinder....I actually thought your English was very good! Good to see you post again; you should come around more often:)

Thanks Ranj, but I really feel my English became much worse for the last several years (was better when I studied at school I think... ), 'cos I don't have communication experience. Will work on it :) As well as on Polish :)

Had many work to do in the office, now a bit more free and will post more often here :)

If you have skype or msn, you can contact me and we could practice. I'll pm you my e-mail and give you my id.

I believe I am right in saying that about eighty per cent of Ukrainian words are very similar to Russian words. I have been to the Ukraine as I spent a month in the summer time 1982 in a town called Kharkow. We flew to Moscow and then took an overnight train to Kharkow. Lovely weather during the summer time in the Ukraine.

Sidewinder,
That your spoken English is inferior to your written English comes as no surprise, since writing is a far more passive skill than speaking, which requires split-second timing and accuracy of response. In order to speak as well as you write, would mean that you understood idiomatically/contextually what is being said, not merely literally.

I've been a German interpreter, consecutive and simultaneous, and take it from me, doing written translations is far less demanding!

Marek

I wrote that Ukrainian is more similar to Polish than Russian to Polish. :)

Of course Ukrainian is similar to Russian too.

But I don't think you have heard many Ukrainian words in Kharkow, because Kharkow is Russian-speaking town (moreover, former governor of Kharkow region proposed to separate several regions including Kharkow from Ukraine and join to Russia when we had revolution here).

There is also an awful mix of Russian and Ukrainian, called "surjik", sounds really awful (though some people who speak surjik are sure they speak Ukrainian). I can speak surjik for fun only.

It would be expected that Ukrainian and Polish may have similarities due to geographic location.

Well, Ukraine also borders on Romania, but Ukrainian language doesn't have many similarities with Romanian. :)

BTW, it is just the opposite in fact. :)

well, Michal was in Kharkov in 1982, I figure people simply spoke Russian then, with a little Ukrainina accent, that's why he thought he understands the language so well :)

or maybe, JUST maybe because ukraine was simply another polish province in the Polish-Lithuanian kingdom before they got this crazy idea to separate themselves. Didnt turn out so well in the end.

I think it's up to them to decide how it worked out, remember that remaining in the union with Poland meant partitions, WWII, communism - not really a much better fate, and if a nation suffers, they'd rather suffer for their own sake

of course we may speculate that both Poland and Ukraine would be much better off remaining in the union (one stronger state, weaker Russia etc.), but it would be just speculations

It was actually a Russian friend of mine who lives in Portsmouth but came from Moscow originally and then later studied with me many years ago who talked of the word similarity between the two languages. I have never made a study of it myself.

Krzysztof,

Czy mysles, ze gospodarka Polskiej jest lepiej dzisiaj? Lech Walesa byl dobry dla prawcabiorcow, ale kto pomaga prawcadawcom?

Marek

+1,

totally agree with you Krzysztof. :)

It was interesting because the Ukrainians spoke Russian with a very hard way of saying the Russian 'g' sound as they would say xorod for a town and not gorod. It would be nice to go back and see the place again as Kharkov had the biggest square in Europe. I studied at the Economic Engineering Institute.

Yes, it is Ukrainian way of pronouncing "g", though we have both "g" like Russian in our language and Ukrainian "g" which sounds like "h".

So, what you have heard in Kharkow is neither correct Russian, nor correct Ukrainian.

The thing is that people who move from villages to big towns, they speak Ukrainian, so when they try to speak Russian, it sounds like what you've heard.

As for me, I used to speak normal Russian (without those "g", etc., btw, when I visit Russia, people there wonder I speak Russian without accent :)), but I know Ukrainian very well and speak correct Ukrainian, but use it mostly for work. Though when I visit Western Ukraine I love to speak Ukrainian and to hear good "native" Ukrainian language. BTW, Ukrainian language in Lvov sounds a bit like Polish sometimes, not only similar words, but accent too. Like they say "prosze", etc.

Michal, there are sooo many really nice places here in Ukraine. In Western Ukraine - Lutsk, Lvov, small, but really great city - Kamenets-Podol'skiy... In Central region - Poltava, Northern - Chernigov, Eastern - Slavyanogorsk... Southern - Odessa, also Crimean peninsula... Oops, sorry for offtopic again. Anyway, if you will have possibility to visit one of these cities, you won't regret :)

I only know Kharkov and the lovely countryside en route. I remember the following morning looking out through the windows of the train and it was wonderful countryside. I was only in Kharkov and it was for a month so I am not able to comment on any other place. It is quite expensive to visit Russia from England but in those days everything for us was free as we were students. I suppose that we were really lucky as the one month programme in Kharkov was followed in a later year by a five month stint in Moscow as I was also at the famous (or at least it was then) Pushkin Institute in Moscow in 1984.

I'm far from being any sort of expert, but I do remember when I spent time in Poland having a conversation with someone, me speaking Polish and her speaking Ukrainian, and we did seem to understand each other.

I once had a Polish girlfriend, who's mother told me that back in Poland they had a saying that Ukrainian was good Russian, but bad Polish.

I would say that Polish is easier to learn than Russian. It could be personal, though. Back in those days "we'd been taught Russian" (i.e. it was mandatory for schools to teach it) and everyone hated the language, because we hated the 'Russkie' oppression itself. In Slavic countries, they were more successful as the language didn't sound foreign. (And, of course, language-teaching was far more less sophisticated than today in our world of the internet and multimedia.)

I forgot nearly everything, but still helps me in my Polish. (Mostly basic things like numbers, names in the family tree etc., but here and there even some more difficult things just "pop in" from my forgotten Russian.) Sometimes we even joke with our "reminiscent" Russian knowledge with my Polish colleagues, ha-ha. :)

There's one thing no one has yet mentioned: the sexual discriminatory nature of Slavic languages. ;o) It still does my head in that everybody and everything is either masculine or feminin or neutral in gender, plus even in plural there's a difference between a masculine and a feminine/non-masculine "they"!