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Can any young Poles can still speak Russian

posts: 25

KingAthelstanThreads: 14 Posts: 225 Joined: Sep 13, 11 ♂	Sep 24, 11, 19:30 #1
I'm aware that all Poles over the age of 40 can speak Russian, but I was curious to know how common it is for younger Poles (under 30) to speak Russian?

♂

Sep 24, 11, 19:39 #2

I'm aware that all Poles over the age of 40 can speak Russian, but I was curious to know how common it is for younger Poles (under 30) to speak Russian?

not that common at all - my bro who is 32 now still was taught Russian at school and is able to understand some Russian and speak a couple of words (this helped him a bit in dealing with Lithuanians in his job in Northern Ireland) - his girlfriend who is a couple of years younger than him was not schooled in Russian and she can't speak nor understand any Russian that is not obviously similar to Polish (most Russian is not obviously similar to Polish for a non-accustomed ear)

pozdrawliaju was s Nowym Godom ;) kakaja u was pogoda w sientabrie Korol Athelstan? idjot czasto dożd?? - there is a well established Polish transcryption of the Russian language though many Poles may be completely unfamiliar with it

MalopolaninThreads: 8 Posts: 198 Joined: Sep 5, 10 ♂	Sep 24, 11, 20:28 #3
all Poles over the age of 40 can speak Russian All? 5% is more likely.

noreenbThreads: 4 Posts: 1,082 Joined: Apr 22, 09 ♀	Sep 24, 11, 21:11 #4
I speak Russian. It's great. J remember a lot from primary school. I also had Russian at high school. The language is great and easy to learn for Polish. It's a bit strange that it's not taugh at schools as often as in the past. Russian literature is amazing and sooo interesting. It's just of the reasons to learn the language.

pawianThreads: 90 Posts: 5,415 Joined: May 30, 08 ♂	Sep 24, 11, 23:44 #5
=KingAthelstan]I'm aware that all Poles over the age of 40 can speak Russian, Nope, we can`t. But we can read it with understanding.

WulkanThreads: 1 Posts: 344 Joined: Dec 28, 07 ♂	Sep 25, 11, 03:10 #6
Can any young Poles can still speak Russian well their Russian is just a bit worse then your English

KingAthelstanThreads: 14 Posts: 225 Joined: Sep 13, 11 ♂	Sep 25, 11, 03:27 #7
I am English Wulkan.

hague1cmaeronThreads: 21 Posts: 1,654 Joined: Mar 30, 10 ♂	Edited by: hague1cmaeron Sep 25, 11, 03:41 #8
I'm aware that all Poles over the age of 40 can speak Russian No, only a few can in fact. And hardly any young people in Poland speak Russian or understand it. I am English Wulkan. Which makes it worse.

beckskiThreads: 19 Posts: 2,148 Joined: May 15, 07 MEMBER ♀	Sep 25, 11, 07:03 #9
Can any young Poles can still speak Russian My cousins are able to speak very little Russian today. They are now in their late thirties. They're more concerned with continuing to learn the English language, in order to assist them with their careers. A sincere thanks PF, for putting up with me FIVE terrific years, muah!

bullfrogThreads: 4 Posts: 390 Joined: Apr 23, 09 ♂	Sep 25, 11, 08:26 #10
It's a bit strange that it's not taugh at schools as often as in the past are you kidding? you are surely aware of Poland's history..

Billy_Vodka	Oct 5, 11, 23:19 #11
Most of the youth nowadays studies English. It is afterall the most important language for all Europeans to learn.

Zman	Oct 6, 11, 00:49 #12
Russian has been mostly passee for a good while now. Like 22 years, so no.... kids do not dig it. And those over 30/40 have long forgotten it. Of course there are exceptions (me!) :-)

legendThreads: 9 Posts: 819 Joined: Apr 23, 11 ♂	Oct 6, 11, 02:07 #13
No I cant speak Russian I must say. I understand all slavic languages except Russia too :\|

KingAthelstanThreads: 14 Posts: 225 Joined: Sep 13, 11 ♂	Oct 6, 11, 02:24 #14
wh No I cant speak Russian I must say. I understand all slavic languages except Russia too :\| what percentage of Russian words can Polish speaker understand? My Serbian wife ( who can't speak russian) says she can understand about 50 % of spoken Russian just from knowing Serbian.

NatasaThreads: 7 Posts: 2,611 Joined: Jun 6, 10 MEMBER ♀	Edited by: Natasa Oct 6, 11, 02:31 #15
Similarities with Russian: Russian 100% Ukrainian 90% Bulgarian 90% Serbo-Croatian 65% Polish 60% Czech 40% link Govoriš li srpski KingAtheristan? Sram te bilo ako ne ;) stop the earth i want to get off

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Edited by: Sasha Oct 6, 11, 06:32 #16

what percentage of Russian words can Polish speaker understand?

The biggest obstacle for the Poles in understanding Russian is Cyrrilic alphabet. We the Russians don't have that obstacle for everyone can more or less read Latin letters.

what percentage of Russian words can Polish speaker understand?

Hard to say really. One may trust figures provided by Natasa but my feeling is that I understand Polish better than Serbian, though worse than Ukrainian. It's definitely different the other way round. Poles understand us worse than we understand them. It's just my assumption based on fund of words in Russian.

That's how Natasa's phrase would sound in Russian:

Govorish li ti na serbsom? /Govorite li Vi na serbsom?
Sram tebe (Vam), esli net.

Wroclaw_666Threads: 3 Posts: 69 Joined: Sep 20, 11 ♂	Oct 6, 11, 06:38 #17
But we can read it with understanding. It's not so easy... there is a different alphabet... I know their letters but it's really hard for me to read their words. Many of them is understandable for me, but only after decryption from their letters :)

legendThreads: 9 Posts: 819 Joined: Apr 23, 11 ♂	Oct 6, 11, 08:41 #18
what percentage of Russian words can Polish speaker understand? My Serbian wife ( who can't speak russian) says she can understand about 50 % of spoken Russian just from knowing Serbian. Myself maybe 10 percent at most. My mom (shes not young) probably 70 percent.

MEMBER ♀

Edited by: Natasa Oct 6, 11, 09:02 #19

The biggest obstacle for the Poles in understanding Russian is Cyrrilic alphabet. We the Russians don't have that obstacle for everyone can more or less read Latin letters.

Being nowhere constantly, we have equally relevant two alphabets (East, West), one is taught in the 1.grade(cyrillic), the other one in the 2. grade (latin) of elementary school.

My education in large part was happening during the golden liberal socialism period, when different elem. schools had two different obligatory languages. English was the most common, and present in almost all of the schools(95%), second one was russian, then close to the oldest part of Belgrade, as a second language instead of russian that was more common in Novi Beograd, German and French were taught. Kids could choose only the school, but not the languages they will learn in particular school.

Summary: I had 5 years of English, from my 9- 14 year (most basic level), and in gymnasium my foreign language (elementary school was determining that one) was only russian. English was replaced with Latin.

Problems I had with Russian are not describable!!, we all mostly cheated shamelessly, my lexical fund was enriched with, all in total 20 truly russian words during 8 years of 'learning' it.
Russian grammar , on the other hand, I knew better than Serbian. System was for some unknown reason insisting on knowing by heart all declinations for nouns, adjectives. (in Russian)

So, I have no idea how would all that look like if there was no russian in school, but I do understand approximately 70 % of spoken russian, and I know that Russians understand me proportionally.

Written Polish is harder for me to comprehend than spoken one, and I understand it even then far less than russian.

I found the link to that chart, I am not sure about reliability of the source.

stop the earth i want to get off

delphiandomineThreads: 42 Posts: 9,954 Joined: Nov 25, 08 ♂ [Suspended]	Oct 6, 11, 09:04 #20
I found the link to that chart, I am not sure about reliability of the source. I'm not convinced it's accurate - Ukrainian is far closer to Polish in terms of nouns.

a.k.	Oct 6, 11, 09:28 #21
what percentage of Russian words can Polish speaker understand? My Serbian wife ( who can't speak russian) says she can understand about 50 % of spoken Russian just from knowing Serbian. One in 20. I have Russian channel on my tv and understand only single words from time to time.

♂

Edited by: gumishu Oct 6, 11, 11:14 #22

No I cant speak Russian I must say. I understand all slavic languages except Russia too :|

what percentage of Russian words can Polish speaker understand? My Serbian wife ( who can't speak russian) says she can understand about 50 % of spoken Russian just from knowing Serbian.

it's more difficult for a Polish person with no education in Russian I guess safely below 20 per cent (or even just 10 per cent) of spoken Russian would be understood - with just some basic training a Pole can gain some 10 per cent - other than that you need to learn a lot of words to understan Russian - still the grammar mostly poses very little problem

KingAthelstanThreads: 14 Posts: 225 Joined: Sep 13, 11 ♂	Oct 6, 11, 13:06 #23
It's not so easy... there is a different alphabet Govoriš li srpski KingAtheristan? Yes but what percentage of purely spoken Russian would a Pole ( who can' speak Russian) understand? Govoriš li srpski KingAtheristan? malo zman

♂

Edited by: isthatu2 Oct 6, 11, 13:19 #24

To a non native who speaks some Russian and some Polish it seems strange that Poles claim to be so bad at understanding Russian when it is clear to the non native that often there is only a slight difference in pronunciation.
But,I guess this ties in with Poles finding it difficult to understand non natives speaking Polish without a pitch perfect accent. In short, Poles dont really do accents/dialects.
A few years ago I was with some mates from the Warsaw area and put on a Gorale CD, they were convinced it was Slovakian ,claimed not to understand it untill they listened really carefully and read the CD case :)
Its funny though because give a reasonably inteligent Pole any non Slavic language and they usually master it pretty well .
I wonder how much of it is still a hang on of,frankly,choosing not to understand Russian?

a.k.

Oct 6, 11, 19:12 #25

Yes but what percentage of purely spoken Russian would a Pole ( who can' speak Russian) understand?

As I already said: 1 word in 20. That would make 5% as for me. Given that one word for 20 not always let you to understand the context, the answer for how much I understand is: nothing ;)

I have no idea how you can say such thing. I just played myself a random Russian tv footage of some interview and I have no idea what they were talking about. The only phrase I understood was "Ja nieznajo" or something similar but that was all! Of course there are some words or phrases that are comprehensive for a Pole because they sound quite similar in Polish (a good example is the title of a hit of a Russian girlsband Tatu "Nas nie dogoniat" from 2002, which is known worldwide as "Not gonna get us") but I think there is not so many of them.

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