Purely as a hobby, i've decided that i'd like to pick up a European language (I already speak a couple Asian languages).
I initially wanted to learn Czech, but i was comparing populations that speak languages in Europe and found that Polish outnumbers it and that it also has a lot in common with slavic languages.
tl;dr: Anyone who speaks Polish or Czech, or any combination of those Slav languages, are there similarities? 'ppreciate your comments.
Name:
Anonymous2008-07-06 23:04
I once went to the Prague together with a few guys from (among others) Poland, Croatia and Serbia, and they all told me they could mostly understand what the Czechs said. Turned out to be very convenient, because the natives understood their languages too, while only relatively few people there speak English or German. This didn't work with Russian, though.
Yes, it's right that there are more people in Poland. But the entire country sucks, learn Czech. If you're only going by number of speakers, Russian, German, Italian, Spanish or French would be the better choice anyway.
Name:
Anonymous2008-07-07 2:45
Croatian here
Croat/Serbs/Bosnians can almost completely understand each other.
Czechs im a little unsure most of the time
Name:
Anonymous2008-07-07 7:54
Why would you want to learn the language of Untermenschen?
i won't write about things like more/less half of German females raped by Red Army, Shitler's suicide etc:) wannabe german troll is wannabe german. funny thing is Niemcy, Polish word for both Germans and Germany comes from 'niemy', 'mute' you Germs, just barking like above lol.
so, Polish is more similar to Slovakian than to Czech and people from former Czechoslovakia understands each other with ease. my gf is Czech, i'm Polish and it was a whole lot of fun finding totally different meanings of same words in our lingos. other Slavic languages are sharing less words in common with mine
Name:
Anonymous2008-07-29 1:27
Different Slavic languages all sound hilarious to speakers of other Slavic languages. The phonology is always very similar, yet the words are completely different, making it sound like gibberish.
Name:
Anonymous2008-07-29 3:10
indeed, like for example 'świeży chleb' (Polish 'fresh bread')in Czech means, like, dried out one, hard bread, when at the same time Polish term 'czerstwy chleb' (for dry, hard) is about fresh in Czech. confusing:) 'szczotka', Polish 'brush' is Czech word for vagina^ etc. also automatic translators, due to extreme flexibility of grammar and exceptions, are not working good.
propably cheapest hint possible, but check Wikipedia, there are fairly good articles about Slavic languages, similarities and differences between them, Swadesh tabel would be helpful in making a choice which to pick, i presume
i don't know too much about similarities between Balkan and Eastern Slavic languages unfortunately, anyway good luck with learning, this will be rather difficult task in any case:) greets
I appreciate the responses from the actual slavic-speaking users. I admit i had lost hope in the thread during the German blitzkreig, but i'm glad i gave it another look.
I picked up some Czech resources after looking into some family-trees. It's just going to be a hobby, so hopefully it will be fun.
Thanks for the intel. Hope to gab with some of you when/if i ever hit the area. Nashledanou pozdeji!
Name:
Anonymous2008-08-02 16:48
I'm from Croatia.
Czech and Slovak are very similar to each other (I believe it's called "mutual intelligibility"), just like Croatian and Serbian. I have a hard time understanding Polish though. It's somewhat different than the languages I mentioned above. Basically, I(atleast partially) understand every Southern and Western Slavic language (except Polish).
Eastern Slavic languages (Russian and others) are something completely different + you'll have to learn the Cyrillic alphabet (which is also used in Bulgaria and Serbia btw).
Anyways, I suggest Czech.
Name:
Anonymous2008-08-02 22:11
>>14
bok croatfag.
we can understand Bosnian as well right?
Ive only ever been around Croats and Serbs so i have no idea
Just out of curiosity: just how intelligible is the Podhale (Gorale) dialect to other Slavs?
(Check out Zakopower (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDmqqv3WnkE et.al.) if you don't know what I'm talking about)
Name:
Anonymous2008-09-08 1:08
Kad oko mene je tama stalno mislim o nama napet sam do ludosti Sa jutrom nestaje nada slabic postajem tada ostajem bez hrabrosti Ja ne znam da li si sama da li mislis o nama smem li da te probudim I onda hocu da podjem da pred vrata ti dodjem za oprostaj zamolim
Have you Slavs envisaged why you more often than not speak ill of each other?
Only in the 17th century did the Germans unify their languages into one.
Czechs, Slovakians and Poles together fought against the Teutonic Orders in Grunwald and against the anti-Fuss German nobles. The First Pan-Slavist Conference took place first in Chechia in the 19th century, where Checzs was desparately trying to resurrect their ethnic language. During the WW2 Poland and Czechoslovakia agreed in London to form an unified a large West Slavic country, which came to nothing due to Stalin's strong objection. Later, Soviets fed Czechs and on the other hand exploited Poles so that the two nations hated each other. And now you see what.
although I'm not a pole or a polish descendant, i like poland, too.
lovely country, nice people, good food, improving society, thriving economy.
Name:
Anonymous2008-10-01 9:12
Poles are even more hardworking and intelligent than Germans are, to my surprise.
Name:
Anonymous2008-10-05 18:12
damn, guys just visit Poland and Czech Republic and you'll see how it looks alike:) Central Europe is not a Siberia ffs lol at least Wiki them. chix, food, beer, relics and landscapes are really cool. my Australian friend visits Wroclaw every summer vacations, rents a car and it's closer to Prague and Berlin than to, for example, Warsaw. greets for immortal German trolls, i presume it's hard to have ugly chicks and woof-ing language :B btw this bullshit above about Poles and Czechs not liking each other is just funny. ahoj!
Czechs and Slovaks understand each other since language differences ale little, or they can be simply derived when there is some IQ in your head.
Czechs and Poles understand sometimes something. Other slavic languages are almost unintelligible - for Czechs.
Name:
Anonymous2008-10-09 12:21
For Poles most difficult slavic language is Croatian... cause in those two languages many same words have two completly different meanings, for ex. 'godina' in croatian means a year, and polish 'godzina' (spelled in croatian 'godjina') - an hour; croatian 'na prafo' means straight ahead, and polish 'na prawo' (spelled practically like 'na prafo') means.. turn right. So it is a great challenge for Poles and Croatians to understand each other :D
Name:
Anonymous2008-10-10 13:46
West Slavic languages got too much consonants per single word and they use Latin script which even makes reading harder because of diphtongs. Adjectives have very few vowels too (svenska, polska, cesky, etc). Well, I never heard the pronunciation, but for example Polish script makes me think that this language normally has 4-5 consonants and 1-2 vowels for a word. Am I right?
Name:
Anonymous2008-10-11 6:38
>>38.
Just one thing wrong here: "svenska" means "Swedish", which is a Germanic language (Scandinavian, to be precise).
Speaking of which; one of my favorite Scandinavian words is "skriftspråk" ("written language")...
(the "å" pronounced like the "o" i "more")
Name:
Anonymous2008-10-11 13:52
Swedish is actually Finno-Ugaric, it just has a shit ton of German loanwords.