Interested in learning Russian? Read our honest RussianPod101 review.

As you should have noticed from the video, Ukrainian and Belarusian are a lot more similar to each other than they are to Russian.

Both Belarusian and Ukrainian share more vocabulary in common with Polish than with Russian.

As I already speak intermediate Russian, I found the grammar pretty easy to follow in Ukrainian and didn’t spend much time focussing on it.

Instead, the challenge for me was learning the vastly different vocabulary and understanding the slight pronunciation differences between Ukrainian and Russian.

Learning beginners Belarusian was pretty straight forward after Russian and Ukrainian.

The vocabulary in Belarusian was similar to the vocabulary I had learnt in Ukrainian earlier in the year and even better, the spelling in Belarusian is more phonetic than the other two so it was the easiest of the 3 to read. (All use Cyrillic alphabets but this takes just a couple of days to get used to)

If you are learning Russian (or Ukrainian or Belarusian) before you arrive, I recommend trying italki (all languages), Mimic Method (Russian), Vocabooster (Russian & Ukrainian) and Glossika (all languages), to build on these competences.

You can read my full reviews of these language resources here italki, Mimic Method, Vocabooster and Glossika.

Early in 2018, I traveled to Lviv in western Ukraine to learn Ukrainian for a couple of weeks.

Lviv is truly a beautiful city and you can see how my time went in my Lviv winter 2018 video below!

Later at the beginning of the summer, I traveled to Minsk, the capital of Belarus for 10 days of Belarusian language tuition.

It was a bit frustrating that Belarusian is no longer widely spoke in the capital and so I struggled to apply my Belarusian outside of the classroom.

All the same, I had a fantastic time in Minsk and a series a travel vlogs from both summer and later on in the winter of 2018 are almost ready for publication so you can also get a taste of what to expect if you visit Belarus.

A region that does still speak more Belarusian is Grodno and I also was there during the first half of 2018.

I spent a large part of the summer 2018 in Odessa, Ukraine, a city very dear to my heart. Even though the official language of Ukraine is Ukrainian, Odessa remains a predominantly Russian-speaking city.

There I got the chance to practice my Russian for a couple of months and managed to push it on a notch even though I didn’t take any formal classes.

Michael

Michael has been an avid language learner and traveler for many years. His goal with LanguageTsar is to discover the most fun and effective ways to learn a language. He is currently learning Japanese, French and Indonesian.

languagetsar.com/

Both countries were founded by the Greco-Dacian people.

The question in this article is: do Romanians and Moldovans speak the same language?

Until 2013, the official language of the Republic of Moldova was ‘Moldovan’, a direct consequence of the historical events related to the Russian annexation. Back in the 20th century, the Soviet Union tried to invent the “Moldovan” language by translating Russian words into Romanian. For example, самолет (samoleot; plane) –singurozburător (flying itself).

It was an attempt of changing the ethnolinguistic consciousness of Moldovans. Many of them have fallen prey to the lie and have treated it as the truth. Moldovans were convinced that they speak a different language to those in Romania.

The “Moldovan” language is analogous with “Transylvanian”, spoken in Romania, meaning a ‘dialect’.

It was a great shock when I went to Romania to study and I was asked by a classmate to translate “I love you” in Moldovan. We actually speak the same language!

Today, officially both Romania and Moldova speak the Romanian language.

Formally, the Romanian spoken in Moldova and Romania does not differ. Although, informally there are major differences due to the widespread use of words of Russian words origin and of course, the accent.

The history of the “Moldovan” language begins in 1812, when a part of Moldova was annexed to the Russian Empire, later called ‘Bessarabia’.

At the end of the First World War; Transylvania, Bessarabia, and Bukovina joined together with the Kingdom of Romania, thus forming a larger Romania.

This union, however, did not last long because Bessarabia was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940.

The Republic of Moldova became a sovereign and independent state only on May 27, 1991, with the signing of its Declaration of Independence.

As a result of roughly 200 years of Russian rule, the vocabulary of the citizens of Bessarabia has been greatly influenced. If a Romanian and a Moldovan meet in an informal environment, there is a chance they will not understand each other, even though, formally, they speak the same language.

Both Romanians and Moldovans are aware of these differences, thus the creation of Moldovan-Romanian “dictionaries”.

A
Abaldi- be amazed, it comes from the Russian word обалдеть;
Abij-offense (обидеть);
Abisci- promise (обещать);
Afighi- amazed (офигеть)

C
Cadru- a funny man (shot, comes from the Russian word кадр);
Caloş bîhlit – a shoe that smells ugly;
Ciainik – teapot (kettle, Чайник);
Cicăcios – disrespectful guy;
Cărăbuş – carabineer (Карабин).

Not all the words can be translated directly or match the meaning of the word they come from.

As mentioned above, the language spoken in Moldova is a dialect of the Romanian language.

Romanian is divided into five sub-dialects: Moldavian, Wallachian, Banat, Crisan and Maramures. Each of these sub-dialects has their regionalisms that can be misunderstood in other regions of Romania or in Moldova.

Moldovan regionalisms:

Păpuşoi  – porumb (corn);

Harbuz – pepene verde (watermelon);

Supă – ciorbă (soup);

Scurtă – geagă (coat);

Etatajul întâi – partier (ground floor);

Bătută (bitocik) – șnițel (schnitzel);

Mâţă – pisică (cat);

Ogradă – curte (yard);

Pelincă- scutec (diaper);

Poloboc – butoi din lemn (wooden barrel);

Prispă – terasa în fața căsei (porch);

Ogheal – plapumă (blanket);

Bortă – gaură (hole);

Perje – prune (plums); and others.

În limba română aici!

На русском здесь!

Michael

Michael has been an avid language learner and traveler for many years. His goal with LanguageTsar is to discover the most fun and effective ways to learn a language. He is currently learning Japanese, French and Indonesian.

languagetsar.com/

До 2013 году, официальным языком Республики Молдова был молдавский – прямое следствие русской аннексии. огда пытались придумать «молдавский» язык, переводя русские слова на румынский, например самолет- singurzburator (singur-сам, zbor- полет).

Из-за этой попытки изменить этнолингвистическое сознание молдаван многие из них стали жертвой лжи, будучи убежденными в том, что они говорят на языке, который в принципе даже не существует.

«Молдавский» язык – это тот же «Трансильванский», то есть «ДИАЛЕКТ».
Когда я была в Румынии, моим самым большим удивлением стала просьба перевести «Я люблю тебя» на молдавский. На самом деле мы говорим на одном и том же языке, и это РУМЫНСКИЙ ЯЗЫК.

В настоящее время как Румынии, так и Молдове говорят на одном языке.

Формально, румынский язык на котором говорится в Молдове и в Румынии ничем не отличается, но фактически, существуют значительные различия из-за русских слов используемых молдаванами и, конечно же, в акценте.

История появления румынского языка на котором говорят в Молдове начинается в 1812 году.

Часть Молдовы была присоединена к Российской Империи, позже названной Бессарабия.

В конце Первой Мировой Войны Трансильвания, Бессарабия и Буковина объединились с Королевством Румынии, составляя таким образом, Великую Румынию.

Однако это соединение длилось недолго, потому что Бессарабия была повторно аннексирована Советским Союзом в 1940 году.

Появление Республики Молдовы как суверенного и независимого государства произошло 27 мая 1991 года, с подписанием декларации о независимости.

Российское доминирование за, примерно, 200 лет повлияло на словарный запас молдаван. В неформальной среде  румыны и молдаване могут не понять друг друга, даже если они официально говорят на одном языке.

Как румыны, так и молдаване знают об этих различиях и в шутку составили  «молдавские- румынские словари»:

:

Read in English here!

În limba română aici!

Michael

Michael has been an avid language learner and traveler for many years. His goal with LanguageTsar is to discover the most fun and effective ways to learn a language. He is currently learning Japanese, French and Indonesian.

languagetsar.com/

Spanish and Romanian: In the Beginning

Both Spanish and Romanian are Romance languages of the Indo-European family, and both are derived from Vulgar Latin. Spanish is a member of the Western-Romance languages, while Romanian is a part of Eastern-Romance languages. Due to the countries’ physical locations, many changes have developed within each language due to the influence of nearer nations and their languages.

The following table offers a quick insight into just a few of the ways the languages are similar and different. We will go over this in-depth later in the article.

Spanish and Romanian Similarities

Sentence Structure

First, let’s cover the similarities of these two languages. Both Spanish and Romanian use the similar sentence structure of noun-verb-object. Adjectives typically come after the noun being modified in both languages. Of course, you can always plan on exceptions to the rules.

Noun Gender

Both Spanish and Romanian have masculine and feminine nouns to be considered with the added neutral noun in Romanian. Without getting into details yet, both feminine and masculine nouns require specific articles depending on their gender. In Spanish, most nouns ending in -a are feminine, and most nouns ending in -o are masculine. In Romanian, many nouns ending in vowels are feminine, but there is much less conformity than Spanish.

Cognates

Because Romanian and Spanish are both Romance languages, you will find many cognates, or words that are spelled or pronounced similarly and mean the same thing. In fact, the lexical similarities of the two languages is about 70% by most counts. This means that approximately 70% of Spanish and Romanian words are quite similar.

This table highlights just a few of these cognates with their English equivalents.

Spanish and Romanian Differences

Definite and Indefinite Articles

In Romanian, the indefinite articles, or the equivalent to English a or an, are un for masculine (m) and neutral nouns and o for feminine (f) nouns. Niste is plural for all three genders. In Spanish, indefinite articles are un (m), una (f), and plurals are unos (m) and unas (f).

So, there isn’t a huge difference with indefinite articles except that Romanian only uses niste for all plural nouns despite gender. It is with definite articles that the bigger difference lies. Romanian adds the definite article to the noun as a suffix with various rules for gender and plurals. Spanish definite articles are similar to their indefinites using el, lo (m) and la (f), and plurals are los (m) and las (f).

Romanian has Five Cases

Romanian retained cases from Latin, one of the few of the Romance languages to do so. At any rate, this means that similar to conjugating verbs in English or Spanish, Romanian requires the nouns to be conjugated as well depending on which noun is completing the action and which one is receiving the action. The ways in which these nouns are modified depend on the different case and they are called nominative, genitive, vocative, dative, and accusative.

Spanish and Romanian Verbs

Another difference between the two is that Spanish follows a general pattern when conjugating verbs, and most of these “regular” verbs fall into this pattern. Romanian, on the other hand, has far more “irregular” verbs that do not fit into their traditional conjugation patterns.

Recommended Reading: Need help with your Spanish listening? Check out these Spanish Audiobooks you can listen to for free!

How Difficult is it to Learn Spanish or Romanian?

While both languages are considered to be a Level I difficulty by the US State Department rankings, we are going to go out on a limb and suggest Romanian as the harder of the two languages to learn for a native English speaker. Romanian cases can be difficult to wrap your head around when you aren’t used to them.

However, because of all the similarities between Spanish and Romanian, we feel that if you already know how to speak Spanish, learning to speak Romanian will come more naturally to you. The overall edge goes to a Romanian speaker learning to speak Spanish. While the languages are not mutually intelligible due in large part to pronunciation and dialect differences, a speaker of either language could probably have a good overall idea of what is going on if listening in on a conversation of one language or the other.

Sources

Romanian Articles

Master the Spanish Definite and Indefinite Articles in 10 Min

Romanian language lesson: Definite and indefinite article in Romanian

Michael

Michael has been an avid language learner and traveler for many years. His goal with LanguageTsar is to discover the most fun and effective ways to learn a language. He is currently learning Japanese, French and Indonesian.

languagetsar.com/

As a native English speaker who has learnt German, I am always surprised that other native speakers consider German ‘difficult’ to learn.

While I found German relatively easy to learn in the beginning (due to the similarity in basic vocabulary), it is true that the intermediate and advanced levels were trickier than expected.

In this article, I’ll be delving into the main similarities and differences between English and German.

German and English belong to the West Germanic language family, a family that also includes Dutch, Afrikaans, Yiddish, Frisian amongst others.

German is spoken by about 95 million people worldwide, and is the official language of Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg and Liechtenstein.

Written German has been standardized from a myriad of related dialects into Hochdeutsch or ‘High German’, although there remain significant regional differences in the spoken language.

English is known as a lingua franca. The English language is a global powerhouse. It is the third most common native language in the world, behind only Spanish and Mandarin Chinese.

It is the most widely spoken second language in the world and an official language of the United Nations, the European Union, and many other international organizations and businesses.

English and German both belong to the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family. Because they are so closely related, they share many features.

SIMILARITIES

1. English and German are Germanic languages

English and German are recently descended from Proto-Germanic, which was spoken for thousands of years as one language.

Geographically the proto-West Germanic language centered around present-day northern Germany and then spread to southwards as well as northwestwards and before going global with European colonization.

The Germanic tribes had been speaking their own version of English before the Normans invaded and conquered England. 

Norman and Latin words didn’t displace much vocabulary, or subtract anything but rather added to the existing Germanic language.

Today, 80 of the 100 most common words in English are Germanic in origin. 

These most basic, most frequently spoken words in English and German.

They are similar with some minor spelling and pronunciation differences. For example:

• I have – Ich habe
• It is long – Es ist lang
• Where is that – Wo ist das

The Germanic language in the British isles was also influenced by the Celtic people already living there and the later raids by Vikings from Scandinavia. 

A lot of Latin, Celtic and Norse words have come into both English and German, creating a lot of cognates that are easy for us to understand, even though they were not existing in the Proto-Germanic language. For example:

• Direct and Direkt come from the Latin Directus
• Activ and Aktif come from Activo.

2. English and German use the same alphabet

While both languages use the Latin alphabet, there are a few additional letters in the German alphabet:

• umlauted letters (ä, ö and ü)
• Eszett or sharp S (ß)

DIFFERENCES

1. Phonology

The /th/ sound as in words like the in English and thing does not exist in German so many German speakers have problems reproducing such sounds correctly. 

Ever noticed that Germans struggle to pronounce the letter w correctly in English? The /w/ also does not exist in German so although German words beginning with this letter, it is pronounced like a /v/.

This explains the mispronunciation of English words we or wine as ve and vine.

2. Grammar

German has 4 cases: Nominative, Accusative, Dative and Genitive. In English, there is only nominative, accusative, and genitive for pronouns e.g. “I, me, my/mine”.

This is something that intimidates many native English speakers learning German but in reality this is not so complicated, especially when compared to Slavic languages (like Russian) which have many more cases.

German can sometimes have very long compound nouns and I mean really long! For example, Kraftfahrzeug-Haftpflichtversicherung, which means ‘automobile liability insurance’ has a whopping 36 letters!!

Another characteristic of German is that the first letter in a noun is always capitalized; that’s why Handy, Schiff, and Buch are all written with a capital letter.

Another difference is that in English, the definite article is “the,” and the indefinite article is “a” or “an.” However, in German, the definite article can be der if the word is masculine, die if it’s feminine, das if it’s “neuter” or die if it’s “plural”. 

For example, Tisch (“table”) is masculine so it’s der Tisch. There is of course nothing particularly “masculine” about a table.

Have you learnt German, English, both or any other combination of Germanic languages? Or perhaps you’ve learnt two or more languages from the same language family? If so, I’d love to hear your experiences. Write them in the comments section below this post or send me a message! I read all the comments that I receive.

Are you currently learning English? Click here to read our review of EnglishClass101.

Michael

Michael has been an avid language learner and traveler for many years. His goal with LanguageTsar is to discover the most fun and effective ways to learn a language. He is currently learning Japanese, French and Indonesian.

languagetsar.com/

Acum apare întrebarea-cheie: care a fost soarta limbii vorbite în aceste două țări?

Până în 2013 limba oficială în Republica Moldova a fost limba moldovenească, consecință directă a evenimentelor istorice legate de anexarea rusă, care a încercat să inventeze limba ,,moldovenească’’ traducând cuvinte rusești în limba română,  de exemplu: самолет (samoleot) –singurozburător.

Datorită acestei încercări de a schimba conștiința etno-lingvistică a moldovenilor, mulți dintre aceștia au căzut pradă minciunii și au tratat- o drept adevăr, fiind convinși că vorbesc o limbă ce în fond, nici măcar nu există.

Limba ,,moldovenească’’ este aceeași ,,ardelenească’’ dacă vreți, vorbită în România, adică un DIALECT.

Cea mai mare uimire dar și durere a mea a fost atunci când mergând în România la studii am fost întrebată de către un român cum se zice la ,,te iubesc’’ în limba moldovenească, pentru că defapt vorbim aceeași limbă, LIMBA ROMÂNĂ.

Actualmente, atât România, cât și R. Moldova vorbesc oficial aceeași limbă.

Formal, româna vorbită în Moldova și România nu diferă prin nimic, totuși nonformal, există diferențe majore datorită rusismelor utilizate de către moldoveni și desigur, în accent.

Istoria stâlcirii limbii române vorbite în R. Moldova începe în 1812, când o parte din Moldova a fost anexată Imperiului Rus, ulterior numită Basarabia.

La sfârșitul primului război mondial, Transilvania, Basarabia și Bucovina s-au unit cu Regatul României, constituind astfel România Mare.

Această întregire totuși nu a durat mult, căci Basarabia a fost reanexată de către Uniunea Sovietică în 1940.

Apariția Republicii Moldova ca stat suveran și independent a fost pe 27 mai 1991, odată cu semnarea Declarației de Independență.

După o dominație rusă de aproximativ 200 de ani, vocabularul cetățenilor dintre Prut și Nistru a fost influiențat major, astfel încât dacă un român și un moldovean vorbesc nonformal, există o probabilitate înaltă ca aceștia să nu se înțeleagă, deși formal vorbesc aceeași limbă.

Atât românii cât și moldovenii conștientizează aceste diferențe, astfel încât au apărut diverse pamfleturi și ,,dicționare’’moldo-românești:

A

A abaldi- a râmăne cu gura căscată;

Provine de la cuvântul rus обалдеть.

A abijî- a ofensa; обидеть

A abişci- a promite; обещать

A afighi- a rămâne uimit; офигеть

C

Cadru- om haios; кадр

Caloş bîhlit- încălţăminte care miroase urât;

Ciainik- băiat prost; Чайник

Cîcăşios- băiat nerespectuos;

Cărăbuş- carabinier; Карабин

Nu toate cuvintele pot fi traduse exact sau corespund sensului cuvântului de la care provine.

Regionalizme moldovenești:

Read in English here!

На русском здесь!

Michael

Michael has been an avid language learner and traveler for many years. His goal with LanguageTsar is to discover the most fun and effective ways to learn a language. He is currently learning Japanese, French and Indonesian.

languagetsar.com/

I learnt French on my Erasmus exchange year and it was my first foreign language to learn. My next language after French was Italian as I had fallen in love with the bel paese on a 2-week long trip there at the end of my Erasmus year.

Having learnt both languages in quick succession, I am really aware of how similar and different these two Romance languages are in fact.

Two questions I am often asked are:

1. How similar are French and Italian?
2. Didn’t you get confused between the two languages when learning them one after the other?

Learning French? Read: Is FrenchPod101 worth it? 

In this article, I’m going to answer these 2 frequently asked questions.

Origins of French and Italian

French and Italian are both Romance languages. That means that they are derived from Latin which was the language of the Roman Empire.

With the collapse of the Roman Empire around the 5th century, dialects of Vulgar Latin started to form over time in some of the Roman territories.

Today while a large number of these dialects are still in use, for political reasons there are just a handful of major derived languages that are similar in grammar and vocabulary.

These are official languages of the following European countries:

French (France, Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Monaco), Italian (Italy, Switzerland, Vatican City and San Marino), Spanish (Spain), Portuguese (Portugal), Catalan (Andorra) and Romanian (Romania and Moldova).

All these languages are mutually intelligible to a certain extent thanks to their common origins.

Italian and French languages share the same history, but their roots are different. The territory of France was inhabited by Gauls and after occupied by Romans, while Italy always remained part of the Roman Empire. So only after the Germanic Wars (which occurred between 113 BC and 596 AD) did the local languages (Visigothic, Burgundian, Alemannic, and Frankish, Romanolo, Veneto) that are different from the Latin slowly start to develop.

Different historic periods and changes provoked the development of new dialects, many of which, still exist today.

So standard Italian is based on Tuscan dialect due to the political and economic situation of the époque but there are also distinct dialects, as Florentine dialect and the Italo-Dalmatian variant with Sicilian and Dalmatian dialects.

On the other hand, Modern French is based on the language of Île-de-France or the langue d’oïl  but even today other languages such as Breton, Basque, Occitan (langue d’oc), Alsacian, Flemish and Catalan are still spoken in the different regions of France.

French has spread further across the world than Italian due to France’s relative success as a colonial power. As a result, French is an official language in 29 countries spanning the globe, including the Americas (e.g. Canada), Africa (e.g. Congo) and Oceania (e.g. Vanuatu).

So how different are French and Italian?

The lexical similarity between French and Italian is around 85-90%. That means that almost 9/10s of the two languages’ words are similar but does not mean that they are necessarily mutually intelligible to native speakers due to big differences in pronunciation and syntax.

Grammatical differences

– In French, subject pronoun is used in writing and speaking form, when in Italian it is written, but usually, it isn’t used in conversation. For example, J’aime voyager (I love to travel) is Amo viaggiare in Italian;

– In French direct object pronoun (le, la, les) is used before the verb, when in Italian they are attached to the end of verbs in the infinitive form. For example, je veux la voir (I want to see her) in Italian is Voglio vederla;

– The negative form construction is different in French and Italian. In French we add part “ne” before the verb and the part “pas” after the verb, when in Italian we put just part “non” before the verb. For example, je ne parle pas Français” (I don’t speak French) is equal to non parlo italiano in Italian;

– In French, the plural forms are created by adding “s” in the end as it is in English, when in Italian there are irregular plural forms, for example, uomo (man) = uomini (men);

Have you learnt Italian, French or both? Or Italian and Spanish? Or perhaps you’ve learnt two or more languages from the same language family? If so, I’d love to hear your experiences. Write them in the comments section below this post or send me a message! I read all the comments that I receive.

Interested in learning Italian online? We have some great coupons for ItalianPod101.

Michael

Michael has been an avid language learner and traveler for many years. His goal with LanguageTsar is to discover the most fun and effective ways to learn a language. He is currently learning Japanese, French and Indonesian.

languagetsar.com/

I’ve learnt Russian over a long number of years and have in the past dabbled with Polish.

In 2016, I started learning Ukrainian which is closer to Polish than Russian. As a result, Polish has become more understandable on my trips to Poland.

The fact is that both Polish and Russian have a lot in common but how different or similar are they really?

History of the Polish and Russian Languages

Poles and Russians share common traditions and a similar fate, especially for the forty years after World War II since they were living under a similar communist systems.

Polish is the official language of Poland but it is also used throughout the world by the Polish diaspora. It is also one of the official languages of the European Union.

Russian is an official language in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and several unrecognised countries, e.g., Transnistria. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, and to a lesser extent, in the other countries that were once republics in the Soviet Union.

The Polish language as a literary language appeared very late. There is little surviving evidence of the Polish language until the 16th century. It appears exactly after the confluence of Poland with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania from which its “golden age” began. 

Even in the 14th and 15th centuries, church services in Poland were being conducted partly in the Slavic (Church Slavonic) language, which is also related to the Russian language.

Russian, on the other hand, is the largest native language to Europe but the modern language was formed only in the 18th century following the reforms of Peter the Great. In 1783, the first Russian dictionary appeared.

In the 19th century, Russian was still mostly spoken in urban areas, while the rural part of Russian Empire and later of the Soviet Union kept using their own local languages.

Recommended: Read our honest review of PolishPod101

So what are the differences between Polish and Russian?

1. One major obstacle to overcome is the different writing systems. Polish uses a Latin alphabet while Russian uses a Cyrillic alphabet.

2. What can be tricky is that often a word exists in both languages, and you can see that it came from a common source but has come to mean different things in each language (i.e., false friends). For example, in Russian, запоминать means “to memorize,” while in Polish zapomniec means “to forget.”

3. Russian grammar is very similar to Polish but there are differences. Forming the past tense is easier in Russian  – less endings to remember, all you need to know is gender and whether it’s singular or plural:

zrobiłem, zrobiłeś, zrobił – сделал

zrobiłam, zrobiłaś, zrobiła – сделала

zrobiliśmy, zrobiliście, zrobili, zrobiłyśmy, zrobiłyście, zrobiły – сделали

In Russian, unlike in Polish, you need to use pronouns more often to make it clearer which person you are talking about, for example:

они (ru) means both oni (pl) and one (pl)

Recommended: RussianPod101 Honest Review 

Why Russian at times is closer to Polish than Ukrainian is

Sometimes it is said that Ukrainian is a ‘Polonized’ version of Russian. But let’s look at some examples where this is not the case.

1. Look at this phrase, for example:
А коли це було?    (Ukrainian)
A kiedy to było?    (Polish)
А когда это было?   (Russian)
When was it? (English)

Here, the word “kiedy” is clearly closer to the Russian “когда” than to the Ukrainian “коли”, “to” is also more like “это” than “це”.

The following examples are similar – the Russian and Polish are basically identical unlike the Ukrainian word:

Сестри (UKR) — siostry (PL) — сестры (RU) — sisters (EN)

Ніс (UKR) — nos (PL) — нос (RU) — nose (EN)

Їсти (UKR) — jeść (PL) — есть (RU) — eat (EN)

2. Now let’s take phonetics, which will be more similar? Both Polish and Russian have a habit of softening consonants before the letter “E”.

At the same time, as for Ukrainian, it is not like this – only some consonants, only in some cases and very rarely. Almost always consonants before “E” are pronounced firmly.

In Russian, there is the sound “G”. It is a breakthrough sound, the equivalent of the Latin “G-g”. In Polish – too. However, in Ukrainian, the same sound is pronounced as equivalent of the Latin “H-h”.

Both Russian and Polish are Slavic languages but despite this they only have roughly 38% lexical overlap – compare this with 56% for English and German, 82% for Spanish and Italian, or 86% for Polish and Slovak.

Polish and Russian are very distant cousins in a very close family and despite their larger-than-expected differences for one native speaker to learn the other language would not be very difficult.

If you are planning a trip to Eastern Europe, I encourage you to learn at least a little of both of these different yet related Slavic languages.

Have you learnt or do you speak Polish or Russian? If so, write me your thoughts and experiences with these 2 languages in the comments section below. I read all comments I receive.

Michael

Michael has been an avid language learner and traveler for many years. His goal with LanguageTsar is to discover the most fun and effective ways to learn a language. He is currently learning Japanese, French and Indonesian.

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