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Post by Jaga on Oct 5, 2007 22:22:25 GMT -7
A friend of mine found a fascinating article about the origin of languages. The author, prof. John McWhorter: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McWhorterhe has to be familiar with Polish language because he gives lots of comparisons between English and Polish and Polish versus Russian. He states and I agree with him - that English language does not have any other language which is similar to it very much. This is due to the fact that English, Germanic language, was modified greatly through the thousand of years, first by Vikings, then by Normans (therefore lots of French), and finally by Latin. 99% in English language are of.... foreign origin! The language changed so much that it is very hard, almost impossible to read the oldest document in English language from earlu 11th century so called: Beowulf. On the other hand, Polish language did not go through so many changes, it is still similar to the other languages of their neighbors - like Russian or Czechs. here is what he wrote: IF A POLE WANTS TO LEARN RUSSIAN, SHE CAN KIND OF DO IT BEFORE SHE GOES TO BED EVERY NIGHT, BECAUSE IT'S NOT GOING TO BE THAT HARD. FOR US, WE NEED COFFEE AND THERAPY TO LEARN RUSSIAN. ;D
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Post by leslie on Oct 6, 2007 2:03:39 GMT -7
Jaga Have you ever thought that the American language is going through the same changes as did English - forces include all the emigrants bringing with them their languages and retaining words, phrases and meanings. To change the example you gave, parts of the American language is unintelligible to the English from which it is formed and the whole language may become unintelligible in less than the thousand years. The same is true of many languages throughout the world. This, I feel, makes language rich and interesting. Which Polish language did not go through changes? The original Polish territory was inhabited by hundreds of Slav tribes, many speaking different forms of 'Slav', from which Polish developed. Leslie
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joyce
Full Pole
Posts: 394
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Post by joyce on Oct 6, 2007 5:57:43 GMT -7
Ah blessed are those can read, write and speak Polish and English and not get them mixed up at the same time. In school, we were taught that German was the hardest language to learn, where French was the second hardest with all the tongue rolls and female/male specs before words. Spanish was the easiest to learn & those classes filled up first. It was unheard to want to speak Russian or Polish. It was assumed any one learning German they were going into the military(ROTC) after school. The basic English language has remained the same-as far as adjectives, adverbs, etc. Some of the college English books really get nick picky as to what is good grammer and how to write it. College English courses are a must for those who are going into journalism, the media or to become a writer. I think the English language has changed only in the slang words as people of different cultures use them. Depending on where you live in the states will depend on what you hear and say. We all say the same thing, but with different accents. And the accents are just as diversified as the languages that are spoken. I can remember my grandparents speaking Polish, around the dinner table, when they didn't want us grandkids to know what they were talking about. So could I safely assume that Polish was spoken as commonly & if not more in the household when our great grandparents were alive? For those who can speak Polish fluently-it it hard to speak English? And for someone who wants to learn basic Polish-will a Polish-English dictionary be of any help? I have a few letters written in Polish that I would like to transcribe to English, but it looks all "greek" to me. Are there any Microsoft programs that could/would translate Polish into English? It would be nice to be able to read some of the Polish articles mentioned in this forum, but if they are written in Polish, all I can do is look at pictures. Joyce-rambling in TX
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Post by pieter on Oct 6, 2007 6:20:41 GMT -7
A friend of mine found a fascinating article about the origin of languages. The author, prof. John McWhorter: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McWhorterhe has to be familiar with Polish language because he gives lots of comparisons between English and Polish and Polish versus Russian. He states and I agree with him - that English language does not have any other language which is similar to it very much. This is due to the fact that English, Germanic language, was modified greatly through the thousand of years, first by Vikings, then by Normans (therefore lots of French), and finally by Latin. 99% in English language are of.... foreign origin! The language changed so much that it is very hard, almost impossible to read the oldest document in English language from earlu 11th century so called: Beowulf. On the other hand, Polish language did not go through so many changes, it is still similar to the other languages of their neighbors - like Russian or Czechs. here is what he wrote: IF A POLE WANTS TO LEARN RUSSIAN, SHE CAN KIND OF DO IT BEFORE SHE GOES TO BED EVERY NIGHT, BECAUSE IT'S NOT GOING TO BE THAT HARD. FOR US, WE NEED COFFEE AND THERAPY TO LEARN RUSSIAN. ;D Russian is a beautiful language as any other language that touches human hearts, and a language loved and spoken by people all over the world, the Russian diaspora is like the Polish diaspora and the Russian dissidents like the Polish dissidents. What often is forgotten is the fact that Russian was and is the language of both Bolsjewists and Imperilialistic opressors (both the Czarist- and Sovjet regimes) and anti- Czarist and Anti-communists in and outside Russia. In my country I stil see today the same resentments of people towards the Germans in the East, and that some people can be rude towards their Eastern neigbhours when they visit us. For instance some people refuse to speak German to German tourists, while they do speak German. (We are in Holland an so these Moffen (Krauts) should speak our language, since they speak a simular language). From the other side some younger generation people speak English only and so don't know German. It looks simular, but many words are differant! Before I create a stereotype, most of my compatriots today are not hostile towards Germans and many Dutch people are friendly towards Germans and other foreign visitors. I just wanted to compare Polish attitude towards Russians with the Dutch-German relationship, which is both complicated, sublte and also fed with stereotypes! Pieter
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Post by pieter on Oct 6, 2007 6:21:59 GMT -7
Neighbours who are close have often more difficulties with eachother than distant neighbours!
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Post by rdywenur on Oct 6, 2007 6:33:41 GMT -7
Russian I find is hard to read due to the cyrilic characters used to write it but If I hear it spoken many times I can make out what they are saying as the language is similar. Would it be easier to learn ...maybe for some but not for me.
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Post by pieter on Oct 6, 2007 6:49:15 GMT -7
Jaga Have you ever thought that the American language is going through the same changes as did English - forces include all the emigrants bringing with them their languages and retaining words, phrases and meanings. To change the example you gave, parts of the American language is unintelligible to the English from which it is formed and the whole language may become unintelligible in less than the thousand years. The same is true of many languages throughout the world. This, I feel, makes language rich and interesting. Which Polish language did not go through changes? The original Polish territory was inhabited by hundreds of Slav tribes, many speaking different forms of 'Slav', from which Polish developed. Leslie Leslie, You are so very right, my own Dutch language for instance is deeply influenced by latin, French, German, and even Jiddish/hebrew influences, because of immigrants that fled more authoritarian Catholic countries in the past. The Sephardic jews that fled from the Iquisition in Spain and Portugal (Spinoza), and the Ashkenazi jews that fled from progroms in Eastern Europe. Next to these jewish immigrants we got the French Huguenots and the Flemish Calvinist merchants that fled the Spanish south of the Low lands (Pays Bas). Dutch language is very authentic, but has many German, English and French words that are pronounced or spoken in the original language version. We for instance use a lot the Germanism "überhaupt", and "Fingerspitzengefühl", or the french "dossier" (file), 'cachet', 'bureau', 'chauffeur', 'paraplu' and 'retour' and words that have been made more Dutch 'boetiek' (from 'boutique'). The Dutch were more oriented on the South than on the East and therefor there are more French influences. Other German loan words are: 'arts', 'ansichtkaart' ( postcard), 'gas', 'heimwee' ( being homesick), 'kater' ( headache after drinking to much)), 'kliniek' ( Clinic) and (more difficult): 'Aha-Erlebnis' and 'Leitmotief' (Leitmotif/ leading motif). The English influence came from the second half of the twentieth century (but the Dutch elite was already British oriented in the twentees): Just some examples from English and American words used in Dutch today: blunder, handicap, lunch, en more recent: 'sale', 'nuts', 'manager' and ofcourse the 'coffeeshop', 'printer', 'goal', 'upgraden', 'site' and 'webplek' (=webspace). on the field of fashion English has taken over the traditional French ('panty', 'pull-over'' e.d.). The average Dutch person has little difficulty with the present incomming flow of Englsih words. Links: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Dutch_loanwordsen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_influence_on_German
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Post by pieter on Oct 6, 2007 6:59:06 GMT -7
Today Polish
Today Polish is the official language of Poland; it is spoken by most of the 38 million inhabitants of Poland (census 2002). There are also some native speakers of Polish in western Belarus and Ukraine, as well as in eastern Lithuania. Because of emigration from Poland in various periods, millions of Polish-speakers may be found in countries such as Ireland, Australia, Israel, Brazil, Canada, the United Kingdom, United States, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and France. The estimated number of Poles who live beyond the borders of Poland is 10 million. It is not clear, however, how many of them can actually speak Polish - the estimates range from 3,5 to 10 million. This puts the number of native speakers of Polish all over the world between 40 and 48 million. According to Ethnologue, there are about 43 million first language speakers of Polish worldwide. Polish has the second largest number of speakers among Slavic languages after Russian. It is the main representative of the Lechitic branch of the West Slavic languages. The Polish language originated in the areas of present-day Poland from several local Western Slavic dialects, most notably those spoken in Greater Poland and Lesser Poland. It shares some vocabulary with the languages of the neighboring Slavic nations, most notably with Slovak, Czech, Ukrainian, and Belarusian.
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Post by pieter on Oct 6, 2007 7:25:30 GMT -7
Today Russian
Russian is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia and the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of three (or, according to some authorities, four) living members of the East Slavic languages; the others being Belarusian and Ukrainian (and possibly Rusyn, often considered a dialect of Ukrainian). Written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century onwards. Today Russian is widely used outside Russia. Over a quarter of the world's scientific literature is published in Russian. It is also applied as a means of coding and storage of universal knowledge — 60–70% of all world information is published in English and Russian languages. Russian also is a necessary accessory of world communications systems (broadcasts, air- and space communication, etc). Due to the status of the Soviet Union as a superpower, Russian had great political importance in the 20th century. Hence, the language is still one of the official languages of the United Nations. Russian distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without, the so-called soft and hard sounds. This distinction is found between pairs of almost all consonants and is one of the most distinguishing features of the language. Another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels, which is not entirely unlike that of English. Stress in Russian is generally quite unpredictable and can be placed on almost any syllable. Syllabic stress is one of the most difficult aspects for foreign language learners.
Classification
Russian is a Slavic language in the Indo-European family. From the point of view of the spoken language, its closest relatives are Ukrainian and Belarusian, the other two national languages in the East Slavic group that are also descendants of Old East Slavic. Some academics also consider Rusyn an East Slavic language; others consider Rusyn just a dialect of Ukrainian. In many places in Ukraine and Belarus, these languages are spoken interchangeably, and in certain areas traditional bilingualism resulted in language mixture, e.g. Surzhyk in eastern Ukraine. An East Slavic Old Novgorod dialect, although vanished during the fifteenth or sixteenth century, is sometimes considered to have played a significant role in formation of the modern Russian language. The vocabulary (mainly abstract and literary words), principles of word formation, and, to some extent, inflections and literary style of Russian have been also influenced by Church Slavonic, a developed and partly adopted form of the South Slavic Old Church Slavonic language used by the Russian Orthodox Church. However, the East Slavic forms have tended to be used exclusively in the various dialects that are experiencing a rapid decline. In some cases, both the East Slavic and the Church Slavonic forms are in use, with slightly different meanings. For details, see Russian phonology and History of the Russian language. Russian phonology and syntax (especially in northern dialects) have also been influenced to some extent by the numerous Finnic languages of the Finno-Ugric subfamily: Merya, Moksha, Muromian, the language of the Meshchera, Veps etc. These languages, some of them now extinct, used to be spoken right in the center and in the north of what is now the European part of Russia. They came in contact with Eastern Slavic as far back as the early Middle Ages and eventually served as substratum for the modern Russian language. The Russian dialects spoken north, north-east and north-west of Moscow have a considerable number of words of Finno-Ugric origin. The vocabulary and literary style of Russian have also been greatly influenced by Greek (Byznatine roots of the Russian alphabet), Latin (Polish-Lithuanian influence), Italian (the rennaissance influence and stile and architecture in St. Petersburg), French (the language of all European nobility, kings, Queens and aristocracy, so also the Russian ones), German (settlers), Ukrainian (neighbours), and English. Modern Russian also has a considerable number of words adopted from Tatar and some other Turkic languages.
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Post by bescheid on Oct 6, 2007 7:51:39 GMT -7
Interesting of Language, for it is a living language in use and location. For as a person though, I am not very linguistic, and Russian is just impossible not to mention Polish....
English, well our Brit Friends would most then likely, have the correct knowledge on history and use of English. For they are in the land of English..
But, where were they to gain their language? If not for our Vikings, they and perhaps many other nations, would be speaking Keltic/Norman French of what ever a mix.
North Germany speaks the unified high German {Introduced and enforced to create a unified language over the multitude of dialects} but, at same time on the coastal regions, a dialect of the area. Our area was both the high German and Niedersächsisch. High German was for normal business and communication, whilst Niedersächsisch was the coastal speak. Also very handy in Dänemark. As a child, this was our universal language whilst living in Dänemark.
As Pieter indicated, yes with some elder Hollanders, there are some dissatisfaction upon our mutual meeting in public, but not so much so. This mainly once the table conversation will drift over to the war years. But not so much. With Sea people, who cares, it is our boats, ships power systems, who snagged which net, and who will pay and why for the stupid master {ships} grounded upon a well known sand bar.
I think perhaps it is much more easy for North European people in communication for the timeless years of close living. It takes not but a close look to understand the signage and not be poisoned in the restaurant menu.
Because of the traffic, in past, it was always much the more simple, to travel by BMW motorcycle into Holland, as so, also a person is close to the elements/people and the land. I think much perhaps that the sea is a great unifier of people. It is both a provider and at similar, a dangerous over seer. For once it becomes angry, it will kill with out remorse.
Whilst only a small exposure to Poland with my motorcycle, the Polish spoken language was a mystery, as worse, the road way signage was even more a mystery. The people spoke both German and if not so much, then the universal language is used {gestures and a smile}.
Charles
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Post by Jaga on Oct 6, 2007 8:56:40 GMT -7
I wish I could provide you with the copy of the printed article, but I could not find it anywhere on the internet.
Polish language undergoes through a big change right now. My "ears are fading" (uszy wiedna) when I hear how much English words are incorporated into Polish, way too many!
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Post by kaima on Oct 6, 2007 10:36:16 GMT -7
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Post by leslie on Oct 6, 2007 11:19:44 GMT -7
Jaga Some people would say (NOT ME, NOT ME!!!!) that the Polish language is being improved by these English additions!!
Leslie
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Post by leslie on Oct 6, 2007 11:25:07 GMT -7
Kaima
I went to the site you cited (that's an unintentional pun!) and I liked the only Polish entry among the many mistranslations and warped sayings:
""Polish/Poland: on the menu of a Polish hotel: Salad a firm's own make; limpid red beet soup with cheesy dumplings in the form of a finger; roasted duck let loose; beef rashers beaten up in the country people's fashion.""
Leslie
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Post by Jaga on Oct 6, 2007 22:46:09 GMT -7
Kai,
this is a wonderful website, I also emailed it to some of my friends
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