Polish or Russian?

dmc36

im very interested in learning a new language, as I now work very closely with poles, Russians and Ukrainians I know that the poles and Ukrainians understand one another.

I once heard that Russian would be better to learn as you would understand all three is that true?

Not to bothered with the reading more the oral side of things
Thanks

galson

Not really, if you speak Polish, you will only be able to speak with people speaking it, same with Russian/Ukrainian, although I'm not sure how things are between the last two. For an English native speaker slavic languages are very difficult to learn, have that in mind

Tom75

http://grzegorj.w.interia.pl/gram/gram00.html

''Foreword

The Polish language is, with good reason, said to be the most difficult language in the world. To write an outline grammar for it is a hard task, especially when the author is not a professional linguist. Of course, I have done it basing it on the accessible literature and on my own knowledge of the language (I am a native speaker of Polish).

Many orthodox, educational views on some grammatical facts are now considered, in a number of recent works, to be out of date or simply wrong. That is why some of the ideas presented here may be thought controversial. Do not hesitate to send me mail if you have other conceptions or if you want to initiate discussion with me. I try to use correct English on my website, but English is not my mother tongue and I might have made mistakes. Please inform me about these as well.

All the material presented here is contrasted with the English language, so you do not need to speak Polish to peruse my site. This page is also posted in a Polish version, the content of which might not be identical for various reasons. New changes will appear first only in the Polish version.

This site contains Polish texts. You are advised to test on this page if your computer is adjusted properly to show all the material presented here.''

Lucena

According to this:

http://web.archive.org/web/20130501025506/http://www.nadbuhom.pl/art_2638.html

Polish, Ukrainian and Belarusian are reasonably mutually intelligible.

Lucena

Or maybe this link might be more useful!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_intelligibility#Spoken_forms_only

WeeGee

"Polish, Ukrainian and Belarussian are reasonably mutually intelligible" - not so. Russians, Belarussian and Ukrainians may understand one another. Polish people over 35 yrs of age were taught Russian at school, so they should understand something of the language. However, it does not mean that the others understand Polish! Those Poles who live near the borders may understand Russian as their dialect has been influenced for ages by their foreign neighbours.

davwain

I have tried to learn Russian and Polish, but have found more people interested in the former. I have, to try to get the right pronunciation for Polish place names, what they sound like in Russian e.g. Korczowa, in Russian Cyrillic, is written "Korchova" (Корчова), while Świętochłowice, in Russian, is written "Sventokhlovitze" (Свентохловице). Yet the "Ś" is pronounced like "shch". In German, the city is written "Schwientochlowitz" (similar to how it's written in Polish). Interesting, isn't it?