what languages are polish and czech related to
Are Polish and Czech Similar or really Different?
The Slavic languages, such as Shine, Czech, Slovak, and Russian, are divided into three subgroups: South Slavic, Eastward Slavic, and West Slavic languages.
Both Polish and Czech belong to the same subgroup of the West Slavic languages. This means that they are very closely related, and therefore, they share a lot of similarities.
Just, how similar are they? What are the differences between them? These are the questions that we will answer in this article. We too included some audio recordings and then that you can hear the differences in pronouciation betwixt Polish and Czech.
Origins of Polish and Czech
To improve understand how Smooth and Czech relate to each other, it is worth exploring the history of how they originated. These 2 Slavic languages come from the Proto-Indo-European language, an extinct language that existed many centuries BC in Central Europe and Central Asia. In fact, nearly European languages every bit we know them today originate from the Proto-Indo-European language.
Notwithstanding, as a consequence of tribe migrations, this language started to evolve and split itself into various dialects and afterward into separate languages. This is how the Slavic language grouping came to exist and divided into 3 subgroups: West Slavic, Eastward Slavic, and South Slavic language.
Furthermore, the West Slavic languages divided into three subgroups: Czech-Slovak, Lechitic, and Sorbian. The Czech language belongs to the Czech-Slovak subgroup together with Slovak (which is why Czech and Slovak are mutually intelligible), while Polish falls under the Lechitic group.
Both the Polish and the Czech languages almost disappeared entirely due to historical events. In the 17th century, the Czech language suffered a nearly-extinction after the outbreak of a thirty-year religious state of war. Due to the war, the population of the Czech republic brutal significantly, together with the linguistically-gifted elite.
Still, the Czech linguistic communication stayed alive in the countryside, beingness taught from one generation to another, mostly in speech. Although the linguistic communication lingered in the minds of the Czech population, information technology wasn't until the 18th century that it was fully revived.
Every bit for the Smoothen language, the history was very like. Poland had endured a tough catamenia of 123 years when it completely vanished from the map of the world due to the Third Partition of Poland in 1795 by three ability nations: Austria, Prussia, and Russia.
During that fourth dimension, it was forbidden to use the Smooth language, and anyone who dared to use it publicly faced legal consequences. Despite the adversities, the Polish people kept the language alive. Poland regained its independence in 1918, and the Polish language was revived.
Nowadays, approximately 11.5 million people speak the Czech language, out of which 10 million are Czech Republic residents. It is most closely related to Slovak and then also to Polish, Kashubian, and Lusatian.
Polish is spoken past approximately 44 million people worldwide, mainly by Polish residents and Shine people living abroad. It is the 6th most spoken linguistic communication of the European Union and one of its official languages.
How Polish and Czech influenced each other
The Polish and Czech languages adult in parallel. It is said that the Czech language developed in speech from the 10th century, but its first scriptures date back to the 13th century. For Smooth, the starting time scriptures date dorsum to the 9th century. Although it may seem that the Smoothen language influenced the evolution of the Czech linguistic communication, it was really the other fashion around.
The similarities in the vocabulary of these two languages come by and large from historical events. To first with, Poland adopted Christianity through the Czech republic in the year 966, when the first Smoothen King - Mieszko I - married a Czech adult female called Dobrawa (Doubravka in Czech) from the Přemyslid dynasty.
Autonomously from Christianity, this international marriage as well introduced new vocabulary into the Polish language. This is why many words in Polish originate from the Czech language, such as Polish "kościół", which comes from the Czech "kostel" and ways "a church building".
Later on on, in the Center Ages, the Czech language became very pop in Poland. Nearly anybody who belonged to an intellectual circle spoke Czech. This created a manner for the Czech language, which originated in many lexical changes in the Smoothen language.
For example, Polish words that contain the particle "ra" or "ła" between the consonants, such every bit "brama" (gate) or "błagać" (to beg), typically originate from the Czech language.
Are Polish and Czech Mutually Intelligible?
When ii languages are mutually intelligible, it essentially means that the speakers of one language can hands understand the other language without the need to learn to speak it.
Although Polish and Czech belong to the aforementioned subgroup of Slavic languages and share many similarities, they are not mutually intelligible. Linguists claim Czech'south oral intelligibility with Polish is only 36% and written intelligibility 46%.
However, Poles and Czechs are able to learn to understand each other's linguistic communication exceptionally quickly based on how much exposure to that linguistic communication they are experiencing.
This is why many Polish people who alive close to the border with the Czech republic tin easily understand Czechs and vice versa.
Is Smoothen or Czech easier to learn for anglophones?
Although Polish and Czech may accept a lot in common, in that location is no incertitude that they are incredibly different from the English language. Both Shine and Czech share circuitous grammar that differs a lot from English grammar.
They are both difficult to pronounce for an English language speaker with lots of sounds that simply practice not be in English, and their vocabulary has nothing in mutual with the English vocabulary.
What's more, both Smooth and Czech are categorized as level Four languages according to The Foreign Service Establish. This means that learning them at a basic conversational level requires at least i,100 hours of study (or 44 weeks).
Nonetheless, if you already have some background in another Slavic language, or yous're just a linguistic communication lover who finds information technology like shooting fish in a barrel to acquire strange languages, learning Polish and Czech may not be so hard for you.
Similarities between Smoothen and Czech
Although we cannot say that Polish and Czech are identical or even mutually intelligible, there is no dubiousness that they share many similarities. Coming from the aforementioned language grouping and subgroup, these two languages share a like grammatical structure and vocabulary.
With that said, let'southward accept a look at the similarities between Polish and Czech more closely.
i. Grammatical structure.
Polish and Czech follow a very similar general grammatical structure. For example, both of these languages utilize coast.
Declension, which is entirely unfamiliar to whatever English speaker, is a complex system of grammatically determined modifications of nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and numerals.
Both Smooth and Czech have seven cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, locative, and vocative. They as well share many similarities in the conjugation of verbs, the apply of tenses, or the use of prepositions.
2. Lexical overlap.
The almost prominent similarities between Polish and Czech are in their vocabulary. The similarities in the lexical development of these languages are caused by the inheritance of words from the Proto-Slavic linguistic communication (which is one of the dialects the Proto-Indo-European language developed into during tribe migrations).
It is estimated that Smoothen adopted approximately 1,700 words from the Proto-Slavic language. In comparing, the Czechs incorporated about ii,000 words into their vocabulary - virtually of which are words mutual to both languages.
Here are a few words and expressions that sound very similar in Smooth and Czech:
- "Bird" is "ptak" in Polish and "pták" in Czech.
Therefore, the phrase "This bird sings beautifully" is "Ten ptak pięknie śpiewa" in Polish and "Tento pták krásně zpívá." in Czech. - "Milk" is "mleko" in Polish and "mléko" in Czech.
Therefore, the phrase "At that place is no milk at home." is "W domu nie ma mleka" in Polish and "Doma není mléko." in Czech. - "Information technology'southward truthful" is "to prawda" in Shine and "to je pravda" in Czech.
- "I'm coming domicile" is "wracam do domu" in Polish and "vracím se domů" in Czech
- "Red wine" is "czerowne wino" in Polish and "červené víno" in Czech.
Differences between Polish and Czech
Let's have a expect at some significant differences between Smooth and Czech.
i. Phonetics.
Although Polish and Czech may sound almost indistinguishable to a strange ear, the most significant differences between these two languages lie in their phonetics.
To first with, the Shine consonant system is relatively complex, while the Czech version is fairly elementary.
On the other hand, the vowel system in Shine is straightforward (information technology has but six oral monophthongs and 2 nasals). In contrast, the Czech vowel organization is more than adult (it has ten monophthongal and three diphthongal vowel phonemes).
What's more, the Czech language does non have nasal vowels as Polish does. Czech distinguishes long and short vowels, while Polish doesn't. Additionally, Polish preserved the phonetic divergence between 'i' and 'y', while in Czech, they take merged into one single vowel.
Another big divergence in how these ii languages audio is the pronunciation stress. In Polish, the stress is usually put on the next-to-last syllable, while in Czech, the first syllable of a word is stressed.
ii. Grammatical modifications.
Although Polish and Czech follow the aforementioned grammatical structure, there are some differences in the details.
For case, both Smooth and Czech use declension of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, numerals, and the conjugation of verbs, but their grammatical modifications differ significantly.
The sentence syntax likewise differs between these two languages as the word lodge in Czech sentences is not precisely the same as in Smooth sentences.
3. Polish-Czech Vocabulary False Friends.
Although Polish and Czech share a considerable percentage of their vocabulary, in that location are also many significant differences that Poles and Czechs need to pay attention to when communicating with each other!
You may often hear Poles and Czechs telling stories of how using similar-sounding words in each other's languages created funny situations and complete misunderstandings. This is because Polish and Czech have a lot of fake friends: words that sound similar but are very different in meaning.
For example, in Polish, the word "zachód" ways Westward, while the very like-sounding "záchod" ways toilet in Czech!
Some other funny example is the Czech discussion "divadlo", which simply means "theatre". Whereas In Shine, the word "dziwadło" means "a freak"!
Here are some examples of false friends in Polish and Czech:
- The discussion "čerstvý" ways "fresh" in Czech, while the Polish equivalent "czerstwy" ways "stale".
- The discussion "nápad" means "idea" in Czech, while the Smooth equivalent "napad" means "an attack".
- The word "sklep" means "basement" in Czech. In Smooth, the verbal aforementioned word ( "sklep") ways "a shop"! On the other hand, the word "piwnica" means "basement" in Smooth, while in Czech, it means "a beerhouse"!
- The word "láska" in Czech means "love", while the Smoothen equivalent "laska" means "a cane" or, casually, an attractive immature woman.
4. Spelling and orthography.
There are also meaning differences in the spelling and orthography of the Polish and Czech languages.
Showtime, the Czech linguistic communication has diacritic marks unknown to the Shine language. For example, the Czech language uses a dash (called čárka in Czech) that appears to a higher place vowels and marks the length of the vowel above which it appears.
A dash in Polish is placed higher up certain consonants (ć, ń, ś, ź, dź) to denote their softness. The only vowel that appears with a dash is "ó", pronounced the aforementioned way a "u" is. In comparison, in Czech, the vowel "u" is marked in two means: either with a dash (ú) or with a circle (ů).
Another critical difference is that the Czech linguistic communication uses the then-called "hook" (from Czech "háček") above certain consonants (č, ň, ř, š, ž) and the vowel "ě". This doesn't exist in the Polish language.
The Czech messages with hooks accept the following equivalents in Polish: "č" is Smoothen "cz," "ř" is the equivalent of "rz," "š" corresponds to "sz," "ž" corresponds to "ż," and "ň" to "ń."
Conclusion
Most people believe that Smoothen and Czech are ii very similar, almost identical, languages. It may be practically impossible to distinguish between these 2 Slavic languages to an untrained ear.
While it's truthful that Smoothen and Czech adult simultaneously and share a lot of similarities, such as their grammatical structure and vocabulary, many differences between them brand them into two completely divide languages.
Source: https://vocab.chat/blog/polish-and-czech.html