kravietz 🦇 @kravietz@social.privacytools.io

@werekat

Then, Russian has accented words (писать, замок) which are virtually non-existent in Polish. You can imagine my friend's father's surprise when I started talking to him using this false-Russian-Polish with the most frequent word being "pisać" (писать), obviously with the accent on the last part, because it's how it sounds in Polish.

And I just wanted to write a post card! 😂

@werekat

I don't think it's only Polish influence in Western Ukraine - some of my friends in Russia get quite agitated when I mention that but when I was trying to read old Russian scriptures in Orthodox churches it's much more similar to Ukrainian than modern Russian, and thus much easier to read by a Polish person (assuming you can read the alphabet).

@werekat

My first encounters with Russian were.. interesting - specifically because of the temptation to assume identical words have identical meaning. But between Russian and Polish there's *plenty* of such traps so you use words like "krawat", "lustro", "kawior" and you're all "ha, I'm speaking Russian" and you just see people's faces getting longer and longer as you're speaking nonsense to them 😂

@werekat

Do you mean natural language processing or neuro-linguistic programming? 🤔

@werekat

For most Polish people Ukrainian will sound just like someone speaking in broken Polish with strong eastern accent, which is why they will pay attention as they are trying to make sense of it. They can understand almost all of it... but there's something they cannot get about it, and this is what makes them uncomfortable.

@werekat

* ok, "Выпраўляючыся" is the only word that doesn't match Polish - more similar to Russian "выправляющися"

@werekat

Interestingly, it's a bit more challenging with Belarussian but it's probably due to even less practice on my side. For example this Brutto lyrics:

Неба – колеру цёплага воску,
Цяжкую вільгаць цягне патроху.
Анархісту дай папяроску
Выпраўляючыся* ў дарогу.

All words are like 100% match in Poland but how they are pronounced is just unusual for me.

Niebo - koloru ciepłego wosku
Ciężką wilgoć ciągnie po trochu
Anarchiście daj papieroska
Wyjeżdżający w drogę

@werekat

I'm pretty sure you would understand 90% of spoken Polish. I have a friend here who is Ukrainian and I've asked him specifically to talk in Ukrainian to me and I do understand it without any problems. Reading is a bit more challenging as I have little practice - I have to read some words aloud and then I have this "a-ha!" moment where I'm able to recognize the word by its pronunciation.

@werekat

I may be biased because as an IT guy I love to optimize things and Polish spelling is one of the most wasteful encodings I've seen 😂

So in addition to these digraphs, we have sounds which are identical but are written differently - H and CH, Ż and RZ, U and Ó - depending on their etymology.

For example, "morze" (sea) and "może" (he/she/it can) sounds 100% identical but are written differently, which is a cause of endless headache for school children in Poland 😀

@werekat

And as a native Polish speaker I understand a lot of Ukrainian just like that, especially there's a lot of common vocabulary, which is not the case for example with Russian, where many of similar words means something completely different (canonical fun examples: uroda, sklep).

What is the largest barrier is the Ukrainian alphabet, which most people in Poland don't know and have no desire to learn.

@werekat

Modern Polish spelling is problematic for many Polish speakers - all these sz, cz, rz could be easily replaced by š, č, ř (as in Czech in Slovak) but we stick to these awkward digraphs for some reason.

The word "ścierwo" has double meaning in Polish, one for "corpse", the other a popular insult - I guess it's the same in Ukrainian (стерва) and Russian. "-jad" (-ед) is obviously a noun made from verb jeść (eat).

@werekat

Sapkowski's language is very rich indeed, and he brought back a lot of almost-forgotten words. I think language forms large part of his popularity, the other is the "intellectual with a sword" atmosphere that you so precisely captured.

"Zgiń, ścierwojadzie!" is the spelling in Polish :) Literally "die corpse eater".

@werekat

Ok, that is probably my mistake - it seems like Geralt uses "zaraza" even in the original book stories a lot - along with "kurwa" 😀

https://pl.wikiquote.org/wiki/Geralt_z_Rivii

@werekat

Oh wait, but it's the game, not the series, right?

That's interesting, I was thinking game was also using the original "kurwa" as in the books.

If Polish game version decided to go with "zaraza", which directly translates to "plague" in Polish, and is rather archaic form, this explains why they used the same in Russian.

And game might have gone for "zaraza" to bypass age restrictions 😃

@werekat

He says that only in Russian version (not sure about Ukrainian). In Polish it's simple and straightforward "kurwa" and I was always wondering why in Russian translation they decided to use such a soft curse!

@thenewoil

The best part was where they explain how you are a product in a section titled "you are not a product" 😃

@Wetrix

Yeah, I guess you could make a whole cartoon or short movie based on this story 😁

#Netflix again positively surprises with another pretty good Polish crime series "The Mire" (Polish "Rojs"), happening in 80's.

@werekat

Law enforcement in Russia is non-linear. They may intensify prosecution of a single penal code article in one town or region simply because they need statistics at the end of quarter, then go back to a non-intervention mode. This has nothing to do with rule of law obviously, but that's how they operate.