Saturday 31 August 2013

Polish vs. Slovak: what’s the difference?

 

How does one compare two language in a truly objective fashion? This is an interesting question, especially in cases where two languages are related and sometimes claimed to be mutually intelligible. The main reasons I‘m spending a fine Saturday morning for this type of philosophizing are a) I have a personal interest for these two languages; b) I personally find it annoying when people claim to know a language when they can guess what it means (such a noble reason to write this post!), and c) it is fascinating to see how languages are interrelated and where their actual connections lie. 

The problem may be approached in several ways. I have made a small table comparing Polish and Slovak, but, as it turns out, it does not say much, it does not show the differences.

Language Polish Slovak
Native Speakers 40 million 5 million
Language subgroup West Slavic West Slavic
Number of letters and sounds in alphabet* 47 46
Numbers of cases 7 7
Difficulty rating** Category II Category II
     

 

As mentioned above, this table does not say much more than that there are a lot more Poles than Slovaks on this planet (or, more correctly, the table shows that there are more Polish native speakers). Let’s compare the same text in the two languages instead:

UN Declaration of Human Rights in Polish

Artykuł 1

Wszyscy ludzie rodzą się wolni i równi pod względem swej godności i swych praw. Są oni obdarzeni rozumem i sumieniem i powinni postępować wobec innych w duchu braterstwa.

Artykuł 2

Każdy człowiek posiada wszystkie prawa i wolności zawarte w niniejszej Deklaracji bez względu na jakiekolwiek różnice rasy, koloru, płci, języka, wyznania, poglądów politycznych i innych, narodowości, pochodzenia społecznego, majątku, urodzenia lub jakiegokolwiek innego stanu.
Nie wolno ponadto czynić żadnej różnicy w zależności od sytuacji politycznej, prawnej lub międzynarodowej kraju lub obszaru, do którego dana osoba przynależy, bez względu na to, czy dany kraj lub obszar jest niepodległy, czy też podlega systemowi powiernictwa, nie rządzi się samodzielnie lub jest w jakikolwiek sposób ograniczony w swej niepodległości.

….

 

UN Declaration of Human Rights in Slovak

Článok 1

Všetci ľudia sa rodia slobodní a rovní v dôstojnosti a právach. Sú obdarení rozumom a svedomím a mali by sa k sebe správať v duchu bratstva.

Článok 2

Každý je nositeľom všetkých práv a slobôd, ktoré zakotvuje táto deklarácia, bez ohľadu na odlišnosti akéhokoľvek druhu, ako sú rasa, farba, pohlavie, jazyk, náboženstvo, politické a iné presvedčenie, národný alebo sociálny pôvod, majetok, rodové alebo iné postavenie. Ďalej sa nesmie robiť nijaký rozdiel na základe politického, právneho či medzinárodného postavenia krajiny alebo územia, ku ktorým osoba prináleží, či už ide o krajinu alebo územie nezávislé, poručenské, nesamosprávne alebo podrobené inému obmedzeniu suverenity.

….

 

My interpretation and analysis of these two texts is dependent on my earlier experience in Slavic languages. A person with no experience in any Slavic language might not see what I see. I can see several similarities between the two languages, in terms of both vocabulary and grammar. I must, however, admit that whereas my ability to understand Polish increases my ability to understand Slovak, it does not increase my ability to communicate and express myself in Slovak. It might be easier to get a grasp of Slovak, but I still have to start from zero.  And the differences? The spelling is an obvious difference; other differences worth mentioning are the case endings, verb endings, prepositions etc.

 

* including digraphs and trigraphs

**http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Language_Learning_Difficulty_for_English_Speakers

The Play Goes On–And The Summer That Was

The summer is slowly moving to an end, leaving memories that will be looked back at with fondness. It was a summer with very little internet and a lot of travelling: Budapest, Eger, Slovenia, Italy, Austria. It was a summer with visits and a lot of laughter.

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Piran, Slovenia. Photo taken by Jesper.

The Autumn ahead is arriving with a plentitude of promises – promises of hard work (last year of uni is about to start), fun travels (Krakow is waiting in two weeks), and hopefully some bouts of creativity. The one thing I have been missing this summer is the writing, reading and pondering on the world…