Polish and Russian are two of the most widely spoken Slavic languages in the world.

Learning one of these languages makes learning the other much easier.

However, they belong to different branches of the Slavic language family.

Polish is a West Slavic language.

Russian is an East Slavic language.

This means they share a lot of common ground.

It also means they have major differences.

I’ll break down exactly how Polish and Russian compare in terms of alphabet, vocabulary, and grammar.

The alphabets

The most obvious difference between the two languages is the writing system.

Polish uses the Latin alphabet.

This is the same base alphabet used in English.

We added special characters with diacritics to represent specific sounds.

These unique Polish letters are ą, ć, ę, ł, ń, ó, ś, ź, and ż.

Russian uses the Cyrillic alphabet.

Cyrillic is based primarily on the Greek alphabet.

If you know English, you can read Polish words phonetically almost immediately.

To read Russian, you must spend time learning an entirely new alphabet first.

Vocabulary similarities and false friends

Because both languages have Slavic roots, they share a massive amount of core vocabulary.

Many everyday words sound almost identical.

Here are a few common words that show this similarity.

But you have to watch out for false friends.

False friends are words that sound similar but mean completely different things.

Relying too heavily on cognates can cause some embarrassing misunderstandings.

Here are a few famous false friends between Polish and Russian.

Grammar rules and cases

Grammar is where Polish and Russian are incredibly similar.

Both languages don’t use articles like “a”, “an”, or “the”.

They both categorize nouns into three main genders.

These genders are masculine, feminine, and neuter.

Both languages also use a complex case system to show how words function in a sentence.

A noun’s ending will change depending on whether it’s the subject, the direct object, or showing possession.

Russian uses six grammatical cases.

Polish uses seven grammatical cases.

The extra case in Polish is the vocative case, which is used to directly address someone.

Both languages also rely heavily on verb aspects.

This means verbs come in pairs to show whether an action is completed or ongoing.

Here’s an example of a simple sentence to show how similar the sentence structure is.

Pronunciation differences

Polish and Russian sound quite different to the trained ear.

Polish is famous for its heavy use of consonant clusters.

We string many consonants together, which creates a very “hissing” or “rustling” sound.

Polish also has nasal vowels.

The Polish letters ą and ę sound similar to French nasal sounds.

Russian lost these nasal sounds entirely over time.

Russian pronunciation heavily features vowel reduction.

An unstressed “o” in Russian is pronounced like an “a”.

In Polish, you pronounce every single letter exactly as it’s written regardless of stress.

Stress in Polish words almost always falls on the second-to-last syllable.

Russian word stress is unpredictable and can fall on any syllable.

Mutual intelligibility

Many people assume Polish and Russian speakers can easily understand each other.

This isn’t entirely true.

A Polish speaker and a Russian speaker can’t hold a fluent conversation without prior study.

They’ll pick out familiar words and understand the general context of a basic sentence.

However, the differences in pronunciation and false friends cause a lot of confusion.

Written communication is slightly easier if the Russian text is translated into the Latin alphabet.

If you learn one of these languages, you’ll have a massive head start on learning the other.

The mental framework for cases and verb aspects will already be in your brain.