7 ms·

I believe the fact that Polish uses the Latin alphabet (with a small Slavic twist to express the extra sounds) meant it was much easier for Poland to align itse

by quibono 3mo ago

I believe the fact that Polish uses the Latin alphabet (with a small Slavic twist to express the extra sounds) meant it was much easier for Poland to align itself westward. I think the average Pole is much closer culturally to the Western neighbours than to a Ukrainian or Russian (maybe apart from cuisine).

q3k 3mo ago
Polish cuisine is very similar to German cuisine. (This comment will make a lot of Polish people very upset.)
- ck45 3mo ago
  Lots of common main ingredients like potatoes, beets, cabbage, and sausages. It could also have a different reason, like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Former_eastern_territories_of_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Former_eastern_territories_of_...
- grvbck 3mo ago
  Sure, a common use of bread, potatoes, cabbage/other vegetables, hearty meat dishes etc but the Polish kitchen is closer to Ukrainian/Russian in technique/ingredients. Barszcz, pierogi, fermented everything, pickles, sour rye, and many dishes built around wheat/rye, mushrooms, dairy, and Eastern-style fillings are much more like Ukrainian/Belarusian/Russian food. The biggest German influences are probably the sausages and the beer culture.
- CurtHagenlocher 3mo ago
  How reasonably can German cuisine be described as a single unified thing? My mother was from East Prussia and my father from Swabia and their "home" cuisines were pretty dissimilar -- if for no other reason than climate.
  - minkeymaniac 3mo ago
    Same is true for Croatia.. food from Slavonia (near Zagreb) is very different from the coastal regions (Istria and Dalmatia)
  - tannenfreund87 3mo ago
    Cuisine in Europe is shaped by climate, soil and former political entities. You'll find similar cuisine in and around the alps, along the north sea coast and around the baltic sea. While the people eating the same food speak a dozen different languages.
- tau255 3mo ago
  Due to Partitions of Poland a lot of of territory was under Prussian influence for over a century - that had to have some culinary effect (other than forced germanization).
- broken-kebab 3mo ago
  It's also true for Belarus, Baltics, and some parts of Ukraine. Generally, we can speak about North-Eastern European cuisine with potatoes, secale flour breads, and various pickled things. And that name will make a lot of everybody upset, cause everybody in those lands pretend they are "Central". Americans would not believe how many "geographical centers of Europe" are claimed there.
  - rconti 3mo ago
    I'm not sure how surprised Americans would be to learn that there are so many "centers of Europe". After all, we all know that Colorado is in "the west", Texas in the "southwest", and, clearly, "the South" is located in the geographical southeast :D
    - broken-kebab 3mo ago
      These American peculiarities are funny too, but they are mostly historical, and from that perspective have reasonable explanation. In turn "we are not Eastern, but Central" is relatively recent PR-born madness. Somebody decided that EE often associates with questionable things like alcohol consumption somehow, so the solution is to separate yourself from other drinkers by claiming being completely different "Central" kind. Nobody stops drinking meanwhile, because why would you? I simplify the story, of course, but the logic is exactly like that.
      - rconti 3mo ago
        Also, I imagine that the expansion and reduction in size of the Soviet empire over the decades has played a part, not to mention a certain provincialism among (western) European powers in terms of what they consider to be "real" Europe. When it was a poor backwater "somewhere over there", it wasn't part of Europe. When it was Soviet, it wasn't Europe. Now that it's a bulwark against a militaristic Russia and a convenient place to do lower-cost manufacturing: "Hello, my European compatriots!"
    - bleepblap 3mo ago
      And my favorite -- you need to go north from Miami to be in "the South"
- keiferski 3mo ago
  Yes it's similar, but certainly not more than Ukrainian/Russian/Belarusian food.
- jyounker 3mo ago
  I don't see why. A lot of Western Poland used to be German, and it's not like there's one German cuisine either. You don't get many Bavarians eating pickled herring with beets, but's it's classic cuisine in Berlin.
  - tannenfreund87 3mo ago
    Western Poland used to be German, but all the Germans left/got expelled. After WW2 it was resettled with Poles from Eastern Poland, nowadays Ukraine and Belarus. Which makes traveling from Berlin to Poznan or Wroclaw an interesting experience. Directly at the German-Polish border, you'll enter Eastern Europe, then when you arrive in the mentioned cities, you're suddenly back in Central Europe. Also, you'd be surprised at how widespread pickled herring is in Bavaria. Herring has been a trading good for millennia in Europe, was and is still consumed in the winter months in Bavaria. You can easily get a "Fischsemmel" at the Oktoberfest in Munich. Bavarians also used to pickle everything for the winter: cucumbers, beets, cabbage, beans.
    - morsch 3mo ago
      You can also get jiaozi and tempura shrimp at the Oktoberfest, that doesn't make them traditional Alpine food. > Directly at the German-Polish border, you'll enter Eastern Europe, then when you arrive in the mentioned cities, you're suddenly back in Central Europe. I mean I get that impression even before crossing the border to Poland. It's just very rural and not exactly wealthy on either side of the border.
      - jyounker 3mo ago
        That about sums it up. If it weren't for the Oder river, it would be hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. There are some places on the border where the only signs that you've changed countries are... the signs. (Specifically I'm thinking of Gorlitz/Zgorzelec.)
    - jyounker 3mo ago
      I know you can get herring in Bayern, and I know you can get a Weisswurst in Berlin. That doesn't change the fact that they're represented differently in the regional cuisines. The cuisine up here in Berlin/Brandenburg is much closer to that of Poland than it is to that of Bavaria. I say that as a person who lives in Berlin with Polish roommate, and travels pretty regularly to visit friends in Munich.
gedy 3mo ago
Being Catholic helps too
keiferski 3mo ago
The adoption of the Latin alphabet was itself a move to align itself westward, with kingdoms in the Latin world, not the Byzantine one, and tied to adopting Catholicism rather than Orthodoxy.
- dhosek 3mo ago
  In fact, the Slavic countries which use Latin are all predominantly Catholic, with Bosnia being an outlier in using both Latin and Cyrillic while also being roughly half Muslim.
reddalo 3mo ago
Like Kazakhstan, which decided to switch from Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet [1] in order to align more with Europe and less with Russia. I wonder if Ukraine will do the same in a distant future... [1] https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20180424-the-cost-of-changing-an-entire-countrys-alphabet https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20180424-the-cost-of-ch...
- cynicalsecurity 3mo ago
  Ukraine absolutely must ditch Cyrillic alphabet, after the war. There will be plenty of things to change.
  - jagaerglad 3mo ago
    I sometimes hear the same in my circles about Persian ditching the perso-arabic script. I don't get it, why can't you align a country however you like without creating a huge rift between a big population and years of literature, material etc etc? One can learn multiple scripts and almost all literate people know the latin script globally nowadays. Besides, sad to see the whole world just use the latin script in the end but that's not the point
    - toast0 3mo ago
      Sharing a writing system helps with communication across cultures, even when there isn't a shared language. > One can learn multiple scripts and almost all literate people know the latin script globally nowadays. If almost all literate people know the latin script, there's a benefit to writing your language in it. Of course, the switching cost is high.
      - jagaerglad 3mo ago
        Language in the scope of a cultural phenomenon is something way beyond just cost or efficiency in communication thats way wi dont rayt English veri efishent ither
      - 3mo ago
wolvesechoes 3mo ago
[flagged]
pndy 3mo ago
Dirty summary (not involving AI): Just like Christianity arrived in Poland by marriage of Mieszko with Czech princess Doubravka/Dobrawa in 10th century, we also adapted Czech alphabet (and thus Latin) from Jan Hus efforts of codifying Czech language. Scholars believe that around same time Polish began to develop as a separate language. And up until the 13th century it was still possible to communicate with southern neighbors without much of issues. Between 15th and 16th century Polish orthography forms; Stanisław Zaborowski and Jan Kochanowski tried to customize alphabet by introducing letters that would accurately reflected Polish phonology at that time - their alphabets proposals were really long. Jumping to the Partitions period, where heavy russification aims at eradicating the Polish language and culture. There were attempts of introducing Cyrillic script but occupier's efforts eventually failed - Polish people stood up; literature of these times was full of titles exploring patriotism, love for homeland as a theme. Linguistic reform of 1936 molds language to what we know today. The communistic period introduced second person plural within the public language, which naturally exists today in Czech and Slovak (vykání). Here it didn't lasted as it was unnatural and politically branded. While Polish language divides into dialects, that time also forms the standard Polish dialect, as post-WW2 migrations blurred the differences. Today our language is heavily populated with borrowed words and terms from English, which in some case become "naturalized" - hater become hejter.
- keiferski 3mo ago
  The most ironic part of this story is that Czechia is rather a-religious nowadays, primarily from “Catholic imperialism” from the Austrian empire and from the communist era. So the country Poland got Christianity from is no longer interested in it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_Czech_Republic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_Czech_Republic Poland on the other hand has Catholicism as a key identity marker, although IME living in Poland for a decade, this is fading rapidly with younger people.

by quibono 3mo ago

q3k 3mo ago

Polish cuisine is very similar to German cuisine. (This comment will make a lot of Polish people very upset.)

ck45 3mo ago
Lots of common main ingredients like potatoes, beets, cabbage, and sausages. It could also have a different reason, like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Former_eastern_territories_of_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Former_eastern_territories_of_...
grvbck 3mo ago
Sure, a common use of bread, potatoes, cabbage/other vegetables, hearty meat dishes etc but the Polish kitchen is closer to Ukrainian/Russian in technique/ingredients. Barszcz, pierogi, fermented everything, pickles, sour rye, and many dishes built around wheat/rye, mushrooms, dairy, and Eastern-style fillings are much more like Ukrainian/Belarusian/Russian food. The biggest German influences are probably the sausages and the beer culture.
CurtHagenlocher 3mo ago
How reasonably can German cuisine be described as a single unified thing? My mother was from East Prussia and my father from Swabia and their "home" cuisines were pretty dissimilar -- if for no other reason than climate.
- minkeymaniac 3mo ago
  Same is true for Croatia.. food from Slavonia (near Zagreb) is very different from the coastal regions (Istria and Dalmatia)
- tannenfreund87 3mo ago
  Cuisine in Europe is shaped by climate, soil and former political entities. You'll find similar cuisine in and around the alps, along the north sea coast and around the baltic sea. While the people eating the same food speak a dozen different languages.
tau255 3mo ago
Due to Partitions of Poland a lot of of territory was under Prussian influence for over a century - that had to have some culinary effect (other than forced germanization).
broken-kebab 3mo ago
It's also true for Belarus, Baltics, and some parts of Ukraine. Generally, we can speak about North-Eastern European cuisine with potatoes, secale flour breads, and various pickled things. And that name will make a lot of everybody upset, cause everybody in those lands pretend they are "Central". Americans would not believe how many "geographical centers of Europe" are claimed there.
- rconti 3mo ago
  I'm not sure how surprised Americans would be to learn that there are so many "centers of Europe". After all, we all know that Colorado is in "the west", Texas in the "southwest", and, clearly, "the South" is located in the geographical southeast :D
  - broken-kebab 3mo ago
    These American peculiarities are funny too, but they are mostly historical, and from that perspective have reasonable explanation. In turn "we are not Eastern, but Central" is relatively recent PR-born madness. Somebody decided that EE often associates with questionable things like alcohol consumption somehow, so the solution is to separate yourself from other drinkers by claiming being completely different "Central" kind. Nobody stops drinking meanwhile, because why would you? I simplify the story, of course, but the logic is exactly like that.
    - rconti 3mo ago
      Also, I imagine that the expansion and reduction in size of the Soviet empire over the decades has played a part, not to mention a certain provincialism among (western) European powers in terms of what they consider to be "real" Europe. When it was a poor backwater "somewhere over there", it wasn't part of Europe. When it was Soviet, it wasn't Europe. Now that it's a bulwark against a militaristic Russia and a convenient place to do lower-cost manufacturing: "Hello, my European compatriots!"
  - bleepblap 3mo ago
    And my favorite -- you need to go north from Miami to be in "the South"
keiferski 3mo ago
Yes it's similar, but certainly not more than Ukrainian/Russian/Belarusian food.
jyounker 3mo ago
I don't see why. A lot of Western Poland used to be German, and it's not like there's one German cuisine either. You don't get many Bavarians eating pickled herring with beets, but's it's classic cuisine in Berlin.
- tannenfreund87 3mo ago
  Western Poland used to be German, but all the Germans left/got expelled. After WW2 it was resettled with Poles from Eastern Poland, nowadays Ukraine and Belarus. Which makes traveling from Berlin to Poznan or Wroclaw an interesting experience. Directly at the German-Polish border, you'll enter Eastern Europe, then when you arrive in the mentioned cities, you're suddenly back in Central Europe. Also, you'd be surprised at how widespread pickled herring is in Bavaria. Herring has been a trading good for millennia in Europe, was and is still consumed in the winter months in Bavaria. You can easily get a "Fischsemmel" at the Oktoberfest in Munich. Bavarians also used to pickle everything for the winter: cucumbers, beets, cabbage, beans.
  - morsch 3mo ago
    You can also get jiaozi and tempura shrimp at the Oktoberfest, that doesn't make them traditional Alpine food. > Directly at the German-Polish border, you'll enter Eastern Europe, then when you arrive in the mentioned cities, you're suddenly back in Central Europe. I mean I get that impression even before crossing the border to Poland. It's just very rural and not exactly wealthy on either side of the border.
    - jyounker 3mo ago
      That about sums it up. If it weren't for the Oder river, it would be hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. There are some places on the border where the only signs that you've changed countries are... the signs. (Specifically I'm thinking of Gorlitz/Zgorzelec.)
  - jyounker 3mo ago
    I know you can get herring in Bayern, and I know you can get a Weisswurst in Berlin. That doesn't change the fact that they're represented differently in the regional cuisines. The cuisine up here in Berlin/Brandenburg is much closer to that of Poland than it is to that of Bavaria. I say that as a person who lives in Berlin with Polish roommate, and travels pretty regularly to visit friends in Munich.

gedy 3mo ago

Being Catholic helps too

keiferski 3mo ago

The adoption of the Latin alphabet was itself a move to align itself westward, with kingdoms in the Latin world, not the Byzantine one, and tied to adopting Catholicism rather than Orthodoxy.

dhosek 3mo ago
In fact, the Slavic countries which use Latin are all predominantly Catholic, with Bosnia being an outlier in using both Latin and Cyrillic while also being roughly half Muslim.

reddalo 3mo ago

Like Kazakhstan, which decided to switch from Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet [1] in order to align more with Europe and less with Russia. I wonder if Ukraine will do the same in a distant future... [1] https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20180424-the-cost-of-changing-an-entire-countrys-alphabet https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20180424-the-cost-of-ch...

cynicalsecurity 3mo ago
Ukraine absolutely must ditch Cyrillic alphabet, after the war. There will be plenty of things to change.
- jagaerglad 3mo ago
  I sometimes hear the same in my circles about Persian ditching the perso-arabic script. I don't get it, why can't you align a country however you like without creating a huge rift between a big population and years of literature, material etc etc? One can learn multiple scripts and almost all literate people know the latin script globally nowadays. Besides, sad to see the whole world just use the latin script in the end but that's not the point
  - toast0 3mo ago
    Sharing a writing system helps with communication across cultures, even when there isn't a shared language. > One can learn multiple scripts and almost all literate people know the latin script globally nowadays. If almost all literate people know the latin script, there's a benefit to writing your language in it. Of course, the switching cost is high.
    - jagaerglad 3mo ago
      Language in the scope of a cultural phenomenon is something way beyond just cost or efficiency in communication thats way wi dont rayt English veri efishent ither
    - 3mo ago

wolvesechoes 3mo ago

[flagged]

pndy 3mo ago

Dirty summary (not involving AI): Just like Christianity arrived in Poland by marriage of Mieszko with Czech princess Doubravka/Dobrawa in 10th century, we also adapted Czech alphabet (and thus Latin) from Jan Hus efforts of codifying Czech language. Scholars believe that around same time Polish began to develop as a separate language. And up until the 13th century it was still possible to communicate with southern neighbors without much of issues. Between 15th and 16th century Polish orthography forms; Stanisław Zaborowski and Jan Kochanowski tried to customize alphabet by introducing letters that would accurately reflected Polish phonology at that time - their alphabets proposals were really long. Jumping to the Partitions period, where heavy russification aims at eradicating the Polish language and culture. There were attempts of introducing Cyrillic script but occupier's efforts eventually failed - Polish people stood up; literature of these times was full of titles exploring patriotism, love for homeland as a theme. Linguistic reform of 1936 molds language to what we know today. The communistic period introduced second person plural within the public language, which naturally exists today in Czech and Slovak (vykání). Here it didn't lasted as it was unnatural and politically branded. While Polish language divides into dialects, that time also forms the standard Polish dialect, as post-WW2 migrations blurred the differences. Today our language is heavily populated with borrowed words and terms from English, which in some case become "naturalized" - hater become hejter.

keiferski 3mo ago
The most ironic part of this story is that Czechia is rather a-religious nowadays, primarily from “Catholic imperialism” from the Austrian empire and from the communist era. So the country Poland got Christianity from is no longer interested in it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_Czech_Republic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_Czech_Republic Poland on the other hand has Catholicism as a key identity marker, although IME living in Poland for a decade, this is fading rapidly with younger people.