Spanish? Wspaniały! - Some Correspondences between Polish and Spanish

Having studied and been acquainted with Spanish long before I ever even heard Polish, I found it interesting to notice certain phonological and in some cases semantic correspondences between Polish and Spanish words. While I’m not aware of any direct influence between the two languages, it’s clear that many of these similarities are a result of shared Latin influence. For example, many words which have a common root in Latin and have filtered into numerous modern languages are the same or nearly so, such as literatura, temperatura, astronomia. There are also homophonous words of identical or very close meaning, like the conjunction i (Span. y) and, banda band/group/gang/team, flota fleet, rasa (Span. raza) race/breed, palma palm tree, plaga plague/scourge/calamity, proza (Span. prosa) prose, terapia therapy, etc. Interestingly, they also both use the interjection basta! (that’s) enough! 

After having studied Polish, I realized that a Polish-speaking person has an advantage in learning Spanish because, like Polish, pronunciation is very faithful to orthography, and the majority of sounds which occur in Spanish also occur in Polish (while the reverse is not true). So, for example, a Pole with absolutely no knowledge of Spanish could read a sentence like Tengo dos amigos en este barrio aloud with purely Polish intonation and sound much closer to the actual pronunciation than, say, an English or French speaker. A half-hour’s study to acquaint himself with the orthographic differences (c, ci, ch, ll, j, y, to name a few) and he could pronounce Spanish sentences with relative ease, even without comprehension. Even ñ has its Polish counterpart, ń, although the languages differ in where they permit this sound to occur.

Over time, for fun, I’ve created this list of Spanish-Polish homonyms/homophones. These words are pronounced exactly or very nearly the same in both languages, but have either slightly or completely different meanings. Possibly some of these words are similar due to a common root in either Latin or Proto-Indo-European, but many/most are probably coincidental occurrences due to the languages drawing from a similar phonetic pool.

Here’s the list, which is in no way meant to be comprehensive. Also note that several of these words have more possible meanings than I’ve listed:

This list is continually updated.

SPANISH // POLISH

cara (face) // kara (punishment)

casa (house) // kasa (cash; cashier/checkout)

cena (dinner) // cena (price) near-homonym

cosa (thing) // kosa (scythe; slanted)

crezca (grows) // kreska (line, stroke)
curva (curve, bend) // kurwa (whore; fuck; interj.; all-purpose swear)

dar (to give) // dar (gift, talent)

débil (weak) // debil (idiot)

droga (drug) // droga (path)

escapada (escape) // eskapada (escapade)

gafa (glasses) // gafa (blunder, faux-pas, gaffe)

grande (large) // grandę (ruckus (acc. of granda))

los (plural definite article; 3^rd. pl. pronoun) // los (fate, chance, destiny)

obras (works of art) // obraz (image)
osa (dares; bear) // osa (wasp)
pan (bread) // pan (sir, Mr.; lord)

para (for; stops) // para (pair, couple; steam, vapor)

pasa (raisin; happens) // pasa (sash, belt (gen. of pas))

pies (feet) // pies (dog)

posada (inn, lodging) // posada (job, position, post)

prueba (evidence, proof; test) // próba (trial) near-homophone
ropa (clothes) // ropa (oil, pus)

rosa (pink) // rosa (dew)

sala (living room) // sala (room, hall)

ser (to be) // ser (cheese)

tasca (bar, pub) // taska (carries something heavy, lugs)

zapada (sapped/undermined) // zapada (sinks/falls/drops (into))

I’ve also encountered some Polish words that don’t correspond to Spanish words, but have a Spanish feel to them, for example peron railway platform, trasa route, jelito bowel/intestine, flacha flask, zasada rule.

Offhand, I can’t think of many notable similarities between the languages on the level of grammar. Overall, Polish is much more complicated on this front. One thing that jumps out to me, however, is the shared preference for a dative-like construction to express “I like X.” For example, the phrase “I like cookies” is likely to be expressed in both languages in a form that translates literally to “Cookies please me” (Span. Me gustan las galletas, Pol. Podobają mi się ciastka).

I would be interested in comments from any readers bilingual in (or studying) both Polish and Spanish. What similarities/differences between the languages stand out to you?