Language / What do you find difficult about learning Polish? [98]

You really think English is easier for a Pole to pronounce than vice versa? Jury's still out on that one!

Consider first the following: silent or reduced letters in English -

DIME ('e' written but not spoken)
THOROUGHLY ('o' 'u' 'g' and 'h' muted or silent)
NIGHT (long/closed 'i'-sound, yet no final 'e' as in 'dime' and 'time' etc.)
ESPECIALLY (unclear accent/syllable stress, 'sh'-sound for 'c')

and the list goes on and on and on and on..........

Compare Polish -

WIE (once learned that 'w' is like English 'v', VEE' YEH)
GDZIE (pronounced EXACTLY as written!)
POKÓJ (zero irregularities in either spelling or pronounciation)
SUFIT (see it, say it with a regular first syllable beat ALWAYS!!)
KSIĄŻKA ('ą' always same, final 'a', always 'ah cf. English 'a'!!!)

This lawyer rests his case!

Language / What do you find difficult about learning Polish? [98]

Danielle, is English or Polish your mother tongue?

Language / What do you find difficult about learning Polish? [98]

"I wish I was Polish learning English....."

Oh no you don't! Polish may seem to have 'more grammar' than English, but English orthography and pronounciation is far more complex and confusing for Poles! Most Poles take their grammar for granted, therefore it CAN'T be harder for them than English, since, as native speakers of their own language, they never knew anything else growing up!! This is to say, they have no point of comparison. They'll usually say however that they find English easier, if merely to make foreign learners feel somewhat better about having to struggle learning all those case inflections.

If anything, quite the opposite, I found. Many Poles remarked how threadbare and superficial English seems in comparison to the morphological richness and subtle texture of their language, especially with those verbal aspects which usually are untranslatable in another language.

Language / Books for Polish speakers learning English [9]

Got a simple, 'inescapable' answer to this question: NO!!

Got an even simpler question for you all: How come "mass language learning" of many of your languages here in the States, although by far fewer learners, is almost ALWAYS taught by native teachers/speakers of the language being studied, huh?? Is it solely a question of learner speaker percentage? If so, then expense be damned; all 1.7. billion Chinese should be learning English in school taught by how-many hundred/thousand or so English native speaking teachers, right?? LOL

I'm not discouraging the study/learning of English, more, I'm appalled at the arrogance with which it's used, rather MIS-used, around the globe.

Back pre-Globalization, round about 1981 or so, I entered a language school looking for a position as an English instructor. I met a woman there and asked if she was the chairperson of the department. In very French cadences, she replied that she wasn't, reminding me that, as good as her English was, as a non-native speaker, she hadn't a snowball's chance in Hell of getting a job teaching a language not her own. Today, I encountered a youngish man applying for a job as English tutor here at our college. His native language is clearly NOT English. When I asked for which language he was applying to teach, he nearly barked at me: "I teach English language, of course!!".

Tsk, tsk, how our world has changed.LOL

Language / Plural forms 2-4 and =>5 [30]

'Anyone of Poles' sounds in English as though 'Poles' were a singular or collective (zbiorowy!) concept, which it isn't. 'Anyone of THOSE Poles..' etc. would be perfectly correct, again, because of the 'THOSE' indicating a plural marker. Better still, 'Any Poles..' etc.

Make sense yet?

Language / Plural forms 2-4 and =>5 [30]

McCoy, the quote was 'Any Poles remember..' which is correct English, since 'Poles' is plural and the verb 'remember' requires no 's'-:)

'Any of you rememberS..' is incorrect English and I for one do not say it.

Language / Books for Polish speakers learning English [9]

So let me then understand: Poles (perhaps others too) are teaching their own using their usually heavily-accented and grammatically faulty English to teach other Poles English, thereby perpetuating source-language (Polish etc..) related errors in the target language (English) ad infinitum, like my computer virus example never being rid from the hard drive??

Is that it, sort of?? LOL

Sure explains a lot, let me tell you.

Once in Germany years ago, I was invited to observe an intermediate English class in a German gymnasium. The teacher self confidently proceeded as follows: Goot mawwninkk, aaffriydawddy! Zaaaw, pleeesss rreet ze tschepptuh frrahm ze lahhhsst hawmmveukkss...

Almost laughable, I had to restrain myself from cracking up. LOL

Language / Plural forms 2-4 and =>5 [30]

Exactly!

Language / Plural forms 2-4 and =>5 [30]

..use plural genitive (...but often with SINGULAR verb endings, e.g. 'było' vs. 'byli'/były')

Language / Books for Polish speakers learning English [9]

Hmmmm, looks engaging. Do show us more-:)

Language / Plural forms 2-4 and =>5 [30]

For instance, "Dwaj panowie BYLI.." vs. "Pięciu panów BY£O.." Perhaps the reason why Poles, as well as many other Slavic native speakers, have no end difficulties with 'much'/'many' persons/people in English.

Language / Books for Polish speakers learning English [9]

Osioł, the British Council has many publications for immigrant speakers of lots of languages, Polish well among them. Suppose their website would be your best guide (..though you've undoubtedly already thought of that route yourself-:).

Language / Plural forms 2-4 and =>5 [30]

Usually dictionary entries will give only the most common 'nominative' forms of a noun in the plural. Considering the degree of complexity noted in the Polish language, no single volume, practical student or pocket dictionary could possible provide all the myriad permutations for nominal endings!! -:)

Language / Rok vs. Lat [30]

Are not 'był'/'była'/'były'/'byli'/ etc. and 'będę' the respective past and future forms of 'jestem'?

Indeed, that 'człowiek' has no 'człowieki'-form in Polish DOES constitute a morphological irregularity.

This, among numerous other such, albeit linguistically explicable, irregularities. LOL

Language / Rok vs. Lat [30]

But 'rok' did indeed have a plural form, only to be subsumed years later by 'lat_' as the measurement classificiation of years/summers melded into one.

Language / Rok vs. Lat [30]

Nice, Cinek! Thanks loads. I learned something, never read a complete history of Polish as yet.

In certain poetry or elevated use, I've seen 'latY' with a 'y' as in a line from a poem by Iwaszkiewicz "...przez laty do laty..", the latter used in the genitive plural much less-:)

Language / Rok vs. Lat [30]

That darned number five (pięć) buggers everything up!! 'Rok' is fine up until good ol' five and then.....chaos: 2-4 lata, 5 lat and from there onward things are never quite the same!

Other nouns function in like manner: 2-4 pączki, 5 pączków, etc...

Language / POLISH OR RUSSIAN -- MORE MODERN? [20]

Dariusz, you've expressed exactly how I feel.

Language / POLISH OR RUSSIAN -- MORE MODERN? [20]

"Polish uses an easier alphabet."

For someone raised on Western script, you're right. However, Russians and other Cyrillic users find our script just as hard as we find theirs, the only difference is, many Russians like to put down their language when among Westerners, if only in order to sound 'cool' LOL

I suppose I'd side with HAL9009, if only for this person's honesty in admitting that the above distinctions between Polish and Russian are really all a question of personal bias-:)

Language / POLISH OR RUSSIAN -- MORE MODERN? [20]

You've hit the proverbial nail on the head; sound subjectively! Words like 'primitive', 'modern', 'pretty', 'civilized' etc... are scarcely objective observations based on provable method, but rather subjective impressions of the world based upon our own prejudices.

Language / POLISH OR RUSSIAN -- MORE MODERN? [20]

I agree with Mafketis one-hundred percent, as a fellow professional linguist.

Structural complication and modernity vs. primitiveness are merely tools of a white-collar elite, attempting to denegrate those from Third-World societies such as much of Latin America, where Spanish is the predominant language. Well, isn't it convenient that a mostly Caucasian country such as Finland, Hungary or Iceland is considered more advanced in their language than Spanish whose Hispanic population, unlike the former, lives often below the poverty line.

Language / POLISH OR RUSSIAN -- MORE MODERN? [20]

"Archaic" or "conservative", Polonius? No doubt many linguists do refer to highly infected (OOoopsidaisy, infLected..lol) languages such as Finnish or Hungarian, not to mention the Slavic or extant Baltic languages, as archaic. Who though is to judge whether the more "streamlined" among the world's tongues are the more "modern"? Is English a more "modern", not to mention advanced, language than for example. Chinese, Hindi or Basque, merely because it's analytic morphology has radically simplified from Old English and therefore lacks the so-called baggage of case endings and gender-driven articles/enclitics as in German, resp. Icelandic?

This theory is extremely controversial in my opinion and is surely fueled by one's own ethnocentric or geopolitical agenda-:)

Language / POLISH OR RUSSIAN -- MORE MODERN? [20]

German has 'Flugzeug' = "the flying thing" for 'airplane. English 'zipper' is in German 'Reissverschluss' = "the rip closer" etc... Now which sounds more 'primitive', d'you think?? LOL

Language / Verb patterns 'BYC' [29]

A thousand apologies if my post was erroneous in any way.-:) I merely was paraphrasing what I remembered. Seems though I remembered wrong in this case. LOL

Language / Verb patterns 'BYC' [29]

I think I goofed a bit in my translations of the above verbs. LOL

Sometimes I try to relate the motion verbs with those prefixed verbs in German, e.g. "steigen" vs. "ERsteigen", "BEsteigen" "ANsteigen" etc..

But often they're impossible to render exactly.

Language / Verb patterns 'BYC' [29]

True, which is why aspects are NOT the same as English tenses-:)

Language / Verb patterns 'BYC' [29]

Jadę do Warszawy. (codzienne = on a regular basis)

Jeżdźę jutro do Warszwy. (po raz pierwszy = for the first time)

Chodzę do szkoły. (Jestem studentem)

Idę do szkoły. (Spaceruję ku budynku szkolnego)

Pójdę do szkoły. (Będę iść tym razem do szkoły)

Language / TYPICAL MISTAKES OF POLISH LEARNERS OF ENGLISH? [23]

Are those qualities equally as "endearing" in the reverse? LOL
I wonder if Poles find our mistakes cute, or simply annoying, over time-:)

Life / POLES' ENGLISH COMPARED TO EUROPE AS A WHOLE? [39]

Surely it's neither feasible nor practical to learn EVERY language in all corners of the globe in order to get along with reasonable ease elsewhere.

The eternal problem comes about when the SUB-standard of this mish-mash known variously as "Globish" or "Global English" starts slowly (or in this case rapidly) becoming the unquestioned international standard, sworn by among an increasingly Americanized, and hence dumbed down, world society!

Should, for example, an American software engineer from Iowa sent over to Poland, Lithuania or Timbuktu, feel the slightest hesitation to travel on money-making business, simply because he/she doesn't know a syllable of Polish, Lithuanian or Hausa???!! Of course not.

However, should the presumably monolingual engineer feel naively satisfied that he or she has successfully communicated the cultural nuances of English to the Polish, Lithuanian or Hausa native speaker, no matter how 'fluent' the latter may seem? Hardly.

At best, international communication in English is an approximation, not a conversation.

Still, it is the best we can hope for at present. Let's though keep in the back of our minds that there's almost always something lost forever in translation-:)

Language / TYPICAL MISTAKES OF POLISH LEARNERS OF ENGLISH? [23]

Perhaps the reason the thread is called "Typical Mistakes of Polish Learners...", is that far more Poles abroad are heard speaking English (even if slightly mangled--:)) than non-Poles speaking Polish in or outside Poland!

Therefore, English errors made by Poles are far less conspicuous than vice versa, i.e. everyone expects non-native English speakers to know English more or less fluently. The same is not true the other way round. LOL