Dokonany/Niedokonany - Perfective/Imperfective

Apparently, when I speak Polish, I have been told that I have an extremely strong accent. I would like to lose my english accent to make my Polish sound more fluent. Does anyone have any suggestions??

One thing you can do is practise the correct pronounciation of the hard and soft sounds of cz, rz, ci, si, ż etc... For example most of us foreigners pronounce cz and ci the same, but they are not. Likewise with sz and si.

The difference is cz, rz, sz, ż are hard, ci, si, zi are soft.

For hard ones pout when you say them, for soft ones smile. The way I remember it is when I see "i" think smile, otherwise pout.

After that it's a case of getting native speakers to correct you.

Benszymanski, as you are being so helpful, may I, too, prevail upon you?

In English we can say "I am drinking tea", meaning right now I am drinking tea, or we can say " I drink tea", meaning I habitually drink it, but we would not use it to say we were drinking a cup right now.

My question is, is it true that in Polish you don't have this distinction? You can only say pije herbata, and if you want to convey the meaning of habitually, you have to use extra words?

I think so, yes. "I am xxx-ing" in English is called the present continuous. In polish just like in french and german there is no present continous and they have to add extra words to specifically emphasise right now. In french they add "en train de ...", in german they just add "gerade" and in polish "teraz" normally does the trick.

Edit - or maybe "już" instead of teraz is better - już idę! for example

"I am drinking tea" <-- I would say in Polish "właśnie piję herbatę"

The word właśnie is from "właśnie (teraz)". The "teraz" word is conjectural.

I think there still could be other words we use ^_^.

So, in fact, "pije herbate" means I drink it habitually, I like it, and does not mean I am drinking it right now.

This is al very interesting, thankyou.

No, piję herbatę could mean any of the following:

I drink tea (generally, habitually)
I am drinking tea (right now)
I do drink tea

Which one depends on the context...

OK now I understand! THANKS

It can be both "I drink" and "I am drinking". If we feel that the difference between these two meanings is important, than we use extra words to express it.

Now you know why Poles complain so much about learning English verbs, we have all these extra forms they don't have.

mieszkać = to live, i.e. dwell in a house, apartment etc. IMPERFECTIVE

zamieszkać = to live/dwell officially at a specific address PERFECTIVE

pomieszkać = to live/dwell somewhere a while, not permanently! PERFECTIVE

Normally, certain prefixes 'perfectivize' the root verb, by itself, an imperfective verb denoting a continuous action!

Does this make sense?

Aspects function similarly, yet not identically, to English tenses. They appear more complicated to English speakers because sometimes the two forms, perfective and imperfective, don't seem to have much in common, e.g. 'brać' vs. 'wziąć', both translated as 'to take' etc....

Czarne Oczy,

Be careful here! 'nauczyć się' means 'to learn', not 'to teach'-:)

Try speaking Polish after drinking a few wodkas! All you can do is practice but I very much doubt if you will ever be able to loose it completely. I hear Poles in England who have been here for like thousands of years and they still sound really dreadful when they open their mounths and speak in English.

"when they open their mouths...."

Ditto, ditto and ditto plus!!!-:) It continues to amaze me how certain nationalities, and not unintelligent members of said species, particularly from Poland, Spain and France, can live for umpteen years in an Anglo-Saxon country and still sound as if they just got off the boat.

Somehow, I credit us Anglo-Saxon speakers, even from moderately educated backgrounds, with making more of a concerted effort at speaking a foreign language than many a foreigner makes at speaking ours. Prhaps this is because fewer expect us, especially Americans, to speak a foreign language and also too, because we were never said to 'need it', compared with most other nationalities, where English is considered soooo important, that not only is every Tom, Dick and Harry required to learn/study it, but worst of all, practically any Tom, Dick and Harry is allowed to teach it, atrocious grammar, pronounciation what have you!!!!!

I know English people like that.

Indeed, Dariusz, but I'm pretty sure that it's their native language, i.e. they have inherent license to do with their mother tongue as they wish. The same though, does NOT apply to foreigners. A foreign tongue is much like a guest pass: It should be treated with care by the user and may be required back at any time....no reason necessary!-:)