Mafketis, thanks for the advice. Indeed, ANYTHING is handy at this point--:):) LOL
Alcestis, your two queries, one general, directed at all learners, and the other specific, require a response.
As far as why Polish has become a popular language to learn, globalization for one thing, is probably the most practical answer. The world is no longer a monolingual world and Poland especially is becoming a major economic force to be reckoned with. More to the point, much as with Spain, but unlike say, Germany or Scandinavia etc... English in Poland is still a comparative rarity. Thererfore, fluency in Polish is essential, perhaps (for many other reasons) AS important as a Pole's fluency in English.
This leads me to your curious (if typical!) remark concerning 'why I should know "ugór"..' if it's not on some made-up vocabulary list mandated by whomever.
Who decides who is ready to use what words?? Sorry to be blunt here, but maybe the reason I know words like "ugór", "prześieradło", etc... is the same, yet often lacking, motivation for foreign English learners like yourself to acquire words such as 'emolluments', 'comestible' etc...... If the goal is merely to communicate in a sort of globalized gobbledygook of pablem, subjecting the partner to a steady stream of watered down baby talk, then yes, words such as those above are clearly unnecessary.
If though, a higher and more interesting level is desired, then the above words reflect the culture of the speaker, rather than the lack thereof.
I figure you also understand Swedish. Most Finns I've encountered speak better Swedish than English, though they'd claim the contrary and would deny this is so. In addition, as with many Europeans, the younger generation usually, they mostly claim to enjoy speaking English more than the enforced languages they had to study in school. However, they usually don't communicate as well in English (which they enjoy) as in, for instance, Swedish (for the Finns) or German (for Poles, Hungarians, etc.) which they claim to dislike. A Catch-22 if there ever was one-::) LOL
Not that Finnish or Hungarian et al are a bleedin' picknick either, only that it'd be a bit of a mistake to confuse amount of cases with ease of language-:)
German, for example, has a mere four (one less than Latin with its Ablative!) compared with Polish seven, if one counts the vocative, and yet learners of German from Mark Twain on down have often been inundated with its tricky and slippery rules, or, seeming lack thereof.
Furthermore, what English lacks in the above grammatical baggage, she more than compensates for in her totally irregular and haphazard spelling/pronounciation incongruities. LOL
Um, some say that there are a few more possible cases: Prolative (+tse =by means of (przez+Ac in Polish)) And a couple of wierder ones: Eksessiivi (Finnish nomenclature, ending -nta. Could maybe be the called the "excessive" case in English (heh) Lative... but we're geting into theoretical stuff here......
I have read that there are Finnic languages which have 30+ cases!
Finnish doesn't have grammatical gender.
Er no, but that is about the only aspect of Finnish that is easier than Poish. Finnish has mindnumbing compound nouns. My favourite example: tottelemattomuudestansa (meaning "because of his lack of obedience"). As a native English speaker who has had a lot of contact with both Finnish and Polish languages I can definitely assert that Finnish is much tougher!
Finnish cases are much easier than Polish. And I was sooooo relieved to find no gramatical gender in Finnish.
Both languages are a lot of fun to try and learn though.
Basque has, I believe, almost the same cases as Finnish-:) No relation, though. The former belongs more to the Nostratic Languages, and may share affinities with the Kartvelian tongues of Georgia.
I know alot of finnish, and russian. Will knowing these languages help me?
Finnish in unlikely to be a help I think. It is quite different to Polish, for example Polish mixes prepositions sometimes with its case endings (! for a Finn) and also the adjective and noun endings don't match (!!) in Polish like they do in Finnish.
Surely not too much, admittedly. Yet Swedish is rightfully considered the lingua franca of Scandinavia, as is German of much of the Eastern part of Europe and these days English almost everywhere else, particularly in Asia.
French still maintains a last gasp of hegemony in sections of Africa and of course Eastern Canada!
I was comparing polish to russian last night and found a few similarities, like in good evening and good bye. It is re assuring for me, cause i hear polish is extremly difficult. Also too i guess finnish might help me cause of all the case endings, which might make learning polish less intese on my mind
ALL Slavic languages have certain basic silmilarities, the numbers, for instance and various formulaic greetings etc. Structurally, Polish, Russian, Czech and Croatian have the same roots, but vocabulary can be especially tricky, loaded with false friend "booby traps", some of which can be harmless, e.g. Russian 'pismo' (letter) vs. Polish 'pismo' (general body of written work) etc..., while others not-:) LOL
Counting for a monolingual Pole travelling to Zagreb would prove little difficulty, that is, slowly identifying individual words in a written text. Beyond that however, it'd be as if a Parisian who only knew French going to Italy without speaking the language: It wouldn't really work, although the latter also speak a closely related language!
Back to Finnish, as it's closest relative appears to be Estonian, another even less commonly studied language (for a variety of reasons!), it's practically impossible to find cognate words in sister tongues as it would normally be among a decent size language family such as the Romance or Slavic group.
With Finnish, as with Hungarian or Turkish, aside from loan words, one's almost adrift without an anchor or sightings of familiar land (-:
Hungarian was a tough nut for me to crack as well. Not yet sure I even pierced the shell (he-he!), but I'm gettin' there....one case at a time-:):) LOL
Actually, when I finally did make it over to Budapest, I found that all the Hungarian I had learned, on my own mostly, was useful within the first 24 hours, since I got lost on my way back to the hotel and needed to be able to read bus directions etc.. NONE WRITTEN IN ANYTHING BUT MAGYARUL!! Scary. In addition, most younf people knew neither English nor even a smattering of German. Had a couple of tense moments there.
I know Brazil nuts and the Poles call walnuts 'Italian nuts' but Hungarian nuts?? ;) ;)
I find when to apply sz and ś quite hard. I also have to pinch myself when I see rz so as not to write rż. I also have to remember to write ści and not śći. Still, it has been learned, it just needs to be relearned from time to time.
Yep, Seanus. First time I saw the city of 'Szeged', thinking Polish 'SZ', having come almost straight from years of Polish study, I pronounced it 'Sheged' to a Hungarian and they almost doubled over with laughter.
There were a number of such phonetic malaprops or whatnot that I made by transferring Polish spelling to Hungarian pronounciation-:)
