Should I learn both Polish and German

I chose French over German because I had a head start learning it in Junior school.
If they'd offered any language in the world, back then I'd probably have chosen Welsh!
(No particular reason!)

No matter what language you learn, I'd be interested to hear anyone say they were worse off for learning it.
Even if it is Welsh! (No offence to the Welsh, but you do all speak English...
until I enter the pub when I'm on holiday there!)

Peidiwch â phoeni'r merched yn y babell nesa.

If you hear them say this. Don't ask. :)

Mae'n hyfridd heddiw.

I actually would be quite interested in learning Welsh and help to keep it alive. I like minority languages and enjoy trying to be somehow 'different' from the mainstream.

The strongest Celtic language in the world today.

In some schools Latin maybe but Italian and Polish would be very rare indeed. Normally Polish is taken by school children who's parents are Polish as a sub subject 'on the side'. When I sat G.C.S.E. Polish at POSK in London I was the only adult there! It was quite embarrasing, a whole hall full of people younger than sixteen and me! Everybody was Polish and shouting in Polish amongst themselves and I remember the Polish lady who was the moderator. She gave out all the instructions in Polish and when she finished she thought about me, sitting there on my own at the back of the hall-the only one adult she d came over and asked "I am sorry, did you understand all that?" So I obviously did stand out! I would have thought that official G.C.S.E Polish classes in British state schools would be near on non existent.


One of the very few though I imagine that Irish is taught in schools in the Irish republic as a compulsory subject.

You've certainly managed that.

like the rest of us then!


Thats why my 15yr old cousin is doing polish language at her school here in doncaster plus 3 other languages on top and she has no polish blood line connection.

So maybe the Polish Language is growing in popularity.

I have heard that it's not a very popular subject - they's rather be learning Spanish, French or German.
But in Wales, their language is more popular now than it's been for a couple of hundred years.
I met an Irish girl in a Welsh pub. She was shocked at how everyone, young and old, were speaking Welsh.
But it is also true that there are no monolingual Welsh speakers.
It is not in the same category as Polish, the learning of which has far more uses.

Michal,

quote = "They didn't speak it at all...."

Probably their Russian language competence far exceeded their English, but, being post-war Germans, wouldn't (or couldn't!) admit as much, since Russian wasn't exactly considered "cool" --:):)

Silly!

Marek

Michal,

Foreign languages were never terribly popular in the UK, French perhaps, being the notable exception.

I have met a few Brits taking holiday on the Continent who actually DID manage a few smidges of German during the time I was visiting Berlin, but they were the rare few, to be sure. Such tourists one could count on the fingers of one hand (if he were missing two fingers!!)

Marek

PS
More often than not though, I'm afraid the majority I've encountered seem to take a bit of the benighted attitude of John Cleese's Basil Faulty character in "The Germans", i.e. "Oh, they don't speak English?? Well then, that's their problem now, isn't it!", heard snapping when asked if he could assist a group of monolingual German visitors to the hotel.

In the Greenpoint district of Brooklyn, New York, not far from where my wife and I live, Polish day schools, nurseries etc. have been springing up like mad of late.

Typical though of numerous immigrant communities here in the US, often native Poles, Chinese, Russians etc. are hired to be, of all things, English-language instructors for their own at local schools, institutes etc.

Many Poles, for instance, therefore learn accented, grammatically poor English from Polish teachers who often don't have a good enough command of the target language!!

Marek

They probably make a lot of money from these schools and it is cheaper to hire Poles who may be even illegal and therefore you do not have to pay National Insurance Contributions.

........thus further polluting the English mother tongue!!!
Yet another disgrace. To wstyt, ze panstwo nie zakazac illegalne szkoly.

Marek

What? about a quarter Germanic, the rest French, Danish, Latin, Greek, Turkish, Hindi, Italian...

I attempted to speak a bit of Germany last time, but all the Polish I'd been learning and practising made me forget any German I ever knew (very little).

I do not know, I meant it as more of a joke really, but who knows...


Why do you not become teacher then?

Michal.

As you know from my Forum-Profile, I am, among other things, a foreign-language instructor of both English and German, as well as a translator.
English seems to be one of the few, if not the only language with which I'm familiar, which can be rountinely butchered with impunity by non-native speakers, let alone, so-called specialists. As the "world language", it seems to have become world public property too, meaning, any and all can get their paws all over the language, frequently without ANY qualifications!

To be a Polish instructor, on the other hand, at either the Kosciuszko or Pilsudski Institutes in New York, being merely a bilingual Pole from Greenpoint, Bklyn, USA is not enough: you've got to be a native Pole, born and preferrably educated, in Poland!!

And that's how it should be for all languages (unless, like those such as myself, true, unaccented native fluency can be attested to in both languages being taught). That is to say, although I speak Polish, Dutch or Swedish and several other languages, I would never profess to being competent enough to teach or translate INTO them. Except in my case for German, no institution would hire me for same and be worth much of anything!

Marek

Soon he found that quoting city names didn't work, that's when he turned to his trusty phrasebook but it came out as Ick can doy-tch nicked spraycan. He was promptly arrested for aggrivated graffittiing.

We're back to that pronunciaton thing again. :)

I would never profess to being competent enough

jo Marek i weiss, wos du meinst. In Österreich ham die meisten ÖsterreicherInnen, die ich getroffen hob, geprahlt, daß sie echt gutes Englisch sprechn können, aber normalerweise ist das ned der Fall gewesen. Sie ham sich jo verständlich gemacht, aber sie waren sicher ned so fließend, wie sie glaubten. I muss zugeben, i hobs lustig gefunden, als sie mit österreichischer Ueberheblichkeit versuchten, mein Englisch zu verbessern.

Anderseits für die normalen ÖsterreicherInnen ist die Sprachkompetenz ned so wichtig gö? I vermute, wenn sie mitm Ausländer einfach in seiner eigenen Sprache reden können, ist das wohl für sie genug.

naja es nervt trotzdem. :)

I am most impressed! Are you German or do you simply know the language?

Servus "Huegerl",

recht hast du in dem Fall! Tatsache aber bleibt, dass die Anzahl der englischkundigen Oesterreicher geringer ist, als die der englischkundigen Deutschen, Hollaender oder Skandinavier.

Demgegegenueber kaempfen die Polen immer noch mit der Sprache, ziehen sogar Deutsch als Englisch vor, da sie es halt besser koennen, geben trotzdem zu, Englisch sei "cooler"--::)!!!

Marek

I'm not so impressed.

There are a lot of people in the world who can speak German.

I, on the other hand, can't speak German.
Although I did claim (in this thread) to be aware of a language called Germany!

Osiol,
The issue here is not whether speaking a language is impressive. The question becomes more one of maintaining standards for those languages, hereby designated "world languages", in this case making the claim for English, so that they remain at a commensurate level that facilitates, not merely approximates, communication on every plane, in the latter instance, due only to a lack of the necessary vocabulary.

Marek

don't worry you make up for it with e fluency in other areas. :)

Do I sound challenging because I'm talking about stuff that sounds interesting but you're just getting into it? It's a drug mate don't do it I beg you run away while you have a chance - when you get deeper into this stuff there's always more going on than you can handle, this is why I got into this stuff: because there's always something to find out rather than the more usual (about the Arts) "Is that all there is?" No one told me that language learning goes on forever. Good innit

I'm not claiming impressive.
It is good for the mind to be learning things.
And whatever language it is, it may have some practical use too.


Enlgish is spoken badly, not just by foreign speakers (who may be very good, or not),
but also by those who speak it as their first or only language.


I only ever bite off slightly more than I can chew. That's not all there is.

Very true! Once you're used to the "formula" of language learning, it's hard not to pick up that next book. :)

Incidentally, Hueg, was your first German post written with colloquial spelling or is that the standard in other German-speaking countries, outside Germany? Both of my old German professors, coincidentally, came from the same town in N. Germany, so I never learned much variety, although I hear Swiss German is a bit different in that way. :p

German is a lot of fun, but it isn't much help in learning Polish; not for me, at least. That wasn't the original post's question, I noticed, but whenever I see this thread, it always looks like he's asking whether knowing German would be helpful for learning Polish, rather than for living in Poland, which was the real question. Heh.

Well, I can't!

Yes sorry mate I lived too long in Austria, so now when i'm in a rush or just typing stream of consciousness, it comes out in watered down Upper Austrian. As a rule I try not to use the more colloquial words though unless actually there as German German speakers can't understand them. It's like a whole new world Jim.

As for Schweizerdeutsch. That is completely baffling at first and it doesn't get any easier. :) By far my favourite dialect is Kölsch for many reasons but I just love the way it flows. :) I guess it's being on the Rhine.

Saar'emo, wat hat he jesaat?"


And another visit by The Flying Proctologist. No one mention exhausts. Don't worry about him Michal he's feeling all vulnerable bless. Perhaps just two Shredded Wheat aren't enough these days. :)

By the way to answer your earlier question. I'm British with no connections German is just something I stumbled across a few years back. It treated me well so I dug deeper. :)

Hueg!
Which do you find harder, Polish or German? Your German seems quite fluent.

Marek