Apropos something completely different. I'm still searching for something on line about Polish dialects, especially the so-called 'góral' or Highlander Polish of the Tatry Mts. area.
some samples of "gwara góralska" are here: pl.wiktionary.org/wiki/Indeks:Polski_-_Gwara_g%C3%B3ralska but this is just vocabulary. The important differences are also in accent, intonation and, typical of other Polish dialects, labialization and dyphtongization of "o". For the phonology if this dialects though there are few good substitutes other than live speech. Perhaps youtube would have some.
One of the cutest vocabulary/dialect words from the 'góral'-speakers' region is "godzinnek" for standard Polish "zegar"! The list is helpful.
I like the goral dialect a lot. It's hilarious. I can speak a somewhat similar one too (kieleckie region) and my wife always gets a kick when I throw in some sentences in the dialect.
Some other languages make the use of inflection, so the order of words is not as important as it is in English.
Example:
English (two different meanings): Johny loves Mary Mary loves John
Polish (same meaning, give or take a subtlety or two):
Jan kocha Marysie Marysie kocha Jan
miss things like "the" out
No, they don't miss anything out. They don't need it. Similarly Poles could say that English "misses" inflection out. Does it?
As for your example, incidentally, it is a flawed one, since in Polish we would most often say "przechodzę przez drzwi" which translates exactly into "I go through (the) door".
Take a really simple English sentence and you find the word order is nearly always fairly rigid. The more complex the sentence, the more ways there are of ordering the same words, only appearently less so than in an inflected language like Polish.
I've tried asking about certain details of word order in Polish - at last year's summer barbeque we had a big green flowerpot full of water ice, and more importantly, bottles of beer and even vodka. Two of the Polish guys insisted it was a green big flowerpot.
Various things I have tried to learn in Polish seem to be fairly rigid in wjhat word order sounds right, so how flexible is it?
edit: My simple answer to the question has to be English. That is because I can speak in it, write it, read it and even think in it. Almost every other word I say in Polish is 'ummm' or 'errr'. French sounds good with a few 'errs' but that doesn't come across in every language.
After comparing the sounds of Polish and German on my recent travels, I have to say I prefer the sound of Polish. German can sound nice, but I understand even less of it and it does include words that I just think sound funny. You're not supposed to laugh at important safety announcements.
Of course it does, Shelley, to you and other English native speakers, but NOT to a native Polish, German, whatever. Yours is rather ethnocentrist thinking, if I follow your logic correctly. The first of the examples you give OSV makes perfect "sense" in many of the world's languages, among them Turkish, Korean and Japanese. SVO is actually in the relative minority among the myriad tongues on this planet, i.e. living languages.
Perhaps too, this very point is the reason English speakers often shy away from studying a foreign language in school: because they've been taught to believe English is the most normal (ha-ha!!) of any language. Other languages therefore must be weird.
Sure hope that's not what you're seriously saying!
One of the things that always made me smile is the frequent use of possesive pronouns in English. For instance:
I put my hand in my pocket.
Whose elese hand? Whose else pocket? Why say "my" if it is not unusual or critical to state an obviouse fact. If I were to "put my hand in his pocket" that's a different story. Not something you do everyday.
Still, of course, I will put my hand into someone's pocket. So, again, why say "my"?
If you "put your hand in his pocket" then I agree, the possesive pronouns make sense, even if the action doesn't.
Here is a fragment of a recent email i received from a website I subscribe too:
"If you speak English, you know words from at least a hundred different languages. That's because English has borrowed words from languages everywhere, and continues to do so.
All living languages borrow, though not to the same degree. Each new word brings its own color to the mosaic of the language, just as each new person does to a population, making it richer and vibrant.
We see words derived from Greek, Latin, Spanish, French, etc. every day, but this week we'll look at a few words from languages that are not so well known -- Javanese, Coptic, Tamil, Shelta, and Hawaiian -- and also learn a little about those languages"
wordsmith.org:80/words/lahar.html
So, it looks like English is not really an original language...for the ones who still learn, take heart, it's not that difficult.
What language do you like better, Polish or English?
- I like both of them completely equally. None of them is any better, easier, more or less beautiful, etc. than the other. It's one's attitude towards a language that makes it good, easy to learn, hard to learn, beautiful, ugly, etc. to one. That is, if one holds the conviction that, for example, a given language is hard to learn, then the language is hard to learn to one.
And so on, and so forth.
By the way, Polish and English aren't as dissimilar as many seem to believe they are.
That's because English has borrowed words from languages everywhere, and continues to do so
- Let's not exaggerate - English is open, but not totally, crazily open, to foreign influences. I'd say that as regards borrowing from other languages, English doesn't do it more than others. Lots of languages, actually, have borrowed from English.
Now when I say 'English,' I mean British English - it's the standard English for me.
The 'magic' year in the development of English, that is, in terms of unstoppable influx of foreign words into native Anglo-Saxon, was of course 1066 AD - the Norman Conquest - when the English language received, so to say, it's greatest injection of French, i.e. Latin, vocabulary.
German and Polish, just to mention two, never experienced this exact same type of "discovery conquest", except of the course for the gradual inroads of English into their languages. Analogous events in the annals of language might be Romanian, completely Latin until the Roman settlement in Slavic-speaking territory or Turkish, essentially of Turkic word stock (as English is still considered a 'Germanic', and not a Romance, tongue!) with a heavy overlay of Arabic from neighboring border invasions, settlements etc.
The 'magic' year in the development of English, that is, in terms of unstoppable influx of foreign words into native Anglo-Saxon, was of course 1066 AD - the Norman Conquest - when the English language received, so to say, it's greatest injection of French, i.e. Latin, vocabulary.
Yes, 1066 is an easy point in time to use as a point of reference but the process was a little longer than that. For a century or two there were two parallel language "cultures" so to speak. The court and the nobility spoke what was rather French, while the masses were still speaking OE. The mutual penetration of the two (with the French having the upper hand) is pretty well documented.
Indeed, all 'silent' letters in English spelling are a direct result of the Normans' influence on the language. Interestingly enough, "Normans" means "Northmen", suggesting that in fact William the Conqueror wasn't French at all, but Norse or North European by birth or descent!
Apropos the former, much of Sir Edmund Spenser's "Faerie Queene" resembles Chaucer's ME, just look at the spelling of "Queene" with an unpronounced final "e". The leap from OE, e.g. Beowulf, Cynewulf, Caedmon's Hymn etc. to late ME is therefore considerable.
Polish though too underwent a similar, if historically less dramatic, transformation, e.g. "Polzsce" > "Polsce" etc.
Interestingly enough, "Normans" means "Northmen", suggesting that in fact William the Conqueror wasn't French at all, but Norse or North European by birth or descent!
That's because Normans who conquered Britain were in fact descendants of "Northmen" (Vikings) who by 1066 were christianized and adopted the French language under the influence of the local population.
just look at the spelling of "Queene" with an unpronounced final "e"
You are correct in general but I'm not sure if this particular word proves your point. The final "e" in the word queene was actually at one time pronounced. The word comes from OE cwene which was pronounced 'kwene where the final "e" was not mute.
Good point, Darius! True, I gave a deceptively 'false' example. I omited to mention too that many letters which are TODAY silent, such as the final "e", were NOT so back then.
I should have remembered since I had the rare chance of hearing old voice recordings in the days of the great, late lamented LPs, of Prof. Norman Bessinger of Columbia's English Dept. reading OE and ME texts aloud in the original. Honestly, the ME of Chaucer sounded in pronounciation much like modern Yorkshire speech!
OE 'cwene' is a direct cognate for 'kvinde' and 'kvinna', respectively in Danish and Swedish where it means the generic for 'woman'. 'Queen' on the other hand is 'dronning' (Danish) and 'drottning' (Swedish)
I think in Old Dutch it meant barren cow :) I don't remember that particular spelling though.
OE was quite a beast when I had to learn it. A first year student of English Philology in Poland I was a little bit in for a surprise when the first text they asked us to read and be ready to discuss was Beowulf. I have to admit that at the time I had to read it with the modern English version right next to the OE one.
Strangely, the historical linguistics was taught a year later. Two semesters of what initially seemed like mute exercise in some strange languages, but as time went on it all made sense and I found the history of language (English and in general) probably the most exciting part of my English studies. It's been years though so I'm not so sure if I could pronounce OE with any degree of fluency anymore.
Old Norse is similar in both structure as well as vocabulary and inflection to Old (even Modern!!!) Icelandic. Little has changed in orthography. I've been told that only the pronounciation is noticably different.
But, as with any dead language, we have no way of knowing for sure. Speech reconstructions however are fascinating, but not that accessible!
Mentioning Dutch, in order to pass modern German Linguistics, I needed to take a class in Middle Dutch. It put me to sleep, not because of the instructor, but because it was all so repetitive of the modern language, I was bored to tears!
of course polish!!!because it makes me feel clever:Dcause it is the hardest language i have ever seen:Denglish is very easy...i ve just studied 3 months...now i can express my feelings in english but it is 5 months since i ve been studying to polish but i cant tell or write anything easly:Di suppose it is a little bit complicated:P but when you learn you feel yourself as a genious one...there are too much exeption in polish..and the hardest side of polish is plural nouns...but the best side of polish is the people of poland(very sincere)...
Turkce orgrenyorum. It's so different from Polish, I'm not able to say which language is more challenging. Well, having grown up with German and English practically bilingual, I guess anything's easy now! - - :):) LOL
I should have remembered since I had the rare chance of hearing old voice recordings in the days of the great, late lamented LPs, of Prof. Norman Bessinger of Columbia's English Dept. reading OE and ME texts aloud in the original.
Not by him perhaps, but still... I really like that language:
