Language / What do foreigners find the hardest part of Polish? [63]

....one of numerous reasons why normally the educated Dutch speak English with such idiomatic naturalness most of the time!
'Course, often the latter leads to a degree of casualness in speech, frequently making liberal use of US-style vulgarities and short hand, in my experience in The Netherlands:-)

Polish English instruction seems to be mired in stone-age ideology.

Language / What do foreigners find the hardest part of Polish? [63]

Certainly much to said for Steven Pinkert's theory in particular!

He contends that all speakers of their mother tongue are "circuited differently", that is, respond to identical language aka "speech act" stimuli in radically different ways.

As far as Chomsky, that's as valid as any.
For that matter folks, let's all look at how language pedagogy has changed over the decades. We went from the deadening, impractical grammar-translation approach to the direct or "integrative" method, which is exactly how I as an adult learned Polish:-)

Language / What do foreigners find the hardest part of Polish? [63]

Like the old Sausseur model.

His two children were born in Alsace. They grew up speaking German as well as French, their "native language":-)
These were children and children are sponges.

I grew up speaking German alongside English. Polish I didn't begin learning until almost thirty!
I needed plenty of structure and immersion. For German, as well as English, naturally, not so much.

RIch's analogy with not needing anatomy to make love is therefore not entirely applicable in this context.

Language / What do foreigners find the hardest part of Polish? [63]

How else, Rich, are people expected to learn Polish, any language, with no real knowledge of it's structure etc? By magic?
lol

Language / What do foreigners find the hardest part of Polish? [63]

You can't allow personal experiences to tarnish others' desires, Rich! I think it's wonderful the she wants to learn Polish.
More power to her! I mean, what other language are you supposed to speak in Poland? Swahili??!

News / Schools in Poland to strike tomorrow [235]

Amen, kaprys!

It's usually the teachers who end up getting screwed anyway.

Language / What do foreigners find the hardest part of Polish? [63]

Lri,

Thanks so much for your responses as well as your questions. I'll be happy to help:-)
Don't listen to Rich! Particularly if you have and wish to maintain any sort of steady, serious contact with Poland, not to mention with Polish nationals where you live, there's really no substitute for knowing the language!

Poles here on PF and even in Poland can appear surprised that you are interested in learning their language, but never interpret this to mean that they don't no end appreciate your efforts.

Furthermore, it's always far more rewarding to communicate with Poles in their OWN language.

Almost forgot to add that dictionary entries can be notoriously incomplete! A solid lexicon of common Polish verbs, for instance "500 Polish Verbs" by Barrons, will explain what Mafketis was talking about.

Language / What do foreigners find the hardest part of Polish? [63]

For example,"jezdzic", I believe, contains an identical combination, no?

Language / What do foreigners find the hardest part of Polish? [63]

Occasionally, I'll still trip over "dziedzictwo" or "przyjazn", although these are fairly everyday words:-)
However unlike English, there's a certain degree of predictability in Polish spelling/pronunciation.

Seems also that our 'schwa-sound' is non-existent in the Polish language, making it more demanding perhaps for native Anglophones to learn to
pronounce EVERY vowel as a separate sound and never to "swallow" or "eat" our wordsLOL

Language / What do foreigners find the hardest part of Polish? [63]

You have a point there.

Only, compared with, say, English or French, Polish for me is so darned phonetic, pronouncing the stuff was the least of my worries way back when I

was still studying with Pani Jola:-) One sound to every consonant cluster, and if you see a vowel, you say it.
What could be easier when compared with English "pflegm", "straight", "cough", "bough", "dough", UUGGHHH, don't even want to think about it or I'll start having nightmaresLOL

In Polish, "PRZYjsc" (psheeshch), "WIE" (vyeh) etc., and from then on, you're practically home free.

Language / What do foreigners find the hardest part of Polish? [63]

Thanks, PolishGirlThief!

For me, it was the number "quirks", also wrapping my brain around the concept of "perfective" vs. "imperfective, and always trying to remember at the very beginning NOT

to think of them in terms of English tenses or I'd mess up for sure:-)

Looking forward to lots more hits and even more posts.

Work / You gotta be a little bit of a gangster to make any money in Poland [9]

Bribery, favors trading and the like has been common along the Old Silk Road for thousands of years. Today, we know it under the
name "corruption", and once more, scarcely limited to Poland or the former Eastern Block.

Work / You gotta be a little bit of a gangster to make any money in Poland [9]

Poland is scarcely alone in her Black Market past!

The same proviso of your title thread might just as easily extend to most of Italy, indeed much more so.
Knowing Polish of course is a forgone conclusion. German might help around academic circles, as would
English in an even more limited capacity, outside of course the elite centers of the hospitality industry
eager for US dollars.

News / Schools in Poland to strike tomorrow [235]

...and because (almost) nobody sees fit to correct when correction is needed, this is but one of many reasons why we are in the holy mess we're in on this planet!!!

I still feel that the correction my generation went through when we were young enough to internalize it, to heck with whether or not we "appreciated" it, made us stronger, better people. When I blithely read a 'compostion' for lack of a more fitting word, in front of the other students in Mr. Outerbridge's 9th grade English class, before I even finished, this middle-aged, coiled-spring, George C. Scott-curse to the teaching profession, slammed his fist on the desk and yelled, 'Now what the hell does that mean, son?" The average person today until eighty??

In plain Appalachian "Y'ALL CAINT TELLS 'EM NOTHIN' NO MO'"

News / Schools in Poland to strike tomorrow [235]

Rich, we don't speak in numbers thus far, do we?

Math aka arithmetic is surely important, but so are language arts, above all English, soon to become an endangered species in these United States, if it hasn't already!

History / Why is Poland weaker than Russia? [390]

Russia's rich in resources and territory, but poor in infrastructural development.

News / Schools in Poland to strike tomorrow [235]

I've known ever so many Polish English teachers, and frankly, their English skills can be questionable to say the least!

History / Why is Poland weaker than Russia? [390]

Backward, Milo?

You've been reading too much Polish, British or German anti-Russian propaganda, my friend!
Vast and culturally on the fringe of Europe, indeed. She is after all known as "Eurasia", a sort of perennial bridge between East and West.

Yet economically, not to even mention in terms of natural resources by virtue of her sheer size, Russia's got Poland beat by kilometers.

Furthermore, in terms of speaker percentage, many, many more people speak Russian than Polish, for example. The latter's importance is more that of a geopolitical buffer, now that the Cold War ended and German no longer has quite the same hegemony as it once had:-)

News / Schools in Poland to strike tomorrow [235]

I take it then that you're a Brit, Braveheart16.

News / What should Poland do to solve the population crisis? [101]

Better messin' up some bureaucrat's books than screwin' up a woman's life!
Social Security can easily do some "creative bookkeeping" as they've done since time immemorial.
Tough do creatively reconfigure someone's insides:-)

News / What should Poland do to solve the population crisis? [101]

Significantly enough, here in the States, a problem has been brewing for some time now, that apparently the ONLY ones having children on a regular basis, are Hispanics and recent migrants from Syria:-) White Americans are having fewer children, quite a large number, having none at all!

History / Positive portrayal of Poles in world`s cinema and TV [18]

Her Polish pronunciation was nothing short of astounding. Boy can that lady do accents!

History / Why is Poland weaker than Russia? [390]

The Prussian land reforms during the early to mid-19th century substantively reshaped the political map of Europe at the time as well as into the future!

Von Stein expanded the hegemony of Prussia, fulfilling a life-long dream of Frederick The Great.

USA, Canada / Pulaski Day (celebrated in the US only) [54]

Oughtn't it then be the PulaskA Day Parade??
LOL

Classifieds / Startup people (Ontario, Canada)? [7]

Gambling has been completely legal in Ireland for instance for a long, long time. This includes the numbers game too, if I'm not mistaken.

Life / The role of government agencies in Poland. Who is making decisions? [8]

Gezza, which country are you from anyway?

Here in the US, the Office of the President has traditionally, indeed historically, been that of "servant" to the Senate! In order for any president to declare war, for instance, an absolute 2/3 majority is necessary.The entire notion of checks and balances, so core to the American value system, has been to prevent precisely the sort of overweening power which our current leader is attempting to fortify, often at both the expense of our Constitution as well as Jeffersonian Democracy itself!

While I'm obviously not as familiar with Poland, what I've observed, it's Duda who has the power and Kaczynski who is the titular figure head, so to speak. Put another way, Duda is in Poland where Trump is here in the US, Kaczynski is more of what VP Pence would represent.

Genealogy / Do Polish people often have the Mongolian spot? [24]

Aha...I think:-)

Classifieds / Startup people (Ontario, Canada)? [7]

Telephone poles or human Poles?
)))

History / Positive portrayal of Poles in world`s cinema and TV [18]

@Spike31,

You just won my heart, from one classics buff to another:-)

What's more, Jack Benny nee Benny Kubelski, in real life a Jew (albeit as all-American W.A.S.P.-assimilated as one could get), brilliantly manoevers playing a rank-and-file gentile Pole playing a Nazi higher-up, beside Sig Rumann's usual Teutonic bungler! Carole Lombard's captivating as well and it's one of my favorite "comedies" of all time.