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I need advice - how long does it take to learn Polish? [70]
foreigners speaking polish please help !! i need someone to tell me how long it took to be good in polish not perfect?? which i started to think tha there is no way !! my brain hurting me ! i'm in poland about almost 9 months i think i can understand ppl if they will keep it slow so i can get the words without hearing some r eating (się ,ci ......)..
I can't comment as a "foreigner", as I'm from a Polish family who brought me up to be bilingual. But like those guitar books which claim that you can "play like Jimi Hendrix in three months", you can't become fluent in any language in a few months. I'd say at least a year or two. Working in a country would help significantly.
Some personal examples follow.
French: I took French at school and for a year at uni, but didn't use it in public until over a decade later. To get by in French, I studied for two months before going to France, in order to be able to get around with the basics, but I still couldn't read a French paper.
Italian: No previous experience, started learning three months before going to Italy, got by with the basics with few problems. Likewise, I couldn't read an Italian paper.
Czech: prior knowledge of Polish helped significantly. Started learning two months before travelling, left the phrase book at the hotel after one afternoon in town, could read virtually all of the signs, could read local papers quite easily. Ended up having conversations a few days into my holiday, and even gave some directions to out-of-towners, haha.
Cantonese: started four months before travelling and only managed to remember a few dozen words. I can recognise about 20 Chinese characters, but sadly about 2000 are needed to start reading a paper lol :( Must try harder for next time!
Unfortunately, we Poles love to speak fast (I speak Polish much faster than English, even though I was born here), which probably doesn't help either!