Language / WHY THE HELL CANT I LEARN POLISH?? [64]

Formal instruction can have its advantages as well, no doubt. Only, avoid grammar-translation like the plague!

Another tip might be to label various household objects, as many as you can, when you're learning Polish:-)
This will definitely help form a firm lexical (if clearly not a semanticLOL) foundation, so that you will eventually no longer feel the need to use English; you will be able to name things without having to lean on your dictionary as a crutch!

For example, a nice big block-lettered index card or what not with SCIANA taped temporarily to the wall, KRZESLO to one of your chairs, STOL, for the table, PODLOGA might be hard for the floor, since you walk all over it every day, but you get the idea.

Sorry for the umpteenth time about the missing Polish diacritical marks.

Language / WHY THE HELL CANT I LEARN POLISH?? [64]

Again, speaking, reading, writing, "communicating" in any foreign language, need not mean that the person is THINKING in that language.
I dare you once more to find any random Pole in a customer service, even a higher level executive capacity, with whom you can let your hair down and converse in the type of casually effortless, humorous way in which you would with a native American English speaker:-)

AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN, DUDE!

Actually, I know of only two insanely wealthy people who use a financial advisor, but only because they claim to be honestLOL

Language / WHY THE HELL CANT I LEARN POLISH?? [64]

Aha, Joker! Frame the last sentence because that is in fact what language learning is in itself, piecing seemingly disparate pieces of a much larger picture together into one cohesive whole.

Rosetta, Pimseleur, I found most inadequate, testing myself in fact by seeing if I had zero clue about Polish, whether or not I could expect to learn any practical, above all, fluently correct and grammatically natural conversation, simply by listening to and following a Rosetta CD-Rom and the answer was a resounding NIE!!

As with Berlitz and many a similar language learning series, beyond all the moderately false advertising, all they do is merely plug in phrases in daily context without a sense of how or most important why, the new structure functions as it does.

At best, I could see perhaps for the average, non-linguistic or academically trained learner such as yourself, Rosetta as a possible pendant or accompanying course to an official college class taught by a professional native Polish instructor. Apart from that, try the "direct" method.

Merely to provide but one measly example, the Intermediate beginning chapter, as I recall, starts with "W kawiarnii", featuring the verb pair "przynosic" vs. "przyniesc", both meaning more or less "to bring". Make a short story even shorter, the reader that goes along with the listening section completely ignores any mention of aspect or why there are two paired verbs denoting presumably the same action. It glosses over it so that the learner only learns to repeat, but not to understand. Problem is, none of us are children, but adults, and we need explanation.

Learning organically still doesn't mean learning by magic.

Language / WHY THE HELL CANT I LEARN POLISH?? [64]

I agree, gumishu, but I think that's what the original poster was referring to.
Certainly, this is not going insure acquiring a high-level or academic vocabulary, but for more elementary conversation purposes, the method worked for me at any rate, and Polish was my first Slavic language:-)

Watching Polsat proved tremendously helpful in my case. I was able at the time to switch off the English captions and simply listen to hours of Polish uninterrupted, the goal being to thereby eliminate any second-language "interference.

For example: (announcer) Dobry wieczor! Nazwisko LECH WALESA zjawi sie w gazetach wszedzie w Polsce po rozmowie z dziennikarzka _____________, "Lech Walesa: Bohater czy zdrajca.........

Rather than reading a translation, I simply listened and watched the screen, allowing me to take notes and eventually to acquire the
new working vocabular I'd acquired naturally instead of institutionally.

Language / Spelling of a Polish name? [38]

See my private mail on this point.
We do agree on that, at least:-)

Coincidence is usually difficult to prove scientifically, as is the absence of said coincidence.

Language / WHY THE HELL CANT I LEARN POLISH?? [64]

Polish is imminently "learnable"!

Naturally, it all depends on the technique with which one sets out to accomplish this goal.
Grammar-Translation though is clearly a losing proposition. I would suggest watching Polish videos on YouTube with POLISH subtitles and taking careful notes in the process.

Afterward, review what you've watched.

Language / Spelling of a Polish name? [38]

Oddly enough, there might be root connections there. Take Hungarian "haz" (house, home) vs. English "house", German "Haus", or Albanian "Ju" and English "you". Even linguists, among them Merritt Ruhlen of Yale, don't discount the distinct possibility of linguistic cross over from one neighboring language to another. In my two examples, lexical parity takes precedence over obvious phonemic differences, since each of the those words has in fact an identical meaning.

Surely, the above two names in your post are not utter coincidence. Language development is often murky at best:-)

Language / Spelling of a Polish name? [38]

Teodor as far as I know is the Spanish for "Theodor". Tadeusz is Thaddeus in English.
You probably know that the root "Theo-", dates back to the Germanic king "Theodoric" and is possibly the origin of "theodisk", later "TEdesco", Italian for "German", in German "DEUtsch" and in the ancient German given names Dietrich and Diederich.

In Swedish, Danish, Icelandic, and Norwegian, the somewhat similar "tysk", "tysker" etc. are closely related:-)

History / Your favourite Polish Patriotic films [49]

Ida is the film to which I was referring.

Language / Spelling of a Polish name? [38]

While Tadeusz is in fact translated into English as "Thaddeus", I know a number of Poles whose first names are Tadeusz
but who refer to themselves in English by the short form of "Ted", in the US, an accepted abbreviation of "Theodor":-)

Actually, there is a very old Prussian first name "Thaddaeus", but unlike Tadeusz, it's been out of fashion for at least a hundred or so years:-)

Language / Spelling of a Polish name? [38]

Same with "T - H - E - O - D - O - R" vs. "Tadeusz"....

Where German for instance has a written yet unarticulated letter "h" (no "th"-sound either in that language), Polish simply omits the "h", instead of writing it:-)

Language / Spelling of a Polish name? [38]

Probably, the majority might spell it "T - E - 0 - F - I - L - U - S":-)

@polish girl in germany,

Why would Agnieszka have difficulty spelling her own name, I don't understand. Is Agnieszka foreign or Polish? Your German must be pretty darned good after living in Germany for a decade.

tarsape@gmail.com

History / Your favourite Polish Patriotic films [49]

Actually, to be accurate, I did "see" that movie someone else's YouTube video, but I didn't catch the whole film. Sure looked intriguing.

History / Your favourite Polish Patriotic films [49]

No I haven't. I never even saw "Ida", but I hope to, as soon as it comes to our local library's international resource room:-)

Language / Spelling of a Polish name? [38]

Makes sense! Names of professions were common, no doubt as throughout the rest of Europe:-)

Polonia / Poland and France cultures are similar [112]

I telle we tellen
thou tellest ye telleth

Oh, sure! Conjugational inflections of this sort in fact existed up through early Elizabethan writing, e.g. Shakespeare, albeit the final "e" was not pronounced:-)

Never fail in the delight of recounting what a former English professor of mine in grad school told our class, that Sir Edmund Spencer was apparently chided by critics for his "self-conscious Chaucerisms" in The Faerie Queene, naturally appearing several centuries after The Canterbury TalesLOL

You can't make this stuff up!

Language / Spelling of a Polish name? [38]

Thanks a mill, paw:-)

Polonia / Poland and France cultures are similar [112]

I always remind my students that, had 1066 AD not occurred, we Anglophones would be speaking a language far closer to both present-day Dutch, with practically no silent letters and a word stock composed of essentially Germanic roots, cf. "possible" vs. "mayley", "pedestrians" vs. "footgoers" etc...

:-)

Life / Why are young Poles turning away from Church and religion? [25]

...as you are (perfectly) free to your own opinions, sir, only not to your own facts!!
If you speak about the right to teach the distinction between "Creationism" vs. "Evolution", any US school is currently free to do so.
You can thank the great Clarence Darrow for that. Sure, he lost the Scopes Trial big time, yet, he brought to all our attention that

it was in the end, America's right to THINK which was on trial, and not merely one American school teacher, John Scopes, brave
enough to challenge bigotry and ignorance:-)

Check out "Inherit The Wind" by Lee & Lawrence. Greatest line in the entire play: "A thought is a greater monument than a cathedral",
spoken by Henry Drummond aka Clarence Darrow himself.

Life / Why are young Poles turning away from Church and religion? [25]

Religion was never "removed", as you put it, from ANY American classroom! First, mandatory school prayer was later made voluntary,
subsequently, replaced (though not gotten rid of) by so-called "Religion class", giving an overview of the Bible in relation to other world
teachings such as The Upanishads, The Qu'ran, The Bhavagita etc., seeing the Western Bible within a broader context.

This is not the same thing at all as saying that religion has been somehow taken out of our education:-)

Language / Spelling of a Polish name? [38]

Always been curious as to the meaning of the Polish surname "Bednarz" or "Bednarczyk":-)

Is "Debinski" related to "Dabrowski"? Seems to me they'd be roughly like the family name "Oakely" or the like in English.

Life / Why are young Poles turning away from Church and religion? [25]

The same malaise affecting the entire Continent has come home to roost in Poland!

Once a near bastion of strict Catholicism, she too has fallen victim to much of what has all but
decimated religious practice throughout much of the world.

Here in the US, as has traditionally been the case, rural America staunchly stands by the three
"G's" - G-d, Guns, and Guts. Urban America has nearly always been predominantly irreligious,
indeed, hedonistic.

Poland is finding that she too can run from the inevitable, but she can't hide.

Language / Are there "Spelling Bee" competitions in Poland? (ie. Polish version of USA's "Scripps National Spelling Bee") [16]

However I've yet to encounter any Polish "palatals" quite so palatalized as in, for example Russian.

Language / Are there "Spelling Bee" competitions in Poland? (ie. Polish version of USA's "Scripps National Spelling Bee") [16]

I couldn't agree with you more! Often to non-Polish speakers, the distinction is ever so slight, and in transcribing same, it can be almost impossible.

Language / Are there "Spelling Bee" competitions in Poland? (ie. Polish version of USA's "Scripps National Spelling Bee") [16]

Poor froggy:-)

Nice post, kaprys! The Brzechwa tongue twister though featuring the town of Szczezbrzyn still has yours beatLOL

Language / Are there "Spelling Bee" competitions in Poland? (ie. Polish version of USA's "Scripps National Spelling Bee") [16]

As an erstwhile Polish beginner, my teacher did practically little else for at least the first three to five lessons other than dictations followed by listening comp., subsequently more dictations until I nearly gave up!!

Bully for Pani Jola. Thanks to her not always so gentle insistence, I learned before not too long to distinguish words with "o" + kreska and a "u", between a "s" + kreska and "sz", "between "drz" vs. "z"+ kropka, and so forth.

Pani Jolu, bless you wherever you are:-)

Language / Are there "Spelling Bee" competitions in Poland? (ie. Polish version of USA's "Scripps National Spelling Bee") [16]

France though, as most of you all probably already know, used to have La Dictee Nationale, "hosted" by the one and only Bernard Pivot (Bouillion de la culture, L'apostrophe along with other renowned TV programs), and this was said to be tougher than almost any such spelling bees here in the States:-) Real ball busters, the French when it comes to their language.

Trust the Poles are the same:-) Lord knows, the Germans have slacked off in this regard, perhaps not the English as much.

I too always figured that spelling bees were more or less typical of the US alone, if only because so many Americans, even educated Americans, confess to being lousy spellersLOL

When I lived in Spain once, I got a bit of a tongue lashing from the operator when I did the equivalent of a "Smythe", S - M - Y - T - H - E to which the telephone receptionist snapped in Spanish, "Sir, excuse me! I know how to write my own language!!!"

My cross-cultural gaff/goof was to assume that other nationalities are as orthographically challenged as we are. Ought to have realized that only English is the chaotic spelling nightmare which it is, other languages generally no where nearly as much.

Life / New home gift - Is there a Polish tradition for this situation? [4]

Absolutely. Housewarming presents are always welcome, in Poland as elsewhere.
Traditional such offerings might include, although by no means compulsory, a loaf of freshly home baked bread or a nice bottle of spirits; the former so that the new couple might never know want, the latter in order that the home should always know happiness and contentment:-)

News / Polonophobia rising in Israel. [144]

Either you've MISread the Talmud, or you don't know your royal ass from your bleedin' elbow about Judaism, bud!!

News / Polonophobia rising in Israel. [144]

The only "problems" the Jews "caused" was simply being unassimilated in a Catholic country!
They sought nobody's death or destruction. Yet they had to live, were therefore forced to
do work well beneath their dignity, heretofore off limits to Christians, such as tax collection
and of course, money lending aka pawnbroking. This sadly created an understandably
negative stereotype in Polish eyes, therefore associating ALL dishonest money changers,
all thievery, with the Jews.

There is to be honest, no other way to look at it. History points down one single path.
Claim this path goes elsewhere is incorrect, tantamount to stating on open forum,
Plaszow is the capital of Poland! Swear up and down six ways to Sunday, it's the WRONG answer!!