Life / Romanian graphic designer needs help about Poland's culture and symbols [4]

I think the most universal and recognisable symbols are the crowned white eagle and the white and red colours.

Language / zraniłem się w + Polish accusative? [8]

Zraniłem się + accusative. Yup.

Zraniłem się w nogę (singular)
Zraniłem się w nogi (plural)

Zraniłem się w rękę (singular)
Zraniłem się w ręce (plural)

The declension of ręce is weird.

ręce is the singular locative and dative and plural nominative and accusative of ręka.

Language / Polish Language - Basic concepts [52]


Yes, because "dla" takes the Genitive and "na" takes the Accusative or Locative. The confusing thing is that the Accusative looks the same as the Genitive/Nominative for all words that don't end with 'a'. But since "dziewczyna" does end in 'a', it changes to 'ę'.


You'll notice that sometimes the basic rule just doesn't look/sound right, and your gut instinct is usually correct. That's often because some combination of consonant+vowel or vowel+vowel is illegal in Polish, so it'll be changed a little bit to fit in with normal pronunciation. But for all intents and purposes, the basic rule gets you very close to the intended form. Since you're already familiar with "truskawki" instead of "truskawky", you'll notice that the same thing happens to all other words ending in -ka. It could just as easily be "wygodnej ławki", "warszawskiej syrenki" and so on. The general rule will make everything you pronounce understandable and even if it doesn't match exactly what the correct form is, it should be very close, so you can then just let nature take its course, and allow increasing familiarity with the language to fill in the gaps for you without much effort.

Life / 'TO MY A JAK' - looking for title and/or artist [4]

Well, I've had no luck finding a likely match. Unfortunately, the bit you memorised is an extremely common combination of syllables in Polish. I've been searching for similar phrases. Maybe someone else can help. Not even you can be sure that you heard correctly, and the possibilities are endless.

"to my a jak" would literally mean, "that's us, but when..."

"to mija jak" would mean, "it passes as though"

"to ma, a jak" would mean, "... has got it, but when"

"to miała jak" would mean, "... she had got it like"

"to moja k-something" would mean, "this is my k-something"

"ta moja k-something" would mean, "that k-something of mine"

"domy jak" would mean, "houses like"

"tu, my jak" would mean, "here were are as"

"oddał mu jak" can possibly mean "he gave it back to him like".

To complicate things further, any Polish verb can end in "-my" in the first person plural. "Ja" also means "I" and any number of words can begin with "k-", not to mention the innumerable words that have "ja" as their first or final syllable.

History / Ukrainian-occupied Eastern Poland [135]


That's a rubbish definition of socialism, and it's one that almost anybody can agree with. By that reckoning, I'm practically a socialist, although I'd replace the word, "equal" with "equitable" (i.e. "fair"). But in reality, I am anything but a socialist.

And unfortunately, that's not how communists and many non-communist socialists envisioned it, when they called for the abolishment of private property, the nationalisation of the means of production and the destruction of the middle and upper classes (the so-called "bourgeoisie").

Life / Some questions about Imieniny (Polish Name's Day) [14]

I've only ever heard of name days being celebrated after birthdays, so that would most likely be March, even though it's almost six months away. Some people may do it differently, but it's confusing if they do.

Life / Some questions about Imieniny (Polish Name's Day) [14]

1. The general rule is that you celebrate it the first time your name comes up after your birthday.

For example, the name days for Marek (Mark) occur several times during the year. Generally, people celebrate the very next date after their birthday.

2. Generally, yes. Variants of the same name are generally not distinguished, but some are. For example, Szczepan and Stefan are two forms of the Polish equivalent of "Stephen" but they are celebrated on different days. In general, variants are treated much the same, so Michel, Michael, Michele, Miguel, etc. are all essentially variants of Michael in varying languages and so their name day would be on the same day as the most common Polish variant, "Michał."

Language / Polish Language - Basic concepts [52]


There is no difference. The Accusative is an odd case in Polish. It only really exists for nouns ending in 'a'. In a way, Polish can be said to have five and a half grammatical cases instead of six.

The only ending you really need to know for the Accusative is 'a' -> 'ą' for adjectives : 'ę' for nouns. If you want to form the affirmative direct object for other words, you put words ending in a consonant that refer to people or animals in the the Genitive case, and leave all other words are unchanged and just use the Nominative. Grammarians will still say that those animals and things are in the Accusative and that it's just its form that is identical to the Gen/Nom, but you and I know better.

Perhaps one happy day, the Accusative will be lost entirely and will be replaced by the Genitive or Nominative. And that will be a happy day indeed for Polish language learners indeed because things will be a lot more consistent. Until that day comes, perhaps in hundreds of years, the rules for how to mark the affirmative direct object will seem very convoluted.

But what you have to do is use the Genitive for the affirmative direct object of masculine people/singular animals, change 'a' to 'ę' for all words ending in 'a', regardless of grammatical gender, and use the Nominative in all other cases. This sounds complicated, but really, instead of trying to work all this out on the fly, it's simpler to remember that for kot, you say, "widzę tego kota" and for długopis, you say, "widzę ten długopis", and leave it at that. That's how Polish people get it right. They don't go through a set of complicated rules to pick the right form. They subconsciously just remember what the word is like in a sentence like "widzę xxxx," and just change the verb. The rules will help you derive the right form for words you haven't come across before, which is great, but once you work it out, just think, "Oh, okay, it's 'widzę ten dźwig'", try to remember it, and you're good to go.


Look at the lyrics. It's so much easier! If you know with 100% accuracy what they are singing, then, you will get used to how those things sound, and in time, you will be able to understand most things fine without the lyrics. Trust me, this is awesome. Even if you still have trouble understanding conversation, it's absolutely amazing to hear a foreign song you've never heard before come on the radio and to be able to work out most of the lyrics. And this doesn't mean you will understand everything all of the time, because even native speakers sometimes can't make things out, and that's why lyrics sites are so popular on the internet.


Now, that's a silly example, but "na tego małego policjanta" is literally "onto that little policeman". The na + accusative form, where "na" means "onto" instead of "on", is actually quite simple. "na" works just like an affirmative verb.

So:

"onto that little policeman" ---------- "I see that little policeman"
"na tego małego policjanta" - "widzę tego małego policjanta"

"onto that little orange" ------------ "I see that little orange"
"na tę małą pomarańczę" - "widzę tę małą pomarańczę"

"onto that little tree" ------ "I see that little tree"
"na to małe drzewo"------ "widzę to małe drzewo"


Okay, re-reading my explanation, I still think I've made it seem more complex than it is.

To simplify it a bit, you are absolutely correct that you should put affirmative sentences in the accusative.

"lubię zimną pogodę" = "I like cold weather"
"nie lubię zimnej pogody" = "I don't like cold weather"

However, for masculine words that refer to people or singular animals, it's actually easier.

The negative and affirmative sentences use the same form. Always. And everywhere. Technically, one is in the genitive and the other is in the accusative, but that's just what grammarians have decided to call it. You could just as easily say that for these situations, you always use the genitive, and it could have conceivably been described that way by grammarians too.

To sum up:

"lubię tego faceta" = "I like this guy"
"nie lubię tego faceta" = "I don't like this guy".
"lubię tego psa"
"nie lubię tego psa"
"lubię tego kota"
"nie lubię tego kota"
"lubię tego nauczyciela"
"nie lubię tego nauczyciela"
"lubię tego policjanta"
"nie lubię tego policjanta"

So it's actually easier for these words, since the form is identical.

History / Ukrainian-occupied Eastern Poland [135]


Well, when Ukraine was part of the USSR, everyone had to know Russian, so I'm assuming that had Poles remained there, they would have learnt both Ukrainian and Russian.

History / Ukrainian-occupied Eastern Poland [135]


Lol, I think they would have quite happily continued on living in Ukrainian Lviv and would have learnt Ukrainian and Russian if they weren't forcibly deported to Poland, Kazakhstan or Siberia.

Language / Polish Language - Basic concepts [52]

Amazing!

Pam, you are a genius!

Your Polish is already at a very good level. Find some Polish songs you like and translate the lyrics back into English. Polish songs typically use good colloquial language interspersed with nice poetic phrases, and that way, you'll learn Polish patterns of speech, and you'll pick up the correct use of case endings naturally. You'll pick up strategies on how to make sense of Polish, and where the word order is not what you expect, you'll find yourself relying on figuring out the case endings to do it. Plus, there's nothing better than remembering how to use a particular word by humming a tune you like in your head.

Music is a great way to learn a language because you can learn and remember new words relatively painlessly, and it's been massively helpful for me in both Polish and Spanish. It was an excellent way for me to learn Spanish tense suffixes and helped me master the subjunctive tenses, which don't really exist in English, without ever reading a single grammatical explanation of what they are. And it's very satisfying when you come across a song on the radio in a foreign language and can understand every word. After you do this for a good few songs, you'll naturally understand others, and your skills will transfer to spoken and written language too.


czerwoną kurtkę is the direct object
czerwoną kurtką would be the instrumental

Tiny difference.


Excellent. Very close. Using analogy will get you the correct form or close to it, and once you're comfortable with the basic rules, you can try going from very good to perfect. The adjectives are quite regular in Polish. It's just the damn nouns.

For example, Polish has no words with "ky" in it, so Polish people aren't used to pronouncing this syllable, so they use the next best thing. "ki". That's why Polish smooths out "truskawky" to "truskawki" to bring it in line with the Polish accent. But if you forget the slight sound change, you will be understood perfectly.

As for "bez telewizoru," you will in fact have a minority of Polish people say that, because it makes sense and is consistent, but the officially correct form is "telewizora" for no reason other than the fact that it's used much more frequently. In fact, Polish is in a process of change and no consistent ending has yet been settled on for the inanimate masculine form, so the correct form is decided on by majority vote. Until Polish settles on one ending, they will continue sometimes to take 'a' (ser -> sera), sometimes 'u' (długopis -> długopisu), or sometimes, both forms will be considered correct (krawat -> krawatu/krawata).

Because the use is inconsistent, don't worry too much about it, because both are perfectly well understood. While the "majority vote" form is "bez długopisu" (Google lists 50,000 occurrences of the phrase), lots of Polish people will say "bez długopisa" (Google throws up 4000 occurrences of the phrase). Once you get used to hearing and speaking the language, you will naturally use the "majority vote" version.

The forms are fairly well settled for the other cases. The Dative has a few frequently used masculine animate nouns that take -u instead of -owi (Panu, kotu, psu, Bogu, bratu), but in general, it's all fairly consistent.

I guess my point above is that where there is a departure from a consistent rule, native speakers will themselves be prone to using the consistent although technically incorrect version. In fact, Googling "bratowi" throws up results about native speakers being confused about which form is considered correct.

This is not something that a beginner needs to worry too much about to be understood. It's just something that gets ironed out with increasing familiarity and using the language you hear.

A recent mistake I have made is that I said "od wtorka" instead of "od wtorku". I was perfectly well understood, but it was a tell-tale sign that I'm not a native speaker. Googling "od wtorka," though, clearly shows that native speakers slip up too.

BACK TO DECLENSION

Let's get a little perspective of how this works again.

If we count cases, then comparing the various languages, we see that Finnish has 14 grammatical cases and Hungarian has about 22, Polish has 6 plus the vocative, and German has 4.

If we look carefully at English, we can identify 3, although for most words, the nominative and accusative are the same.

The genitive (possessive): dog -> dog's, dogs -> dogs'
The nominative: I, he, she, they
The accusative: me, him, her, them

The way Hungarian and Finnish cases work, however, is not that difficult. They have quite regular suffixes and correspond closely to English prepositions. Polish and German have fewer cases, but whereas, say, in Finnish, the case endings change only slightly to be harmonious with the preceding vowels, Polish and German use different endings depending on the grammatical category of the word, which in Polish is mostly determined by the vowel or consonant the word ends in. In addition, instead of stacking two suffixes, one denoting a plural and the other a case, the distinguishing feature of Polish and German is that they are fusional languages and use a separate suffix to indicate both at the same time.

Finnish:
"this small mug" -> "tämä pieni muki"
"into this small mug" -> "tähän pieneen mukiin"
"in this small mug" -> "tässä pienessä mukissa"
"on this small mug" -> "tällä pienellä mukilla"
"to this small mug" -> "tälle pienelle mukille"
"out of this small mug" -> "tästä pienestä mukista"
"from this small mug" -> "tältä pieneltä mukilta"

Polish has too few cases to do away with prepositions all together, so it uses prepositions and reuses the same case endings. Whereas English can be thought of as a prepositional language and Finnish can be thought of as a postpositional language, Polish is more of a circumpositional language, where a word needs to be both prefixed with a preposition and suffixed with a case ending. The whole prefix-suffix unit carries the meaning of the preposition across, and that's why "na" with the locative suffix means "on" and with the accusative suffix means "onto".

Polish:
"this small mug" -> "ten mały kubek"
"into this small mug" -> "w ten mały kubek"
"in this small mug" -> "w tym małym kubku"
"on this small mug" -> "na tym małym kubku"
"to this small mug" -> "temu małemu kubkowi"
"out of this small mug" -> "z tego małego kubka"
"from this small mug" -> "od tego małego kubka"

Instead of trying to learn this directly and going mad, try translating some Polish back into English. You'll become frustrated with trying to look up the most common patterns over and over again, and you will get a feel for it and make mental shortcuts that will help you identify the patterns and remember them.

Don't try and learn it all at once. That's not the easy way to learn tense suffixes or case endings in any language. Translate Polish text, especially songs, and you will get a hang of the patterns naturally.

Here's a quick reference.

Genitive


Dative


Accusative


Instrumental


Locative


Vocative


As a quick note, English also uses prepositions with the Accusative case, where that is differs from the Nominative.

For example, you say "with me", "with him", "with her" and not "with I", "with he" or "with she".

A common grammatical mistake English speakers make is say "between you and I". In fact, the correct form is "between you and me" because the word "between" takes the English Accusative case.

So all this case madness still exists in English, albeit in a vastly reduced form when compared to German or Polish.

Language / Polish Language - Basic concepts [52]


I'm glad to get input and feedback because it helps me find ways of presenting the language in a more understandable manner and also to see what parts others might find confusing in my descriptions.


Exactly. Knowing about cases is technically quite unnecessary, and although I did start off learning Polish grammar the traditional way, I've found it quite unhelpful.

While learning about cases didn't really make me better at Polish, it did make me really good at writing lists of words in different cases:

"Zrobiony" is in the nominative/vocative and possibly accusative case
"Zrobionego" would be genitive and possibly accusative
"Zrobionemu" would be dative
"Zrobionym" would be locative/instrumental

Language / Polish Language - Basic concepts [52]

Polish words are interdependent

Just as it's a good idea to learn Polish verbs in perfective+imperfective+"he/she/it" triplets, Polish nouns in demonstrative+noun pairs, it's also a good idea to learn Polish prepositions as parts of a prepositional pattern.

Learning "z" means "with" and "na" means "on" complicates things in the long run, because in Polish, words rarely occur in isolation, and must occur as part of a consistent pattern.

1)
"nad tym różowym kapeluszem"
"nad tą czerwoną kurtką"

2)
"od tego żółtego krawatu"
"od tej brązowej trawy"
"od tego niebieskiegoauta"

Learning five template phrases like this might seem like a lot of work, but you can then plug in all the instrumental prepositions into the first pattern and all the genitive ones in the second, and modify, add or delete the nouns and adjectives as you see fit, and most of the time, you'll end up with perfectly formed, grammatically-correct Polish, or very close to it.

Plus, you can make your sentences as rude or weird as you like, since that will make them more memorable. You'll only be using them as templates until they become second nature.

In my opinion, the initial investment of learning a few patterns pays off massively and saves a lot of energy in the long run. It's certainly been indispensible for me.

In my opinion, the initial investment of learning a few patterns pays off massively and saves a lot of energy in the long run. It relieved me of the strain of having to remember to make every single adjective/demonstrative etc. agree with the noun. Instead, I would just plug words in and go, and hey presto, "Wow! Your Polish has really improved recently."

Anyway, I'll try and think of a better way of describing the "Plug & Play" method, but it will probably take me a while.

Language / Polish Language - Basic concepts [52]


It doesn't matter. Whichever form you prefer. I'm used to calling it "goat's cheese" and I imagine "goat cheese" should be cheese made out of goats, but in fact, I think "goat cheese" is probably the more common form.

Language / Polish Language - Basic concepts [52]

It still means "with".

"Co się stało z tym dużym drzewem" means

"What has happened with this big tree?"

It's just that in English, it sounds better using the word "to" and saying "to this big tree". But it literally still means "with", and you can say it the Polish way in English too.

"What has happened with you?"
"What has happened to you?"
There's a slightly different nuance in the two English sentences. "to" sounds a bit more involuntary.

Polish likes to use the "with" form a lot more.

But Polish can also say both "Co się z tobą stało?" and "Co ci się stało?" in much the same way as English, so it's very similar.

Language / Polish Language - Basic concepts [52]


To be honest, British English speakers tend to coalesce the "di" sound to "j", and you hear words such as "dew" being pronounced every which way, from "doo", to "dyoo", to something like Polish "dziu", to something like "Jew". So many, in trying to pronounce "na paradie" would actually say something that sounded like "na paradzie" anyway. Even if they did keep the "d" and "y" sound distinct, they would be well understood, which is why I don't think it's important to worry about getting it wrong. Just being aware that Polish tends to convert "di" to 'dzi" is good enough, and I wouldn't worry too much about it.

Ziemowit

Widziałem dwóch mężczyzn
Widziałem dwie kobiety

It's all part of a broader pattern of widziałem te dwie śliczne kobiety vs nie widziałem tych dwóch ślicznych kobiet_.


I would disagree and say that it is in fact almost wholly unimportant if you learn a noun as part of a demonstrative+noun or article+noun pair. Of course, that's just my personal bias, because I'm a strong believer in learning by doing, and I think grammatical overthinking really gets in the way of getting people to say what they want to say.

To be honest, I only know a few words of French from school, so I can't remember much what it's like, but Spanish is very much like Polish, in that the final vowel letter of a word will with good accuracy determine the gender of the noun. However, it is common practice to learn words in article+noun pairs, since the gender information is encoded in the article and I think demonstrative+noun pairs are a good strategy for learning Polish words too, as in "ten mężczyzna" and "ten satelita". Now, of course I quickly came across exceptions in Spanish, such as "el idioma" and "el problema" and "el día" which are masculine, and even "el alma" and "el agua", which, despite using the masculine article are actually feminine, but it's not seriously problematic to memorise and practice using those exceptions correctly once you come across them in either Polish or Spanish.

As for "ten mężczyzna", remembering it as a demonstrative+noun pair will solve all declension problems. It's much easier to remember the phonetic difference ("ten" vs "ta") than somehow trying to memorise the abstract concept of "grammatical masculinity" that means nothing to English speakers. After a while, you get used to "mężczyzna" going with adjectives ending in "y", and saying it any differently would sound weird. In fact, in Spanish I didn't even notice that the word "el día" was masculine and a rare exception because "buenos días" and "todos los días" are such common phrases, that you sort of automatically match the pattern if you add modifiers of your own and use it correctly anyway without being conscious of its gender or its exceptional nature. The case with perfective and imperfective verbs is similar. It's much easier to associate them with clear meanings such as "to do" vs "to be doing" than to associate one with the grammatical concept of perfectivity and the other with imperfectivity.

In "ten mężczyzna", any adjectives will have to match the word "ten", and "ten" itself will follow the same patterns as in every other "ten" you've ever seen. Mężczyzna itself, will decline in a similar manner to any other noun ending in 'a' would (widziałem mężczyznę). And you can learn the specifics of individual nouns once you get to the point of using them. Learning them before you can actually understand simple spoken or written language is unnecessary and painful.

So, of course there are exceptions to the rule, but you will get a lot further learning just a few ideas that work 95% of the time, than learning the 1000 exceptions that work only 5% of the time. Kids don't start off knowing the 1000 exceptions before they start attempting and succeeding at producing correct Polish. So I'm a big fan of crossing a bridge only once you come to it. In fact, I believe that if you are reasonably confident in the general rules of a language, you'll be able to spot exceptions and learn them more easily than if you focus on them outright. And it's much nicer just making a mental note to yourself, "Oh, okay, so you say it that way," than trying to get it right first time.

Learning any new language is hugely demanding on memory at first, but it becomes much easier once you begin to understand it, until it becomes a passive process, as you learn it in a relaxing manner through just watching TV, reading a book, listening to music or having a conversation. What I'm trying to do here is to lower the barrier to get to the point where one can simply understand at least a moderate amount of the language in speech or in writing, because once you get to that point, the rest is much easier, because you can learn a lot of it passively and without much effort.

For anyone who is struggling to learn Polish, I think that learning a few hard and fast rules and the basic patterns to get to the point of being able to understand and produce reasonably accurate Polish most of the time is a great starting point. Polish is significantly different to other Western European languages, and so I think minimum effort, maximum results is the best way to get started, and then once you know enough to be able to comprehend a language fairly well, you can begin to fill in the gaps, expand on the patterns you already know, and allow the exceptions slowly take care of themselves as you passively absorb the language's idiosyncracies.

The exceptions to the rules in Spanish and Polish seem fairly easy to me now since I understand the languages and I've heard those exceptions used hundreds of times, so I'm familiar with them, and the more systematic forms now sound wrong to me. But learning the exceptions outright at the beginning, and especially doing so for Polish, would have driven me absolutely crazy.

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Language / Polish Language - Basic concepts [52]


Well spotted! "z" was the only preposition in that list that could take two cases!

So yes, two rules. I haven't covered the other one yet.

Remember "kanapka z serem" and "sos z sera pleśniowego"? I think I mentioned this whole thing before.

"z czegoś" means out of something
"z czymś" means with something

so "z tego dużego drzewa" means out of this big tree
and "z tym dużym drzewem" means with this big tree

z on its own doesn't really mean anything until you match it up with a particular pattern.

z .... -em/ą = with

z .... -a/y = out of

Kawa z mlekiem = coffee with milk
Ser z koziego mleka = goat's cheese (lit "cheese out of goat milk")

You can use "ser z tego koziego mleka" as a template pattern and swap words in it to construct all the following examples:

"prezent dla twojego dziecka" = "a present for your child"

See what I've done there? I've changed every word and deleted "tego", but the pattern is identical. You speak in English using formulae you've been using since you were a child. Polish does the same thing, and about 90% of the language is just variations on the same common patterns. And instead of analysing each and every word, plugging words in to common patterns is a quick way of getting it right.

Language / Polish Language - Basic concepts [52]

LEARNING DECLENSION - THE EASY-ISH WAY

The cases help in freeing word order and case and gender agreement is a redundancy feature, which in turn helps to make the language more robust and increases the threshold of how noisy it can get before the listener can no longer work out what is being said. Learning this will be extremely complex and painful if you go about it the wrong way. But children don't find it that difficult.

Ask any young Polish child. They have absolutely no idea what the Dative is. If you asked them what the "celownik" is, they might at best guess it's something to do with "aiming" ("celowanie") or a "destination" ("cel"). That guess would be quite accurate - it definitely is something to do with a destination, but they still wouldn't have a clue about what it actually is.

They have no idea why they sometimes say a word one way and sometimes another way. When they speak, they don't get into a panic thinking, "Oh no! Do I use the Instrumental or the Genitive?" They have no concept of what the Instrumental or Genitive might be. They just know. And later on, I will try and help you to be able to "just know" too.

And I'm not going to tie you up and yell, "Kogo? Czego?" at you, demanding you give me the correct form of a noun or risk getting a painful electric shock. I promise. Even if you knew how to decline them perfectly, it wouldn't help you use them correctly. And yet little kids learn both declension AND correct use, so there must be a way.

Let's take a step back, first. I'd like you to realise that Polish, despite the fact it uses declension and that it's got an alien phonology and orthography, is actually very similar to English. It's still part of the same Indo-European super-family, and even though common words and Germanic loanwords in Polish have frequently changed beyond recognition, "cierń" ("thorn"), the languages have a lot more in common than it might seem.

Here is a fragment of Alice in Wonderland in the original English, a Polish translation I've found online, and lastly, a very literal word-for-word translation of the Polish back to English.




Try doing a word-for-word translation of Japanese. You will get gibberish. Polish, on the other hand, is still a very English-like language, but dressed up in Slavic clothing.

The major differences are the topic of this post. In Polish, the forms of words are very interdependent. In one sentence, you see gender agreement, with these words ending in 'a': "Alicja", "rosła", "była", "zmuszona". In another, you see both case and gender agreement with the preposition "z", with all these words ending in 'ą': "jedną", "ręką", "opartą", "drugą", "owiniętą". This is an alien feature in English.

So how do you produce it?

THE BIG DECLENSION SECRET

Well, how do children learn it? They don't think in terms of case endings. They think in terms of patterns. It's far easier to learn meaningful patterns than it is to learn abstract case endings.

And it's no use knowing that the preposition "od" means "from" if you don't know how to use it. Being able to decline nouns in the Genitive case perfectly will get you absolutely nowhere. Fast.

But if you learn a pattern like, "od tego małego pieska" ("from this little dog"),
you can, just like a child, be completely unaware of what cases are, and modify the pattern, changing, adding or deleting words to suit your needs.

You can, then, with little effort say
"od tamtego dużego wilczura" ("from that big German Shepherd"),
"od nauczyciela" ("from the teacher"),
"obok tego starego faceta" ("next to that old man"),
"z tego dużego drzewa" ("out of that big tree"),
"nie chcę ciasta" ("I don't want cake").

This pattern is accurate for all nouns that end in "o", "e". It's also accurate for nouns ending in consonants that refer to people or animals, and for some things as well. It applies, with few, if any modifications, for somewhere close to half of all Polish nouns. With just this one little pattern, you've tackled possession, the direct object for negative verbs and the prepositions, "od, do, z, dla, bez, oprócz, obok, koło, blisko, zamiast, naprzeciwko" and you've saved yourself from learning hundreds, if not thousands of complicated rules.

Similarly, if you learn, "ku temu małemu pieskowi" ("towards this little dog"), you can follow the same pattern to say "ku tamtemu malutkiemu kotkowi" ("towards that tiny kitten"), "przydało się tamtemu policjantowi" ("it came in useful for that policeman"), "mojemu najlepszemu przyjacielowi" ("to my best friend").

You might have noticed that I have seldom mentioned gender or feminine, masculine or neuter nouns. The reason is that the they're not at all important. The only difference is that you might have to learn a slightly different pattern for words ending in "o" and for words ending in "a", for example, because 99% of the time, the final letter determines the pattern. No Polish person really thinks of "lampa" as being somehow womanly or feminine. It's a lamp for heaven's sake. It just ends in "a" and other words that refer to it must also end in "a". That's it.

Grammarians try to break down the patterns and investigate how they have arisen and how the individual elements fit in together. This might be interesting if you're a linguist, but it's not very helpful, and that's not how your brain works.

Why this works, and why it's so much easier

Your brain works by matching patterns. That's how redundancy works in a language. If a Polish listener mishears something in a noisy environment, then there will be a pattern mismatch, and the little elves in his head will quickly be able to spot the error and fill in the gaps by looking at the adjacent words and matching them to the most likely pattern. The person is completely unaware that this is what his brain is doing, and probably won't even realise that he heard something wrong, because the erroneous information was already automatically corrected by his brain.

Knowing just a few patterns will enable you to produce very clear and understandable Polish much of the time, and even if there are sound changes and irregularities, they will not at all impede understanding, because the listener will recognise the pattern.

And knowing perhaps a few dozen of these patterns will quickly get you up to the 90% mark. This is much better than learning innumerable complex rules and case endings.

In my next post, I will try and identify the common patterns for all the seven cases so that you can quickly start being able to produce perfectly correct Polish much of the time, or, at the very worst, easily understandable Polish.

Okay, the most important set of patterns first.

DECLENSION IN DETAIL: GENITIVE PATTERNS

These are by far the most important patterns in Polish, and probably account for about 60-90% of the noun changes you will come across. The genitive is a difficult case to decline, but it can still be summarised in just a few patterns.

Uses

1) To indicate the direct object in certain situations. I've already hinted at simplifying this bit of Polish grammar in Objective Forms earlier, and I will cover exactly how to do this in Objective Patterns.


2) To indicate possession.


3) In set time phrases, sometimes in place of an English preposition


4) With certain prepositions


Getting it right
The word "nie" and most of the above prepositions are a dead giveaway that one of the above patterns will follow. As soon as you hear or see one of those words, you should expect these patterns to follow, and as soon as you utter one of those words, these patterns should be at the tip of your tongue.

A note on sound changes
Sound/spelling changes account for a lot of the apparent messiness of the Polish declension system. For heaven's sake, don't worry about them. Just follow systematic patterns that work to produce a perfect or close-to-perfect result 90% of the time, and the other 10% will take care of itself as you become more familiar with the language. The patterns almost always stay intact, and whatever changes do occur are typically just to keep things in line with Polish pronunciation.

For example, the typical ending for the locative case is 'ie'. "Pożar" means "blaze". But you say "w pożarze" and not "w pożarie", because the "ri" sequence began to be pronounced as "rz" at some point. That's why Rome in Polish is "Rzym" and not "Rim". It would be easier if Polish spelling just wrote the "rz" sound as "ri" because then the whole declension system would make a lot more sense on paper, but alas, that is not the case.

For the most part, there's not much point learning about the sound changes and you can just pick them up naturally. If you want to get a head start, then just be aware that Polish can't stand certain letter combinations, so all native Polish words change them. For example, it hates 'ri', 'di', 'ti', 'łi', 'ly', 'ge', 'ke', "gy", "ky" and changes all to 'rzy', 'dzi', 'ci', 'l', 'li', 'gie', 'kie', "gi", "ki". It also hates some vowel combinations such as "iy" and will simplify them to just "i". If you're aware of this, you will be far less surprised that the possessive form of "Babcia" (Grandma) is "Babci" and not "Babciy" and that instead of saying "w sadie" the correct form is "w sadzie". In fact, in these two examples, and in fact most of the time in general, the "wrong", systematic form would sound almost identical anyway, so it's not a problem if you start off using it.

Language / Polish Language - Basic concepts [52]


An excellent observation.


Good to know I'm not alone :)


Officially, if you use the pronoun like you would in English, you also use the same word order as in English.
"My byśmy robili"
"We would be doing"

If you drop the pronoun, Polish reverses the word order.
"Robilibyśmy"
"We would be doing"

That's the official version. If you use the pronoun, put all modifying words such as "mi" "się" "by" before the verb. There's no reason for this other than the fact that some people decided that it sounded cool that way. People try to stick to the official guidelines, especially if they consider themselves educated, but you will hear people saying "my robilibyśmy" and "byśmy robili" in speech all the time because it really doesn't make any difference and the rule is quite arbitrary. It's hard to call it a grammatical mistake, since in Polish, word order is not really that important. It's more of a stylistic thing.


They're not necessarily mistakes, as in your "bo już jadłam" example from a previous post. You have already achieved an amazing feat. Encoding a thought into the words of a foreign language, producing the words in speech and actually managing to get the other person to understand exactly what you mean is a hugely complex process, and is an amazing achievement if you succeed, even if you bend the rules a bit. And while knowing some of the rules does help one get started, nobody expects a native, let alone a non-native speaker to go exactly by the book.

Regardless, you will keep on making mistakes! Native speakers make them too like in the case of "byśmy robili" without the pronoun. Lots of native speakers too use the Genitive in place of the Accusative or decline dogs as though they were people.

Learning a language is a bit like learning to play a sport. Knowing the rules certainly helps, but no matter how well you know all the intricacies of football in theory, it won't win you the World Cup. It's only practice that makes perfect, and no-one starts off being good at a sport. In fact, we all start off being pretty bad.

Think of all the great conversations you've had with people who don't speak English as their first language and have made every mistake in the book. They were still great conversations. You still understood each other. And even if you had a misunderstanding, it was probably quite humorous. I fondly recall the many mistakes I've made while speaking Polish, some of which resulted in what I said being misinterpreted as a hilarious sexual innuendo. No doubt I will make more mistakes of the sort. It's all part of the fun, so don't sweat it.

Speak as well as you can. If you're not sure what the right word is, say the wrong word, and see what happens. It might be right after all, or someone will tell you what the right word is. And having someone tell you that in person is more memorable and useful than reading all the language books in the world.

Okay. This is part 2a. Before I cover declension in more detail, I think this part of everyday Polish can be super-difficult for learners, and here I will try to make it simpler.

MARKING DIRECT OBJECTS - THE EASY-ISH WAY

Now, this is a contentious part of Polish grammar and probably one of the most difficult parts for a beginner to get right, not because it's particularly hard in and of itself, but because the descriptions of it are so damn convoluted.

Originally, when I wrote this post, I wrote lots of what I believed were interesting things about this subject, but, to be honest, I just have a verbose writing style, and so here, I have decided to cut the crap and give it to you straight. If anyone's struggled with this part of Polish before, they've read through enough rubbish already.

Forget all the complications of whether to use the Genitive or Accusative case. Think along the lines of how to get the direct object in the correct form.

So here, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the Objective Form.

How to make the Objective Form

Here is a concise set of rules for marking the direct object of any verb.


There you have it. Now that wasn't so bad, was it?

Language / Polish Language - Basic concepts [52]

Thanks, Lyzko. I guess I should have named the thread something like "Tricks to make learning Polish easier."

Anyway, if anyone has got through the section on verbs, they will now, with the help of a dictionary, be perfectly well equipped to understand their first Polish song.

So, if you've got this far, well done! This song will hopefully demonstrate how lovely and regular the Polish past tense is, and you might even enjoy it:

Try your hand at translating this song: Kasia Klich - Będę robić nic.
youtube.com/watch?v=2kz1t1LqI-M

The lyrics are here:
tekstowo.pl/piosenka,kasia_klich,bede_robic_nic.html

FYI, "będę robić nic" means "I'll be doing nothing"

Now, so you don't spend all night wading through a dictionary, here are the verbs and their meanings. Try and figure out what their conjugated versions in the lyrics mean. You'll quickly realise that Polish doesn't have to be scary!

Language / Polish Language - Basic concepts [52]

Yup, there's more coming up. I'm really glad someone has found this useful.


That was just an introduction. I did in fact notice that I forgot to say that the direct object is put in the genitive case in negative sentences, but thanks for pointing that out. My point was that the use of cases is actually quite logical, and that people needn't be afraid of them. And you have a very good point - the genitive is by far the most important case. In fact, I wrote a bit more about verbs and intend to post about that soon, but I also intend on writing more about declension after I cover verbs.

And, before I start writing about declension again, I went through about a minute of a Polish pop song to get an idea of what cases are used most frequently in typical, casual language. Nominative, the dictionary form, was used 7 times. The accusative case was used 10 times and every time it was identical to the nominative, dictionary form. Genitive was also used 10 times, 4 times to signify the object in place of the accusative. All the other cases put together were used just 4 times. So out of 31 nouns and pronouns, 27 were either in the nominative or genitive forms.

Suffice to say, focusing your efforts on those two forms and just being aware of the others will go a very long way in Polish.

Anyway, I speak from the point of view of a non-native speaker who speaks Polish well enough to pass for a native speaker much of the time, though not always, and even then, my Polish is considered very good. I would like to help give other English speakers who may be struggling the foundations necessary to be able to understand the language and to be able to communicate in it comfortably and effectively, without overloading them with unnecessary complexity that would only stop them from getting off the ground. The highest levels of any language are not acquired by rule-learning, but by daily language use.

To be absolutely honest, I myself didn't actually know that the form was "ustąpić komuś czegoś" instead of "ustąpić komuś coś", so that would most likely belong in a thread called "Polish Language - Advanced concepts." This is most likely since the word isn't used that often, and when it is, it's usually used with "miejsca", and the phonetic difference between that and "miejsce" isn't that great. However, even if I used the grammatically incorrect accusative form in speech, I would still be understood just fine, and, chances are, nobody would notice.

All language learners are going to make mistakes. Not just non-native speakers, but children as well. That's what the whole learning process is about. I can't teach anyone university-level Polish, since I myself haven't reached such an advanced level of proficiency. But I have successfully managed to get a hang of the language, so I can hopefully give some useful insight from an English speaker's perspective.

Okay, so here's part two of my massively simplified, but still quite accurate description of how Polish works. In part three, I will try and deal with declension in more detail. And maybe there will be a part four on some strategies to put it all together and get it into your brain reasonably quick so that it becomes second nature, without getting too frustrated or bored to death.

VERBS IN MORE DETAIL - REDUCING MEMORY LOAD

Okay, now I'll be assuming you at least have a vague idea of what conjugation is and how it works, even if you can't conjugate a single Polish verb.

So, assuming you'd like to learn how to do this seemingly impossible feat, please don't waste your time staring at conjugation/declension tables. It's not going to help.

In fact, it's going to be counterproductive. Instead of learning lots of new words, you'll have wasted time learning 20 variations of the same word, many of which are hardly ever used, and when push comes to shove, you'll be none the wiser, because your head is filled with way too much unnecessary information.

Use what you already know instead of relearning the same thing over and over again. Don't try to learn everything at once. Just learn the most common and useful forms, and you can cross the bridge when you come to it as far as the less frequent forms are concerned. That said, there really aren't that many forms to learn, so if you're feeling really dedicated, you can try and learn it all in one go, but it's only through frequent use that they actually start to mean anything to you on a subconscious level, so my advice is to take it easy.

Now, let me introduce you to some secrets of this seemingly impossible irregular conjugation system. The problem is that grammarians want you to be able to work out all the possible forms from knowing just the infinitive. That might work in Italian, but it doesn't work in Polish. So by trying to fit the Polish language into an Italian-shaped hole, they end up introducing millions of incomprehensible rules to take into account historical sound changes from over a thousand years ago. And still fail and end up with a million exceptions.

Remembering irregular Polish verbs the easy way

I'm going to make a very bold proposition here:

There is an easy way. An easier way, anyway. In fact, despite the irregularities, it's probably easier than Italian or Spanish, because you don't need to know half as many suffixes.

To know how to make all the tenses of "pisać", all you really need to know is:


If a verb is very irregular, such as "prać", all you need to know to be able to conjugate it perfectly is:


Another seemingly horrible verb is "jechać." But you can make all the possible tenses perfectly knowing just this:


Apart from just a few exceptions, most notably with the word, "iść" and derivatives, the past and conditional tenses in Polish are very, very regular, so you can easily derive them from the infinitives. Where it is irregular, learning one or two extra words will help you derive the rest. But generally, the past tenses are quite nice and friendly and regular.

Yes. Regular. In Polish. I said it!

This doesn't mean easy, but it means easier. Learning a new language is always hard. As children, we take to it naturally and start using it without thinking why things are the way they are. But as adults, we find it difficult to accept new information uncritically, so seeing the logic in it helps a lot. I refer to the Romance languages a lot because I have in fact learnt Spanish. I could probably write a whole 'nother post about the easy way to remember Spanish verb endings, but that's not what this one is about. When it comes to verbs, though, I can honestly say that I believe that Polish is less taxing in terms of how much you have to remember.

The nonpast conjugation can seem like a pain, but here's how it works:

Much of the time, you only need to know the "he/she/it" form to make all the other forms. They just take the suffix you would expect.

Now, a quick recap of what the suffixes are:

The suffix for "I" is ę or m
The suffix for "you" is sz
The suffix for "we" is my
The suffix for "you (pl.) is cie
The suffix for "they" is ą

Here's an example for pisać:


And the past tense is very regular. Whereas the non-past is based on the "he/she/it" form, the past is based on the infinitive.


That's all the hard work done. If you need a different tense, all you need is to add the prefix na- or the word będę to the past form.

You only need to bother learning the "I" form separately if it's different, in which case the "they" form will be different too. Even then, it's going to be similar, perhaps lacking palatisation in the form of the letter 'i' or something. And the difference between the "I" and "they" forms is almost always just swapping the "ę" for an "ą" or the "m" for a "ją".

Let's try the non-past of jechać knowing the "I" and "he/she/it" forms alone:


In fact, I'm having a hard time trying to find exceptions to the above patterns. One I can think of is "ja dam" and "oni dadzą". But exceptions really aren't that common, and if they're there, they're very minor.

I know this might still seem complicated, but hopefully, knowing this will help you reduce your memory load by a factor of between 5 and 5 billion. And if you already know a few words, you'll notice that, for example, "prać" follows the exact same pattern as "brać," reducing your memory load still further. It really doesn't help knowing that it uses conjugation form 14d(iii) or whatever grammarians might have called it. If you already know "prać", you know "brać", and once you get the hang of the most common verbs, all the rest work pretty much by analogy.

Don't worry if you make a mistake and say "piszem" instead of "piszę". Chances are, nobody will even notice.

Feel free to use personal pronouns

Polish is technically a pro-drop language, much like Spanish or Italian. That means that since the verb already says who's doing what, you don't have to repeat the fact with an additional pronoun that says "I" or "you" or whatever.

But Polish doesn't really care if you do repeat it or not. It can be used for emphasis, but it doesn't have to be. You'll often hear Poles saying "ja mam" instead of "mam" simply because it actually doesn't at all matter which form you use.

If it makes it easier for you, don't let anyone dissuade you from using personal pronouns just like you would in English. It sounds quite alright, especially in speech. Poles do it all the time, why shouldn't you? The importance of whether you say "ja muszę iść" or just "muszę iść" in terms of intelligibility is about on the same level as how you pronounce "neither" in English. I say "neether". Maybe you say "nyther". It doesn't matter. Either one is fine.

And if you make a mistake and say "ja bierzę" instead of "ja biorę", you will be understood just fine thanks to the pronoun. It might also help cement the patterns ja goes with -ę/-m, ty goes with -sz, my goes with -my, wy goes with -cie and oni goes with -ą in your mind. Once that happens, you'll probably find you drop the pronoun naturally in the same places that Poles do, to save a syllable out of pure laziness.

Long words aren't really long words

The conditional word, "wyobrazilibyśmy" (we would imagine) might look scary. But it can also be written "my byśmy wyobrazili," because "byśmy" is the part that actually means "we would", and joining it to the preceding verb is just a spelling convention. It's still pronounced as though "wyobrazili" were written separately, and in fact the stress falls on the penultimate syllable of "wyobrazili" in "wyobrazilibyśmy".

In fact, "wyobrazilibyśmy" is actually three words. "Wyobrazili" ("imagined"), "by" ("would") and "śmy" (the last part of "jesteśmy," "we are"). So it's like writing wewouldimagine in English. Yes, it's long. But the information it contains isn't overly complex.

If you also notice that "obraz" means "image" and "wyobrazić" means "to imagine", it might make even more sense.

NB: you say "wyobraziłbym sobie" (because "I would imagine" works a bit like saying something like, "I would make a mental image for myself")

Reflexive verbs are just the way you smile in Polish

Now, if you know French, German, Spanish or Italian, reflexive verbs will make perfect sense to you. If you only know English, they might seem a bit odd, but the way they work is actually quite easy.

"się" means "oneself" or "one another". That's it. It's actually just the short form of the word "siebie," although the two are not interchangeable (though perhaps in the distant past they were).

Where in English you might say something like, "I am interested in something," Polish might say, "interesuję się czymś" (I interest myself with something). Americans say they "wait in line". Brits say they "queue up". It's the same thing.

Similarly, whereas in English you might say, "I'm having a bath," a Pole will say, "kąpię się" (I am bathing myself).

Sometimes, it's not so clear-cut. Poles say, "uśmiecham się". "I smile myself"? What? Well, if you like, you can think of it as "I make myself smile" or "I en-smile-en myself." Americans and Brits smile. Poles ensmilen themselves. Same thing.

Poles might also say, "czuję się źle" (I feel bad). In Spanish, you would also use a reflexive construction, "me siento mal." Translated literally into English, it means, "I feel myself bad." What can I say? That's just the way they say it.

That's it
I think that's enough about verbs. If you can get your head around this much, you will be the king or queen of conjugation and you will be able to impress your friends with the seeming ease that you are able to master what they themselves consider to be the incomprehensible idiosyncracies of their own language. Hopefully, this has been helpful. Next time, I'll try and cover declension in a little bit more detail.

WARNING: ADVANCED INFORMATION
Now, I hesitate to include this, but for the sake of completeness, this might be useful if you're already on your way to becoming a conjugation master.

While 95% of the time, the Polish past tense is regular or almost regular and at most, you might have a slight change in vowel (widzieć - widział) which no beginner needs to worry about and is something that's best left to be picked up naturally, there is some method in the madness for the other 5%, so if you're tackling these more difficult ones, this might help:

Language / Quick question on Polish language fundamental [40]

Lol, I've spent a lot of time tearing my hear out about these very same questions, and it usually turned out that the answer was a lot simpler than it first seemed :)

Language / Quick question on Polish language fundamental [40]


Of course it can't be that simple. It's simpler! :D As a side note, I imagine that historically, gdy probably appeared as an abbreviation of kiedy, and in the closely-related Czech, the word for both is kdy.

As a rule of thumb, gdy tends to correspond quite closely to English while or as. On the other hand, kiedy usually corresponds quite closely with English when, but it's a forgiving word, and can also be used in both senses. So if while and when both make sense in English, kiedy and gdy will generally both make sense in Polish too.

So, saying, "While is the wedding?" in English wouldn't make much sense. Saying "Gdy jest ślub?" in Polish could also be met with a blank stare for the same reason, or it could be misinterpreted as a statement of surprise, "[You want to do that] while the wedding is going on!?"

On the other hand, "While I was a teenager, I used to babysit" still sort of makes sense in English, though English prefers to use when in this context, whereas Polish isn't fussy. In fact, it might sometimes prefer to use gdy or while where English would prefer to use when, but the two are quite often interchangeable. There may be a stylistic preference of one word over the other in certain situations, and as zetigrek said, gdy can sometimes sound a little more posh, but usually, it's hardly a noticeable difference.

Generally speaking, kiedy is the safer word to use, since it means both while and when. You don't usually have to use gdy except in set phrases, such as podczas gdy ("whilst", "at the same time as"), w przypadku gdy ("in the event that").

Don't let the related word, gdyby (the "if" in "if...would" sentences) confuse you. There is no corresponding "kiedyby" form. Only gdyby exists.

And since I've brought it up, and to clear up any confusion before it arises, the difference between the two Polish ifs is as follows:

gdyby is used in "if...would" sentences:
"Gdybym była bogata, jadłabym kawior na śniadanie."
"If I were rich, I would eat caviar for breakfast."

you could also switch things around and say:
"Jadłabym kawior na śniadanie, gdybym była bogata."
"I would eat caviar for breakfast, if I were rich."

Notice, that in English, "if...would" sentences are a special case too. Good English grammar requires the use of "If I were" instead of "If I was" or "If I would be," and the verb must be in the past tense. In fact, both Polish and English require the verb to be in the past tense, but Polish also uses a different word for "if" altogether.

In plain old "if" sentences that don't use the word "would", you use jeżeli or jeśli (their usage is identical. Jeżeli is a little bit more posh):

"Jeśli spadnie deszcz, zostanę w domu."
"If it rains, I will stay at home."

tl;dr

gdy means while
kiedy means when or while

Life / Is it me or do people "seem" to live longer in Poland? Life expectancy among Poles. [52]

Blah, who needs to live long anyway? Much of the increase in life expectancy is spent just taking pills that allow you to be sick for longer but not die. Sure, it'd be nice to be active and limber at 80, but chances are you won't be, and your brain will be ever so slightly mushier every time the abusive black nurse in the care home comes to change your bed sheets.

There's all that hooplah about tobacco, alcohol and hydrogenated fats giving you lung/liver/heart disease. They're pretty damn good at preventing old age, though. We're all going to die anyway, and unless you win the genetic lottery and are exceedingly lucky, you're probably better off kicking the bucket when you're 70 than spending another 20 years being increasingly sick, immobile and lonely.

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


This is a new phenomenon and is partly related to globalisation and the transfer of production to the Far East. Who knows how long this situation will last? Perhaps it will continue and things will get worse. Or maybe the world will rebalance in the future. I'm not clairvoyant and can't predict how things will pan out.


I agree with you. But drug and alcohol abuse are not limited solely to the lower and middle social strata. And if Poland and other European nations are inevitably going to go extinct, I guess they might as well go out with a bang.

I propose that it's better to try and do something than to sit idly by for fear of unintended consequences. Unintended consequences can at least be reversed in part, whereas if you continue on the road to extinction, you eventually reach a point where there is no turning back.

Life / The unacceptable side of Polish culture [48]

jdthebrit

JD, while you may have grown up in a lovely cottage in Devon, I don't think you realise that this sort of sh*te goes on every Friday night in British cities too, infamously oop north, and Brits are themselves notorious for being badly-behaved abroad.

Indifference too is becoming common in all western nations, and perhaps has always been there. I haven't lived long enough to know. I don't have an objective scale with which I could measure who is worse. Even if Poles were worse, it's just a telling sign of how sh*tty their culture has become, with Brits trailing but slightly, and thus losing their right to brag about their good behaviour.

I admire your courage for stepping in. Well done. This holier-than-thou attitude, though, really doesn't help.

Life / Internet connecting in Olsztyn and Warsaw? [7]

Formerly state-owned Telekomunikacja Polska was bought out by Orange, a subsidiary of the partly state-owned France Télécom.

UK, Ireland / Irish, married to a Polish woman, considering moving to Poland - Rzeszow [11]

If you're reasonably well-to-do in Ireland and own your own home outright (or have a reasonably low mortgage), then I'd rent it out and move in an instant, and perhaps teach English part-time as a hobby for some extra cash. You'd be able to have a much better quality of life with a fairly modest Irish income. Poland could be a wonderful place to live if this is an option for you, and southern Poland is possibly my favourite part of the country on account of its pleasant climate (this is, of course, quite subjective), natural beauty and cultural richness. But, if you need to make money in Poland, you need to look into securing a job beforehand - there's a reason it's seen such an exodus of people, and that's the fact that economic conditions, though not exactly atrocious, are very much inferior to those of Western Europe.

Now, you could potentially work in a multinational company and earn a good salary knowing English alone, but you'd be more likely to find such opportunities in Kraków than in Rzeszów. Teaching English is certainly an option, although I haven't looked into how much it pays. If it does pay sufficiently, you could look into investing in a relevant qualification in Ireland. It shouldn't be too difficult, time-consuming or expensive.

Most people in Poland don't speak English or speak it poorly, so in the long run, learning at least conversational Polish is a must. While not the easiest language in the world, claims of it being an incredibly difficult language are overblown. It's got five tenses (as opposed to at least a dozen in English), and much of what the scary Slavic case system is really about is just replacing some prepositions with suffixes ("Michałowi" = "to Michał", "nożem" = "with a knife").

And Poland is not Japan. You can hop on a plane and be back in Ireland in no time, and it won't cost you very much.