Is Polish an easy language to learn and is there a way of learning it easily?

Try telling that to the average pupil of English! Most often, one hears either vulgarity maskerading as "communicativeness" read "naturalness", or, the 'stilted precision' you mention; there seems precious little in betweenLOL

I don't hear that at all - just people speaking a second language. If itisn't your first language, there's no reason whatsoever to speak it like a native.

as if i wasn't doing that simultaneously? i lived in Poland for 4 years and during that time, i had plenty of immersion. i watched polish movies, watched the news, spoke with polish friends, translated texts, read polish news websites....i did it all, man. i just chose to study grammar hard to make sure that as i learned more phrases and vocab, i didn't get caught butchering said phrases and vocab with sloppy, really "foreigner" sounding grammar. it's not how I roll :)

you always have a better, longer lasting home with a solid foundation underneath you. i look at language learning similarly.

If you managed to learn the grammar in four years then that's amazing.

Personally, I don't see how 'foreigner sounding grammar' is avoidable.

You are, after all, a 'foreigner'.

I actually couldn't concur with you more, Jon. My ire though is raised when, for example, various European nationalities in particular (and I think we all know which ones!!) appear on the one hand to blatantly discourage foreign visitors from attempting to speak their language, claiming that it sounds awful, at the same time, being encouraged by tongue-tied foreigners to by all means speak English, even though the English that person is speaking is usually MISspoken, hence, the double-standard; it's okay for Norwegians, as one example, to try to mimic the "cool" American idiom with some success, but it's somehow not okay for, say, an American of some language talent to try to mimic native Norwegian speech.

Something's cockeyed about this logic.

Your English is very odd.

Academic, I think you mean. For either a foreign-born, non-native English speaker, or most people under thirty, maybe so. For educated, over fourty, native-born speakers of North American Standard, I beg seriously to differ!

Spot on.

There seems to be (in the case of a country not unconnected to this forum) a kind of inferiority complex about their language - considering (or pretending to consider) it to be impenetrable while claiming mastery of other languages that they mangle. You get the same with Welsh, Irish, Scots Gaelic speakers too - as much to do with history as the structure or vocabulary of the language.

One of the crazier things is people insisting on speaking English, even though their English is far worse than your Polish.

Polish isn't hard at all - there isn't however any particularly well-developed register in the language for non-natives as there is for, say, English or French.

Aptly stated, old man! Spot on as well.

True.


Not true. Polish is hard. I can compare it with Welsh.

Welsh simply appears difficult. Its grammar, however, can be learnt in a few months. That's not true with Polish.


But eventually you will almost always end up speaking the language it is easiest to communicate in.


Or your language skills aren't sufficiently advanced for you to recognise nuances of register in Polish.


No, I mean it sounds pretentious and unnatural.


I'm an educated native speaker over forty.

Then I must take issue with your observation/opinion:-)

One person's pretension is another's effortless fluidity and erudite expression.

Polish is "hard" only relative to one's ability in the language, that's all.

Szczecinianin, the language "easiest" to communicate in though, may not necessarily be the language that is spoken best. The interlocutor's refusal therefore may result in a mere approximation instead of a seemless transference of ideas. Where once, a Polish or other scientist coming to the States might have hired out an interpreter to speak through a more fluent mouthpiece, nowadays, that same scientist prefers to mangle the English language instead:-)

Is Polish an easy language to learn and is there a way of learning it easily?

The easiest of them all. Even toddlers can learn it - and you can find many living examples of that fact.

You give the impression of trying too hard. You seem to be far more interested in showing off your knowledge than in actual communication. Good language skills mean being clear and concise rather than verbose. I once read that in Polish it is the writer who is more important whereas in English it is the reader. I believe there is some truth in that observation.

that is not academic sorry, it is pretentious guff.

Dzięki Szczecinianin i Fuzzywickets. I take on board what you are both saying and I have tried lots of different approaches to learning Polish.

I am OK in shops and restaurants etc where I know the context of the conversation, still not brilliant. Not living in Poland made it much harder.

I am now living in Lodz, well will be from 20 November after I finish these Microsoft IT courses.
I have organised for a 4 week course at the University so this should help too.

I will then start looking for a job in the IT field in Lodz.

They are; there isn't such a register currently used in PL. The nearest thing I suppose would be Lwow Polish - very easy to recognise - not just because of the accent.


This is very true. Though there are always surprises..

Fairly obviously, there are more and less formal ways of speaking Polish. Just as in any other language.

Szczeczinianin, your comments are as much a reflection of the times we live in as they are of my posts. As expectation levels of language and culture have declined over the past half century or so, what was not to long ago deemed witty, enjoyable and well written, is now perceived (incorrectly, I might add!) as stuffy, pretentious and silly.

Sadly, we're living in a garden of saplings where once a forest of mighty Redwoods blossomed. Polish of today in movies ("Zmróż oczy") is scarcely comparable with that of "Popiół i diamanty", the English of "Perry Mason" on US TV some fifty years ago is so far superior in both acting as well as dialogue compared with nowadays, it's practically as joke to compare the two!

I find it difficult to speak polish even had lived here now for 6 years. Firstly you go to a shop or somewhere and you ask for something in Polish and if they speak english, more then often they will answer you in English. 2nd'ly most poles are wanting to speak english too because they have, had or currently learning it, or lived in say Uk or Ireland and haven't had a chance to speak english for a while.

Now my kid if 3 though i am finding it easier to learn, and i guess, trying to learn like a kid...but in comparison to a kid, he is picking up 2 lingos without effort.

Absolutely - and since independence (after which regionalism was frowned upon) and the post-war movements to areas that were ethnically cleansed there's been a homogenisation of dialects unfortunately.If you like, an estuarisation. But, as I said originally, their isn't a register of Polish which is specifically a second language.

Yet.

People said much the same about standards declining in the ancient world. You are not writing in a register appropriate for this forum. Therefore, you come across as 'pretentious'.

However, it's up to you, I suppose.

And for what forum, pray tell, would my comments be appropriate? On the contrary, the truth often seems threatening, i.e "pretentious" to those who'd just assume settle for second best! Up until round about 1970, ball park, news broadcasters on TV, e.g. the late, great Charles Collingwood, Walter Cronkite etc.. would interview guests, and one of them i particular (John Stevenson) would even gently but audibly recast a guest's faulty grammar for the purposes of bothe aesthetics as well as clarity.

Where are such men today?

Rotting away in cemeteries, I'd imagine.

....hopefully leaving their legacies to the rest of us clever ones from which we all may benefit:-)

You are confusing verbosity with cleverness.

I did the same, good luck with that. After you learn the basics on you own, I would recommend you the "Polonicum" summer courses at the Warsaw University, it's rather cheap for the good quality of the lessons, and they provide a dormitory accommodation : polonicum.uw.edu.pl/indexpl.php?lang=en

Some people learn Polish for very different reasons there: I even remember a Japanese guy learning Polish just for the love he had for Chopin's music.

By the way, as a French speaker, I found Polish way easier than German, for various reasons:
-Polish has a huge amount of French loanwords.
-the phrasal structure is very simple in Polish. In German, the verb changes its place all the time, and most of the time you have to wait to the very last word of a sentence to understand its whole meaning.

-in German you have to learn the gender of every single word (der/die/das) whereas it comes by itself in Polish as the gender depends from the last letter (-a is feminine, -o and -e are neutral, etc).

As for English, it's only considered as an "easy" language because of its huge influence both culturally en economically. But honestly speaking, the hardest part in English would be the pronunciation, which is absolutely irregular. Ask a beginner in English to pronounce the word "archive" for instance. As you see, it really differs from "achieve".

Same for other words like "tough/thought/though".
Listen at this poem and tell me if the English pronunciation is something easy to master: youtube.com/watch?v=m-JDu3o7Cyw
At least, the pronunciation is regular in Polish: you pronounce every word the way it's spelled.

It is an 'easy' language.

We don't have cases or genders and very few declinations.

Of course, one or two aspects are 'difficult'. However, if you were to take (say) a Japanese person who knew nothing of either language, I feel confident he or she would learn English far quicker than Polish because of its comparative simplicity.

Horses for courses. A native speaker of French may find that taxing, however remembering a bit of pronunciation is as nothing compared to gender-based languages like French. Especially when thay are like French, completely illogical. Le vagin for example - what's masculine about a lady's trou?

And in Polish, mężczyzna is spelled as a feminine word.
Btw, grammatical genders are not that hard in French since 99% of the words ending with -on or -e are feminine, the rest is masculine.

And in Polish, a person is feminine and a door is plural - not actually that hard to remember, especially once you've got your head round it.

Although I'm a francophile, things like le fauteuil/la chaise and le chateau/la maison only seem to make sense if you don't mind a. setting aside logic (and egalite) or b. your name's ZIMMY. The English language is far from perfect - it is however very egalitarian as well as both logical and almost infinitely flexible.