Among the Indo-European family, Baltic languages are on a par with Slavic languages both in terms of their apparent inscrutability to outsiders as well as their morphological conservatism, i.e. their propensity for retaining vestigial forms in their language, sort of the like the prehensile tail of certain contemporary fauna!
Among the Slavic sub-group, Polish is certainly among the most phonologically as well as morphologically complex.
Analogies on a scale of "difficulty" in this forum with Welsh, for example, are indeed accurate:-)
Merged: Do you enjoy learning Polish compared with other languages?
Just wondering whether people who are learning Polish enjoy it more than learning other languages because I really do. I think it's the best language I've learned. It is difficult but it's still my favorite. If not Polish, what has been your favorite language to learn?
If not Polish, what has been your favorite language to learn?
French seemed easier because of it's close association with English vocabulary. Not sure I can use the term "favorite" but Polish is much more of a challenge and that I enjoy.
If you want to learn Polish, I invite you to my blog: startpolish:blogspot I have no motivation to practice my English (I really need help ;) ) so we can help each other. Greetings from Poland!
Last time I used Google translate, someone told me it had written my words as if I were a female writing them.
Few years back i've been told by my mate's supervisor that his wife was studying Polish for about 2 years. Several months later, before Christmass, i've got best wishes she sent in a sms. It was quite long. Apparent use of google translate. I knew all the words in it but it was just a babbling. 90+% of texts translated with a use of tools such as google's engine are almost completely impossible to apprehend to me, especially when one tries to use some nice, sophisticated wording. This is why i agree with Fuzzywickets that at least basic (or even intermediate) knowledge of Polish grammar is essential right from the start.
Yes and no. On the one hand, too much grammar immersion in the beginning may scare off all but the most serious student of Polish! On the other hand, it is admittedly difficult (if not seemingly a Sysyphysian labor) to learn the declensions, conjugation patterns, counting etc. just from listening to conversation on the street.
My great grandmother came from Poland and I always wanted to learn Polish language. I never thought it would be that easy for me to learn Polish. I always make jokes about Polish language running in my veins ;) I discovered that learning Polish is a great experience. Teachers showed me how to learn efficiently. My pronounciation improved rapidly with their help.
I don't think Polish is easy, but no language is " easy ". It's only as easy as you make it. If you have some serious motivations to learn Polish, you will do " easy " learning it. To learn it for your ancestors is a good reason, and it will motivate you.
But don't expect to be fluent in a years time. It might take much longer than expected, especially when you haven't learnt any other language before up to a fluent-base.
@Labrador: of course, no language is easy and no language is hard! It all depends upon first of all one's native language and also of one's experience in language learning (it is well known that 2nd language is "easier" than the 1st, that the 3rd language is "easier" than 2nd etc etc..).
As a French native, I can also understand a lot in other Latin languages withOUT having studied them (only Italian for 2 years, centuries ago and mostly forgotten).
As to someone (obviously not educated) claiming a lot of French words look like "English", it is so BECAUSE English is made up of at least 40% French words (some have of course changed their meanings over the centuries and it is the same for instance for the numerous French words also in the Polish language (of course spelled Polish way).
As Victor Hugo rightly said "open a school, and you'll close a prison". Lack of education and ignorance lead to disaster....
As most Americans are grossly UNDEReducated in the matter of foreign language (not to mention their own) and have usually never been required to study either Latin or Greek, most have zero understanding of case, syntax or register:-)
While nothing particularly "new", if anything, it's gotten much worse with the advent of digital technology aka i-Phones ("idiot"Phones for longLOL) etc..,hard on the heels of the TV-generation of eternal couch potatoes, deadening their brains in mindless garbage!!
Europe might not be all that much better, but it surely can't be a damned sight worse.
The US has got a population of 322,369,319 humans. How can you even claim, most of them would be " grossly UNDEReducated " This means you would have to know more than 60 % of all American's to even build an opinion about them, at least when it comes to things like education.
Such claims are just arrogant and stupid. I've lived in Canada, near the U.S border, so I had quite some contact with the yankees. I haven't met many who were " under-educated " most I've met were well informed about history,geography & languages.
Labrador, as you must already be well aware, Canada has in general a far higher level of standard schooling than the US! It is therefore relatively pointless to compare our two countries. If what you mean by your statement is that I'm guilty of generalizing, you are probably correct.
Don't forget, generalizations are merely inherent truths that have overstayed their welcome:-) You mentioned you live in the UK. Surely, the number of British native speakers of RP has dwindled considerably over the past several decades.
As far as learning a foreign language, in order to sound at least "educated", a familiarity with structure as well as proverbs from a language is key.
tbh i dont think polish is hard its how its pronouced which makes it hard to say i love poland and the polish language i myself is learning it and i find that if you have any polish friends ask them to help you out or if you dont have polish friends try downloading language apps hopefully it will help you thats what i do and ps sometimes google transulate isnt always right or makes any sense.
