That's as intelligent a reason as any:-)) Do it and see the reward in the long run! Conversely, wouldn't you expect Poles to learn some of YOUR language if they've decided not merely to go to/visit, but to WORK in your country??
Thanks Lyzko. I get it all the time watch use is Polish bla bla bla, and i said well alot to me actually as i reguarly visit the country and cant expect everyone to speak englidh, i like the people and country and want to work there, so for me as usefull as Englsih, then they have nothing to say. I'm one of them people that don't care what people think, it's my life :-)
To many English speaking people expect the world to speak and learn englsih
Of course, learning is always good, and practical applications should not be only reasons. I still think that in, oh, I don't know... conservatively, in 4-5 generations, everyone in Poland will be able to speak English. And many other countries, as well. Not sure what are you talking about, lyzko, but, to each its own.
This carefully crafted myth about universal English or "Globish" is as much rubbish as the Francophone daymares of a certain French politician decades ago, who envisioned an entirely French-speaking world, dominated (of course!!) by France, then extending down to her myriad colonies througout the various continents:-)
It's a ridiculous to suggest the latter, as it is to initmiate that ANY language for that matter, will dominate! For a single tongue to dominate, that would logically mean a uniform culture would have to PRE-dominate as well.
Don't know 'bout y'all, f-Stop & Co., but to me, that's just friggin' SCARY!!!
Fez, once again, you're being smart! No, you can't and shouldn't expect everybody abroad to communicate in your mother tongue exclusively. That's stupid! You can't bank on much of anything, particularly with English nowadays, other than the chances are good that if your interlocutor isn't particularly good at languages, they'll get it wrong every timeLOL
Lyzko i must admit i didnt know what to expect from Poland when i first went but i was pleasantly surprised and du to my ignorance surprised out how many people didnt speak english lol
Yeah just was my first time there and at that point i didn't know anything about Poland and i think i was one of them people who thought everone spoke English at the time lol i was younger and ignorant haha
Only so long as you grow INTO your maturity and OUTgrow your ignorance
My experience here in the States, is that those who speak practically flawless, unaccented and idomatically perfect, natural and aesthetic American English, are exclusiely visitors to this country who have spent years prepping and studying our culture, and not immigrants, many of whom typically speak as badly on day one as on day one-thousand-and-one.
Okay then, in Wajda, Andrzejewski, Wanda Jakobowska in cinema, Iwaszkiewicz, Tuwim, Herbert, Mróżek, Miłosz in literature, Kantor and Grotowski in legitimate theater and Szymanowski in music....
The point is and was that the reasons for learning Polish or any language is to understand the culture of the country. As culture goes deeper than language, you basically CAN'T therefore understand one without the other; they're intertwined, that's all! Learning English based solely on dumb, present-day sit-coms, sub-mental survivor shows etc... is pointless. More useful might be to go back into the golden age of American popular culture and glean English from a truly rich minefield, instead of drilling energetically where there's no ore at all!
The part about learning the culture is fine. But the moment you start trashing English and assume Polish is superior, you loose me completely. I don't know why you compare classic Polish arts to present day English/American sit-coms. Are you under the impression that Poland does not have trash TV or England, worthy classics?
1.You're moving to Poland for good or for a longer period of time. 2.Your wife or hubby is Polish or just because you want to show some respect to Polish people while in Poland.
You can understand Polish people better and it allows you to come into contact with more Polish people which helps break any stereotypical ideas that you have about them, but this works for any language I am sure.
It also allows you to be able to read more books and do other stuff where you need to be able to understand some polish. If you like a certain genre now you have access to a whole other heap of it in another language.
It is also a language where you can learn about declensions etc. I never knew declensions existed until a good while after I started learning some polish.
Undone, I mean that the amount of poor English allowed unchecked into our common everyday parlance has increased exponentially over that the past decades to the point that standard English is no longer recognizable as such. Don't therefore expect Poles or others to speak it well if we ourselves have such an abysmal command of it:-)
A bit declasse your comment, Marcelo, but I've got to agree! There's often little more compelling purpose to learning a foreign language than ensuring that one knows when one's being trashed (..albeit with a broad smile and polite gestures):-)))))
Japanese, for example, are past masters of the deadly dagger in the back, yet smiling as the blade goes in!
The reason for learning any language, as we've kept saying, is to communicate effectively and intelligibly with native speakers of that language group, without necessarily having to lapse into English, which the other person may or may not understand sufficiently:-)
How much more obvious a reason could there possibly be???
If by "fluent" you mean "without assistance of any kind, hmmm, I'd have to say German, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Polish, Spanish (though mostly in a survival context)! My skills in, say, Russian, Turkish or several others I'd SCARCELY ever call fluent, if only because my ability in those languages is quite limited:-)
