WHY THE HELL CANT I LEARN POLISH??

Amazing really...i have spent the last god know how many months here and as of yet i know exactly 12 polish words...I can understand what people are saying to me(bits and pieces) but i can speak it at all...the only sentence i know(and i fear its not right) is to tell a girl she is beautiful (jestes ladna...i think)....I TRY everyday im learning these sentences and using them and waking up next morning not remembering one bloody word...i can speak more french(uni classes where i never go) then polish and i spend the entire day with my polish friends...im going mad...i love this place and if i cant learn the language its gonna be a problem...do all foreigners have this problem(to this degree i mean)..?

Yes,,

All in good time my friend.

While continuing to learn the language (but not too intensely, I should add), you should leave it to your brain to work out this competence and come up with it in its own time. My wife who as a girl used to hear people speaking Croatian at her Polish home, started to speak this language all of a sudden after several months of listening to it.

Hm... try to put liquids off in the evening ;-)

Ok, sorry, I couldn't resist... Yes, from what I've heard almost every non slavic foreigner has problems with polish.

you should watch polish cartoons as the cartoons are design for children with easy basic words, it's like learning language again duplicate the same method as first time you learn to speak.

You need to practice your Polish every day :

Practice makes perfect! It gets easier, trust me!

okay thats sounds encouraging i spose...


haha tried that too but i thnk liquids actually help... ;-D

I know exactly how you feel. I hate sitting on the bus hearing some 2-year old coming up with more complex sentences than I ever could've. And they even get the inflections right. It's not fair!! ;)

I don't know how long it would take for an average adult Germanic or Romance language speaker who comes to Poland to start speaking Polish at a decent level, but I would suspect at least 4-5 years or even more. Although I'm sure it's possible to spend a lifetime hear without learning the language properly. Everyone says exposure is the key to learning a language, which is probably true. In the case of Polish it might not even be enough, though.

I fear Polish is the kind of language you simply need to learn as a child, because later it might be too late to "mould" the brain into thinking "po polsku". To use a very poor anology: So far in life a small workshop has been formed in your head with all the equipment, tools etc needed to build rowing boats, and now suddenly you have to start building ocean liners... Needless to say, you need to tear down everything, level a few square kilometres of ground and build a huge shipyard in your brain... ;)

If you tell yourself that you will never learn Polish, you will not pick up phrases or learn anything else.

OF COURSE it's possible to learn Polish!

1. Get a good Polish language book. - This is very important!
2. Talk to people every day in Polish. In the beginning for a short time with very easy sentences.
3. Listen to Polish music and Google the lyrics, translate and compare.
4. Read easy texts.
5. Try to find Polish movies with English subtitles.

Good Luck!

Good luck indeed. ;)

Judging from the style of your writing, you might be troubled with some serious blockades preventing you from acquiring foreign languages, especially ones as difficult as Polish.


Polonia Channel used to show such films:

That's 11 more than I know, but the one word I know is magic. It's "piwo", and it works wonders everywhere I go. When somebody asks me how I am, I say piwo and they smile. When I go to my favorite (yeah, I'm American) kiosk and say piwo, I get my Gauloises cigarettes. When I have to take a train, bus or tram, I just say piwo and I get a ticket to my destination. And when I'm in a pub and say piwo, voila and there's a beer in front of me.

Trust me on this one. You don't need to learn Polish. Just say piwo and the world smiles with you.

Not very helpful I'm afraid.

I really must say I pity deaf people in Poland. They can only dream about watching movies.

If you want to try to learn some stuff fast i recommend for you somthing called Michel thomas method. Its a very good audio course to get to use to how Polish sentences are constructed and at the same time you learn new words very fast and how grammar in polish works. Only downside can be that you have to know some english ofcourse to use it.

Hope this tip will help you.

I said used to because I don`t watch TV and didn`t know if it still works.

But it does: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TVP_Polonia

TVP Polonia (also known as TV Polonia or Telewizja Polonia) is the international channel of the Telewizja Polska (TVP). The channel is co-funded by the TVP and the Polish Ministry for Foreign Affairs and broadcasts from the TVP headquarters in Warsaw. TVP Polonia is targeted at Polish-speaking audiences outside of Poland, and it broadcasts many of the shows also broadcast by TVP's domestic channels in addition to news from Polonia/Polish communities around the world.

TVP Polonia is available on cable networks in Poland, the United States, Germany, Canada, Italy and elsewhere. In Lithuania it is available using a normal TV aerial. It is also transmitted free to air from Astra 1KR satellite[2]. Some of the shows are translated into English

I know, I mean the opposite, English movie with Polish subtitle. It's nice to go to the cinema as well.


So far I have not met one single person who learned how grammar works from an audio course. You must learn the structures.

I've been learning for over a year, and I move to Poland next month. I can say short sentences, but I can understand much more than I can say. I recently got a tutor who will only speak to me in Polish (Trust me this helps), she says that I've spent too much time just concentrating on grammar and not enough just speaking and listening. I've picked up lots of phrases and short sentences just listening to my girlfriend speaking to her friends.

It will happen, just lots and lots of practice and being forced to speak Polish. I know that once I've moved to Poland, I will have no choice but to speak ;-).

I don't think it's up to date, or this is something very rare. I've never seen any movie with English subtitles on that channel.

This is the best way to learn a language. Speak only Polish, and you will learn quickly. Difficult in the beginning.

It's not that rare actually - I've spotted a few old films with English subtitles on there!

In Chicago, from 8am - 10am; 8pm - 10pm , & again 12am - 2am, WCIU-DT 26.6 (or real channel 27.6), FBT airs Polvision, a Polish network based in Chicago, airing Polish programming. They air some programming from Poland, along with some programs produced in Chicagoland. I've been watching that to get an idea of how to comprehend the language. Spanish & Polish are 2 common languages in Chicago. Once I get some money, I'm gonna look online to see where I can buy some Polish language CD's to learn the language.

I saw a commercial for Czerwone Jabłuszko, and tried to listen to how it's pronounced. The person who speaks in the commercial doesn't speak clearly enough to understand the pronunciations. I'm aware Czerwone Jabłuszko means Red Apple, as I had a receipt for the place, and the receipt had the business name in English.

don't take it personally but none of you , American people, will be able to learn as difficult language as Polish really is. First of all, you're oblivious to the fact it's impossible to comprehend the language unless you fully immerse yourself in it, which means moving to Poland for a certain period of time or being surrounded by Poles all the time. I realise it may be slightly daunting but if it's very important for you to get to know Polish, you must be aware that its acquisition is much harder than it seems to be. Anyway, I'm glad to have read there are people in the world, especially Americans, who want to gain more knowledge...

knowledge out of their own country! ;)

Oh my God that is good!, thanks for the information, I have listened to the examples, very impressive, easy to understand and actually gets you thinking on it, good way of learning, easy way, lets hope keeps been easy when on the advance stuff :)

I new a guy that said the same thing about English, he could not learn he study for 8 hr a day and noting but he had the drive to learn so my solution is try different method

Go to the countryside for a couple of weeks with a dictionary. You're not learning Polish because you don't have to learn Polish. No motivation. I could live my entire life "getting by" with English and German in Wroclaw. I learned more during my month in the countryside than a year in Wroclaw.

My advice:

Keep studying but don't expect real progress until you're in Poland. Once you're in Poland, find something to do that brings you into contact with people that don't speak English or won't want to go to the trouble of accomodating your linguistic disability. The intimidating grammar becomes easier when you have to say things to be understood.

Find a way to volunterr with some social group, a hobby or try to learn something. I might suggest social dancing classes (a big deal now with the popularity of dancing shows on TV). Many or most of the people there won't speak enough English to deal with you and you'll have to use your Polish and hopefully have fun and meet people.

This is pretty important. I learned more Polish in a classroom in UK because there I was talking in Polish. These days I find almost all my time is with students and/or people who want to practice their English... result, my Polish is still crap after years!

A sports club or something where you are using real conversational language is a great idea.

It is like with music or singing talent. Few people have amazing talents, most average and some lousy,. It also applies to foreign language learning and practically all activities in life.

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.