Perfective vs Imperfective - grammar

I am amazed why people bother so much!

Are you as "amazed" that many interested Poles aka Europeans "bother" to try to perfect their English?
This is as much at the root of your grammar as tenses, spelling, and idioms are at the root of ours:-)

No but keep using ja as in English language will make us angry for sure ;)

Będę dawać lekcje angielskiego. - many lessons, recurrent, I will be teacher, sounds ok.
Będę dawać lekcję angielskiego. - one lesson eg today afternoon, sounds weird
Dam lekcję angielskiego - one lesson eg today afternoon, sounds weird
Będę dawać ci trochę pieniędzy - recurrent
Dam ci trochę pieniędzy - one time, today, now

This is also where Polish tends to differ from Russian, where the "ja" is ABSOLUTELY necessary, cf. "Wiem." vs. "Ja znaju.", whereby the pronoun MUST be said, as well as written:-) My Russian tutor told me, since I kept making understandable transference errors from Polish to Russian, that if I simply say, "Znaju", a Russian would certainly consider it wrong, and might even re-cast my answer to make sure THEY understood me!

Better to substitute ja with kurrwa, then you are talking like a local.

...like a local, perhaps, but NOT necessarily a "native" local! Native speakers surely can detect whether the user is also a native speaker as opposed to either a very clever (or ambitious) foreignerLOL

Especially with a UK Midlands accent, I was always able to detect that my mother and father were a foreigners by their Polish accents.

Must sound as comic to a native Pole to hear 'outsiders" use Polish slang, as for English to hear someone obviously NOT from the Midlands, for example, saying, "Dees tschopp deed ah blahdii goot vorrrk." etc.

Sorry I was using local in a metaphorical sense,

"Dees tschopp deed ah blahdii goot vorrrk"

Yes I don't lke to eat it either.

"This chap did a bloody good job." sounds as charactaristically "ENGLISH" as "Czuwajcie chłopci!" sounds Polish!

Written correctly aka naturally, in context, a native Pole likely couldn't tell whether the latter were written by a Polish or foreign native speaker.

To hear it spoken though, would in all likelihood be a dead giveaway:-)

Using ja in Polish especially with the word following which begins with ja- sounds really weird. Sorry guys but thats it.

Ja jadę samochodem do Warszawy.

I agree, I have been trying for 3 years to stop using it. (I,I,I Ja,Ja,Ja) dont work in Polish

As I learned Polish before Russian, I too was in the habit of NOT writing/saying "Ja" when it was necessary:-)

One difference I have noticed is that Russian is not as rigorous about using the genitive for negations, whereas in Polish it is absoltuely necessary

Also, oboje (both) in Polish always refers to a couple of opposite sex but in Russian it can also mean two males. There are numerous other diferences and pitfalls for the learner. There must be a webpage online listing some of them.

So Polish is a 'prodrop' language like Spanish then? (ie you do not need to keep saying the pronoun, I you he she it)

Yes. Czech is as well (and all the non-Eastern Slavic languages AFAICT). I think just Russian, Ukrainian and Belarussion are non-pro drop (the latter two largely under the influence of the first).

yes.... te quiero & kocham cię

English is also Prodrop, but ONLY in slang:-)) 'Havin' a great time!, 'First time here, Sandra? etc....

Nooo Lyzko , no ones used that chat up line since 1972.

..in the UK perhaps, about which I can't comment, not being from there:-) Here though, it's used all the time!!

Back on topic please

I'm amazed you can say this, given that you have obviously worked hard on your English language.
Learners want to get it right, even if they know they will probably never attain native speaker level.
The difference between Perfective/Imperfective is very important for someone learning.

@You're saying the same as I, Chemikiem:-) Europeans are often surprised that foreigners either speak fluently or are even interested in their languages.

Oddly, the level of European English, while conversationally colloquial, usually bordering on the flippantly vulgar, falls short regarding the more aesthetic (and equally useful) elements of standard English as well!

As many learners, even more advanced speakers of Polish, will occasionally trip over the difference between "poprawiać" vs. "poprawić", many a so-called fluent English speaker from whom I've met, will typically make flagrant tense errors, such as "How many languages are you speaking, Mark?", instead of (correct), "How many languages DO you SPEAK?" etc...

Quite right Lyzko, I at times use naprawiać (repair) when I meant correct, got to give it to you language people, the detail you go into is mind bogling.

Must say I find discussion about language on this forum most interesting.

I too, dolno! That's why it's an open forum, furthermore, that's the reason why trolling, abuse or similar denegration is such an insult to serious participants:-)

While native speakers in their own language make mistakes, it's therefore especially important that non-native speakers speaking a second or third language take extra care with it. After all, a language is an instrument as any other, and words are tools, not toys.

So do I, it was my main reason for joining the forum. Sadly the language threads are nowhere near as busy as they used to be.

I can understand, I would need to start from the basics and to be honest I kind of feel it a bit Intimidating, because I know some people would pick this up and take the michael, and those at a high level may not have the patience required to help.

I'm surprised, I thought you would be more or less fluent. I know you grew up in the UK but presumed you would have spoken Polish at home.


I can understand that. I only really try my hand at translations if I'm pretty sure that what I've said is right. I feel there are at least a couple of posters here who would rip the sh!t out of my Polish if i got it wrong, even though I am a learner. Maybe you should give it a try though, your Polish has got to be way better than mine! If more people contribute, these threads will stay active :-)

Perfective-imperfective pairs in real life sometimes wander away from rules (more exceptions)

take for example this future tense pair - Będę myć naczynia- I will be washing the dishes - in natural language the perfective counterpart would often be: Pozmywam naczynia. - I will wash the dishes.

look at the developement involved: myć (imperfective) - zmyć (perfective with added symantic field determiner - the neutral perfective is umyć) -> zmywać (imperfective (frequentative) of zmyć) - pozmywać (perfective of zmywać)

have fun

Most people here say my Polish is very good, but I know they are just being kind, my problem is that I know most many of the words in the polish language but I struggle to find them when making a sentence, and I don't always use them in the right context.

The crazy part of it is I recognise all of these words when they are spoken to me, I have no trouble comprehending what is being said to me.

When I went to school in the UK at the age of four I couldn't speak english only Polish, over the years I have lost some ability to process Polish in favour of processing everything in english first then converting to Polish, does that make any sence to you?, It confounds me.

Which is what I would have said - umyję naczynia, but this is obviously wrong. Then again myć just means 'to wash', while pomyć is to 'wash up'.


I'm really not! I tend to get lost with phrases such as