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Spend more time on Polish verbs or nouns?


catsoldier  54 | 574  
12 Nov 2011 /  #1
When "learning" Polish what proportion of time should be spent learning verbs versus nouns? 50% each or should more time be spent on verbs or nouns?

Thanks
pawian  219 | 24673  
12 Nov 2011 /  #2
0% each or should more time be spent on verbs or nouns?

I suggest the ratio 45.6 to 54.4.
pip  10 | 1658  
13 Nov 2011 /  #3
funny. verbs are most important in polish- they convey everything.
mafketis  38 | 10881  
13 Nov 2011 /  #4
verbs are most important in polish

Native speakers might think so, but as a successful learner of Polish as a foreign language I suggest spending time on (in decreasing order)

1. Nouns (gender and case endings)

2. Adjectives (same)

3. Pronouns (same)

4. Verbs

The reason is simple, in face to face communication Poles (despite what they might say) understand Polish with the correct noun/adjective/pronoun endings and wonky verbs far better than with correct verb endings and wonky n/a/p endings. Ideally you want everything to be correct but make nouns the priority and you won't regret it.
pawian  219 | 24673  
13 Nov 2011 /  #5
funny. verbs are most important in polish- they convey everything.

Nope. See a thread title:

If I'm agnostic, deist, atheist - can I say that to Polish people in Poland?

Delete everything except verbs, and what do you get?
Derevon  12 | 172  
13 Nov 2011 /  #6
When "learning" Polish what proportion of time should be spent learning verbs versus nouns? 50% each or should more time be spent on verbs or nouns?Thanks

Both verbs and nouns are of course essential to understanding and communicating in a language, so I would recommend that you focus on all words that are frequently encountered regardless of what part of speech they belong to.

Of course there are a number of common verbs that are used in all sorts of situations, and these basic verbs are probably more important than just any noun. Nouns are more connected to specific situations, so which nouns you need is probably more connected to your particular goal of learning.

In general, of course, more nouns than verbs are needed to communicate well in any language. I'm saving most "new words" I encounter in Polish in my vocabulary training software, and with 9783 entries so far they are distributed as follows:

Nouns: 4929
Verbs: 1759 (counted as aspect pairs. E.g. robic/zrobić is counted as one verb).
Adjectives: 1481

The rest of the entries are for the remaining parts of speech, phrases, sentences and expressions.
pip  10 | 1658  
13 Nov 2011 /  #7
Nope. See a thread title:

If I'm agnostic, deist, atheist - can I say that to Polish people in Poland?

Delete everything except verbs, and what do you get?

I am only going on what my polish language prof. taught me.

not really worth the argument.
boletus  30 | 1356  
13 Nov 2011 /  #8
Which lexemes are more frequent: verbs or nouns? NONE. Below is a proof by example. :-)

There are many lexical frequency analyzers for most world languages - both amateurish and professional - including Polish. I just picked one from PWN, korpus.pwn.pl/stslow_en.php

Word frequency in the demonstration corpus - top 200

Following is a lexeme frequency list for the demonstration version of the corpus sampler. The frequency of the lexemes was calculated after summing up the frequency of all forms, and in the case of homonymic forms - with reference to the proportions of their occurrence in Słownik frekwencyjny polszczyzny współczesnej [A Frequency Dictionary of Contemporary Polish].

Shown here are only the first two dozen or so lexemes, to give you some idea how it works. This is a simplified presentation. Each triad is made of: (rank frequency lexeme). Original list shows both combined inflected and individual inflected forms. Here are shown just the combined forms. The first noun on the list is "rok" (including "r.") - appearing not until the 21st rank. "Być" (3) and "mieć"(16) both precede it.

The list of most frequent verbs is quite interesting since most people would agree that they are the most important verbs: być, mieć, móc, wiedzieć, mówić, chcieć, musieć, powiedzieć, zostać.

The similar list of nouns looks to me almost random: rok, czas, człowiek, praca, pan, przykład, dzień. I could probably go away without half of them here. :-)

In conclusion - by being professionally skewed "functional programmer" (as opposed to "object oriented programmer") - I vote for the actions, the functions, the VERBS. :-)

============

(1 120000 w) (2 95966 i) (3 78003 być) (4 76694 się) (5 65960 z) (6 62634 na) (7 56899 nie) (8 53257 on) (9 43683 do) (10 41122 ten)
(11 37244 to) (12 31640 że) (13 28656 a) (14 24090 który) (15 23882 o) (16 21693 mieć) (17 18572 jak) (18 16497 tak) (19 16388 ja)
(20 16160 co) (21 15730 rok)

.... continue but ignoring anything but nouns and verbs:

(26 11975 móc) (38 7965 wiedzieć) (41 6941 czas) (42 6941 człowiek) (44 6567 praca) (47 6459 mówić) (54 5662 pan) (65 4973 chcieć) (67 4880 musieć) (74 4650 powiedzieć) (75 4644 przykład) (77 4613 dzień) (79 4461 zostać)

FILTERED:

Verbs: (3 78003 być) (16 21693 mieć) (26 11975 móc) (38 7965 wiedzieć) (47 6459 mówić) (65 4973 chcieć) (67 4880 musieć) (74 4650 powiedzieć) (79 4461 zostać)

Nouns: (21 15730 rok) (41 6941 czas) (42 6941 człowiek) (44 6567 praca) (54 5662 pan) (75 4644 przykład) (77 4613 dzień)

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