Dating in Poland not able to speak Polish

I just arrived in Warsaw and don't know anyone. I'm curious if it would be possible to date girls here by only speaking English. I've noticed it to be difficult starting conversations by asking someone if they speak English. Any tips or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Dude, learn at least the bread-and-butter basics of the language of the country you're visiting:-) To answer your query, I'd say probably NO!

You really want to make a super first impression on a young Polish lady? Address her in her native tongue and she'll flip, trust me. Avoid learning the vulgar slang, at first. Concentrate on polite phrases. Polish women go nuts over hand kisses in some circles and DO NOT appreciate Homer Simpson or Rambo.

It is very possible.


Just speak to them as you normally would.

Sure, you "may" speak English while dating Polish girls. You can speak Swahili with them too if you wish. I'm only saying that knowing a least a minimum of Polish shows you're not simply going to a foreign country with the intention of hopping right into the sack! Certain nationalities with a not always deserved reputation for promiscuous behavior, the Swedes, the Dutch, the Danes etc.. will resent you're Anglophone arrogance of coming to their country, if only to get laid!

Of course its going to be difficult, however not impossible.Are you just on holiday? Call me cynical, but if so,i don't think conversation is at the forefront of your thoughts.......:) :)

Not speaking Polish is not a problem , as long as the girl you are interested in speaks English...

But try to learn a few words just to be polite...

It is possible to have a relationship with somebody you have big problems to talk to , but its hard work....

Be wary too of cross-cultural misunderstandings and misperceptions! No matter how "well" your potential Polish date may claim she knows English especially, I'll lay ya odds she's exaggerating and sooner or later (probably sooner rather than laterLOL), it'll come back to haunt ya. So be wary, that's all!

Powodzenia:-)

If you are in Warsaw or any other big town, young girls are likely to speak some English. The level of conversation should show if it's only basic or good English. Some people have flair for making themselves understood without too much of a language in common. It all depends how much effort you and the girl are willing to put into it.

I suppose in the end, if "conversation" in a given venue is not the main thing anyway, knowledge of any language is irrelevant. It would be hard for me to imagine though going to a country and not knowing at best a few polite phrases, requests etc.. (NOT necessarily sexual!)

I agree, but I wouldn't expect someone to learn language of a country they are visiting on holiday. Speaking phrases and speaking language are two completely different things.

Agreed, sa11y!

My only beef is with the double standard, "If you come to America, be it vacation or whatever, Freakin' SPEAK ENGLISH!!!" vs. "If you come to Poland, wherever, don't bother to learn Polish, Danish, Spanish etc.., English will do just fine! "

Quoting you back to yourself "Speaking phrases and speaking a language are two completely different things." :-) All TOO many Europeans blithely confuse speaking phrases with speaking aka "knowing" the English language. Fact of the matter is, (usually) they really don't, or, they can'tLOL

I think you are being very harsh on some people. I sense that you are referring to speaking language well, which not many people do (even their mother tongue). What I'm talking about is being able to communicate, make oneself understood. You don't need sophisticated wording and perfect grammar for this. The way I deferentiate this from speaking phrases is that you can make sense if you hear words in different context, and you are able to express yourself beyond the wording context used in language books and cd's, still using limited vocabulary. And yes, I also think it's unfair that people don't make that effort to learn even few words of a local language, but to me it's more to do with respect of your hosts than effective communication.

Once more, I completely agree, only why then the double standard? It's somehow "cool" to hear for instance Poles or whomever speak broken English, yet foreigners are often corrected by Europeans, such as the French, at every bend and turn for committing various and sundry infractions against THEIR language!! Now, is that fair?

When I was last in Europe, I met some other younger Germans and Eastern Europeans on a pleasure cruise. We were travelling together with our spouses and decided to stop for lunch. During our meal, one of the German couples asked me in English if I enjoyed practicing my German, to which I every so nonchalantly, smilingly responded, as much as she enjoyed practicing her English, gently winking in casual recognition of the other's gentle tease:-) All of a sudden, her brows nit in annoyance, she gave my wife and me a dirty look and walked away!

This incident I've often encountered, whatever the group, be they Poles, Germans, Dutch, French, even (European) Spanish speakers:-)

It's patronising, but I'm not sure I'd call it double standard. I think it's just a mental shortcut people are taking by assuming that English is good enough to communicate accross the world and that everyone knows it. Regardless of how unfair it may be, English became most common communication language accross the world. That's probably why you got reactions like that, people simply didn't think that someone would make effort to learn their language well. I don't think they were being nasty, just insensitive (or perhaps a bit ignorant)

Learning foreign phrases is the biggest waste of time. Let's say you memorize a block of questions and statements. Then what? You're gonna have no idea what the respondent is saying back to you. Everybody winds up confused and frustrated. Of course you gotta learn "how much", "thank you", "please" and "good day". You won't get too tied up with those gems. But if you REALLY wanna learn the language, start with the fundamentals. My best advice is to begin with the prepositions. They're tricky at first, but they're the keystone to everything else. Even if you fail miserably, your honey will appreciate the effort, trust me. Here's a handy list of Polish prepositions: mylanguages.org/polish_prepositions.php

Give & Take

If you aren't willing to give the effort to learn a foreign language, people aren't going to give the effort to converse with you.

You will be hard pressed to find a nation more wiling to spread it's story & culture than Poles. Show them you want to get to know Poland & they will treat you like their own

Bringing America into this discussion is a waste of time because Americans only speak 1 language & some Spanglish.

I speak
- Polish
- English
- Learning Deutsch
- Learning Computer language

While I understand the American schooling system is very much to blame, Americans for the most part want to live in their little North American bubble & judge the world based on what they see on television. ''We already have everything here. Why would I need to travel''

Marcin and Sa11y, you're both on both the right as well as the wrong track a bit. As far as Marcin's comments are concerned, what Poles and others DON'T understand about American culture could fill a library (and probably does!!):-) You only know the contemporary cesspool of what is termed "popular" culture. Check out though older black-and-white Hollywood classics from the thirties up until the early 70's when dialogue, NOT special effects, reigned supreme throughout the land. Furthermore, check our some of our great poets, classic novelists, playwrites etc... You'd be surpised, my friend. Give your brain, not your typing finger, a workout!!!LOL; you might learn something.

Sa11y, what you say may well be so, it nonetheless hardly excuses such provincial rudeness or insensitivity. Furthermore, my German, as it turns out, was so far superior to her English, it was almosty laughable, I had to restrain myself, in fact:-)

And on the subject of "communication", since when does incoherence qualify as communicating?

My first time in Budapest, after arriving at Ferihegy International:

£yżka - [I introduce myself in passable Hungarian and offer a few explanatory remarks!]

Booking clerk - Sir, vee awll are tawlking Ingleesh. Vaht yoo arrr ahssking?

£yżka - I only wished to confirm the meeting place for the Gellert Hotel pick-up service.

Booking clerk - Sir, daahrr iss naww sahch a thing, "meeting place"!! Dehh tehk yoo too hotel directly!!

£yżka - I'm sorry. Maybe there's a slight misunderstanding......

Booking clerk - Sir, yoo dawn't leesten vat I talling yoo......

....so went the conversation for almost another five or so minutes. Multiply this by numerous times non-English native speakers think they speak English better than the visitor will or can ever speak their language! Essentially, I became a virtual prisoner of that fellow's gibberish. Never once, did he admit that just possibly his English may have been lacking, yet insisted on using it to "communicate":-)

LOL

I know exactly what you mean, because after being in South Africa 2 months, I was told that my English improved :-} by an Afrikaans individual whose English wasn't exactly flawless... And I came to South Africa having learned English for over 20 years, out of which 10 years was spent in UK, living and working among English people... Somehow, I think he thought he was being appreciative, so I decided not to take offense... Annoying as it may be, I really think those people did not mean to be rude to you.

As for some people "thinking" they speak language better than somebody else... Yes, this can be very frustrating, especially if you are getting nowhere in the conversation... But what do you do? Try to prove them wrong (in which case they get defensive and whatever you are trying to get them to do will probably not happen...) or let it done and over with as soon as possible? Sometimes the latter works better than bursting their bubble.

Unthinking and arrogant's more like it, you're quite right. In the end though, they're the ones who lose out, as they usually fail to get even their point across.

So much for the faddy "fluency over accuracy" garbage. If the person's in fact NOT communicating, plus speaking poor English to boot, what's the bloody point, huh?

Sa11y, as a native ENGLISH (not Afrikaans!) speaker, I can confirm that your English, as far as I've been able to assertain on this forum, is excellent:-) Had I encountered YOU over the course of countless European sojourns during the past years, I might have actually broken my hard and gast rule of resolutely not speaking English with foreigners and conversed with you in English.

Consider that a compliment: I can be awfully hard on poor grammar masquerading as fluencyLOL

PS
I misspelled "knit" in my prior post:-)

Thank you ;) My spelling is awful though! Thanks Heavens for spell check!

Join the crowd. Most Americans today can't spell, with or without spell check:-) They had to revise the last census, as the question "How many SIBLINGS do you have?" proved too difficult for Joe Average. People didn't know what "siblings" were, so it had to be re-worded as "brothers and sisters":-)LOL

Joe Average of ca. 1959, was Joe College of 2012. Just listen to regular game show contestants from the early days of TV, plumbers, mechanics, accountants, etc.. NOT professors, translators or assorted braniacs!! Compare them with so-called college students of today. Now who has the better standard vocabulary, sentence structure and knowledge base?

The game changed round about '64 with immigration laws being loosened, then the onset of the drug culture, fast forward to amnesty of international drug king pins and the rest, my friends, is history!!!

You can learn a few Polish sentences to help you introduce yourself to others. You can also join a Polish dating site that has an English version.

youtu.be/felROXw_SaI

Just take this advice from The Man.