Common pitfalls for Poles learning English

@InPolska,

I agree one-hundred percent! So often Poles for instance will misinterpret a harmless, figurative utterance in English and take it literally!
An example I posted once previously concerned a young Polish acquaintance who responded to our remark about her daughter that the latter had grown since our last get together, with some annoyance, replying "Well, she certainly hasn't gotten any smaller!"

This is but one of numerous petty examples of "understanding" the text, but not the culturally-imbued "meaning" of a second language, no matter how, grammatically correct, accent-free and American style it may well sound:-)

@Lyzko! Absolutely too! :). A NON native unless after years and years of immersion in target language environment shall not know how to express themselves correctly in most situations. They may know grammar and have a wide range of vocabulary but this is NOT enough. In X language natives say "A" in a given situation whereas in Y language natives say "B" in same situation.

This is the reason why I am most skeptical about 99.98% non natives' ability to teach foreign languages. As a result, I am not surprised that our "ProTeacher" (for example) does not have enough work and has to look for anything through any random forum ;).

There is much more than grammar, vocabulary and even accent. A teacher should teach target language the way it is spoken by natives and 99.98% of non natives cannot. Please bear in mind that in Poland (for instance), in order to teach foreign languages, Polish "lektorzy" are expected to have ... B1 or B2 levels. B levels are decent as far as students are concerned but too low as far as teachers are concerned.

My conclusion: ideal is to have qualified natives! ;).

That is true, inPOlska but to be honest for lower levels (and let's face it, not many people do go beyond a basic level) a non native teacher is fine.

In my (extensive) experience the vast majority of learners - the ones who sign up for classes anyway - would be hard pushed to 'catch' any colloquial expressions or hear any difference in accent, even if they were played over and over again.

Good grief I have even had 'advanced' classes of Swiss Germans (and trust me, you cannot tell a Swiss German anything) who will talk about the plural of 'man' being 'mens' and will roll their eyes at you if you try to correct them.

For people like that, any teacher will do..:).

Besides it is about international communication , not about trying to sound like a native speaker (because they never ever will).

Actually it makes me laugh when some learners think they have learnt some colloquial expressions and tell you 'it is raining cats and dogs'. I tell them not to bother, nobody has said that since 1956, and even then it was only in England, and we are not teaching English for provincial slang anyway, we are teaching it for INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATION. Not to sound like a faux Brit.

LOL.

I think the biggest pitfall for a Pole learning English are the articles, same as for Russians.

and btw InPolska , 'shall' is only used for offers and suggestions, and even then it is hardly used these days.
eg 'shall we go to the pub?' or 'shall I open the window?' . Even so it is more likely a native speaker would say 'Let's go to the pub' these days or 'Would you like to go to the pub?'. 'Shall' is really quite vintage and is not used at all in, for example, Irish English.

Just saying.
A conditional would be better there.

In a fit of conjugation nitpicking I have to disagree:

The traditional rule in standard British English is that shall is used with first person pronouns (i.e. I and we) to form the future tense, while will is used with second and third person forms (i.e. you, he, she, it, they). For example:

I shall be late. Shall we go the pub?

They will not have enough food. Will you being going to buy a round at long last?

However, when it comes to expressing a strong determination to do something, the roles are reversed: will is used with the first person, and shall with the second and third. For example:

I will not tolerate such behaviour.

You shall go to the ball!

In practice, as you point out, the two words are used more or less interchangeably, and this is now an acceptable part of standard British and American English.

Shall may be constrained to the dustbins of modern language but it retains a charm.

'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day' rolls off the tongue far better than 'Will I compare you to a summer's day, innit' IMHO

yes well that is all very well Szarlotka, but does anybody really talk like that in 2015? I think not..:)
other than 'shall we go to the pub'..important things first!
You see what I mean! it does sound positively antiquated!
But anyway my main point was that 'shall' was only ever really used for offers and suggestions, and inPolska might want to brush up her conditionals ..before she starts pontificating about use of English..:)

Of course it sounds antiquated and I agree that a conditionals brush up is a far more important task.

My point, however, is that shall was used a lot in the way I described, not just for offers and suggestions, and not all that long ago.

We shall fight them on the beaches for example.

Sorry if I am labouring a point - I'm having a naff day.

Or how about the difference in "English" between British "I have been to the museum today." vs. American "I was at the museum today", or, "Have you...? vs. "Do you have....?"

Drives foreigners nuts 'cuz English is such a pluracentric language!!
:-)

I too frequently have issues between the "have been" versus "was at". I tend to default to British English when in Europe as most people in Europe seem to have been trained using British English; however, when in the USA I always use "was at". With this said, I have found that all Europeans understand me if I use the American "Do you have", while many Americans give me strange looks if I say "have you...?".

"Have you" is entirely CORRECT, in fact, there's an old English-language anecdote regarding one of our presidents, Calvin Coolidge, who, when asked if he was running for a second term, replied "I do not choose to run." Grammatically, this is wrong, because in fact he is CHOOSING not to run. What he meant was (the grammatically proper) "I choose not to run.", since he of course DID already make a choice, namely, not to run a second time as president:-)

Poles though, I've noticed, tend to respond slightly better to English correction by foreigners than, say, the Germans or even the French!

So? In American usage there's no way to use it (in the meaning "czy masz..?") without sounding like you're 80 years old or very pretentious.


No, it's fine. It's also ambiguous (possibly his intention) it could mean either he decided to not run or that it wasn't his choice to run but his party's (kind of a "nie chcem ale muszem" situation.


I would say "I choose to not run" (sounds far more natural in modern usage).

"I choose to not run." is a split infinitive, ol' buddy, and DEAD WRONG, I don't care which playbook:-)

There are in fact the three of them: Do you have... ?, Have you ...?, Have you got ...?


It is. You can frequently see this problem in Polish people on the PF who have been living for many years in the UK ...

Another pitfall is prepositions. They are extremely difficult to learn properly in any language. For a Polish learner, the English preposition 'at' is a particularly 'foreign' one. I think we have a respective preposition in Polish which is 'u', but it is a fixed, sometimes archaic, and not "lively" preposition (I mean you cannot creatively use it in new language structures).

Yes, I agree Ziemowit! But the article seems to confound them on a regular basis:-)

Now that's interesting Roz because I'm Irish and I always say 'shall I/we?'. I never really noticed it until someone pointed it out to me. Mind you, I use a lot of vintage English, probably from reading too many 'jolly hockey sticks' school stories when I was a child!

loved the Jennings books and Billy Bunter. Strangely enough Jennings was based on an Irish boy whom the author was at school with.


But we usually say 'I went to the museum today' rather than 'I have been'. Simple past is more likely to be used especially if some hours have elapsed since the event. In my experience this is one that Poles often have trouble with, using the present perfect incorrectly in places where they should use the simple past.



The argument between prescriptive grammar and descriptive. Most native speakers don't use 'correct' grammar all the time when we speak because it sometimes sounds stilted and overly formal.

Irish English is not British English. Shall we agree on that?

Well, I think we should discuss a certain standard here which may be called English English. Let's assume we are talking about pitfalls for Poles learning English English. Or maybe American English as well. Irish English or Australian English? No, thank you.

It's different, however the similarity is so strong that for overseas learners the differences are minimal. For the Polish learner, Irish English is within the grammar family of British English. Australian English too.


If you say "I've been to the museum", you normally wouldn't need to add today. If you needed to qualify it, you'd say "I went".

Many foreigners learning English, including a lot of Poles along with others, will typically say "I have eaten lunch today..." vs. "I had aka "ate" lunch today...":-)

I think that natural idiomatic usage in any language is the slipperiest slope for those learning a foreign language.

"I've eaten lunch today" is an interesting example since it's close to two phrases "I haven't eaten lunch today" and "Have you eaten lunch today". "I've had lunch", "I've just had lunch" are more common.

In my experience, only a very few Polish users of English 'feel' the present perfect enough to pick up on that nuance.

A more common error in which the simple past is unequivocally correct is for example "I have written to my cousin before." as opposed to the proper "I wrote to my cousin..." which clearly signifies an action completed within the most recent past (for which the simple past is the intended tense)!

Polish has far fewer tenses than, say, English or French. For that they compensate with an abundance of prefixed verbs and their myriad aspectual distinctions, e.g.

"mieszkać" vs."POmieszkać" or even "ZAmieszkać" etc....

You'd better believe it. Take chodzić, jeść, pić, stać, etc. and the seemingly unlimited prefixes that go with them and change the meaning each time.

I especially like the interrupted frequentative verb forms such as popłakiwać (to cry for a bit, stop and then cry again or give off a sob every so often). You mentioned a similar one: pomieszkiwać: to live (somewhere) off and on.

Poles to whom I've taught English struggle conversely like the Dickens with our tenses, e.g. past perfect vs. past perfect progressive etc... The distinctions seem to practically glance off of them like bullets off of Superman:-)

I think perhaps you misunderstood. Roz was referring to the use of 'shall' and said that it is never used in Ireland, which it is, as I use it myself. I am pointing out that I use a British form in my speech though I am Irish.



But for Poles like my husband who learned their English in Ireland it's very relevant and there are, at a conservative estimate, about a quarter of a million of them.


Absolutely correct. Standard English in Ireland is pretty much exactly the same, certainly in business communications etc, it's identical.

Calls to mind an anecdote about two New York taxi dirvers. One asks: Jeet? The other replies: No, Jew? (Did you eat? - No, did you?)

In the Northern States the girls say "yes you can" and in the Southern States they say, "ya'll can". :-)

Only if they're into group sex.

>>>>Only if they're into group sex.
...and who isn't?

Two British schoolboys:

Bobby: What's the meaning of "Jew"?
Jimmy: "Jew"?? Oh, I feel the "Jew" (dialect pronunciation of "dew") on the grass every morning!

:-)

That's an old one and is actually used by Rupert Brook in Granchester (you know, the "stands the church clock at wotsit" one).

The same issue as statue /stætju:/ or /statʃu:/.

I've always found a bigger problem with Poles who are absolutely convinces that Andrew should be pronounced 'Endryu' and not 'Androo'.

Pronunciation's a whole 'nother kettle of fish though, jon! As Polish has no schwa sounds, zero difference between long and short vowels and varying consonental quality compared with English, this makes getting rid of a native Polish accent (at least over the age of eight or nine) nearly impossible!

:-)

Yes - law, saw, hoar/*****, pour/paw; shirt, girl, pert, turd - are an especial problem - by adulthood, the mouth has become used to making very different sounds. And the schwa is just counterintuitive for a native speaker of Polish.

Plus stress timing - which speakers of a more syllable timed language dislike.