Language /
Why is the Polish language so difficult? [309]
@Milo, modern English, certainly since the death of Chaucer, Spencer, and the arrival of Shakespeare, shuffled
off the mortal coil of case and declension.
Where for instance in contemporary English do you have the morphological acrobatics
of German or Polish? Come on, mate!
What's tricky about English is its spelling cf. with its pronunciation. In Polish, consonant
clusters have only one pronunciation which never changes. In addition, there are zero
schwas or even silent letters as opposed to English words such as "dime" vs. "dim" etc.
Once more, what's complicated about Polish for foreigners, especially Anglophones,
are the perfective/imperfective verbal aspects along with the case endings for the three
genders, and of course, let's not forget those pesky counting quirks after the number five:-)
On the other hand, English is a pluracentric language with numerous varieties, e.g. English
and American. Polish has ONE standard written language, naturally apart from myriad
dialects such as goral.
Moreover, English tenses confuse many Polish students of mine. As Polish aspects measure
repetition of action, that is, the frequency with which an action is performed, English tenses
measure temporal action, when, rather than now many times, a given action is performe
"Do you speak Polish?" vs. (incorrect) "Are you speaking Polish?" and so forth.
In Polish "Idziesz do szkoly?" (right now) vs. "Chodzisz do szkoly?" (Do you attend school [regularly]?)
@gumishu, many of my Polish students find English nightmarishly
difficult, among them teachers, doctors, and lawyers.
