Language / Extremely Hard - Polish the hardest language to learn [226]

Missed the last point, Wulkan. Who raised the issue of "silent" letters anyhow?? Not I, that's for sure:-)

@Paulina, as a Polish native speaker you naturally cannot judge how an attuned outside listener hears/perceives you pronouncing English! You have only to trust the ears of a foreigner who's heard Poles (miss-)pronoucning English for years. Part of Anglophone dialect comedy concerns Poles confusing the "W" of "will" with the "V" of "vote etc....

Language / Polish was chosen the HARDEST LANGUAGE in the world to learn... :D [1558]

JanMovie,

To be sure, Lithuanian is indeed even more conservative than Polish! It's exceptionally complex declensional system rivals even Estonian in its apparent irregularity:-)

While I wouldn't call Polish "a piece of cake" (kinderleicht) by comparison, it has roughly more recognizable word stock and perhaps a tad more predicitablity than any of the extant Baltic tongues of which Lithuanian is considered the most complicated, especially for foreigners.

One of the many reasons for language difficulty depends upon the degree of historical isolation enjoyed respectively by the speakers of certain languages such as Estonian, Lithuanian, Polish, Icelandic, Basque, Sami and others. Compared with English, Spanish, French or Italian, the former have operated relatively apart from almost all linguistic trends, past or present. This raises though an interesting issue, namely is language difficulty a matter of the importance of said language? Well, languages as vastly different as German and Chinese are both immensely important and have a relatively wide geopolitical (not dependent though on their speaker percentages!), yet both are much more daunting for the foreigner than English is said to be:-)

Language / Extremely Hard - Polish the hardest language to learn [226]

More simply put, you SEE the letter, but you instinctively pronounce the sound or grapheme "phonetically", i.e. as you THINK the sound(s) should be spoken because you still hear them in your native tongue. This is what is meant by having a 'foreign accent':-)

Language / Extremely Hard - Polish the hardest language to learn [226]

I've heard Poles frequently confuse the "w" sound for a "v", Paulina.usion you mention may simply be visual, i.e.graphemic, rather than phonetic, that is, seeing the actual orthographic representation of the letter yet not being able to reproduce it correctly:-)

Language / Extremely Hard - Polish the hardest language to learn [226]

Wulkan, sorry to embarrass you, but mistaking a Polish "w" for an English "v" is but soooooo typical of Poles learning English, it's not even funny!! Perhaps you either refused to or simply COULDN'T hear your own leaner accent once upon a time, but believe me, it was there ^^

Whether or not you sound like a Brit, an Aussie or a Yank nowadays is really inconsequential:-)

Language / Extremely Hard - Polish the hardest language to learn [226]

Vot yu arrr tolkink, meestairr Voolkonn! Pawlleesh okzentt verrii haahtt gawtt reett awffLOL

Admittedly not all Poles evidence this sort of clodhopper speech pattern, yet all too many do (..and many end up teaching English right here in Forest Hills!!)

:-)

Language / Extremely Hard - Polish the hardest language to learn [226]

Often "manners" simply don't work with certain people. What I do in that case rather than become angry etc. (as you suggest that I do!!) is merely affect a foreign accent in English of the language which I'd like to speak, e.g. a Polish accent in Poland or a German accent in Germany etc.. At this point, most become totally flustered and automatically switch back to their native languageLOL

Language / Extremely Hard - Polish the hardest language to learn [226]

For the umpteenth time, TheOther, I'm in total agreement with that statement! However, I will continue to become peeved so long as foreigners who in the reverse expect, yet DON'T, hear a perfect Polish, Dutch, Swedish...from myself as a non-native speaker of those languages, insist on switching to an often equally imperfect English as their "small way" of compensating for the language barrier:-) For G_d's sake people, kindly admit to second language interference and apologize for it before launching into an English filibuster about the virtues of one world language or some such nonsense. This honestly grates on one's nerves.

We ALL should be learning from each other. Often, I get the uneasy feeling that certain Europeans in particular feel they must do the "teaching", whilst the rest of us outlanders do all the "learning"!!

Life / Do Poles have a problem understanding American English? [76]

Right on, Monitor, and rarely any movies of the highest quality of, say, a Hollywood black-white classic with snappy dialogue and acting which reflected a higher standard in society! The average Europunk nowadays knows only Bruce Willis, Sly Stallone et al., little if at all pre-1982. This is a crying shame. Even late Seinfeld's considered some arcane, useless antique to the Euroyouth. Cultivation's being eroded to such an extent that it seems people so little any longer but, eat, sleep and fornicate to excess, leaving the art of conversation way back on highway One.

Language / Extremely Hard - Polish the hardest language to learn [226]

The Other, my "attitude" arises from, for example Dutch or Germans who take this 'look-ma-no-hands' approach to communicating in English! The less care taken in using English compared say with myself using Dutch, German etc..., the ever more lopsided the communication scale becomes, thereby cheapening language alltogether. If Nordic folks take the tone that they're practically Anglophone anyway (which, by the way, they aren't), so who cares how they speak English, the entire language becomes one mass garbage heap.

Contrary to what all too many people believe (including MANY right here!!!), American English is no more solely a Rambo-like collection of vulgarisms, grunts and filler words than British English is nothing more than stagey-sounding RP.

Surely there must be a middle ground:-)

Life / Do Poles have a problem understanding American English? [76]

You're referring then to "Pidglish" otherwise familiar as Pidgin Polish, a mishmash of old-fashioned countryside regionalisms combined with US-slang and sloppy grammar, right? I recently met several US-born Polish-Americans who began speaking in Polish once I told them I knew the language. To be honest, much of what they said I couldn't much make out.

Perhaps a Polish native speaker would've had better luck:-)

Language / Extremely Hard - Polish the hardest language to learn [226]

McDouche, the Dutch and the Germans APPEAR to know English "better" than many mainland Europeans merely because they're more skillful in concealing their native accents, that's all. They're guilty of the same wanton vulgarities and infractions as the rest of the lot, make no mistake:-)

Here again, Wulkan, I must roundly disagree with your assessment of the level of difficulty presented to native English speakers by Estonian and Hungarian. I found even Polish slightly more 'transparent' than either of the former owing to the almost completely lack of 'cognate' vocabulary with which to anchor the Anglo-Saxon learner.Polish still uses much Latin and Greek, Estonian and Hungarian typically don't!

Language / Extremely Hard - Polish the hardest language to learn [226]

I haven't as of yet, Wulkan. Will keep ya posted though:-)

@Michał, jeszcze nie dostałem odpowiedźi na moją minęłę wiadomość. Wciąż proszę o przykłady tych wyrazień!

Language / Extremely Hard - Polish the hardest language to learn [226]

Thanks, Wulkan! My remarks yesterday were actually intended for Michał:-)

Language / Extremely Hard - Polish the hardest language to learn [226]

"...where some of the syntax of expression are pronounced similarly...."

Could you possibly provide examples of 'some of the syntax of expression' which are pronounced similarly? Are you perhaps referring here to like-sounding grammatical constructs, maybe prepositional usage which might cause confusion for Poles learning English, e.g. "to be in THE office" (być w biurze) vs. "to be in office" (być urzędnikem), i.e. "to be an office holder" etc...

:-)

Language / Polish was chosen the HARDEST LANGUAGE in the world to learn... :D [1558]

Interesting that you find German above all to be the "hardest" language to acquire. Is German not your mother tongue? To me as a bilingual German-English native speaker, German is much more precise than English as a rule, if not exactly always "logical"LOL German therefore should be easier for your than either Polish or particularly English, no?

Oder vielleicht weiss ich nicht, worauf du hinaus willst.
:-)

Language / Polish was chosen the HARDEST LANGUAGE in the world to learn... :D [1558]

While Polish is indeed similar in many respects to German as I've stated before, fluency will take time, much as it did for me.

I learned Polish too as a first-language German speaker, learning it in fact using German as the source language. While the concept of gender as well as declension were already a given, the counting quirks and phonological shifts etc.. took me for a loop! Moreover, learning to think in a foreign language is always a stumbling block, much as you must have struggled to learn to think in English having German as your mother tongue. Occasionally, I even see faint traces of first-language influence in many of your English posts:-) No offence meant.

Language / Polish was chosen the HARDEST LANGUAGE in the world to learn... :D [1558]

Often, Poles simply aren't used to foreigners either speaking their language, namely Polish, correctly. The converse is that many are even LESS used to it being mangled. We English native speakers are so used to our language being merrily mutilated by self-assured, yet less than competent, foreign native speakers, that we both don't really mind it any longer, make an effort to understand their broken English, or (most often the case!), pretend that we understand when in fact we don't because we really don't care.

In Poland, if a Pole honestly can't make heads or tales of what you're saying (and they don't know English or know it adequately), they'll pursue the discussion until they've arrived at reasonable clarity. The Germans will frequently do the same, often breaking into a chorus of fractured English in an attempt to get to the bottom of what is really meant.

Americans especially, will usually shrug their shoulders as if to say "Forget about it!"
:-)

Language / Polish was chosen the HARDEST LANGUAGE in the world to learn... :D [1558]

Poulson, "Proszę o herbatę!" sounds more polite:-)

History / Poland must get back Lwow, Wilno and Brest back [318]

I knew it was a transliteration, wiseguy, I was only joking:-)
If you don't understand "groaners", you essentially don't really understand the flavor of American English!

News / POLAND to have its own automobile brand (back), the SYRENA! [36]

The total "POLar" opposite then (pardon the pun, he-he!) of the old East German "Trabant" or Trabi; anything but luxury:-)

History / Poland must get back Lwow, Wilno and Brest back [318]

If per happenstance Poland DOES manage to seize Brest back from Russian hands and ends up having to provide emergency victuals to its population, wouldn't that technically be considered "brest feeding"??

Sorry, I couldn't resist ^^

News / POLAND to have its own automobile brand (back), the SYRENA! [36]

Well then, I guess I do. Funny, thought the spelling was different somehow. I see we've cleared that up! Didn't realize that Korean Daewoo was also producing Polish carsLOL Guess their own market wasn't large enough, eh?

News / POLAND to have its own automobile brand (back), the SYRENA! [36]

Again, I seem to recall the 'Polonis', oh, back in the 80's. Or was that some sort of gag promo?
:-)

News / POLAND to have its own automobile brand (back), the SYRENA! [36]

Hmmm, I thought the original "pride" brand was the POLONIS!!
Guess I was wrongLOL

Language / Should I learn Polish or she learn English? [83]

Amen, Crow!

Language / Should I learn Polish or she learn English? [83]

Smurf,

You just reminded me of a colleague of mine who also decided to learn Polish, if for no other reason, than that he worked as a model photographer and (not surprisingly!!) many top models are from Poland. His first professional shoot with a twenty-something young lady from Poland and, a la marshal arts tactics, when she was least expecting it, he "hit" her with a whopping "Dzień dobry, pani! Bardzo mi miło, proszę wejść!", at which point, upon disarming her completely he raised her right hand to his lips, barely touching it, while intoning "Całuję pani rączki!"Rather than thinking "Who's this perve weirdo!!", she was apparently so flabbergasted, she insisted that he be the ONLY one to do her modeling shoots in the US:-) All this, at a drop-dead salary!

So you see, guys! There's hope for you all yetLOL

Language / Should I learn Polish or she learn English? [83]

Grubas,

It really cuts both ways. There are some Poles who sound practically as fluent, accurate and aesthetically pleasing as any erudite Anglophone could hope for, while others sound like vulgar cartoon characters, a poor parody of every Lech, Maciej and Mieszko who ever cracked open an English reader and tried sounding out the words:-) No offense.

The same for Anglophone Polish speakers. Some sound truly ridiculous and had best use an interpreter who is bilingual in both languages. Then again, there is the rare foreigner and non-Slav to boot who speaks and writes a perfect Polish. Sadly, I'm but merely such a wannabe.....though in time I'm sure I'll get there, though many will probably already be collecting Social Security by that stageLOL

Language / Should I learn Polish or she learn English? [83]

Hear, hear Sobieski! Couldn't concur more:-)

Now, let's hope it resonates with some of those lazy ex-pats out there who think the world should dance to their (out-of) tune!!

Language / Polish was chosen the HARDEST LANGUAGE in the world to learn... :D [1558]

Yeah, same difference:-) It's still WRONG!!
lol