Work / English teachers in Poland - why are they so unhappy? [89]

@Maf,
In the US, that mind-numbing "grammar-translation" method for teaching foreign languages was still in full force until at least the late '70's! By the time I arrived on the college scene during the early '80's, instructors had for the most part smartened up to the fact that if Americans are ever going to learn a foreign language with the superficial facility of their European counterparts, foreign language programs, starting in high school, are going to have to insist on TARGET language materials in the classroom.

Work / English teachers in Poland - why are they so unhappy? [89]

Not sure though if teachers of Polish in primary schools in Poland teach cases as first, second, third, fourth...cases.
If so, then listing the cases in a different order might bugger up the original order!

Travel / Bilingual signs and notices all over Poland [20]

Their dialect though is kinda cute!

Standard Polish goral gwara
zegar godzinnek
etc.

Travel / Bilingual signs and notices all over Poland [20]

Wonder whether or not in Zakopane signage reflects similar bilingualism among the goral (mountaineers) vs. standard Polish.

Work / English teachers in Poland - why are they so unhappy? [89]

@Ziemowit,
The Latin case order Nom. Gen. Dat. Acc. is identical in all European languages which require said declension:-)

Only US textbooks for certain languages disregard the original order.

Work / English teachers in Poland - why are they so unhappy? [89]

Agreed with the latter comment

Work / English teachers in Poland - why are they so unhappy? [89]

No brainer, Maf!
Always found it so counterintuitive for ESL instructor colleagues of mine to actually "teach grammar rules" to their beginning and intermediate learners.

Unless visual diagrams, preferrably using colours, are presented to the learner in an organically child-like fashion, it'll go over them like a wave.

Travel / Bilingual signs and notices all over Poland [20]

Perfectly reasonable. How about Gorlice/Goerlitz, Jasna Gora/Hellberg etc.?

Work / English teachers in Poland - why are they so unhappy? [89]

There's of course also the school of thinking, equally legitimate as a language teacher, I must say, which states that grammar as such doesn't exist! Human learners don't learn grammar, they learn (as you say) instinctively.

A colleague of mine insists that grammar is SOLELY for teachers, rather than learners, of language:-)

Work / English teachers in Poland - why are they so unhappy? [89]

Poles I met would actually claim they had no accent.

Work / English teachers in Poland - why are they so unhappy? [89]

This also readily explains why Poles, as with certain other European English speakers, tend to to have an "English accent" when they speak English, at the least the more educated:-)

Life / My Opinion About Poland After 2 Years [35]

Poles on the whole do seem to enjoy one upping the other, I must admit.

Work / English teachers in Poland - why are they so unhappy? [89]

Europeans usually mistake, for example, "Are you swimming?" vs. "Are you GOING swimming?"
Verb usage is tricky in English, not to mention as you just noted, the differences between British and American!

Work / English teachers in Poland - why are they so unhappy? [89]

@jon,
Not to flog the proverbial dead horse now, but Pinkert maintains even more adamantly than either Chomsky or Kashen that speakers of different languages are "circuited" differently (Pinkert's words, not mine) from one another, thereby respond inherently to varying language stimuli. Sausseur insisted that any child could learn another language provided they had non-stop aural exposure to that language from earliest childhood on, often never needing a textbook in order to "learn" to speak that language! Reading and writing, naturally, are a separate matter entirely:-)

Work / English teachers in Poland - why are they so unhappy? [89]

English teachers have been complaining about lousy pay throughout Europe for decades, but the problem remains; if the government wants qualified instructors, they'll have to be willing to dig deep and hire NATIVE SPEAKERS!!

Poland, the former Soviet Union, along with many other European countries have been plagued by state-sponsored, non-native English speaking hacks who merely studied briefly in the UK, for longer than most of their students/pupils would care to remember. I know of so many students of mine who'd bellyache to me about how awful their grade school English instructors and how boring their English classes were. Frequently, they'd come to me in order to literally "undo" the poor foundation they were forced to endure.

Pity that only at the university level are native Yanks, Brits or Canadians prerequisite for teaching English language as well as literature courses. The answer though is all too obvious, namely, that the government would have to pay them at least a living wage, if not higher in order to keep them for more than a semester or two.

However the irony is, that of course it's not at the highest levels that native English speakers are required, but instead at the beginning of one's instruction so that the correct pronunciation and usage are cemented by listening to native-born, educated Anglophones.

By college age, it's often too late!

News / Scandals, conflicts, tensions, arguments - real life examples from Poland [470]

Of "curse" (Fluch)....??
The error must be intentional:-)

News / Scandals, conflicts, tensions, arguments - real life examples from Poland [470]

"Mouth robbery" though is NOT English!
You simply translated from the German, admit it.
There's nothing to be ashamed of.

I've often done the same in Polish:-)

Polonia / Polish workers in Denmark [41]

Danish is more regular than English, but has an especially lax pronunciation almost like American.

Language / Having a really hard time with Polish cases [59]

Precisely, which is still wrong in standard English! Back in the early '70's, there was a US-cigarette magazine advert "Winston tastes good like a cigarette should!". Apparently. English teachers and authors wrote in to the magazine that correct would have been "Winston tastes good AS a cigarette should!"

The magazine immediately incorporated said ad into their follow-up issue. "Winston tastes good like a cigarette should! No, AS a cigarette should. Whaddya want? Good grammar or good taste?"

TV ads are no longer the arbiters of correct usage as they once were.

Polonia / Polish workers in Denmark [41]

Thanks, jon! Overlooked it, shoulda known LOL Concerning the use of English instead of Danish, my reply is that, as with basic arithmetic which the whole world needs and uses since primary school, while everybody learns it, not everyone is necessarily good at it without some assistance:-) English is no exception.

@Gracjan, Powodzenia!

Language / Having a really hard time with Polish cases [59]

Not quite sure I see the analogy here. Are you possibly referring to some sort of response delay in between command as opposed to a completed action?

In English too there are certain verbs which under no circumstances can use "-ing", e.g. "I love..", but never "I'm LOVING you" etc., that is to say, they are always completed rather than continuous, since the action according to conventional, standard usage can only be performed once at a given moment!

News / Scandals, conflicts, tensions, arguments - real life examples from Poland [470]

I think you meant "pilfering" (Mundraub), Alien.
Watch for translating literally.

News / John Paul II's Beatification [134]

Easier said than done.

Polonia / Polish workers in Denmark [41]

Basic Danish might prove more useful at first, GracjanW!
Where are you from originally?

News / John Paul II's Beatification [134]

Spot on, jon!

Language / Having a really hard time with Polish cases [59]

@pawian,
In Polish, there are the Nom. Gen. Dat. Acc. Loc. Inst. Voc.
Latin had five (including the Ablative of Means or Instrument), German has four
....Hungarian & FInnish approx twenty between them!

Apropos tenses, English does indeed have more tenses than Polish, since in Polish, tenses are often subsumed under aspectual prefixed verbs which reduce the application of tense, since the latter measure temporal action in terms of "when" vs. "how often" an action is performed.

News / John Paul II's Beatification [134]

Same difference, Rich!What's the problem with serving G-d from the Parliament vs. the pulpit? The Lord hears both as the same plea:-)

News / John Paul II's Beatification [134]

John Paul was in the Polish Underground Resistance, wrote for "Tygodnik Powszechny" and was front and center regarding sexual abuse in the Catholic Church along with absolving the Jews of wrong, well ahead of any other Pontiff.

Language / Having a really hard time with Polish cases [59]

Seven actually, paw, if one counts the Vocative/wolacz! Modern English no longer has case endings as we had in Old English.

Case as such gave way to context information from Middle English onward, therefore, English gradually became a more analytic as opposed to a purely synthetic one.

Cute quip about that. Apparently, Sir Edmund Spencer's "Fairie Queene" was chided when first published for its allegedly self-conscious Chaucerisms LOL

Language / "Poles" or "Polish people" - which is better to use? [200]

Either nomenclature is just fine with me.
Eternal debate seems merely hair splitting.