Language / Pimsleur v Rosetta stone [27]

Pimsleur is just a (very good) introduction to the language. It is very useful to get "a feel" for the language and correct pronunciation.

But a normal 90 lesson Pimsleur introduces no more than 500 words. The Polish 30 lesson one probably stops at 150-200.
Not much grammar is introduced - IIRC, no informal speech (ty instead of pan/pani); no verbal aspects at all besides "Chciałbym pojechać do Krakowa. Jak dojechać do Krakowa? Proszę jechać prosto"; and cases also introduced lackingly.

If the Polish Pimsleur will be extended to the full 90 lesson course, at least it will cover pretty much of the usual grammar and you really get a feeling for the language - though again, just as an introduction. This was my experience with Pimsleur Russian.

***

On Rosetta Stone I have only bad things to say. It is good to solve word puzzles and that's it. It's evident that it is the same for each language, which means that it sometimes is pretty awkward. Besides, the complete lack of feeling for the target country, all those pictures of multiethnic people in Washington DC or being cowboys kills it for me.

***

If you can get Pimsleur for free (library?) and have free time in 30 minutes chunks, then go for it just as an introduction. If you like audiocourses (you can't really read or write while commuting), try also Michel Thomas - again, just as an introduction, and with plenty of bad sides too (awful students, too many idiotic mnemonic rules, no repetition value: who wants to listen to those three again!).

But find a good textbook with audio and use it as your primary study method. Listen to the dialogues plenty of times before reading and translating them. There is the free one at russian.slavic.pitt.edu, there are Teach Yourself and Colloquial and all others mentioned in these forums. If you are lucky to know French or Italian, find Assimil Le Polonais (new) or Assimil Le Polonais sans peine/Il polacco senza sforzo (old).

Language / The Polish accusative case [32]

I hope I can ask in this thread.

Some masculine inanimate nouns have accusative in -a, at least in some expressions:

grać w pokera, grać w tenisa, ...

Is there a rule on this? And whose "fault" is it, of the verb grać or of those nouns?

Language / The Polish accusative case [32]

Thank you.


So it's only grać w.. ? I was having nightmares of "double forms of accusative" and other tragic grammar happenings.

Language / The Polish accusative case [32]


Sure! Polish is already difficult enough...

Seriously, from the little Russian and Polish I know, Russian cases seem easier and more regular to me.

Language / A Polish female name (anna) [18]

When I first heard, in a Polish language course, something like Nazywam się Anna Nowak, I was sure it was Annina or Annyna...
For geminate (?) consonant users like Finns or Italians, Polish double consonants are difficult.

Language / A Polish female name (anna) [18]


Well the "Anna Nowak" I heard in one course, and to a lesser extent the "Anna Borowska" I heard in another, are definitely not as in Italian.

Language / Why x.xx$ in Poland? [20]

The only "oddity" I have found - at least in Polish textbooks - is the use of "deka", as in decagrams, for buying food as in cheese or ham. Is this common?

Not that I find odd at all our use of "etto" (100 grams) in Italy for the same reason...

Language / Pimsleur v Rosetta stone [27]

I was going to reply... until I noticed I already replied a few lines above (though over a year ago)...

I stand by: Rosetta Stone completely useless, Pimsleur a good (but looong) INTRODUCTION, Assimil, especially Assimil Polish by Barbara Kuszminder, fantastic. In English Polish in 4 weeks is somewhat similar to Assimil.

For vocabulary acquisition, if you want to go the hard (and inefficient, in my opinion) way of single words instead of context, instead of Rosetta Stone try wordlists or a Spaced Repetition Software, like the good and completely free ANKI.

Language / How similar is the Italian accent to the Polish accent (when speaking English)? [34]

Polish and Italian both use quite open vowels and are mostly stressed on the penultimate syllable. I find both very "normal", "prose" languages, as opposed to the more poetic/emphatic Russian and French respectively.

Language / cookery, word usage question [19]


Not only in Poland.

Language / Napić się kieliszek koniaku [25]


Your examples are exactly how I thought it.

Strange only that also my Polish friend would have said kieliszek instead of kieliszka.

She adds she lately heard on television: "to co..napijemy się kieliszeczek naleweczki?"

Language / Napić się kieliszek koniaku [25]

What a discussion came out! Thank you all.

Language / How hard is it to learn Polish? [178]

Nah, if you know Russian well you will learn it very fast, as both are quite similar both for grammar and lexicon. All those mysterious word changes (D -> D-, T -> Ć, R -> RZ,...) will make sense in view of the palatalizing rules of Russian, as when adding -Е in the locative case.

I'd suggest to use resources in Russian for Russians, as they will probably bring out well the differences between the two languages.

Language / How hard is it to learn Polish? [178]


I'd hate Polish to use only U or only Ż and dispense with Ó and RZ. Or even, more drastically, to write devoiced consonants as such: 'tesz' for też, 'pszepraszam', 'buk' for buk, Bóg and Bug.

I do actually like the Polish ortography - I personally prefer it to Czech or Croat, for example. Not to talk about those ugly Cyrillizations of a language which doesn't suit (anymore) to Cyrillic.

Language / A good free online conjugator for Polish [8]

polish.slavic.pitt.edu/~swan/beta/

is an online dictionary with all verbs conjugated (and all nouns, etc. declined).

The website (polish.slavic.pitt.edu) has lots of other, free, interesting materials, from a first year university course to a couple of grammars, etc.

Language / pospieszyć się, pośpieszyć się. [5]

Thank you, asik!

I found both in słownik języka polskiego, with pospieszyć being "zob.".

Does "zob." mean "popular" or something similar?

Language / pospieszyć się, pośpieszyć się. [5]

Ale jestem głupi!

Language / A good free online conjugator for Polish [8]

On polish.slavic.pitt.edu/~swan/beta you write jest in the search field (on the right side of the page) and press Enter. You get 23 results as it is often used in examples in the dictionary. The fourth result is być. Click on View Tables under być, and on the imperfective verb... być, and you get all the tables.

Language / Pan vs. pan (letter capitalization), Cię, Ciebie [13]

Thanks k..., Lyzko and gumishu. So I take it than in a novel you'd have a dialog:

- Dzień dobry, pani Kowalska!
- Dzień dobry, panie profesorze.

Language / Is rosetta stone any good for learning Polish? [51]

Rosetta Stone is the single worst language course I have come across. Well, second to worst, after the American selling his Spanish course where you multiply words instead of adding them.

For a free and legal alternative, check out the courses at supermemo. The paid courses work like spaced repetition software, but you can use it for free without spaced repetition.

Language / Pronounciation of the name "Rafael" [16]




So which is off, my English or my Polish, as for me it should be as the U in "cut" and not the A in "cat"?

Language / Polish - Absolute Beginner Questions. Study plan. [75]


Maybe all languages from the same family.


If you listen to tons of native material you will understand next to zero and you won't progress. That's why they suggest "n+1" or "comprehensible input": listen or read material that is only one step more difficult than your current level and you will progress fast.

Grammar is not a monster - on the contrary it is very useful, especially for beginners. We are not children: from one side, we have qualities and knowledge that they don't have (we can read, we have been in school, we already know one or more languages,...); on the other we might have lost some of their ability to "intuitively" learn languages, and we are not actively immersed in the language - with "actively" I mean your mum teaching you, repeating, correcting, encouraging.

Grammar often makes it easier - I don't mean to learn by heart all declinations and conjugations, but to understand why something is like it is and to have a clearer picture of the language.

As an example, take the popular course called Pimsleur. They avoid on purpose all grammar terms, but in doing so they have to take plenty of difficult steps to explain even the most basic concepts of the language. It would be much easier, and faster to learn, if they'd allow some basic grammar, as in "what is a case".

Language / Polish - Absolute Beginner Questions. Study plan. [75]


Those are used here too (Italy) at the university, but as you mentioned, they pretty much require a teacher.

Language / The difference between lubić and podobać się in Polish? [4]

Polski bez problemu! intermediate has the following to say:

Language / Tego/Jego [15]

Just as a side note, I think that in Russian you must use 'swój' (свой) when, and only when, referring to the subject of the sentence, that is: subject + verb + "swoj"-something. Therefore in Russian it would go exactly as in your examples (note that in the second example the subject is "chłopiec i jego dziadek".

But I think in Polish it's much more of a free choice.

Language / Pan vs. pan (letter capitalization), Cię, Ciebie [13]


Miłości i wolności, potrzebuję was.

Language / Are the languages of Russian and Polish similar at all? [94]


Wrong.

Finnish is actually quite a simple language. Contrary to Slavic or Romance language, the first steps are quite steep, but you will eventually reach a plateau: there isn't so much grammar after all in Finnish.

The problems of Finnish are:
- different feel from Indoeuropean languages, different vocabulary - which is paradoxical, as most lexicon is Indoeuropean, though this usually doesn't help much, as both Finnish and Indoeuropean languages have changed the original words in different directions;

- pronunciation, but there actually isn't any sound you don't know from English/French/German. Ä, Ö, Y aren't so difficult after all.
- cases, a good number, 14(15), but of these six are locational (w, na, do, od/z) and some are very rare, relics from the past. That leaves only 3(4) cases: nominative, genitive, partitive (and accusative, which is equal to one of the others).

- consonant gradation: word stems, both nouns and verbs, get specific changes, especially with K/P/T - something Polish is full of too.

On the other hand:
- the verb system is easy, there's even no future tense
- almost no prepositions, which cause so many headaches in other languages (w vs. na in Polish, all Romance languages, English phrasal verbs)
- you pronounce as it's written, fixed stress, no omophones (u/ó, rz/ż, ...)
- very easy sounds, for example only one sibilant (?), s and one affricate -ts-, as opposed to s/ś/sz/z/ż/ź/c/ć/cz/dz/dż/dź
- no gender

Just to debunk a myth.