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Posts by Wills  

Joined: 25 Jan 2013 / Male ♂
Last Post: 9 Dec 2016
Threads: 1
Posts: 3
From: Paris, France
Speaks Polish?: Tak

Displayed posts: 4
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Wills   
25 Oct 2013
Language / Is Polish an easy language to learn and is there a way of learning it easily? [105]

I wanted to honor my Polish ancestors by learning Polish, I am 50% Polish. I wanted to learn it easily as well, but I don't know how to.

I did the same, good luck with that. After you learn the basics on you own, I would recommend you the "Polonicum" summer courses at the Warsaw University, it's rather cheap for the good quality of the lessons, and they provide a dormitory accommodation : polonicum.uw.edu.pl/indexpl.php?lang=en

Some people learn Polish for very different reasons there: I even remember a Japanese guy learning Polish just for the love he had for Chopin's music.

By the way, as a French speaker, I found Polish way easier than German, for various reasons:
-Polish has a huge amount of French loanwords.
-the phrasal structure is very simple in Polish. In German, the verb changes its place all the time, and most of the time you have to wait to the very last word of a sentence to understand its whole meaning.

-in German you have to learn the gender of every single word (der/die/das) whereas it comes by itself in Polish as the gender depends from the last letter (-a is feminine, -o and -e are neutral, etc).

As for English, it's only considered as an "easy" language because of its huge influence both culturally en economically. But honestly speaking, the hardest part in English would be the pronunciation, which is absolutely irregular. Ask a beginner in English to pronounce the word "archive" for instance. As you see, it really differs from "achieve".

Same for other words like "tough/thought/though".
Listen at this poem and tell me if the English pronunciation is something easy to master: youtube.com/watch?v=m-JDu3o7Cyw
At least, the pronunciation is regular in Polish: you pronounce every word the way it's spelled.
Wills   
25 Oct 2013
Language / Is Polish an easy language to learn and is there a way of learning it easily? [105]

Well, Mandarin Chinese is an 'easy' language to your standards then, given that its grammar is even simpler than in English.

Seriously, if Polish was the language of business, a worldwide culture, with famous rock-ski music bands and Hollywoodski movies widespread in the entire World, anyone would find it easy to learn.

There is not such thing as an 'hard' language, it's just a matter of your own backgrounds and influence.
Wills   
9 Dec 2016
Law / Changing the name on a Polish passport [6]

Hello everyone,

Apart from having another nationality, I also have Polish citizenship, and I'd like to ask a question: I want to change my family name to take my mother's maiden name (which is Polish) and "Polonize" my first name (ie Andrew -> Andrzej).

1/ Could you give me some tips about the procedure? It took me years to have my Polish nationality recognized as I had no help in that.

I live in Krakow, speak Polish but I struggle reading it. Since I'm quite flexible, I can do it in an embassy abroad if some of you suggest it is a faster procedure.

2/ Is the former name (nazwizko rodowe) going to appear on the new passport alongside with the new identity? (I guess it does on the dowód)

3/ Are they taking my old Polish passport for that?