Language / learning Polish using American phonics [24]

Imagine you will be eating Polish for the next week.

Each meal will consist of a starter (phonetics), a main course (vocabulary) and a dessert (grammar).
It's nice to plan your meals ahead, but you only eat one meal at a time and one course at a time, otherwise it would taste horrible, give you bellyache and be too much for your alimentary canal to cope with. However, whilst tucking into Monday's nosh, you should be aware that by Saturday there will be a huge dessert, all of which you might not be able to eat in one sitting.

On Monday, have a big starter of pronunciation, followed by two much lighter courses of vocabulary and grammar.
On Tuesday, you need your starter, but the main course can be a little more substantial. That way, you have more words with which to practice your pronunciation.

On Wednesday, you can indulge in a bigger dessert which will make the meal feel a little more complete and digestible.
... and so on.

When people give guides to pronunciation, be very careful to note who is giving the explanation and what variety of English they speak. As a southern Englishman, if I say something sounds like the letter a, an American might say it sounds like the letter o. Chances are, when descibing Polish, neither of us actually hit the mark and are too accustomed to the kind of hors d'oeuvre with which we start dinner in our own country.

Language / Polish or any Slavic language key to any other Slavic languages? [126]


I'd have said the ł in words like jabłko make more of an exception. There are dipthongs formed with a vowel + ł or a vowel + j. Nasal vowels, when articulated as such seem to be slightly longer.

Old Church Slavonic could be the key to Slavic languages generally, partly because it was from a time before the languages had diverged very far, and I believe it was an invented language that pulled together different elements that speakers of different Slavic languages could all understand... kilkaset rok temu... or something like that.

Life / Winter in Poland? [161]

Białystok's not all bad, surely. I've seen it from a car window and the view from one particular car park. Aaah! Great days! There was snow at the time.

Genealogy / Are all Poles blue eyed and blonde? [451]

I could go through a whole list of Poles I know or have known and give you their hair colours. One of the most common colours seems to be grey, but there might be another reason for this. Family A in Lomza all have dark hair unless they've gone grey. Family B in Slough, although from somewhere in eastern Poland, three have blond hair, one light brown and one dark brown hair and one who used to have dark hair.

Of these 11 people:
3 blond
1 light brown
7 dark brown

Even when I thought of more people, this kind of balance didn't shift dramatically, although definitely more of an increase in the count for light brown haired people.

Life / Famous Polish people (that we have actually heard of) [224]


To not know of at least two from this list, is a sign of ignorance and/or lack of education. I know three so I'm doing quite well.

Love / What do Polish girls think about Gypsies? [116]

Romani is a word that has nothing to do with the names Romania or Rome (after which Romania is named). Some Romani do come from Romania, but the similarities in name are purely coincidental.

Language / Clever and Innovative Polish Keyboard Layout. must see! [14]


Is that like the double click on a mouse, so if you wait a moment longer, it will give ee instead of ę?

News / "Drink Hard" - Bruce Willis to endorse Polish vodka [48]

12 Drunkeys

Language / Polish Swear Words [1242]


Kurwa I'm not suprised at all.

Language / Free and accurate Online Polish-English / English-Polish translator? [49]

I've not used babelfish, but I have tried google language tools and I'm not impressed. I've also used translatica which is better, but still not great.

Genealogy / Why Polish aren't white?? [272]


Anton Diffring played loads of Nazi German roles with his blond hair and blue eyes and ability to be sinister.

Life / The Poles - do they "bumble" through life? [29]

Poland is the most buzzing place in the world. It's like a massive hive in the middle of Europe.

Love / Are 98% of young Polish girls emotionally unstable and mood changing? [191]

Surely a post by a landlubber. The mighty oceans are certainly not predictable. Many a sailor has come to a sticky end when faced with a woman's heart... I mean the deep, rolling sea.

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

I believe some of the Central American languages make a distinction between creaky and non-creaky vocal sounds, rather like the kind of affectation people often make when imitating the very old or like the aaarrgghh that one of the Eric Idle characters in the Holy Grail makes when he's deciphering something written on the wall of a cave.

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


I argumentatively said what I said about the vocative because I hear kids using it. That tells me that it has plenty of life left in it. But when people use it wrongly, it is either a case of altering irregularities into regular forms or, as is less likely, vice versa. The old English word bōc (book) had a plural bōces (pronounced like the word bookies). As fōt and fōtes (footies) developed into foot and feet, bōces developed into beek, but for some odd linguistic reason, during the early Middle English period, it was corrected to the more logical plural of books, although feet never became foots. This could be an example of hypercorrection, although maybe not so hyper.

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

I'm not saying any genders should be dropped and I'm not saying we should speak an artificial language. Just look at what is essential in communication and what isn't. Look out - Polish has lost of few of its old features - you're down to only three tenses and two numbers and allegedly the vocative is slipping away. Something else will be next.

I can't imagine gender disappearing in Polish either but based on the IE derived three gender system being whittled down to two in most European languages and in some cases only one, this kind of thing is possible.

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

I think the goat may have been saying there is no inherant need in language for there to be any grammatical gender. Not only is a table being masculine and a spoon being feminine nonsensical, but even with actual gender, it is not essential for there to be a difference with words and or grammar when talking about him or her.

Food / WHAT DID YOU EAT FOR POLISH EASTER TODAY? [45]

A packet of crisps and a cheese sandwich.

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

Somebody mentioned Esperanto, but didn't put it at the top of easiness to learn. It is far simpler than English because the spelling system is entirely straightforward. In the language, there are 16 rules to learn and no irregularities. For someone who speaks English or one of the Romance languages, it is so easy it is actually almost boring. For speakers of other Latin-influenced languages, it is also quite simple.

It was invented by a man in Białystok whose day-to-day life called for him to speak Polish, Russian and Yiddish, and as a doctor he needed an understanding of Latin, and it was also in the latter days of dominance of the French language and the rise of English. I suppose he just needed one more language to complete the set and no-one had published any Navaho, Nahuatl or Fang grammars that were readily available.

My father took an interest in Esperanto, and when I was about 10 years old, we went to the annual international Esperanto conference which was in Brighton that year. I spent most of my time at the ice rink, on the beach or strolling around the interesting streets there, but it was interesting to see people of almost every nationality, speaking to eachother in a language which was nobody's first langauge, a language with no government or army or other possible serious negative connotations.

Of course, Esperanto speakers are just a bunch of rope-sandal wearing vegetarian dreamers. Are those things negative connotiations? A more serious problem Esperanto has is the myth that it means to supplant national languages or mother tongues. It's original concept is good, but these days people seem to communicate the world over with "lol", "lmao", "fail" and "brb".

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

Not only do children have to be corrected with the mistakes they make in language, adults also make mistakes. A lot of children find th sounds difficult. Some perpetuate these mistakes into adulthood. My Polish ladyfriend sometimes corrects her children when they get something wrong, usually in one of those curious dark corners of the Polish language such as collective numbers. Then she texts me with spelling mistakes that even I can spot. Actually, I don't see any text messages coming this way any more.

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

But Hausmeerschweinchen is umlautless, so I wouldn't know if it's masculine, feminine or neuter. Świnka morska is quite clearly feminine. Guinea pig is quite clearly genderless because it's English, so it will either be it or have gender based on its actual biological gender. I'm never really sure what to do when talking about a male guinea pig in Polish.


Do you mean when się, for example, is nowhere near the verb it's qualifying or is there something even more difficult and awkward going on?

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


Is that madchen that's neuter? Where's the logic in that?

Grammatical gender, especially for an English speaker, is all nonsensical other than when talking about actual gender. Even then, I don't suppose it is a necessity in language, just as some languages (I am led to believe) don't have different forms for plurals.

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

and Krankenwagen, Bahnhof, Schmetterling or Fussborden?

The examples you gave are all the same gender as they would be in Polish! (Shock! Horror!)

Having said that, I have read about the word dziewczę, meaning girl. It is neuter, apparently, but I've been told that no-one uses it these days.

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

BB, how easily can you tell the gender of a noun in German? In Polish, it's not usually too difficult to know whether a noun is masculine, feminine or neuter. There are exceptions (the masculine -a, the feminine non -a nouns for example) but by and large this is a relatively easy part of the language.

I've never tried learning German, but a mate of mine who's married to a German has not got very far with his learning in the last six or seven years, whereas I've learnt a lot more Polish in the last three years, and that's supposed to be more difficult.

I'm still tempted to give up Polish and learn Portuguese, Swedish or Fang instead.

Language / Polite forms in Polish vs English [49]

In some, perhaps many cultures, polite address is used with those who are unfamiliar and those who are familiar but not liked. Polynesians apparently are good at this - if you want to insult someone, it's best to address them with utmost politeness.

Would sir care to hear me most graciously call him a complete and utter.... now what was it I said about this time last night?

Language / Polite forms in Polish vs English [49]

The trouble with this subject is that English is a language, whereas Polish is a language and a culture. I'm not saying there isn't diversity within Polish, but it doesn't have widely divergent forms covering first and second language speakers in a variety of countries around the globe, all with histories of their own.

Let's take South Africa as as example. It is one of the world's younger English-speaking nations. The story I heard is of a South African boy starting school in England. The teacher says "Would you like to..." then follows what is actually an order to complete a piece of work. The South African boy replies "No, I wouldn't like to, but if I should do it, then I will."

Another story: I stood in the queue at the Chinese noodle stall (sadly defunct) at St. Albans market one Saturday morning. Just in front of me in the queue was an American chap. With each item he ordered, he said the words "Can I get..." which struck me as sounding quite rude. For him, this was polite enough, but for a native like myself, this way of asking for service is flipping out of order!

The butcher whose shop I go to whenever I need to buy some good quality meat for cooking, always calls me sir. He doesn't have to. He doesn't have a boss telling him to address everyone as sir or madam. He is the boss. He just calls everyone sir or madam because it is a polite form in the English language.


It may be because informal speech is generally accepted as the mode of speech to use in the workplace, that polite address in Polish is something I have almost only ever seen in books. I don't feel comfortable using it because I have such limited experience of actually using it and hearing it first hand.

News / What's the stupidest question asked about Poland? [414]

Budapest is in India, named after Buddha and all those flies and bugs that can be such a pest. The capitool of Poland is Walsall.

Language / Your perception of the Polish accent [145]

For a language to lose it's dialects and accents, along the way, people have to feel bad about the forms of speech that have developed naturally over generations in favour of another one that just has the power of authority behind it. I much prefer mutually intelligible accents rather than just one common accent.

Those here who have more ability to speak more than one language would possibly have the understanding that different languages involve thinking differently. Different accents, although obviously much closer than different languages, still go hand in hand with other differences in manner, perception and thought and these are differences the world needs.

Barney, I would most definitely not use the word advanced.

Language / Polite forms in Polish vs English [49]


The answer could be "No, you're alright."

There's nothing wrong with answering no. Not really is a good one though. The best way of using this kind of politeness is not to be completely vague or unobstrusive, just slightly.

Language / Your perception of the Polish accent [145]

Why is it that modern British accents tend to centre on cities rather than rural areas, whereas Polish accents seem to be the other way around? Is there an assumption there that accents are somehow uneducated or even wrong? I worry about the idea of everyone speaking "with one voice".

I've spent plenty of time with people from £omża, plenty more time with people from some little place east of Warsaw called Mokobody, and had to endure sharing my flat with someone from close to the Lithuanian border. Most differences I have heard I put down to personal differences in choice of words or sound of voice, although some of these differences may be to do with accent or regionalisms.

I was on the tube (for those of you who don't know, that's the London Underground - a system of railways, many of which are situated underground, especially within the more central parts of London). As the train rolled along, two women and a man were standing by the doors talking and joking noisily. I don't really know what they were talking about, I wasn't eavesdropping. I could tell, though, that they were from the southeast but weren't Londoners.

Then one of the women started to laugh. It was a very loud laugh, punctuated by snorting sounds which gradually, as she laughed more and more, happened more and more. They were all laughing, but this one woman was particularly loud, and funny with the way she laughed.

Nearby sat a family with two little girls. The woman's laugh made me smile and chuckle to myself. I looked up just after a break in the laughter and suddenly, just as my eye caught one of the little girls, the laughing woman suddenly made another very loud snorting sound, then the little girl burst out laughing as well. Then I couldn't help laughing out loud too.

Anyway, as the family started talking, I could tell instantly that it was some kind of Slavic language, but I couldn't tell which. Judging by their appearance, almost definitely somewhere in the Balkans. The laughter had quietened down for a while, when suddenly the laughing woman said in a loud voice "v****al w**k" and started laughing again. Luckily, these words in particular didn't seem to register as anything to the family with young children. The one woman who sat nearby and who paid absolutely no attention to any of this was probably a Londoner. Londoners on tube trains are normally the ones who manage to remain completely blank and expressionless.

Later on, I was sat on another train, now much closer to home. I noticed, just as the man who had sat opposite me for the last half an hour stood up to leave the train, that he'd been reading a book with the words on the cover reading "Język portugalskiego" with something that suggested that this was Brazilian-style Portuguese.

Now that would be an accent to hear. But sometimes the best sound a voice can make is just laughter, even if some people's laughs would be unbearable in anything other than small doses. I'm sure I could only have taken her sense of humour in small doses.