You sound like poor old Mr. Mark Twain who once quipped in his 'The Awful German Language' that he'd rather decline two drinks than one German adjective LOL
Thanks for the complement as well, but I'm far from a Polish native speaker. My mother tongue(s) consist of German and English. Polish was a far later acquisition on which I continue to toil.
Why, you still ask? Because NO Pole, Dutchman, German, Swede etc.. communicates as seamlessly or effortlessly in English as in their native language, I don't friggin' care how good they (think they) are!!
Well, that's nonsense really. Cześć, dzień dobry and dziękuję are learned early days. How is it that I can be left alone with my wife's parents who don't speak English, and chat away freely? Many foreigners speak Polish with varying degrees of success and you just need to think about it when your fluency goes off the boil.
Absolutely right on the money, Seanus and company!!!
A dedicated foreigner who hasn't been literally bombarded with years of poorly-taught English from grammar school on, will and usually can speak far better Polish than the average Pole I've just described can speak English. Much like graduating from arithmetic to mathematics, choice remains a key (though perhaps not the only) factor in foreign language success.
Some on this as well as other fora have ventured the absurd comment, "Better the whole world know one language, preferrably English, than bother learning so many a (useless) second language. English doesn't need to be perfect, good enough will do!"
To those people I respond in kind: When you're ill and require the services of a trained doctor, just use the next dunce off the street. In a pinch, it doesn't have to be perfect. Close enough is good enough.
Multiply that kind of thinking in almost every area today and what have we left? MEDIOCRITY RULES THE WORLD.
If a foreigner in Poland wishes to comminicate with the locals, Mikas, in which tongue pray, do you suggest he or she speak? Swahili??!
The smart Pole usually travels with an interpreter, as English is often as much of a challenge to speak effectively as Polish is for many people out there.
Some may say, "English is so much easier?" If so, then why does it sound so bad when ninety-nine point nine percent of most non-native English speakers speak it if it's that easy?
this is your native language, so it is worthless to brag here
My parrot can speak Polish, my dog understands and obeys the commands given to him in Polish and they don’t brag.
Polish language sounds impossible to 99.99% of intelligent people from all over the world.
So your intelligence is lass then that of the two mentioned, IQ level somewhere in the single digits, so I guess in a way you’re right, you really have nothing to be proud of.
Mikas, my post is NOT my opinion, but that of several other members of this and other fora.
The non-English speaking world treats English like trash, yet "we" the native English speakers, when speaking other languages, are expected to speak it with a respectable pronunciation, otherwise, many take the attitude "You're struggling! Let's speak English!"
Is it really helpful if the continued errors continue for so long and throughout the years that eventually the wrong becomes right??!
Polish has a degree of subtlety which English doesn't have. It is damned near impossible to render, for example, in English the differences between 'pisać', 'pisywać' and 'rozpisywać', withouth changing the target-language wording considerably. In Polish, just add a prefix, and presto, the aspect alters the meaning which would require a much wordier translation:
"Rozpisywałem do Ciebie, ale nigdy nie odpowiedziałaś." = I kept writing you until my fingers (literally) hurt, but you never answered.
Here, as in countless other instances, is Polish much more 'compact' than English, if the translation is to sound natural and not like translatorese:-))
A dedicated foreigner who hasn't been literally bombarded with years of poorly-taught English from grammar school on, will and usually can speak far better Polish than the average Pole I've just described can speak English. Much like graduating from arithmetic to mathematics, choice remains a key (though perhaps not the only) factor in foreign language success.
"Rozpisywałem do Ciebie, ale nigdy nie odpowiedziałaś." = I kept writing you until my fingers (literally) hurt, but you never answered.
You certainly don't appear to be a dedicated foreigner trying to learn Polish. As Strzyga says, the use of "rozpisywalem" in this sentence does not make much sense.
See, in English you can speak poorly and still be understood. Not all of us aspire to recite Shakespeare's sonnets appropriate for a given occasion. Likewise, few tourists to England, or elsewhere, will find Beowulf in OE of much use in a fast food joint, or anywhere else for that matter.
A learner of Polish has a far steeper hill to climb before becoming comprehensible. Comprehending others is even a steeper hill. English in its grammar and structure is fairly simplistic. Polish is complex. Neither is better or worse. One is easy, the other is not.
It is possible to get by in English knowing about 1000 words plus a tense or two. Learn 1000 Polish base words, a tense or two and see how far you'll get.
A learner of Polish has a far steeper hill to climb before becoming comprehensible. Comprehending others is even a steeper hill. English in its grammar and structure is fairly simplistic. Polish is complex. Neither is better or worse. One is easy, the other is not.
English is not 'fairly simplistic' in it's structure. But the greater reliance on word order and overall fewer inflections means that the structure can be pretty mangled but still understandable. Native speech and writing has a lot of structure that natives themselves don't recognize. But learners don't have to respect the structures that natives use to make themselves understood (especially to other learners).
This backfires badly on more advanced students who may be pretty fluent in day to day spoken English (they think) but cannot break the intonation barrier (a lot of the structure of spoken English depends on stress levels and choice of stressed word) or ever learn to write formally (without a native double checking) or do half a dozen other things that they might be able to learn if they had really had to work at it early on. The price of early ease is that hardly any learners ever really master the language.
For a lot of everyday uses, this doesn't matter, but it does lead to crap like the following passing for (academic!) English:
"The article aims at defining the notion of amateurism phenomenon. The basic forms of musical amateurism are also considered here. Amateurism appears in the article in its development, particularly, in its transition to professionalism. Characteristics examples of regeneration of amateurism into professionalism (jazz, rock, bard's song and other kinds of mass music) are given here. Special attention is being paid to such a form of modern amateurism as computer composing."
It is possible to get by in English knowing about 1000 words plus a tense or two. Learn 1000 Polish base words, a tense or two and see how far you'll get
You will get absolutely nowhere with Polish, still people will not understand you.
You are saying that Polish is more difficult to learn than Greek and Chinese. Sorry, but you're wrong.
A problem for beginners is that written Polish words look much more difficult to pronounce than they really are.
And Polish letters and letter combinations are always pronounced the same. This is not the case in English. To put it simply, the way letter and letter combination are pronounced in English is very irregular. But in Polish this is extremely regular.
Polish does have a very difficult grammar. But on the other hand, English grammar is one of the easiest in the world.
The argument "Language A is harder than language B" is kind of pointless seeing as difficulty is a subjective notion. Nonetheless, Polish is definitely among the most complex languages in the world in terms of grammar. At least if you only count "major" languages (I'm sure there are obscure Indian languages that are more complex, like Navajo).
I cannot agree that English is more 'understandable' necessarily with less of a linguistic arsenal than Polish, as but one example. Often, I honestly don't get what many Poles on this forum as well as in conversation are saying when they attempt to speak English. When such a person insisted to the point of becoming adamant that they speak to me in English during an intermission at a (MAGNIFICENT!!!) Chopin recital at the Polish Consulate General, the following ensued:
Lyzko: Well, if you prefer we can speak English. Anonymous Polish guest: Hey man, you not f---------g pesisting to speak in English cuz' it's no time for that, huh. So you f--------g make Polish words. I make English, okaj?.....
The exchange went on as described, plus the gentleman was stone-cold sober. Can anyone here decipher/translate into Polish or English what he wa jabbering about????
By the by, my Polish-German Wielki Słownik Polsko-Niemiecki states for "rozpisywać" = sich die Finger wund schreiben, ueberschreiben etc...
Whilst Ii trust a native Polish fellow translator like Strzyga, how can both of us arrive at two separate (professional) conclusions about the same bloody word?
Polish-German Wielki Słownik Polsko-Niemiecki states for "rozpisywać" = sich die Finger wund schreiben, ueberschreiben etc...
Is it Langenscheidt? IME The old Langenscheidt Polish-German dictionary is pretty bad (hint: think of the last syllable in British English). I think it may have been good once, but was not kept up to date. Many times I had the experience of looking a German word up and being puzzled by the Polish translation, and so off I would go to my Polish English dictionary and find out it's a synonym of a better known word.
By the by, my Polish-German Wielki Słownik Polsko-Niemiecki states for "rozpisywać" = sich die Finger wund schreiben, ueberschreiben etc...
Whilst Ii trust a native Polish fellow translator like Strzyga, how can both of us arrive at two separate (professional) conclusions about the same bloody word?
Lyzko, you are in a position to demand a refund from the publisher.
This is from Slownik Jezyka Polskiego PWN:
- rozpisać - rozpisywać
1. «zapisać jakiś tekst ponownie, zwykle nadając mu inną formę graficzną» 2. «zapisując, przydzielić coś komuś» 3. «podać do ogólnej wiadomości» 4. «przepisać wybrane fragmenty tekstu, z których każdy przeznaczony jest dla innej osoby lub grupy osób»
translation: 1. to record (write) some text again, usually in a different graphical form 2. to assign something to someone in writing 3. to announce (to general public) 4. to copy selected fragments if a text, each of which is meant for a different person or group of persons.
As you see, nothing about fingers.
The word also takes a reflexive form and this is what the same dictionary has to say about that:
- rozpisaćsię - rozpisywać się
1. «napisać obszernie, szczegółowo» 2. «nabrać wprawy w pisaniu»
translation:
1. to write voluminously, in detail (<-- this is what you should have used in the original a few posts before, but still noting about fingers)
2. to gain practice/proficiency in writing
Just when you though Polish wasn't so difficult, huh? ;)
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