Polish was chosen the HARDEST LANGUAGE in the world to learn... :D

Olaf, in Communist Russia as well, you were "Citizen Kalenko!" (Garazhin Kalenko!), and not "Mr. Kalenko", even the melifluous patronymic "Vladimir Antoleyovitch!" or the like, was strictly avoided in official or public places, I'm told.

Among friends, then simply "Volodia!"

Pienczoro uszu is what I'm betting on :) :) It depends!!

Who is taking the next bets?:))

pięcoro uszów???

pięcioro uszu
but pięcioro uszów is also correct

dzięki, Paulinko:-) No dobrze, nie jestem wariatem!!!!

thanks for encouraging to learn polish :S

Pięcioro, oops. Why is hardest language in block capitals here? Is this some kind of competition? Some people find certain things hard, depending on what they are accustomed to. Let's drop the competitive undertones. My wife has to listen to people in the travel agency where she is a manageress brag about where they have been. How shallow!

Anyway, any Pole care to put some teasers out?

me too! :D

haha this will also be going on my cv.

i find this strange as i have found learning polish easier than learning french which to my friends is quite weird as they picked up french within a year and were completley fluent the next. i however was not fluent in french but polish and this was withouth any official lessons or sessions, just good old friends and youtube :p

what about the town I mentioned a while back, "Szewce".

I'm going to Szewce = ?

I'm in Szewce = ?

My best guess would have to be "Jade do Szewcow" and "Jestem w Szewcach", but I've gotten different responses from native Poles, or no response at all, just "I gotta think about it...."

Jade do Szewc
jestem w Szewcach

Paulinka_87 wrote:


that was one of the guesses. "Szewce" is a plural noun (i believe), hence, my guess was "Szewcow".

I'm pretty sure that all the plural toponyms ending in -ce in Polish are actually neuter (or feminine?) at any rate, the expected genetive plural is - zero.

You can find the answer in the Kielce edition of Gazeta Wyborcza. In the article 'Odkrywamy Świętokrzyskie - Szewce' you can find the following sentence: 'W lesie, po lewej stronie drogi prowadzącej do Szewców od Zgórska...'. So Szewców is the correct form.

Also in 'Słownik ortograwiczny PWN' you can find:
Szewce (miejscowość) -ców

Odd. Is it related to szewc (cobbler)? Is it an old alternate plural?

Judging by ghits, it does appear that the alternate form 'Szewc' is also in common usage.

A specific site or link for specifically Polish, not merely general Slavic, toponym endings/case inflections including nationalities etc. would be exceedingly useful, at least for myself:-)

thanks in advance!

Not quite on the first.
You must learn to distinguish dysorthorgaphia from misspelled words on keyboard or even haste. Thanks for a smart-ass comment.

Pofficer: I admit that that my post you took excerpts from was written lousy, due to haste. Try to focus on the message then;)

Topographical Dictionaries and other publications of that kind

In Polish:
1) Grzenia J., Słownik nazw własnych, Warszawa 2002;
2) Mały słownik odmiany nazw własnych, red. A. Cieślikowa, wyd. II., Warszawa-Kraków 2008;
3) Słownik nazw miejscowości i mieszkańców - Aleksandra Kubiak-Sokół (oprac.);

In English:
4) Toponymic Guidelines of Poland for Map Editors and Other Users, Wyd. Główny Urząd Geodezji i Kartografii, Warszawa 2002;

The full publications list you can find here: tinyurl/ykw64nl

Mind the space in the address!

Dziękuję, AdamKadmon!

Ale szukam wersii tego on-line:-)

polish is impossible to learn!

Some of us have managed it! :P

some of us have lives

"...What shall we use
To fill the empty spaces
Where we used to talk?..."

;-)


Grazhdanin Kalenko.

The Wall :) Look, they are spaces and not Spaces.

Bolshoi spasibo, Pbwl!

i have to say completely agree with you.
polish is the most ,most,most difficult language to learn.i guess maybe easy for E.T
i'd learned russian for 8 months and scores 5 for grammar test.
when i came to poland and finished 8 months polish classes,i'm still in lost. Een though i didn't touch russian for a year,my russian is still better,and much better than polish

P.S.chinese is extrmemly easy compared with indio-euro language,i mean all the language.
chinese doesn't have cases,genders,tenses,anything.there even doesn't exsit grammar!!!

Being Chinese yourself, I'm not surprised

ooohhh, i guess i'll throw another question up. please translate these sentences into Polish:

"with a few women"

"with a few men"

"with a few men and women"

"with a few children"

"with four children"

"with four women"

"with four men"

and, for the hell of it, "with eight children".

just another attempt to show the inefficiency of Polish. the true test here would be if all native Polish speakers on this forum would have to type an answer right away without calling Kasia or Piotr or Magda for their opinion, along with everyone typing their answer simultaneously so that they can't read posts from others and then say, "OOOHH...that's right, it should be xyz...."

anyway, enjoy!