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

Poor, poor foreigners!
I can only repeat.

I can teach everybody (average intelligent person without racist prejudices) in between 20-30 teaching hours the most useful Polish grammar rules.

Being honest with you. I worked for a few language schools in Krakow Jagiellonian University inclusive and I could not stand it too (-:

good point and I had explained it in my previous post. English is EASY to learn because of other language influences. It is a relatively easy language to learn in comparison to other languages.


some are as a result of post-colonialism sentiments, but to be fair there are some Poles who are very ethnocentric as well.

Polish was formed as such because it was spoken only by Poles who are high IQ people so the language tends to be complex.Similarly German or Chinese,Japanese are also complex since formed by high IQ people for their needs.Also language reflects national character(German precision where every word means only one thing etc).

On the other hand languages which become international(like English,Spanish etc) lose their complexity because they have to be spoken by non-native folks(colonies etc).So they sacrifice the edges.

The same happened to Greek.Ancient Greek was one of the most(if not the most ever) complicated language on earth spoken in a small region inhabited by high IQ individuals.When Greek became international after the conquests of Alexander the Great it was radically simplified to meet the needs of persons who had never spoken Greek before but now they had to(Syrians,Egyptians etc).So now after 2000 years I have no problem to understand this language although for the ancient Greek language I need dictionary since many words since have changed meaning or vanished at all.But simplified Hellenistic language is perfectly understandable though still more complicated than modern Greek.

that is something I would agree with and I think there is a social theory re: the influence of the spoken language on the persons patterns of thinking, values etc. Language carries much more then just words.


yes and no. I don't know Spanish, so I cannot comment really, but I know that English used to have cases in the past. Whether colonial politics was the only reason for the change is not for me to say, but I think that the changes happened before colonial times.

I am not buying your IQ theory though:)

Again like I wrote long before: Have you all read this article about the hardest language? It's rubbish and contains false data. If someone makes such judgements based on poor quality research and (I guess) no comparative linguistics skills then... what value has such a statement?

My brief thought is: Polish is hard but rather not the hardest, Hungarian, Finnish or Czech are also hard to master; complexity of language forms is an advantage to the users not a handicap, English native speakers who don't know at least 1 or 2 other languages (with preferably one non-indoeuropean and one from other language family than Germanic) are not the best in comparing language and their qualities (unless they have aptitude towards studying grammar of languages etc.)


that's the famous L.Wittgenstein's thought and it is true especially when comparing languages. The more of them you know (learn at least) the more world you understand.

Magdalena: Can you explain this to me please: "Because no other Slavonic language has inflections, genders, or tenses. And no other language has them either..."

Sarcasm. Are you capable of detecting it? ;-p

Not sure I especially buy this I.Q. stuff either.
So you're saying (or seem to me to be saying): Complex languages are spoken/written by equally complex minds of those who originated that language vs. 'simpler' languages which are spoken/written by simpler-minded peoples. Is that it more or less, less than more??:-)

Where then's your evidence, where're your clues?

All sounds rather elitest, bordering on just plain bigotted, to me!

That is not only a theory but proven. I remember reading articles about studies concerning this.

yea, yeah., of course Polish is so extremely hard and has the craziest grammar in all the world, because all Poles have the highest IQ in the world, yeah right :)))))

suprising though, no statistics on the level of IQ of the population places Poland even in the first 50 countries in the world ! Oh oh, that is a shock !!!

that's why 99% of poles cannot say correctly in their own native language extremely easy phrases like:

"with four children"

"with eight children"

because polish have very high IQ of course, they are so superior to all other races :))))))))

I think I never laughed so much in this whole month :)))

Well, language is to determine the cultural identity anyway. Cultural borders are usually the language borders. The cultural border between NL and FR, for example runs through the middle of Belgium. A cultural entity is only then a full cultural entity when it has its own language. When it doesn't, it can have its own culture and all, but it will never be a cultural entity.

>^..^<

M-G (at least, that's how I learned it at uni)

I agree with all you are saying.


nice:)

Psycholinguistics is indeed a fascinating subject and the entire topic of linguistic vs. cultural identity is a specialty of mine in cross-cultural studies. Chomsky, Pinkert and Ruhlen among other linguists have written extensively on this topic, going in fact, all the way back to Sausseure himself and his observations on how his own children acquired their first 'second' language, German, not in school, but rather by playing with German kids near their town right by the Alsation border.

Bilingualism and language identity is of course an offshoot of the idea that all of us learn to think in our own language without cognitive ability, but rather, organically.

Lovely post, Mac!

so what happens when I speak 3 languages ?

I've heared about that polish language is hard,but i would like try and i'm gonna learn this langauge myslef :)

It is not only the IQ which adds to the complexity of a language.Geographical-social factors also play an important role.For example scandinavian languages tend to be simplified despite the high IQ of the general population because people there lived in extended lands separated from each other and needed simple means of communication.Mountains etc play an important role as well since they divide certain groups of people causing dialects etc.In Greece it was just insane n 19th century how many variations of the same language existed.

i don`t know Polish language but as a Serbian i can say that i quite nice understand Polish. i understand Polish well when listen and when read. i am sometimes slow to understand full sense (eventually some particular word) but, in general i always understand meaning of talk/text.

let me show you something...

POLISH METAMORPHOSIS OF TWO SERBIAN FOLK POEMS

pbunjak.narod.ru/koautorski/metamorfoze_s.htm
pbunjak.narod.ru/koautorski/metamorfoze.htm


Polish:

O matko, matko! Bodajś nie pożyła,
żeś nas obojga ze światu zgładziła.

Serbian:

(Približno: O majko, majko! Dabogda ne poživela,
zato što si nas oboje na onaj svet oterala).

When you have such a similarity, practicality overlapping in epic poetry you know that analyzed ethoses were one and same ethos in past. We know Slavic, Polish and Serbian history, we know that we are separated (territorially) by hostile foreign force.

Aphrodisiac, as best I can make out, one thinks differently according to the language being spoken, resp. written. If you're speaking English, supposedly (hopefully!), you're thinking in that language too, same for speaking Polish and thinking in Polish vs. your native language etc....

I'm summing it up in a nutshell, but there's a lot more that just this:-)

Maybe Polish is not super easy to learn but anybody can speak it if really wants to
youtube.com/watch?v=wkmIGvXj870

Not much debate there, grubas:--))

I am familiar with the concept;). more truely I am usually full of it. You might want to practise being more understandable with your sarcasm or you''ll be getting close to being misunderstood more often, Miss Magdalena the Linguist.

grubas wrote:


congrats to this dude from Africa who can speak a bit, but this is a perfect example of Polish people saying someone can speak Polish.....when they really can't. you wouldn't brag about someone in your class who speaks B1 level English....so why highlight someone speaking AT BEST B1 level Polish?

TV interviews are edited, questions are prepared, they only show what went well, and even the things he said were nothing impressive. he's below FCE level and his pronunciation is poor....and has probably been in Poland for YEARS.

great post though....gets us back to the main topic of this thread and supports the theory of "hardest to learn" or at least "one of the hardest to learn".

When I first visited Poland, I would have thought myself lucky to find even a hotelier who could speak 'B1 level English, much less anything nearly half as good as my survival Polish LOL.

Then again, I was in a medium-sized city, it was the mid-90's and I'm pretty sure if I'd been instead to the capitol, I would have definitely been able to find ordinary tradespeople, certainly hotel mgmt, who spoke fluent English:-)

FUZZYWICKETS You are 100% right
GRUBAS, why do you defend Polish so pathetic way (-:
Polish does not need it!

I am afraid that not only majority of foreigners does not belive that Polish is not to speak,
but also Polish teachers and and naitve speakers. But they are so brave. They defend the case which is (they think) lost. They really like to be a hero (-:

This is really funny from my point of view (-:

P.S
I have pure Polish blood (-:

Makes it a language for intelligent person to learn, really. Explains why some of the better schools in the UK are now teaching Polish as a second foreign language.

Sorry I've made mistake in my last post should be not:


but

... is to speak (-:

Delphiandomine wrote:


so you think Polish is not more difficult than other languages.....but requires more intelligence?

i'd argue that polish IS in fact more difficult to learn in general, but doesn't take intelligence to learn......rather........lots and lots of persistence and sheer will.....and time.

Delphiandomine wrote:


i don't understand your reasoning. how does Polish being difficult "explain why....better schools in the UK are now teaching Polish.....?"

An interesting point, indeed. Mastering a foreign langauage, regardless of whether its grammar is complicated or not, is always a great challange, even for talented people. You can even study a language for the mere sake of learning it, just to keep your brain going well; lots of people love to do cross-words which is easier, but also challenging in a similar way.

For some dedicated morons, however, it will always be smarter to complain endlessly how a given language is difficult and how its grammar is "stupid".

Polish language classifications make as much sense as those in any other language. I believe it is more the perception of difficulty than the actuality itself:-)

Yes of course. That is why polish have between the lowest IQ in the whole Europe.

Because it took a very high IQ to learn the language, and then there is little IQ left to use for something else, right?

Probably you don't belong to Europe to write sth like that.