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

w czasie suszy szosa sucha :)

Good one, ShortHair. I used to confuse DYKTAT = dictate (as in a law etc..) with DYKTANDO = dictation
lol

Wonder how ya say "jackditation" (a specious or spurious legal claim) in Polish.

Not quite sure what you mean, I have look that up.
Did you mean 'jactitation' (a maliciously boasting or giving out by one party that he or she is married to the other).

Suchą szosą Sasza szedł.

Now something less known: "Czy tata czyta cytaty Tacyta?" - I really can't pronounce it!

Nope, Short-Hair! My word means irrelevant testimony based upon an inherently specious claim. No matter, was sort of half-joking anyhow:-)
Thanks all the same.

As a translator though, I did pick up some legal Polish, but didn't find it any harder than legalese in any languageLOL

I didn't read all the posts etc. but from the heading I don't understand why this is important.

Would it be a problem if it was the easiest language in the world to learn?

the amount of time that is devoted to teaching of correct Polish spelling in school is the one single most important reason

the programmes were enough 20 or 30 years back with children not spending most of their time in front of TV or a computer - children are now bombarded with information and being so distracted at each and every corner and AFAIK the curriculums of Polish language teaching haven't been revised to address that

- Polish children are taught (were taught) a lot of theory of literature and loads of cultural (greek myths, symoblic figures etc etc) and patriotic notions (greek myths, symoblic figures - especially theory of literature is completely useless - I would even argue whether patriotic notions should be taught (they are taught based on literature - like Mickiewicz, Słowacki, Broniewski etc etc) - with so much time spent on useless things in later classes children who haven't managed to learn proper spelling and other basic stuff in the first couple of classes are left out in the cold in this field - this is why with a fairly simple ortography Polish language has we have so many kids (and subsequently adults) who never learn correct spellings (or make tons of mistakes) - fortunately Polish ortography is even simpler in that respect that you have no problems in reading out what is written - i.e. with significantly few exceptions you know how to read out/pronounce a word by the form it is written (in contrast for example to English ortography)

Thank you finally, gumishu.

I've been saying the same about English spelling for years!

"wyrewolwerowani rewolwerowcy rozrewolwowywują wyrewolwerowanych rewolwerowców"
"Szedł Sasza Suchą szosą"
"Król karol kupił królowej karolinie korale koloru kolorowego"
"Chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie w szebrzeszynie"
4 of the most difficult polish sencences

dyktando.info.pl/index.php?go=17
:D

That actually reminded me of one of my early-education exercises...

Dżdżownica dżdżu życzyła
Żab żółtej żardynierze
Dżin drzemał odurzony
Po jeżynowym dżemie.
Oburzał się na drzemkę
Bosman żeglugi wielkiej
Rzekł: "Nie możesz wytrzymać?
Zawiąż sen na pętelkę!"

In English, a similar tongue-twister:

Theophilus Thistle, the successful thistle sifter, who, after sifting a thread of unsifted thistle through the thick of his thumb....
Success to the successful thistle sifter.....

:-)))

couple more.......she sells seashells on the seashore. peter piper picked a peck of pickle pepper.

Well, let me just say; I've learned more Polish in an evening then I did in 2 years of French Lessons.

That says more about you than about either language.

I agree. I am Polish, heard it spoken as a child. Even took Polish lessons in school in grades 1-3. As an adult I took a Polish class at the local Community College. It was extremely difficult. I found Russian easier, even Albanian of which I am halfway fluent, I found easier.

Albanian has so many clitics and enclitics among its derived case endings, I even find Polish and Russian a reliefLOL

I too began studying Tosk, as Gheg appears to have fallen out of fashion among Albanian instructors as well as language-learning material. While I never got much beyond simple phrases and structures, the language fascinates me somehow. In addition, fre native Shquiptare know English that well. Learning Albanian's sort of like a foreigner beginning Norwegian and faced with the eternal fork in the road: one leading to Nynorsk, the other to (standard) Bokmaal, or Chinese, starting with Mandarin (standard) vs. Cantonese etc....

Polish defines the physical world with such detail, native English speakers whose FIRST foreign language is Polish, will have a Dickens of a time figuring out all the stuff posted here on PF, particularly the numbering system after "one", which looks all sixes and sevens to someone not yet familiar with or atuned to the intricacies of Polish.

What's so difficult about those?

Georgian and Greenlandic come close to this level, only with certain glottal, rather than sibilant, assonant, combinations, darned near IMPOSSIBLE for yours truly to wrap his tongue around:-)

If you're Polish, why would you need lessons?


Try Navaho!

English is a much "easier" language, I finally gotta admit.

'Whenever I READ that RED book about the story of LEAD my teacher LED me to discover.....'

Now, let the average foreign English learner tell me that they know for sure whether it's in the past or present tense and how one could honestly figure it out if the sentence were only heard, but not seen:-)

Take your sweet time puzzlin' over that one!

no need.

take any language and read a sentence without context, the same problems exist.

"Ale sluchaj......chlopak mowi do mnie.....po co robisz to? I wiesz co, mowie do niego...."

Am I talking about the present or past?


you said it right the first time, dude.

I would presume by "mówi", and not "mówił", that present rather than past is indicated:-)
Then again, idiomatic usage prevails, throwing off ALL preconceived notions of correctness.

By the by, Fuzz, I was being purely sarcastic when I said that English really is "easy".
LOL

"but check this out......so the guy says to me....why are you doing that? and you know what, I say to the guy....."

look familiar?

poles tell stories often times the same exact way. in fact it's very convenient because when i am telling a story to my mother in law, i can think in english and use the tenses the same as in my language.

You mean like the "narrative present", e.g. "And so, the young Beethoven arriveS home, tellS his mother of his desire to quite school, and IS promptly given a sever beating by his father."

Make sense!

Jon, you've hit the nail on the head as regards Navajo (or Navaho)!

Now THIS is considered by both linguists and language scholars to be almost definitively THE HARDEST:-)
It has, even now, NO single codified dictionary since it was traditionally only spoken, until very recently. It also has compounding possibilites which would make even a German, a Welshman and a Hungarian blanchLOL. It has no structure in the way that other languages know the term and shows perhaps only tenuous connnection with certain Paleo-Mongolian tongues, some of which may be extinct by now:-)))

No outsider has ever successfully learned this language and it's therefore no surprise that the "code-talkers" during WWII were Navajo natives only.

A remarkable story. The British Army used Welsh, but that was risky because a few Germans and Italians know it.

Didn't know that about the British Army using Welsh! Not totally surprised though. I've rarely known any single language group as uniformity challenged or as mutationally capricious as Celtic.

The Parachute regiments Battle Cry during the war was one they had learnt in North Africa. " Whoa Mohhamed". No German could get near to pronouncing Arabic and the phrase was used at Arnhem and Normandy as a sign of friendly forces being around. Not sure they still shout it in Afganistan though :)

If I remember rightly Lord Lovats Commandos had Scots Gaelic speaking radio operators .

The Dutch too used to love tripping up the German with the place name S - C - H - E - V - E - N - I - N - G - E - N!!! As most couldn't begin to pronounce it properly, the Dutch usually knew immediately who the mole, resp. spy. was in their ranks:-)

uuuhhmmm.....narrative present. sure. if providing the proper terminology to the discussion makes you happy, well great.

i have no idea why you even wrote that, but yeah sure...narrative present.