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

Quite likely, but several of those forms are so rarely used, I believe that one may be forgiven for the occasional mistake!


^^^^
This. Particularly the bit in bold.

For example, I can read Czech as fast as Polish or English, and can translate from Czech to Polish or English (particularly the former) quickly. But I have to listen very carefully to the spoken language to fully understand what I'm being told, even though I understand probably 80% of the words. It's why phrasebooks alone are never enough.

Slightly off-topic (though its been mentioned): I find it interesting that someone else has mentioned that Chinese isn't as difficult to speak as many think. I used to go out with someone who was English but used to work in Hong Kong and was fluent in Chinese, and she said the same.

I'm planning on starting to learn the language in a few weeks time, as I'm planning on going to HK myself at the end of the year, and don't trust the "most people speak some English" descriptions I keep reading.

Unfortunately, I can only remember about three characters so far (mind you, I haven't really tried learning yet, lol) so seeing if I can actually read any of it after 6 months will be interesting to say the least! I may report back here though, hehe ;)

Mamy dwa samochody. Konkretnie dwie beemki. Jedziemy samochodem we dwoje. Z tyłu wsiadło dwóch kolegów. Ci dwaj koledzy piją piwko. Nie jadą z dwiema koleżankami. Gdyż dwóm koleżankom akurat coś wypadło. Więc jadą z dwoma piwami ;]. To nie jest dużo jak dla dwojga. Dwojgu kolegom zachciało się pogawędki. Jednemu się przypomniało, że jak jechał kiedyś z dwojgiem rodziców i dziadkami. Dwójka dziadków opowiadała że. W szkole miała same dwójki. Bo zamiast się uczyć oglądali Dwójkę (tvp2 :P). I każdy z nich lądował z dwójką na koniec semestru. Nie szło im za dobrze w dwójce (II LO :P), więc przenieśli się do trójki. Przed odejściem walnęli sprejem na ścianie napis „żegnaj dwójko”

wow. Thanks man. Hate to ask for more but can anyone translate those? I think it will really help with my learning process.

We have two cars. Two Beemers (BMWs), to be exact. The two of us are travelling by car. Two friends got in the rear. The two friends are drinking beer. They aren't travelling with two girlfriends, as something turned up for the two girlfriends. So they are travelling with two beers (haha - I like this one :) ) which isn't much for the two of them.

(Sorry, more later. I've just been told dinner's ready ;) haha)

thanks for the first part....

no worries ;) (I got forced to do the washing-up too... anyway... I'm back...
no long ting... hehe ;) )


The two friends wanted to chat.

For one of them, it was a reminder of when they used to travel with both parents and grandparents

Both grandparents recalled that when still at school, they received just “twos” (I think this refers to grading/marks, not sure). Because instead of learning, they watched “television channel 2” (TVP 2), and each of them ended up with a "two" at the end of term/semester.

It didn't go well for them in the 2nd (grade/form/year - not sure which is the most appropriate usage here), so they were moved to the 3rd (as above)

Before leaving, they sprayed the wall with the message “Bye, 2nd Grade”

Correct. The "old" grading system was 2 (fail), 3, 4, 5 (very good)
In the nineties they added 1 (fail) and 6 (excellent), so nowadyas 2 (dwójka) is now longer fail, but for many genrations it sound strange because the old system was in use since before the WWII.


Wrong, in this context it means high school - in cities bigger than about 25 thousands inhabitants you usually have more than one liceum (plus a few technikum and, currently less popular, professional mid-grade school, without matura (Liceum Ogólnokształcące no. 2 and no. 3, although in Polish we use Romanian numbers for high schools so it Liceum Ogólnokształcące II, Liceum Ogólnokształcące III etc.)

Aha ;) Well, I went to school in England, so I'm sure I can be forgiven, lol. When I left school (quite a few years ago) we used to call each year of a particular school the "1st Form/"2nd Form", etc., however I think they use an Americanised numbering system these days :)

Haha well it's good that the language goes along with the girls/women. Both extremely hard to master/understand :D

What about Vietnamese with more than 25 grammatical forms for "I" (the first personal pronoun)? :D It just depend on each person's skills in learning a foreign language, not ALL find Polish the most difficult one (but some do).

chauduyphanvu,

maybe you'll be interested in this:

wietnam-polska.wikidot.com/

Depends on who you believe, obviously. But for speakers of English, it looks like it's NOT the hardest language at all (still pretty hard, but not the hardest):

community.livejournal.com/learn_languages/522322.html

mafketis
Thank you very much, although I'm not a Vietnamese living within Poland but I'm interested by the website. :)

I didn't even know that my mother tongue may be so difficult to use by foreigners. I know it's complicated but don't give up people. I know people who do speak polish as a second language so I guess it means that it is LEARNABLE!

Polishgirl, Polish is NO harder for us Anglos than English is for you Poles. It's often merely the perceived impression of degree in difficulty. After all, for most people, perception still is reality-:)

Marek P.

Yeah, if Chinese is so difficult, how come the Chinese manage to learn it so easily then? :)

To illustrate how difficult Polish is...that should be dwie. Dwa is for two masculine things...and piwo (singular) is neuter...so dwie is used for fem and neuter.

Jihozapad, obviously the Chinese learn their language as a mother tongue, therefore, it couldn't ever pose the same level of difficulty as for an outsider. We Anglos can spell our crazy patchwork quilt of an orthographic system, and we're clearly not all geniuses (pardonez moi, geniae LOL)

Rather a no brainer, I should think-:)

When asked once by a student what I thought was the "hardest" language in the world, I responded by asking the student what they thought was the "easiest' language in the world!

It's merely a mirror image of the same question-:) Difficulty and ease are such relative matters, depending on whom you ask.

Wow...I thought Arabic was the only hardest language to learn.

To me Polish is hard to spell...

I'm a Swede living in Poland since over a year back, and to me it's not the grammar that is the biggest obstacle, its the fact that I don't understand what people say even if I know all the words, because Polish sounds very fuzzy to me, and even if I recognise all the words, I don't have time to think about what they actually mean. A while back I saw the movie Mała Moskwa, and I realised I even understood more of the spoken Russian than of the Polish, even though I just studied Russian for 2-3 months and I already forgot most of it. Sometimes I even think I understand spoken Spanish better than Polish even though I never studied it or know any other Romance language.

And I really hate all those schwhwschwch-sounds, like "Cieszę się, żę się cieszysz..." Can anyone actually hear a difference between "cieszę się" (I'm glad) and "czeszę się" (I combing my hair)? Words like dotknęlibyśmy or drgnęłybyście might as well be from Mars. Sometimes I find it hard to believe that Polish is Indo-European. ;)

Good job michalek :)

Yes, very clearly (I'm a native speaker of Polish, though). I've noticed that you (meaning people from the so called Western Europe) also have a problem with "si" and "sz". "Si" is often incorrectly translated as "sh". For example, Gosia becomes Gosha. It irritates me a lot. Thank God I don't have any "si" or "sz" sounds in my name.

Hi! I am also a Swede living in Poland. As you can tell from my user name.


I think you also can hear the differnence. Maybe if the person is drunk and talking fast it can be difficult.

But it's a clear difference between ci and cz(e).
Cz is like the ch in the English word cheese (slight t-sound in the beginning).
Ci is more tssi sound. But difficult to explain in words.

I've always been told "ci" is more soft. What's your impression?

You can't blame foreigners if they don't have that particular sound in their language.
Cz and ci are close sounds.
Cz can be transcribed as an English 'ch' sound.
Ci is the same sound, just...wetter.

But you know, when you're not used to it, those sounds are pretty similar.

I don't. The lack of care when spelling someone's name is what irritates me.


The tongue is in a completely different position.

Then please don't come to France, here people don't even try to imitate the accent (i'm generalising a bit but i know i'm right).

'You are a beautiful girl' -> (with a strong French accent) You aRR uh byouTifool guh-RRl
Nice.

;)


Completely different, really?
It's obvious for you, not for everybody.

Hey, I realise that. I have the same kind of problem with some English sounds.


Oh, I love it ;-) .

Ah, you see ^^


Argh, i don't ;) It's such a shame that people can just speak French.
There are French people who are very good at English, but they're a minority.