For Poles, English is a nightmare as is Polish for the average Anglophone:-)
you are completely wrong - English has a very gentle learning curve compared to Polish (thanks to quite straightforward grammar: no declination to speak of of nouns and adjectives,no grammatical genders, maximum of 4 different forms of verbs with a whole lot of them being regular ie following a simple pattern) - the biggest problem with English is getting the hang of the spoken language (with understanding the spoken language being the bigger obstacle than speaking it well enough to be understood) - I wouldn't count English ortography as a problem because, from my experience, you mostly learn new English words in written form (well at school it is both written and spoken at the same time actually) - well, OK, there is also the vast and nuanced vocabulary which you need to master the language (I will probably never master English tbh, which only proves that it is not that difficult to attain intermediate level if you have average memory)
which only proves that it is not that difficult to attain intermediate level
Exactly. I never studied English. I just use it. I never say "What did he say?" while watching TV. I never studied the chemistry of a carrot. I just eat it. I can't name any leg muscles. I just walk.
@Milo, modern English, certainly since the death of Chaucer, Spencer, and the arrival of Shakespeare, shuffled off the mortal coil of case and declension.
Where for instance in contemporary English do you have the morphological acrobatics of German or Polish? Come on, mate!
What's tricky about English is its spelling cf. with its pronunciation. In Polish, consonant clusters have only one pronunciation which never changes. In addition, there are zero schwas or even silent letters as opposed to English words such as "dime" vs. "dim" etc.
Once more, what's complicated about Polish for foreigners, especially Anglophones, are the perfective/imperfective verbal aspects along with the case endings for the three genders, and of course, let's not forget those pesky counting quirks after the number five:-)
On the other hand, English is a pluracentric language with numerous varieties, e.g. English and American. Polish has ONE standard written language, naturally apart from myriad dialects such as goral.
Moreover, English tenses confuse many Polish students of mine. As Polish aspects measure repetition of action, that is, the frequency with which an action is performed, English tenses measure temporal action, when, rather than now many times, a given action is performe "Do you speak Polish?" vs. (incorrect) "Are you speaking Polish?" and so forth. In Polish "Idziesz do szkoly?" (right now) vs. "Chodzisz do szkoly?" (Do you attend school [regularly]?)
@gumishu, many of my Polish students find English nightmarishly difficult, among them teachers, doctors, and lawyers.
If all of you had started leaning the language when this thread started and kept practicing, today you'd be fluent enough to see no point in continuing discussions like this ;-)
Broken Globish, you mean? No, Rich et al. Never a smart idea. Communicate in the language CORRECTLY, or leave the English speaking to someone who can, plain and simple.
@Cinek, Learning a language is a life long pursuit, even of one's native tongue.
For the bazillionth time, Polish is no more "difficult" than, say, English for a monolingual, Mandarin speaker, as but one example!!
Anglophones will surely find Polish a most challenging, to be sure, intimidating, language at the very outset. However, for Russians, Ukrainians or other Slavic native speakers, Polish is hardly as much of a stretch as German, French, Swedish or Dutch, for instance.
