All languages have their difficult and easy points. When asking if one is difficult, the question should be, difficult for whom?
One issue is that unlike French and English which have many second or third language speakers who are not expected to speak it perfectly, Polish is usually for its natives who aren't used to hearing mistakes. That will doubtless change with time, as the language and its use evolve.
Nevertheless, it's possible to pick it up by speaking; it's often the best way since those who teach it aren't usually that skilled in teaching languages.
Polish is usually for its natives who aren't used to hearing mistakes.
Are you serious? Listening to an ad hoc interview with Poles is beyond painful. It's like walking into a junk store that was vandalized. No flow, no rules,...pure chaos. Like Picasso's women with three eyes.
Jon's correct here of course! I grew up with German and English, almost bilingual. Had I tried to master German completely, naturally, all but indistinguishably from a German-born native speaker by the time I'd entered my freshman year of college at roughly eighteen, I'd have flunked from the first day of Frau Koerner's class with flying colors LOL
Any language can be learned the younger one is, practically as with any motor skill, from foreign languages to driver's ed.
Polish admittedly is a far different quantity from either English or German. As the latter are both related Germanic languages, it stands to reason they would be easy to master for Brits, Yanks or anybody with a similar mother tongue.
Being a Slavic language, Polish presents certain immediate obstacles for foreign learners, not the least of which is the base vocab., followed by pronunciation, thereupon counting quirks and paired verbal aspects.
Polish children naturally absorb the latter with their mother's milk:-)
focusing too much on speaking "perfectly" often impedes daily communication.
You see this focus on 'perfection' a lot with Poles when it comes to speaking English. They are sometimes far too self-conscious about their English language skills, and underestimate themselves. Polish culture is very judgmental and critical, so they have an ingrained fear of making a mistake and being ridiculed/criticised - especially given that English is a language of many exceptions and quirks to stumble over.
From what I understand, English actually has incredibly simple grammar compared to Polish, which makes it relatively easy for them to learn (far easier than vice versa) but it's these many potential tripping-up points (e.g., pronouncing something not quite right) that they're scared of.
Polish, on the other hand, has devilishly complex grammar, so until you're pretty proficient at it, non-native speakers end up sounding like brain-damaged three-year-olds.
It's not especially demanding.
You say that as someone who's been speaking it for decades, though, is quite knowledgeable about languages in general and works as a translator/teacher (from what I gather here?). For most non-Slavs, reaching B1 Polish is a helluva anchievement.
@LanguageSandwich, The key difference between Polish and English is that Polish looks like a ***** to ever learn, but later get easy, almost transparent, orthographically anyhow. English to a Pole looks at first like a breeze, only to find eventually that the spelling's a nightmare, the pronunciation inconsistent plus the slang is ever so removed from the way it's expressed that only a native Anglophone can make sense of it. English "-ing" vs. infinitive distinctions don't exist in Polish, neither do auxiliaries!
Rich, education always threatens those without any. Knowledge is power and ignorance is (intellectual) impotence.
The only statement of yours to which there is some validity is that concerning grammar. Yes, Sausseur and Pinkert both concur that grammar doesn't exist, that it's nothing more than an abstraction, a mental construct used by linguists to explain language, that's all.
On the other hand, without structure, we'd all be reduced to a series of grunts, like four legged rather than the two legged species to which we belong.
These days, you can learn a foreign language 50% faster than 2-3 decades ago when you had only books and some audio tapes. Polish is hard to learn, but it can be done if you dedicate some time for it.
Polish is most learnable as NO language has a monopoly on difficulty.
Difficulty is relative, and it depends on many factors such as your native language (e.g., Polish is innately harder for Anglophones than it is for Russians/Ukrainians/Czechs because their languages are much more similar) and things like the age in which you learn it (kids learn faster, especially when immersed in bilinguality), and the way in which you learn / are taught it, and your aptitude for language learning.
and the way in which you learn / are taught it, and your aptitude for..
Yes. And circumstance too.
With language, sometimes a block forms and that is hard to get past. And sometimes the opposite happens and you aren't sure why you've picked up a language so quickly.
Spot on, Lyzko. One reason that 'suggestopaedia', useless as a method, interesting as a tool, was so popular in (I think) Hungary a few decades ago.
Contextual learning's the only effective method.
Yes and no. Methods are inherently limited by their form and different approaches suit different people at different times. One reason why Language Trainers do need emotional imtelligence.
We've all known the guy who passed all their exams in French, can hold a conversation in German yet struggles to listen to another language trying to make the words out, and there's also people who never passed an exam in their life that can chat away in a language without thinking of it.
