I think Pawian overestimates how widely English is spoken in Poland.
If course not!!! I under nothing! I base my opinion on relations by trustworthy travellers who visit Poland. E.g, Novi claimed many times everybody who he spoke to used good English and that the language should be adopted as official instead of Polish. Ha!!!!
don't speak English
We don`t believe you cos you are troubled with a long history of blatant lies which we caught you spreading about Poland in the past. You are an obsessive liar. Simple.
Some would say the opposite. It very much depends on the person.
It depends on the person and the language in question.
Written french has lots of structural cues that spoken French doesn't. I can often get the gist of things in written French whereas spoken French might as well be Swahili.
On the other hand, someone who learns spoken Egyptian (or whatever) Arabic won't have much luck with written Arabic which is based on Classical Arabic which no one speaks. Victor Mair (eminent American sinologist) said that spoken Mandarin is the easiest language he's ever learned and written Chinese the hardest.....
I can often get the gist of things in written French whereas spoken French might as well be Swahili
Very much so.
who learns spoken Egyptian (or whatever) Arabic won't have much
Never assume that Arabs are especially literate in Arabic.
About the different varieties some are highly idiomatic too. Others have a very restricted vocabulary.
Victor Mair (eminent American sinologist) said that spoken Mandarin is the easiest language he's ever learned and written Chinese the hardest..
He's probably right. Acquiring a written language that (like Hebrew and Arabic) that has sense units rather than words is bloody hard. A language like Mandarin Chinese (where someone from the northeast and someone from the southwest can't understand each others' speech but can both read the same newspaper) is wholly another.
With tongue twisters there's a phenomenon (there's a good Polish example) where speakers of a language make a tongue twister that's hard for them however speakers of some other languages don't have a problem.
I'm thinking of "butelka oetykietowana, butelka nie oetykietowana". Very easy for you and me but a tongue twister for Poles.
Poles/Poleses don`t realise the intensity of swishing, rustling, hissing in their language cos they are used to it But when one tries to forget his/her Polishness for a while and hear it as a foreigner does, then they will be able to recall how a traditional kettle for water sounded.
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