Polish Grammar quiz/puzzles:

I checked them out, they ask for declensions and I simply don't remember them by heart. You're not speaking language by thinking ah and here I should use a such and such form of a verb a singular nominative case or whatnot...

I think those test were devised to catch out native speakers of the language, so you have done very well indeed.


I don't see the problem they can use their own version of the Polish language. Why not? That school of linguistic purism that took over in Poland for more than century is just silly.

Educated people with class will be always speaking a proper Polish whereas all the rest will either speak Silesian which is amusing, sounds nice and is refreshing or create distorted version of 'pure' Polish as we can see on TV. Especially some politicians speak that language badly, with something I call an accent from a gutter. Others are not much better, taking too fast, without a proper rhythm and measure.

I take an authentic regional version of the lingo every day over that pol-soviet newspeak. A poor excuse for a language.

Daj ać ja pobruszę, a ty poczywaj = You rest, and I'll grind.

The oldest known phrase in Polish. Curiously, apropos of absolutely nothing, the oldest extant excerpt from Hungarian, is "Hallodi beszel" or "A Funeral Sermon" (probably meaning "eulogy")!

:-)

Oh well that's some consolation then, not as bad as I first thought.


Well you wouldn't think about it as it's your native language, same as i wouldn't think about it in English. It's largely automatic. It's only when fluency is achieved that grammar ceases to become an issue, and I'm never going to be fluent I'm afraid! I don't have to think about word forms as much as I used to speaking Polish because over time my Polish has improved, but it's inevitable that I will have to think about it sometimes, especially when it's written down as in those tests, because it isn't my native language.


Thanks!

Same with me, Chemikiem.

@Lyzko
I bet you made more mistakes than Chemikiem. Many many more.

With the liczebniki zbiorowe (collective numeralia), DEFINITELY!! In the perfective/imperfective (dokonany/niedokonany) aspects for motion verbs (czasowniki ruchu), surprisingly, almost none:-)

Odd, isn't it how wrong we can be?

Hi, I have a short question. Maybe you can help me with the word desperatka. Is this the right way to write it, and say it: "Jestem desperatką?" It should be in instrumentalis right? With that ą in the end of the sentence, while the word desperatka as a word itself is written in nomiative. Am I right or can you help me with this? Thank you.

@try_languages
Yes you are correct with your assumptions. Mind you that Polish "desperat/desperatka" has much more negative weight in it than English "I'm desperate to..." . Don't try to literally translate from that.

Another quiz about Polish (Matura level).
wiadomosci.onet.pl/ciekawostki/matura-z-jezyka-polskiego-sprawdz-czy-zdasz-quiz/hx6jgc9

@NoToForeigners Thank you for your answer. I see, as I am not a native speaker of English, I try to avoid to translate things straihgt away, I think this is a great explanation of the word, in Polish: sjp.pl/desperatka

I should have added this: I get the point, I suppose, you can't use the word desperatka in the sencente: "I am desperate to get a new bicycle tomorrow." It is more serious than than, it would maybe slightly leans toward the spanish word desperado, right?

What is your first or native language? I ask only because source-language intereference is usually the biggest single stumbling block in foreign language acquisition. No offense meant and your English isn't bad at all:-)

Hello Lyzko and thank you for your input. My native language is Swedish and I agree with you, if there are sources only in, let's say English, another foreign it becomes more difficult to learn the target language, compared to if you have good sources in your own native language. My English is not very good actually, I seldom use it actively, I suppose I like to try to comunicate with people in their own language, especially neighbour countries. You can learn a lot of new things while trying to learn a language, not only the language itself, and Polish is nice to listen to and it seem that "most people" here, if they ever learn a second language, go for Spanish, French or German, or if they pick a slavic language they choose Russian, though it is a east slavic language.

Best regards try_languages

I nearly didn't bother with this one, but it wasn't as bad as I thought. Many of those questions weren't too difficult to understand because the spelling of Polish terms e.g metafora, oxsymoronu, is almost identical to corresponding English terms. As long as you understand what they mean, and the questions they related to weren't as hideous as the ones in that other test, the answers weren't that hard to get. There were quite a few of those type of questions :)

No idea about last 4 questions as they were about Polish books/authors. I got half the test right, but I did use a dictionary because I couldn't understand all the words.

Hej, prova__ frammande spraak!

The considerable differences between Swedish vs.Polish confirm both our understanding that when working in a language not our birth aka"first" language, there is always bound to be interference. For example, my Swedish is far better than my Polish because in the latter, I continue on many occasions to translate from the German, instead of "thinking" in Polish, even though I have made inroads in that regard:-)

The counting quirks in Polish, coming from such relatively straightforward numerals/numbering systems in English and Swedish, certainly took me for a loop when I started learning. The time I took the quiz, I nearly flunked. However, the aspectual differences between verbs was almost a piece of cake and I bot almost none wrong, although neither Swedish nor English have anything even close to issues such as "brać" vs. "wziąć", both meaning "to take". German has prefixed verbs which sometimes show aspects, but they're nothing like Polish.

tarsape@gmail

There's no "x" in Polish alphabet as well as there's no "v" and "q".

Hej Lyzko, vad trevligt att du kan svenska! Nice that you know Swedish! : )

Yes, I think so too, it is the best thing, to try to "think in the new language" instead of thinking too much in the native language and try to translate. That requires of course some knowledges about the structure of the language and know how to use it. It is truly a challenge, but I guess some people find some languages easier thn others, depending on how hteir brain works, I am not sure. A related language can be easier but it can also make you "think in your native language" and rely upon that. A complete foreign language can look so impossible and difficult that you are more openminded and it can be easier to overcome problems. Just some thoughts. Trzymaj sie! : )

When I was in Poland many years ago, I visited Szczecin aka Stettin, on a day trip from Berlin. On the train ride (less than two hours!), I just happened to sit beside a young couple chattering away in Polish. Thought there was something about the woman's Polish which sounded very distinct, deliberate almost. Turned out, she was a translator from Malmo, he an engineer from Germany who'd grown up in Poland:-)

Neither spoke much English at all, yet I decided to choose between the three languages in the compartment, and opted for Polish.

She confessed that counting objects and persons together drove her crazy. I could agree! The concept of non-living masculine vs. "virile" living nouns [dwaj przyjaciele vs. dwa rachunki etc. plus declensions!!!) was anethema to her, as well you can imagine.

Ha det saa bra,
tarsape@gmail