Where did you start or the best techniques for learning Polish.

I recently, within the past two months or so, saw "Kret" and (separately) "Zmroz oczy", a sort of adventure movie which I took to be about a man avenging the death of his father (all gleaned BEREFT of customary English subtitles).

Probably understood a good over seventy percent of the former, while the latter kept me scratching my head at times:-)
Took copious notes while watching and was pleased I could do so without assistance.

Probably the same or similar for you watching a Hollywood classic, that is, a black-and-white film with snappy dialogue in English worth listening to.
Do you ever watch with Polish subtitles or without?

@Lyzko
Wasn't that in the US? It seems quite surprising that there is a problem with bribery when it comes to teaching positions in the US :S

I'm not really into Hollywood films (especially black and white) or films in general. If I watch something on TV, it's usually a sitcom. I don't really need subtitles unless they speak a dialect or something. For example, I found 'Billy Elliot' challenging at times. :p

Still English subtitles are better. There might be some mistakes in translation. That applies to Polish films, too. I remember watching some Polish films with subtitles on TV Polonia and they were usually terrible. Perhaps it's better now. I don't know really.

meh, Poland actually doesn't have that big a problem with bribes, they're mostly restricted to a few select areas (cars, sometimes building permits) but it's less a bribe culture than a negotiating culture. I've always gotten what I want form the bureacracy and I've never paid a bribe...

Neither have I.

So say you. Then again, as with abortion or the like, who ever admits to a bribe?
LOL

I found the subtitles often hinder rather than help!

Mistranslations aside, I prefer to watch a movie such as those I described with POLISH captions (napisy), so as I can see what the actors are really saying.

So... you're used to paying bribes in the US?

....been going on as long as time itself, only thing is, it's more in your face in the Black Market countries (but particularly along the Old Silk Road....), come on, wake up, Maf, stop acting so surprised:-)

LOL

Like to see you justify/rationalize certain people with thick accents teaching English for modestly good pay, while native English speakers often go begging!
If you can figure that one out, you're good.

In Poland it's pretty easy to explain.

On the one hand you have Polish teachers with paper qualifications who understand how Polish organizations function and who've been in the position of the students and so understand what problems they're having and why

vs

Native speakers with no formal qualifications who are liable to not know any Polish (and need constant extra explanations) and don't know how the Polish workplaces (and need constant handholding for their constant traumas) and who have no understanding of what their students really need? And if the native speaker isn't from the British Isles there will be visa issues as well.

Which do you choose? Remember your school is a business that has bills to pay and teachers that alienate/confuse students mean fewer bvtts in seats and peril for your mortgage....

Granted, Maf!

Yet, why should quality control suffer? Oh, how I pity the ambitious young Polish English pupil with their eyes on something more rewarding than simply

"Good Morning, Mrs. Brown! Are you going into town? Why such a frown? etc."... and even the word "frown" might well be too topic specific for those young fraudster teachers from whichever Polish backwater to understandLOL

Look, I've nothing against a well-meaning, university educated Pole who desires to pursue their love of language teaching teach English at any level they wish.

As an educator myself who's taught a language not technically his "native" language for years, I couldn't be happier for such a person.

However, what serious institutions in Poland should do is to have perhaps ONE retired native English speaker whom the school doesn't have to pay, on hand when there are questions as to certain subtleties of the language.

Our foreign language teachers here in the States weren't always from the country, yet they ALWAYS were the first to check with a native-speaker from that country who'd be either a paid or non-paid educational consultant for the school usually from the local consulate:-) This surely satisfied both teacher and learner alike by assuring some degree of standard.

Is this too much to ask?

It's great to hear all American schools, even in small towns, can have their language teachers checked by native speakers of a given language sent to them from the local consulate. ;)

We don't have that in Poland, for sure.
It's even more amazing to hear that you know all American foreign language teachers and can assure us none of them speak the language they teach without the American accent.

Why do these kids speak German with such a strong American accent (even though their German teacher is obviously fantastic?)
youtube.com/watch?v=X67xPm0SUzA

Quite - I have never heard this, ever!


I wonder if they're (or their teacher is) from south Germany, the old American zone? Their teacher would be more likely to teach that pronunciation if s/he had studied the language and teaching in that region.

@jon,

My experience with high school French and Spanish, was that our native-American born teacher (who'd studied at the Sorbonne) taught with a rather obvious American accent, yet as far as grammar, knew it like a book. When Mr. Larson proceeded to teach Spanish, his Midwestern diction notwithstanding, he always would consult with our Senor Chocron from Valladollid on matters of idiom and more advanced locutions for his Honors Spanish course:-)

@kaprys,

Pity they don't do the same in Poland!

Good that a native-American got to university in Paris - he must have been almost unique there. There was a famous native-American who lived for years in Poland.


This just sounds like a normal, practical thing to do.

In Polish, like any other language, listening to the speech patterns of people from/in Poland is invaluable. The same with English - foreigners always have some sort of L1 transference.

@Lyzko
And how can you judge his knowledge of grammar? He might have just seemed knowledgeable to someone who knows nothing about the language, like he didn't have to consult the coursebook. But wait: doesn't it sound like that Polish teacher whose lesson, you claim, you have observed.

And do you really not see how arrogant you sound? Self esteem is great but there is nothing wrong with being humble. Common sense is great, too. You can't possibly know every single US language teacher or assess their command of the target language. Not to mention Polish language teachers. Or bribery in Poland. For goodness sake, you have spent several hours in Poland twenty years ago. You really don't know Poland. Get off your high horse.

As for language teaching anywhere, people speak with an accent and sometimes make mistakes - that's normal. Even if they have a chance to consult a native speaker of the second language. Native speakers make mistakes, too. Some find it hard to see the difference between 'your' and 'you're', 'może' and 'morze' etc. There are good and bad teachers and students everywhere.

As for what this thread is about (as some people might actually be interested in learning Polish) if you want to learn Polish, you need to be dilligent and patient. Don't get discouraged when you make a mistake. They're part of the learning process. Don't get annoyed when someone corrects you. Read a lot. Watch films in Polish. Watch videos on youtube. Preferably about something you're interested in. Listen to songs in Polish. If someone doesn't understand you, rephrase what you want to say. As with any other foreign language.

Not professional teachers, one would hope.


Yes, this is the same for all languages. You should aim to make a hundred mistakes a day.


This is good advice.

@kaprys,

Any astute learner can judge the efficacy as well as the effectiveness of a given instructor's pedagogical technique, whether they're (in my case) sixteen or sixty!

Off of which high horse should I dismount, pray? Nice turn of phrase though, kaprys, you are getting darn good, although I hate to be condescending. If I could come up with the perfect bon mot in the Polish original, I trust you'd say the same about yours truly:-))

The fact remains that, as Maf posted the other day, a school is a BUSINESS!! Yet, to what extent is it practicing "monkey business"? Yes, I certainly can "judge" how well I'm learning or not, and the reason why so many Poles whom I've encountered such as yourself have such huge attitude problems is that far too many believe themselves G_d's gift to the English language. Not all of you can write English like Joseph Conrad.

If a native speaker of French, for instance, upbraids me for misusing their language slightly (although I believe it to be right), I'd immediately thank that person for pointing out the error, which I would then endeavor to correct. When in Poland, I could hold my own, no problem! When in Paris last in my thirties, I THOUGHT I could, but found out that my French by Parisian standards was barely up to snuff. "So why did folks in Montreal not say a word and give me the impression my French was excellent?", I thought.

Rather reminds me of what you replied to me, that if I couldn't always understand your English, I must have a mental problem, after all, you claim to have been in London and there nobody had any issue with your English. Perhaps they were just being polite, as with my French-Canadian encounter.

Surely, they were just being polite. My English is really difficult to understand. Unlike your Polish. ;)

Oh, you're joking again:-) Seriously now, kaprys, your English is really not bad at all for someone who learned/studied it as a second language!

Just don't make the all too common mistake of confusing blatant, low-level vulgarity aka our "f-curse", "s----ks" etc., for strength of expression as some of your other Polish-forum colleagues seem to do constantly.

In order to master a language, including one's own, it is usually necessary to know both the literature as well as the vernacular of that language. As an educated native Polish speaker, you obviously have been schooled in Mickiewicz's "Pan Tadeusz" etc. doubtless in much the same way we multilingual Anglophones had to learn Shakespeare, Lovelace ("Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage....."), Dickens, Emily Dickinson, Millay, Gilbert & Sullivan in order to be able to express ourselves accordingly.

Not sure how it works now in Poland (twenty years since must be an eternity to youLOL), but it must have occurred to you how the level of language universally has deteriorated, suffering from a poverty and not merely a difference in expression. Watching "Zmroz oczy" from 2004 or so is a totally different experience from "Popiol i Diament" or the great pre-War films.

Quality not merely quantity of spoken as well as written material must be one's watchword in learning a foreign language especially.

Lyzko's Polish is terrible. Simply TERRIBLE. His spoken Polish must be even worse. Dunno what's worse than terrible.

My written Polish is that of an educated foreign-born student! Surely it requires improvement, as does your English, so don't bother denying it. Judging from your "English", although not precisely "Poglish" admittedly, you undoubtedly avail yourself of GoogleTranslate a fair part of the time:-)

I wouldn't be that harsh on the lad, not many try to learn polish in the first place, If he didn;t spend his time praising germany and blaming Poland for the holocaust we would be lauding him as to how well he has progressed.

German's my second first language, not Polish! When above all an American learns Polish as a THIRD second language, like two hippos having sex, it's not whether it works perfectly which is the issue, but that it works at all:-)

@dolnoslask
Thing is guy claims his Polish is fluent/perfect and he considers himself an expert of Polish language while he never visited Poland or he was there on a several days trip years ago. His Polish is incomprehensible and that is a FACT. He claims MY English is on par with his Polish lolllololoolollollo

Wrong. I merely said that as your English needs improvement, my Polish surely needs a way to go too:-)

You probably have a noticable Polish accent in English. My spoken Polish you'll no doubt never hear and so cannot judge!

@Lyzko
I have lived a decade in the UK so those ppl could hear me saying stuff with or without an accent ( i consider English accent ugly and never ever tried to learn it). I was talking with brits about anything. Anything as personal as love blisters i got after having sex. You probably never met a Pole and never said anything beyond "Cześć" with terrible and incomprehensible accent.

Your english is probably on par with mine, I hope people help Lyzko improve his Polish, I am playing catchup after forty years of not speaking it, well apart from the odd vacation to see my uncle in warsaw.

Quit trolling. I know Poles who've lived in Queens, NY for decades and still can hardly speak English, so there:-) Length of stay abroad isn't always the key to speaking another language accurately, not to mention fluently!

Americans particularly are often loathe to correct foreigners's English. The Brits are more proscriptive in my experience. The Poles not as much, the French and Germans to the highest degree.

I read "Rzeczpospolita" nearly every day:-)

Of course - different people learn in different ways, different contexts and for different reasons.


It's still considered bad manners.


You're from England, aren't you, Dolno?

Heh How can they correct someones English when they don't use English correctly in America!!, Americans speak a kind of patwa (A mix ), even the spelling of common English words is different in America, Im not saying there is anything wrong with American language, but its not English as we know it.