POLISH 18 - 30 years old know MUCH BETTER ENGLISH language than their own native language!

POLISH 18 - 30 years old know MUCH BETTER ENGLISH language than their own native language polish!

It sounds insane, but it is just the truth, and of course polish people will find a lot of justifications
for this, but this is not happening anywhere else in the world... but only in crazy Poland :)

proof:

ask any of your 100 polish friends how to say these in polish:

five eyes.
five ears.
mother with four kids.
mother with eight kids.

you will be shocked to notice that you will hear a lot of versions,
and none of them will be correct.

Polish people simply do not know their own language correctly,
they can't tell correctly such basic words as above...

you can write here your opinions... everyone will probably have his very own version :))

My English is not very well, but I can say though that most Poles are not even able to count till 10 in English .. why do you think, Polish people are good in English??

Perhaps he thinks Poland was part of the old British Empire. Speaking English better than our own native language is wishful thinking on his part, though many do speak better English than the native speakers of English.

That does indeed sound far fetched.

I wouldn't say that being aware of the very straightforward system of numbering in English and making mistakes with the over-complicated Polish system means that they know English better than their own language.

So did you ask any of your 100 polish friends how to say these in polish:

five eyes.
five ears.
mother with four kids.
mother with eight kids.

THEY KNOW EXACTLY HOW TO SAY THESE IN ENGLISH,
AND IT IS USUALLY EASY FOR THEM, but
you will be shocked to notice that you will hear a lot of versions
for these told in POLISH, and none of them will be correct....

Nonsense post, feck all people can speak English to a high level here.
Just coz kids in school can repeat crap like a parrot means nothing........and god knows how many times I've had students in the past who complained that school in Poland do not teach English as it is spoken by native speakers. They're still teaching people to ask "How do you do?" That's how Charles Dickens used to speak for pete's sake, no native speakers actually speak like that anymore.

I've already provided you translations of your sentences, were they wrong?
Once again

Pięcioro oczu
Pięcioro uszu
Matka z czworgiem dzieci. Matka z ośmiorgiem dzieci.

What were the answers you received?

EVERYONE who is polish and I asked, they all said DIFFERENT way for this.

also... how it is correct:

pięć palcy or pięć palców ?

pięć widelcy or pięć widelców ?

Maybe there are several ways of saying it? For example one may say: "Matka czworga dzieci" or "Matka czwórki dzieci" both correct too. It's not literally mother with 4 children but conveys the same meaning (like saying "mother of 4 children")


pięć palców, pięć widelców.

I think you may be right. As for the first two examples, these are rarely used or not used at all. But the last two examples are not so unusual (I mean the declension of the numeral with the plural noun "dzieci"), so most people should be OK with them. The trick here which most people may not be aware of is that all nouns in your example fall into the same gramatical category for the purpose of numeral declension: neutral nouns or only-plural nouns. Other examples of that kind may be: troje sań, czworo drzwi, pięcioro okien, though I dare say quite a number of Polish people, if not most of them, will be inclined to say: trzy sanie, cztery drzwi, pięć okien. I myself "feel" pięcioro okien as a little bizzare form, as opposed to pięć okien which seems all right to me, but is not).

They may think so, but in reality the level of english in PL is low.

Of course it's low. I'm very suprised of the good statements about level of English in Poland. Most speak (pre)intermediate level (B1/B2).

I am interested in your definition of 'better English'. Whatever a native speaker says is correct in the sense that it is a natural expression of the mother tongue. However good the 'grammar' of a non-native speaker, and however perfect their turns of phrase, there will always be the odd moment of unnatural language which will give them away as non-native speakers. So, in this sense, they can never be 'better' than a native speaker.

It depends what you are judging it on.

Personally I think a language is by definition fluid, and its life lies in the hands of its users ... I delight in variation and, even in some cases, in what some might call bastardisation of a language, because this is the language being manipulated and fully 'used' by its speakers.

What grates on my ear is the artificiality of non-native usage, but of course I also sound artificial, and my language acquired, in my non-native languages. So I give, as well as taking.

That's bs.

I can

Same in many European countries nowadays, I'm afraid (:-

Problem is, those in question don't even know English all that well if one compares it to educated native English speakers from as little as one to two generations prior! The fact remains that my younger Polish, Russian, Norwegian or German contemporaries (using the term loosely^^) probably can rattle off bubble-gum US-slang ten times faster than I can, or would ever care to. However, listening to much of their often submental conversation, they show shocking evidence of being able to say little else, forget about their knowledge of world historyLOL

This is the real "digital divide" everyone's been talking about for some time now and sadly, it shows no signs of improvement!

Stop this crap.I'm Polish and I know how to say it in Polish and English.My friends are able to do it as well.And even if someone makes mistakes in Polish is does not necessarily mean their English is better then Polish.

Let's take this tiny English dialogue:

A: I like pizza
B: Me too

Now show me how many English native speakers aged 18-30 can spot and correct the grammar mistake.

The example is meaningless.

If Poles under a certain age "claim" to know English almost as well as Polish (though not better!!!), why then does their English sound as threadbare as it does?? They know the basic words of Globish, yet rarely if ever the more textured words which make English English! They claim it's not important. Would they like foreigners to butcher their language?

Some ppl do that and I have nothing against it.I know how hard it is to really learn foreign language.Besides that's the price English paid for being international language.You can't have it both ways.Just see how many ppl (even here) says things like "nobody speaks English.." as if it was ppl duty to know English.And you get something for that - there is much more materials available in English,you can travel without language difficulties...That's just how it is.

Fine, Lenko! Only let's then not pursue some sort of double standard here that it's ok for Poles not to know English 100%, but then to pass off their less than perfect English as compeltely acceptable (which it is NOT!). Poles correct foreigners' Polish and we're supposed to appreciate it. Whilst I do, as a Polish-speaking foreigner, why not the reverse? Often Poles seem angry, offended at even the slightest corrective recast of their often faulty English. This is where I and others often have a problem!

I always welcome help (and correcting faulty expressions is big help) but I often feel embarrassed that I've got it wrong the first time.Maybe that's what you take for anger?I can't speak for the whole nation but that's how I feel about it-same rules for every person struggling with foreign language.

Even if this example were 100 % true in the way that the OP describes. It does nothing to prove the incredibly general point that young Poles speak better English than Polish. In fact, proving such a statement is almost impossible, just looking at the parameters which it would require. Jeez!

The fact that almost no polish even dared to write how they say in their own native polish language, such easy translation,
proves that not even 1% of polish people can speak polish language correctly, and that is because polish is THE HARDEST LANGUAGE ON THE PLANET

Yeah,right.Keep dreaming.

Exactly right!

Worth mentioning that Polish is very far from being the hardest language on the planet, or even in Europe. And also that languages change all the time. A language rule (about, say, numbers) is not written in stone!

You both may be right. The emotion displayed may depend on the attitude of a person towards their knowing of the language; if they are convinced their level of mastering the language is very good, they might feel angry at corrections, if not they would welcome it or even ask for it. I think Lenka's attitude may be something halfway between the two.

My problem while I was staying in the North of England in 1980s was that no English people of the region (except for the person I was staying with) ever wanted to correct my English, albeit they were explicitly asked for it! I remember it only once when an English person (a German teacher, btw) corrected my pronounciation of the adjective "conservative". No other instances in a five-month long stay! Incredible, isn't it (I even managed to have eventually included 'question tags' into my everyday utterances at the end of my stay in England, something which I had previously been finding very bizzare in the English language)?

Yes....The fact that ALMOST none of the Polish people who have happened across this internet discussion have answered proves your point. You are clearly right beyond a shadow of a doubt. My bad. This site represents every single one of the 10's of millions of Polish people on the planet.

Do you often use the phrase "five eyes" or "five ears"?

Either you work in a transplant clinic or you have a very exotic social life.