I am a foreigner and I've not heard this phrase a lot. Its been around 3 years now. I have talked to a lot of polish women. And even if they say it, it is as a courtesy and mannerism.
If anything sounds annoying it is not because of them. May be you should put some effort to cure your ears.
It is good that they are trying to constantly improve themselves in a foreign language even though their knowledge is far more than average.
And I do not think Polish language is hard. It is hard for English speakers. Not for everyone. And I have not seen any polish kid having trouble in speaking their language. As a foreigner, polish sounds very pleasing to me. And I have a lot of respect for polish culture and language.
Its not a phrase,but, please,enough of the ear blasting ultra sonic MWWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHHHHHHHHHH screech between every few words. FFS, isnt *Um* or *er* good enough? Why do you feel the need to make dogs ears bleed while you figure out what to say next?
Polish girls: Here is your saviour, contact him and you'll never use that phrase anymore (facepalm). As about the topic: I've been here in PL a couple of years now and I might've heard it but not that much as MaryPerry says. But I've heard billions of times: po prostu (I still don't know what does it mean).
As an English speaker who suffered relatives who taught in the UK Royal Academy Education System; English is a silly, often trite language full of very maddening rules. IMO Romance languages make far better sense.
In my Native Labradormiut, a branch of Inuttitut; it is both true and false we have hundreds of words for snow. We do. But only because we affix hundreds of suffixes for adjectives and verbs to nouns.
@Maryperry, Although I tend to agree about the robotic sameness of such excuses you mention, one thing is the truth, that is, most Poles I've met travelling abroad or in Poland, actually do speak relatively poor English in comparison with many of their Northern European neighbors!!
I have worked with some professional Poles; and I think they know the English. But that Polish accent is tough to speak English in. It makes it sound mechanical and halting.
And how, danny! Ya think that's bad, try listening to Hungarians struggle through English! You'd think the sentence would never end. No sense of pause control either, drives most Americans bats#$%^t.
About the most frustrating thing is when a barely English speaker calls; and proceeds to try to talk to you by a committee of even worse English speakers. You stay on the phone while they take forever trying to figure out what to try to say. And it makes about as much sense as:
Odd Rich, that the Poles never seemed to avoid you, despite your accent! Are you going to have us believe that you speak Polish to this day as comfortably as you speak English??
Pole: "No, I don't speak any English at all. Growing up I had many English lessons in school, but sadly I never learned the language. The funny thing about English is it's a hard language, but the truth is that whenever I went to America and Britain over the past 5 to 10 years, even though I didn't speak any English just like I still don't speak any English, I really enjoyed living there, and had a nice time. I know it seems a bit transient, but it's difficult to quantify how much I don't speak any English. Anyway, I gotta go, because since I don't speak any English, I guess we have nothing to talk about. Bye!"
But that Polish accent is tough to speak English in. It makes it sound mechanical and halting.
It certainly can be. It's not so much the accent as the "prosody" (speed, intonation and timing, especially the timing).
About the timing of a language, thinking the difference between the Swedish Chef on the Muppet Show and an American 'deep south' or a British West Country accent. The first of them sounds staccato and mechanical, the second two sound languid and relaxed. The Polish language doesn't easily fit into either category (linguists can't agree on how to classify it) and this is why Poles speaking English can sound, as you say, mechanical and halting.
It's different again for people from Upper Silesia around Katowice. When they speak English above a certain level they can sound like characters from South Park.
I like the Polish accent. It is distinctive. And said methodically to convey a point.
Now my adopted Grandfather was from Kent England. A short little man who lived his life as a Coast Guard'er. Managed the Sea rescue boats. Now there was a man who spoke some kind of accent you could not understand. Almost like he had a mouth full of pebbles. Very grovelly. Very hard to even understand at times. With a very powerful shouting tendency.
Very strange. As his Sister taught primary English at the Royal Academy. Painfully strict. Diction and usage very proper. I wrote Auntie Grace often. And every single time she would write back every misspelling, grammar error and poor usage of words and phrase. But I really miss that Grand Lady...bless her soul.
They are cousins of our Chukchi and Koryak peoples.
The Chukchi and Koryak, are the closest relatives of all Native Americans/First Nations. Instead of crossing the Bering Strait and colonizing North and South America, they stayed in Siberia.
I'm curious to what extent the languages are still mutually intelligible.