How hard is it to learn Polish?

Good info. Thanks. You should register on this forum.

I know, I know. Every time I log in, the system, i.e. PF, keeps rejecting my pass code. BUMMER!!!!

NKEmerald wrote:


what can i say, i flat out disagree.

NKEmerald wrote:


you are not helping your argument here. you have essentially supported the fact that the pool is made up of completely random, different types of people.....which is why the pole/survey is 1,000 people, not 10, for both languages. some are doing one thing, some are doing another, some are doing another......in both countries.

NKEmerald wrote:


YOUR reason. how can you ask me a question based on YOUR reasoning when I already disagree with it?

as for the other things you wrote, i can see you totally missed points i was making and/or misinterpreted what i wrote and I don't have the time to entertain any of it so I'll just say this: do the 1,000 in france/1,000 in poland pole every month, with random groups chosen every time.....and you will constantly see, by a HUGE margin, that the expats in France are above and beyond in reading, writing and speaking French than the expats in Poland are with their polish skills. the reason for this is that french is simply easier to learn, an easier language to make progress with through simple osmosis and faaaaar more user friendly in general.

totalfrance.com - the vast majority of them can't write French to save their lives.

Likewise in Spain, the vast, vast majority of expats there can't speak Spanish.

Poland is no different - native English speakers simply don't learn languages very well.

delphiandomine wrote:


due to lack of effort. many english native speakers see no need to learn it, but among those that do in France and Poland, the ones in France are having a much easier go at it.

Fuzzywickets ... if you claim that most of the Polish expats in France speak French (if I understand you correctly), how come I have never met them? Or Polish expats who live in the Netherlands or Flanders who speak Dutch ... ? Could it be that you might be misrepresenting the facts just a wee bit ... ? Do you know how many Polish expats in England aren't able to speak English? If you'd have to give each of 'em a pound, you'd be very poor indeed.

Stu wrote:


no, you do not understand me correctly.

Exactly, Fuzzywickets! And precisely because many, though not all (sich as your truly), think that way, they figure if someone can't understand MY language, i.e. English, they're not worth talking toLOL This type of misguided, Archie Bunker-style, know-nothing ignorance has hurt the US in many substantive ways, e.g. dropping off of trade with foreign partners, the anti-American protests world wide, such as in France, but most of all, the overtaking of China as am international market place, outstripping US quality, jobs and pride as well!!!!

Furthermore, many Americans today (not as in decades of yore), especially the middle-aged and younger ones, have gradually become all but tone deaf to the English language and unfortunately, all that is wrong with foreigners' English sounds right to us because our language skills, cultural knowledge etc. have atrofied and Global English is scleroticizing before our very ears. A sorry state indeed (:-

Apart from English, some people love to think their own language is very complicated as it makes them look sophisticated. Simple as.

Had to laugh when a Spanish woman said this to me though.

Also, it's a bleedin' hoot n 'holler for me when foreign native speakers (whose English is frequently horrendous!!!) tell me how "simple" English is compared with their language-:)))

I gotta plain laugh our loud. Izzat the pot callin' the kettle black, or what?

thing is, it IS simple at a basic functional level.....many learners never see or reach beyond this.

Thank you for that, rozumiemnic! Sooooo, so (sad but) true!

Several of us here on PF might draw a lesson from such observations, oh gosh, I forgot; good grammar ain't cool =>

--::))

You're entitled to, of course.


I asked no question. It was a statement, if you go looking for question marks you'll be disappointed. You have however, failed to explain your counter argument to this sentence.

Other people seem to have proven your argument a little flimsy here, I'm afraid. As I have alluded to before, English-speaking expats tend to form a little bubble of English with them wherever they go, some do not of course, unfortunate that they are in the minority. What I have found though, is that people have the power to make a language very difficult, or very easy for themselves based on their own mindset when going in to learning the language.

Fuzzy, you could take 10,000 English-speaking expats from each country and still find that both are doing equally miserable in both countries. Adding to the fact that French happens to be a more popular language than Polish, with more resources and more 'chic' value, therefore results will be skewed no matter how you conduct this survey. In other words, unless you can find 10,000 people with the exact same motivations, interests, time and money on their hands in both countries, and provide them with the exact same quality of learning materials (or give both sides NO learning materials) it's a completely useless litmus test.

It appears to me that quite a lot of people learning a language like to make it out to be a lot more difficult than it actually is, perhaps to create the illusion that they've climbed a higher mountain than somebody else... It is as if you think your efforts to learn Polish are somehow more praise-worthy than somebody with equal skill in French or Italian, simply because you got a more 'difficult' language to learn.

NKEmerald wrote:


That would be correct, because Polish is more difficult. Simples.

"More difficult" merely by virtue of being less familiar. As a trained linguist, I've come to reject the simplistic layman's notion that one language trumps another in difficulty. It's all a question of from which vantage point one approaches a particular language. Is Athabaskan more "difficult" than Navajo, French any "easier" than Polish etc..? Such remains unfortunately a moot point on several issues, not the least of which is the degree of underpinning at hand before even attempting a stab a learning the language in question. Japanese insurmountably hard, practically like climbing Fujiyama straight up blindfolded?? Sure, if you're, oh, 50+ and a monolingual Anglo-speaker, never been out of the States, for example, with NO foreign language background whatsover, you bet it's gonna be hell x five!!!

If your first language is, say, Chinese or even Korean, Chuckchi or Mongolian, it won't be a piece of cake either, but that slope up Mt, Fuji will scarcely be as treacherous, I dare say. Polish utterly impossible?? Not if Russian's your native tongue, it isn't. Nor however does that mean it's gonna be a romp through £ażienki Park either, rather, it'll be more bearable and less back-breaking than if French or Swedish were your mother tongue. English a nightmare? If your a native (North) German, Dutchman or Scandinavian, excluding of course the Finns, English will be a darned sight more transparent than Japanese or Latvian etc...

I think you see my point by now-:)

I know one Russian who learnt Polish simply by working in a bar for a year - she does speak with a strangely high pitched accent, but apart from that, her Polish is fine.

Point proven!

Vice-versa as well-:)

I once met an Italian man who claimed he spoke a perfect Parisian French without any trace of an accent. Too bad he was speaking to somebody with only a rudimentary knowledge of either language!

And yet, despite any similarities between Polish and Russian, I found Russian more difficult to learn at school than English. Similarities may often be confusing, and here I do not even mean false friends, but the pronounciation and how to decline nouns. One of the more complicated things in Russian for the Polish learner is stress which in Polish is fixed on the second sylable from the end of the word, while in Russian it is mobile.

Russian's therefore have an easier time acquiring an 'American' accent, particularly 'uh Nyawwk' accent, since Russians have schwas which Poles haven't and American English especially is chocked full of 'em LOL

Oh my, the arrogance... good god, the arrogance... and ignorance, we can't forget that now, either. Again, you fail to answer the question. How many other languages have you actually got experience with? I'd expect you're fluent in most languages except of course Polish (because it's so hard, you know?) to know quite so much about linguistics, eh?

Apparently, Fuzzy's never wrapped his tongue around such notoriously quixotic (not to mention, unphonetic) languages such as those in the Celtic family, among them notably Cymrae (Welsh to you)-:)

CymraeG is a phonetic language though.
Also, how exactly can a language be "quixotic"?
Do you mean "quirky" maybe?

NKEmerald wrote:


arrogant for what.....disagreeing with you? you say red, I say green, and somehow I'm the arrogant one? i stand by my opinion, deal with it.

NKEmerald wrote:


three directly and have discussed the intricacies of Polish with native speakers of many other languages as additional sources of comparison. i've got all the "experience" i need to form an opinion.

any other questions?

Niezrozumnienic, as a non-native, doubtless 'quirky' and'quixotic' appear different. In fact, one works as well as the other int this context-:)

Lysko please do not patronise me, anyway I am not a 'non-native'. btw I know very well the word "quixotic" is from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, (a famous Spanish writer just in case you do not know) and can hardly be applied to a language, nor is it synonymous with 'quirky'.

Also if you're going to pontificate about languages, you could at least check your facts and meanings.
Its not 'Cymrae' it's CYMRAEG.
I rest my case.

What I in fact meant before by 'quixotic' is that Cymrae, as with Polish, looks often unpredictable, capricious in its morpho-syntactic vagueries, that is, until they've been internalized!

I never said 'synonymous', nor did I 'patronize' you. I may have appeared a trifle condescending, that's all, but then, hey, I'm German LOL

Arrogant because you admit to considering yourself 'better' than someone because you think you've learned a more difficult language than someone else. That's not a disagreement with just me, but to ANYONE who has struggled to get where they are in a supposedly 'easy' language.

I'm glad you have actually experienced becoming fluent in other languages, but disappointed that in having done so, you failed to come to the realization that 'difficulty' in language learning is an entirely personal and arbitrary thing, and in no way scientific fact at all...

I'll say it right now... Polish is... easy...

Perhaps because I find so many similarities in it with my native Irish? Who knows... perhaps...


Hehehe, I speak Irish native... so similar to Welsh... not that I could understand a single word of Welsh, but we're in the same language family! ^_^

Tell me about it, Em-:) I tried once pronouncing 'Slante!", "Siobbhan", "Padraig", "Erin go bragh!" along with a few other assorted odds and ends, only to gales of genial laughter from some Irish-speaking friends. Similarly, my attempts in Welsh at saying "Llewelyn" and "Angharad" didn't fare much better in terms of not drawing audible (if well-intentioned) snickers from some Welsh visitors a number of years back-:)

NKEmerald wrote:


First of all, you know as well as I do that I never said I was "better". You're grabbing for straws now, mate.

Second, I'm not being arrogant, I'm merely saying that I learned a harder language than someone that learned say....Italian.

You're starting to sound ridiculous, man.

I firmly believe that some languages are far more difficult to learn than others......an opinion MANY people on this forum have already voiced......and I'm the arrogant one. Brilliant.

Oh, and for the record NKEmerald, i've heard "Polish is easy" 1,000 times before, you're not ruffling any feathers there. Only, it always seems to end with that person coming forth with the most convoluted, grammatically disastrous pile of rubbish barely resembling the Polish language. Not being arrogant, just sayin'.

Calm down, Fuzzywickets! You're simply using generalizations to justify a foregone conclusion, namely, that Polish is considered a "difficult" language by some, even by many and not by others. As far as references to its grammar being convoluted, whatever, etc.. etc.., remember that probably just as many non-native English speakers out there are saying (or at the very least, thinking) the same things about our language-:)

Again, difficulty cuts both ways. One's perception need not necesarily be the other person's reality.