POLAND . The Unofficial Guide	Unanswered \| Archives
POLAND . The Unofficial Guide	Poland News and Events	Witamy, Guest \| PF Members \| Gold Members

Polish Forums / General Language /

Polish was chosen the HARDEST LANGUAGE in the world to learn... :D

page 27 of 37: « Prev 1 ... 26 27 28 ... 36 37 Next »

OlafThreads: 8 Posts: 1,348 Joined: Oct 29, 09 ♂	Apr 11, 10, 01:32 #781
Magdalena: Sarcasm. I am familiar with the concept;). more truely I am usually full of it. You might want to practise being more understandable with your sarcasm or you''ll be getting close to being misunderstood more often, Miss Magdalena the Linguist.

♂

Apr 11, 10, 09:47 #782

grubas wrote:

Maybe Polish is not super easy to learn but anybody can speak it if really wants to
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkmIGvXj870

congrats to this dude from Africa who can speak a bit, but this is a perfect example of Polish people saying someone can speak Polish.....when they really can't. you wouldn't brag about someone in your class who speaks B1 level English....so why highlight someone speaking AT BEST B1 level Polish?

TV interviews are edited, questions are prepared, they only show what went well, and even the things he said were nothing impressive. he's below FCE level and his pronunciation is poor....and has probably been in Poland for YEARS.

great post though....gets us back to the main topic of this thread and supports the theory of "hardest to learn" or at least "one of the hardest to learn".

Lyzko

Apr 11, 10, 22:25 #783

When I first visited Poland, I would have thought myself lucky to find even a hotelier who could speak 'B1 level English, much less anything nearly half as good as my survival Polish LOL.

Then again, I was in a medium-sized city, it was the mid-90's and I'm pretty sure if I'd been instead to the capitol, I would have definitely been able to find ordinary tradespeople, certainly hotel mgmt, who spoke fluent English:-)

♂

Edited by: Polish Tutor Apr 12, 10, 22:46 #784

FUZZYWICKETS You are 100% right
GRUBAS, why do you defend Polish so pathetic way (-:
Polish does not need it!

I am afraid that not only majority of foreigners does not belive that Polish is not to speak,
but also Polish teachers and and naitve speakers. But they are so brave. They defend the case which is (they think) lost. They really like to be a hero (-:

This is really funny from my point of view (-:

P.S
I have pure Polish blood (-:

delphiandomineThreads: 40 Posts: 9,587 Joined: Nov 25, 08 ♂	Apr 12, 10, 23:29 #785
FUZZYWICKETS: supports the theory of "hardest to learn" or at least "one of the hardest to learn". Makes it a language for intelligent person to learn, really. Explains why some of the better schools in the UK are now teaching Polish as a second foreign language.

Polish TutorThreads: - Posts: 115 Joined: Jun 22, 09 ♂	Apr 13, 10, 00:09 #786
Sorry I've made mistake in my last post should be not: Polish Tutor: I am afraid that not only majority of foreigners does not belive that Polish is not to speak, but ... is to speak (-:

♂

Apr 13, 10, 08:20 #787

Delphiandomine wrote:

Makes it a language for intelligent person to learn, really.

so you think Polish is not more difficult than other languages.....but requires more intelligence?

i'd argue that polish IS in fact more difficult to learn in general, but doesn't take intelligence to learn......rather........lots and lots of persistence and sheer will.....and time.

Delphiandomine wrote:

Explains why some of the better schools in the UK are now teaching Polish as a second foreign language.

i don't understand your reasoning. how does Polish being difficult "explain why....better schools in the UK are now teaching Polish.....?"

♂

Apr 13, 10, 09:36 #788

delphiandomine:

Makes it a language for intelligent person to learn, really. Explains why some of the better schools in the UK are now teaching Polish as a second foreign language.

An interesting point, indeed. Mastering a foreign langauage, regardless of whether its grammar is complicated or not, is always a great challange, even for talented people. You can even study a language for the mere sake of learning it, just to keep your brain going well; lots of people love to do cross-words which is easier, but also challenging in a similar way.

For some dedicated morons, however, it will always be smarter to complain endlessly how a given language is difficult and how its grammar is "stupid".

Lyzko	Apr 13, 10, 19:53 #789
Polish language classifications make as much sense as those in any other language. I believe it is more the perception of difficulty than the actuality itself:-)

Spimo	Apr 13, 10, 23:31 #790
Ziemowit: delphiandomine: Makes it a language for intelligent person to learn, really. Explains why some of the better schools in the UK are now teaching Polish as a second foreign language. Yes of course. That is why polish have between the lowest IQ in the whole Europe. Because it took a very high IQ to learn the language, and then there is little IQ left to use for something else, right?

southernThreads: 116 Posts: 10,900 Joined: May 17, 07 ♂	Apr 13, 10, 23:33 #791
Spimo: That is why polish have between the lowest IQ in the whole Europe. Probably you don't belong to Europe to write sth like that.

OlafThreads: 8 Posts: 1,348 Joined: Oct 29, 09 ♂	Apr 14, 10, 11:44 #792
... and following Spimo's thought maybe s/he speaks a language even harder than Polish and even more of his/her IQ was consumed for processing the language and less for thinking.

Lyzko	Apr 14, 10, 13:51 #793
In terms of 'hard' - 'harder' -'hardEST'... I keep coming back to Navajo, once considered so impenetrable, i.e. "unlearnable" for outsiders, it became the code-crackers dream during WWII:-)))

convexThreads: 47 Posts: 7,189 Joined: Nov 25, 09 ♂	Apr 14, 10, 14:50 #794

ZiemowitThreads: 10 Posts: 1,056 Joined: May 8, 09 ♂	Apr 14, 10, 15:10 #795
Convex I just wonder: are you comparing this discussion to "juice readily pressed" or you doubt that it is "pomarańcz" (masculine gender), but you think it should be "pomarańcza" (feminine gender)?

convexThreads: 47 Posts: 7,189 Joined: Nov 25, 09 ♂	Apr 14, 10, 15:24 #796
I just wanted to post a picture of my thumb.

z_dariusThreads: 22 Posts: 5,091 Joined: Oct 18, 07 ♂	Apr 14, 10, 15:29 #797
Lyzko: Navajo, once considered so impenetrable, i.e. "unlearnable" for outsiders, it became the code-crackers dream during WWII You probably meant code-crackers' "nightmare"

♂

Apr 14, 10, 17:06 #798

FUZZYWICKETS:

i'd argue that polish IS in fact more difficult to learn in general, but doesn't take intelligence to learn......rather........lots and lots of persistence and sheer will.....and time.

Depends on how intelligent you are, really. A bright person will be able to learn it far quicker than your average idiot, mainly due to the way that it can't be mastered through mere exposure - unlike Italian for instance.

FUZZYWICKETS:

i don't understand your reasoning. how does Polish being difficult "explain why....better schools in the UK are now teaching Polish.....?"

Quite simply, the best schools are looking to provide the best challenges for their children. It's the same reason that Latin is kept in the very elite private schools - it's not a language for stupid people.

I think we can agree that Polish, for an English speaker, is certainly much more of a challenge than French or Italian!

Lyzko	Apr 14, 10, 17:06 #799
..."nightmare" for the enemy, dream for the Allies LOL

z_dariusThreads: 22 Posts: 5,091 Joined: Oct 18, 07 ♂	Apr 14, 10, 17:09 #800
Lyzko: "nightmare" for the enemy, dream for the Allies LOL Yes, the enemy would be the ones to try and crack encryption.

Lyzko	Apr 14, 10, 17:10 #801
French, indeed! All those silent letters, unpronounced 's'-sounds, written but not spoken (except for the inital 's' of the famous, now defunct, 'Les Halles'!!!!), those myriad tenses, varied patois speech etc... Polish is much easier than French, if for nothing else, the pronunciation!

Lyzko	Apr 14, 10, 17:11 #802
Right again, Darek:-)

Lyzko	Apr 14, 10, 21:04 #803
This though is not to say that, morphologically speaking, Polish is not much more of a challenge than either French or Italian:-) Except for perhaps only Romanian, Romance languages abandoned case endings centuries ago when they broke with Latin.

♂

Apr 14, 10, 23:10 #804

The Defense Language Aptitude Battery (DLAB) is a test used by the United States Department of Defense to test an individual's potential for learning a foreign language.

Level 3 includes Polish, Russian (despite having a more difficult script), Turkic languages, Thai, Vietnamese, etc.

Level 4 (more difficult) includes Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Pashto and Korean.

So who says Polish is the most difficult language? Also, surely these things, to a lesser or greater extent, work both ways - it should be as difficult for a Pole to learn English, assuming the same level of resources are available. Therefore, if Polish is the hardest language, then so is English, ergo neither can be the most difficult. I win.

Lyzko	Apr 16, 10, 14:03 #805
"...it should be as difficult for a Pole to learn English..." Thank you!! Finally, someone agrees with me out there that the myth of English 'simplicity' vs. Polish 'difficulty' is precisely that; a lazy man's fallacy. Moral of the story? ANY language, for that matter, discipline, is 'hard' if the requisite perseverance and focus are lacking. Why for pity's sake should Polish be different?!

Lyzko

Apr 16, 10, 14:22 #806

...to continue, while there's never been any denying the extreme challenges posed by most conservative inflected languages, Polish, Hungarian, Basque, Lithuanian, Finnish...German etc......, I still hear so often, (frequently from native speakers of the above languages!!!) that it would be so much simpler if "we all used English".

A few questions at this point. No.1, who's "we"? No.2, simpler for whom? And finally, no.3. does one mean "used" or "abused", i.e. missused through poor use??

The fact that English has long since become lingua franca numero uno in the world for aviation, international conferences, many areas of research, banking and so forth, doesn't mean everybody reallyt knows it. All it means, is that an air traffic controler in Houston, TX and a control tower person in Moscow can make themselves basically understood for sheerly practical purposes.

The level of any world language though, pays a certain price for its accessability.

♂

Edited by: FUZZYWICKETS Apr 16, 10, 15:15 #807

Delphiandomine wrote:

I think we can agree that Polish, for an English speaker, is certainly much more of a challenge than French or Italian!......Quite simply, the best schools are looking to provide the best challenges for their children. It's the same reason that Latin is kept in the very elite private schools - it's not a language for stupid people.

do you honestly think Latin is taught in elite schools because it is simply "not a language for stupid people"...? they chose it only because it's hard?

I think we can all agree that if I was a rich man living in the UK and was spending thousands of pounds/euros per year to send my child to a high end private school, I'd want him or her to be learning a language worth knowing.

tight rope walking over a pool of alligators is more difficult than tennis....should they be teaching them that too?

melsomelyb wrote:

Level 4 (more difficult) includes Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Pashto and Korean.

roman alphabet vs. symbols/different alphabet....that's all that is. Polish is entirely more difficult than any of the above when it comes to forming grammatically correct, coherent sentences....which puts it right back at the top of the list.

♂

Apr 16, 10, 15:49 #808

Japanese is level 4, interesting! Is Polish in the same bracket? I don't find either that hard (I mean overly hard) and can more than get by on both. Heck, I picked up a version of The Ring which I assumed was in English. It was in Japanese with Polish subtitles so I comfortably got by. It's largely about state of mind. If you are relaxed and receptive then language comes that bit easier.

You just have to be careful when language deserts you. There have been occasions where both my Polish and Japanese have let me down in administrative places but maybe it was due to the pressure of needing to be precise/accurate.

Lyzko

Apr 16, 10, 16:17 #809

The counting system in both Japanese and Polish, as I'd stated once before in this Forum, appears of equal complexity, just in different ways: Polish distinguishes between the nature of nouns being counted in terms of their quality and gender, Japanese on the other hand, in terms of their size, shape, roundness, smoothness, i.e. their texture.

Thererfore, the choice is yours: Which do YOU find harder?

:-)

SeanusThreads: 22 Posts: 30,160 Joined: Dec 25, 07 ♂	Apr 16, 10, 18:53 #810
Japanese counters are harder I think. There are irregularities due to sound. I fancy an honest test in Polish counters. I came undone when I had to guess the Polish for 6 horses. If the resident Poles wouldn't mind, I could try 1 of sth, 2 of sth and 5 of sth. Jedno piwo, dwa piwa i pięc piw, for example. I wouldn't look them up, I promise.

page 27 of 37: « Prev 1 ... 26 27 28 ... 36 37 Next »

Home / General Language /

Unanswered [this forum] | Similar

Similar discussions:

Reply re: Polish was chosen the HARDEST LANGUAGE in the world to learn... :D

If you're reading this, you are probably not a registered user yet and cannot access all forums and features!

- Before creating a new thread, make sure to follow the Thread Title Creation Rules.
- Your message must comply with the General Forum Rules.
- If you have further questions, check the Forum FAQ & Feedback section.

To post anonymously, please enter a temporary and unique username (without password) or login and post as a member.

Username: Password:

re: Polish was chosen the HARDEST LANGUAGE in the world to learn... :D

Posting Guidelines:

- Stay on topic. If your post is not related to this thread, create a new thread or post in the Off-topic forum.
- Use the Search and Similar Threads features to avoid duplicating threads.
- Do not insult or harass others, play nicely!
- Do not personally attack others to avoid temporary or permanent suspension.

learning Polish using American phonics

Coming back to Polish

Random: Mr. Men and Little Miss series - trying to bring it onto the Polish market

Home \| Unanswered \| Archives \| Random \| Statistics	Time in Poland: 07:15 / Feb 10
About Us \| Contact Us \| Rules, Privacy \| Poland Advertising	© 2005-12 PolishForums.com