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


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gumishuThreads: 4
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Joined: Apr 6, 09
Gender: Male 		  Apr 13, 09, 10:45 / #61
osiol - no vocative is not slipping away - maybe it is more rarely used than in the centuries gone by but it is well alive (well I actually do not follow the language of those fresh generations too closely - but I know they make quite a lot of grammatical mistakes (it spreads TV-wise) and what is more they are not familiar with a whole of Polish words which look strange and exotic to them (this is simply limited vocabulary) well actually they speak slang don't they
osiolThreads: 59
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Gender: Male 		  Apr 13, 09, 12:29 / #62
gumishu:
osiol - no vocative is not slipping away - maybe it is more rarely used than in the centuries gone by

I argumentatively said what I said about the vocative because I hear kids using it. That tells me that it has plenty of life left in it. But when people use it wrongly, it is either a case of altering irregularities into regular forms or, as is less likely, vice versa. The old English word bōc (book) had a plural bōces (pronounced like the word bookies). As fōt and fōtes (footies) developed into foot and feet, bōces developed into beek, but for some odd linguistic reason, during the early Middle English period, it was corrected to the more logical plural of books, although feet never became foots. This could be an example of hypercorrection, although maybe not so hyper.
lunchboxThreads: 3
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Gender: Female 		  Apr 13, 09, 16:31 / #63
Changes happen for the oddest reasons. What about double plural? Who decided the plural of "child" should be "children" when it already had a proper plural "childer" or as some say dialectic "childre". Odd were the times when the -en plural was popular.
glaswegians   Apr 13, 09, 16:38 / #64
The hardest languages in the world are generally far east asian especially mandarin and japanese.

Polack is not the hardest language to learn.
SeanusThreads: 19
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Gender: Male 		  Apr 13, 09, 16:50 / #65
Japanese, I don't agree. Maybe Thai and Vietnamese, with Finnish and Hungarian too.
lunchboxThreads: 3
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Gender: Female 		  Apr 13, 09, 16:55 / #66
That really depends... You could either look at each language's difficulty by the difficulty it poses for native speakers to master it.. or people who learn it as a foreign language. The latter however is really a subjective thing. It all depends on how close your native language is to the one you're trying to learn and which other languages you are already familiar with. So it's hard to claim that whichever language is the hardest. Switching the writing and having to get into a completely other mindset of grammar or rather lack thereof is difficult for anyone.. so having been in contact with one set of languages all your life and then suddenly trying to learn Japanese is quite a challenge, I would say.
SeanusThreads: 19
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Gender: Male 		  Apr 13, 09, 17:00 / #67
I did it in reverse. First Japanese and then Polish. The difficulty also depends on how comfortable you are. When I'm with close friends, I can be more natural and use Polish better. When there's more pressure, it gets difficult.
lunchboxThreads: 3
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Gender: Female 		  Apr 13, 09, 17:13 / #68
Oh when I've had two beers I'm a natural at Polish. :P
krysiaThreads: 26
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Gender: Female 		  Apr 13, 09, 17:14 / #69
It's always the easiest to learn swear words. Lol.
SeanusThreads: 19
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Gender: Male 		  Apr 13, 09, 17:17 / #70
You are Slovenian, lunchbox, or a foreigner based there? Nice if you are a Slovenian, I think you'd be the first. Slovenia is a Slavic country and I've talked to Poles that have been there. It seems quite ok to follow as a language, I heard your PM speak out against Slobodan Milosevic all those years ago.
lunchboxThreads: 3
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Gender: Female 		  Apr 13, 09, 17:32 / #71
What do you mean quite okay to follow as a language? As in you find it easy to understand? Are you Polish or just living there? Cause you understanding Slovene would make much more sense were you actually Polish.. though I have to say it shouldn't be *that* easy. Or maybe I just had some extra difficulty trying to understand Polish when starting off :P And yes, I'm actually Slovenian. Born and raised in a country one needs about two hours to pass through. :P
SeanusThreads: 19
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Gender: Male 		  Apr 13, 09, 17:50 / #72
To follow, yes. I could understand parts through a knowledge of Polish though false friends do exist in language. I'm Scottish but understand Polish pretty well. Scotland is also a small country.
lunchboxThreads: 3
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Gender: Female 		Edited by: lunchbox   Apr 13, 09, 17:51 / #73
krysia:
It's always the easiest to learn swear words. Lol.

Is it really? Sadly, after almost three years and an exchange program in Kraków, I'm fluent in neither - the descriptive drunken banter in foul language or the normal "let's have a conversation about something other than drinking or exchanging bodily fluids" part.

Seanus: Scotland might be small by your standards.. you could still fit about four Slovenia-sized countries in there though :P
SeanusThreads: 19
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Gender: Male 		  Apr 13, 09, 17:56 / #74
Czemu kurwa nie wiesz? LOL The swear words are quite easy to pick up.
lunchboxThreads: 3
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Gender: Female 		  Apr 13, 09, 18:08 / #75
So you would say you can get quite artistic with the four swear words you pick up the first day? Until you can fluently curse in Serbian you have learned nothing. Now that is *colourful* :P co więcej chciałam powiedzieć.. ah.. takie brzydkie słowa nie mają nic do roboty w takich słodkich ustach.. tsk, strike one.. następna stacja: lanie. :P
SeanusThreads: 19
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Gender: Male 		  Apr 13, 09, 18:13 / #76
Such a sweet mouth :) Nah, you can pick them up by using them in the right contexts but it takes a bit of practice.

I can't imagine Polish being the hardest language in the world. It only has 7 cases (some would say 6 now) and follows many set patterns. Yes, there are exceptions but most languages have.
lunchboxThreads: 3
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Gender: Female 		  Apr 13, 09, 18:24 / #77
I'm just trying to say that from my point of view picking up foul language is quite pointless until you are skilled enough to actually draw up enough context by yourself to embed the said curses in. I also find people "learning" languages and claiming they can get by ridiculous. What good does it do to anyone when you can ask where something is and then get completely lost when someone tries to give you an answer in rapid speech and you turn into a deer caught in the lights.

And no, I'm not saying people shouldn't learn languages. And yes, learning a language takes time and a lot of mistakes. I'm just saying that it'd be easier if people would drop the "I can speak a gazillion languages" act.
SeanusThreads: 19
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Gender: Male 		  Apr 13, 09, 18:31 / #78
Quite right, I don't use foul language. I'm watching a Polish hooligans video and these 'people' are pathetic. I hate people that say they are polyglots when they know one or 2 phrases in different languages.

I invested time and effort into learning Japanese and Polish but I'm not fully fluent in either
berni23Threads: 3
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Joined: Mar 26, 09
Gender: Male 		  Apr 13, 09, 19:44 / #79
I know it' totally out of context, but you simply have to love Polish movies and the dialogs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uw2pzaA9Zo8
berni23Threads: 3
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Gender: Male 		  Apr 13, 09, 20:13 / #80
And my 2 cents about swearing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DyeVRtnHps

ROFL
Lyzko   Apr 13, 09, 22:10 / #81
Mark Twain once mused, he'd rather decline two drinks than one German adjective:)))))
Seriously though, Mafketis, as a fellow linguist with more than a few languages under my belt (give or take several notches, he-he!!), I've learned quite a bit about Navajo and the Wikipedia entry is most enlightening.

The most challenging languages for me to pronounce are Georgian and the Greenlandic variety of Innuit.

Marku
gumishuThreads: 4
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Gender: Male 		  Apr 13, 09, 22:24 / #82
Marku is your surname Loeffel??? ;)
gumishuThreads: 4
Posts: 1,158
Joined: Apr 6, 09
Gender: Male 		  Apr 13, 09, 22:42 / #83
you have too many passwords to too many places in the internet I guess Marku ;) go for something strange for example a corruption of memorable name (mine is such) it's corruption of Ariadna (but you will never guess) :P :)
mafketisThreads: 8
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Gender: Male 		  Apr 13, 09, 23:54 / #84
Lyzko:
I've learned quite a bit about Navajo and the Wikipedia entry is most enlightening.

The problem is that when you try to actively figure out how larger units are built it all stops making sense. Somewhere (in storage in NAmerica) I have a Navajo textbook. It has many wonderful qualities (inluding exchanges like the following (approximate working from memory)

"The police arrested me when I passed out in the mud."
"That is not good, my son."

Anyway, it also includes lots of declination tables but finding patterns is really hard because of massive non-linear morphonemic alternations (making Polish seem tame) but the fact that every little morpheme (and there's no end to them) changes everything around it (in a ripple effect in both directions).

Greenlandic (what little I know of it) seems almost simple in comparison. I've managed to carefully avoid Georgian which seems to be in the Turkish gargle-throated phonological Sprachbund which means I can't make phonological sense of it when I do hear it.
F15guyThreads: 1
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Gender: Male 		  Apr 14, 09, 14:12 / #85
lunchbox:
Slovenian has however dropt the vocative case

Wish Polish would. Never really quite know what to call out for a name.

Any rules?
mafketisThreads: 8
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Gender: Male 		Edited by: mafketis   Apr 14, 09, 16:51 / #86
Simplified basic rules on Polish vocative (there may be an exception here or there):

Male names the vocative = the locative, if you can say "about ...." thats also the vocative

If you don't know the locative the ending is

if the final consonant is hard, then the ending is -(J)e (that is e preceded by softening the consonant before it)

Robert = Robercie!

Ryszard = Ryszardzie!

Paweł = Pawle!

Wiesław = Wiesławie!

if the last consonant is already soft or -sz, -rz, -l, -ch or -k then the vocative is -u

Januszu!
Lechu!
Karolu!
Jacku!
Jasiu! (from jaś
Kazimierzu!

For women if the final consonant is hard then -a becomes -o

Anna = Anno!
Agnieszka = Agnieszko!
Barbara = Barbaro!

If the final consonant is soft, then -ia becomes -iu

Ania = Aniu
Asia = Asiu
Zosia = Zosiu

but if the final is -ja or -ia (where -i- is pronounced as -j-, almost like a separate vowel) then they act like hard stems

Natalia = Natalio
Patrycja = Patrycjo

If the final consonant is -l- or -sz- I'm not so sure, I'm pretty sure I've heard both Elo and Elu and Olu and Olo (I think the forms in -u are more common but I'll leave that for Poles to debate).

The vocative of Pan is Panie and the vocative of Pani is .... Pani. These aren't used on their own though, they're followed by a name or title.

Panie Norbercie! Pani Krystyno! Panie kolego! (Mr Colleague!)
z_dariusThreads: 20
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Gender: Male 		  Apr 14, 09, 16:57 / #87
mafketis:
Simplified basic rules on Polish vocative (there may be an exception here or there)

To really simplify those rules just use Nominativus. It's acceptable in Polish and it seems to be increasingly frequent.
mafketisThreads: 8
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Gender: Male 		  Apr 14, 09, 17:01 / #88
Hej Ty! works too and also seems to be spreading.
MarekThreads: 4
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Gender: Male 		  Apr 15, 09, 14:50 / #89
Mafketis, perhaps that's why Navajo was chosen to be the code-talkers' language during WWII; almost noone outside the Navajo themselves knew or even recognized it, plus, it is, we both agree,ferociously difficult-)))
z_dariusThreads: 20
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Gender: Male 		  Apr 15, 09, 16:54 / #90
A while ago, in pre-Internet times, I read somewhere the Polish language was used by Israeli pilots during the Six-Day War of 1967, and it also was, what Egyptians thought, an unbreakable military code.

A lot of Israeli military had Polish military training at the time, including the top brass.

Btw. Navajo ineed sounds like a linguistic hell for the non native speakers.
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