PolishForums.com
POLAND . The Unofficial Guide
 Unanswered | Archives
Polska, Polonia, Poland Witamy, Guest | PF Members | Gold Members

Polish Forums / General Language /

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


page 37 of 40:  « Prev  1  ...  36  37  38  39  40  Next » posts: 1171

Lyzko  Jan 18, 12, 23:41    #1,081
Scarcely "more interesting", Uluguda, but surely more morphologically conservative, like Icelandic or Lithuanian. German, don't forget, was often the second foreign language among pre-War Poles, indeed the preferred language among the post-War Eastern Block nations over Russian. Poles above a certain age will typically speak as well as write German with an academic accuracy, an almost textbook slavishness to arcane grammar, long but ignored by native German speakers. Their German is therefore light years better than their English ever was, yet, like everyone else, would rather stumble along blindly in the lingua franca of (unspoken) misscommunication, instead of in a language many REALLY know well.

At international conferences, interpreters were used for accuracy's sake, costly as they were. Nowadays, cost saving madness has invaded the interpreter's booth and the rule has become to slog on in bad English alone rather than pay somebody who knows how to talk English perfectly to speak on the other's behalf. Add to this, bad grammar has become "cool", vulgar depravity glorified, ain'tcha heard?
:-)
Annon<3  Jan 19, 12, 12:47    #1,082
Moje Piwo się rozlało.
A tego Piwa miałem mało.
Już nie będzie więcej piw . :(
Teraz tak przyglądam się tym piwom i rozmyślam o tym piwie.
Jednak w końcu zrozumiałem ,że to głupota zawracać sobie głowę piwami.
Stwierdziłem jednoznacznie ,od dzisiaj mówię nie piwu.
Fakt pozostaje jednak taki ,ze byłem już po trzech piwach .
Wiec i tak mimo wszystko, miałem niezły humorek.

but seriously... ę and ą are the most annoying letters in the whole wide world. We don't even like them so much , we tend to pronounce them "om" and "e".
There's no avoiding ś,ć,dź,dż tho. The only difference between "ś/ć" and "si/ci" is that "ś/ć" are a bit shorter(in pronunciation ,but still the same sound) .
Take a look at "ćma" and "cicha" xD, ask someone to say it and listen how long is the sound.
We also tend to look at the people who try to talk too precisely as being big headed(among ourselves, big indicator when you are perfecting Polish).Don't stress too much over pronunciation :)... have fun^^
I guess some of the comments saying that Polish sounds gibberish might be true. Some of the sounds we have taken into our language from the nature itself.
szzzzzz....is the sound of the wind(or the sea).
chhh.....is a sound that you naturally make when u breath heavily(or yawn).
We are proud of our language and it is a great honor that you guys try to learn it.
I mean Poland was once gone from the map of the world, but our language lived and with it our spirit, we are here:)
Thanks guys.

btw. I'm trying to learn Japanese... really cool language.Definitely much better than Chinese or Korean in my opinion . I really REALLY(can't stress that enough) recommend it to those who are fascinated by the Asian culture.
Tho I think that I might be learning it the wrong way, because I am doing so by watching anime xD... whatever works right?xD
I have Touched a bit of German (because of German roots,great grandma had a cool surname "Wolfgang"... bad-ass) , learned a bit of French at school(and failed horribly xD).I understand Czech and Slovak(Slovak moar!!!) ,but Russian is still a bit confusing to me :P
Learning languages is the coolest thing ever XD
Please forgive me for any mistakes I made T_T I am still a noob :)
Lyzko  Jan 19, 12, 17:08    #1,083
"...Wolfgang..bad ass..."

Actually, it means "way" or "path of the wolf":-))
Good guess thoughLOL

Bad ass??? Hmmm, "Geiler Bock"??? Not really sure.

Like your take on Polish, by the way.
uluguda  Jan 31, 12, 14:48    #1,084
It depends on where are you from. because polish can be the most difficult language for people from england,germany,spain,chinese,japanese etc but easier for slovakia ,czech republic and hungary because polish is similar . But polish , is really difficult (grammar) comparing english or german.
FUZZYWICKETSThreads: 12
Posts: 1,997
Joined: Nov 3, 09 ♂ 		 Jan 31, 12, 17:38    #1,085
uluguda:
but easier for slovakia ,czech republic and hungary


oh ok. so for 99% of the world's population, it's still insanely hard. good.
delphiandomineThreads: 42
Posts: 9,954
Joined: Nov 25, 08 ♂ [Suspended] 		 Jan 31, 12, 17:51    #1,086
FUZZYWICKETS:
oh ok. so for 99% of the world's population, it's still insanely hard. good.


It's not "insanely hard". It's difficult for English speakers who can't grasp the case system, but if it was "insanely hard" - why do Slavic language speakers find it ridiculously easy?

I know a few native German speakers who found Polish to be quite easy. And don't forget that Polish is remarkably easy to find if you want to practice it, too.
GabiDaHunThreads: 1
Posts: 66
Joined: Jan 18, 12  Pictures: 1 ♀ 		Edited by: GabiDaHun  Jan 31, 12, 18:05    #1,087
uluguda:
It depends on where are you from. because polish can be the most difficult language for people from england,germany,spain,chinese,japanese etc but easier for slovakia ,czech republic and hungary because polish is similar . But polish , is really difficult (grammar) comparing english or german.


Guess again. I speak Hungarian fluently and Polish is a real minefield for me, even though I completely get what case endings are about most linguists agree on 14 cases in the Hungarian language (Polish has 7). At the moment I'm struggling with simple sentences, particularly with gender declination and animate vs. inanimate declinations. Hungarian has no gender - so that doesn't help me.

It's not always obvious which case follows which verbs either.

I think Hungarian probably is harder for most people to learn than Polish, but not by much - it's not a competition. The two languages aren't really that similar at all, although they do share some common lexis.

It really all depends on what your mother tongue is.
FUZZYWICKETSThreads: 12
Posts: 1,997
Joined: Nov 3, 09 ♂ 		Edited by: FUZZYWICKETS  Jan 31, 12, 20:43    #1,088
delphiandomine:
but if it was "insanely hard" - why do Slavic language speakers find it ridiculously easy?


uhmmm.....because a lot of words sound the same? i mean, is that really your argument, dude?

i went on a tour of a castle in the Czech Republic once, half the tour group was Polish, and the tour guide spoke only in Czech. the Poles knew exactly what was going on as the woman spoke. hell, even I can watch 'Nova' and catch a lot of words and with subtitles, i get about 30-40%. Slovak is even closer to Polish than Czech.

if you don't like the word "insanely", let's just say really really really hard.

send me to France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy for 2 years, I'll walk out C1 easily. try doing the same in Poland.

gabidahun wrote:

Hungarian has no gender - so that doesn't help me.

man does that make things easier. i know Hungarian is a super hard language but no gender.....heaven.
GabiDaHunThreads: 1
Posts: 66
Joined: Jan 18, 12  Pictures: 1 ♀ 		 Jan 31, 12, 21:11    #1,089
FUZZYWICKETS:
man does that make things easier. i know Hungarian is a super hard language but no gender.....heaven.


It's one of the ONLY redeeming features of learning the language. It has no genders, but try mastering the "vowel harmony" system.

I think you'll be begging for the return of genders.
Lyzko  Jan 31, 12, 22:45    #1,090
As far as comparing Polish with German, both have three genders (masc., fem. neut.) only Polish, like Russian in this instance, has ZERO articles before nouns, save for 'to', ta', 'ten' and their variants. German's a lot more repetitive in its adjectival endings in both singular and plural compared with Polish. I say this as a bilingual German/English speaker.

Hungarian is for me more of a challenge, if solelyl due to the lack of familiar lexical cognates with Indo-European.
delphiandomineThreads: 42
Posts: 9,954
Joined: Nov 25, 08 ♂ [Suspended] 		 Jan 31, 12, 22:49    #1,091
FUZZYWICKETS:
send me to France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy for 2 years, I'll walk out C1 easily. try doing the same in Poland.


Likewise for a Pole - send them to Russia and they'll be at C1 level easily (I know a Russian who did just that in Poland within 8 months), but send them to Germany/the UK and they'll be far worse off.

I'm also pretty sure none of us would be anywhere near C1 level if we went to somewhere like Finland - or interestingly enough, Swiss German is apparently an utter bitch to learn, not least because language schools won't enrol you onto Swiss German courses without being fluent in German first.
gumishuThreads: 17
Posts: 3,943
Joined: Apr 6, 09  Pictures: 1 ♂ 		 Jan 31, 12, 23:02    #1,092
Lyzko:
Hungarian is for me more of a challenge, if solelyl due to the lack of familiar lexical cognates with Indo-European.


there are plenty of Slavic borrowings in Hungarian - zsir, padlo, molnar, konyv, puszta are the ones I remember now
GabiDaHunThreads: 1
Posts: 66
Joined: Jan 18, 12  Pictures: 1 ♀ 		 Feb 1, 12, 10:50    #1,093
gumishu:
there are plenty of Slavic borrowings in Hungarian - zsir, padlo, molnar, konyv, puszta are the ones I remember now


kaposta, kulcs.

Makes polish a bit easer for me than my English speaking friends. Not much easier though!
Lyzko  Feb 2, 12, 14:19    #1,094
asztal, varos....
NatasaThreads: 7
Posts: 2,607
Joined: Jun 6, 10  Pictures: 2  Gold Member MEMBER ♀ 		 Feb 2, 12, 17:48    #1,095
Lyzko:
asztal, varos....


Are you sure that it isn't the other way around, hungarian borrowings in Slavic languages?

I understand those two :) The first one aways sounded to me like the most important of Ottoman heritage in this area, for the second I was almost certain it was originally hungarian word.

stop the earth i want to get off
FUZZYWICKETSThreads: 12
Posts: 1,997
Joined: Nov 3, 09 ♂ 		 Feb 2, 12, 17:53    #1,096
delphiandomine:
Likewise for a Pole - send them to Russia and they'll be at C1 level easily


I've already addressed why that is. It's a bad comparison.
Lyzko  Feb 2, 12, 18:04    #1,097
Turkish calques from Hungarian and vice versa or legion, Tash!
RubyopticsThreads: 3
Posts: 12
Joined: May 23, 11 ♂ 		 Feb 2, 12, 21:09    #1,098
I realise that this is slightly off-topic, however, through various travels through Europe and farther afield (UAE etc) i have found that whilst Polish may not be technically the hardest language to learn (it damn well feels like it though sometimes!!) i think that as an English 30 year old guy, it is the language that i get the most appreciation for TRYING to speak and/or listen. In UAE i learnt a few basic phrases such as please and thank-you and was treated with suspicion, if not downright hostility, in many European country, if you speak and are grammatically in-correct you will be made very aware of it. However, my experiences in trying to speak Polish have been rewarded with smiles (as well as a bit of gentle mocking, so my partner tells me!) but never in a rude or abusive way, more the way you would look at a puppy "awww, look, he is trying to run all on his own!" lol! its a nice feeling and one that encourages me in my efforts greatly. Sorry for the off topic ;)
Lyzko  Feb 2, 12, 21:19    #1,099
As far as difficulty, you may be right, although as a 52-year old American "guy" who began learning at 30, I didn't find it quite so daunting, frankly.

Never encountered what you have from Poles. Ever tried to speak imperfect German to young, trendy Germans?? Ohoo!!
uluguda  Feb 10, 12, 16:33    #1,100
I really like listening polish conversation it sounds like hums from the sea I mean " pszzz,brzz krzzz,pszrzzz" Thats sounds grate I would like to be able to say so difficults words as polish people can speak. Spanish ,English sound too fluent..German language sounds ..ugly? I dont like that language .Polish,hungarian,finnish are cool
Lyzko  Feb 10, 12, 17:09    #1,101
Apropos tongue twisters, some say the Polish language itself is one big tongue twister-:))

W Szczebrzymie chrząść brzmi w tcecinie. - The beetle buzzes in the reed - Der Kaefer summt im Schilf.
ShortHairThugThreads: -
Posts: 1,374
Joined: May 1, 09 ♂ 		 Feb 10, 12, 17:33    #1,102
Lyzko:
W Szczebrzymie chrząść brzmi w tcecinie.

That should be ‘W Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie’ BTW, but you can say ‘u nos to chrobok burcy w trowie’ if it makes your life any easier. :)
boletusThreads: 47
Posts: 1,095
Joined: Apr 13, 11 ♂ 		Edited by: boletus  Feb 10, 12, 18:06    #1,103
‘u nos to chrobok burcy w trowie’ - nice. :-)

Lyzko:
W Szczebrzymie chrząść brzmi w tcecinie.

Inspired by your "chrząść" - try this, I invented it just for you: "Chrzęstna chrzęści chrząstką chrząszcza." (The Godmother rustles a cartilage of the beetle).

Although there are Polish surnames "Chrząść" there is no common word "chrząść" in Polish dictionaries, but I would not be surprised if the etymology of "chrząstka" is actually "chrząść".
boletusThreads: 47
Posts: 1,095
Joined: Apr 13, 11 ♂ 		 Feb 10, 12, 18:25    #1,104
boletus:
Chrzęstna

Oops, I meant "chrzestna", not "chrzęstna".
Lyzko  Feb 10, 12, 19:18    #1,105
It will make my life easier or it WON'T make my life ANY easier, ShortHair? Which d'you mean?
LOL!!
How's about "Trzy Czechy cieszą się ciesać się." = Three Czechs enjoy combing their hair.
:-))
pamThreads: 22
Posts: 463
Joined: Oct 11, 11  Gold Member MEMBER ♀ 		 Feb 10, 12, 19:42    #1,106
Lyzko:
Apropos tongue twisters, some say the Polish language itself is one big tongue twister-:))

W Szczebrzymie chrząść brzmi w tcecinie. - The beetle buzzes in the reed - Der Kaefer summt im Schilf

if you want a really good laugh and further tongue twisters, go to uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/polish_language for anyone trying to learn the language, this is a must!! enjoy!!
Lyzko  Feb 10, 12, 19:47    #1,107
...Under "Łamie językowe" lit. "breakers of the tongue"
ShortHairThugThreads: -
Posts: 1,374
Joined: May 1, 09 ♂ 		 Feb 10, 12, 20:33    #1,108
Lyzko:
Which d'you mean?

Easier of course.

Lyzko:
How's about "Trzy Czechy cieszą się ciesać się." = Three Czechs enjoy combing their hair.
:-))

Czechów Trzech cieszy się czesaniem włosów. LOL

How about (Dżdżystym rankiem gżegżółki i piegże, zamiast wziąć się za dżdżownice, nażarły się na czczo miąższu rzeżuchy i rzędem rzygały do rozżarzonej brytfanny)
a.k.  Feb 10, 12, 20:44    #1,109
Lyzko:
"Trzy Czechy cieszą się ciesać się." = Three Czechs enjoy combing their hair.


If anything: Trzej Czesi cieszą się czesząc = 3 Czechs rejoice while combing... but it goes different way:

Czy się Czesi cieszą gdy się Czesio czesze?

Lyzko:
"Łamie językowe"


Łamańce językowe.

:)

ShortHairThug:
How about


My turn. Try to say as fast as you can:
Ząb zupa zębowa, dąb zupa dębowa.

Has anyone slipped? ;)

ShortHairThug:
Dżdżystym rankiem gżegżółki i piegże, zamiast wziąć się za dżdżownice, nażarły się na czczo miąższu rzeżuchy i rzędem rzygały do rozżarzonej brytfanny


Haha, a fine example of Polish dyktando!
ShortHairThugThreads: -
Posts: 1,374
Joined: May 1, 09 ♂ 		 Feb 10, 12, 20:55    #1,110
a.k.:
Haha, a fine example of Polish dyktando!

Yes it is, although quiet easy for a native to pronounce I think a foreigner would have a hell of a time.

page 37 of 40:  « Prev  1  ...  36  37  38  39  40  Next »

Home / General Language / Unanswered [this forum] | Similar


Similar discussions:

learning Polish using American phonics  Coming back to Polish


Random: Need some info on polish clothing sizes

Only registered and logged-in users may post here. Please log in or register.


57 [Guests - 37 / Members - 20] users on live forums now


Home | Unanswered | Archives | Random | Statistics Time in Poland: 15:55 / May 26

About Us | Contact Us | Rules, Privacy | Poland Advertising
© 2005-12 PolishForums.com