Should I learn both Polish and German

Yes, but it is not a language of international understanding like Spanish is but I agree if something takes your fancy, why not? When I was in South Africa in 1976 I tried to learn the language a little and it is surprising how you can remember the odd word or two even over so many years (in my case thirty) and it is always a 'party piece' when you meet someone from there who at least know what you are talking about!

Polish,czech and russian are very useful to males for some strange reason.

More than that, I intend to be living and working there in 2 years within the palliative care setting. The only reason I am not there now is due to my lack of sufficient Polish.

Polish is the easiest slavic language in my opinion.

Do you mean that males try to learn these languages because they want to go to these countries and pick up a nice female? I think that it is deffinately the reason why many TESOL teachers go there.

I would have thought that Chech and Slovak are both similar to Polish in difficulty. Russian is harder, of course, because of the moving stress patterns.

I would have thought that it would be worthwhile you just going and if you have a deep interest in learning you would soon pick up the language.

I always wondered what made me learn these languages.If you speak them you have an extraordinary advantage with the local ladies.

It could be one reason, I suppose. Otherwise, maybe you are a language whizzard or something.

Czech seems more difficult to me.A bit more complicated,intonations etc.Polish is more straight.Thre is also the dark czech sense of humour.

Slavic languages are attractive.They have structure but not as rigid as german and they are melodic.Russian more primitive.

I have looked into it and decided that my Polish is not sufficient enough to be acceptable. Remember that I would be talking to terminally ill people and their loved ones (from day one) in most cases and me blundering on in cracked Polish while they are already distressed enough is not acceptable (to me and colleagues agree), I will see how I am after a year but it's likely two years will be the realism. I'll continue to work in my field here and pick up more knowledge to take with me.

I only know that with Chech words the stress tends to fall on the first syllable whereas in Polish it falls on the penultimate. I get the feeling that the Czechs are a clever lot. They seem to speak good English and German. They always say that if there is a former country from the East that will make it in to the EU it will be the Chech Republic.

Sth that worked for me was to get to polish forums and write in polish with help of dictionary.You have t answer quickly and gradually manage most conversations.With slavic languages if there is no talking partner it is almost impossible to learn cause written speech is different from oral speech.Very much in russian.
Thanks all the different girls for the feedback they provided.

Yes,Czechs seem clever.They had also a lot of literature and lots of contacts with West,so maybe their language became more complicated.

For a learner, I'd imagine tha reading Polish would give a better idea of pronunciation than reading all those bizarre English spellings.

I am sorry, but your theory is rather silly.
"Complication" or "simplicity" of a language (as perceived by you) would be a sign of civilizational advancement related to contacts with the West as opposed to the primitive, rough East. Am I right?
1) Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia are not eastern Europe. They are central Europe. Check your map, please.
2) The older the language, the simpler it tends to get. Look at English. Its early forms were a nightmare complete with 4 forms of irregular verbs, inflections and what have you. The relative complication of Slavonic languages stems from the fact that they are a bit younger than English, in other words, they had split from their joint Old Church Slavonic stem about 500 years later than Anglian or Anglo-Saxon had from whatever it was that Germanic tribes used to speak before they spread around Europe.
3) Russian is not a primitive language. Quite the contrary. I spent 4 years of primary school and 4 years of secondary school learning it and had a very strict teacher. The best I ever got was a B.
4) Please do realize that central and eastern Europe was not a barren desert of cultural and linguistic desolation even under the communists. We share our history and culture with you and it is extremely humiliating to be treated like a weird species of subhumans aspiring to the unattainable golden West. It's time to wake up and smell the coffee.

No, I agree with Southern. There is no doubt about it that when it comes to literature and in fact engineering for that matter, the Czechs are well advanced on Poland. Meet any traveler who has been throughout the ex Communist Eastern Europe and everybody will agree that the Czech Republic is YEARS ahead of anything in present day Poland. I am sorry, but in comparison to the Czech Republic, the Poles have a lot to learn from them. The Poles from me get a D-!!

I never knew that Poland shared a history with England at all. Maybe I was taught badly though? I do know that history can be taught from a variety of different perspectives.

I am half-Czech and have been called a Polonophobe on this forum before, so I should be beside myself with glee upon reading this, right? Well, not exactly. As I know both countries equally well, I can see strengths and weaknesses in both. And I strongly dislike such sweeping generalisations, as they are patronising and uninformed. If you wish to prove your point to me nevertheless, I would be most obliged for examples - specific examples.

Let me stand this statement on its head: I never knew that England shared any significant history with Europe at all ;-)
We were always just "the continent" to you anyway.

No, again that is not true at all just like your szlachetny kon! We have strong links with France and Germany both through wars, colonization-even the Royal family in England has German and Greek connections.

It does not the least bit of difference anyway as none of these universities are recongnized in the West!

Russian is very primitive in fact, on a par with Polish!

And you are being childishly spiteful as usual!

Our next door neighbour has rented out one of her rooms to a Pole who works in a care home via an agency. If these jobs exist in Poland then why are they all flocking over here looking for work? I think that your whole philosophy is over simplified somewhere.

Can you explain what you mean by primitive?

Oh, come off it. It is a well known fact that the Russian language comes from simplified terminology used in the countryside a couple of hundred years ago. Compared to German grammar, well, there is no comparison.

Is English primitive because all the complex words derive from other languages such as Latin, French, etc.

No, English is quite different all together.