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Thoughts on polish cases | ||
Tags: Morphology | Polish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Lusan Diglot Newbie United States Joined 3933 days ago 35 posts - 53 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: Polish | Message 1 of 19 12 March 2014 at 2:51am | IP Logged | ||
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Is it effective and productive to learn polish noun cases by drill practices? How do tables and grammar study help us? Too slow, as far as I am concerned.
In terms of the noun-plurals, I just realized that most noun plurals take either y, i, or e. So, why bother with being 100 % correct when one could be correct ~70% of the time? It does not seem to be a good payoff. I just counted 14 rules for them. English has only 2: s or es! Likewise, the 7 cases, if most of the time the case is either accusative or genitive, why bother with the other cases? Why not to just let them be and learn them as they happen without any special effort? Edited by Lusan on 12 March 2014 at 2:53am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6694 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 19 12 March 2014 at 11:27am | IP Logged | ||
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An extreme cost-benefit analysis as the one you just presented would not be popular among language teachers and linguists, but you have a point. The danger is that the same approach at some point may lead you to conclude that you just have to learn enough Polish to understand and be understood, but at a Tarzan level where you won't every be taken seriously. But provided that you keep improving even beyond this point it is a good idea to jump the fences where they are lowest and pick the low-hanging apples first.
But this presupposes that you can identify the lowest points and the lowest-hanging fruits, and ironically that presupposes that you can see grammatical patterns. One example: there are three kinds of masculine nouns in Polish: personate, animate and inanimate, and these govern whether the accusative is like the genitive or like the nominative. In the singular it is like the genitive for personate and inanimates, whereas it only is like the genitive with the personate in the plural.There are also certain endings and numeral types which seem to be reserved for personate masculines. Things like this should be learnt as graphical patterns rather than through detailed tables. And then you can start learning the relevant endings. But there is another distinction which runs perpendicular to the personate/animate/inanimate parameter for gender, namely the one based on hard and soft consonants in the stems. And here you could in principle memorize long lists of endings with different kinds of stems, but the core of the problem is that some consonants tend to be changed to certain other things at certain positions in the tables. It is almost impossible to learn such things through drills, but tables of endings and lists of consonantal changes can be used as guides which help you to see the interesting features in concrete examples. However that takes time. There are a few things like -a versus -u in the genitive singular of masculine nouns where there simply aren't any simple rules, but just tendencies. Here you just have to know that there is something going on and then make a mental note each time you see a relevant example - in particular if you have X possibilities and this one represents the rarest of them (like an -u genitive which isn't the genitive of a big bulky dead thing). And again: the main danger is that you stop being alert to such grammatical details once you have reached a stage where you by and large can read and understand things. Not that you haven't memorized them all at an early stage. Edited by Iversen on 12 March 2014 at 1:01pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Lykeio Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4235 days ago 120 posts - 357 votes | Message 3 of 19 12 March 2014 at 11:58am | IP Logged | ||
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Do you want to chatter or do you want to speak? If the latter, a good grasp of
grammar, pronunciation, and a sizeable lexicon are requisite. You absolutely can learn the case forms by pattern drilling. Despite the naysayers, this seems to be the best way. But learning the forms is different from fully comprehending them. In terms of time efficiency, you want to memorise the forms as quickly as possible to the point they are internalised, but that needs to be buttressed with contextual readings. What functions can each case take? do they have exclusive prepositions? etc etc. You need to be exposed to a lot of input besides the grammar for the grammar to work. Otherwise you're building a car without knowing how to drive. Iversen has helpfully outlined some useful things for you and he's right, it takes time. Don't be afraid to go for the low hanging fruit and slowly build up. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6430 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 4 of 19 12 March 2014 at 1:39pm | IP Logged | ||
What's it like to interact with people who speak Spanish only in the present tense or indicative, or who mix up which person to use - it mainly ends with things like o and a anyhow, right? And you mainly use the first and second person singular and the third person; why bother with the 'we' forms of verbs? 70% correct is wrong often enough that your listener can't trust any of your grammatical endings and needs to think really hard about whether you meant the one you said. How you choose to learn the grammatical constructs is up to you; it doesn't have to be via drills and tables. Choosing not to learn them is probably a mistake, unless you only care about very basic language use. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5774 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 5 of 19 12 March 2014 at 4:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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Creo que tienes razón. Lo importante es hacerse entender. Así que de hoy en adelante yo no pienso seguir
intentando hablar bien. Es decir, soy convencido de que no necesito intentar usar los verbos ser y estar con corrección ni conjugar los verbos, porque tú me entiende de todos modos, ¿verdad? Lo de que el artículos y el adjetivos deben concordar con el sustantivos, yo ya cree que este ideas no son importante. Tampoco lo del género de la sustantivos. Y ¿por qué demonios necesita el español dos pretéritos?. Yo sólo necesita el indefinido- tuviste razón: este cosas no son importante. En fín, yo te desea muy buen suerte en tu estudios y espero que algún dia tu polaco llega (me doy cuenta de que ya no necesito el subjuntivo) a ser tan elegante y agradable al oído como mi español. ;-) Edit: man, that was actually quite cathartic! Edited by Random review on 12 March 2014 at 4:56pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lusan Diglot Newbie United States Joined 3933 days ago 35 posts - 53 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: Polish | Message 6 of 19 12 March 2014 at 11:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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Folks, I hear/read your points. However, I hope I did not convey wrongly that grammar is not important, since I believe otherwise. Let me clarify these views.
Polish and similar languages are hellish grammar-wise. A beginner student, as I am, probably needs to focus on the fundamentals: rhythm of the language, logical structures as well as building a PASSIVE vocabulary of several thousands of words. Time passed looking at cases, declinations and other amazing things, I feel do not deliver much. I suspect that after some strong fundamentals, then grammar comes into the game. What is the sense of knowing that there are perfective and imperfective tenses when I cannot even say, without feeling uncomfortable, Kobieta jest w mój domu or whatever? I mean, in the case of polish, that these are my targets. To: 1. Become familiar with the sound of Polish. ON GOING 2. Build a basic PASSIVE vocabulary ~ 3000 words or so. ON GOING. I know about 600 words and a bunch of key sentences. 3. Slowly learn some very basic grammar. Accusative, genitive, and the most common stuff. ON GOING 4. Activate the vocabulary with easy drills, reading, writing, listening, and conversation. Learn grammar as it shows up during reading. [Expose myself to active language] Of course do 1, 2, 3 happen simultaneously using several resources. I suspect that this is similar to other language self-studies. Cheers Edited by Lusan on 13 March 2014 at 12:58pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Lusan Diglot Newbie United States Joined 3933 days ago 35 posts - 53 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: Polish | Message 7 of 19 13 March 2014 at 12:00am | IP Logged | ||
No creo que hablas en serio, pero si creo que lo importante es entendernos. Todo esto de gramatica y de las complejidades del idioma es puramente academico. Por ejemplo, lo que escribiste es sumamente claro para mi. El hecho de que hayas cometido errores no me importa lo mas minimo -y hay bastantes errores, pero que importa.-. Imaginate, que en espanol hay 16 o 17? tiempo verbales. Es lamentable que alguien se pase la vida estudiando todos estos tiempos y no pueda conversar con nadie. Ya quisiese que mi polaco fuese tan bueno como tu espanol. Congratulaciones. -Notas lo compleja que es esta oracion? Es el tiempo condicional, bla-bla-bla. Mi vecino, mejicano, no tiene la mas remota idea acerca del tiempo condicional y lo usa continuamente. Esto de no hablar bien es peligroso. No digo que uno deba de hablar mal, sino que uno debe de hacerse entender y usar la practica para el aprendizaje Durante la practica uno puede, creo, mejorar automaticamente. Despues de todo, es improbable hacer literatura en una lengua no materna. Eso que dices acerca de verbo ser y estar no es correcto tampoco. Los verbos ser, estar y haber son fundamentales en espanol. Si los usas incorrectamente nadie ha de entenderte. Pero para usar estos verbos correctamente no es necesario saber de la existecia del los tiempos plustamperfectos y otras locuras que aprendi en mi infancia. Pero esto son solos mis opiniones. Tal vez son disparates para decirle al forum que todavia estudio y que lo encuentro maravilloso. Me callo. Mejor me pongo a estudiar polski. Podoba mi się. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5774 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 8 of 19 13 March 2014 at 2:50am | IP Logged | ||
1 person has voted this message useful |
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