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Is Polish really that hard? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| michi Nonaglot Newbie Austria Joined 5299 days ago 33 posts - 57 votes  Speaks: Dutch*, German, French, English, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese Studies: Turkish, Arabic (Written), Serbo-Croatian, Indonesian, Japanese | Message 105 of 125 10 August 2011 at 1:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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Just a few days ago I have started to learn a little bit of Polish again, because I intend to go on a holiday to Krakow. I have learned a little bit in the past on my own. In the discussion so far I have been missing two important points.
1) It makes an enormous difference if you already know another Slavic language. I have studied Russian for one year at the university and I have learned some Croatian as well and was an enormous help for learning Polish. Both the vocabulary and the grammar are quite similar. 2) If I compare the difficulty of Polish and Russian - the Slavic language that is learned most abroad . the big advantage for Polish for me is that is in written in the Latin and not the Cyrillic script. Although the Cyrillic alphabet is not that difficult, it is a problem if you don't read in it every day. For this reason I tend to say that although its grammar is more complicated for me personally Polish is easier than Russian. Of the three Slavic languages that I have learned however Croatian is definitely the easiest. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Martien Heptaglot Senior Member Netherlands martienvanwanrooij.n Joined 7103 days ago 134 posts - 148 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, German, Spanish, Turkish, Italian, French Studies: Portuguese, Serbo-Croatian, Latin, Swedish, Arabic (Written) | Message 106 of 125 10 August 2011 at 2:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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@michi I think you have some good points. You could also take in mind that the in spite of the complexity of grammar, the script is quite regular. If you hear a word, you won't always know how to spell it, but if you read a word, you will know how to pronounce it (thanks to its regular stress). Sometimes I hear a comment that Polish is difficult because pairs of consonants often behave like one letter (cz, rz) but it is just a matter of getting used and English has the same feature. Even people who are not fluent in English, won't pronounce "flushing" like "flus-hing" or "point" like "pow-int" :)
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| Homogenik Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4822 days ago 314 posts - 407 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Polish, Mandarin | Message 107 of 125 14 September 2011 at 12:36am | IP Logged | ||
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I've been having a little trouble with the many variations on iść, jechać, jeździć and chodzić so I tried to make
myself a little table to sort things out. I was wondering if any of you could comment on it. Have I forgotten something? Is something wrong in my assessment (which I gathered this afternoon from various dictionaries and other resources). Sometimes, each verb has more than one signification but I just put in one to be as simple as possible for my level of learning. And, as far as I can tell, all the non-accomplished verbs are also iterative except iść and jechać. NDK (niedokonany) / DK (dokonany) / Signification iść / pójść / to go, on foot jechać / pojechać / to go, or to leave in vehicle przychodzić / przyjść / to come przyjeżdżać / przyjechać / to come in v. przechodzić / przejść / to cross (road) or to go see (someone) przejeżdżać /przejechać / to cross in v. pochodzić / pochodzić / 2 forms of same verb : DK (to originate from), NDK (to date from) chodzić / pochodzić / to walk or have a little walk jeździć / pojeździć / to go or to have a little trip in v. wychodzić / wyjść / to go out wyjeżdżać / wyjechać / to go out or to leave in a v. wjeżdżać / wjechać / to enter in a v. (and not to enter a v.) wchodzić / wejść / to enter odchodzić / odejść / to leave odjeżdżać / odjechać / to leave in a v. dochodzić / dojść / to get close to dojeżdżać / dojechać / to get close to, to reach a place, in a v. podjeżdżać / podjechać / to get close to, in a v. podchodzić / podejść / to get close to obchodzić /obejść / to have to go around something objeżdżać / objechać / to have to go around something, in a v. najeżdżać / najechać / to hit something or to invade a place, with a v. nachodzić / najść / to hit something or to invade a place rozjeżdżać / rozjechać / to crush or hit someone, with a v. rozchodzić się / rozejść się / to leave each other or to disband zjeżdżać / zjechać / to go down a hill or to go astray, in a v. schodzić / zejść / to go down a hill or to go astray 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Haukilahti Triglot Groupie Finland Joined 4962 days ago 94 posts - 126 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Polish | Message 108 of 125 16 September 2011 at 11:44am | IP Logged | ||
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Nothing new for you, I think, but here is my understanding. I called "indeterminate" what you call "iterative", I think.
The usual grouping for the "basic" forms are: chodzić / isć / pójść jeździć / jechać / pojechać where the first two forms are niedokonany, the last one dokonany. Of the two imperfective verbs, the first is "indeterminate", meaning either without a destination "I walk in the park", or repeated "I go to school everyday", the second is "determinate": "I am going to school now". Those two niedokonany forms are then used to make all the other ones, with indeterminate becoming niedokonany and determinate becoming dokonany: wychodzić / wyjść wyjeżdżać / wyjechać Note the jeździć to -jeżdżać transformation. Other than that, I don't think (natives please!) that there is much of a difference between the different forms with the same preposition, if you take into account that chodzić/iść means by foot, jeździć(-jeżdżać)/jechać means by vehicle, etc. Therefore all wy- forms mean "to leave", etc. I'm not good enough to comment on all those forms, but I'd add to the w- forms (wejść, etc.) the meaning "to climb (a hill)". The same rules and prefixes work almost identically with "to fly" latać/lecieć/polecieć and "to swim" (also in the meaning: to go, to travel by ship or boat): pływać/płynąć/popłynąć. Also very similar are the constructions from "to carry": nosić/nieść/ponieść (by foot) and wozić/wieźć/powieźć (zawieźć?). For example: "to bring (by foot)" przynosić/przynieść (ndk/dk). Edited by Haukilahti on 16 September 2011 at 11:46am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Homogenik Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4822 days ago 314 posts - 407 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Polish, Mandarin | Message 109 of 125 16 September 2011 at 7:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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wow, thank you so much, that was really helpful to me.
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| EricsonWillians Triglot Newbie Brazil myspace.com/pois Joined 5003 days ago 8 posts - 12 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, German Studies: Norwegian, Polish, Italian | Message 110 of 125 26 September 2011 at 2:24am | IP Logged | ||
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I must confess that I didn't read all this thread, just 3 pages of it. But anyway, I
would like to express my opinion about this really interesting language (Polish). I'm a Brazilian and I've learned English and a lot of German by my own (Without having any English or German family, or anyone to test my skills), and I've found a lot of difficulties in German and its really irritating 4 cases. I've begun to explore the Polish language now and I've found it initially EXTREMELY difficult, and that's what I have to say: When you have Portuguese as a native language, it's REALLY insane to learn a Slavic Language from nothing, specially polish, which uses the same alphabet that I use, but with a lot of STRANGE things, such as the "ogonek" for "ą" and "ę", and it's COUNTLESS consonants. For a Brazilian, when I show a text in polish (That's happened to me in my first contact with the language), it seems to be just UNSPEAKABLE. For example, the word for "passado" in Portuguese: "przeszłość" (Correct me if I'm wrong). It seems completely insane to pronounce, I've lost a lot of time with the polish sounds. Well, but I have this necessity, I really want to learn a Slavic Language, since I speak none of them, I think that by learning some of polish I'll have less problems when I begin to explore the Russian Language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kartof Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5064 days ago 391 posts - 550 votes Speaks: English*, Bulgarian*, Spanish Studies: Danish | Message 111 of 125 26 September 2011 at 4:30am | IP Logged | ||
Not to be nosy, but what about Bulgarian? No cases, similar sounds to Portuguese, complex verbs like in Portuguese, and a lot of vocabulary in common with Russian. The only hinderance may be Cyrillic, which may be an advantage if you're confused by consonant clusters and diacritics. If you have a particular attachment to Polish, disregard what I just said :). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| EricsonWillians Triglot Newbie Brazil myspace.com/pois Joined 5003 days ago 8 posts - 12 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, German Studies: Norwegian, Polish, Italian | Message 112 of 125 26 September 2011 at 4:43am | IP Logged | ||
I've developed a particular taste by the Polish language, because of this natural thought that the language is hard, but I'll take a look at the Bulgarian, it sounds very interesting (Despite the complexity of the verbs just like in Portuguese, that's not a very attractive thing hahaha). The verbs of my language are really hard, and it's funny the fact that the majority of the Brazilian people don't speak their language CORRECTLY (In fact, that's really frustrating and bloody shameful). I speak good Portuguese, but because of me, a lot of people here are very ignorant. I don't know if that happens in European countries, but here a lot of people just speak Portuguese WRONG. Edited by EricsonWillians on 26 September 2011 at 4:45am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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