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Czech, Polish, Greek? case heavy langs | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Mooby Senior Member Scotland Joined 6107 days ago 707 posts - 1220 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Polish | Message 17 of 38 30 October 2013 at 7:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi samfrances,
From the point of view of socialising and practising conversation, I'd recommend Polish since you live in the UK where Polish is now the 2nd most commonly spoken language (at least in England). This was my main reason for learning it; I'd met numerous Poles and began to teach them English. I just decided to learn their language (Solidarność and all that!). I didn't know anything about the language and had never heard of declensions. But I'm very glad I started 3 and a half years ago. Had there been thousands of Russians or Portuguese in my area, I may well have started those respective languages. Polish is with me for life. I get the chance to speak it every day and to enjoy new relationships. I've become very appreciative of Polish writers, film-makers, musicians and some Polish cuisine (still not sure about the salads and sausage, but love the cheesecake!). Feel free to check out my 2013 Polish Log for more. Powodzenia. Edited by Mooby on 30 October 2013 at 7:53pm 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| samfrances Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4054 days ago 81 posts - 110 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 18 of 38 30 October 2013 at 8:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi Mooby, Wow, I didn't realise Polish was the 2nd most commonly spoken language in the UK! Any recommendations for Polish films and novels available in translation?
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| Mooby Senior Member Scotland Joined 6107 days ago 707 posts - 1220 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Polish | Message 19 of 38 30 October 2013 at 9:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi samfrances,
FILMS: Anything by the renowed Krzysztof Kieślowski. For example: Blind Chance Camera Buff Dekalog - series. Watch the Dekalog 1 with English subtitles. Also: Ashes and Diamonds. Directed by Andzej Wajda. Wszystko będzie dobrze - no subtitles on this link, but all DVD versions have English. Edited by Mooby on 30 October 2013 at 10:47pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6705 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 20 of 38 31 October 2013 at 9:54am | IP Logged | ||
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I chose to learn some Russian and later some Polish too, and a couple of other Slavic languages, and I already knew German and a certain amount of Icelandic - and then I just had to accept that this also meant that I had to deal with the morphology issue in each of these languages.
One of the first things I did with Russian was to sit down with a couple of grammars and write down the regular nominal endings. I then combined those of the adjectives and the nouns in one table (and in Icelandic I did the same thing, but there I also had to include the pre- and postpositioned articles). The pronouns went on a separate sheet of paper, and an overview of the verb endings on a third one. I left out the problems with the accent because that's something you have to deal with word by word, and I excluded a number of irregularities represented by one or two words. And well, it turned out that one halfsheet was enough to contain more or less everything I might want to learn about Russian adjectives and substantives (apart from those rambunctious freeroaming accents). I then found out that I had to write the whole thing down on thick green paper because I otherwise wouldn't be able to find the sheets with my tables again, and voilà - the 'green sheets' were born. The motivation behind just writing the endings without quoting whole words was primarily space considerations, but it turned out not to be a problem because I didn't spend much time trying to memorize the tables. Instead I put those green sheets on a notestand so that I could consult more or less the whole regular part of the morphology at one glance, both when I was reading and when I wrote things myself. The pile of green sheets is now about one centimeter thick and growing, and in a few cases I have made a separate copy to carry around with me. One side effect of making such a green sheet is that I now can use the position in a table as an additional memory hook, which wouldn't be possible with tables spread over several pages and maybe even with different orders of the cases (one example: in the Slavic languages the only logical position of the accusative is between the nominative and the genitive, but grammars made in Germany always put it after the Genitive or even further down, depending on the language). And making the sheets with the analysis this entails is in itself a good way of learning something - but rarely to the extent that I know the whole thing by heart right after I have produced such a sheet). More about green sheets here. Edited by Iversen on 31 October 2013 at 10:12am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| samfrances Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4054 days ago 81 posts - 110 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 21 of 38 31 October 2013 at 11:07am | IP Logged | ||
Thanks Mooby. I don't know yet if I'll try to learn Polish, but I'm definitely going to watch some Polish films. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| samfrances Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4054 days ago 81 posts - 110 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 22 of 38 31 October 2013 at 11:31am | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks Iversen. That looks really useful for when I choose which highly case inflected language to learn.
It sounds like you're saying that having this "green sheet" and referring to it when necessary in itself helps you learn the case endings. When I was briefly taught Latin in school, I (stupidly, in all likelihood) thought this was cheating, and that you had to be able to chant "agricola, agricola, agricolam..." before you could even begin reading. Edited by samfrances on 31 October 2013 at 12:09pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6705 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 23 of 38 31 October 2013 at 1:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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Schools ought to spend more time on teaching how to cheat in a productive way.
5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Fuenf_Katzen Diglot Senior Member United States notjustajd.wordpress Joined 4371 days ago 337 posts - 476 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Polish, Ukrainian, Afrikaans | Message 24 of 38 01 November 2013 at 4:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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I can give a somewhat edited version of why I decided to start learning Slavic languages. I say edited because it involves issues that I are not supposed to be discussed here, and I don't want to take the chance of detracting from the topic, so please feel free to PM me if you want me to go further.
Basically, I have no Slavic heritage (that I know of!) but Slavic languages have always fascinated me. I admit my reasons for first wanting to learn Polish were somewhat superficial; I liked the way it sounded, I enjoyed some of the music and art that came out of Poland, and I thought it would be fun to learn a grammar-heavy language after German. Where I live, Polish has an interesting situation as there is a good amount of people with Polish (or Slavic) heritage, but Russian is by far the one everyone wants to learn. When I started to learn it, I found that there were certain parts of Polish cultural identity and history that resonated well with me, and I really appreciated how important they were, and how they united Poland as a country. That sense of identity is something I've found lacking being from the US and I think partially I was seeking out a culture that had a strong national identity. With Ukrainian (which I'm planning to begin in 2014), the reasons are much more personal than linguistic. I've really come to appreciate its history and culture, and in some ways, having exposure to Polish helped me to appreciate Ukrainian traditions more in ways that I never thought about in the past. In general, my motivation was that I always felt a connection with Slavic languages and cultures (though that connection has really always been with the Polish/Ukrainian traditions and never quite made it to Slovak/Czech, though I think it would be interesting to see how they linguistically relate to each other). I never realized how much I needed to have the cultural connection until I started studying Polish--I think if it didn't exist for me, I wouldn't be able to continue learning it, because the language is very different from what I've learned in the past. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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