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Is Polish really that hard? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6592 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes  Speaks: EnglishC2*, Norwegian*, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 9 of 125 25 April 2010 at 4:43pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I'm sure people who are dedicated succeed, but on the whole I wouldn't suggest Poles are strong at languages. I've never attended school in Poland, but I have to assume that the standard of education has to be quite poor, given the average person's level of English (it used to be that they were more interested in German but eventually English became the most important foreign language). And this seems to be reflected by something else. I was there in February and I was struck by the truly vast amount of advertising for private foreign language schools. I've never seen anything like it. So many different companies selling their services, above all for English, "business English" and things like that. It seems to suggest that the public education system is pretty deficient on this point (frankly I doubt these language schools get all that much business despite their advertising). Edited by numerodix on 25 April 2010 at 4:45pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6965 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 10 of 125 25 April 2010 at 4:54pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
May I suggest that you check out this somewhat old thread about the difficulty of Polish versus Russian. Within this old thread there is an attempt to compare the "difficulty" of various features in each of Polish and Russian. how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=7898 &PN=1 I think that Polish's reputation of being difficult is partially a function of some Poles "talking up" their own language (you don't know how many times I've heard Poles tell me that their language is SO difficult), and the observations of non-Poles who think that it's also SO difficult. In my experience, I don't think that Polish is as easy or as hard as it looks ;-) 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| ruskivyetr Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5290 days ago 769 posts - 962 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Russian, Polish, Modern Hebrew | Message 11 of 125 25 April 2010 at 5:44pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I agree with Chung, it's a lot of talk from learners. However, I think Polish is JUST a bit harder than Russian. In fact, I'd say it's a bit the same on the difficulty level, if not lower. The reason being the "EXTRA CASE" that people make such a big deal about is the vocative, which is really really really easy to master if you know what it's used for. Yes pronunciation can be a pain, but it just seems that way because of all the consonant clusters. The fixed accent is indeed a "godsend". I mean, I don't really pay attention to the Russian accentuation (I probably will later), but I just find that right now I just want a good pronunciation, and good grammar. Accentuation can come when I listen and repeat. So Polish is really hyped up, but I don't think it's any harder than the other Slavic languages out there. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| TixhiiDon Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5273 days ago 772 posts - 1474 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, German, Russian Studies: Georgian | Message 12 of 125 26 April 2010 at 12:39am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Sorry for going a little bit off topic, but my friendly advice to you ruski would be to start paying attention to accentuation NOW! Correct stress is completely vital to good Russian pronunciation and you need to start getting used to the patterns (there are some, thankfully) as soon as you start learning. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5951 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 13 of 125 26 April 2010 at 12:45am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Yes, I definitely agree with TixhiiDon about accentuation. Once you have taught yourself one way to pronounce or stress a word, it is extremely difficult to change that. An example of this is with язык, which I originally though for the longest time was pronounced "yázyk." Even now that I know that it is pronounced more of "ízyk," my brain wants to pronounce it the former way whenever I read it. The lesson is that you have to learn to pronounce it right the first time!
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| ruskivyetr Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5290 days ago 769 posts - 962 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Russian, Polish, Modern Hebrew | Message 14 of 125 26 April 2010 at 1:33am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Oh noo :(. I really hate the accentuation changes :P. I guess it's not that big of deal. My Cortina book explains it very well, so I guess I'll go right along and use that. Thanks for the heads up though. I mean, I don't have audio with my Cortina book, so I really need help with all the stuff I learn from that (although I do expose myself to A LOT of Russian news). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5951 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 15 of 125 26 April 2010 at 1:39am | IP Logged | ||||||||
What I do when I need to know how to pronounce something is I put the word or phrase into a text to speech machine such as this one and can get the general idea of the pronunciation from that. Lately I mostly use it only for determining stress in Italian and German words if I'm not sure. Another thing you could do is type up the material from the Cortina lessons and submit them as a text to be read here by native Russian speakers. That's what I do with my Swedish and Japanese lesson texts since they don't have audio. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Przemek Hexaglot Senior Member Poland multigato.blogspot.c Joined 6284 days ago 107 posts - 174 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, SpanishC2, Italian, Portuguese, French Studies: Turkish, Hindi, Arabic (Written) | Message 16 of 125 06 May 2010 at 12:52pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I think Polish is not harder than Russian. Polish is my native language, and I learned Russian for 8 years at school. The pronunciation of Polish may be a bit tricky (all those nasals and soft letters) but the words are written in Latin script, so you don't have to learn a different alphabet.
On the other hand, the words are often pronounced slightly differently than they are written. For example a letter "ę" (I hope you will see it on you non-Slavic computers), it is an "e" with a tail. Sometimes we pronounce it similarly to French indefinite article "un", sometimes like English "an" in "angle" and sometimes like Spanish "e" (especially at the end of a sentence). I think even more difficult is a difference between perfective and non-perfective forms of verbs. When in English you have only one form, in Polish there are two or even three forms; examples: "to go" - "iść" or 'pójść", "to wait": "czekać", "poczekać", "zaczekać". Only a few words don't have these forms, the others have, so it's like learning two words at a time, instead of one. Though with some words the meaning, especially in the future tense is nearly the same, with others not. Edited by Przemek on 06 May 2010 at 12:55pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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