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Is Polish really that hard? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| doviende Diglot Senior Member Canada languagefixatio Joined 5780 days ago 533 posts - 1245 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Hindi, Swedish, Portuguese | Message 49 of 125 05 December 2010 at 8:11pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
SRS means "Spaced Repetition System". It's a computer program that keeps track of when you should see some information again, so that it's easier to remember it. Anki is a specific SRS program (there are many others). You can see an explanation on the Anki site here: Why Anki?. Also, search the forum and you will see many discussions about "computer flashcards" and SRS. Edited by doviende on 05 December 2010 at 8:12pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5936 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 50 of 125 05 December 2010 at 8:17pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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You can also see this article about the benefits of Anki, written by Sprachprofi.
3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| B-Tina Tetraglot Senior Member Germany dragonsallaroun Joined 5321 days ago 123 posts - 218 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Polish | Message 51 of 125 08 December 2010 at 11:11pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Great idea! Makes me want to write a lang-8 article on PHT in Polish ;)
You're right, I used a lot (A LOT ;-) of flashcards in order to learn polish declensions and grammar in general. However, when it comes to numeralia I think the greatest problem is the lack of repetition as most articles just write the number, e.g. "po 3 dniach" instead of "po trzech dniach". I'm trying to solve that by inserting some examples from my grammar books to Anki, though it's still quite a long way to go. On the bright side, learning polish grammar never gets boring ;-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| michau Tetraglot Groupie Norway lang-8.com/member/49 Joined 6020 days ago 86 posts - 135 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, NorwegianC1, Mandarin Studies: Spanish, Sign Language Studies: Burmese, Toki Pona, Greenlandic | Message 52 of 125 08 December 2010 at 11:51pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Do it and send me a PM to let me know. :)
That's probably the best use of an SRS when you're advanced - maintaining exposure to rare things. To quote the classic (Antimoon):
Edited by michau on 08 December 2010 at 11:52pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| clumsy Octoglot Senior Member Poland lang-8.com/6715Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4972 days ago 1116 posts - 1367 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Japanese, Korean, French, Mandarin, Italian, Vietnamese Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swedish Studies: Danish, Dari, Kirundi | Message 53 of 125 21 December 2010 at 10:09pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Well, verbs are very hard (my Korean friend said so, she lives in Poland).
Jeść = to eat zjeść = to eat complete past jem - I am eating zjem - I will eat. z makes the verb complete (sometimes different sound is used, but z is the most popular one to complete a verb) but if we add other part to the verb base to create pojeść (it's hard to explain to meaning of this verb, it means something like " eat to the heart content") pojem = the verb meaning is different, but the meaning has the future tense! So, we now don't have the present tense, what can we do? we change the verb to: pojadam !!! Now that is something? (not many people use this verb in present tense, but it's only case of some verbs, most are used in present tense). As for ć cz and ś sz difference: these are like Chinese sh x ch q. (Mainland pronunciation, in Taiwan Mandarin (or Chinese American?) people do it differently) As for Japanese for Polish sh in Japanese sounds like ś (not sz! Even though, Polish use Anglicized word "sushi", pronouncing it as "suszi", where actually it should be "susi"). English sh is often pronounced in Polish as sz (it's a little wrong pronunciation however, teachers say that actually it's more similar to ś, maybe English one is something in between). There is a lot of irregualr nouns as well. One German (Steffen Muller - In herehe is very popular foreigner who speaks Polish) said' that it's not that there are many irregularities in Polish, there are just not many regularities - it's hard to find regular noun, verb. As for education in Polish, well, it is said we are better than some countries, but I think that not so much... Students hve attitude like: teach'! Is it needed for the exam? Or we can just do without learning it? Yeah, because the only purpose of learning is passing the exam. Teacher, this book "lalka" is so long! we have math... biology and... we don't have time! I was actually the only person who did read this book. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| derevon Diglot Newbie Sweden Joined 4849 days ago 4 posts - 21 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Polish | Message 54 of 125 22 January 2011 at 2:06pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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As a Swede who has studied both Russian and Polish I would say that Polish is indeed significantly more difficult in terms of grammar and pronunciation.
As for pronuncation: Polish pronunciation is really predictable and easy. In theory. In practice, however, it's a real challenge as it requires immense amounts of "tongue acrobatics" (at least for me as a Swede). Russian has its unpredictable stress patterns, but the words are generally much easier to pronounce if you've just heard somebody say them. In my opinion there are pretty much just two things about Polish that is "easy": 1. Almost all words have completely predictable pronunciation and stress. If you know the rules, in theory you could read almost any text perfectly out loud without having any clue whatsoever about what you're saying. 2. Genders of nouns are almost always predictable (there's probably like 100-150 nouns in the entire language whose gender cannot be predicted based on a few simple rules, and most of these are very rare). That's it for "easy"... To compare Polish and Russian grammar: Nouns: Polish has 7 cases, Russian 6. The vocative case (which Polish has but not Russian), though, is not really important, and you can usually get by just fine without knowing how to use it. Polish has significantly more complex declensions, though. Far more patterns and changes. To make a few comparisons: Star = gwiazda in Polish. In the locative case it's "gwieździe". Here the word changes all the way back to the vowel, leaving only "gwi" intact. То form the locative in Russian it's usually enough just to stick an e at the end and that's it. Other examples of transformations: świata -> świecie, mucha -> musze. Polish also has the notorious "masculine personal plural", which can be formed in a lot of different ways. For example, "pilot" in Polish can mean "pilot" or "remote control". Plural of "pilot" as in remote controls = "piloty". Plural of "pilot" as in "pilot" = "piloci". How exactly the plural forms are formed is not always predictable, e.g. plural of "profesor" = "profesorowie" and plural of "doktor" = "doktorzy". Verbs: Polish verbs have many more conjugation patterns, and generally change more in relation to the stem than in Russian. Each verb also has more different forms. To sum it up, Polish verbs simply have more of everything, and they're often harder to pronounce. Completely cosmic sounding (and looking) verbs (at least to my Swedish ears/eyes) like "zamknęłybyście" are not infrequent. Adjectives: No big difference, except the masculine personal plural adjectives which have plenty of different forms. E.g. "drogi" = "dear". "przyjaciel" = "friend". "Dear friends" = "Drodzy przyjaciele". Here "gi" becomes "dzy", and there are plenty of different patterns here. Numerals: Polish numerals are a complete nightmare. For example, all these words: dwa, dwie, dwóch, dwom (dwóm), dwoma, dwiema, dwaj, dwu, dwójka, dwójkę, dwójki, dwójce, dwójką, dwoje, dwojga, dwojgu and dwojgiem, would all be translated simply to "two" in English. When using the numbers, you always have to take into consideration the gender of the people you talk about. "dwaj studenci śpiewają", "dwóch studentów śpiewa", "dwie studentki śpiewają", "dwoje studentów śpiewa" would all mean "(the) two students are singing". The first two versions are for "male only" students, the second for "female" and the last one for students of mixed sex. Poles themselves are even often confused about them. Ask some random Pole how to say "two violins", and you will probably get more wrong answers than correct ones (correct should be "dwoje skrzypiec". Pronouns: Polish personal pronouns have a lot of different versions. Not just do they have to agree with gender, case, number and animacy, there are also certain forms which are used after prepositions, and certain forms which are used only after verbs. Finally, the conditional particle "by" is harder to use in Polish as it can stick either to the verb, either be alone or it can be attached to a conjunction. After more than 2.5 years of living in Poland, being exposed to Polish every day at work, and after spending thousands of hours on learning the language, I'm still not able to have a normal conversation. Understanding what people say in Polish is very hard for me for a number of reasons, like movable stress, prepositions without vowels and all those terrible "sch"-like sounds that makes everything very fuzzy. If somebody speaks clearly and rather formally (without too much background noise) I can understand almost everything what a person says. This almost never happens, though. If I hear two Poles conversing with each other during a lunch break, I would understand maybe 15-20%. I can, however, read a Polish newspaper and understand almost everything, although I would trade that any day for being able to communicate at a decent level in the country where I live... Edited by derevon on 22 January 2011 at 2:06pm 14 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| michau Tetraglot Groupie Norway lang-8.com/member/49 Joined 6020 days ago 86 posts - 135 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, NorwegianC1, Mandarin Studies: Spanish, Sign Language Studies: Burmese, Toki Pona, Greenlandic | Message 55 of 125 22 January 2011 at 3:21pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Well, I'm certainly biased, but I don't think this word is very difficult to pronounce for someone who speaks Swedish and English. In IPA it's [zam 'knɛ wɨ bɨ ɕtɕ͡ɛ]: z like in English "zeal" [zi:l] a like in Swedish "bank" [ˈbaŋk] m, k, n, b more or less same as in Swedish ɛ like in Swedish "häl" [hɛl] w like in English "well" [wel] ɨ is an unrounded version of ʉ, so it's like u in Norwegian "full" [fʉl], but without rounding the lips ɕ like in Swedish "kjol" [ɕu:l] t͡ɕ is one sound, which can be approximated by pronouncing t and ɕ at the same time, it is similar to the way kj is pronounced in some Western Norwegian dialects There is a consonant cluster "mkn", but "m" is actually at the end of one syllable, and "kn" is at the beginning of another, and such clusters exist also in Scandinavian languages, e.g. "om kneet". Of course it is quite long, but words aren't pronounced at once, but always syllable by syllable, so even a very long word is split into managable chunks. Edited by michau on 22 January 2011 at 3:29pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| derevon Diglot Newbie Sweden Joined 4849 days ago 4 posts - 21 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Polish | Message 56 of 125 22 January 2011 at 4:36pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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You're right. "Zamknęłbybyście" is not a very hard word to pronounce for me. It's just the weirdness of such words that make them confusing. You have the basic forms "zamykać" and "zamknąć", and from these you have to form all the other hundreds of forms without much thinking (to be able to talk normally). There are just too many conjugation patterns, and too many of everything.
For example, in English you have one word for "closed". In Polish you have 26 (as in verb, past tense. If you would count the participles there would be many more of course). In Russian there would be 8 forms I suppose. These 26 forms in Polish are: zamykałem, zamykałam, zamykałeś, zamykałaś, zamykał, zamykała, zamykało, zamykaliśy, zamykałyśmy, zamykaliście, zamykałyście, zamykali, zamykały, zamknąłem, zamknęłam, zamknąłeś, zamknęłaś, zamknął, zamknęła, zamknęło, zamknęliśmy, zamknęłyśmy, zamknęliście, zamknęłyście, zamknęli and zamknęły (that's not counting the conditional forms). This is just one of dozens different conjugation patterns. Learning to do all those without much thinking in real time... I honestly don't understand how a non-Slavic speaker can succeed in learning this language. As for Polish pronunciation, the hardest part for me is some consonant clusters like "W Pszczynie" (fpshch). To say that without spitting somebody in the face is really hard. I also have big problems with too many consecutive "sh"-sounds, like "chcielibyście coś zjeść?", "cieszę się, że się cieszysz", and the like. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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