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#Post#: 17449--------------------------------------------------
If you are interested in Polish language (not necessarily to
learn it)...
DIR By: MartinSR
Date: July 5, 2019, 9:44 am
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You probably know the Langfocus channel (actually it was the one
which directed me to the learning platform we all knew once...).
Eventually Paul has created the video about Polish language...
And I'm really impressed by his work:
HTML https://youtu.be/hfJinyofQdk
In many of my posts I tried to tell something about the impact
of our strange history on the language we speak, about our
connection to Latin, German, Russian. You can see it in this
video in a very condensed form. I would probably add something
about the Italian influence in 16th century (maybe Neal
remembers our discussion on It...i about Bona Sforza) and French
in 19th.
There are also a few interesting grammar features not mentioned
in the video.
But... I repeat once more... Paul has done a great job!
Enjoy!
#Post#: 17450--------------------------------------------------
Re: If you are interested in Polish language (not necessarily to
learn it)...
DIR By: Nikola
Date: July 5, 2019, 10:20 am
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So basically, when you buy a Polish Scrabble game, half of the
letters will be a Z.
#Post#: 17490--------------------------------------------------
Re: If you are interested in Polish language (not necessarily to
learn it)...
DIR By: MartinSR
Date: July 5, 2019, 11:49 pm
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--- Quote from: Nikola link ---
>
> So basically, when you buy a Polish Scrabble game, half of the
letters will be a Z.
>
--- End Quote ---
Maybe. At least half of the consonants... A few jokes about
buying "Z" in Polish "Wheel of fortune" was created after this
video ;)
To be more serious I didn't noticed any predominance of Zeds in
our texts.
Another thing what surprised me was 'non-past tense', because we
learn at an elementary school that we have three tenses: past,
present and future (On the other lessons that we have mainly
past). But we may see our grammar differently. The video was
made from the position of the native English speaker (he is
Canadian if I remember it). How does it look from the position
of other Slavic nations? Hopefully not so strange...
The interesting thing that wasn't in the video is that we
sometimes use the past tense endings to create the future tense
- I'm not sure if it is better or worse (maybe improper) than
using the infinitive, but we often do that. So, for example, 'I
will go for a walk' I may say: "Będę iść na
spacer" or "Będę szedł na spacer " or "Pójdę
na spacer" or even using the present tense meaning the future
(like in many other languages) "Idę na spacer" (I go for a
walk).
This example is my wish actually, because I have to go to work
today :(
#Post#: 17498--------------------------------------------------
Re: If you are interested in Polish language (not necessarily to
learn it)...
DIR By: Alharacas
Date: July 6, 2019, 6:21 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Thanks for the link, Marcin! It's definitely fortunate this
video wasn't around when I started learning Polish, as I'm sure
it would have put me off your fascinating language for good. Of
course, I could probably have learnt several other languages in
the time it took me to more or less give up on coming to grips
with Polish. ;) Still, I would have missed out on becoming
friends with my teacher and a couple of both lovely and very
interesting language partners. They have been teaching me a lot,
if not precisely their native language.
#Post#: 17502--------------------------------------------------
Re: If you are interested in Polish language (not necessarily to
learn it)...
DIR By: MartinSR
Date: July 6, 2019, 8:12 am
---------------------------------------------------------
--- Quote from: Alharacas link ---
>
> Thanks for the link, Marcin! It's definitely fortunate this
video wasn't around when I started learning Polish, as I'm sure
it would have put me off your fascinating language for good. Of
course, I could probably have learnt several other languages in
the time it took me to more or less give up on coming to grips
with Polish. ;) Still, I would have missed out on becoming
friends with my teacher and a couple of both lovely and very
interesting language partners. They have been teaching me a lot,
if not precisely their native language.
>
--- End Quote ---
I would bet your Polish is much better than you try to convince
us, maybe better than you think.
If it is so impossible to learn why do we meet so many
foreigners (not only Slavs) who speak it at almost native level?
Of course in many cases it's not hard to guess their mother
tongue from the way they pronounce Polish, but they make only
minor mistakes which not interfere with the intelligibility of
their speech.
Many comments under this video were from native Polish speakers
and non-native learners who encouraged others to try. Most of
them say that one doesn't have to be perfect to be understood
and that learning tables of grammar and rules is definitely the
least effective approach. They say that learning by examples is
much better. Maybe Polish is a good example of a language which
should be acquired by immersion rather than learned. This
immersion can be just reading and listening, then trying to
communicate.
The rules are the nightmare of every native speaker of Polish at
the elementary school level. Some wise people tried to
categorise the elements of our language and form the rules. It
quickly appeared that those rules were not perfect and needed a
lot of additional clauses, exceptions and so on. The sources of
our language are so numerous that it's often hard to tell what
have we borrowed from whom and why do we speak like that. The
children learn it from their parents almost effortlessly, but
the thing they have to learn at school is the correct spelling
of those consonants which sound the same (h=ch, u=ó, ż=rz),
and many native Polish speakers fail to do it. Of course there
are plenty of rules, which are... more or less useless when you
have doubts. It's a rule saying that after [a list of
consonants] we write this and after [another list] that. Or the
rule saying that we write "ó" when in other forms of this word
or in similar words in other Slavic languages there is "o" in
this place. One would have to be a professor of Slavic philology
to be able to use this rule. So we learn it by reading and
writing examples. And the teachers are very strict about it.
When I was in high school, we had to write an essay (20-30 pages
of handwriting) about the person from the book we were reading
and analysing that time. The officially accepted interpretation
was that we should write how brave the person was and how has it
sacrificed his life and family "pro publico bono". One of my
friends had just opposite views (more suitable for 21st century
youth than for 1980's) and has written that the person's
behaviour was showing his lack of self-preserving instinct, his
absent-minded decisions, not to say he was a kind of common
idiot actually. After checking our essays the teacher said that
she had a problem here, because she felt she couldn't judge the
student because of his different views. But her problem has been
easily solved, when she noticed he has made three ortographic
(spelling) errors. This meant the disqualification of the text
regardless of its content.
So, as you see, the rules are often too hard to understand for
us too. And we don't demand this knowledge from the foreigners.
It's the same like in the most countries (maybe except for
France) that we would be extremely happy seeing you try to
communicate with us in our language even if with a few mistakes.
And its flexible syntax, clear pronunciation rules, high
tolerance to minor flexion mistakes, very regular accenting- it
all will make you understandable even if not the perfect
speaker.
But You are a perfectionist type as I already could notice ;)
I just try to use the languages I know at the level I learned it
(Or what actually left in my memory, because e.g. my German has
been better 20years ago than my English is now). Of course if I
found a time and motivation, maybe I could reach C1 with my
English and at least B1 with the others... But all I need is to
communicate, even if it's far from perfection.
#Post#: 17524--------------------------------------------------
Re: If you are interested in Polish language (not necessarily to
learn it)...
DIR By: Aliph
Date: July 6, 2019, 4:46 pm
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Thanks for the video Martin.
I better stick to Arabic. Only three cases. Less letters in the
alphabet. Definitely easier than Polish.
#Post#: 17529--------------------------------------------------
Re: If you are interested in Polish language (not necessarily to
learn it)...
DIR By: Alharacas
Date: July 6, 2019, 6:20 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
--- Quote from: MartinSR link ---
>
> I would bet your Polish is much better than you try to
convince us, maybe better than you think.
> If it is so impossible to learn why do we meet so many
foreigners (not only Slavs) who speak it at almost native level?
>
> Maybe Polish is a good example of a language which should be
acquired by immersion rather than learned.
--- End Quote ---
I wish, Marcin! :D
I'm guessing you mostly meet those foreigners in Poland, though,
don't you? So, they probably learnt your language mostly the way
you recommend (and I think you're quite right in doing so), by
immersion.
#Post#: 17537--------------------------------------------------
Re: If you are interested in Polish language (not necessarily to
learn it)...
DIR By: Irena
Date: July 7, 2019, 2:19 am
---------------------------------------------------------
--- Quote from: MartinSR link ---
>
> Many comments under this video were from native Polish
speakers and non-native learners who encouraged others to try.
Most of them say that one doesn't have to be perfect to be
understood and that learning tables of grammar and rules is
definitely the least effective approach. They say that learning
by examples is much better. Maybe Polish is a good example of a
language which should be acquired by immersion rather than
learned. This immersion can be just reading and listening, then
trying to communicate.
>
--- End Quote ---
You know what, I have to disagree here. I've been working on my
Czech declensions very deliberately, and while I'm still not
perfect, I've made a lot of progress. Seven cases in both
singular and plural, times 14 basic declension types gives you
196 entries. And that's just for basic types of nouns (I don't
even know how many exceptions there are). And then there are
adjectives (fortunately, those are easier than nouns). How much
exposure to the language would I need to pick up all that by
immersion? Thousands of hours, for sure, and I'm not sure I'd
pick it up even then.
Also, what's immersion? I've lived in the Czech Republic for
nearly a year now, I've had just over 100 hours of private
lessons, and I've invested at least as much time into studying
on my own. And only now do colleagues occasionally try to talk
to me in Czech for some very limited purposes. (Sure, cashiers
and such talk to me in Czech. Obviously. They don't know I'm a
foreigner. But with cashiers, you get the same questions time
and again.) The point is, immersion only starts being useful
once you're at least intermediate in the language. The more you
already know, the more you learn once you find yourself in a
country where your target language is spoken. For instance, I
spent two years in France, and my French improved very
significantly during that time. That's because everyone spoke to
me in French. And the reason for that is that I already spoke
French. My colleagues who spoke little to no French when they
arrived in France improved - a tiny bit. Because everyone spoke
to them in English. Obviously.
#Post#: 17539--------------------------------------------------
Re: If you are interested in Polish language (not necessarily to
learn it)...
DIR By: Alharacas
Date: July 7, 2019, 3:21 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Couldn't agree more, Irena. I suppose we've all met people who
think that just physically being in a country will magically
confer on them the ability to eventually speak the language -
without even the slightest effort on their part. :D
But don't underestimate how much vocabulary (and often also
grammar) you didn't need to consciously learn because you see it
written on the labels of everything you buy, or how much grammar
is reinforced by hearing and seeing it applied day in, day out.
;)
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