Most Difficult Languages - Polish
99I've read about the supposed difficulty of many languages. Some I don't know at all (like Chinese or Arabic, which I'd imagine are difficult), but I did have the opportunity to learn one of the hardest, and supposedly the most grammatically-complex Slavic language, Polish. It is certainly harder than Croatian, which I already knew when I started to learn Polish.
Here's one (somewhat trivial, but illustrative) example of the relative complexity of languages: the number 2.
English, Spanish, Dutch: 1 form (two, dos, twee)
Portuguese: 2 forms (dois/duas) - depending on gender (2 - masculine & feminine)
Croatian: 7 forms (dva, dvije, dvoje, dvojica, dvojice, dvojici, dvojicu) - depending on gender (3 - masculine, feminine, and neuter) and case in one specific form. There were other variants historically but they're not used anymore.
Polish: 17 forms. Depends on gender (3), case for all forms. Pretty much all these forms occur in regular speech (6-11 less often than the others)
Dwa palce
17 grammatical forms for the number 2
- dwa
- dwie
- dwoje
- dwóch (or dwu)
- dwaj
- dwiema
- dwom (or dwóm)
- dwoma
- dwojga
- dwojgu
- dwojgiem
- dwójka
- dwójki
- dwójkę
- dwójką
- dwójce
- dwójko
Why is Polish so complex?
Poland's history is one of being attacked and subjugated by its neighbors throughout most of its history, either by Germans, Austrians, Swedes or Russians. Many times the speaking of Polish was forbidden, so people were understandably protective of their language and less likely to have foreign intrusion into it. (English readily absorbs foreign words because American, Brits, Australians, etc don't feel like their language is threatened.) Also, "world languages" simplify much more rapidly, while "niche languages" don't have the same sort of pressure.
Even the names of months, which are usually similar in all the languages of the world, retain old Slavonic forms in Polish:
- January - styczeń (from the Polish word for joining, since January joins two years together)
- February - luty (from the Polish word for freezing cold; this is the only month that is grammatically an adjective, not a noun)
- March - marzec (from the Polish word for freezing - yes, it's cold in Poland)
- April - kwiecień (from the Polish word for flower, since this is the month when flowers bloom)
- May - maj (the only one adopted from the Roman calendar)
- June - czerwiec (from the Polish word for reddening...named after the Polish cochineal, a red insect that is used for red dye and is harvested in June - thanks, Lola!)
- July - lipiec (from the Polish word for linden tree, which blooms in July in Poland)
- August - sierpień (from the Polish for for sickle, since this is the month of harvest)
- September - wrzesień (from the Polish word for heather, which turns a brilliant shade of purple then)
- October - październik (from the Polish word for a type of flax mulch used in the fields during this month)
- November - listopad (almost literally - falling leaves)
- December - grudzień (from the Polish word for hardened, frozen ground)
Imperfect and Perfect Verbs in Polish
Another grammatical difficulty is the concept of imperfect and perfect verbs in Polish (and other Slavic languages). The verb "to see" has two completely different verbs in Polish: widzieć and zobaczyć. The only difference is that you use the first if something happens continuously or more than once, and the second if it only happens once.
Widziałem - I saw (repeatedly in the past, like I saw the sun come up every morning)
Zobaczyłem - I saw (only once; I saw the sun come up yesterday)
This is not a tense difference - the verbs themselves are different.
There are many other examples:
to take - brać / wziąć
I took - Brałem (repeatedly), wziąłem (only once)
to sigh - wzdychać / westchnąć
I sighed - wzdychałem (repeatedly), westchnąłem
So for every verb in English, you effectively have to learn two verbs in Polish, which often conjugate in the future tense completely differently from each other (the past tense is usually the same, which makes for relatively easy side-by-side comparisons, like above). The present tense is impossible for the perfective verb because you can not be doing something now and finish it at the same time.
For about 5% of Polish verbs, there is no perfective version, so you luckily only have to learn one verb counterpart.
Plural forms change based on number
The last major wrinkle is that the plural form of nouns changes depending on the number. In English, there is only one plural form for the word "telephone" and that's "telephones", whether you have just 2 or 100. In Polish, it's 2, 3 or 4 "telefony" and 5 "telefonów". (Grammatically speaking, 2, 3 and 4 take the nominative case, while 5 and beyond take the genitive case)
Occasionally the difference between the nominative and genitive forms makes the jump between 4 and 5 awkward sounding.
4 or 5 hands: 4 ręce (rent-seh) but 5 rąk (ronk)
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Wow, I'm going to stop complaining about Japanese now ...
My god! And I thought the seven cases in Czech were a nightmare!!!
But at least Polish doesn't have that special R that 50% of the country - including Havel! - can't pronounce!
I think Czech works similar to Polish, but it probably doesn't retain all the complexity of the old Slavic tongue.
Yeah, that ? is supposed to be impossible to pronounced. Combination of r and zh (ž). It's funny but for words with a common Slavic root, Croatian pronounces it r, Polish pronounces it rz (despite the r, it's pronounced ž) and Czech like ?.
River - Croatian rijeka (ree-yeh-ka), Polish rzeka (zhe-ka) and Czech ?eka.
Hey, this was interesting, and nice to see you speakng Croatian. Pozdrav ;-)
i'm polish ^^
it's really difficult language ,my natives sometimes can't use properly language^^ a lot of mistakes in wirting and conversations..a lot polls can't prounounce word jab?ko^^
I remember that, Anna. I remember (occasionally) correcting my students' Polish - things like "weszlem", "nie mam rekawiczkow", and "plasc" (instead of plaszcz). But then again I made PLENTY of mistakes that no native speaker would ever make!
Mieszkam w polsce ale szczerze nie zdawa?am sobie sprawy ?e j?zyk polski jest a? tak trudny! Chcocia? i nie jeden polak ma problem z tym j?zykiem I salute all :*
To Isabella Snow: Trust me on this one: What you've read about Polish is the same in Czech. Apparently, czech is meant to be the 2nd most difficult language to learn (after japanesse). Our ? is the best invention!
zycze powodzenia wszytkim ktorzy maja zamiar uczyc sie tego jakze wspanialego ale i naprawde bardzo trudnego jezyka :) pozdrawiam
Dziekuje Andreew, i zgadzam sie zupelnie - jezyk polski jest bardzo trudny i takze wspanialy!
to e bell: these features are not only the same in czech but also in serbian/croatian. i didn't count how many forms there really are for the number 2 in croatian, but the author missed some eg. dvojicom, dviju etc... so there are definitely more than 7. serbian/croatian has also the same feature of perfective/imperfective verbs and the different counting from 5 on. 2,3 and 4 go with the genitive singular and from 5 on the genitive plural is used.
Polish rlz :)) have fun learning:) start with dzie? dobry - good morning/ guten tag ;-)
Well, I have started to learn Polish in February 2007, and I have learned the 2/3 of my language book. IT IS VERY VERY DIFFICULT, but I enjoy this difficulty which is training my mind.
I'm polish
I can't say how difficult is polish cause it is my first language. But, to my embarrasement, being in England 7 years, I started making terrible mistakes. And that despite the fact that I had best marks at matura (egzam when you 18 years old). I am so dissapointed with myself.
I married portuguese. My children speak 3 languages (poruguese, polish and english) I tell you! Englishjust comes naturally. Portuguese, I cant say much, but seems that it is ok to my kids (from what my wife says). But polish grammar!! I cant make up conversation with my 3,5 year old son in polish at all.I'm very happy he gets the basics. Sometimes he does suprice me with jewels like 'to jest tatY, ale to jest FranciszkA' (thas is dad's but this is Franciszek's). but his cousin is doing much better progress living in Poland.
i am czech..
the most difficult is czech, slovak and polish language...we have 7 cakes in our grammer..our language is easy to write but our grammer is very difficult...i would like see stranger who can learn it...if you exist you can write me on my mail...i am very curious !!! mirindaaak@seznam.cz
and next information :
in czech we can have THREE negatives in one sentence
for example : " nikdo nic neud?lal " - nobody did it
but when i want translate it to english exactly so its mean: "nobody didn't nothing"
one more thing...maybe last what i will say : our cases
we have 7 cases : 1. who 2. out of 3. to the 4. who (for, i see,..) 5. call 6. about who 7. with who
i have word "syn" - son
in english :
1. who - son
2. out of - son
3. to the - son
4. for - son
5. (call) heej - son
6. about - son
7. with - son
czech in english :
1. who - syn
2. out of - syn
3. to the - syn
4. for - syn
5. heej - syn
6. about - syn
7. with - syn
in czech :
1. who - syn
2. out of - syna
3. to the - synovi
4. for - syna
5. heej - syne
6. about - synovi
7. with - synem
i choosed very easy word...we have more difficult words of course
i hope that you will understand it....
You know, I'm Polish and I really admire people who are learning Polish. Sometimes even I don't understand this language... It's strange that people do everything to make his lives difficultes, don't you think so?
Anyway... I wanted to say that now I'm learning a lot of Spanish, becouse I'm in the class where I have 18 hours Spanish in a week. And I have a teacher who is Spanish, but he lives in Poland 9 years. And I must to say that even he doesn't speak Polish very well. He has terrible accent and he always makes maistakes in genders, cases and verbs. And he is learning Polish 9 years!
But I have a friend who is half Japanese half Polish and she is living in Poland 4 years and she speaks so well! I don't hear any difference from normal Polish! It's amazing. She speaks actually 3 languages (Polish, English, Japanese) very well and she has started learning Spanish and she is quite good in this. :)
So once more I want say that it's so nice and I feel proud of my languge when I hear that someone really likes it. And I really admire you, all, who are studying Polish.
Thank you. / Dzi?kuj?. / Gracias. / Arigato. / Danke.
Ps. In Polish is similar!
Is all the same, but we have diffrent order.
1.who-syn
2.out of-syna
3. to the - synowi
4. for - syna
5. with - synem
6. about - synie
7. call - synu!
And we can have tree negatives too. :)
Is so funny, that these are two diffrent languages, but so similar. :)
Very interesting. I had a friend who went to poland for 6 weeks for school and said it was one of the greatest/worst experiences of her life, namely because of the language barrier. Now I see why. Good hub! And thank you for your comment!
Polish, Czech abd Slovac languages belng to the same Western Slavic group and have many similarities, but aport from gramar diferrences Polish pronounciacion can be more difficult than Czech. Actually Polish speakers perceive Czech pronounciation as a littly funny and childlike(i.e. easy). Similarity between Polish and Zlovek are even greater and dialects along Polish Slovak border are very similar.
Comments on Polish names of months:
Czerwiec(June) is from insect czerwiec polski(Porphyrophora polonica) used to produce red dye in middle ages and collected in June. In fact color red in Polish (czerwony) is derived from this insect name too.
Pazdziernik - the name is in fact from flax mulch but the October was (and still is) the month when the flax is processed not when it is used in field. Even now the flax mulch is used for production of building and furniture material (plyta pazdzierzowa). similar to wood particle board.
After listing all of the difficulties with Polish it is worth mentioning that Polish spelling is almost completely phonetic and contrary to English if you learn how to pronounce 32 Polish letters and 7 two letter combinations you can read Polish text so it can be understood by Polish speakers even if you don't understand a word! It also means that when you learn how to write the word you will now how to pronounce it and vice versa(in most cases). For beginners it is worth mentioning that even when you use wrong grammar forms most Polish speakers will understand you providing the pronouncciation of the word roots will be close enough.
Good luck lerning Polish
I Proud to be Polish and use most beautyful and developed language on the world
About the negation: in the Polish grammar there's multiple negation, so you can negate even five or more times in one sentence (you must be very creative though!). Ex:Nikt nikomu nigdy nic nie powiedzia?.Word for word:Nobody hasn't never said nothing to nobody.
Yes, yokie, but almost every language except English seems to work that way. :)
I'm Polish living in Chicago for over 13 years. I learned English in Poland and I do understand that Polish is a very difficult language to learn. One sentence in English can express the same what two or more sentences would in Polish. I love that about English. I do know some Spanish; I tried learning French (NOPE! Not for me :) ) . My sister is a translator and lives in Spain. She knows five languages; I admire that. What's best about knowing well another language, you learn also nwe culture and mentality of people.
Podziwiam ludzi próbuj?cych uczy? si? j?zyka polskiego. Obawiam sie, ?e ?ycia Wam nie wystarczy ?eby pozna? go do ko?ca :)
I think sri lankan language is very difficult language, I live in london and some times I see srilankan people speak to each other, i think it would be impossible for non srilankan to learn the language
I'm studying Polish and I do agree is a complicated language. It even harder than my mother tongue, Portuguese, considered very difficult worldwide.
Juz umie mówic troche po polsku, bo ucze sie troche sam w domu. To bardzo interesujacy jezyk, ale tez trudny... Mieszka w Brazylii, a studiuje tlumaczenie na uniwersytecie. Poniewaz lubie jezyki obce, tez ucze sie niemiecki, japonski i arabski. Dobrze rozumiem i pisze po angielsku. Nie mam polskiego pochodzenia, ale straszno uwielbiam jezyk polski (przeprasam, dla mnie nie jest ladnego, ale warto go sie uczyc!)...
Sayounara!
Auf Wiedersehen!
Salaam!
Pozdrowienia z Polski ;-)
Children learn Polish in 3-4 years. I think that anyone, who comes to Poland for a few years would learn it.
Yo, I'm from Poland. I didn't expect that our language is so difficult, but after this article I changed my mind ;) Good luck with learning!
hi, wow i don´t think i´ll try polish ;)
i learned basque at school, which is also pretty hard, with 21 cases, this was really hard but it opened my mind for language learning, after that, learning german was a
fairy tale (with only 4 cases), and by now i speak 5 languages quite fluently.
i think it must be also easy for polish speakers to learn other languages.
respect for having learned such a tough language
nice hub
Joe - I think Basque is much, much harder than Polish. 21 cases?! And it's not Indo-European, so many of the international words we expect to be similar (like "hotel", "telephone", etc) must be completely different. Like Hungarian!
Hi!
I'm Polish and I have to say Polish, Czech and Slovak kept a lot of characteristics of praindoeuropean language. Take example of sanscrit (India). There is dwa in polish, dva in sanscrit and two in english. Brat in polish, bhratr in sanscrit and brother in english. Sanscrit has seven cases like polish czech and slovak, too.
Only seven cases, but you have to consider system of genders in these languages. There are five genders in singular and two in plural in polish language. There are three genders in czech in both numbers. In Slovak.. I don't know.
Czech and slovak are similar, but polish has more archaic characteristics. E.g. nasal vovels (?, ?) or some words (e.g. r?ka, oko, ucho- hand, eye, ear) are inflected in plural not as plural words, but other way, as dual. German languages and romance languages aren't so "archaic" in gramatic.
By the way, learning other language is quite easy for us (I think so) but belive me, english tenses system is terrifying;) In polish we have only 1 present tense, 2 future tenses (simple, composite in two variants B?d? robi?= b?d? robi?) and 2 past tenses (plusquamperfectum on the decline).
Crevan - yes, I taught English and know there were 2 main difficulties for Polish learners:
1) tenses (esp the perfect tenses which don't exist in Polish; also the progressive tenses)
2) the really messed-up spelling of English words.
I told students that native speakers rarely make mistakes with tenses, but they *always* make mistakes with spelling.
But then again, my students made mistakes in written Polish, too. (Weszlem i wzialem plasc)
Oh, forgive me, I have made mistake... In sanscrit is 8 cases, seven like in polish plus ablativ. Ablativ disappeard in polish a few centuries ago. Genetive with preposition "od" is used in place of ablativ nowdays.
I have sentence for you to pronounce:
W Szczebrzeszynie chrzaszcz brzmi w trzcinie:)
I would also add articles "a , "the" as the main source of despair of Polish students of English (like me :)) - they are not present in our language.
I've never thought it's so many people who are learning polish!!! Hmm... my english is not perfect, but i'm trying :-). Polish is beautiful language but it's also difficult. Powodzenia! - Good luck!
Do Marlon Ribeiro - brawo, dobrze to napisa?es, kilka drobnych bledów, ale i tak jest swietnie. Tak trzymac!
Marlon Ribeiro: very good polish! I mean it. But you made a few mistakes:
Juz umie (UMIEM) mówic troche po polsku (...) Mieszka (MIESZKAM) w Brazylii (...). Poniewaz lubie jezyki obce, tez ucze sie niemiecki, japonski i arabski (NIEMIECKIEGO, JAPONSKIEGO i ARABSKIEGO). (...) Nie mam polskiego pochodzenia (NIE POCHODZE Z POLSKI), ale straszno (STRASZNIE) uwielbiam jezyk polski (przeprasam, dla mnie nie jest ladnego (LADNY), ale warto go sie uczyc!)...
Best regards, and Good Luck in study ;)
I tried to learn Arabic and got stuck at very beginning, at 5 consonants that sounded all like H to me.
How hard is to learn particular language heavily depends on the mothertongue.
And some examples of possible problems:
Swedish - 18 vowels (not counting diphtongs);
Chinese - 4 tones, aspiration, both retroflex and dentopalatals (as in Polish), myriads of character and growing;
Japanese - no rules letting you know how to read each character in every context - you must memorize every word, every combination separately, counter words that need to accompany numerals for dozens of word categories;
Arabic - pharyngeal sounds, confusing script with no vowels;
English - no strict rules of reading, 16 tenses, lot of homonyms, lot of vowels and diphtongs.
Each language is hard, but some of them are simple in some ways:
Hawaii - only 13 phonemes and orthograpic script - you write what you hear;
Afrikaans - nearly no grammar, only nouns and adjectives decline, verbs do not conjugate (or conjugate ideally regular).
BTW, I heard that Slovak is slightly harder than Polish.
I'm Polish too, and actually, yes My language is quite hard, but the best way to learn it is just listing to it.
And some warm words for everybody who want to learn this language - many Polish people don't use this language as they should, and the make very crucial mistakes
Well, good luck!
i'm from Poland and have never thought about this matters. Great job, greetings from Warsaw
"June - czerwiec (from the Polish word for reddening...not sure why)"
Because of insect larvae that was catched in June and used as a red pigment in Europe many many years ago:
be ware polish lanaguage is a terroris lang?id? you want to be terrorist dont lern it
Ignore that jerk above
You have been digged on polish Digg - Wykop.pl :)
I've been studying English, Russian and Slovenian, along with few other slavic languages, but I have to say I never seen more difficult language than Polish - even if I'm Pole - it's even more difficult than Old-Church Slavonic ;), and to be honest - a lot of poles don't speak it properly - enough to mention simple mistake in "weszlem" and "wszedlem"...
@Patrycja, It may seems suprising(specially for us poles), japanese phones sound almost the same with polish! Even with syllables there are only FEW exceptions, where sound differs. Beside yours friend's language skill, I guess this is main reason why she speaks polish so well.
P.S. In japanese, there are also roman symbols (romaji) that are priceless help for foreigners. I've learned reading romaji in about 30 minutes! But when it came to reading their "symbols" i just gave up;)
polski to nie czeski.... polacy nie gesi i swoj jezyk maja.....;) wiekszosc osob myli tu polski z czeskim, czy wy wogole wiecie gdzie lezy polska?;P
hahaha the most complicated are polish politics!!
To Speedy - in Polish we can've 3 negatives in once sentence 2:
Nikt niczego/nic nie zrobi? - exactly as ur e.g. - Nobody did nothing.
Hi, I'm Polish.
I belive you forgot about one more very interesting thing in polish language. Because of all those cases and diffrent forms of one word, contruction of sentence is very elastic. I'll give you an example.
In english when you want to say that for instance "Ann has a cat" - there is only one way to constuct the sentence "Ann has a cat". In polish yo can say "Ania ma kota", "Kota ma Ania", "Ma Ania kota", "Kota Ania ma", "Ma kota Ania" - and all of those means the same and are 100% properly.
If you want to say tha "Cat has Ann" - again there is 6 possibilites how can you construct the sentence in polish language.
Of course we use rather one form - the most common "Ania ma kota", but still...
wiec tym wiekszy podziw budza we mnie obckorajowcy ktorzy po polskiemu mowia, znaja i rozumieja polska literature, np,,Litwo ojczyno moja!...'';)
The Month June- in polish Czerwiec comes not from reeddings but from a name of a tiny red spider. These spider were used to make red colorant for painters and june was the season for collecting them in Poland. As they were very rare and expensive it was one of the most profitable export product.
I'm Polish and it's certainly not the easiest language (e.g. vocabulary richness is great for natives, but confusing for foreigners), but definitely not the most difficult one. Recently I started learning Japanese and Chinese (to be precise, Mandarin) from audio (listening & speaking w/o writing). Now I think that Japanese is not so difficult as some are saying (of course I know a little about hiragana, katakana, kanji), but Chinise is, especially pronounciation, because even if you are good at speaking using 4 tones (high, mid-rising, falling-rising, falling), you must remember that tonality for each word, because meaning is based not only on vowels (and context), like in other languages. In my opinion Chinese is more difficult than Polish, but I'm biased. Maybe someone, not Chinese and not Pole, will have a say in this subject.
@ziemmowit
U are wrong. Only "ania ma kota" is correct form. The others examples aren't properly, but they're intelligible for polish people in right sense.
BTW. I'm polish :)
I realy didn't realize that my native laguage is so complex. It just comes natural for a natie-speaker.
Pozdrawiam!
Great article;)
I always wonder how other nation hear Polish language. For example polish people hear French as a compilation of "throaty R", German as some kind of hard and loud speaking, Czech sounds funny (I know that Polish sounds funny for Czech people;), Russian sounds melodic and Spanish is so fast;)
I know that many people hear Polish like Russian, Czech or sth.
Poles always like to complicate something (7 cases, etc.), but if you live here more than 4 years you can speak Polish very well. I know some foreigners who can speak Polish so well that you can't say they are foreigners. But we're not alone (German: der, die, das - why?;); English: the, a, an;)
Nobody can say which language is the hardest. Every language has sth easy and not. E.g. Polish has very hard grammar, but names are mostly from foreign countries.
For me (I'm Polish) one of the most difficult languages are Chinese, Japanese and Arabic, especially for speaking. Just see this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_t
Congratulation for all foreigners who can speak Polish:)
I pozdrowienia dla tych, co sie ucza i dla tych co juz umieja;)
Sorry for my English:D
You said:
June - czerwiec (from the Polish word for reddening...not sure why)
And the why is:
The Polish name for bee's hatchlings is "czerw" plurar nominative "czerwie". The hatchlings are red in colour. Bee's hatch multiple times during all spring summer and early autumn, but in June other insects massively hatch their maggots, which shared the same name in ancient Polish. The word's gender is feminine.
E tam trudny, sie uczy sie wie
KLUSEK it's you, who's wrong, read some more about your own language (e.g. http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Szyk_wyraz%C3%B3w). Most of the possible forms are proper, though the "Ania ma kota" is used in most cases. The other forms are proper in certain situations - when you want to emphasize the most important part of the sentence.
A ja znam Polski :D
Yea, it is true. Polish is hard.
Pozdrowienia z Polski ;)
ziemmowit : mnie zawsze uczyli ?e najpierw jest Podmiot a potem czasownik
For me English is almost like a black magic. I can read it, hear it and understood it, but can't learn to talk and write perfectly. Study English 5 yrs.
But with polish i can help :) Pozdrawiam.
Mnie on problemów nie sprawia :D:D
I'm studying the 3 languages you mentioned as "hard"- Polish( I'm from Poland ), Chech ( I live on the coastal line, so it goes preety easy for me) and Japanese; and also Russian and English.
And I really can't speak fast in Japanese- it's like the polish accent doesn't allow me to say it, because i start to mix the sylabes.And I'm having a lot of difficulties in writing cyrylica, because almost half of the letters look exactly the same in my handwritings xd
I'm from Poland. You forgot 1 form of two(in english second), it's "drugi".
BTW: "r?ce (rent-seh)" Rotfl.
KLUSEK , ossa: Not necessary. It's a question of style, not grammar. It changes with time. For eg. Polish language in 17th century is much more similiar to nowdays Polish than 18 - 19 th century Polish. Your Polish teacher of course will say that this form is unproperly, but teachaer of your grand-grand-grend children maybe will say that different form is properly.
Polish language is inflective.
Polish is very simple language^^
Cze??, nazywam si? Pawe? i mieszkam w Warszawie. ^^
Hello, my name is Pawel and I live in Warsaw.
I am from Poland, and - belive me - even for me Polish is sometimes difficult, especially in old textes. But I am glad that I am Polish - it's beautiful language. Congratulations for people who can speak this ;)
We can have even 4 negatives in one sentence in Polish
"Nikt nikomu nic nie da?"
Nobody didn't give nothing to noone
- translated literally but it really means "nobody gave anything to anyone"
Hello :)
I'm Polish.
In fact, I'm not suprised that my national language is the most difficult for foreigner :) I really have respect for people who wants to learn Polish.
Try to say this:
W szczebrzeszynie chrz?szcz brzmi w trzcinie :)
@ziemmowit's examples: they are all ok grammar-wise, but there's some pragmatics behind using those: you would normally use "Ala ma kota", as others can differ slightly pragmatically. You might want to emphasize some aspects of the fact in question and can use order to do that, for e.g. when you want to create a 'similar' response to some sentence/question, or want to highlight an aspect: you may focus on WHO has the cat, WHAT does Ala have, or emphasize, the very fact, that the Cat is in Ala's posession 'Ala kota ma' would be incompatible with 'Ala kota nie ma' ;]
Cheers
There's not could!!! There's much priettier weather than for example... in Uk :/
Spoko, nawet wielu polaków nie rozumie dobrze polskiego :) W szkole to ?atwiejszy jest ju? angielski ni? polski...pisa? Pola
pozdrawiam wszelakrze szczepana wyszczorskiego
our full alphabet:
A ? B C ? D E ? F G H I J K L ? M N ? O Ó P R S ? T U W Y ? ? Z
and extra sounds as combination of single letters, but they create different sounds:
CZ DZ D? D? SZ RZ
phonetically U=Ó H=CH ?=RZ
GOOD LUCK :)
well, site doesn't support our extra letters:
full description is here:
Well native polish people make many mistakes. For example.: "Jest rok dwutysi?czny osmy" instead of "Jest rok dwa tysi?ce osmy" 99% make this mistake. Of course "poszlem" instead of "poszedlem". "W dzisiejszej gazecie pisze o wypadku samochodowym" instead of "W dzisiejszej gazecie jest napisane o wypadku samochodowym". "Pilot s?u?y do prze?anczania kana?ów" instead of "Pilost s?u?y do prze??czania kana?ów". And what I learn still is "Obejrz ten film" instead of "Obejrzyj ten film". Every first sentence is wrong. Do You speak corectly?
You forgot to mention a very interesting thing. There are in fact some words in polish language, that are written in some way but read otherwise, e.g. "pojedynczy" (=something single; masculinum, an adjective) - we pronounce ? (a shorter version of ni) instead of n. Its not a joke, its not a mistake, its just the right way to do it. There are more words like that, but I dont remember them at the moment.
Speaking of foreign languages.. I've been learning english and german for about 12 years, latin - 1 year and japanese for 6 months. All I can say is that Germany and UK uses thousands times more latin words than you can ever imagine.. and german, latin and asian languages have the same form to build sentences (like the verb in the end).
Forgot to add..
I found out that my fellow worker is in her 4th year of university.. studying polish language. It sounded a bit weird to me, believe me. She told me about some of her classes and tests she had to take.. There was a funny one, really.. Like there are images of your oral cavity with a tongue and palatum mole in different positions and you have to guess what letter it represents ;o a very tricky one!
what about hunagrian? its hardcore. i was there for holidays.. sh.it. impossible to understand anything
Hi, I'm polish :)
Do you know, why there are so much comments writed by polish people?
Look that link: http://www.wykop.pl/link/97506/najtrudniejszy-jezy
wykop.pl is like digg.com :)
Now meybe something about polish language. It's very hard - this is true. Therefore it's so beautiful... I'm proud that I know this language
Polish people do many mistakes in their own language, especially in grammar and interpunction, but it's difficulty don't affect our communication. Mistakes are normalcy and everybody understood each other. We have a habit in Poland - people who knows better our language often ammend others. This is a good way to differ quick-witted people from other, because dims do many mistakes, mostly in writing. So we have an mathod to seperate it in seconds, when we talk with them on Internet :). Personally I respect polish language and I don't like seeing so many mistakes in ortography, grammar and interpunction in it. That's horribile and there are more and more textual errors :(. This is an serious problem, because I do more mistakes than earlier, when I see so much it on Internet...
But I wish good luck for all people, who learn that beautiful language :)
PS Sorry for my English, it's pitfull... :P I used dictionary many times :D
Polish Language is one of the difficulties language - this is not language of grammar but rather mean so it dobule complication - what mean that mo important is sense than form - by the way to be the master in Polish is need to understand that little different order with special tempo changes meaning of sentences what makes it very difficult.
7 kind for noun is not enough as there is at least 4 genders (male, female living, female not living, neutral) in polish language and each gender is plural or not what make combination of 7x4x2 some forms are similar ...
Expression of tenses is not to complicated but very flexible - Polish not have strict syntax what is quite common for English.
Czerwiec the name is not form "czerowny"(red) but from the word "czerw"(maggot - especially in the meaning a bee maggot) other possibility is that the name is derived from "czerwiec" - a red bug (Polish cochinea) - which was used to produce red dye [based on Polish Wikipedia]
The name of June it's from little animal - maggot becouse there's a lot of maggots in June in Poland. Colour "czerwony" (read) is from maggot too.
IMHO Polish language isn't more dificullt than others foreign languages. But I think that the most important thing is learning words. If you know what you want to say you'll be understood and grammar won't be important. But in Polish there are only three tenses - past, present, future. In English... 17 (? I'm not sure, don't remember). For Polish people that's ubbelievable! It's stupid and unnecessary! So maybe Polish isn't too easy but another languages aren't too.
And... sorry for mistakes ;p
One more thing about Polish names of months: Maj (May) is not the only one adopted from the Roman calendar. The same is with Marzec (March), which comes from Roman 'Martius'.
Yes, it's a bit cold in here, but not so cold to say we are freezing (marzn??) in March.
there is also funny thing about some words, which we pronounce in the same way, but write in the other way ;)
for example:morze (sea), and moze - with a dot above "z" (maybe)
in polish "rz" and "z with a dot" we pronounce like "g" in the word "mirage", so "morze" and "moze" sounds the same :)
it is very tricky for polish children, who have to write what their teacher says ;)
Hello,
I'm from Poland and I'm realy proud to be Polish. Have a good luck in learnig Polish :D
I'm glad to be Polish and I don't have to learn the most difficult language xD
Guys! In Poland even a three years old child can speek. Easly!
Pozdrowienia z Polski :D
In addition not only do we have 7 cases and 3 declination but many words do not follow those anyway. If you don't believe try to think of any word and see if it follows a particular declination ot conjugation.
That's why I respect those who learn Polish. And I do know one person from Ruanda who speaks beautiful Polish.
here is a contrary opinion, this guy says polish is not that difficult
Hi,
it's really nice article. Here is my favorite strange words in polish:
letter - list
leaf - li??
small letter - li?cik
small leaf - listek
letter - list
leaf - lisc
small letter - liscik
small leaf - listek
I'm Polish, I read about 1000 books in this language. Some of them was written in middle-Polish, so I can use it properly too. I know, that Polish is difficulte, but - I found some really big advantege of this. However you start sentence, you can finish it gramatically corect. For example: I'm supervising here:
I - ja; supervise - pilnuj?; here; tutaj
tu pilnuj? ja
ja tu pilnuj?
ja pilnuj? tu
pilnuj? tu
tu pilnuj?
Of course, it's possible to create this sentence using synonims of that three words, So we can have, I think, a few douzen of this.
http://www.sjp.pl/co/zaczyna%E6here you can see all forms of verb "zaczynac" (to start). Actually all verbs have so many forms, some other examples:http://www.sjp.pl/co/m%F3wi%E6 (to speak, to talk)http://www.sjp.pl/co/je%B6%E6 (to eat)http://www.sjp.pl/co/pisa%E6 (to write)and other verbs connected with writing:spisac, zapisac, dopisac, odpisac, przepisac, popisac, napisac, .......http://www.sjp.pl/co/spisa%E6http://www.sjp.pl/co/%E
I noticed some words similar to Russian. Is there some similarity between Polish and Russian?
Hehe Polish this is my language beacouse i from poland heehe :P i thing this is very easy language :P and now thisome in polish
polski to mój j?zyk bo jestem z polski, my?le ?e to bardzo prosty j?zyk. teraz to samo po polsku.
Hi, I'm from Poland and I'm thinking, that my langugage is hard, too. ;-) But, look - if you learn this language, next languages will be easier for you! :-)
Quicksand: yes, a lot of words sound very similar in Polish, Russian and other Slavic languages. They have the same (or very similar sounding) root - and it's not the question of many occupations. Also, there was an ideology called panslavism, in the name of which the Great Russia of Tzars' tried to unite all the Slavic nations.
Take the numbers - you'll see how similar most of them *sound*.
witam
jeden komentarz co do czerwca- nazwa ta nie powstala od czerwienic- reddending, a od czerwa- larwy pszczo?, much ect (okres wylegania) pozdrawiam
xorcerer - Thanks for your response. I always thought that all Slavic languages were similar to such an extent that a Russian could understand a Czech as well as a Pole when they speak in their respective languages.
well, it's not a secret that Polish is one of the most difficult languages spoken in the world. Umberto Eco classified it on the third place after Ungarian (because it's the only one in its linguistic group) and Mandarinian.
As far as I can see it is very difficult to understand its complex grammar, different sounds and difficult pronounciation. We have so many sounds that totally differ from other languages. There are many Polish that just don't care to use the correct Polish speech, they are just happy to be understood. Let's be honest...the English also don;'t think if they should use the progressive form of the verb, they often mix Perfect Tenses with Simple ones, don't use doesn't. they prefer ain't and so on. That is natural that we want to simplify our conversation. Well...English as a language has the widest vocabulary among all the other languages. There are obout half a million words in English! that's a lot, my dears :-)
Many greetings to all the people who love learning lanuages!
BTW - I am Polish as well :-)
Talking about difficult languages has anyone tried Finnish? (Suomi)
Even Russian has six cases, and the cases influence adjectives and plurals as well.
no, it's not so easy! Saying: I took - Bra?em (repeatedly), wzi??em (only once) you can use these words in different ways, you can say "wzialem to raz" (I took it once) or "wzialem to kilka razy" (I took it a number of times). I have never thought about the difficulcity of Polish just becuse it is my native language. Interesting article ;) The most difficult thing to understand for English speakers is that you can ask a question and you don't need to use inversion. You can ask the same question using a lot of different ways or you can even ask by accent ;)
i.e in the sentence: this is a cat. questions: is this a cat? a cat is this? this is a cat? is a cat this?
Best of luck to everybody who tries to study Polish language :)
ps. And do not worry! Even the President of Poland doesn't speak grammatically correct!!!
Sebastian, I don't fully agree with you. You say: " (...)but it's difficulty don't affect our communication. Mistakes are normalcy and everybody understood each other (...)" I'm not able to read anything if there are too many mistakes, especially orthograpic problems. It is extremely hard to read if you see h instead of ch, z and rz etc. Let's see: the words morze and moze. pronuncation is exactly the same but the meaning of them is quite different. (firs means - "the sea", second one - "maybe") Even if you know the sence of the sentence it will be still very hard to read and it drives me completely crazy!!! I am a native Polish speaker and I can't understand why some people don't know the basic rules!!!
I love my language - polish language!!! :))
I have been saying Polish is the hardest language to learn http://www.claritaslux.com/blog/the-hardest-langua for a while as I am an American who has learned Polish. I am glad to see a Post that backs me up on this.
I can't believe that someone is that interested in Polish language. I'm from Poland and even if I'm only 16 I always try to speak properly. I hate when boy says 'przysz?em' not 'przyszed?em' or something like that. And I'm also happy that you like Polish. :)
Pozdrawiam!
Hi !! I'm also from Poland I can can agree that Polish language is quite difficult bucause of all those different endings and cases. I think also it's harder in Polish to make rhymes, but I wanted to show you one thing in polish grammar. 2 senteces:
There are 5 chairs in the room
There aren't any chairs
In those 2 senteces we use (in eng) one verb - to be, but in polish we use 2 different verbs !!
W pokoju jest (to be) 5 krzesel
Tam nie ma (to have) zadnych krzesel - miec(infinit.)
PS. I didn't use polish special signs to avoid some strange symbol
I have lived abroad for soem tiem now and must say (as a Polish person) I find Polish language difficult at times. Sometimes I am confused about second and forth case. I even use it on daily basis and still find it challenging.
I'm Polish and I think that Polish is complicated. There's a lot form of one word but Slavic languages are very precises. Pozdrawiam :)
Cool... i am also from Poland :) I'm just 16 and I aready speak English pretty good, but if you wanna try to learn Polish it's much more difficult. Probably many people from Poland and other countries can speak English perfectly but there is nobody from any place abroad (I am sure for that) who can perfectly use Polish. It's very hard to pronounse many letters and words even polles have problems with is sometimes :) but.. maby you're gonna be better! Good luck!
People here saying Japense is the hardest to learn, when I was considering taking Japenese courses, I got told over and over again that Japanese was one of the easiest languages, I never started on it, so I'm no expert, but have friends talking Japanese on college and they say it's really easy when you just get started. Writing can be a whole other story.
Nordic language is a lot similiar to English, but I have heard that the scandinavian languages are really hard to learn, the basics should be easy enought, but words change depending on tone of voice, and other languages are build on grammar rules, were many things in nordic language isn't and is more just like what sounds best, wich can be hard for a foreigner to learn.
In school we always got told that our language is the hardest in the world, but I dont know if the teachers just filled us with bullshit.
But slavic seems really hard, and it's not anything I would like to start on.
CIAO
oh.. and Finnish.. FINNISH. How people can talk like that is a mistery. That language is tottally and complety out of any order, there is no other countries that have similiar language, and I heard something about Finnish won the wierdst major language in the world, beating Hawaii that came second.
hey dude, 'u haven't studied spanish it's also really difficult 'cause it's severeal time tenses and the most difficult's called past pluscuamperfect I think you should also think 'bout chinese, vietnamise, japanese and german
I have lived in Japan for 10 years as trader on the N225 index and so many Europeans speak excellent Japanese quite quickly especiially people who speak slav languages. I think because a language has non-latin symbols like Japanese and Thai and Russian people assume its difficult.
I have also lived in Poland and almost no foreigners can speak Polish and those that try give up. I notice that if you lean Polish people are very impressed and you can get on TV and live like a celebrity. In Japan if you live in Japan it is expected that you pick up the basics quickly or get out.
Dzien Dobry
I agree with you Philip. Greek is probably the most difficult language in the world to lean but Polish and Hungarian, Estonian and Finish are probably the next group. People are fightened by strange symbols but with the exception of Greek once you get over the scare of these strange symbols you often find the langauge is not so difficult.
"dwójko"? don't learn it :) it's grammatically correct but actually it took me 5 minutes until i understood when can we use it. Well actually never but as i said its correct.
polish is difficult agree and I've noticed it takes long time to learn even for natives. I have a brother of 7 who is making mistakes in declination or he knows a word but its enough for someone to use another form and he doesnt know the meaning e.g. today he heard word "fakira" and asked what does that mean although he knows the word "fakir"
Hi!
quicksand: speaking of similarities between Slavic languages, it's not actually like this. I'm a Pole and the only languages I can more or less understand without knowing them are Slovakian and Ukrainian.
And in fact as Slovakian is concerned it depends on the dialect of this language and speaking of Ukrainian I had to spend few days in Ukraine to start to understand their language (The words' roots are the same but as it comes to words' constructions we have to learn that they allways put vi- where we put o- or -yty where we put -ic'. It makes a difference!).
When it comes to Russian there's a completely another problem. You see, these two languages have the same roots and let's say a similar influence of other languages. So, if we take Polish and Russian words, though they were very similar hundreds years ago, now they're very different. And two things had a particular influence on this case:
1) Often each nation preferred different synonym of the same thing so the other synonym(s) became very archaic and hardly (or completely not) understandable for the language speakers.
2) Words tended to adopt slightly different meanings so after hundreds of years we have many words that sound almost the same but have very different meanings (the worst case is "zapomnij" or "????????" in Russian, which despite of much different pronouciation rules sound the same but the word means "forget it" in Polish and "remember it" in Russian!)
Belarusian language is probably also as similar to Polish as Ukrainian is but it's hard to hear the language even in Belarus.
As Czech is concerned, it is very similar to Polish, but mainly grammaticaly (when compared to other Slavic languages) so we can very easily understand simple things but reading a Czech book or listening to a Czech radio is imposible for us (I can read in Ukrainian after lerning the alphabet, though. But I didn't have so much contact with Czechs - they always speak Polish when talking with Polish tourists - so maybe it takes a similar effort to start to understand conversations etc.).
There's also the Slovenian language, which is told to be similar to these Slovakian dialects that are harder to understand for us. And the Serbocroatian language which we can understand a bit, but knowing another Slavic language like Russian helps very much with understanding words (sometimes even basic ones).
And the Bulgarian and Macedonian languages are almost completely not understandable for us. We often can catch a sence of a sentence somehow and understand the names of let's say vegetables, but that's all. I think these languages together with Russian are the ones of the Slavic group that let us communicate only in the simplest cases.
And people: don't believe every comment here! I know many foreigners that speak Polish and some of them do it briliant (though they aren't Slavs)! And they haven't became TV stars yet...
Im polish and last year in my hause was one girl- she was on an exchange. She was going to polish school and learnt polish, and, well.. she was very good at it! After 10 months her polish was quite good- she could even say "W Szczebrzeszynie chrz?szcz brzmi w trzcinie" {A beetle sounds in Szczebrzeszyn} or "stó? z powy?amywanymi nogami' {A table with broken legs}. Of course she had problems with gramatic but she was on a good way.
In conclusion all i can say- every language can be easy when we feel it. Hmm, i used to learn german but i gave up.. but it was just because i don't like it :P Now Im practising english and spanish and i love them both :)
Im polish and i hate our difficult terribly made language, we just cant make new words like "weekend" we just say likend pronounced in englisz style. Every kid in school have to have difficult fight witch teachers about grama like "morze" or "mo?e" its same word samely prononuced but we all have to remeber what it was used for... very stupid language i think ~50% of all polish words have to be remebered how it shoud be written becouse there is no diffirence in pronouncing like ucho, uho, óho, ócho - its all same thing but one is correct.
nevermind: This is far more true of English, where there are many, many homophones, like poor, pour, and pore, etc. And did you know that most englisz words actually have a foreign origin? This is why English is such a rich language.
As for weekend/?ikend, why not create a new word: "kotyg"? (koniec tygodnia)
A propos picture with two fingers... I see there 5 fingers... :)
I'm sure that polish language is difficult for foreigners. I'm Pole, my husband is Greek and we live in Germany. I have to learn german language because I removed here 5 months ago and before I could not say any sentense in german. Now I'm doing quite good but I have really big problem with gramatic. My housband want to learn polish. He speaks greek, german, english, french and italian, but he says that polish is the most difficult language witch he have ever heard...
greetings for everybody
I'm Polish for 17 years and I've just learned where those nemes for months come from:)
I use translators to communicate in languages I do not speak. This site would not allow this to be post this response in Polish.
I think that Polish is even more difficult than it's shown above. To be honest I've found more than 17 forms of "two": dwójek, dwójkom, dwójkami, dwójkach. Moreover, another interesting part of Polish are phrasals like "krowie na rowie" which are imo more confusing than English ones.
Yes, Polish is a really difficult language. I'm Polish and I know ^^ It's difficult to say "W Szczebrzeszynie chrz?szcz brzmi w trzcinie" or "W czasie suszy szosa sucha". xD Is there a more difficult language than Polish? Maybe Chinese...
I don´t really think that Polish is such difficult as some people below described here. I am native speaker of Slovak and I think that all slavic languages are approximately similar (I can speak 3 slavic languages, understand 4 including Polish), because they have the same roots, but it can be said also about any other language in the world. Everybody thinks that their language is the most difficult, that´s why I must disagree that Polish is more or less difficult than my own language.
I followed this Hub and its comments until it made my head spin.
I grew up listening to Polish and more or less always got the gist, although I never learned to speak it. For me, because I grew up hearing it, it is an easy language to understand. But I never had to write it or dissect its grammar.
This is a great Hub. I will share it with my mother, in her eighties now, and she will be able to tell me the differences in the 17 or more variations in the number 2.
Awesome.
Listen up! I am the native speaker of the Polish Language, learning English and Khmer and Italian at the Accademic Level (Uniwersytet Adama Mickiewicza in Poznan) and after different linguistic adventures I can tell all of you there aren't any difficult languages- olny people are lazy whom luck of motivetion and so on. Isn't this true? ;) I love learning new linguages- each of it is a new world for me, all of them have such many amounts of new linguistic figures :D
Know all languages and every separately! Fascinate! ;)
Im Polish and my boyfriend is French. My language is more explicit than french. I d like to call my boo misiu, miniu, misiaczku misiaku, skarbusiu, tygrysku, sloneczko, kotku, kociaku.. etc
But french language has only cheri or chouchou :SSSS ://////////
Any ideas for french nice words??? 4 man?
Im Polish and my boyfriend is French. My language is more explicit than french. I d like to call my boo misiu, miniu, misiaczku misiaku, skarbusiu, tygrysku, sloneczko, kotku, kociaku.. etc
But french language has only cheri or chouchou :SSSS ://////////
Any ideas for french nice words??? 4 man?
I lived in Poland for a year, and agree, it's a hard language to learn.
I've been living in Poland with my Polish girlfriend for around 6 months, studying for hours almost every day, and I still can't have a normal conversation. If I need to say something I have to think for like a minute. Reading is ok, but understanding when people talk is really hard for me. There are too many sounds like ?, ?, sz, cz, ?, ? etc. For example "tak si? ciesz?, ?e ci? widz?!" just sounds to me like "takshehtsheshehzhetshewidze". It's crazy. Polish needs less "shshshsh" and more vowels! I suspect that Poles frequently suffer from tongue muscle damage. ;) The best thing about Polish is that in theory it's possible to read a text like a native speaker without having a clue about what you're saying. ;)
By the way, someone said Swedish has 18 vowels. This is not true, there are just 9. The same as in English and the additional "å, ä, ö". I've tried to teach some Poles to pronounce Swedish, but it's really impossible for them. ;) When they try to say "te" (tea) for example, they always say "tie". Personally I don't understand why Swedish vowels are so hard for people. They're very clear, and not even diphthongs! :) Anyway, Swedish grammar is infinitely easier than Polish, so at least that shouldn't be a problem. ;)
Well there is something very confusing in Polish (just as in other slavic tongs) with the grammatical gender. There are only 3 genders in singular, 2 in plural, but their use in different grammatical cases differs as the 'vitality' of a described object has to be considered ;P Here you have an example:
hat - kapelusz
computer - komputer
dog - pies
student - uczen
they are all masculine, but hats and PC's are not 'vital' as dogs and students are. Now:
I see a NEW hat - Widze NOWY kapelusz
but
I see a new student - Widze NOWEGO ucznia
See?
Widze NOWEGO psa, widze NOWY komputer. BLEE;P
moreover, you do not have to use the subject in the sentence while speaking in polish. In english you would say "I go to school", in polish you would say "Ide do szkoly", you do not use the word "JA" meaning "I". ;P
Also, when saying about future with future simple, in english you'd say "I will go to school" and in polish you'd say "pojde do szkoly", you don't use the subject neither do you use "will", you merge it with the verb.
Polish is veeery difficult and confusing, the grammar is very accidental (especially with the endings in various cases), the perfect tense occurs sometimes but actually does not exist... Moreover, you can use about 7 word orders in the simpliest present tense... and the pronounciation is also quite irritating. There are more complicating things in Polish, but my post is already quite long...
Am from Dubai and i was living in Prague for 10 years. I speak Czech so good that you wouldn't say am a foreigner and because of that i understand quite good polish and i never been there!! how is that possible?
Ahojky:))
as we all know, Chech and Polish languages are veeeery similar, but It realy not helps ;/ it makes us laugh :D:D:D:D I'm Polish, believe me ^v^
"June - czerwiec (from the Polish word for reddening...not sure why)"
Czerwiec is from a small insect Porphyrophora polonica used for to produce a crimson dye.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_cochineal
Why on Earth someone says that Greek is soooo hard? OK, the script may be confusing, but not impossibLe to get over it. Cyryllic scripts are much harder, but still I know a guy from Crete who lived in Serbia for 6 years and speaks Serbo-Croatian like a native speaker.
Still, Polish is much harder that Greek OR Serbo-Croatian, and that in spite of "easy" Latin script. Greek grammar is way easier than Polish (much less exceptions), and ONLY 4 cases of the noun!
hello. I`m Polish. I admire people different nationalities who learn polish.. I was always good in grammar and orthography, but my fredns sometimes have to use a dictionary. Polish is very difficult but is very beautiful.
So, I wish you success in learning.
P.S. sorry for errors :)
?ycz? powodzenia wszystkim, którzy ucz? si? polskiego to naprawd? pi?kny j?zyk. Pozdrawiam! :)
Hi. I'm Polish and I used to teach Polish to foreigners at Summer Schools, and I gave up finally because I wasn't able to explain to them the complexity of the language. By the way, livelonger, you didn't list all the forms for the number 2, there are more, if you want to have all the declension cases, but you'd get fewer if you just listed the main forms ;)
Anyway, my favourite example of my native tongue complexity (lucky me I'll never have to learn it as a foreing language) is the verb "jecha?" (to go but only by means of any kind of ground transportation, drive in most cases but not necessarily) and it's variations which describe the direction, timing and whether one has already arrived or not and so on. This is how it goes approximately (the meanings are approximate, to say the least):
jecha? - to go (by means of ground transportation), a continouos action: jad? do Polski = I am going to Poland; jecha?em do Polski = I set out to go to Poland but apparently I didn't get there or I'm talking about something that happened during the journey
pojecha? - to go somewhere and get there: pojecha?em do Polski = I went to Poland (and got there, maybe even spent some time), pojad? do Polski = I really mean to go there
dojecha? - to get somewhere by means of some kind of ground transportation: dojechali?my na czas = we got there on time; doje?d?am do Warszawy - I'm arriving in Warsaw
podjecha? - to approach (again by means of...) or come over to pick someone up and so on: podjad? po ciebie = I'll pick you up (with my car most likely), podjecha?em pod dom = I came close to the house (and most likely parked my car/bike there)
zjecha? - to go down (means apply ;) also skis and sleighs included): zjechali?my do doliny = we came down to the valley
nadjecha? - to approach; poci?g nadjecha? = the train approached
przyjecha? - to come somewhere; przyjecha?am do domu = I came home (means of transportation, of course); przyjad? o dziewi?tej = I'll come at 9
wjecha? - to come in, go into, drive in, enter; wjed? do gara?u = drive into the garage; poci?g wjecha? na stacj? = the train arrived at the station; wjecha?a do miasta = she entered the city (by means etc.)
wyjecha? - to go out or go on a trip, to go up (applies to ski lifts also); wyjechali?my z miasta = we went out of town; wyjechali?my w góry = we went to the mountains (i.e. we drove or took a train etc. there, doesn't imply hiking at all); wyjecha?am na gór? = I went to the top (whatever means of transportation apart from ships and planes)
zajecha? - to cut in, block the way; zajecha? mi drog? = he blocked my way
odjecha? - to leave, to go away: poci?g odjecha? = the train left; kiedy odje?d?asz? = when do you leave?; odjecha? trzy dni temu = he left three days ago
and there are a few more combinations: najecha?, przejecha? etc., you can combine it with almost every single preposition and get a meaning ;) And of course these are only the finite forms, as there are also infinite ones: je?dzi? for jecha? but zje?d?a?, doje?d?a?, odje?d?a? etc. for all the rest.
Have fun or leave all hope ;)
I'm Polish, but lived in New Zealand for15 years so I consider my English as native. Yet I understand a lot of spoken Polish, but sometimes I run out of words when speaking. Reading is slow, but it's made easy due to the fact that polish words dont have hidden sounds (well they do a bit, but nowhere near as bad as English). I'm currently living in Prague and I'm learning Czech. Czech is a really cute laguage and very dificult, but I dont think its as difficult as Polish (Ok the Czech R is a SOB to pronouce). I did learn some Japanese when I was at school and that qas quite difficult. Now I am also having a crack at Arabic, which doesn't seem so bad (apart from the written aspec - I dont even know where one letter starts and where it finishes)
When I hear Polish, it's like "szczesrazdzdnscuszsczcdz".
i guess you forgot one form mate :P which is 18. dwójkomgreets and very nice post (what a shame so many natives havent noticed that befor hihi)
Hi there. I'm polish and i hate this language! Ortography is terrible, but very important. There is a lot of different, difficult form, so we (polnish people) often make mistakes. But luskily, most people care about that and correct other and themselfes. Like every other languages, it is possible to learn it, but (like every another languages) it's need a lot of time. In our country, grammar is very, very important and also very difficult, so that we learn it intensive very long time.
I am sorry for my english. I'm not the best of it :P And i have small request. Can somebody correct, that what I wrote? But don't change sense of sentences :)
Chetnie!
Hi there. I'm Polish and I hate this language! The spelling is terrible, but very important. There are a lot of different, difficult grammatical forms, so we Polish people often make mistakes. But luckily, most people care about that (? co? tego nie rozumiem) and correct themselves and each other. Like every other language, it is possible to learn it, but, like every other language, it takes a lot of time. In our country, grammar is very, very important and also very difficult, so we learn it intensely for a very long time.
But luckily, most people care about that (? co? tego nie rozumiem) and correct themselves and each other.
Spróbuj? to napisa? tak, jak ja to zrozumia?em.
Sorry for my abysmal English
Luckily, people in Poland care about proper speaking, so they correct mistakes of others, and their own as well.
I think this is it.
I have to say, but I disagree. The most difficult language is Slovenian. My native language is slovenian, and I sometimes get lost in it. All other languages have singular and plural, but this one also has dual. There are 6 cases for nouns. I will show you how you do the word son.
Singular Dual Plural
1. Sin Sina Sini
2. Sina Sinov Sinov
3. Sinu Sinovoma Sinovom
4 .Sina Sinova Sinove
5. O sinu O sinovoma O sinovih
6. S sinom Z sinovoma Z sini
There are 7 different ways to work with nouns, depending on the gender. Plus each gender has its exceptions, so this just makes everythin harder. But the plural is also for the verbs. For example:
Delam- I work Delava- We (2) work Delamo- We work
Delaš- You work Delata - You(2) work Delate- You work
Dela- He works Delata - Those(2) work Delajo- THey work
There are also several types of different adjectives, and personal pronouns(not sure if i spelled correct) just like Latin has. You can see that even google translator has some big problems with translatim to/from Slovenian.
If anyone is brave enough to even try to learn the basics; timibrumec@gmail.com
Look at our offensive dictionary too ;DD I'm sure that no other language has although 1/10 of our invectives =] It's awesome. English is easy as hell, you can learn to speak very well without problem at comunication by 1-2 years IF you really want to learn.
Co wy gadacie xP
Polski to jeden z najbanalniejszych j?zyków na ?wiecie :P
Dlaczego?
Bo nie mam z nim ?adnych problemów xD
all that is nothing, try to read "wzdrgn??"
I'm English and I've been learning Polish for nearly three years. At first it was daunting, but I was determined. I still continually make mistakes, but can just about hold a conversation as long as the other person doesn't mind repeating themself a couple of times.
I used to worry about always adjecting nound and adjectives to fit the appropriate case, but now I don't worry about that so much. The same is true of the perfective/imperfective verb forms in Polish. I just read and listed to others speaking Polish and, with the help of a dictionary, pick up what I can.
What I love about Polish is the ugly consonant clusters.
'Szczyt - peak', pronounced 'shchit'
'pszczola - bee', pronounced 'pshchowa'
'zmrok - twilight', pronounced as in English
'wzglad - regard', pronounced 'vzglond' (the 'a' is written with a tail)
'lgnac - to adhear', pronounced 'lgnonch' (yes, one syllable) (the 'a' with a tail and the 'c' with a dash)
'zdzblo - blade of grass', pronounced 'zhdzhbwo' ('zh' pronounced like the French J or the Z in 'azure') (the 'z's with a dash and the 'l' with a mid-way dash)
'mysl - thought', pronounced 'mishl' (the 's' with a dash, and again, one syllable)
'przemyslny - clever', pronounced 'pshemishlni' (the 's' again with a dash, and notice how the 'l' is squashed between two other consonants, still pronounced but not with its own syllable)
'jablko -apple', pronounced 'yabwko' (the 'l' written with a mid-way dash, and I believe this word is just two syllables but I could be mistaken)
'Piotr - Peter', pronounced 'pyotr'
Whereas in English we need consonants like L, R and W to have a vowel either going into it or coming out from it, giving it its own syllable, in Polish that's completely unnecessary. I both love and hate this feature at the same time.
The great redeeming feature of Finnish is its complete lack of consonant clusters, and its grammer certainly isn't any more difficult than Polish. I would love to learn Finnish if I had the time and energy, but I know far more Poles than I do Finns, so my desire to speak to them in their native language is what drives me.
For the person who said that Scandinavian languages are difficult, I couldn't disagree more. I've been learning Norwegian for slightly longer than Polish, and it's difficult to imagine a language more similar to English. Grammatically there are one or two new features, such as gender, and a slightly different use of the definite and indefinite articles, but apart from that it's incredibly simple. The only thing I can't master is the rolling 'rrrrrrrrrr'. :-P
Czerwiec isn't from reddening, it's rather from "czerw", which is bee's grub :)
Wykop pozdrawia!!!
How do you say, "This is a flower" in Polish.
I mean kwiat has to be in the right case.
thank you
To jest kwiat. (it doesn't change in this case)
First of all, I'd like to congratulate Livelonger - it's pretty damn rare to find someone who really enjoys studying our language...
Most of my foreign friends curious of my language have had enough after hearing my surname (which contains aforementioned cluster of "gnashing" consonants) few first verses of "Pan Tadeusz" (the unforgettable "Litwo, ojczyzno moja..." ^^ ) and a brief explanation of the case system, followed by some examples. Thus I really appreciate your effort.
Secondly, I'd like to reply to some of the comments left by my fellow Poles here - namely, the ones complaining about how the polish language is difficult and troublesome even to them. Now, I wouldn't like to get too emotional here, but it really aggrevates me to read things like that. I do think that any Pole who freely admits that he has no grip of his own first language lacks either basic education, intelligence, or both. And it really doesn't change a thing that they can show their dyslexia certificate...
The thing is, just a view years ago it was unthinkable to let anyone unable to both speak and write in faultless polish out of PRIMARY (which translates as "basic" to polish) school. Now the propensity is to push the people out as soon as possible, in spite of the fact that some of them obviously lack the most trivial of skills (which is partially "thanks" to the TV and PC taking place of the books, but mostly because people get progressively more and more lazy) and therefore are unfit for the further education.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a language nazi calling anyone making the slightest of a mistake a dolt, but the very concept of Poles unable to cope with polish is laughable at best... I'm 20, having just started my university studies, and I have no problem with my language whatsoever (save for the sparce doubt about proper usage of "borrowed" words), hence I perceive Poles babbling about the complexity of it as people who are simply unwilling to admit to their own laziness and/or failure.While foreingers have hundreds of excuses (most of them justified, to be honest) to find polish language difficult, the natives have none. So just get a grip of yourselves and stop spreading bollocks...
P.S. Livelonger, unless you are arguing with someone who states that the flower is actually something else, the "jest" in the above sentence is superfluous stress - "To kwiat" would be the for chosen by a native speaker. Hope that helped :)
there is more combinations of the word 2 - two, dois, zwei. The 18. form could be e.g. dwojako ;] but don't worry Polish is easy!;] I know what I am telling you because it is my monther language;]
I'm glad I know this language (I'm polish) because it gives you such amazing advantages, so many languages are similar to polish! Czech, Slovak, Spanish, and so on and so on.. It's great :)
I'm really glad that I'm Polish butI I would be really glad if it would be easier.
Really, why do we have so many forms? Couldn't it be a really nice and easy language like English or Danish?
Ech (a very common Polish word :) ), at least it's starting to ease.
I really would like Polish to be something like germano-slavic language, it would join the flexibility of germanic languages with that note (Polish idiom) of slavic chaos.
Yes, Polish is difficult; it makes Russian look like a joke--and even the Russians love to complain about how hard their language is. =P But quite frankly, I think Hungarian is worse--there are no sentences in Hungarian; just word with suffix after suffix after suffix. ;) I'm just kidding, of course. Maybe I'm slighly biased, since I grew up in Chicagoland (i.e. I hear Polish all the time). But seriously, I tried Hungarian...was not that successful...
But.... Lengyel, magyar két jó barát, együtt harcol s issza borát ;)
Oh, and in response to those who were talking about pronunciation, this video highlights why I think Polish seems formidable to people who aren't used to hearing it. It's a clip from the film "Jak rozp?ta?em II wojn? ?wiatow?" =)
ehpolaczkileczaswekompleksybomajatrudnajezyk
przestanciebomnieembarasujecie
mo?e russian luka jak d?o?k ale i tak w polsce jest syf
"Jak rozpetalem II wojne swiatowa". - "How I started WWII."
BTW "Klimczak" - sounds Polish :) .
Hi everyone! I'm also polish and i must say that this discussion is very interesting. Actually most of slavians' languages are difficult for non-slavian people. I must admit that despite I'm polish, after read your posts my own language interested me more than I expected ;). O.K. lets talk: thats my top 5 in hard languages:
5. Japanese - I love this language, but it has super-hiper-ultra difficult alphabets: kanji, hiragana and katakana. Especially Kanji. When I see this after about hour, I always say: "Szlag! Te krzaki s? takie same!" ("Damn! These bushes are the same!"). We like japanese cause it has very similar pronouncing to polish (I think I'm the first here who told that).
4. Hungarian - I'm not interested in this language, but sounds and looks very hard to learn. I can't to figure anything out.
3. Chinese - it has only one alphabet, but the most difficult I know ;/. Pronouncing is in my opinion actually impossible, if you are not Chinese or you haven't a great humour XD. Otherwise, These syllables very often sound similar.
2. Polish - there it is ;). I won't start say about this cause people before me told quite much about this.
1. Russian - that's my number one. It's quite similar to polish, but tougher. 8th case + flying accent. Sounds funny but it's difficult
Why are you thinking that polish is daunting, Ben?
I know polish has many change. I understand all foreigner. I don't imagine how you learn polish becouse it's too difficult. It's funny when you are trying to say for example "pszczo?a" or phrase "w czasie suszy szosa sucha" :D RESPECT I thank God that I knew polish inside out :D
Hello! I'm Polish :)
I've read this all and I'm amazed how many people learn Polish :D Greetings for you all. I think that it's difficult for foreginers to learn it.
But I have one question... What is ' to adhear' ? I don't know it, I don't have it even in my dictionaries ;p And I don't know what 'Ignac' is :D I just know it as a form of a male name 'Ignacy' ... Can anyone explain it ?
And I have sth about the prefix in Polish :D
ewa: I think "adhear" should be "adhere" (probably misspelled - native speakers misspell things all the time). I have never heard the word "ignac" - it doesn't even look like an English word. The English form of Ignacy is Ignatius, by the way.
I'm so glad and proud of my own language :-D I mean... I've never thought than Polish can be one of the most difficult languages in the world! ^^ Good luck to them, who are learning POLISH! It's a lot of job... ;-) Hugs from Rachel!
It is truth, polish is very hard language to learn and even people living in Poland have problems with him. But I think he's beautiful! I'm polish and I am proud of it. I hope that everybody who is learning polish will learn him very soon, but it is rather impossible. Good luck:)
I m polish living in US. I speak polish and english I live with lots of Polaks Ukrainians Czechs and Slovakians. I know that polish is one of the hardest languages to learn and even to speak. People from those countries told me that our grammar and all those "on, oni, one" is rediculus. Now how come all of them speak polish preety good, and I can not understand what they say Can anyone answer this question?
Wonderful! I'm fascinated by learning about the complexities of foreign languages. well done, livelonger. i'm wondering - is russian grammar as tricky as polish? i admire you for your efforts to learn such a tough language! dawei888
vic says:
2 years ago
This is interesting. I sure didn't realize that Polish was such a difficult language. Thanks.