Grammar
- The Road To Fluency
Hi. My last article received a great deal more attention than I could have ever hoped for; and for this I’d like to thank you all as my message has been spread. I appreciate all the comments and e-mails you were kind enough to send to me, it seems that...
- Second Language Acquisition
Children who are exposed to two different languages at once are indeed able to acquire both of them simultaneously but certainly the majority of people have only one native language they learnt in this process of "sponging". Furthermore, the foreign...
- I Are Hulk, I Has No Grammar
Some people tend to think that knowledge of vocabulary is key to being able to speak a foreign language and that grammar is of less importance. Let me tell you that this isn’t true. We use grammar in everyday speech, whether we want to or not. If...
- Not Exactly What I Meant
We all make mistakes and it just so happens that some of those mistakes are truly hilarious. I think the funniest ones I come across are made by non-native English speakers, including me. When I first moved to the UK I must have been 18 or 19 and my English,...
- Both A Borrower And A Lender Be
I have written an article on word formation processes in the past and the topic has been always close to my heart. I recently tried to do a little research on borrowings and particularly English borrowings in the Polish language. Although I haven’t...
Grammar
So you think Polish is hard?
The truth must finally come out. I’ve heard enough of this utter rubbish about how difficult Polish is. If you’ve tried to learn Polish and failed to achieve decent levels of communication and understanding this means you're either not trying hard enough or are just plain stupid. You can’t just say English is easier, because it isn’t! Sure there are grammatical concepts in Polish that are absent in English but don’t forget this works both ways.
Although some grammar books claim there are 16 tenses in English this isn’t true. It doesn’t make it any easier though as there are two tenses (present and past), four aspects (simple, progressive – also referred to as continuous, perfect and perfect-progressive). This is a formidable combination for foreigners, difficult enough to confuse us along with the very unclear rules surrounding the tense usage. I mean…. There are differences even between BrE and AmE as far as tenses go so are we supposed to get the right ones? Ugh. Now compare that with Polish: three tenses (present, past and future – couldn’t be any more obvious, right?) and two aspects (imperfective and perfective – pretty straightforward and all it takes is to learn the correct verb forms). We like it easy, don’t we?
Foreigners cringe when they hear about seven cases in Polish and I agree this can be a nightmare to grasp for a native speaker of a language that lacks this concept but all it means is that you’ll need to make an extra effort and pay a bit more attention to it while learning. On the bright side Polish has no articles. YES! YES! YES! (I hate articles in English and even though I’m super fluent I still make mistakes when using them).
Stop moaning. People always point to something difficult in every language and the sad ones use it as an excuse for not learning it. Fail! Fail! Fail! What I hate even more are Polish people spreading these rumours about how difficult our language is. No, it isn’t! Put this silly point of national pride behind you. The fact we have lots of consonants is not a problem, we are all humans and if my speech organs are capable of articulating something, yours are too no matter where you come from. I might have struggled with my th in English but here I am pronouncing it like a native. Make the effort! Polish, being almost fully phonetic, is actually easier than English, if you slowly pronounce each and every single letter in a word you’ll pronounce it right (NEVER the case in English, in fact even native English speakers don’t know how to pronounce certain words e.g. schedule).
No language is hard. Depending on your native language, some languages can be easier for you. However, it doesn’t make them easy for everybody. I would probably find Czech much easier than English and similarly if you’re a native English speaker you will find German easier than Polish. Lastly, I wanted to say it’s a pleasure to learn Polish. Why? Because most Poles you meet when you come here will be amazed to see you’ve made the effort to try to speak Polish (even if only a little Polish). We’re quite nice chaps, really!
So…. What are you still doing? Get back to studying Polish. I don’t want to see you back around here again until you’ve learnt some more. Good luck!
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- The Road To Fluency
Hi. My last article received a great deal more attention than I could have ever hoped for; and for this I’d like to thank you all as my message has been spread. I appreciate all the comments and e-mails you were kind enough to send to me, it seems that...
- Second Language Acquisition
Children who are exposed to two different languages at once are indeed able to acquire both of them simultaneously but certainly the majority of people have only one native language they learnt in this process of "sponging". Furthermore, the foreign...
- I Are Hulk, I Has No Grammar
Some people tend to think that knowledge of vocabulary is key to being able to speak a foreign language and that grammar is of less importance. Let me tell you that this isn’t true. We use grammar in everyday speech, whether we want to or not. If...
- Not Exactly What I Meant
We all make mistakes and it just so happens that some of those mistakes are truly hilarious. I think the funniest ones I come across are made by non-native English speakers, including me. When I first moved to the UK I must have been 18 or 19 and my English,...
- Both A Borrower And A Lender Be
I have written an article on word formation processes in the past and the topic has been always close to my heart. I recently tried to do a little research on borrowings and particularly English borrowings in the Polish language. Although I haven’t...