Is Polish a difficult language for an English-speaking person to learn?

8 Comments

1. Lady Yahooter says:

   September 3, 2010 at 1:58 am

   According to the US Department of Defense, Polish ranks in Category III of difficulty for a native English speaker, together with other Slavic languages (the more difficult top Category IV includes only Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean).

   The difficulty of the Polish language lies both in its original qualities and its historical developments. Polish grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation pose a challenge for a foreign learner on many different levels. To begin with, let’s take a look at English for a while: this language uses word order to express grammatical structure (it is a so-called analytic language). This means that by changing the position of a word in a sentence or placing a different word next to it you change the function it performs (for example ‘I can swim’ – ‘Can I swim?’; you can exchange ‘I’ for ‘you’, ’she’ and so on, and the sentences hold together).

   As practice shows, many foreign learners struggle with Polish pronunciation. While some of its aspects are very easy (e.g. the stress is nearly always at the last-but-one syllable, while in English one usually needs to memorize where the stress is in a particular word), other can prove difficult, depending on the characterictics of the learner’s first language, and with English it is. The form of Polish words, typically the ending, is inflected, that is changed according to tense, mood, person, number, case, and/or gender. As a result, speaking Polish requires constant manipulation of word forms to reflect the connections between them and their function within a sentence on a scale much greater than in any analytic language. An extreme example of Polish in action: in English the past tense of ‘to go’ is ‘went’, regardless of who is performing the ‘going’. In Polish, each person’s gender and number is reflected in the form of the word:

   I: (male) poszedłem / (female) poszłam

   you (singular): (male) poszedłeś / (female) poszłaś

   he: poszedł

   she: poszła

   it: poszło

   we: (male or both) poszliśmy / (female) poszłyśmy

   you (plural): (male or both) poszliście / (female) poszłyście

   they: (male or both) poszli / (female) poszły

   The same rule of verb inflection applies as regards for example future tense, while in English another word or expression is used (will, be going to, etc.) This means that in Polish personal pronouns (I, you, she etc.) are often omitted, as the information they carry is already expressed in the form of a verb. The above listing does not contain another feature – the aspect of the verb, an ancient distinction between actions thought of as finished or limited in time and those regarded as continuous. In English aspects are typically expressed using auxiliary verbs (‘be’ for continuous, ‘have’ for perfect) – in Polish the very form of the verb changes (in ‘poszedłem’, the beginning ‘po’ might be dropped), and sometimes a wholly different verb is used.

   Not only verbs need to be manipulated this way – nouns, pronouns and adjectives as well. This is called declension and means the variation of the ending of the word by which its grammatical case, number, and gender are identified. Take a simple word, like ‘a cat’ for example (in Polish ‘kot’). Depending on the activity a cat is performing, or what somebody is doing to or with the cat, the noun ‘kot’ changes into ‘kota’, ‘kotu’, ‘kotem’, ‘kocie’, etc. The same applies to the plural form ‘koty’: ‘kotami’, ‘kotom’, ‘kotach’, etc. Moreover, nouns in Polish are gender-specific, even if they denote an inanimate object. For example, a book (książka) in Polish is feminine and referred to as if it was she. A car (samochód) on the other hand is masculine (referred to as he; there is also another Polish word for car: ‘auto’, and this one is neuter). These rules are usually arbitrary (in French a book is masculine, while in English a car is sometimes referred to as if it was ’she’; as you can see, there are no logical rules here). The ending of a noun sometimes provides relevant information (usually nouns that end in ‘-a’ are feminine), but there are too many exceptions to this rule for it to be trusted (for example ’słoń’ – elephant – is he, while ‘dłoń’ – palm of hand – is she; strangely enough, the Polish word for man actually ends in ‘-a’: ‘mężczyzna’), so the gender of many words must be memorised.

   Lastly, there are many ways to create plural form of nouns, depending on the gender of a noun and other factors. To make things worse, the plural form differs also depending on the number of the actual object (e.g. 1 samochód, 2,3,4 samochody, 5,6, etc. samochodów). All these forms need to undergo declension transformations as well.
2. Eugene says:

   September 3, 2010 at 1:58 am

   "the",what "the"?

   Polish letters may look like the English Latin letters,but the sounds are quite different for certain letters.
   Polish is even very foreign to many other Slavic languages.
3. anonymus_su says:

   September 3, 2010 at 1:58 am

   1) Yes. Polish is very difficult for more english speakers.
   2) I know more foreigners who successfully learn Polish in 1 year. English and Arab native speakers.

   I very like Polish language
4. Nem says:

   September 3, 2010 at 1:58 am

   Like most other Slavic languages, polish does not have any resemblance to the english language. It has more complicated grammar and it has not only "the" but also one for every single gender. it resembles learning french or german but it is very hard to learn as a second language.
5. Dylan says:

   September 3, 2010 at 1:58 am

   no it is considered quite easy due to it being European.
   my friend is polish and often teaches me bits and bobs.

   please return the favor and rate this best answer and 5 stars

   thank you
6. Louie the linguist says:

   September 3, 2010 at 1:58 am

   yes, learning any L2 (your native language is L1) is hard. Some are harder in some aspects, some easier.

   Lots depends on your motivation, available resources, skills, goals.
7. Allan says:

   September 3, 2010 at 1:58 am

   Polish can be quite difficult. It’s a Slavic language, and doesn’t too much in common with English (certain genetic similarities are evident though). It’s MUCH more inflected than English, and from my experience, the pronunciation is a nightmare. I like it, it can be quite fun. I wish it also used the cyrillic alphabet.
8. Małgorzata says:

   September 3, 2010 at 1:58 am

   Yes Polish is really difficult for an English-speaking person to learn but it is possible to get used to