Learning Polish

[mccarn]

Not sure if this is the right place to post this, but has anybody got any good books/CD's/guides for a complete beginner wishing to learn a little bit of conversational polish?

Thanks.

[Sheets Tabuer]

I learnt off my parents, they used pledge.

HTH.

[mccarn]

FS! I'm being serious.

LEARNING TO SPEAK POLISH is what I meant.

[HD Adam]

Carnuba, Beeswax, Autoglym.

It's easy, see?

[MrGman]

Michel Thomas audio books are very good and highly rated, can be a bit pricey but a very good way of learning a language.

Do a search on ebay, amazon or similar.

[mccarn]

MrGMan thanks for the serious reply.

I've already had a look on amazon, just wondered if anybody had any personal experience/recommendations with any of them.

[Snoggledog]

I used the Routledge books /CD when I was trying to learn Slovak. It's ok but TBH, your best bet would be to find the local Polish Deli and ask them.




Yes I did look at your location and they're probably a bit thin on the ground in your neck of the woods but it might be worth a shot.

[trooperiziz]

mccarn said:

to learn a little bit of conversational polish?

Make sure you are polite and always compliment the lady, try not to be too arrogant, but have a little confidence about yourself, you'll soon get the hang of it.

[filaborg]

Just go to your local high street, hang about for a while...soon pick up the lingo....

[elster]

Find a hot Polish girl, start nailing. Best way to learn.

[moleamol]

elster said:

Find a hot Polish girl, start nailing. Best way to learn.

I've done that but never managed to learn much Polish as her and all her mates spoke fluent English, even when we were in Poland. Although she did get pissed off once and told the waiter she could only speak English so that I had to try and order stuff for myself. The bh.

[MrGman]

mccarn said:

MrGMan thanks for the serious reply.

I've already had a look on amazon, just wondered if anybody had any personal experience/recommendations with any of them.

I used the Michel Thomas audio cd for french, an extremely easy way to learn so i can give a personal recommendation for these.

[andrew_huxtable]

start getting the bus, you will pick it up in no time

[Mandat]

Good on you for being willing to learn Polish but accoring to some, Polish is one of the most difficult languages in the world to learn.

I'm lucky in that Polish is my first language and I can speak it fluently, but I can't imagine how difficult it would be to learn from scratch. The best advice I could give would be to get some Polish friends (or even a Polish girlfriend) to teach you the conversational aspects, rather than learning all of the gramatical rules from books, etc.

To help, here are some links to the Polish language that I have found with google:

http://www.claritaslux.com/blog/polish-hardest-lan...

http://hubpages.com/hub/Most_Difficult_Languages_-...

http://www.polish-translations.com/speaking.html

[mccarn]

I have a polish friend. Only known him for a year after being in my college class.

Want to learn Polish as I was at his flat the other day, and he had friends round and I wanted to at least be able to speak a little Polish.

Ideally I'd like to learn a wee bit of conversational first, so that I can suddenly just burst into polish one day during conversation

[Mexico.]

Spend one weekend on the London underground job done

[andthensome]

eta : on a serious note, just go to poland , ive been , nice place!

Edited by andthensome on Monday 22 June 20:14

[Bec]

Rather than going out and spending an arm and a leg on some of these courses, would your local library have one that you could borrow. It's a good why to try something like this out?

This may also help: http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/polish/soap/
They usually have programs on the television overnight that you van record and watch at more a sociable time too

[Snoggledog]

Mandat said:

Good on you for being willing to learn Polish but according to some, Polish is one of the most difficult languages in the world to learn.

I'm married to a Slovak so I have an idea of how hard it is... The hardest one I've come across though is Hungarian. That's a real pig to learn.

[Mars]

My wife (Polish) reckons Finnish or Hungarian are the worst European languages but the Slavic family of languages (of which Polish is a member) isn't one that's immediately accessible to western Europeans.

For a start, pronunciation will get the better of you. They tend to use a lot of consonants without kindly separating them with vowels. This leads to a very staccato sound, and can be quite difficult to get your British tongue around. I've just about mastered that bit.

Next is grammar. In western European languages you can normally forget grammar for present-tense conversational stuff but not with Polish. You need to know the context of the conversation (travel, negatives, etc) because the bloody NOUNS have different endings. At least western Europeans only change the verb endings (except plurals).

Anyway, you might be best-off learning like children do. They learn individual words, then phrases. I can know many phrases now but the grammar is largely a mystery to me. I sometimes astonish my wife by making up a sentence out of the words and bits of phrases I've learned. I normally butcher the endings but she is pleased to hear me having a go anyway.

My wife speaks only Polish to our children, the eldest (at 4yo) is fluent and now translates for me. I'm gushingly-proud of him, especially when his Babcia (Polish nanny) gets him on the phone and he describes his day to her in Polish.

I try to engage with the family in Polish, and between taking the piss out of me ("Why are you speaking in Polish Daddy?"), my son corrects me or just rabbits on in Polish to me by way of testing how much I understand.

Anyway, it helps to have it spoken around you. We have Polish satellite TV too, and listen to the evening news every night (an hour). Having it around me all the time means I can understand quite a lot of people's conversations... well, I can understand the context but mostly the detail is lost to me.

This is after 8 years of marriage and 3 years of formal lessons (2.5 hours a week). Yes, I'm crap at languages but I'm very pleased to be able to get along with our (many) Polish friends now.

Advice: Stick post-its on the cupboard doors around the kitchen, the front door, your wardrobe, the shower cubicle with whatever words and phrases you are trying to learn that week and repeat them to yourself every time you open that cupboard, door, the shower. Over time it'll seep into your consiousness.