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What makes learning Polish so easy?

| 46 comments | Category: guest post, particular languages

Today’s guest post is along the lines of my own posts that Chinese, Hungarian, Turkish, Czech etc. are easier than you think, from someone with good experience learning the umpteenth “world’s hardest language“, Polish!

It turns out that it’s not that bad after all! Polish can certainly be as hard or easy as any other language, but its difficulties tend to be more loudly advertised (especially by proud natives) than what is actually pretty straightforward about it.

Given the clear need for a little balance in the universe, I asked David Snopek, from LinguaTrek an American who grew up only speaking English, but now has pretty impressive sounding Polish, to chime in and offer some encouragement to those learning this language!

This blog post is based on this popular video that he made in Polish (click “CC” on Youtube to read subtitles in English):

Over to you David!

All over the internet people are saying that Polish is the HARDEST language to learn or one of the hardest.

This is a widely held view by many Poles (but not all!) and few will hesitate to share this opinion with foreigners or to defend the language’s honor if someone challenges it. I know because I’ve been learning Polish for about fives years (I’m an American – read this article in English or watch this video in Polish for my story!).

I regularly make videos in Polish on various topics and the only video I’ve ever made that still receives thousands of views per month over a year after it was publish is the one above (called Polski NIE jest jednym z najtrudniejszych języków na świecie; English: Polish is NOT one of the hardest languages in the world).

Personally, I think Polish is one of the most beautiful languages in the world! There are many great reasons to learn Polish. For me, learning this language has been a joy and, honestly, has changed my life for the better!

I don’t mean any disrespect to the Polish language – but I’ve talked with many people who rationalized giving up on learning Polish because it was the hardest language in the word and they don’t have a talent for languages. There are even more people who wanted to learn Polish – but gave up before they started, because they were convinced it was too hard.

This opinion isn’t helping anyone!

What makes Polish so hard?

I’ve seen many reasons given, but almost all of them focus the number grammatical forms:

Nouns can have three genders (some linguists count five)
Each noun and adjective can appear in one of seven cases
Verbs conjugate for gender, person, mood and time (depending on how you count, this makes over 25 forms of every verb)
Verbs come in two aspects (English doesn’t have grammatical aspect)

Are you scared yet? If you want more (although I don’t recommend it!), see the links I gave at the beginning of the article.

When something gets harder, something else gets easier

It’s my personal theory, that all languages are equally hard. I have no linguistic reference to back this up – only my own intuition and the stories of other language learners – but I think that our brains are only capable of holding a fixed amount of linguistic complexity.

So, if some aspect of the language is harder, than some other aspect is easier – or non-existent!

It’s true that there are lots of forms of each individual word in Polish. And it’s true that if you learn Polish, this will be a challenge for you. But many things that would be challenging in other languages AREN’T in Polish!

No articles

One of the most difficult pieces of grammar to learn in English, is when to use “the”, “a”, “an” or nothing at all. In fact, I don’t personally know any non-native speaker that uses them correctly all the time! This is usually how I can identify non-native speakers when their pronunciation is perfect.

(Luckily for people learning English, articles are also one of the least important parts of English grammar! If you use them incorrectly, people will still understand exactly what you mean.)

Unfortunately, for native speakers of English – when other languages also have articles, the rules for using them are frequently totally different!

In Polish, there are no articles! So, you don’t need to worry about them at all.

No word order

In English and many other languages, the order of the words in a sentence is very important to the meaning. “Jan loves Maria” means something different than “Maria loves Jan” and, of course, “loves Maria Jan” is gibberish.

When learning another language, you may encounter a word order different than that of your native language, providing you with an additional challenge.

In Polish, word order is mostly unimportant!

The following sentences all mean the same thing (“Jan loves Maria”):

Jan kocha Marię
Marię kocha Jan
kocha Jan Marię
Marię Jan kocha

You can simply speak as the words come to you and not worry about their order.

There are certain word orders that Poles would consider normal in a specific situation. But they are all understandable! This is used to great effect in music and poetry.

Few verb tenses

In English, we have very few verb forms (ie. the words don’t change much). For example, the verb “do” has only the following five forms: do, does, doing, did, done. But we have lots of verb tenses!

For example:

Present simple – I read everyday.
Present continuous – I am reading right now.
Present perfect – I have read this book before.
Present perfect continuous – I have been reading this book for two hours.
Future perfect continuous – At 5 o’clock I will have been reading this book for four hours.
Past simple – I read all day yesterday.
Past continuous – I was reading yesterday.
… and so on! In total, there are 16 tenses.

If you count tenses the same way in Polish, there are only 5! (Poles count them differently, they’d say there are 3 tenses and 2 aspects.) The following sentences: “I read”, “I am reading”, and “I have been reading” – would all be translated into Polish the same way: “czytam”.

So, forming the verb might be harder in Polish. But knowing when to use which tense, is actually a lot easier!

The alphabet is 95% phonetic!

In English, it can be difficult to know how to pronounce a word from it’s spelling. For example, compare the pronunciation of “oo” in the following words: book, soon, door, flood. It’s different in every word! And there’s no way to know that just from looking at them.

I am a native speaker of English, but even I’ve had the following situation happen to me several times: I’ll learned a new word from reading that I’ve never heard out loud. Then later in a conversation, I’ll try to use it but with the wrong pronunciation and no one knows what I’m talking about! It’s embarrassing, but it’s probably happened to everyone.

On the other hand, the Polish alphabet is almost entirely phonetic. Once you know the rules, you can look at any word and know how to pronounce it.

The opposite isn’t entirely true (hearing a word and knowing how to spell it) but it’s still a lot easier than in English!

Lots of vocabulary with Latin roots

Largely because of its relationship with the Roman Catholic Church, the Latin language has a long history in Poland. Because of this, many words of Latin origin have seeped into the language.

If you speak a language that has borrowed lots of words of Latin origin (like English!), there will be some familiar vocabulary.

For example, many words ending in -cja are directly related to English words ending in -tion:

motywacja – motivation
sytuacja – situation
promocja – promotion
… and many more!

How to get started?

I think the fact that so few people learn Polish helps perpetuate the view that Polish is so hard. I personally know dozens of people who learned to speak Polish at a very high-level. But frequently when I meet a Pole, they say I’m the first foreigner they’ve ever met who can speak Polish!

Please, help me change this!

Like learning any language, all that’s required is a little time, motivation and an effective method.

If you want to get started learning Polish, I recommend the following resources:

Natural Language Learning (Without a Teacher!) – My FREE ebook, which you will receive if you subscribe to my blog! In it, I describe the exact method I used to learn Polish and how to create your own method that will allow you to learn any language on your own. It’s available in both English and Polish.
Don’t start learning Polish with the grammar! – An article on my blog where I try to convince you NOT to do what most Polish language courses do: focus on nothing but grammar for years before actually having contact with the real language.
Real Polish – A blog and podcast in Polish with some excellent content for learners.

I wish you the best of luck in your language learning journey!

Do widzenia! Pozdrawiam!

Any comments, or other words of encouragement for learners of Polish? Share them with us in the comments below!

***********************

Enter your email in the top right of the site to subscribe to the Language Hacking League e-mail list for way more tips sent directly to your inbox!

If you enjoyed this post, you will love my TEDx talk! You can get much better details of how I recommend learning a language if you watch it here.

This article was written by Benny Lewis

Comments: If you liked this post or have anything to say, please leave a comment! I love reading them
Just keep in mind that I’ll delete any rude, trolling, spammy, irrelevant or way off-topic comments. If you have a general language learning question, please ask it in the forums. Otherwise please use the search tool on the right for any other question not related to this post.

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Marek

Pozdrowienia z Polski!

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1046691305 Veronica Nelson

Wow, I’m a native and I didn’t even know English had that many verb tenses! It’s funny how you just learn things without learning the grammar behind them for your native language. I don’t know why everyone insists you HAVE to learn grammar first with a second language. I don’t mind it because it helps me learn, but there are other ways to learn a language. Your mind is amazingly good at picking up patterns.
Thanks for the awesome blog post! I’m not learning Polish, but this is applicable to any language!

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000704616791 Edmund Yong

Agreed! Native normally don’t have to learn grammar. I had a hard time in English Tenses and super irregular pronunciation. I’m a native Chinese and learn English in school since kindergarten but schools are always terrible in language teaching so it ended up many Malaysian people can only write English. I’m lucky to be helped by ‘Harry Potter’, films ,songs and so forth. umm… Chinese learner, is there any tenses at all in Chinese? I think there isn’t.

Rémi

Very interesting. I have a polish friend that might want to help me with that!

MidlifeSinglemum

There is a lot of Polish and Russian that has seeped into Modern Hebrew because of the nature of the first big Jewish immigration in the 1880s. So we also use words such as ‘informatzia’, ‘motivatzia’ and ‘protectzia’. Hey, I can speak Polish and I didn’t even know it!

http://twitter.com/kantanda Kantan da!

Cześć!

Wow, David, I’m a native Polish speaker and teacher and I always think that Poles are just as easily impressed with foreigners speaking their language as Japanese people (commenting on someone who an say “Hello” – “Nihon-go ga jouzu desu ne” [You are veru skilled in Japanese!]). this is because we are aware that we have high amount of difficult phonemes and the case system more complicated than in neighbouring countries. But I am more than glad that someone who LEARNS Polish is able to advocate its non-complex features.

You sir, deserve a big, fat hug!
*tulas*

http://www.facebook.com/freekarol Karol Darvas

Polish is also difficult because of its pronunciation. I know there is a difference between ś and sz or between ć or cz. But I dont know how to make the ś and ć sounds.

http://twitter.com/tomfrompoland Tom from Poland

For Polish natives the same is in English, for example a in apple, bad etc. It’s hard because we don’t have this sound in our mother languages.

http://www.linguatrek.com/ David Snopek

Well, I think this comes in stages. First of all, there are very few words where mixing up ć and cz can change the meaning of the word. And when there is, context will almost always indicate which it is. But after listening to lots of Polish, you will slowly be able to hear the difference. Once you can hear it reliably, you’ll eventually learn how to pronounce it.

I’m still working on learning how to pronounce it, but I can hear it when native speakers speak now.

Best of luck in your Polish studies!

Regards,
David.

http://howlearnspanish.com/ Andrew

This is fantastic, I’ve just been learning a few things about Poland that made me much more interested in visiting there than I was before and I much prefer to become at least moderately proficient in the native language of a country prior to visiting it for any period of time (anything more than a few weeks), so I’ve been kind of wondering about whether I should learn Polish and if so when and how and all that whatnot.

I completely understand what you’re saying about all languages being roughly equally difficult which makes perfect sense when you think about it: they all do the same thing, express what people want to say, and people want to be able to say about the same amount of stuff the world over–the Japanese don’t have significantly more things to say or express than the Poles or French or Brazilians, you know? So those languages will all be of approximately the same ‘size’ if you will, some of them might be a bit more efficient than others but it’s almost certainly not going to be by a significant margin–we’re all about the same average level of intelligence and therefore no one’s language is going to be significantly easier or more difficult than anyone else’s. I’m not sure that made the best of sense but that’s sort of how I’m conceptualizing it.

Excellent article and video, I’ll be sure to look you up when I start into Polish.

Cheers,
Andrew

TLH

Thank you for posting this! I’ve been studying Polish for about a month and it’s really not as difficult as people make it out to be as long as you’re persistent. Although I might have had a head start, because I already speak German, so the idea of a case system isn’t so scary to me anymore. Even the cases are manageable if you see enough examples of them being used correctly. Polish is such a beautiful and expressive language.

http://mainlymagyar.wordpress.com/ Bliddy

Great post!
I wrote an article on my mainlymagyar blog about how “Hungarian is the Hardest Language in the World!” (it isn’t really!!) All languages are difficult – and all of them are easy! It really does depend on your motivation and your mindset.

http://twitter.com/KarolGajda Karol Gajda

1) Thank you for posting this.
2) I have no clue what anybody is talking about when they mention grammar rules in English, much less Polish. If I had to take an English exam I would likely fail. (I used to use English classes as nap time.) How is it possible I can write/read/speak English?
3) I speak Polish. Grew up in the US (since before age of 1), but was born in Poland. I’m currently in Wroclaw.

I mess up a lot speaking Polish, but everybody understands me, and I think more than anything else that is most important. My pronunciation is pretty darn good, but I use unnatural word orders/tenses/all that other stuff. And my vocabulary is lacking compared to my English vocab.

I have also heard many Poles and foreigners say the language is difficult. “How often do you use it outside of a classroom?” Answer is usually, “I don’t.” Well, Spanish (or insert your favorite “easy” language here) is difficult for *me* since I don’t use it in real life situations either.

It’s an issue of perspective and it’s not unique to just languages.

I’ve heard Guitar is a difficult instrument. But so is piano. And so is harmonica. And so is every instrument until you learn it. I’ve played guitar for most of my life so it’s easy and I could probably teach most people to play a song within 30 minutes. I’ve played piano for much less of my life (and never have one to play on) so it’s a lot more difficult. And harmonica I’ve practiced for about 2 weeks so it’s “the most difficult instrument in the world.”

Thanks again.

Pozdrawiam!
-Karol

http://www.linguatrek.com/ David Snopek

Dzięki. Osobiście przetłumaczyłbym np. “I have been reading for two hours” na “Czytam od dwóch godzin”, więc to miałem na myśli. Pozdrawiam serdecznie, David.

http://www.linguatrek.com/ David Snopek

Thanks! Well, the problem is that if it had articles, the rules to use them would probably be different. I don’t speak Spanish, but a buddy of mine does and one day he tried to explain to me how articles work in Spanish since you can end up with phrases like El David (The David) which wouldn’t make sense in English. Needless to say, even with similar seeming articles, the rules are not 1-to-1 to English. The same goes for languages with lots of verb tenses – they wouldn’t necessarily line up with the system in your native language.

In any case, that’s awesome that you’re learing Polish! I wish you luck on your language learning journey – let me know how it goes with Harry Potter!

Regards,
David.

http://www.linguatrek.com/ David Snopek

Dzięki. Pozdrawiam serdecznie, David.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_YCINJXODIKMDMME47X447A3XC4 S.D.I.

Honestly, I think the hardest thing about any language is vocabulary. I think people make too much out of grammar and phonology. The later comes naturally with exposure, whereas the former *will* take longer if it’s futher away from your language.

Also, I don’t know if it has to do with Catholicism. Serbia is a historically Orthodox country, and the language is full of Latin loans (we also have motivacija, situacija and promocija). Although granted, we do share our language with historically Catholic and Muslim peoples (Catholics and Bosniaks).

http://www.linguatrek.com/ David Snopek

I agree completely! I even wrote an article about it:

http://www.linguatrek.com/blog/2010/12/vocabulary-the-biggest-challenge-in-language-learning

But for some reason, people do tend to focus on grammar and phonology.

To the Catholic connection: you know… I think you’re right. Latin did get more use in Poland due to Catholicism, but that probably isn’t why those words are in Polish. Because there are many similar words in Russian too! I’m not sure who to blame: Rome, use of Latin in academia, etc? In any case, those loan words are there now!

Best regards,
David.

http://twitter.com/rooshv Roosh

I love Polish women.

http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny Lewis

Me too

http://www.linguatrek.com/ David Snopek

Nie dokładnie. Bo “I have been reading for two hours” znaczy nie tylko, że “czytałem przez 2 godziny” ale, że nadal teraz czytam. “I was reading for two hours” znaczy dokładnie “czytałem przez 2 godziny”. Mam nadzieję, że to ma sens! Pozdrawiam, David.

http://www.linguatrek.com/ David Snopek

Thanks! I absolutely agree. Regards, David.

http://www.linguatrek.com/ David Snopek

I met a Korean woman in Poland who spoke really good Polish! She actually had terrible problems with English and it was really hard for her. But I think it was a question of motivation.

I agree with your idea that it’s difficult to transform your way of thinking! I’ve seen Americans learning Polish encountering the same problem. I remember being on the Polish course, where I first attempted (and failed) to learn the language. There were people who said things like “Why do they do it that way in Polish? It’s stupid. The way we do it in English is just fine.” There was a resistence to the differences in the language.

In any case, I agree with the commenter below. It’s difficult if you look at it as difficult. If you just focus on communication, however, you’ll enjoy yourself and before you know it – you’ll have learned the language.

I wish you continued success with your Polish!

Best regards,
David.

http://www.linguatrek.com/ David Snopek

Thanks! I wish you continued success with your Polish! Regards, David.

Mariusz Jamro

Gre

http://twitter.com/waegook_tom Tom Stockwell

Ahh Polish…I was there for a couple of weeks earlier in the year. All I could say was, “nie mowie po polsku.” It came in handy. Definitely a tricky language, but they have the most satisfaction – I’m learning Korean (considered super hard for English speakers) but if you put your mind to it, it can be achieved!

Marion Cottil

Słuszne spostrzeżenia moje gratulacje i również pozdrawiam z Polski

http://www.linguatrek.com/ David Snopek

Hi Alex!

To be honest, I only have cursory understanding of grammar terminology. If you say “continuous” and “perfect” are aspects, I beleive you. But it’s definitely different than Polish’s system. In Polish, most verbs come in pairs with the same meaning: one you use when you want the imperfective aspect and the other for perfective. In any case, the Polish system always seemed simpler than the English on to me. But that is very subjective!

Thanks for the comment!

Regards,
David.

Pippa

I really want to learn polish and I have some of the basic pronunciation and meanings down ok but the section where you point out grammer is NOT the place to start really encouraged me as I’d dived right in with the vocab and phrases.

http://www.linguatrek.com/ David Snopek

Yeah, in Polish there is something similar: the word “się”. And there is a natural place for it to land that will sound best for native speakers. BUT you can put it anywhere and they’ll still understand, it’ll just seem a little unnatural. This is actually something that I’ve only recently started to make headway on! In the past, I just put it after the verb for simplicity but now I’m starting to feel where it should go. But it’s taken a while.

I wish you further success with your Czech!

Best regards,
David.

Sam Tureski

This is amazing! Thank you so much!!

Donna

I’m ready to explode!!! I’m currently living in Warsaw and taking a language course to help me learn Polish and I’m having a nightmare with the “Tense’s” I just can’t get past them, just when I think I’ve cracked it, along comes another huge confusion. I don’t understand how I could learn properly without familiarising myself with the 7 tense’s first. I’m doing OK with my understanding, reading and pronunciation (although I still avoid saying the Polish number 3 or anything involving it damn you English tongue!)

Thank you for this site, I’m going to have a good look around and see if I can pick up any tips to make it a bit easier.

Oh speaking of the “Polish is so difficult” brigade, the best statement I’ve heard is – Learning Polish is only for intelligent people I think I’d best quit now if that’s true

Vadim

If you know polish then you know ukrainian language. I’m ukrainian man and I understand almost every polish sentence when I reading It and sometimes I can understand real polish talk.

So If you want to hear some ukrainian words that are similar with polish you can contact me ar skype: go.mirgorod

Zosia

I’m amazed! I’ve never heard any foreigner who can speak Polish like David, with little mistakes. I learn English and French and I’d like to speak these languages so fluently. Congratulations – you have convinced a Pole that Polish is easy. I love English and I must say, articles are so annoying! But I find the pronounciation prettier than ours.

I wonder what you think about Polish spelling, I mean, the use of “rz” and “ż”, “u” and “ó” etc. Many native speakers have problems with it.

Bardzo mi się spodobał ten artykuł Chciałabym kiedyś porozmawiać z kimś uczącym się pięknego i, jak się okazało, wcale nie trudnego języka, jakim jest polski.

ewa

Hey I from Polen and now I live in Canada. We can help each other. Send me @ ewaklepin@gmail.com

http://www.facebook.com/natalia.j.bednarz Nattie Natalinkaa Bednarz

Im polish.. and this everything in this post makes polish more complicated than it should be.. it’s not this hard…

john tylor

awesome!

Mrs Gacia

I am married to a polish born Australian. I have always admired his language duality and now that we are planning children I want them to grow up bilingual. I started polish speaking classes at evening school. I was amazed how many English speaking third generation poles were there because they wanted to be able to speak to their emigrated elderly grandparents in their native tongue as they were dying. Where there used to be shame in the early 80′s after fleeing communism, to speak polish, I feel there is a real resurgence in the admiration for the language. I tried to learn, and gave up because it was too hard. However after 6 weeks in Poland for my honeymoon I began to dream in polish and string phrases together, linking nouns I knew. When I left my mittens at the snowboarding shop, I went back and said ” proshe je jest scarpekta renka?” (excuse me where are the socks for hands?! ) my husband and the staff were amused and delighted that necessity had taught me so well! Your article has given me renewed enthusiasm, and I’ve always thought that watching soap operas and listening to songs helps too. Thanks again and good luck everyone! Aussie wife who has learnt to wash up the polish way x

Raxit

“Then later in a conversation, I’ll try to use it but with the wrong
pronunciation and no one knows what I’m talking about! It’s
embarrassing, but it’s probably happened to everyone. ”
This happened to me! I heard about and looked up the definition of “suave”. I used it in a conversation, but my friends had no idea what “sweyv” meant. I felt so stupid >.<
Great post! I'm studying Polish and this is good encouragement.

amine !

this blog is the reason i’am learning polish dzięki !

Sylwia

Znalazłam ten artykuł przypadkowo i muszę powiedzieć, że jestem pełna podziwu jesteś świetny, mówisz bezbłędnie i płynnie. Gratuluję! Musiałeś włożyć wiele wysiłku i pracy, by osiągnąć tak niesamowity efekt!

Sara

I learn Chinese. It has five (with the neutral one) tones, not seven.

I’m Polish and I think your Polish is very good, your mistakes are tiny, many Poles make more mistakes than you do;)

Katica

Think about it this way…if children can learn the language as a child … admittedly they hear it constantly …then surely it is not too hard for us Adults to learn it too,,,the problem with being an adult is we have the convenience of giving up…bored or lack motivation or delay it etc…where as a child you need to understand to survive…

So sure languages are hard but are they really ? or is it our accustomed to comfortability that is disallowing us to delve further and to continue to learn said language we desire…?

Like I said if children are born not able to speak anything but proceed to understand and speak as children a very *difficult* language…which they have no knowledge it is difficult they just hear and mimic it etc…adults should have that advantage of already being able to get a kick start…since we already understand how words work etc…

So it’s *ourselves* that make it seem hard it’s inside us…we already form these thoughts…of it being hard…children – babies don’t …they just follow and mimic and start to hear the words over and over again…they don’t form these obstacles… we as adults do…

By the way I’m trying to learn the Polish Language…I wish to one day live in Poland…

Max

disagree. French and German were a lot easier than Polish. Using incorrect declination sounds funny whereas if you miss off an article it doesn’t affect the understanding in general. English is a lot easier at a basic level but starts to become more difficult with the introduction of phrasal verbs. I have many friends who are fluent in other languages but still struggle with Polish so whole heartadly disagree with your analysis.

http://www.facebook.com/harld.castillo Harld Castillo

I started to study Polish less than a week ago. My native language is Brazilian Portuguese and I learned English on my own throughout the years and now I give English classes online. I’m using the Michel Thomas Method to learn Polish. I’m acquainted with the Method and I find it very useful, fun to work with and easy. Its focus is on sentences with the verb conjugation in all tenses as a primary factor. I’ve already learned a few thing in Polish with only some 20 minutes of audio like, Czy Pani ma nie jest tego? Co Pan czita? Czy to jest bank czy teatr? -To jest bank.
It actually doesn’t sound so bad as it looks when we read it.

arturo

If you think it from another point of view… having 5 verb tenses instead of 16… to express the same ideas… it makes Polish again more difficult than English… I don’t agree with the video. There are languages much more complicated than others.
Arturo,

What makes learning Polish so easy?

What makes Polish so hard?