I was totally misty-eyed reading your comments. Thank you so much for being so supportive! And thank you for your constructive criticism.
\nThe blog and my grammar explanations will stay as they are. There was a single, lone email in favor of more sophisticated Swan-like approach, but unfortunately, my dear reader, you\u2019ve been outvoted and outnumbered.<\/p>\n
There was one comment, however, that surprised me. And when a similar sentiment was expressed in a direct email from another reader, I thought I\u2019d better take a closer look at this issue.<\/p>\n
The comment I\u2019m referring to was that Poles don\u2019t like when foreigners learn Polish, and that Poles don\u2019t want foreigners to learn Polish. Whoa! Now, wait a second! I\u2019m Polish and I applaud every foreign person who is willing and able to learn even if only five words of our wonderful language.<\/p>\n
But then, I started to talk to a few random people and ask them all sorts of questions\u00a0 \u201co cudzoziemcach kt\u00f3rzy ucz\u0105 si\u0119 j\u0119zyka polskiego<\/strong>\u201d (about foreigners who learn Polish), and wouldn\u2019t you know it! Not every Pole shares my opinion. That was a huge surprise, I must say.<\/p>\n But let\u2019s start at the beginning. So yeah, we\u2019re proud of our language. We (and here I am generalizing, of course) think it\u2019s a very difficult language. No, scratch that, not think. We KNOW it\u2019s a very difficult language. Go to any Polish shopping mall on any given Saturday and listen to the young and old, and you\u2019ll see just how difficult Polish is. So difficult, in fact, that the great majority of Poles tends to simplify it a great deal and use just several chosen words to express, well… just about everything. One of those words (and probably one of the very first words of Polish, if not the only word, that a native Pole will teach you) is so versatile it functions as a verb, noun, adjective, adverb, conjunction, exclamation, and probably a few other things too. So yes, now you know why. The \u201ck\u201d word is so immensely popular, because Polish is just too difficult and complicated, even for the average Pole.<\/p>\n And because our language is so difficult even for us, we simply consider it to be impossible to learn for anybody else.<\/p>\n Oh yes, foreigners can learn the basics, like ordering \u201cpi\u0119\u0107 piw<\/strong>\u201d (five beers) or explaining why they\u2019re in Poland to their brand new girlfriends \u2013 \u201cucz\u0119 angielskiego<\/strong>\u201d (I teach English). Add to that a couple of popular tongue twisters (to amuse their Polish drinking buddies) and you have the level of Polish skills that most Poles expect from a random foreign person. The problems begin if said foreign person speaks Polish more or less fluently. The natives raise their eyebrows and look on with obvious suspicion. \u201cWhy are you learning Polish?\u201d or \u201cHow the heck did you manage to learn our language so well?” (implying \u2013 \u2018do you have a Polish grandfather or are you a Mormon missionary?\u2019) are two of the most common reactions.<\/p>\n A foreigner speaking Polish is nothing but a direct attack on the very fierce Polish pride (remember? our language is supposedly one of the most difficult in the world and supposedly impossible to learn). And as odd as it may sound, that is the reason why some Poles (not all, but some, and the percentage is surprisingly high) will knowingly sabotage the foreigner\u2019s efforts to learn more. It may be done through incomprehensible lectures and explanations, always ending with \u201ceh, you won\u2019t get it anyway, you\u2019re not Polish.\u201d It may be done through showing the foreigner that his\/her knowledge and studies (even if said foreigner is an expert in a particular field) will never be a match for the knowledge of an average Pole. And when all else fails, they try to snow you with grammar. This bizarre one-upmanship when it comes to our beautiful (albeit very convoluted) language seems to be a national obsession.<\/p>\n The problem is that most foreigners get put off instead of taking it for what it really is \u2013 reverse psychology to motivate you to study harder, learn more and reach true native-like fluency.<\/p>\n (Oy, I don\u2019t even want to think what kind of comments this post will bring.) <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was totally misty-eyed reading your comments. Thank you so much for being so supportive! And thank you for your constructive criticism. The blog and my grammar explanations will stay as they are. There was a single, lone email in favor of more sophisticated Swan-like approach, but unfortunately, my dear reader, you\u2019ve been outvoted and…<\/p>\n
\nPolacy s\u0105 bardzo dumni ze swojego j\u0119zyka<\/strong> (Polish people are very proud of their language). It\u2019s been like that since\u2026 oh well, long ago when a guy named Miko\u0142aj Rej<\/strong> said something along these lines \u201cPolacy nie g\u0119si i sw\u00f3j j\u0119zyk maj\u0105<\/strong>\u201d (Poles are not geese and have their own language). He said that to convince the learned and sophisticated types of his day to write in Polish, and not in French, or some other Latin, or whatever it was that they used back in those olden times to write love poems and make shopping lists.<\/p>\n