CharlotteK

I would learn Czech before Polish (harder to find people to study with in the US, though. I don't know where you are based). Polish is hard to pronounce but I found Czech pronunciation relatively easy...anyway, people understood me, which they often don't in other languages I stumble through. Czech is a highly inflected language, so if you have had Latin you'll get it -- otherwise, it's hard to learn all that grammar.

Pivo will get you a beer in any Slavic speaking land, but they might spell it differently. Anyway once you have a beer the rest is easy.

nytraveler

The point is that some words are similar in many languages since they have all been adopted from another foreign language. For instance the fact that "restaurant" is almost the same is Russian has nothing to do with the Russian language - but that the Russian court adopted French names for a lot of "new" things when Peter the Great first opened the country up to the West.

annhig

For instance the fact that "restaurant" is almost the same is Russian has nothing to do with the Russian language >>

the trouble is that it reads "Pectopah" which does not make life easy for non-cyrillic readers.

tomboy

In Slovak, which is quite similar to Polish, the phonetic "Ah-no" means yes. And that's an easy mnenome.

Good luck, Dan.

nytraveler

Precisely - for Russian you need to learn a whole new alphabet as well as language. But hearing a russsian say restaurant is understandable - but still has nothing to do with indo-euorpean relationships = but adoption straight from another language.

danon

Before going to Prague I learned a bit of Czech . Since I speak another Slavic language
it was not that difficult....I could order meals. and communicate with shopkeepers, but
when I tried to watch TV....I did not understand a word.
Even if there are some similarities with languages we know,
being able to speak and understand a foreign language with ease takes years of studying.

Dave_Ohio

If you wish to challenge yourself, why not master the Cyrillic characters? It is not that difficult if you have some familiarity with Greek characters. You can then read Russian words phonetically (albeit slowly), since the pronunciation is fairly regular (much unlike English). However, as I hinted above, Russian vocabulary is a whole 'nother matter. Get a good English-Russian 2-way dictionary.

None of this is going to help you when traveling in Poland or the Czech Republic, but it is good intellectual exercise.

farrermog

"…once you have a beer the rest is easy." - great phrasebook title!

Apropos German (wish I'd kept it up), this from an interview of Dr Manfred Rommel [son of the Field Marshal, and former long serving mayor of Stuttgart] in John Gimlette's highly recommended btw, in spite of the title, <i>Panther Soup; A European Journey in War and Peace</i> -

"Since 1972, he told me, the [German] death rate had consistently exceeded the birth rate. 'The country's shrinking. In fact, we have the fastest shrinking population in the world… We're slowly fading away! And don't bother learning German, because we don't. Everyone wants to speak English.' " p. 367

annhig

And don't bother learning German, because we don't. Everyone wants to speak English.' " >>

tell that to our german guests. many don't speak great english, especially the ones from what was East Germany. they like being able to speak to us in german, especially when there's a problem.

Daniel_Williams

I appreciated and read every word from every one of you.

Russian and Czech crossed my mind too and seem like interesting options, but I already thought I was being indecisive enough as it is wobbling between German and Polish. And as for whether words are borrowed from another language or actually stem from a common Indo-European root, I'm appreciative of whatever eases the process of language learning.

Seamus

Yes, it is always interesting to learn how certain words came to exist in a language - e.g., in Russian Вокзал (vokzal) = train station after the British Vauxhall engineers who built them; парикмахер (parikmakher, or peruke maker) is barber; potato is картофель (kartoffel, in German)

Other linguistic trivia bits that have stayed with me:
The same word мир (mir) means world and peace.
The concept of safety can only be expressed using a compound word - безопасность (bezopastnost) - meaning without (без) danger (опасность); safety as a primary concept does not exist.

lynda_berlin

Researching for our upcoming Poland trip I've found a few words that I recognise from German, there's the Jarmark in Gdansk (Jahrmarkt) and a Hotel Spichrz (Speicher)in Torun. And looking at the hotel reviews in Polish on booking.com gives you a few more words that we obviously share (Latin roots). Years ago listening to Slovene friends talking I recognised something very like Hochzeit (a wedding) and Waschmaschine.
Polish friends once asked me how similar Catalan and Spanish were, if mutually intelligble. I asked them if they understood Czech and they said Slovak was the easiest for them (in fact Italian is easier for most Spaniards to understand than Catalan is).
I'm planning to meet up with a Polish friend to get some practice pronouncing Polish place names and some basics before I go. One guidebook recommends writing placenames down as foreigners' proununciation of names is hard for Poles to understand. I've found out how to pronounce Lodz but still need to get zloty sorted out!

Daniel_Williams

seamus-- Thanks for telling about the fascinating origins of those Russian words. Lynda_berlin-- I appreciated your sharing the suggestion to write down words as well as your experience with Polish pronunciation and the relationship between Slavic languages. Best wishes, Daniel

PeterB

Just to add to all great replies ;-) that there is Polish and Polish ;-) Academic Polish and regional slang Polish. Similar to e.g in USA Texan or pure New Yorker would speak ;-) wher not only accent but also words maybe different.
Now e.g. considering all border changes throughout years that Poland went thru there are areas of Poland where language is a mix of e.g. German ... e.g. Kashubia, Silesia region ...

Daniel_Williams

So, in thanks for all the advice I received here, I felt it was time to share my experience with Polish. I must say I’m glad I’ve given the language a go, picking up an Introductory Polish book with CD by Routledge, which I’ve found to be systematic & excellent for Spanish and Dutch; Polish so far does not seem to be an exception in language instruction, starting with the all important pronunciation.

There are *some* what I’d call Indo-European similarities: “matka” is mother, “brat” is brother, “siostra” is sister, “nic nowego” is nothing new (nix novo), “noc” is night (like “noche” Spanish), “czarny” is black (reminds me of charcoal), “moja” is my, “nasz” is our and “wasz” is your (reminds me of “nous” and “vous” in French), “kawa” is coffee etc… Let’s just say I’m thankful for all of these sorts of words (possibly 25%?) for which there’s the hook in my brain that I can latch on to my base of Romance and Germanic Languages; let’s say I’m extremely thankful for these words since some of *the rest of the words* are contorting my brain as I try to learn them. Examples of some of the *rest of the words* and relatively simple words at that:

przystanek = stop; przyjaciela = best friend;
odpoczywać= to rest; odwiedzać= to visit
naprzeciwko= opposite; wyjeżdżać = to go away;
przepraszam = I’m sorry; pierwszy = first

I find with words that are this alien to me, I have to say them about 20 times (while I go to the gym, I bring my list of Polish words with me and say them inaudibly while I’m on the elliptical trainer ), write down their conjugations (for verbs) , sleep on them, get up, say them another day 10 times more and then MAYBE I will have absorbed them. While my willpower wants to learn the words , my brain is saying “no, I don’t want to absorb you, word”. I think I probably learned 15 words in Dutch in the same amount of time it took me to learn naprzeciwko. Even short words like “kośćioł” = church took me about 3 days to stick.

I can’t imagine how hard it must be to try a language that has no hooks at all, like Arabic, Mandarin, Thai or Turkish. Let’s just say, I don’t think I’ll be taking on Nahuatl tomorrow. Nevertheless, I’m having fun with Polish and enjoying the challenge in a way; I’m glad I’m exposing my eyes and ears for the first time to that enormous linguistic group that is Slavic languages more in-depth while my mind is still relatively functioning. I’m already glad I’ve learned what I have so that I can pronounce Polish names; I feel kind of embarrassed at my ill-informed pronunciations of the past!

Thanks again for all the advice! Daniel

nytraveler

Well IMHO the simplest way to learn is to just do it verbally and get yourself comfortable that way before you even look at the spelling. I think you get more comprehension that way - although not sure about grammar. I learned French that way - on lesson 11 verbally before lesson 1 in written and can recall more of that - after 30 years of very rare use than I do of Spanish that I learned the usual way and studied longer.

But then I ignore grammar (just as I do in English) and just concentrate on basic tourist type communication. I know I sound like a not bright 3 year old when I speak - but it seems to work out for menus, directions and other basics tourists need. And I can understand way more than that after a day or 2 of re-exposure.

StCirq

<<I can’t imagine how hard it must be to try a language that has no hooks at all, like Arabic>>

I've spent a lifetime studying languages, and Arabic totally slayed me. I took 3 years worth of lessons (a couple of hours 3 times a week), and I guess at one time could say and write simple things, but I either never really grasped much or have forgotten almost all of it. I can exchange simple pleasantries with the guys at the gas station across the street (good morning, how are you, I'm fine thank you, have a good day, Allah be willing, I'm American...), and that's about it. Without hooks, the learning process is entirely memorization, which is fine when you're 5, not so much after 30.

Congratulations with the Polish, though!

Daniel_Williams

nytraveler-- I've noticed different styles of language learning work for different people. I can understand why your approach works for you. Perhaps by focusing on verbal communication first, it gets you enthusiastic about learning a language as you feel you're making progress on what is perhaps most important to you, verbal communication?

I tend to work best with a simultaneous focus on written and oral, at least for the (exclusively European) languages I've attempted. The nice thing about Polish is that the pronunciation is actually very regular once you're used to it (despite the fact that the spellings look very intimidating to an English-speaker). So if I see a word, I know how to pronounce it and even in many cases if I hear a word, I can piece together a few possibilities for the spelling.

st cirq-- Arabic does indeed seem intimidating. Given your extensive language experience and interest, I'm curious if you have ever tried an east Asian language with a different writing system, such as Mandarin, Japanese, Thai, Korean, etc...? If so, I'd be curious if you found Arabic as hard or worse.

StCirq

No, Daniel, I haven't attempted an east Asian language, and probably never will. I studied Russian, though, and a bit of Greek, and that plus the Arabic at least taught me that different alphabets don't intimidate me, but characters? I know I'd get hung up on perfecting the artistry of it. And because I'm a stickler for correct pronunciation, I'd be furious if I couldn't achieve the right tones, which I probably couldn't.

unoduetre

Daniel, learning some morphology (how the words are constructed) helps in the case of polish. Let me explain some examples you gave...

przy- means near, stać means to stand, so przystanek is a place you stand near to.
jechać means to go (by car, bus, train, everything that has wheels etc.), wy- means out, so wyjechać means something like go out/away.

pierwszy ~ first because:
p ~ f
ie ~ i
r = r
w
sz ~ s
y t

check if it is easier to learn if you cut the words into pieces:
na_przeciw_ko (see na, przeciw)
prze_praszam (see prosić)