Earlier this week, I told
some friends that learning Polish
makes me want to drink – EVERY DAY!
I’ve been taking intensive
Polish classes for 2+ months now (which is why the blog has been a little more
quiet lately) here in Warsaw. I thought Level 1 was alright as I learned some of
the language basics, and I passed with flying colors.
But now, I’ve hit a major roadblock
in Level 2.
“Jestem zła!” (I am angry!)
I’ve even told my teacher
and my private tutor this! Polish makes me angry!
Polish is by far the most
difficult language I’ve had to learn so far in my expat life. (I also knew some Spanish, French and Italian before we moved abroad.) I thought learning
Turkish was awful, but I was wrong. Turkish has a few rules and made
sense once you understand those rules. As my Turkish teacher always said,
Turkish is “çok ekonomik!” He was
right!
But
Polish has more rules than I can or want to understand! Just when I think I
understand a little, the endings change and then they change again! Why?
And
there’s like 6 different verbs to say I go. Why?
Don’t even get me started
about the cases – nominative, accusative, dative, instrumental and genitive – I don’t even know what the hell these things
are in English!
I just want to learn
enough Polish that will help me in my every day life just like I learned enough
Turkish to help me when we lived in Istanbul. I want to be able to communicate!
 |
| Yesterday, I made my own Polish flashcards at home. |
Polish also makes me angry
because I just want to get it! I’ve always been a good student, so the fact that
I can’t understand it makes me angry. I either want to cry or go have a drink!
I basically need to
memorize the phrase in Polish and forget asking why.
At least, I have learned
enough Polish so I can go to the market and not look like a foreign idiot anymore. Most Poles seem
happy that I’m trying to speak Polish and will repeat something for me if I don’t
understand, especially the numbers.
I’ll keep trying to learn
Polish. Yavaş, yavaş.
At the end of the day, at least
I can go to a bar and say “dwa duże piwo proszę.”
The bartender doesn’t care
that I didn’t conjugate the endings correctly.
Thanks for listening to my
rant!
NOTE: A huge thanks to the Polish website/forum called Inside-Poland for republishing my article about learning Polish! Here's the link to that article:
Finding Polish a Difficult Language to Master? Don't Worry, You're Not Alone!
NOTE: A huge thanks to the Polish website/forum called Inside-Poland for republishing my article about learning Polish! Here's the link to that article:
Finding Polish a Difficult Language to Master? Don't Worry, You're Not Alone!
