POLISH

Its grammar isn't very complicated, but its words, to an English speaker, seem to be very difficult to pronounce. There doesn't seem to be too many vowels in the words.

>>Being a Russian native, I find Polish totally incomprehensible

that's really strange, Polish is absolutely comprehensible for most russians, i ve never learnt polish but while listening to the radio i could understand the main point of the reportage, i wanted to learn polish, but after looking at the grammar and the vocabulary i realized that with my knowledge of russian i can be understood and i can have a small talk with polish guys, at least all insults are the same in both russian and polish;-)

written polish i understand even better, but the language really lacks vowels taking into account that all slavic languages are not very rich in this sence.

polish ----- russian

przemysl - promysel
drzewo - derevo
strzelac' - strelat'
widziec' - videt'

it seems to me that Z is in each polish word, awful;-)

Z is in every Polish word because it's used in combination with other letters to transcribe certain sounds for which there are no letters in the Latin alphabet. Cyrillic is the best alphabet for Slavic languages and words don't seem as messy and you don't have 3 letter-combinations for one sound.

The only occurrence of "z" whose significance I don't understand is when it follows "r". How does that affect the pronunciation?

>> Polish belongs to the west-slavic subgroup of slavic languages. The other west slavic languages are Czech, Slovac and Sorb. <<

Well, that explains why I also tend not to understand many words in movies from (former) Czechoslovakia.

>>The only occurrence of "z" whose significance I don't understand is when it follows "r". How does that affect the pronunciation?

rz can be read as SH or ZH depending on the position in the word:

morze=mozhe=see
rzadko=zhadko=rarely
marzec=mazhets=march
trzeba=tSHeba=one need
powietrze=povyetSHe=air

but sometimes its RZ

zmierzly = disguasting

>>Cyrillic is the best alphabet for Slavic languages

well, poles will tell you that they use special symbols above letters to show that they are soft while russians have to use "soft sign", evryone writes as he got used to, for me russian can be only in cyrillic, polish only on latin:)

Why put the letter "R" into Polish words when they don't seem to be pronounced? Why not dispense with the letter and make it edundant...sorry..redundant?

Bad news for you…

Jezyk polski jest bardzo trudny...

I am a native Romanian and Polish speaker. Personally I find it a challenge to switch speaking between Romanian (Romance) and Polish (Slavic).Ohhhh! Romanian its so much easier…Believe me! (I love both languages)

Polish language is considered to be one of the most difficult European language.

Ex:
Hours of instruction required for a student with average language aptitude to reach level-2 speaking proficiency…

GROUP I Italian, Romanian, Spanish 480 Hours
GROUP II German, English, French 600 Hours
GROUP III Polish, Finnish, Hungarian 750 Hours
GROUP IV Arabic, Chinese, Japanese 1320 Hours

The Polish language with other Lekhitic languages (Kashubian, Polabian), Upper and Lower Sorbian, Czech and Slovak, belongs to the West branch of Slavic languages.

Polish Dialects: Great Polish (spoken in the northwest), Little Polish (spoken in the southeast), Mazovian (Mazur), and Silesian (My dialect)

Linguist,

Is it safe to say that RZ = ZH if followed by a vowel (and perhaps at the end of a word) and RZ = RZ if followed by a consonant?

Linguist,
Maybe I would look weirdo, but even Ukranian is Greek to me sometimes :)

As someone who knows Serbo-Croatian, it's easier for me to understand written Polish than to understand rapid-fire Polish speech. However, I think Slavic speakers can always get the gist of what is being said in another Slavic language.

And, if really pressed, I'd say I would be able to communicate (or semi-communicate) with a monolingual Polish speaker.

Romanian,
Don't forget that Polish is also spoken in South-Eastern part Lithuania. And it is a very strange dialect of Polish... Heavily influenced by Russian or Belarussian...

>>Why put the letter "R" into Polish words when they don't seem to be pronounced? Why not dispense with the letter and make it edundant...sorry..redundant<<<

why do english people write "brought" and not "brot", "night" and not "nait"? :) Language is always developping, pronouciation indeed

>>Is it safe to say that RZ = ZH if followed by a vowel (and perhaps at the end of a word) and RZ = RZ if followed by a consonant<<

at the end of the word it is always SH and unfortunately you ll have to remember when to say RZ, sound ZH is always before vowel or between vowels, BUT if RZ is after unvoiced consonant like in KRZYK then its KSHYK, confusing a bit, yeah?

and Romanian, i disagree with this division languages into groups, this is all very subjective, one person can't read good enough in his native language, the other one can speak fluently 5 and more languages, everything is relative

mishka, i m also weird coz, sometimes i understand polish or ukrainian better then russian spoken by particular persons;-)

>> at the end of the word it is always SH and unfortunately you ll have to remember when to say RZ, sound ZH is always before vowel or between vowels, BUT if RZ is after unvoiced consonant like in KRZYK then its KSHYK, confusing a bit, yeah? <<

Actually, no, as far as voicing and unvoicing go. But aren't there rules for when to pronounce RZ and RZ, or do you really just have to memorize individual words?