Polish

MaintiensLeDroit   Fri May 26, 2006 9:44 pm GMT
Are there any words in Polish which begin wih an "X"?
Lilly   Fri May 26, 2006 10:29 pm GMT
Xena
JakubikF   Tue Jun 27, 2006 3:54 pm GMT
No, there are not any polish words which begin with an "x". There's no such letter in polish alphabet, although sometimes we use it to write some foreign words like names or companies' names etc.
Marius   Wed Jun 28, 2006 1:16 am GMT
Polish sounds very interesting, very shee-chee-shee sounding, but the intonation is very melodic and pleasant to the ears. The grammar is a mess...one of the most complex grammar from Europe.

It's well known about Polish being one of the most difficult languages to learn.

C-is pronounced TS (like in german)
K- is over used
Ł - is like W (in english)
W- is V (as in Victor)

and now the mess begings - an interminable clusters of consonants like szcz dz etc and loads of diacritics...

a sample text:

"Opozycyjna Partia Regionów Ukrainy w proteście przeciwko łamaniu konstytucji przez "pomarańczową" większość, zablokowała trybunę Rady Najwyższej, nie pozwalając deputowanym przystąpić do obrad."


despite this mess, Polish sounds very pleasant to your ears. But the language as any slavic language , is easier to write using Cyrillic. The latin alphabet just doesnt include the sounds of Polish or any other slavic language, hence the messy look of Polish text, combining plenty of consonants and diacritics...

Overall Polish is a soft and nice language compared with other languages, germanic or baltic.

Serbian is very nice to hear ( the best of slavic ) and their folk music is BEAUTIFUL. (at the Eurovision 2006 - Serbia almost won, with a very beautiful and traditional serbian music)

Did you know that English is the only European language (with a latin alphabet) that doesn't natively use any diacritics at all ?

Well, despite that, English is the most difficult language to spell !!!
JakubikF   Thu Jun 29, 2006 7:56 pm GMT
Yes Marius, you're absolutaly right that Polish melody and sounds are pleasant. I also agree that latin alphabet causes this mess but I can't imagine to write Polish in cyrilic although I know cyrilic and I like this alphabet very much. You're also right saying that Polish is one of the most difficult languages in Europe. I must say I admire people who can speak Polish without making a lot of mistakes. Sometimes I think that some rules are so difficult for not native speaker that nobody could get it well...

I bet you aren't native polish speaker. I've got a question, do you learn Polish? If you want to have a "penfriend" to improve this beautiful language ;) that my e-mail jakubikf@wp.pl
Marius   Fri Jun 30, 2006 3:22 am GMT
“I also agree that latin alphabet causes this mess but I can't imagine to write Polish in cyrilic although I know cyrilic and I like this alphabet very much.”

Well try to imagine Romanian (a Latin language) written in Cyrillic, as it used to be written in Cyrillic, because of the Slavonic church influence. Another mess. Not anymore.

Well, despite the fact that Romanian absorbed Slavic loan words, Polish or any other Slavic language sound unintelligible to me. As a Romanian living in the Balkans, Eastern and Central Europe being a 90% Slavic hemisphere, it is very difficult for us to travel and communicate with our Slavic neighbours, because of the language barrier. Romania also suffered from cultural isolation, being the only European country isolated from its family language, reason why Romanian is an archaic Romance language.

As a Pole you can travel from the Baltic States down to Serbia, speak and understand some Slavic languages like: Slovak, Czech, Ukrainian, Serbian, etc.

I think that is the reason why I decided to study some Polish, being one of the major Slavic EU languages. And a communication tool in Central Europe.

In Europe you have three choices, and learn three main language families.

Anglo-Saxon family – learn English
Latin family – learn French
Slavic family - learn Polish (the major EU Slavic language) Russian is dead!!!

I speak Romanian, English and French, and I need to learn some Polish.

!!!Since the EU enlargement, absorbing the Slavic hemisphere, in the UK and Ireland, bank staff and some clerks were given Polish lessons to deal with the large number of migrants from Poland. Also because of the economical boom and relatively cheap labour compared with Western Europe. Polish language is increasing in popularity.

And for those who don’t know, it’s worth to say that Polish, Slovak, Ukrainian and Czech are more similar and interrelated than Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Romanian are.
JakubikF   Sun Jul 02, 2006 2:55 pm GMT
Muszę przyznać, że miło jest przeczytać, że myślisz o polskim jako o języku ważnym do uczenia się go. Nie uważałem tak dotychczas, sądząc raczej, że polski jest postrzegany w Europie jako interesujący, ale dziwny eksponat językowy; niemożliwy do nauczenia i bardzo trudny.

Tak jak już mówiłem, jeśli chcesz mieć kontakt z fajnym i miłym Polakiem, czekam na twój mail.

Pozdrawiam

I must say it's nice to read that you think about polish as an important language to learn. I haven't found it in that way because I thought rather that Polish is saw like an interesting but strange language exhibit in Europe; impossible to learn and extremely difficult.

As I said if you want to have contact with kind and nice native polish speaker - I'm looking forward to hearing from you.

Best wishes