*I realize that I am running the risk of sounding extremely ethnocentric and ignorant, all at the same time, so to be fair, I'm going to share some complaints about English as well.
I'm not looking for a pat on the back or commiseration so much as a way to express how learning about Polish has expanded my understanding of language in general.
Some quirks about Polish that make me grateful for English:
- I don't think I'll ever understand the purpose or need for nouns to have genders. Polish nouns are either masculine, feminine, or neuter, and every adjective has to be altered according to the gender of the noun it is modifying. Example: There's no "good book, good picture" similarity here. In Polish, it's "dobra ksiaka, dobry obraz" ("dobra" and "dobry" are the feminine and masculine versions, respectively, of the word "good"). So that basically means for every adjective I learn, I have to learn several versions of it so I know which one to put with each kind of noun.
- There's also no one way to make a word plural in Polish. Think how easy it is in English. Just slap an 's' on the end and you're there. . . usually. But in Polish, it could be anything. Sometimes you add an 'i,' sometimes you change an ending 'a' to a 'y.' Other times you change a few more letters, like with snake and snakes: waz and weze.
- I think the biggest difference between English and Polish, and the thing I have the most trouble with, is that Polish uses cases. There are seven different cases, so a word like "chicken" will have seven different forms, depending on how you use it in a sentence. (Not to mention seven OTHER forms if you're talking about chickens, plural.) Example: If it's the subject of the sentence, it's "kura." If you're talking about many chickens, it's "kury." If it's the indirect object, as in "I'll give the chicken some food," it's "kurze." If it's the direct object, as in "I love the chicken," it's "kure." If you're using it it in an instrumental way, as in "I got here by the means of a chicken," it's "kura." If you're talking about it with certain prepositions, as in "in/on/next to the chicken," it's "kurze." If you're directly calling to the chicken, it's "kuro." (On the upside, that last case is becoming more and more rare, so maybe I won't have to learn that one as thoroughly.)
- I just learned that for every past tense verb (walked, saw, etc.), you have to differentiate between the gender of who you're talking about. If you want to say "he had" or "she had," it's "on mial" and "ona miala."
- What's up with our crazy alphabet and pronunciation? (Remember the endless lists of homophones: wear, ware, where?) One very wonderful thing about the Polish alphabet is that the letters ALWAYS make the same sound. So you can basically read anything, once you know the alphabet, with pretty good pronunciation. (I just looked at the word "thoroughly" that I typed earlier. That's a perfect example of English madness.)
- There are so many tenses in English. In Polish, there are basically three: past, present, and future. But English? Here are a couple examples: "We had kept them waiting all day" or "I will have been teaching for 5 years."
- You can say "I must" and "you must," but you can't say "I musted" or "you musted."
I know this was long, complicated, and rather boring, but boy do I feel better for having gotten it out. It is pretty interesting though, to see how it works in foreign brains and to have your eyes opened to see how crazy English seems to other people. Basically, I'm just glad I already speak it.
I'd also love to hear about crazy quirks in other languages, if you'd be so kind to share.
I just wanted to say that i loved the case of talking TO the chicken. Also, please can we say "i musted, you musted"? I musted gotten lost. it also kind of sounds like 'mustard' with a british accent.
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