Who's learning Polish/Doing courses?

Owen

Let's see who's busy learning Polish. I'm learning Polish in the Cork College of Commerce at the moment, it's Polish for beginners. Thankfully herself has perfect English, so it's more so that I can speak to her parents when we (regularly) visit them.

Anyone else? And why?

spurious

Just started Polish for Beginners in an evening class in Trinity, two evenings a week.
Many of the kids I teach are Polish and some of their parents have little English, so I thought it might help. It's also a country I have had an interest in as a result of a 30 year old pen-friendship, conducted through good German on her side and hammy German on mine.

Filan

Doing Polish 1 evening per week at Limerick Senior College...a graduate of German and a qualified English as a second Language Teacher....like languages and could assist my teaching...but primarily it's a labour of language love....

neil_hosey

My Girlfriend has, over the last 2 years, has turned our house into some kind of polish gaeltacht where she only speaks polish to me. I have to say, its working. I can now ger around when im over there!!

Dirk Gently

Any classes in Dublin in the morning time?
I work mostly evenings / nights so it rules me out of evening classes.

trevorku

I've been self-learning :Polish on and off for a while through books and CD's. I now live in Poland but I'm returning after Xmas coz I cant stick it unfortunately. However when I return I intend to do a course for Polish and maybe Russian as well. I'm 24 and have a Polish gf, however oddly having your gf teach you a language somehow never works out in my experience.

I know the basics, and can hold somewhat of a beginner conversatoion but I've a long way to go yet.

Piste

spurious wrote: »

Just started Polish for Beginners in an evening class in Trinity, two evenings a week.
Many of the kids I teach are Polish and some of their parents have little English, so I thought it might help. It's also a country I have had an interest in as a result of a 30 year old pen-friendship, conducted through good German on her side and hammy German on mine.

Spurious when are these classes on? I fell in love with Poland when I went on our school tour to Krakow last year and I'd love to learn the language!

spurious

Mondays and Thursdays 6.30 to 8.00. We started on October the 8th.
I have a feeling it's full for this year but they will no doubt start again next October, when hopefully I'll be doing the next level.

Trinity isn't cheap though - it's over 600 euro for the course.

When I was searching for a course there were other places offering courses for much less, but I figured you get what you pay for and our teacher in Trinity is excellent.

Owen

My Polish course is finishing tonight in the Cork College of Commerce, and when I get the notes done up in Word, I'll post a link to the file, as I have the Polish phrase, the phonetic pronunciation, and the english translation. Due to the popularity of the course, they're starting an intermediatery course in January!

Piste

spurious wrote: »

Mondays and Thursdays 6.30 to 8.00. We started on October the 8th.
I have a feeling it's full for this year but they will no doubt start again next October, when hopefully I'll be doing the next level.

Trinity isn't cheap though - it's over 600 euro for the course.

When I was searching for a course there were other places offering courses for much less, but I figured you get what you pay for and our teacher in Trinity is excellent.

I might take it up when i'm in college, might be a bit busy in 6th year for it! Thanks Spurious!

Sephiroth_dude

I've a bit of an offtopic question I've wanted answered for a while,but is polish,czech,slovakian,russian are they all similar languages?

teetotaller

they may sound similar for some people but generally they are not.

some of words are the same - but they have different meaning
some are the same and mean the same.

grammar is absolutely different.


so if u speak polish and don't have any basics of russian - u won't talk each other, but if u know just a little about russian grammar and basic words - u can communicate with russian about bacis things.

one easy example

english - what is your name ?
polish - "jak ci na imie"?
russian - " kak tiebia zawod" ? (pronounciation)

where

in polish "imie" is name
in russian "zawod" is name
in polish "zawod" is occupation


of course there is different spelling as russian has different alphabet.


the same is with other languages

czech won't understand russian etc.

jamaica

Sephiroth_dude wrote: »

I've a bit of an offtopic question I've wanted answered for a while,but is polish,czech,slovakian,russian are they all similar languages?

They belong to the same group of Slavic languages. There are different sub-groups here and e.g.: Polish, Czech & Slovakian belong to the West Slavic branch, whereas Russian is a n East Slavic language to put it roughly.

Some people claim it's possible for Polish people to communicate with Chech/Slovak/Russian people without knowing the language. I assume it regards just the very basic vocabulary/expressions.
Anyways, I'd say they are similar languages.

Sephiroth_dude

Cheers for the replies.....I'v asked a couple of the polish lads at work about this and they all tell me that czech and slovakian are very similar to polish and that they can understand czech and slovaks sometimes and russian to funnily enough........I wanna learn czech

m.arty

Sephiroth_dude wrote: »

Cheers for the replies.....I'v asked a couple of the polish lads at work about this and they all tell me that czech and slovakian are very similar to polish and that they can understand czech and slovaks sometimes and russian to funnily enough........I wanna learn czech

Undesranding of czech/slovakian or russian/ukranian depends on which part of Poland one comes from. For those from south it is easier to understand Czech and Slovakian people, and in east it is no problem to communicate in russian or ukranian, and people in west are more likely to speak german. Czech and slovakian are very similar but sometimes it's fun to speak to them because many word have completly different meaning.

andala

I remember watching Czech tv when I lived in Poland and being able to understand it. However, it may be quite embarrassing to assume ALL words that seem the same have identical meaning. I goofed once when I told my Czech cousin's boyfriend that my cousin went to look for him and used the Polish verb 'szukac' (meaning 'to look for'). To my greatest surprise in Czech it means...'to f**k'...ouch!

niallo87

I started learning polish level one in midleton tec in october and it lasted 10 weeks. im just learning it out of interest really! My teacher told me there would be a level 2 in spring but it doesnt seem to be in the evening course book!!! Do college of Com have a level 2?? How are you finding it??

Dasilva94

Does anyone know which language is harder to learn, Polish or Russian?

jamaica

Dasilva94,
When doing Russian you'll need to learn Cyrillic alphabet on top of everything else. I think Polish spelling rules are far more complicated than Russian, grammar and language structure in both languages are pretty similar. Being able to speak both I'd say learning Russian seems to be more fun.

!_Brian_!

Sephiroth_dude wrote: »

I've a bit of an offtopic question I've wanted answered for a while,but is polish,czech,slovakian,russian are they all similar languages?

My girlfriend, whos Slovakain, can speak Slovakian, Czech and Polish and can understand the gist of a conversation in Russian but cant speak it. The Russian she can understand a bit of as its a Slavic language as was said above. Polish and Czech she is fluent in because when she was a kid in the 80's all the cartoons used to be in Czech (this was obviously Czechslovakia at the time) and Polish so she learned it without really realising. Saying that tho she was telling me only the other day that she remembers being with her cousins as children watching cartoons and she'd be laughing at something said and her cousin's were like, "You can understand that?" That being Czech or Polish so not everybody was the same.

Since the seperation of Czech and Slovakia she reckons this multilingual norm will be seen a lot less when this generation of kids grows up, mostly because of the fact that all the TV shows are now in Slovakian.

Dasilva94

jamaica wrote: »

Dasilva94,
When doing Russian you'll need to learn Cyrillic alphabet on top of everything else. I think Polish spelling rules are far more complicated than Russian, grammar and language structure in both languages are pretty similar. Being able to speak both I'd say learning Russian seems to be more fun.

Thanks Jamaica. I've done a beginners course in Russian, because I've always wanted to learn a slavic language and Russian probably gives the best access in terms of Literature and History. Despite a lot of practice Cyrillic is not easy, especially if you don't have the stress for a particular word.

If I can get a place this Term I'll do Polish, which is more practical in that I can know what some of my coworkers are gabbing on about and it might give me another aspect on Russian!

upmeath

I'm taking Polish as an elective for 2 hours every Tuesday evening this semester in UCD, loving it so far.

jamai_0

Hi there,

I'm polish living here in Ireland since 5 years. If anyone need a help with polish language please let me know. Will help with pleasure.

regards,
Adam

Malice

I've got a couple of Polish audio CDs which I'm playing in the car so I can do something different when I'm driving too and from work. It's something different than listening to music in the car and for me at least it certainly beats the radio! What I have found with the CDs I have is that they are very narrow in their focus so that if you are talking to someone and they deviate slightly from what you know, it's difficult to understand.

I think that learning to speak conversational Polish is easier than trying to learn to read/write it. The same would probably hold try for Russian, especially when you take into account the Cyrillic alphabet.

teetotaller

Did any of u tried to learn some basic Polish with help of any Polish work mate, friend ?

It may be a good idea to ask Polish person whose english is not fluent if s/he could help u and then u will help with some English grammar

I think that it is easier to learn in 1 : 1 meeting even if "partner" is not a teacher than learning in class room where are 10 or 15 people.

Malice

teetotaller wrote: »

Did any of u tried to learn some basic Polish with help of any Polish work mate, friend ?

It may be a good idea to ask Polish person whose english is not fluent if s/he could help u and then u will help with some English grammar

I think that it is easier to learn in 1 : 1 meeting even if "partner" is not a teacher than learning in class room where are 10 or 15 people.

I speak the little Polish that I know with my Polish friends. Then they correct what I say or suggest better ways of saying things. I will help them with their English, especially with slang words and curses!

trevorku

I just started a polish course in the city centre, had my first lesson, seems good so far. Just hope that at the end I have at least conversational level polish, at least something to get me around when I go to Poland. I kind of understood everything in the first lesson as I've been self studying for like 3 years but after the fourth class I suppose is when I'll start learning the harder stuff. The teacher is nice though and friendly which is also a bonus. Theres just 3 people in the class at the moment but I guess that means more individual attention.

PolishWindow

I'm polish living in Limerick .If someone looking for help in polish I can help . I am also looking for English Native Speaker to encurage my English .
Please contact with me zib@mymeteor.ie

NialoF1

Started learning Polish through the internet a few months ago when I used to work with a few of them in Superquinn, just out of interest basically. I'm pretty crap at the grammar but most phrases I can kinda say are understandable. Found it quite useful when I was dealing with someone on ebay from Polska which proves I wasn't wasting my time learning the language

Might try Japanese for a laugh

elleA

I've been learning Polish from my co-workers for the past few months and I absolutely love it. Probably helps that my 'teachers' make it so fun. I'm finishing work in a few weeks though and moving back to Limerick. I hope I can find an evening course there to continute learning. I'm visiting Poznań in January for 3 weeks so I'm hoping my conersational Polish will be at an acceptable level by then...