The difficulties of Polish language for a Hungarian
“How did you manage to learn Polish? This is a really difficult language!” I can hear such sentences quite often while talking with my Hungarian acquaintances, relatives or some new people I have just met for the first time. I always answer that each language has some difficulties and that being ambitious and patient enough, you can learn any language. Nevertheless, Polish also has some challenges for those who learn it, such as other languages, too.
At the beginning it was for me such kind of challenge to distinguish “ś” (a “smiling” SH) and “sz” which is pronounced like “sh” in English. For a foreigner, these two letters may sound quite similarly. However, you really have to be careful since there is a “slight and subtle” difference between “proszę” (“please”, “you are welcome”) and “prosię” (“pig”). (This case is similar to the difference between English “s” and “th”. When you are on a sinking boat, it does matter whether you say to the ambulance in the phone that “you are sinking” or “you are thinking”.) It still happens to me that I have problems while pronouncing such words like “źdźbło” (“blade”) or “spostrzegawczość” (“perceptivity”), but even if my pronunciation is not always impeccable, yet I have the impression that Poles can still understand me and in my opinion this is the most important. One of my dear acquaintances in Hungary who also knows Polish, thinks that this language sounds like a bricked radio. However, I still find Polish pronunciation easier than the English one because in Polish you just have to memorise once how to pronounce “sz” (like English “sh”), “cz” (like English “ch”) or “ł” (like English “w”), in contrast to English where there are several possible ways to pronounce “a”, “e”, “g”, “o” etc. Therefore, Polish pronunciation is definitely more consequent and logical than the English one.
Sometimes I also have some problems with the grammatical endings. Generally, the fact that there are several suffixes and grammatical cases in Polish has never been weird for me since we also have a lot of them in our language. However, it is still strange for me that you have to say “Poproszę hamburgerA” (“One hamburger, please”) and not just “hamburger” because in Polish you have to use the accusative case after “(po)prosić”, but “hamburgera” is a genitive form. Nor can I understand why Poles say “Mam VolkswagenA” (“I have a Volkswagen”) because grammatically it would be correct to say “Mam Volkswagen”. The genitive case is sometimes difficult for me especially when I have to decline masculine nouns as they say „Nie znam tego językA”, „Korzystam z tego słownikA”, „Nie znalazłem tego kluczA”, but „Wsiadam do tego samochodU”, „Nie widziałem tego basenU”, „Korzystam z tego telefonU” etc. Even though this is sometimes difficult, after a certain period of time you can just feel which ending is the most proper one.
Alternations also happen to be a challenge because you say „zĄb“ (tooth) – „tego zĘbA“ (… of the tooth), „dĄb“ (oak) – „tego dĘbU“ (… of the oak), but for example. „kĄt“ (angle; corner) – „tego kĄta“ (… of the angle; … of the corner) (and not „kĘta“). The proper use of numerals also used to be hard since Poles have 17 (!) words to say f. ex. “two” (see the attached picture), but during a summer language course in 2015 in Wrocław I have participated in, our teacher, a true-born Pole, carefully explained the rules to us and, despite appearances, it turned out not to be so difficult at all and to be even logical.
Besides the above-mentioned language course, two Erasmus+ periods in Gdańsk, private lessons and my current PhD studies at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow, it also helps me a lot that I have a lot of Polish acquaintances with whom I have the opportunity to practise Polish and who also correct me when I do some mistakes what makes me always grateful. When I am asked how I speak Polish, I usually answer that I do not speak it as well as Adam Mickiewicz (great Polish writer and poet in the 18th–19th century) or Henryk Sienkiewicz (a significant Polish writer in the 19th–20th century) did, but I manage to say more than just “Good morning!”, “How are you?”, so somewhere in-between. Although I have my C1-level certificate in Polish (thanks to God for that!), I still try to improve my language skills every day, f. ex. by reading the Bible or several articles in this language, and by talking and writing to the Poles I know since you can always learn something new and enrich your vocabulary. Nevertheless, if you “put a language aside”, it may happen that it will “revenge itself” on you, by “getting gradually out” of your head.
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Áron Szabolcs Fodor