And I'm back in 2020 :-D

In 2015 I posted the grandiose project "52 in 52". I intended to study a language for a week and post my discoveries and material here.
Well... it didn't go so well.
Polish was one of those languages, and I had posted some information about the Polish language, and that was it. So, now, when I am serious about learning Polish, I decided to blog there, and not here. But now I have caught Bulgarian (the language of the week after Polish), and I don't want to spoil it, so I am back in my own time, posting now.

So - I was rereading my blog posts, and noticed that I had posted the Finnish names for months, but not the Polish ones, so I corrected my lapse. And I realized a couple of things.

1) tłuczeń  crushed stone
- tłuc  to break; to shatter

pieczeń roasted meat
piec to bake, to roast

uczeń student, schoolboy, pupil, apprentice (someone who learns)
uczyć się to learn, to study

So... Sierpień... Sierp is the sickle, so... is there a verb "to sickle"? There is sierpać, but I don't have the slightest idea what that means. To cut? To sickle? Perhaps. So... sierpień would mean "sickling", "sickler", "sickled"?
Someone said sierpać is an archaic form of szarpać - to jerk, tug, yank.

Let's look at wrzesień, then. They say it comes from wrzos or wrzosiec, meaning heather... now... is there a verb "to heather"? I found this: "notes on heather use in basket making" and "I have been told that heather was traditionally gathered in September when the sap has risen and it is at its most flexible."
But I also found "wrzesić". To resurrect, to raise... Hmm... What is the connection?

Grudzień

"freeze the surface of the earth, cause clods to form on the surface of the earth"

grudzień ziemię grudzi i izby studzi

December freezes the soil and cools down the rooms

Day 7 of the 10 day challenge, and I have FINALLY managed to write the flashcards I was supposed to have written on day 0 :-D

I think there's a serious flaw in my 10 day challenge ;-) (But not going to change a thing anyway :-D I'll just say it starts WHEN the flashcards are written. So, today is day 1.)

Piąty dzień wyzwania Polski

I'm premenstrual, so I react on everything very emotionally. Learning that there is a word in Polish meaning "umpteen" - "someteen", "fewteen", that you actually can create words by taking a prefix and a suffix, made me cry :-D "So sweet!" :´)

(It's kilkanaście, BTW. "naście" means "teen" (short of "na dziesięcie") and kilka is "a number more than 2 and less than 10". And even that fact makes me cry :-D

Etymology of the Polish numbers

OK, so it's day 5, and I SHOULD be able to

- know the alphabet
- know the "useful phrases" on Omniglot
- know how to count to 1 million
- know the 3000 most frequently used words and their inflections (which makes it quite a lot more than 3000 words :-D As most frequency lists count "I, me, my, mine" as four different words and I count them as one.)
(BTW, this is pretty much crap. Or, well... the person who compiled it took some USonian movies and calculated the frequency from the subtitles, there's a lot of names on the list, some words that haven't even been translated (like Los Angeles - two words, San Francisco - two words - Las Vegas - two words...*sigh* And I wonder which movies he was watching. There were quite a lot of war and criminal/detective movies... I seriously doubt sergeant and sheriff are among the 3000 most common Polish words. But, what ever. Any words are fine.)

and I should be
- writing a diary entry every day, 10+ sentences
- posting the entry to some site and have it checked
- reading it out loud and have it checked on some site where that is done
- listening to radio
- learning a song every day and sing along
- watching at least 1 hour of television series or movie, without subtitles
- having discussions with imaginary people
- describing everything I do and see
- hopefully actually going out there and speaking with people.

 I found out that Poland has a radio channel with just audiobooks and radio theater... Wow...

I'm not. I have been writing my flashcards and studying through Duolingo, and writing the flashcards is taking too much time. So, basically, I'm still on day 0 :-D
I'm not worried. (yet :-D My language mood is still strongly on.)

 (It should be "dziewczyna" 

- the girl I like, her male friend/colleague, her ex, her father - me...)

mnie się to podoba - I like it / mnie się to nie podoba - I don't like it
czy ci się to podoba czy nie - whether you like it or not

mnie - I, dative (to me)
się - oneself
to - this
podoba - image, look, appearance, form

Huh? Where's the verb? "to me myself this appearance"?

It turns out that "podoba" IS the verb. "podobać się" - to enjoy, to like, "this pleases me".

More Polish

I still have only 500 flashcards, instead of the couple of thousand I was counting on :-D
But I am doing a good job and checking each word, so it's not going quickly. I'm not just copying a word list and learning the words on it, no...

I am also doing Duolingo, because that is a really great way to learn conjugate verbs and so on.

In the mean time, I was reading my blog and was reminded of that I actually used to post music videos with lyrics...

Jeśli to tylko sen
Nie chcę budzić się
I już na zawsze zostać tu
Niech zginie cały strach
Dzisiaj stało się,
nie wiedziałem, że też chcesz
A gdy w końcu jesteś blisko mnie, czuję że...

If it's only a dream
I don't want to wake up
And I want to stay here forever
Let all the fear get lost
Today it happened, I didn't know that you want it too
And when you're close to me at last, I feel that

Staje nagle w miejscu świat
Gwiazdy tańczą wokół nas
Kiedy Ty, kiedy ja, kiedy my
Oprócz nas już nikt

Z Tobą świat zyskuje treść
Z Tobą wiem, że mogę biec
Nawet gdy brak już sił
Wszystko nic, byle z Tobą być

Suddenly the world stops

The stars dance around us

When you, when I, when we

Nobody except us

With you the world gains the content

With you I know that I can run

Even when I don't have any more stregth

All is nothing, I only want to be with you

Czas biegnie szybko tak
Niech ta chwila trwa
Nie chcę nigdzie indziej być
Bądź tylko obok dziś
W taki sposób i
więcej w życiu nie chcę nic
Bo gdy tylko jesteś blisko mnie, czuję że...

The time runs so fast

Let this moment last

I don't want to be anywhere else

Only be by my side today

This way and I don't want anything more in life

'Cause when you are close to me I feel that

Dziś w końcu przyszedł ten dzień
Dałaś nam szansę by być
Niech trwa już zawsze ten sen
Śnijmy go razem już dziś

Today this day came at last

You gave us the chance to be

Let this dream last always

Let's dream it together today

I'm very pleased, because I recognize most of these words... :-)
Another thing, to practice pronunciation:

Day Three of Polish

Today I stumbled over Yatir Nitzany, who says it's quite enough to know 350 words of a language to be able to manage, have rudimentary discussions, and have a good base to build the language further.
He has written several "books" about his method, with these 350 words in. His first book is Conversational Language Quick and Easy, where he explains the method and gives some of the words in several languages. (27, actually, of which 8 are different variations of Arabic.) He has written separate books with the full list of the words, and additional information.

Huh.

These 350 words are about 100 verbs, "yes", "no", pronouns, prepositions, number from 1-10, some adjectives, some nouns (name, time, relations, house, book, car...) , some sentences. If you are interested, find the book :-)

Anyway, I think that would be an excellent addition to the "learn a language in 10 days". 

(Makes me think of The Loom of Language by Frederic Bodmer - you'll learn the particles first because 1) they make about 1/3 of the language 2) their meaning is fixed 3) one cannot deduce/guess their meaning 4) there's less than 200 of them in every language

So that's what I have been doing today :-D

And going through verbs.

Day 2 of the Polish superchallenge :-D

I'm late... because I didn't just take the words from the 1000 most common words list as they were, I had to make it more difficult for me :-D
BUT I don't want to learn Polish to be able to communicate with Polish people and keep me à jour with Polish things, I want to learn Polish to be able to read The Witcher in original language, so my goal is specific, and it doesn't help me to learn things like fridge and representative democracy. It helps me to learn words like sword, sheath and saddle :-D

So, I'm late. I'm not going to be bothered by that, just continue.
I have made my wordlist, I have waded through the nouns and particles, I need to do the same with adjectives and verbs. Not looking forward to that.
The declination and comparison and all that seems to be pretty easy and self-evident.
Polish reminds me a lot of Finnish. :-D Especially the "kto/co"
I also need to work with the prepositions today.

Polish prepositions - we are talking about the purple dot 

that is
next to/beside - above - below/under
in front of - behind - between
inside - outside  - around
far from - near/close - with you

BTW, I found this cute image about the French prepositions

Really cute.
As far as I know - and it's not necessary correct, so don't quote me -
"à droite" is "po prawej stronie", and "à gauche" is "po lewej stronie"
and "en face de" is "naprzeciwko"

Some parsing is always good to understand and learn to use the prepositions. I learned "sur" through "sur le pont d'Avignon", so I wanted to see what it is in Polish, and the Polish Wikipedia article about the song says this:

Sur le pont d’Avignon – Treść piosenki opowiada o ludziach tańczących na moście,
choć w rzeczywistości prawdopodobnie tańczyli oni pod mostem (sous le pont).

subject    song  to tell about people to dance+ing on bridge
nom.sg  gen.sg 3.sg present - loc.pl  loc.pl.v. - loc.sg
although in reality probably to dance they under bridge

 - - loc.sg. - 3. pl.v. past nom.pl - instr.sg

Very nice, as it has a lot of prepositions. From it I also learn that the word "o" is connected to is in locative, and so it is with "na" and "w", but "pod" has its noun in instrumental. (Or, to be clear, these prepositions come with other cases as well, but that changes the meaning of the preposition a little. Of course. USUALLY they come like this.)

I still haven't found a good way to show parsing on the internet. I do it in my journal, and there I can use all kinds of colors and draw arrows to show the relations etc. etc. but I expect you to figure it out, if you want to.   

Then I was thinking about Eddie Izzard's Cake or Death! and the whole monkey business :-D

kot śpi w łóżku (locative)
pies jest pod stołem (instrumental)
małpa siedzi na gałęzi (locative)

While checking if those sentences are correct, I came across this one:
Czy mogę spać z kotem w łóżku?
Can I sleep with a cat in the bed? Cat in instrumental, bed in locative. Finnish doesn't have either case, but they are pretty obvious. Instrumental case answers the question "with whom or what the action is completed" - what or who is used as the instrument or means.
- sleeping is completed with the cat in bed. How the bridge becomes an instrument when the dancing is done under it, or the table when being happens under it, beats me, but I'm sure there is a quite rational reasoning behind it. :-D (dancing is completed with the bridge above? Being is completed with the table above?)
Locative case answers the question "where" - whether it is in a real, physical place, placed in time or thoughts. Cat is in the bed. The people in the song are dancing on the bridge, or "in reality" probably under it.

BTW, in Finnish it is "sillalla" (on the bridge) and "sillan alla" (under the bridge - one of the rare postpositions in Finnish.) The "kissa" can sleep "sängyssä" (in the bed) or "sängyllä" (on the bed), the "koira" is "pöydän alla" (under the table) and "apina" is "oksalla" (on the branch). or "puussa" (in the tree) 

BTW. I tried the Goldlist method. I gave it a year. It doesn't work for me.  Yes, I understand the sentences, after having read them once with full understanding and then just writing them down, and not bothering to learn anything. I wouldn't be able to actually repeat any of those sentences, or use any of the information in those sentences.
 

Polish

This was written 4th of August 2020, but I put it here, 5 years earlier, for my 52 in 52 challenge.

Yes, I know, "cheating", but - you don't want to do it like I do it. Because I'm frivolous and easily distracted, and... well, not really. I'm multitalented polymath, and superfocused, just not in one thing for a very long time... I am into what ever it is I'm into 100%, but only for about three weeks. So I NEED to learn a language in a week. At least the basis of it. And then I - PERHAPS - can upkeep it for the rest of the time, by using it to research my other interests.

So - back to business, Polish.

It suddenly became important to learn Polish, because I started reading The Witcher :-D
I love it. I absolutely love it. But I'm reading a translation, and I have a feeling that the original is even better. So, you see, I HAVE to learn Polish.

Day 1:

The alphabet

Learn these "useful phrases"

Learn the numbers

How to say dates in Polish 

Buying things in Polish

Learn the vocabulary for the first chapter of Witcher :-D (Or... the first "real" chapter of the Last Wish, The Witcher)
It's just about 400 words.

So, today I checked the frequency list of the words in that chapter, and then I had to check what ALL these words were to find out the true frequency of the words, as Polish is a lovely, flexible language. :-D (Three main genders, 7 common cases, and several tenses, absolutely beautiful :-D)

The most common words (used more than 5 times in one or another form)
and, with, in, at, to, "kto" and "co", no, to be, to have, oneself, innkeeper, stranger, sword, guest and guards
The 11 first ones are also on the 100 most common Polish words -list. :-D

I can tell you it took me a LOT of time to organize these words, but I'm very pleased with the work I've done.

some interesting things I found out:

Polish nouns have gender, which affects some things, like declensions and numbers etc.
Some words can have both genders, and one of the examples caught my eye, because in my mind it should be the exact opposite :-D
"żołądź: masculine - "acorn", feminine - "glans penis"
(In Swedish the word is "ollon"; acorn is "ekollon", beechnut is "bokollon", and glans is just "ollon". Now you know why the Swedes smile when they hear about the Swiss town of Ollon. Maybe they'll change the name back to Olun or Aulon ;-))

They also divide the masculine nouns into three categories; inanimate things, animate things (living things) and persons. Cucumber is a living thing :-D I mean, of course it is, I just find it cute that the Polish people acknowledge plants as lifeforms :-) (Vegans don't.)

"Son of a bitch" is "psie nasienie" - "dog's seed". Cur cum. Somehow it sounds worse. :-D
(And continuing the "doggy" to "curry"... ew.)

Challenge 52 in 52: Polish

Polish in Wikipedia and in Omniglot

Polish is a West Slavic language of the Lechitic group. (The Lechitic languages are Polish, Kashubian, Silesian, Slovincian and Polabian) It is spoken primarily in Poland and serves as the native language of the Poles. In addition to being an official language of Poland, it is also used by Polish minorities in other countries. There are over 50 million Polish-language speakers around the world and it is one of the official languages of the European Union.

Polish is written with the standard Polish alphabet, which has 9 additions to the letters of the basic Latin script (ą, ć, ę, ł, ń, ó, ś, ź, ż). Polish is closely related to Czech and Slovak. The language currently has the largest number of speakers of the West Slavic group and is also the second most widely spoken Slavic language.

Historically, Polish was a lingua franca, important both diplomatically and academically in Central and Eastern Europe.

Today, Polish is spoken by over 38.5 million people as their first language in Poland. It is also spoken as a second language in northern Czech Republic and Slovakia, western parts of Belarus and Ukraine, and central-western Lithuania. Because of the emigration from Poland during different time periods, most notably after World War II, millions of Polish speakers can be found in countries such as Israel, Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland and the United States.