Hi my name's Andy and I'm an avid language learner
and today I've got a new challenge
Hi. That's right. Yes, I've got a new challenge and I challenged myself just
today. Today's the 12th of September, Thursday 12 September and I've decided
I'm going to be learning some Polish, or as much Polish as I can within the next
two weeks. So, why Polish? Well,
it's a language I've dabbled with for a few years. I've sort of
dipped in and out of it, but I've never really studied it properly to be honest.
I've started studying it and I've always been on the periphery of this
language. Now it's about time to just dive in and get a bit more Polish
learnt. So, why is this challenge for two weeks?
I work as a charity shop manager
and today we had two new Polish students start. They are a very nice couple of teenagers.
Their English is very good and I said a few words to them in Polish and they
started teaching me some new words in Polish, and I was helping them with their English.
It was great because we got a lot done in the shop
We did a lot of work.
So, we chatted while we hung clothes up and steamed them and did all the processes that we normally do.
It was great. They were so helpful
that I thought, "That's it. Now I need to learn some Polish. Let's crack on and
couple of weeks." I also have another Polish volunteer who's been volunteering for
probably coming up to a couple of years now Maybe a year and a half.
I haven't really learned that much Polish to be able to speak to her. So, I feel a bit guilty
about that. Why haven't I progressed with Polish before? Well I find it's a bit
of a monster of a language for me. Having studied other languages and
progressed quite quickly with them, such as Mandarin.
I've been learning Mandarin for six months and I've reached a sort of conversation level.
I feel. I haven't reached that level in Polish. Anyway, to me this is Polish.
This my dinosaur T.rex and it's monster of a language for me because of the
pronunciation, because of the
the sheer number of letters that are completely different to Englsh.
There are lots of consonants together. I'm just guessing some of them, such as szcz and prz.
Okay, let's just say some Polish as I already know some.
I don't want to go into this and you think WOW, after two weeks he's learnt all this Polish.
I do know some already. So, the Polish I know is things like....
Good day. Thank you. Very good. I speak a little Polish.
I'm not going to say the numbers because I know I'll get them mixed up with Russian or Croatian.
I know I won't pronounce them properly, so I'll work on that this week.
I did some Pimsleur Polish lessons a few years ago. Just up to lesson 10 I think
So, I can say things like. "Czy pani…." Would you like something to drink?
Or, Would you like something to eat? (to a woman)
Always the way with Pimsleur they are the first phrases to learn.
I can say, "What time...?"
1st, 2nd (Polish way of expressing time)
Anyway, that's pretty much it.
I can't string a sentence together. Also, we have a lot of Polish customers.
I try to speak to them in Russian
or a mixture of Russian and Croatian. Sometimes they understand and sometimes they don't.
It's going to be good. It's going to be a good language for me to learn. Very useful.
So, that's it!