Three weeks ago I participated in my first class of Polish for foreigners . It was a nice experience. Maybe I had expected something extraordinary, like we say in Polish, fireworks. But it didn't happened. However, I enjoyed it and I felt more aware of my own language and culture. One of the strange things was that there almost weren't people of my age. We were 23 students and maybe only 4 of them was still studing (like me) or just graduated. The majority of the students were mature women. Yes, we were all women. The unique men was the professors.
Today I would like to talk you about one the subject that was typically linguistic. Grammatical system od Polish language against the background comparative, that was its name. It was 12 hours of lecture. One hour here is understood like 45 minutes.
At the beggining it resulted quite diffult and boring. You can imagine what does it mean analize case by case (nominative, genitive, etc.) and their exceptions. Actually, there are more exceptions that words that keep the rules. Slide by slide I was feeling pity on all the foreigners, my future students included, treating learn it... It's necessary to have very strong motivation! That's my conclusion.
We talked about all the parts of speech: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, etc., and about their funtions in the clauses. It was like a Polish lesson in primary school! I remember I loved it! But this time I saw it with more awareness, like a linguist, I can say. How much changed everything! The situation, my knowledge... but not my interest in grammar :D
I know some Brits who are currently learning Polish and I must tell you it's a real challenge, especially that they have to do it in Britain, not here. The funny thing is they find it difficult to speak Polish to Poles, since everybody immediately starts speaking English to them :) It's great that you're doing this course. I think there will be more and more foreigners coming to Poland, and they will need your help!
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