Connections.

[kiya]

We live for words and die for words
Principles we can afford . . .

--"One By One", Chumbawamba

Discussion on rasfc about languages. Political influence on.

My great-grandparents (great-great? Mom hasn't been consistent) were subversives. Taught Polish when it was illegal.

Need to learn language. Honor ancestors who would have died for it.

Memory.

Comments

Similar thought, had to share.

[frozencapybara.livejournal.com]

My grandmother emigrated from Germany before WWII - not immediately before, but soon enough before that she dealt with bullying over her obviously German name in grade school. When her family emigrated, they wanted to seem more "American" - and so the she and her sisters were only allowed to speak English, even at home. She doesn't know German, since she hasn't spoken it since she was too young to remember.
I have long considered this one of the great tragedies of our family history. It's part of why I studied German in college - that, plus learning more about my ancestry (it's amazing how much you can learn about a culture by studying its language), plus I like the way German sounds.

So, what I'm saying here is: go you! Polish! Good! Yay! Or something like that, anyway. :)

Is Polish a Germanic language, or does it have a different root? I know absolutely nothing about it, which is probably bad - I ought to know more about eastern european languages, though Polish is pretty low on my list of ones to study. Hungarian's pretty high, since I'm part Hungarian and the language is supposed to be very strange (i.e. not germanic or romance or any other category - its it's own thing), and Russian just sounds neat. I've never heard Polish spoken.
(By the way: I'm a closet language geek. Can you tell? :)

Re: Similar thought, had to share.

[kiya]

Slavic. Western branch, I believe.

Yeah, western Slavic. (Russian's eastern Slavic.)

It's more or less Latin-alphabet, with a few additions (like three different Zs, which I can't remember which is which in the pronounciations, need to brush up).

Apparently the grammar's a bear. (Inflections through seven cases would just be the beginning!)

Re: Similar thought, had to share.

[larksdream]

It's complicated, but not significantly more so than many languages. I have a friend who is 100% American (by which I mean, unilingual) and he's not doing half bad with it. I lent him some books and things; would you like me to find out what's been most useful for him? Also google for Polish-American organizations in your area (they are called Polonia); there is sure to be a class or two available in a college town.

There are two funky z's (plus the standard vanilla z, which is pronounced as you'd expect). The one with the dot is to z what "sh" is to "s", a "zh" sound like in Zsa Zsa Gabor. The one with the apostrophe-like mark is a softer version, the same sound made with the tongue further forward and its middle pressed up.

Re: Similar thought, had to share.

[kiya]

I know there are Polonia organisations around here; this was a major settling point for a wave of Polish immigration around the Depression.

I would love recommendations. Yay. (I've got one of those tape-learning things around somewhere, which I think will do me for having the sound around to correct myself by, but which are just wrong for actually getting my head to learn stuff.)

Re: Similar thought, had to share.

[larksdream]

I would love recommendations.

I shall inquire from my friend who's learning. :-)

Re: Similar thought, had to share.

[larksdream]

My friend Matt says:

The book I've learned the most from is called "Polish: A Rough Guide Dictionary Phrasebook". It's published by Rough Guides. The book of yours I got the most out of is the "Teach Yourself Polish: A Complete Course for Beginners."
[snip]
I forgot to mention the software I bought which obviously is good since there is some audio involve. It's called "Learn Polish Now". I found it on Amazon.

Re: Similar thought, had to share.

[kiya]

Woot! Danke.

Also woot-woot, one of those I already own. :)

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I know what that's like. My dad doesn't speak Burmese properly, so he was never able to teach it to me, and every so often I feel there's a huge part of my... makeup that's missing. Rare though it is, I live in London, and could probably take classes at SOAS - but I'm crap at languages, and it wouldn't be the same.