Learn a new (spoken) language
January 20th, 2007
For a variety of reasons, I’ve come to the decision that I should learn how to speak Polish. I know a crapload of computer languages, of course: Perl, Java, Ruby, Bash, Tcl, Logo. But English is the only thing I can speak, even after 3 years of floudering in highschool French and a year of 8am university Latin courses.
It’s time to learn another human language.
Sure, you can speak French and sound sexy. But even simply pretending to speak French is enough to accomplish that. Everyone’s 4-year-old speaks Spanish fluently these days, and I simply don’t need to be shown up by a 3-foot-tall crumb muncher. That’s no good for the ego.
So, Polish it is.
I live in a small mountain town and figured correctly that our bookstore wouldn’t have any useful Polish courses on CD. Thanks to the zippy folks at Amazon, and my seemingly unending free trial of their Prime cheap overnight service, I possess the first 10 lessons of the Pimsleur system.
For those of you who don’t know (I didn’t), Pimsleur is purely an audio/spoken system. There’s nothing to read. The Polish speaker on the CD works backwards through sounding out words and there is just enough repetition to learn while keeping it all interesting.
So far, I can say
- Excuse me!
- Do you speak English?
- Are you an American?
- I understand a little Polish.
The package of 5 CDs is nice enough. I quickly ripped them to iTunes so I could drop them on the iPod. The CDDB is just whacked when it comes to the Pimsleur CDs, be warned.
Then, for the hell of it, I Googled for Polish resources in my town.
Lo and Behold! The local vocational college, about a mile away, has a Polish class starting next week. I’m heading back to school!
January 26th, 2007 at 4:50 am
Czekamy Panie szefie :-)
(We’re waiting boss)
February 7th, 2007 at 1:14 am
[...] (You may now notice that my decision to learn Polish wasn’t quite as arbitrary as it may have initially seemed.) [...]
September 16th, 2007 at 4:58 am
Polish! Excellent choice. i think you should report back and let us know how it’s going! Nice blog.
October 29th, 2007 at 7:03 pm
I visited Krakow in 2002 and in 2003. It was incredible. I had never been to Europe so it was especially exciting for me. I managed to learn some basic Polish phrases and would like to continue.
November 22nd, 2008 at 1:50 pm
Pimsleur Language Program – does have material to read, but it’s just vocabulary. Usually vocabulary words that use similar sounds that you just learned in the audio lesson. Would be good if they translated the words that they were helping you learn to pronounce correctly.
How’s your Polish class going? I’m now trying this: http://polish.slavic.pitt.edu that has free software that helps you drill the vocabulary and grammar you’ve been learning! I really treasure finding it.
Drill software: http://polish.slavic.pitt.edu/firstyear/drills.html
I really love the sound of polish; with my portuguese speaking background, it’s been a challenge, since it’s so grammar intensive & uses sounds foreign to my ears.
Best wishes to you all.