You can’t imagine how many times I’ve heard that Polish is… strange… So many things seem very normal for the people for whom Polish is the first language but surprise the learners. Let’s have a look at some of the things that seem strange in Polish and I’ll do my best to make them look at least a little less strange to you… Let’s go!
One stroke can change everything
Maki means ‘poppies’, add just a tiny little wiggly line and it becomes mąki - ‘flours’ (not ‘flowers’) or ‘of the flour’ (Genitive). Quite different, isn’t it? While intimidating at first, the instances in which the meaning of a given word would completely change are quite rare. Secondly, some Polish speakers (those who don’t use spellcheck, myself included), very often text without using Polish diacritics, which means that in unofficial communication we can do very well without them - the context always helps! Finally, if you think that this is something that makes Polish a strange language, think about English it’s and its.
Why do you use letters you don’t actually pronounce!?
You probably mean the distinct Polish ą and ę - we do pronounce them but, likely, not the way you’re taught to pronounce them! No way do they represent those exaggerated nasal sounds your teacher is forcing you to make in the class - this is just to help you get the idea. In fact, pronouncing them in such an exaggerated way is considered incorrect! The right pronunciation depends, of course, on their position in a given word or sentence - as always, imitate the locals and you’ll get it right in no time! Fun fact: it is rare but not all of the first-language Polish speakers pronounce these sounds right, some even confuse them with other endings - once again, not as much to worry about as you’ve thought!
The orthography
This blog post is a lot about spelling but this seems to be the biggest challenge. Indeed, there are many sounds that are pronounced the same but are spelled in two different ways - we can’t help it, it’s just the beauty of our language. However, if you still need a logical explanation as to why we need both rz and ż or ch and h for the same sound - historically, they represented different sounds and the spelling was preserved. If you insist that it makes no sense to you anyway - these orthographic conventions are useful for the declension, think: dworzec - dworce (station/stations) - if it wasn’t for the rz, that r in the plural would look very confusing!
The Vocative
Another thing that is there in the grammar but isn’t always used is the Vocative. Personally, I think that it’s kind of nice that we have a special declension for when someone wants to address you but, well, it’s rarely used, especially with personal names. This form may soon disappear from the Polish language, so enjoy it while you can :) But in all seriousness, as you’ve probably noticed, in everyday communication, you can mostly do without it - one thing less to learn.
Why do you use the past tense to talk about the future!?
As you (hopefully) know, Polish has several ways of forming the future tense. One of them is the verb ‘to be’ and either the infinitive or… the past participle. What confuses many learners is why would anyone use the past to talk about the future… There’s no simple answer to this question but if you look carefully at the verbs in many Slavic (and not only) languages you will see that the present tense forms are a bit different from the infinitives, which are, in turn, closer to the past tense verb forms. But anyway, can’t we just accept this little quirk without digging too much into etymology? Isn’t it nice to think that the future is somehow always linked to our past?