russ ([info]goulo) wrote,
@ 2008-02-09 11:46:00
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język polski jest trudny
Mi montros ekzemplon kial la pola iom absurde kaj nenecese malfacilas. Temas pri pluralaj formoj de adjektivoj kaj substantivoj, specife ĉe viraj vortoj. En Esperanto la reguloj tutsimplas: aldonu "j" al adjektivoj kaj substantivoj (kaj eĉ ne gravas ke temas pri viro specife). Ankaŭ en la angla la reguloj simplas: adjektivoj eĉ ne ŝanĝiĝas, kaj aldonu "s" al substantivoj (denove eĉ ne gravas ke temas pri viro specife). Ekz "bona patro, bonaj patroj" = "good father, good fathers". La angla havas problemeton pri kelkaj oftaj gravaj esceptoj, ekzemple "man, men" (viro), "woman, women" (virino), "child, children" (infano), "foot, feet" (piedo), kaj kelkaj aliaj. Do ambaŭ lingvoj ege pli simplas kaj regulas ol la pola, kies regulojn pri pluralaj viraj vortoj mi prezentas sube (adaptita de Beginning Polish de Alexander M. Schenker, kiu notas ke tiu ne estas kompleta listo). Tio estas nur hazarda ekzemplo; estas multegaj tiaj kapricaj regularoj en la pola. Atentu ke la suba tabelo estas tablo de reguloj, ne de nekutimaj esceptaj vortoj kiel la angla "man/men"! (Teĥnika detalo: la "molaj" "ć ś ń ź" esence samas al "ci si ni zi" en tiu prezento, kaj [w'] kaj [m'] reprezentas similan koncepton de "mola konsonanto" sed la pola ne eksplicite montras tion per literumado de w kaj m.)

I'll show an example why Polish is rather absurdly and unnecessarily hard: plural forms of adjectives and nouns, specifically "virile" words (i.e. about men). In Esperanto the rules are quite simple: add "j" to adjectives and nouns (and it doesn't even matter if it's about men specifically). Also English has simple rules: adjectives don't even change, and add "s" to nouns (again it's irrelevant if it's about men specifically). E.g. "bona patro, bonaj patroj" = "good father, good fathers". English has a little problem about a few common important exceptions, e.g. "man, men" (viro), "woman, women" (virino), "child, children" (infano), "foot, feet" (piedo), and a few more. So both languages are much simpler and more regular than Polish, whose rules about plural virile words I present below (adapted from Beginning Polish by Alexander M. Schenker, who notes that this is not a full list). This is just a random example; there are lots of these capricious rule systems in Polish. Note that the table below is a table of rules, not of unusual exceptions like English "man/men"! (Technical detail: the "soft" "ć ś ń ź" are basically the same as "ci si ni zi" in this discussion, and [w'] and [m'] represent the same idea of a "soft consonant" but Polish doesn't explicitly show that with spelling of w and m.)

Deklinacja po polsku jest bardzo skomplikowana i dziwna... Esperanto ma proste reguły: dodaj "j". Angielski też ma proste reguły: nie zmieniaj przymiotników i dodaj "s" do rzeczowników: "bona patro, bonaj patroj" = "good father, good fathers" = "dobry ojciec, dobrzy ojcowie". (No angielski ma kilka ważnych wyjątków: "man/men", itd.) Zauważyłem, że dużo Polaków nawet nie zauważa, że język polski jest taki skomplikowany. Oto reguły męskoosobowych rzeczowników (i chodzi tylko o mianownik!) To są reguły, nie rzadkie wyjątki!

C~C1StemNom.Sg.(Masc.)Nom.Pl.(Vir.)
w~[w']now- (nova, new)nowynowi
m~[m']znajom- (konata, acquaintance)znajomyznajomi
n~ńsmutn- (malfeliĉa, sad)smutnysmutni
n~ń + on~eńzmęczon- (laca, tired)zmęczonyzmęczeni
n~ń + sn~śnjasn- (klara, clear)jasnyjaśni
n~ń + zn~źnmężczyzn- (viro, man)mężczyznamężczyźni
r~rzdobr- (bona, good)dobrydobrzy
ł~l + zł~źlzł- (kolera, angry)złyźli
ł~l + sł~śldorosł- (plenkreska, adult)dorosłydorośli
ł~l + oł~elwesoł- (gaja, merry)wesoływeseli
t~ćstudent (studento, student)studentstudenci
d~dźmłod- (juna, young)młodymłodzi
d~dź + ad~edźsąsiad (najbaro, neighbor)sąsiadsąsiedzi
d~dź but ad~adźblady (pala, pale)bladybladzi
z~źFrancuz (franco, Frenchman)FrancuzFrancuzi
k~cpolsk- (pola, Polish)polskipolscy
g~dzkoleg- (kolego, colleague)kolegakoledzy
ch~śWłoch (italo, Italian)WłochWłosi
sz~śnasz (nia, our)nasznasi

Notes:

a. o~e and a~e before C1
In some stems the C~C1 alternation is accompanied by the replacement of the vowels "o" and "a" in the stem-final syllable by the vowel "e". (zmęczony/zmęczeni, wesoły/weseli, sąsiad/sąsiedzi). (But only "in some stems", e.g. cf. blady/bladzi.)

b. s~ś, z~ź, n~ń before ć, dź, ń, l
The consonants "s, z, n" are replaced by "ś, ź, ń" respectively before "ć, dź, ń, l", but the alternation n~ń is not shown in the spelling, "n" being written throughout. (jasny/jaśni, mężczyzna/mężczyźni, student/studenci spelled with "n" but sounds like "ń").

c. Many virile nouns don't use this system at all, but add -owie (syn/synowie = filo/filoj, son/sons).

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[info]elgrande
2008-02-09 12:40 pm UTC (link)
I don't really about the plural rules in German. Wikipedia already mentions 9 regular plural endings in German and says that some endings appear most often in certain genders but that there are no general rules on how to derive the plural form from a given singular form except for special types of words. If that is really true, the Polish examples still look relatively simple. The Polish forms must be annoying enough, though.

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[info]goulo
2008-02-09 01:19 pm UTC (link)
I should perhaps have emphasized more clearly that these are only the cases where there is a consonant alternation in the ending, and only for masculine people. There are also, e.g., nationalities that have a weird pattern anin/anie (Amerykanin/Amerykanie), or "normal" words with just an ending and no stem change, like "lekarz/lekarze" (doctor). And of course there are irregular exceptions like brat/bracia (brother). :)

But yes, in a sense there are rules that mostly work - it's just that these rules are gratuitously complicated and hard to learn compared to Esperanto (just add "j") or English (just add "s").

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[info]dominiko
2008-02-09 03:05 pm UTC (link)
these rules are gratuitously complicated and hard to learn compared to Esperanto (just add "j") or English (just add "s")
Just add 's'... That must explain George Bush slip-up: *Childrens* do learn.

What about those rules I had to learn:
  • words ending in -f (wolf, loaf...) become: wolves, loaves...
  • words ending in -fe (life, wife...) become: lives, wives...
  • words ending in -o (potato, hero...) become: potatoes, heroes... except some words like piano -> pianos, kimono -> kimonos, etc.
  • words ending in -is (crisis, axis...) become: crises, axes...
  • words ending in -us (focus, radius...) become: foci, radii...
  • words ending in -on (phenomenon, criterion...) become: phenomena, criteria...
  • words ending in -um (datum, medium...) become: data, media...
  • words ending in consonant + y (lady, party...) become: ladies, parties...
And some irregular plurals don't fall into any categories (mouse -> mice, tooth -> teeth, man -> men, vertex -> vertices (or vertexes)... Some words that don't change in plural form (sheep, moose, ...), some words are always plural (information, scissors, pants, ...)

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[info]goulo
2008-02-09 03:32 pm UTC (link)
Most ordinary everyday English words follow the simple "just add s" rule. There's a handful of irregular ones (as I mentioned), e.g. man, woman, child, foot, tooth, mouse ... but the proof is in actual practice: English learners make very few mistakes when using plural nouns (and adjectives :), whereas it's very common for Polish learners to make mistakes because many very common words (e.g. any word describing a male human) have complex rules.

Taking your examples:
f/v (I see no reason to distinguish f/v and fe/ve) covers about ten important words that a learner really might care about. (Life, wife, shelf, leaf, wolf, loaf, ...)

o/oes and y/ies are purely spelling issues, not pronunciation. I'll agree it's annoying that o sometimes becomes oes and sometimes os.

is/es, us/i, on/a, um/a are weird, but those are not important everyday words; an English learner can get quite far without ever learning words like criterion, datum, radius, axis, etc. (Plus anyone who knows a little Latin will have no problem with us/i and um/a. :) In addition, many of the Latin words have disputed plural forms and also can be pluralized with a regular s (radiuses, cactuses, mediums).

So my point is that you are pulling out more advanced examples that an English learner won't need anyway, and still coming up with a shorter list of rules than the Polish rules which apply to a huge number of everyday important words.

If you look at the words an English learner needs to learn to use English in the real world, the plurals really are simple: learn the half dozen irregular ones (man, woman, etc), and learn to just add s. Learn the spelling rule about y/ies (which is a consistent alternation you also learn for verbs, e.g. hurry/hurries/hurried) and memorize o/oes/os words - but even if you don't remember how to spell those, you'll still be saying them right. That is important: your speech will be correct even if you don't know whether to spell "potatos" or "potatoes" or "ladys" or "ladies". (Similarly if you accidentally keep f in the f/v words, the sound difference is subtle, and it will often not even be noticed in speech.) In the worst case, if you just add s (the overwhelmingly common default), people know what you mean (mans, childs).

In contrast, if I mess up the Polish rules (where there is no common or default ending, and where the middle of the words often change as well), I am often wrong to the point of incomprehensibility (speaking from experience).

PS: Information is singular and uncountable, not plural. :)

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For the sake of more completeness...
[info]elgrande
2008-02-09 04:17 pm UTC (link)
"but even if you don't remember how to spell those, you'll still be saying them right."

But English actually has [s], [z] and [Iz] in speech.

I guess for the average learner the rule for when to use [s] and [z] is not exactly easy. I think I've seen grammars that have lists about which of the two sounds follows which sound. Learners whose mother tongue doesn't make a distinction between final [s] and [z] (e.g. German) have even more problems. Actually, the rule is easy, of course: voiced [z] after voiced final sounds, unvoiced [s] after unvoiced final sounds. But most learners don't understand those technical termsn.

The rule for [iz] is relatively easy, too, since it simply follows final [s], [z], [ĵ] (including [ĝ]) and [ŝ] (including [ĉ]). But it's still a rule that has to be learnt. Somewhat confusingly, not all "hissing" sounds work that way, i.e. the "th" sounds are not followed by [Iz] in the plural. Some learners mix that up.
The [Iz] thing also affects spelling: when the word doesn't end in "e" in the singular, it gets an extra "e" in the plural (e.g. box - boxes).

The good thing is that these rules for the plural noun ending "s" are the same as those for the singular verb ending "s".
And then there are those somewhat irregular plural forms of nationality nouns...

All in all, I think English plural forms are still pretty regular.

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Re: For the sake of more completeness...
[info]goulo
2008-02-09 04:31 pm UTC (link)
That is true that the English "s" ending has several distinct sounds depending on the surrounding context. But then there are analogous pronunciation differences of Polish letters in different contexts (even though Poles like to claim that each letter in Polish makes one unique sound, it's simply not true). :P Doesn't that go with the territory in every national language?

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Re: For the sake of more completeness...
[info]elgrande
2008-02-09 06:00 pm UTC (link)
I think the concept of phonemes is helpful when it comes to analysing such questions. (The explanation there is pretty short but I think it explains the concept pretty well. Perhaps skip the bit on the diphthongs, though.)

Roughly analogously: In a text written by me by hand not every sign that looks different will also be a distinct letter. I probably write each letter a bit differently in every position of a word, depending on the surrounding letters, but the letter remains the same letter. Similarly, I probably pronounce every phoneme of my language a bit differently depending on the surrounding context but it remains the same phoneme. (The existence of phonemes is entirely independent of spelling, though "good" spelling systems often try to establish a one-to-one relation between letters and phonemes.)

In English, /z/ and /s/ are distinct phonemes (also in final positions), i.e. different structural units distinguishing meaning. This is shown by the fact that there are minimal pairs like "lies" vs. "lice", "pens" vs. "pence" or "close" (verb) vs. "close" (adjective) etc.

It is often considered that learners should learn to distinguish different phonemes in foreign language. Then people won't think you're saying a different word than what you're actually saying. The more subtle distinctions are not very important and native speakers are usually not consciously aware of them. Apart from that, I think knowing the phonemes is important for getting a feel for the foreign language and also to be able to determine e.g. which words rhyme (e.g. to know that "lies" doesn't rhyme with "rice" or that even "close" (verb) and "close" (adjective) don't rhyme).


"(even though Poles like to claim that each letter in Polish makes one unique sound, it's simply not true)."

I think you have to distinguish two different things. They may forget about imperfections in the spelling system, i.e. about there being phonemic distinctions that are not reflected in spelling as in the case your reported recently. And then they may have problems hearing distinction between variations of the same phoneme. That's something normal, though possibly annoying for people with a different mother tongue who may hear those distinctions pretty clearly.

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[info]goulo
2008-02-09 04:42 pm UTC (link)
It's also worth remembering that this whole example in my blog entry is just about one case and gender (the nominative virile) out of seven noun cases, times 2 numbers (singular and plural), times 3 genders (or 4 or 5 depending on how you consider virile vs animate masculine vs inanimate masculine)... whereas in English once you learn how to make the plural nominative (usually by simply adding "s"), you're done! English doesn't have 7 cases, only 1. (Except the vestigial object form of personal pronouns: I/me, he/him, etc.)

Another empirical argument is that everyone I've talked to who was a non-native speaker of Polish and English and has studied both immediately says that Polish word endings are harder to learn, duh! :)

Actually a lot of Poles themselves have told me that they think compared to Polish (and a lot of languages actually) English is much easier to start learning and say correct sentences due to not having to worry about complex word inflection and knowing what case to use, and that only when you get to advanced stuff (e.g. understanding verb tense subtleties) does English become harder. (The main exception being spelling, which is terribly broken in English of course.)

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