I wonder why Polish people speak good English.

[SipGreenTea]

Hello.

I think Polish people speak very good English.(Or should I say...something like... Polish people are relatively good at acquiring foreign languages?)
Why do I think so?
Well, when I was in the UK, (I was studying English then.) I met two Polish people.
One of them was an engineer, and the other was a physicist.(They were both studying English, too.)
I was amazed to hear their English. It was unbelievably good! I even thought, "Do you really need to study English?"
Here in this forum, too, I got to know a Polish person, who uses English with native-level fluency.
Some time ago, I watched a CNN report, in which Polish Finance Minister, Jan Vincent-Rostowski, speaks very good English with a British accent. (I'm not sure if he is Polish. He might be a native speaker of British English.)

Based on these limited experiences of mine, I came to the conclusion that...Polish people have good language skills.

Well...it might be another strange idea of mine....
What do you think?

Hello,

I am from Poland and I don`t know English as you are talking here about. In Poland, before Poland came to EU, Russian language was like a second and none knew English. After that they put English like a second language and then kids at schools started learn this language. In fact young Polish people, at this moment, know English but older not really. Many Polish gone to UK and maybe that`s why you are thinking that Polish know English so well. They have to speak over there, they have to understand and they are making life in UK. So, they know English because their life is with real English, with native speakers. Also, in my opinion, Polish programmers are good with English.

As you can see I am here to learn English. I have problem with English all over, with grammar, vocabulary, with tenses :( Why? Because I had never English at school. Because I am from old system. I hope that this forum helps me to improve my English because this language develops very fast over here^^

[5jj]

Welcome to the forum, SipGreenTea.

[birdeen's call]

Hello, SipGreenTea! Welcome to UsingEnglish.

I think even before 2004 (Polish accession to the EU), most children studied English at school. It started changing much earlier, even before the fall of communism. In the 1990s, English was taught in most schools.

[tzfujimino]

Hello,

I am from Poland and I don`t know English as you are talking here about. In Poland, before Poland came to EU, Russian language was like a second and none knew English. After that they put English like a second language and then kids at schools started learn this language. In fact young Polish people, at this moment, know English but older not really. Many Polish gone to UK and maybe that`s why you are thinking that Polish know English so well. They have to speak over there, they have to understand and they are making life in UK. So, they know English because their life is with real English, with native speakers. Also, in my opinion, Polish programmers are good with English.

As you can see I am here to learn English. I have problem with English all over, with grammar, vocabulary, with tenses :( Why? Because I had never English at school. Because I am from old system. I hope that this forum helps me to improve my English because this language develops very fast over here^^

Hello, SipGreenTea!
Welcome to UsingEnglish.com.
And thank you very much for your input.
Let's enjoy learning English together.

P.S. I love green tea, too.

[SipGreenTea]

Thank you for greeting.
Well, at this moment, what I can do over here it is reading all forum`s subjects. Over and over. I hope that one day I will able to ask about some grammar things

[BobK]

Thank you for greeting.
Well, at this moment, what I can do over here it is reading all forum`s subjects. Over and over. I hope that one day I will able to ask about some grammar things

Yes, please do! Your plan to read and not contribute too much at first is wise (the informal verb is 'to lurk'); my first post was in November 2006, but I started lurking 4 or 5 months earlier. A lot of things are asked again and again, and research pays. Also you'll get an idea of who to listen to (or not! )

On the other hand, there's a huge amount here, and trying to read it all first is a daunting prospect; you can get value from a library without 'ploughing through' it all first [=reading all the books laboriously*].

b

PS I just thought - and this is a feature of my posts, so be warned - that the Latin for 'to plough' is laborare.

[SipGreenTea]

Well, thank you for the next lesson of English to me. I didn`t know the words wise, to lurk, amount, daunting, feature. It is so depressed to read something and don`t understand it and so excited to get it. In my opinion learning of any language (teaching as well) has to be in a multifarious was; reading, listening to, speaking, translation etc., to don`t get bored.

[bhtr88]

Hello,

I am from Poland and I don`t know English as you are talking here about. In Poland, before Poland came to EU, Russian language was like a second and none knew English. After that they put English like a second language and then kids at schools started learn this language. In fact young Polish people, at this moment, know English but older not really. Many Polish gone to UK and maybe that`s why you are thinking that Polish know English so well. They have to speak over there, they have to understand and they are making life in UK. So, they know English because their life is with real English, with native speakers. Also, in my opinion, Polish programmers are good with English.

As you can see I am here to learn English. I have problem with English all over, with grammar, vocabulary, with tenses :( Why? Because I had never English at school. Because I am from old system. I hope that this forum helps me to improve my English because this language develops very fast over here^^

Hi SipGreenTea!
I saw similliar opinion about people from Sweden and Norway. And it was suggested that the matter is in how they watch foreign movies, i.e. do they keep the original audio track and watch with subtitles or do they dub movies into their native language. In Scandinavia they do the first way, so they hear english speech all the time from the TV.

How do you watch foreign movies in Poland? Are they completely dubbed into Polish or is original audiotrack retained?

[CarloSsS]

How do you watch foreign movies in Poland? Are they completely dubbed into Polish or is original audiotrack retained?

The Polish dubbing is sort of a mix of both. The movies are dubbed indeed, but the voice of the dubber is spoken over the original audio track, so you kind of get both original and Polish at the same time.
What might be interesting is the fact, that this dubbing is usually done by one person only, mostly a male who dubs both actors and actresses. In the CZ, we often make fun of this so called dubbing, because ours is very different, dare I say better.

As for the language acquirement, my view is that this is one of the things that play a role in the penetration of English and its level in various countries. On the other hand, there are counterexamples, such as Germany, where the dubbing is similar to ours (that is no original can be heard, and each character in a movie or a TV series has their dubber counterpart), and yet the English knowledge of Germans is grater and more profound than in Poland or the Czech Republic.

[bhtr88]

The Polish dubbing is sort of a mix of both. The movies are dubbed indeed, but the voice of the dubber is spoken over the original audio track, so you kind of get both original and Polish at the same time.
What might be interesting is the fact, that this dubbing is usually done by one person only, mostly a male who dubs both actors and actresses. In the CZ, we often make fun of this so called dubbing, because ours is very different, dare I say better.

As for the language acquirement, my view is that this is one of the things that play a role in the penetration of English and its level in various countries. On the other hand, there are counterexamples, such as Germany, where the dubbing is similar to ours (that is no original can be heard, and each character in a movie or a TV series has their dubber counterpart), and yet the English knowledge of Germans is grater and more profound than in Poland or the Czech Republic.

Hi CarloSsS!
It's not surprising about Germans since English is a germanic language too, so they are similliar in many aspects.