5 English mistakes commonly made by Poles

Hello David.

Could you please explain why you've used the expression: "Here are the ones I noticed" instead of "Here are the ones I have noticed"?

Actually, "(...) it's been the ruin of many a-poor boy" happens to come from the "House of the Rising Sun" lyrics by The Animals, so it indeed is from a old song. Still, your explanation is fascinating and made me come to love "a". Now I will have to refrain from using it too often! :-)

"Here's where we are a-living" is a (inaccurately-remembered) sentence by Greg Benson that appeared in a movie covering his visit to Poland. He, in fact, explained - just like you did - that "a" has no meaning here.

Here is where you can watch (hear) it: http://youtu.be/dye6lw05RA8?t=50s

"It's a-me, Mario" is well known thanks to Italian brothers: Mario and Luigi (especially the former) from Super Mario Brothers video game.

Thank you for your time,
Dawid

It's a-me Mario!

btw, podczas pisania komentarza wyświetla mi się "E-mail: - Zawartość pola nie będzie udostępniana publicznie. If you have a Gravatar account, used to display your avatar."

Przydałoby się przetłumaczyć ;p

Również dziękuję za rozwianie wątpliwości. :)

Teoretycznie w języku angielskim jest jeszcze jedno uczyć się: to study. Tak więc występują w tym języku (podobnie jak w japońskim) aż 3 słowa na różne użycie wyrazu uczyć.

Hej David.
Taka mała rada co do tego komentarza. Nie jest to może błąd sam w sobie ale po polsku brzmi to trochę topornie:) Chodzi mi mianowicie o "Po angielsku można powiedzieć lub "I'm Polish" lub "I'm a Pole", oba zdania są poprawne." To zdanie też jest jak najbardziej poprawne ale lepiej zamiast lub użyć słowa albo. W języku polskim brzmi to mniej obco, że się tak wyrażę:) Pozdrawiam świetny blog:)

PS. Czy mógłbyś mi przetłumaczyć jak po angielsku powiedzieć " gadać bez ogródek" czyli mniej więcej nie patyczkować się przy rozmowie. Tak btw ludzie z Polski tłumaczą to jako "talk without a garden". Fajne też jest płacić z góry tłumaczone jako "pay from a mountain.

In the sense of "I have only two apples" and "I have just two apples" they mean exactly the same. In other situations, they can be a little different.

For example, you can say "I just arrived" but cannot say (at least in my dialect) "I only arrived" (but you CAN say "I only just arrived").

Thanks for the kind words! I hope my response is helpful!

Best regards,
David.

Could you please explain the construct you used: "a reference a reputable source"? Why two "a"'s in such a little distance? Honestly, I see something like this for the first time.

And one more question regarding your comment. Why do you use "But this may just be A case" instead of "But this may just be THE case"? Could you please explain. Thanks in advance. :)

Hi David

Thanks for your reply. I'm actually approaching this issue from the other side of the 'Standard English' argument, which is to say that the idea of standard English may be one of academic interest in the oak-paneled studies of professors, but that Standard English 'on the street' is only standard on your own street, so there really isn't a need to get too worried about some of the small stuff that was allegedly 'important' at school. 

Almost all of my students in Poland have two things in common: 
their ability to understand English is much better than their ability (or rather their confidence in their ability) to speak it
they have been taught English in a very rule-based, dogmatic way, with a frequently bewildering and unnecessary level of complexity.
They have also been taught some stuff which is, frankly, bullshit. All of this conspires to rob them of their confidence when it comes to opening their mouths and communicating. This is true not just for my pre-intermediate students, but all the way to the top! The more time people spend in an English-language environment, the more they notice discrepancies between what they hear and read, and what they were taught.

I'm about to publish a book on this subject, specifically aimed at busting some of the myths that many Poles are burdened with by the time they finish their education (myths such as: 'I must' is not the same as 'I have to'; you really need 16 [or more] tenses to be fluent in English). Here is an extract from the part that deals with our topic.

Extract 1..................

“What do we do with 'with'?

The other difficult thing about questions in English is that if we use a preposition (with, from, to, since, above etc.), it can move! We need to decide where to put it. Of course, this is often very easy. We could say:

Who were you with at the party?

OR

Who were you at the party with?

OR

With who* were you at the party?

All three of these are fine, but sometimes in longer, more complex sentences the choice is much more difficult:

[with] who were you [with] at the party [with] in the kitchen [with] next to the vodka [with] when the dog got into the microwave oven [with] and exploded[with]?

OK, it's a slightly strange example but you understand the point – the choice is not always simple, and you can't always put the preposition p anywhere you like. So what's the solution?

It's (once again) very simple – put the preposition at the start of the question.

For example:

Since when has he been here? In which bar did you drink?

This works! Like some of the tenses, you might find that the person you are talking with does it in a different way, but THAT DOESN'T MATTER!! It's always correct, and occasionally even quite elegant. The other important point is that is basically the same structure we use in Polish, so it's easier to remember when you're under pressure. The preposition and the open question word stay together at the beginning. This is one of the biggest reasons for suggesting that you use this pattern!

Some of you might be asking another question. You might be thinking “I'm perfectly comfortable about where I put the prepositions in many questions – should I change?”

NO!! - if you're confident, then keep doing what you're doing. This is simply to give confidence on the occasions when you aren't sure. For some people that will be most of the time, for other people almost never. As we say in English “If it works, don't fix it!”.

So – is it worth looking at the exceptions? On this particular occasion, we think it is, for these reasons:
- There aren't many, but they are very common questions
- You probably already know them, so you wouldn't want to use the formula version
- If you change to the formula version, they sound a bit strange!

Here they are:
1) Column 2 questions
What happened?
Who broke (made/did/ate/drank etc.) it?

2) Short versions where the context is already known
What? short for: What do you want? What did I do? etc.
Who cares? short for: Who cares what I did? Who cares what you think? etc.
Why worry? short for: Why should I (you/we etc.) bother?
Why not?

There are probably a few others (which we will think of the day after this is printed). You may be thinking “OK, but what about this one or that one?” Remember – if you already know it and you are confident, then keep doing what you're doing!”
End of extract................

As you will see from this, my point is NEVER to place constraints upon students - rather to give them simple tools to use with confidence, particularly when they are under pressure. The tools are designed to be particularly easy for Poles to use, even when this occasionally upsets the professors. As for your comment: "While I would understand what the person saying them intends to say, absolutely no native speaker of my native dialect of English (Milwaukee, WI, USA) would produce those sentences!", I am happy to take your word as authoritative for Milwaukee. However, I have lived in several places where the (slightly older and more formal) preposition-first convention is the norm, both in spoken and written English. I have also lived in many places where it isn't, but that's beside the point. The point is that it is a more natural, and therefore easier-to-use construction for a Polish speaker of English. In my experience comfort and confidence have a lot more to do with fluency than adherence to some local version of correctness. As you said yourself: "...I would understand what the person saying them intends to say...", an dats kinda the point, doncha think? People will naturally pick up the local variations in English if they spend long enough in a place, but they don't necessarily need to start off with the local version in order to be understood. 

Here's another extract from my book:
Extract 2.........
 “David Beckham is a very talented, successful footballer, with a beautiful, wealthy wife. He is famous all over the world. He seems to be a very nice chap with a good sense of humour. He is respected by his teammates as a good captain. I am genuinely sorry if this offends him, but you DO NOT want to speak English like David Beckham. Thierry Henry speaks better international standard English than David Beckham. Of course, if you and Thierry went to the area where David grew up, you would initially have more difficulty communicating with local people than David would.

Even if you want to live and work in Leytonstone, Essex (where David is from), there is not much point trying to learn the local version of English. If you arrived with international English, everything would be fine, and after 10 years you might even sound like a local. The best place to learn London idiom is London. The best place to learn Calcutta idiom is Calcutta. The point is, it makes more sense to learn to speak a version of English that can be understood wherever you go.”
End of extract.........

As for references in support of my position, a short search on the internet will provide a bewildering array of opinions across the entire spectrum, some of whom would want me to run for president, some who would burn me as a heretic - and everything in between. However, if you would like something a little more specific, I recommend reading "The Use of English" (professors Quirk, Gimson and Warburg) and "Using functional grammar : an explorer's guide" (David Butt ... [et al.]).

Oh - yous might know da guy who came up wid dese quotes, all of which I am in complete agreement with :)

"What is a mistake? There is a lot of debate on this topic! Depending on who you ask, you'll get a different answer. But I would contend that "we gonna" is not a mistake. It's definitely not standard English but that doesn't mean it's wrong."

"English (like all languages) is in a constant state of flux and what was correct or incorrect in the past, is different now. There are also many, many, MANY competing dialects.What is correct or incorrect in one dialect, is different in another."

"Standard English is a dialect too, which actually, I think no one really speaks natively! :-) We all speak slightly different dialects and most people can speak or at least understand more than one."

Cheers!

Mark

I don't wanna be nasty but... What I meant was... actually I'm gonna give you an example.
"Can I borrow your car?" "Could you lend me some money?", w moim zamyśle i ludzi (native speakers of course)znaczy to mniej więcej: "Czy pożyczysz mi samochód? " lub "Twój samochód" (dla czepialskich ;)
"Pożyczysz mi trochę kasy?" niby w polskim bez różnicy, ale zależy co, kto i od kogo :)Jeżeli dobrze zrozumiałem to w Twoich okolicach, mówi się po prostu: " Could you borrow me some money?" Tutaj w Anglii jest to uważane za poważny błąd, ale fajnie,że stworzyłeś miejsce, w którym można swoje wąpliwości rozwiać.
You wrote:
"So, Poles should just move to my city and they won't have any problems! ;-)"
You don't really want it, do you ? hehehe
Pozdrawiam.

It's the comment from a frustrated teenager :)
The educational system in Poland is bad, but many people can go beyond it, learn by themselves and have a great success in their life.