I live in Poland and have been trying to learn Polish for the past 10 months. And failing - a lot.
There are two main reasons for this (in my mind at least):
1) I haven't been fully immersed in Polish; it's too easy to speak English instead.
2) I don't understand English grammar.
If you have an analytical mind, I think point 2 is very important. The amount of textbooks I've read and failed to understand because it's like they're written in a different language. I think it's a bit like when discussing programming terms with a non-techie.
Anyway, I'm now spending my time learning about nouns, adjectives, verbs and what object and subject are in relation to a sentence.
It's a crying shame that I've got to the age of 28 without knowing this stuff, and a damning indictment of the English educational system (and myself!) /but/ I think it'll be worth it ;)
Hey, I have a question for you: how do Poles react to your attempts to learn Polish?
I ask because I spent a year or two studying Polish (not in Poland, though) and in my experience, Polish people were nonplussed by this. In fact, they were rather consistently cold and unhelpful. Their attitude seemed to be "Polish is for Poles, why are you intruding?" I'm curious to know if this is endemic or if I just fell afoul of small sample size. I eventually bailed and decided to go learn a language where people would react to my feeble attempts to speak it by kissing me and offering me food.
p.s. Knowledge of English grammar would be nice, but you're overestimating how much it would help you learn a Slavic language. Latin actually would be better, because like Latin the Slavic languages are still highly inflected (i.e. they vary word endings by case). Anyway, you'd be better off learning from an undergraduate Polish grammar textbook in English, or, if you can read it, a children's grammar in Polish.
How do Poles react to your attempts to learn Polish
I think you were a victim of a small sample size :) All the Polish people I've met have been seriously impressed with my attempts to speak and learn Polish. For those that don't speak English, the effect's the same, usually with a smile on their face. There's one shop I love going to as the various staff there always try and have a conversation with me in Polish, very friendly and patiently.
The reason I need English grammar is because the description of grammar doesn't make any sense to me - I'm at the real basic stage of working out when to use adjective forms of a noun and so on. Shameful, but true sadly.
There are two main reasons for this (in my mind at least):
1) I haven't been fully immersed in Polish; it's too easy to speak English instead.
2) I don't understand English grammar.
If you have an analytical mind, I think point 2 is very important. The amount of textbooks I've read and failed to understand because it's like they're written in a different language. I think it's a bit like when discussing programming terms with a non-techie.
Anyway, I'm now spending my time learning about nouns, adjectives, verbs and what object and subject are in relation to a sentence.
It's a crying shame that I've got to the age of 28 without knowing this stuff, and a damning indictment of the English educational system (and myself!) /but/ I think it'll be worth it ;)