is it difficult to learn the Polish language? How long might it take an average student?

I know some people who find the pronunciation difficult, I think it's easy but I struggle with the grammar.

Having said that, I also struggled with the grammar in Spanish and German but I found the Polish grammar harder.

So really it's hard to say how long it would take.

Powodzenia!!!

It's difficult, no doubt. I've never heard anyone who learnt it as a foreign language and spoke it so well they could pass for a native speaker.

However, not many people need to pass for a native. If you just want to communicate effectively, a few years will do, but how many - it depends.

It helps

-if you know any other Slavic language - similar grammars.

-if you live in Poland - you'll have to use it

-if you know any other European languages - some vocabulary might be useful

For an English speaker the biggest problem is that Polish is so highly inflectional. The sentence structure isn't that far from English, but, for example, in place of English "went" there are 13 (!) forms depending on the person, gender, etc.

Pronunciation might be a bit of a problem, but not as much as you'd expect. There are a few difficult words, just like in any other lingo, but most are "normal". And, the spelling is phonetic, so if you see something written, you know how to pronounce it. The other way it's a bit more problematic, i.e. if you hear something, there might be different spellings.

To sum it up, for an English speaker Polish will be more difficult than Spanish or French, about the same as Russian, but definitely less difficult than Arabic or Japanese!

You may want to check this out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_language

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/polish.htm

Questions like these are hard to answer because what exactly is an average student. I know some people who say Japanese is the hardest language ever (I don't think so at all) and that Russian is easy (I don't think so at all, haha). They aren't any smarter or dumber than me. First, what languages do you already know? Languages in the Romance/Germanic family are better for English speakers, since they similar words, use the Roman alphabet and perfect accents aren't essential.

The being said, Polish is often cited as one of the hardest languages to learn, even for a native Slavic family speaker. However, learning a language is about how much time you put into it, not it's overall difficulty. If you plan to study everyday and practice (speaking, listening and reading, mainly, unless you need to write, I would focus of those), you could have a very solid knowledge of Polish by the next year.

A main difficulty in the Polish language is its alphabet; it is comparable to Latin with a few discrepancies. Polish is also an inflection language like Latin, using 7 cases to define noun usage in a sentence. A mark of its difficulty can be seen in its youth; most people do not master Polish until they reach 16.