A teraz, coś całkiem innego . . . Last weekend was an important milestone for me: it’s been a year since I started studying Polish. Last spring, my grad student housing closed due to COVID-19, and my girlfriend and I evacuated to her parents’ house in New Jersey. Her parents grew up in Poland, and Polish is the language they speak at home. To better communicate with my girlfriend’s family, and because I had free time during lockdown, I decided to learn Polish.
Your post seems to imply that this is something specific to Polish; let me note that all those words have a direct equivalent in Russian (for example; likely the same is in all Slavic languages). Even the example about "Dwaj mężczyźni zjedli jabłko." is more or less preserved: in Russian the straightforward form (Два мужчины съели яблоко ~= Dwa muzhscyny sjeli jabloko) [I am bad at transcription] is also for some reason not the one used, instead one would use the collective form: (Двое мужчин съели яблоко ~= Dwoje muzhscyn sjeli jabloko). However, the verb is still in plural at least.
Re: "It’s not any worse than the cardinal numbers, but for numbers above 20, I always get thrown off. For example, in English we say “twenty-third”, but in Polish it is “dwudziesty trzeci” which is equivalent to “twentieth-third”."
Remember it stops applying for hundreds, thousands and above. It's a common error to say "dwutysięczny piąty" (2000th+5th) instead of "dwa tysiące piąty" (2000+5th), the latter being the correct one, when you refer to year 2005. Or any year after 2000, which is the only one you refer to as "dwutysięczny" (2000th).
But hey, if natives can't get it right why should foreigners :D I'm kind of a descriptivist myself and imo polish is overly complicated, with redundant letters (we could do without ż or ó, we have rz and u) with rules natives can't stick to. I understand if learning weird languages is your hobby or if you have a partner/family member who is a native, but I feel sorry for any foreigner who 'had to' learn it.
> This ["dwaj mężczyźni" vs. "dwóch mężczyzn"] might be a dialect thing.
I think you may be right: I asked a native-speaker relative of mine (from Warsaw), who said that both "dwaj mężczyźni" and "dwóch mężczyzn" are correct and sound natural.
> Some days I think that “overloading” in object-oriented programming was inspired by the Polish prepositions.
Some other languages with noun cases do this too, e.g. Greek πρός has a different meaning with each case except the nominative and vocative: πρός τινος (with the genitive, "from someone, [given, etc.] by someone"), πρός τινι (with the dative, "near someone"), πρός τινα (with the accusative, "towards someone") (according to https://logeion.uchicago.edu/%CF%80%CF%81%CF%8C%CF%82 ).
Your post seems to imply that this is something specific to Polish; let me note that all those words have a direct equivalent in Russian (for example; likely the same is in all Slavic languages). Even the example about "Dwaj mężczyźni zjedli jabłko." is more or less preserved: in Russian the straightforward form (Два мужчины съели яблоко ~= Dwa muzhscyny sjeli jabloko) [I am bad at transcription] is also for some reason not the one used, instead one would use the collective form: (Двое мужчин съели яблоко ~= Dwoje muzhscyn sjeli jabloko). However, the verb is still in plural at least.
Re: "It’s not any worse than the cardinal numbers, but for numbers above 20, I always get thrown off. For example, in English we say “twenty-third”, but in Polish it is “dwudziesty trzeci” which is equivalent to “twentieth-third”."
Remember it stops applying for hundreds, thousands and above. It's a common error to say "dwutysięczny piąty" (2000th+5th) instead of "dwa tysiące piąty" (2000+5th), the latter being the correct one, when you refer to year 2005. Or any year after 2000, which is the only one you refer to as "dwutysięczny" (2000th).
But hey, if natives can't get it right why should foreigners :D I'm kind of a descriptivist myself and imo polish is overly complicated, with redundant letters (we could do without ż or ó, we have rz and u) with rules natives can't stick to. I understand if learning weird languages is your hobby or if you have a partner/family member who is a native, but I feel sorry for any foreigner who 'had to' learn it.
> This ["dwaj mężczyźni" vs. "dwóch mężczyzn"] might be a dialect thing.
I think you may be right: I asked a native-speaker relative of mine (from Warsaw), who said that both "dwaj mężczyźni" and "dwóch mężczyzn" are correct and sound natural.
> Some days I think that “overloading” in object-oriented programming was inspired by the Polish prepositions.
Some other languages with noun cases do this too, e.g. Greek πρός has a different meaning with each case except the nominative and vocative: πρός τινος (with the genitive, "from someone, [given, etc.] by someone"), πρός τινι (with the dative, "near someone"), πρός τινα (with the accusative, "towards someone") (according to https://logeion.uchicago.edu/%CF%80%CF%81%CF%8C%CF%82 ).