Lubić vs. Podobać. What's the Essential Difference?

Here we have two commonly used Polish verbs that must be learned early in the study of the Polish language. Neither are irregular and though they are of different verb classes, both follow the same conjugation rules as other regular verbs.

Basically, both these verbs mean 'to like' something or someone. Or at least that is how tools such as Google Translate will translate both and this can lead to great confusion until one understands the essential difference between them.  

Lubić is a straightforward verb with straightforward conjugation. In use there is absolutely nothing unusual about it and it presents little in the way of difficulty. 

For instance ~ Ja lubię = I like. Ty lubisz = you like. On/ona/ono lubi = he/she/it likes, and so on.

So to say, 'I like you' or 'you like me' and 'I like him/her/it' does not run into any conflict with English word order  ~

Ja lubię cię = I like you. Ty lubisz mnie = you like me. Ona lubi to = She likes it, and so on.

But, podabać is different. It does not function in quite the same way and is almost always paired with the reflexive 'się' and here is where the confusion starts ~

Teraz widzę, czemu podobasz się Joe.

I can certainly see why Joe likes you.

If you take podobać as meaning 'to like' then the above sentence seems to make no sense at all in translation, and yet it is perfectly correct. It seems to mean 'I can certainly see why you like Joe' doesn't it?

It gets really weird when you consider the following ~

Podobam ci się = You like me. Podobasz mi się = I like you.

What? Surely that should be ~

Podobam ci się = I like you. Podobasz mi się = You like me. 

Now we have serious conflict, because this just makes no sense at all to the English mind. It's all topsy turwy with meanings tripping all over each other in an unruly fight to establish common sense.

Who the hell is liking who?

However, when you discover that podobać does not actually mean, 'to like', but rather, 'to please', then it all makes perfect logical sense.

Podobam ci się = I please you.  Hence in translation, 'You like me'.

Podobasz mi się = You please me. Hence in translation, 'I like you.

Simple!

The other essential difference is that lubić means to like something for what it is. I like food, I like cars, I like girls, etc. Podobać means to like the way something or someone looks ~

Podobam ci się = You fancy me'.

Podobasz mi się = I fancy you.

As for 'się', well, that can wait for another day because at the moment, I just don't get it! 

Zero in Common

Among the six and a half thousand languages of the world, the Polish language is widely regarded as one of the most difficult to master, and the English language one of the easiest. As a native speaker of English now into his eleventh month of Polish language study but quite unable to string together a coherent spoken sentence, I tend to agree.

If, for example, I'd chosen to learn French last August then I have no doubt that I'd be able to hold my own in conversation by now. Of course I'd trip up from time to time, struggling for the correct word for the context and putting my adjectives before my nouns instead of after, but really, French and English have so very much in common it would not have been such a trial.



As I quickly discovered, English and Polish have zero in common besides sharing the word 'zero'! They are as chalk and cheese...

Of course that's something of an exaggeration. The word 'no' is also shared. But in Polish it means, 'yeah!' Which can be rather confusing, and probably something that will always fox me given I cannot respond to 'no' as an affirmative having received it and used it as a negative all my life...

What they do share in common is bewildering complexities. English may seem easy but its spelling is not phonetic so the correct pronunciation of every single word must be learned by heart (woman, women!) and the critically important stress patterns that native English speakers apply naturally to every syllable of every word and every word in every sentence make speaking English very challenging for those not born to it.

Its grammar may appear easy, at first, but I can think of very few non-native speakers who know how to use stress correctly and believe me, it is everything, because in English a simple six word sentence can probably carry twenty different meanings depending on which words are stressed and how.

The complexity of Polish is not in the often bizarre looking clusters of consonants, as many might think when taking a cursory glance at a Polish text. With a little training, pronunciation of even the most horrendous string of letters is actually fairly easy because the Polish alphabet is entirely phonetic and without any exception I have discovered, words are spoken exactly as they are spelled, even to the point of double consonants (dd, bb, etc) being sounded twice. Hobby is 'hobuby', for instance.

As for stress. Well, by comparison with English, Polish stress patterns are a doddle. Just stress the penultimate syllable of every word and the last syllable (with a rise in pitch) of the last word of any sentence that asks a question.

The hardest thing for me is controlling my natural inclination to stress the words in a sentence as I would in English, and coping with the strictly limited range of vowel sounds. The language only possesses six, when I'm used to employing twelve!



No, its true complexity is in its frightening verb conjugation and its daunting seven-case grammar which demands that nouns and their adjectives (and even determiners such as 'my' and 'your' it seems) must all receive different endings depending on their function in the sentence. But even that is not the half of it...

You just wait till you have say 'hello', or worse...

'Goodbye'!