Polish, as I understand it

It's the way I am.  I learn by obsession.  I immerse myself in a subject to learn about it.  Desperate to practice what I have learned, no matter how small, as a way of ensuring I remember.  At first, the seemingly impossible, vast and bewildering collections of consonants, posed a challenge for a chap unaccustomed to the Polish tongue. I got so used to the struggle that, in the early days of learning, I'd catch myself trying to pronounce car registration plates as a reflex action.  Ever eager to try out my appalling pronunciation on random unwitting Poles, I'd leap at the chance if I heard even the vaguest Slavic accent.  I have learned several things from this: 1 - There's more Bulgarians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Romanians and Slovakians in my place of work than I thought. 2 - An awful lot of people from central and eastern Europe are polyglots - they speak multiple languages - so do understand what I am saying, if not exactly why. 3 - It seems that I neve...