Maybe it’s because it was in the same language group as those others that polish got singled out. People who speak an Indo European language will expect to be lost when first trying to learn a language outside of the group, but might not expect to be so confuddled from a related language. Expectations basically.
Kinda weird to isolate Polish when Hungarian, Finnish and Basque are actually all their own distinct language families.
Polish actually isn’t in a distinct language family and shares a lot with other western Slavic languages like Czech, and Slavic languages in general.
Maybe it’s because it was in the same language group as those others that polish got singled out. People who speak an Indo European language will expect to be lost when first trying to learn a language outside of the group, but might not expect to be so confuddled from a related language. Expectations basically.