Work / Any english teachers in Poland here with tips to share? [55]


But you don't live in the lesson or get paid in the lesson or have to convince the secretary or whoever that you need that zawiadczenie today not tomorrow. Theoretically the office staff might know English, but practically this often means they know enough to say "no" or "tomorrow" or "those are the rules" and then tune anything you say right out of their heads. It's harder for them to tune out (even bad ) Polish and you can often get your way just so you'll leave them alone and stop pestering them.

The more Polish you know, the better things go outside the lesson.

Law / URGENT-U.S. citizen needs help with Polish permanent residence visa app! [4]

I'm confused, I don't think you can't apply for a permanent visa till you've been in Poland for several years (shorter if you're married but still not right away). I think what you want is a typical first time work-permit visa which you have to receive in your country of residence (it can be renewed in Poland). Don't arrive in Poland without it unless you're willing to work off the books for a while.

I really doubt that they send the physical passport to Poland.

IME (long long ago) consulates do visa work on time.

Also, often in Poland there are two rates, the regular rate and a higher expedited rate. Ask if you can pay more to get it done faster, that's not a bribe, really.

Finally, members of Polish bureaucracy are often not really well informed. If I were you, I'd look up the web page for the "Wydział Spraw Cudzoziemców" (foreigner's department) of the Urząd Wojewódzki (local government agency) wherever it is you'll be in Poland. They're the people you'll have to satisfy once you're here. Avoid pages in English which are often out of date and have your fiance look at the Polish regulations and send an email or two (or even call on the phone, if they've dealt with you before generally things will go easier in person.

Good luck.

Love / Is it true Polish people don't move in together that quick? [27]

Sounds to me like she's made her choice: she'd rather be with an awful boyfriend than a (presumably) good girlfriend.

If she won't leave a loser like that for you, then mark my words, even if she does leave him, she'll dump you the moment a decent guy appears on the scene.

The only possible reason to stay (temporarily) is if she's planning on disappearing from his life in an untraceable way (sometimes necessary in cases of domestic violence and it does take preparation). But there's no indication from you that that's happening.

Love / Is it true Polish people don't move in together that quick? [27]

Forever? For a year? For how long? You need to **** or get off the pot (and she does too).
Remember, she's not doing right by anyone but herself at present, not you or the Dutch boyfriend. As long as you wait, you're a party to the wrong she's doing him (if that concerns you).

Language / I know "się" is the only reflexive personal pronoun..but "jak się masz?" [34]

I surely can (off the top of my head without consulting any references):

nominative: -
accusative: się, siebie
genetive: się, siebie
dative: se*, sobie
instrumental: sobą
locative: o sobie
vocative: -

when there are two forms the first is unaccented and the second is accented (only accented forms occur after prepositions) but się somtimes appears after prepositions too (especially, I think, przez)

* se is non-standard and very rarely written but frequent in some kinds of everyday spoken Polish

there's also an unaccented się, that I would write sie but hardly anyone ever does.

I could if it made any sense.

What I see is

Nice/beautiful. That's how it goes/is arranged into? a/the fucked up ???? of a jigsaw puzzle.

I think you (or the other person) mis-wrote głobie (no such word that I know) and maybe zjebany too (sure there wasn't an 'm' at the end?)

Love / Is it true Polish people don't move in together that quick? [27]

She's taking advantage of:

a) Dutch boyfriend
b) you
c) a and b

there are no other options. No matter how kind she thinks her motivations are, the real world results are that she's using one (or both) of you and setting one (or both) of you up for heartbreak.

Time to make an ultimatum: Either she makes a quick, clean break from Dutch boyfriend and commits to you openly (as possible) or you walk.

Accept no excuses, and remember: the longer you draw it out and the more patient you are, the bigger the hurt you're setting yourself up for. If she's not ready now for a break she's not lesbian but the kind of bi-curious girl who'll go back to men once her curiosity is satisfied.

Language / I know "się" is the only reflexive personal pronoun..but "jak się masz?" [34]

się is the only reflexive pronoun but .... it's also more.

One important function of się is related to transitivity. In essence, take a transitive verb (cieszyć = to make s.o. happy) add się and you have a new (non-reflexive) intransitive verb cieszyć się = be happy)

With jak się masz:

mieć = transitive, have sth, hold sth

mieć się = be in a certain condition, hold out (under circumstances)

Scandinavian languages do something similar by adding a dummy object 'det' (that, or Polish to)

Swedish: Hur har du det? (how do you have it?)

general note to everyone: the poster known as Michal knows nothing about _any_ language and anything he writes should be regarded as wrong until proven otherwise (and maybe even then).

Travel / anyone put the new shengen rules to the test? [30]

I travelled within Shengen in April and the ticket people looked at my passport both ways. I don't know what would have happened if something were out of order...

Love / Age for Polish couples to get married + divorce rates + possessive guys [9]

Random observations:

Pre-marital sex has long been the norm in Poland. Typically a serious couple that might get married starts having sex. If they break up before getting married, well that can happen. On the other hand, if pregnancy results, the wedding plans are moved up (the proportion of visibly pregnant brides is pretty high). The parents may not be happy about this, but they did the same thing and their kids are liable to know it which doesn't give them much room for making sermons.

Random sleeping around has never been the norm and is very much looked down on.

So, very few Polish people expect a woman to be a virgin at marriage. On the other hand, the expectation is that sex has been restricted to serious relationships. Also note, many Polish women are not catholic enough to restrain from pre-marital sex but they are catholic enough to not use birth control. If you're not ready for parenthood and have a Polish girlfriend, take contraception into your own hands (so to speak).

I don't know if Polish guys are really that possessive but:
a) the things that make them jealous are different than the things that make western guys jealous
b) there's a psychotic sub-class that never knows when to let go (generally not violent but very annoying - a friend tells me how his wife's former suitor showed up at their honeymoon hotel).

Age of first marriage is trending up. I remember when female students expected to be married (at least engaged) by the end of their studies. That's just not the case anymore.

Divorce is also trending up. Formerly, a couple that would probably get divorced in the US would still live together but quietly agree to have their own (discreet) private lives. Now, they're more likely to get divorced.

One of the most common causes of divorce in Poland are meddling in-laws (his or hers). Young couples traditionally had to rely on help from parents and the parents used this to try to maximize their influence over the young couple, usually with bad results.

News / 14 year old rape victim from Warsaw denied abortion! [348]

This case is no longer an issue, the abortion did finally take place (on the last possible day).

Language / żeby / żebyś - when and how to use them? [3]

żeby

is a combination of the conjunction że (that) and the conditional particle by (roughly 'would', 'should' or subjunctive)

żeby is followed by an infinitive (impersonal) or a past stem (looks like third person singular of the past tense)

żebyś can only be followed by the past stem and only with second person singular (familiar) subject

żeby być = in order to be

żeby był = that he might be, that he be (subjunctive), that he should be

żebyś był = (same as above but with 'you' instead of 'he')

Language / (part 2) Polish Language Pronunciation - Sample Words and Phrases [311]

Well, roughly (just because two languages are never completely identical)

nia = Italian gna
nie = gne
nio = gno
niu = gnu
ni = gni (do ni and gni contrast in Italian? do ñi and ni contrast in Spanish?)

I think theoreticall you could represent non-palatalized ni with nji (just as -sji- is like Italian or Spanish si) but I can't think of examples.

I'm not entirely sure if nii as in "do Hiszpanii" 'to Spain' is ni or nji.

USA, Canada / I might be moving to Florida.... [36]

sledz, I never considered Sanibel part of Ft Myers for some reason (though I considered North Fort Myers more a neighborhood than a separate entity, I don't know what it's current status is). Mostly I disliked it for the traffic, for almost a year I had to drive through downtown Ft Myers (41) five days a week. Worst drivers in the continental US.

szarlotka, it's not a good idea to swim in any natural fresh water in Florida, alligators, cottonmouths and snapping turtles are the main attractions and there's a few more too (rattlesnakes take readily enough to water). Oh, and crocodiles have made a return in very south Florida.

Language / Polish Conditionals (okresy warunkowe or zdania warunkowe) [23]

I'm not convinced that this very thorough description would really be understood by most English speakers trying to learn Polish. note: The following criticism and suggestions are meant to be helpful rather than hostile.

For one, the conditional terminology you use seems to be part of the tradition of teaching English as a second language and nothing that native speakers are ever taught in school or even think about (the extent to which conditionals were covered in my US education was the admonition to say "If I were" instead of "If I was").

Giving so many gender/number combinations for each Polish example makes them look harder than they are too. This is a phobia of mine because of a guide I had that insisted on giving past forms as

Also, it makes the very simple Polish system seem more complicated than it really is. The learner has to work through the whole thing to find out (for instance) that Polish doesn't distinguish "If I had the money I'd go to Spain" (which could still happen) and "If I'd had the money, I'd have gone to Spain" (which cannot happen).

Gdybym miał pieniądze, pojechałbym do Hiszpanii.

For the English speaking Polish learner, I'd introduce jeśli/jeżeli and the kinds of tenses that can follow them.

Then quite separately, I'd talk about the single Polish conditional (which also does duty as a subjunctive, essentially it's an all round counterfactional).

I'd do that by giving the by forms separately

first person: bym
byśmy

second person (familiar): byś
byście

third person :
by

Then I'd point out that these always co occur with the past stem (which looks like the third person past tense and like it agrees with the subject in number and gender)

Then some basic word/morpheme rules, that the by forms usually occur after the first word in the clause and written together with it .

Lastly, I think

English:

looks more natural to me than

English one:

Language / Popular Polish transcription depends on Anglophone's speech [3]

POHNCH-kee (for many, maybe most Americans, aw or au will not produce the right result, the difference between cot and caught is disappearing in most of NAmerica).

This can work for Americans, but I don't know if it would work for British people.

Polish vowels

a = ah
e = eh
i = ee
o = oh
u = oo
y = ih

ą = ohn (ohm, ong, word finally maybe onh)
ę = ehn, (ehm, eng, if you want to use the old-fashioned word final, then maybe eh-oo (the oo after e is more distinctive than the nasalization).

before vowels

ci = chee
cie = chyeh
etc

czy = chih
cze = cheh
etc

chih roh-ZOO-myehsh?

At the end of a word or before a consonant, there's no realistic way of distinguishing them (as in wieś and wiesz) without diacritics or detailed explanation.

Also there's no reason an English speaking learner has to learn to _hear_ the difference (after more than 10 years I still don't hear it even though I understand spoken Polish just fine) as long as they can _produce_ a rough approximation of the difference.

Food / Polish (but can be just any other) recipes for chicken dishes anyone? [23]

Two simple recipes, one sort of Polish, one sort of Thai.

Sort of Polish (similar to potrawka, a kind of ragout)

Cut one chicken breast into small cubes.

Heat a few tablespoons of oil in the bottom of a pot. When the oil is hot, add fresh ground black pepper. Remove from heat to add chicken pieces (otherwise the oil will splatter). Then replace back on medium heat.

After the chicken pieces are done, add two tablespoons of flour and stir. Add in a cup or so of boiling water and stir until the flour and water have mixed into a smooth mixture.

Add one package of soft cheese (serek, I usually use onion flavor) and stir till smooth. Serve over pasta or rice.
Thats the basic recipe which you can modify in a hundred ways, by adding vegetables (onions, carrots, mushrooms) to the chicken or other herbs or spices to the sauce. For a 70's retro flavor, add a few tablespoons of vermouth.

sort of Thai.

Cut one chicken breast into small cubes.
Wash and pick leaves of fresh Thai basil (not the same as Italian basil at all, in Warsaw you can find it at oriental grocery stores). how many leaves you use if up to your taste, start with about 12 and then increase or decrease to taste.

Heat a few tablespoons of oil and add chicken. Add pepper (white, black or my favorite green), a teaspoon of sugar and a tablespoon of fish sauce (yes, it smells nasty when you first add it, but you'll get used to it and soon won't be able to live without it).

Add two or three fresh or frozen lime leaves (also availabe at Asian grocery stores). Add two or three spoonfuls of Thai shrimp and chilli paste and stir well. Add about a half cup to a cup of water (depending on how watery you like your sauce) and bring to a boil. Throw in the leaves, stir once and remove from heat immediately. Let sit covered for two or three minutes. Serve over rice.

USA, Canada / I might be moving to Florida.... [36]

As a native-born Floridian I feel qualified to comment on my home state...

The good ...

Climate: At least on the coasts, inland it's hot and humid and sticky.

Coasts: There's no bad coastline in Florida, it's all interesting or beautiful in one way or the other.

Variety: There's actually about five different Floridas. There's Miami-Cuban Florida, Old people Florida, Old South Florida (paradoxically in the north of the state), Cracker Florida, Cowboy Florida (yeah, there are real cowboys in Florida, always have been)... Plus there's lot of interesting local varieties and subcultures.

Food: In terms of raw ingredients, there's lots of fresh vegetables year round and great seafood, lots of interesting ethnic food

The bad...

Yankees: Lots of folks move from the North to Florida and then go around telling people how they did things 'back North'. Locals hate them.

Crime: Typically half or more of the cities with the highest rates of crime (including violent crime) are found in Florida.

No live culture: Things like theater, concerts, you know live cultural events are few and far between once you get outside of a couple of big cities. Get used to watching tv and plenty of it. There's not much else going on.

Bad infrastructure: Drinking water is low quality, and the construction industry creates infrastructure needs that it can't fill. The philosophy has always been build now, let someone else worry about infrastructure.

Low pay: No state income tax and no unions and lots of untrained people (local and imported) who'll be glad to work for less than you.

Cars: Because of the philosophy of building out and not up, hardly anywhere in Florida has anything like public transportation and in most places bikes are not feasible. So, you've gotta drive to do anything. Lots of retirees when they get too old to drive become horribly lonely shut ins.

Tourists: For three or four months they clog up everything and add their cars to the general turmoil on the roads. They make up one of the state's biggest industries and locals hate them.

Varmints: Two meter long rattlesnakes that are liable to show up anywhere (and which are all but invisible when coiled in the bushes), alligators, sharks, stingrays. Florida has many animals that want to kill you. Mosquitos are only kept in check by massive insecticide use (which probably has some bad effects of its own)

UK, Ireland / ARE YOUNG BRITS LESS INTELLIGENT THAN POLES? [56]


I did not say it does. I used words like 'average' and 'typical'. Let's look at that quote again:

"an average Polish university student has no problem in transferring and doing well at a typical US or UK university"


Your reading comprehension suggests otherwise.

UK, Ireland / ARE YOUNG BRITS LESS INTELLIGENT THAN POLES? [56]

IME usually an average Polish university student has no problem in transferring and doing well at a typical US or UK university, this includes dealing with the language barrier.

An average US university student would not be able to cope at a typical Polish university, not including the langugage barrier.

FWIW

News / 14 year old rape victim from Warsaw denied abortion! [348]


If the very existence of the 'innocent person' (known to most people as a non-sentient clump of cells) is the result of violence, it has no inherent right to use the body of an unwilling adult for its sustenance and birth.

If a woman has the right to kill a rapist in self-defense then surely she has the right to not tie herself to him biologically. Otherwise, women are just hatcheries for any many who can impregnate them (in any way).

News / 14 year old rape victim from Warsaw denied abortion! [348]


So women have no right of self-defense or authority over their own bodies?

Please enlighten me on your reasoning.

News / 14 year old rape victim from Warsaw denied abortion! [348]

Without pretending to know the real facts in this particular case:

Any woman has the absolute moral right to terminate a pregnancy that results from violence against done against her person just as she has the moral right to terminate a pregnancy that threatens her life or health.

The moral status of the fetus in both cases is immaterial and irrelevant.

News / 14 year old rape victim from Warsaw denied abortion! [348]

To stir the ashes, muddy the waters, (insert your metaphor of choice)

Apparently the protesters (no links, all in Polish and if you can read it you can find it easily enough) are claiming to be acting on what they think is the girl's wishes.

Their story: there was no rape (except statutory maybe) and the father is the girl's boyfriend and the girl wants the baby but is being pressured by the mother to terminate.

I have _no_ idea if any of this is true (and if any of it's true to what degree). But it's their story.

History / WAS WAŁĘSA A SECRET POLICE COLLABORATOR? [26]


This implies that they're endorsing the contents of the book.
The letter I saw implied no such thing. Those writing the "pro-" book letter clearly took no opinion on the merits of the book itself.

They just saying (and I completely agree) that the book should be evaluated by those qualified after publication and not suppressed before publication.

If the book doesn't have any real, convincing evidence, it and the authors should be condemned _after_ publication.

News / What does Poland mean to you? [66]

"I am british."

That explains a lot.

It doesn't explain how awful toilet etiquette in your country must be if "hordes" of toilet cleaners can find gainful employment there.

News / What does Poland mean to you? [66]

"a country where X" means that X happens in the country referred to to.

If hordes of toilet cleaning immigrants invade your country in Poland that means that you are in fact either Polish or illiterate. Which is it?

USA, Canada / Day before Schegen:Canada finds Polish passport, US deports,cut from home [44]

You were trying to illegally enter a country that didn't want you (with very good reason considering your attitude toward visas).

So they returned you to the country you were trying to enter from. You had no legal right to be in that country so you were deported.

Again, I'm sure it wasn't pleasant for you but it seems both Canada and the US were completely in the right.

USA, Canada / Day before Schegen:Canada finds Polish passport, US deports,cut from home [44]

What you don't seem to understand.

Once your visa expires and you haven't left the country, you're breaking the law. When the authorities find you, they will deport you.

The fact that you have a phd is completely irrelevant.

The fact that you weren't working illegally is completely irrelevant.

The fact that other illegal aliens aren't caught is completely irrelevant.

There is only _one_ relevant fact. Your visa was expired. That made you an illegal alien, eligible for immediate deportation when found. If you didn't know that before, then you know that now.

USA, Canada / Day before Schegen:Canada finds Polish passport, US deports,cut from home [44]

I'm sure it's all been unpleaant for you. But, honestly, it's all your own fault and nobody else's.

1. Trying to cross a third international border with an expired visa is .... not smart.

2. Doing so on the basis of a newspaper article (without checking with the relevant embassies/consulates) is ... not smart.

3. VWP's are not for people to go anywhere they please for any length of time. The Canadian officials already had strong evidence that you don't think visa laws apply to you and that you feel free to overstay your visa. They were absolutely right to refuse entry and to turn you over to US Immigration.

4. Polish membership in the EU and Schengen have _nothing_ to do US and Canadian visa/border crossing protocals.

5. This was a lesson. An unpleasant, expensive lesson but one that you very much need to learn. But rather than learn from it, you're writing a lot of irrelevant nonsense that display no understanding of how you ended up where you did.

Conclusion: Based entirely upon what you yourself have written here, you brought this entirely upon yourself through not paying attention to rules and foolish carelessness.

In Poland no one cares about following rules and everybody thinks they're an exceptional case. In English speaking countries, following the rules is a very important cultural value (which you have not yet learned) and claiming to be a special case gets you nowhere (which you have not yet learned).