News / Adoption from Poland for a 50% Polish? [10]

Poland is a party to the Hague Convention which regulates adoptions matters.
I was told by Mr Tadeusz Pudłowski, who heads Warsaw's Publiczny Ośrodek Adopcyno-Opiekuńczy, that foreign adopting parents stand a better chance if willing to accept three siblings, children of 10 or older or infants with birth defects.

He said prospective adopters should go through an accredited adoption agency in their area:

adoption.state.gov/hague/accreditation/agencies.html

Genealogy / Tracking family tree - anyone know any Olian family in Poland? Marek Skawica? [5]

One way is to phone the Urząd Gminy Zawoja to which Skawica belongs, ask for the Dział Ewidencji Ludności and ask them whether they've got a record of any Mareks in the area. They may confirm or deny, but it's a toss-up whetehr they'll give out any concrete address. Naturally all this has to be conducted in Polish.

Language / PRONOUNCING NASAL VOWEL "Ę" IN FINAL POSITION? [11]

CORRECTION (slip of the finger) -- THE ABOVE CONTRIBUTION SHOULD HAVE READ:
The "ą" IS pronounced in final position, only the "ę" is usually nasally silent.

News / Adoption from Poland for a 50% Polish? [10]

You might find this film on adopting from Poland interesting:

filmbaby.com/films/951
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5000_Miles

News / Social mobility in Poland [5]

The Kaczyński brothers were always after the "układy" (coteries, cliques, informal ties) that had wormed themselve sinto free Poland since 1989, when the ruling ciommies struck a dela with the leftists of the Solidarity movement. Ex-commiers including secret polciemen establioshed niches for thersmelves in the privatisation programmes, on bank and company boards, set up detective and security agencies and made extesnive use of their commie-era contacts. The Gazeta Wyborcza crowd, many of whom had long records of collabroations with the former regime, took a hand washes hand approach and opposed all attempts at de-communisation, vetting and sweeping the regime's hangers-on out. To them, Jaruzelski, who had waged war on his own nation, was a "man of honour" and Kukliński (a Polish army officer who had provided NATO with sensitive Soviet-bloc plans) was dubbed a traitor. Members of such układy don't admit it, nor does that class have any formal name.

A competlely different matter was that the Kaczyńskis' execution of that programme was clumsy and ineffective, eventually resulting in their party being swept form office in snap 2007 elections.

Language / PRONOUNCING NASAL VOWEL "Ę" IN FINAL POSITION? [11]

The "ą" IS pronounced in final position, only the "ą" is usually nasally silent.

Genealogy / Contact number for my father in Poland. D. Amezdroz or M. Marsula [3]

The information bureau said there is no landline phone regsitered at that address. Perahps your dad' got a mobile, and there is no inforation brueau providing such numbers. Good luck in your search! If interested in a detective agency to track him down, please let me know.

Language / POLISH VERBS RICHER THAN ENGLISH ONES!? [12]

Fruwać/frunąć or dialectic frugać/frugnąć and furgać/furgnąć all imply wing-flapping. When speaking of aeroplanes we never say odfrunięcie o godz. 0935 but odlot or wylot. If your gf throws a vase at you, lecieć should be used do describe what it is doing in mid-air before it gives you a brain concussion.

Language / POLISH LANGUAGE POLICE? [9]

What kind of language reform would you suggest? Coupla years ago the Germans simplified their spelling a bit (ia replacing many of the ß with an ss). Possibilities in Polish migth include:

* replacing the sz cz and ż with a Czech (and other) style š, è and ž
* replacing rz with ž
* eliminating the ch and using just h everywhere (so the well known saying would be written: W šèebžešynie hžonšè bżmi w tžcinie)

* eliminaitng nasal vowels ą and ę and repalcing them vowel + m or n;
eg głemboki, sond, bende, wonhać
* eliminating past tense personal endings in the Russian manner: ja był, ty widział, my mieli, wy chcieli, etc.
* get rid of internal vowel alternations such as ciasto~cieście; all would be w miaście, w ciale, etc.
* do away with gender identification of verbs: kobiety, studenci, stoły i koty byli
* ja był, widział regadless if a woman or man were speaking
* one could go so far as to do what the sms-ers do and eliminate all diacritical marks too:
Eg: On sni o pieniondzach i slawie; cma spi w spizarni; ladnie sie spisal, wrenc (if no more è) zajebiscie.
Were you thinking along these lines?

News / What did Poland get out of the wars and struggles for others? [1108]

See what unrgateful bastards are the nations the brave Poles have saved or aided!

News / What did Poland get out of the wars and struggles for others? [1108]

ZA WOLNOŚC WASZĄ i NASZĄ is one of the deeply engrained elements of the Polish heritage. Stopping the Mongolians at Legnica in the 1300s (the Polish leader was killed in the fray, but the Mongolian hordes' advance into the heart of Europe was halted. There was also Sobieski's Vienna and Piłsudski's Miracle of the Vistula (1920) that may well have saved Europe from a Bolshevik bloodbath. If the Brits and Frogs has not been so cowardly and calculating, they might have supported Piłsudski's porposal of a pre-emptive allied strike against the fledgeling III Reich before it rose to power. That could have changed the course of world history by preventing WW2. In WW2 Poland was the first to fight till the last day of ther war. It would take another 44 years before the Poles again saved the eastern half of Europe from continued captive-nation status. The Berlin wall would not have come down were it not for the Polish Solidarity revolution.

What did the Poles get out of it? That sounds like something the calculating Czechs might ask who docilely played ball with Hitler and then with Stalin. As a result Praguie was not levelled to the ground the way Warsaw was.

as a result, Poles are known for their valour, courage, patriotism, pride, loyalty sense of honour and dignity and willingness to help the underdog. Is that a lot or too little? I reckon nations with a shopkeeper's mentality would say it doesn't pay.

Life / ANYONE CELEBRATE ANDRZEJKI (ST ANDREW'S EVE)? [21]

Do Scots have any special St Andrew's Day festivities or are these simply general, occasion-non-specific celebrations?
In Poland the fortune-telling theme predominates.

History / Why official Poland attacked Serbians in 1999? Was it worth? [49]

The Balkans have always been a tangled bloody mess, and only Tito's iron fist kept things together more or less. During the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, all nations forming part of defucnt Yugoslavia behaved cruelly and inhumanely, but no-one had more blood on theri hands than the Serbian side. There were examples of mediaeval cruelty such as heads impaled on wooden poles and mass graves reminscent of Nazi and Soviet horrors. Has anyone heard anyone apologise for any of this?

Language / WILL "TĄ" REPLACE "TĘ" SOON? [14]

Is there anyone (native speakers of Polish) on the forum who would write/type "tą" in a speech, dissertation, paper, obituary, etc.?

Language / Which case for adjectives? [47]

Wszyscy is the masculine personal form, and wszystkie is used for everything else (dogs, women, tables, windows, boots, worms, etc.)
wszystkie retains the same form in the accusative.

Genealogy / Brzeskiewicz / Kroll Names [16]

The following are amongst those researching the Kroll surname, which originally was probabyl dervied from Polish "król" (king)

Kroll -- WEST PRUSSIA -- KatBurnham@msn.com -- Jan/08
Kroll ---- luczynskis@aol.com -- Aug/99
Kroll ---- TWoznicki@aol.com -- Jan/98

Language / POLISH VERBS RICHER THAN ENGLISH ONES!? [12]

I think verbs are the main area where Polish is richer. There are of coruse ethnic-specific nouns and adjectives, but all languages have things that arise out of their own specific frames of cultural reference: opłatek, poprawiny, gorzko (at weddings), witamy chlebem i solą, kumoter, etc. But there are also some interesting general (non-ethnic-specific) nouns which I don't know if English and other languages have neat one-word equivalents for, esp. victims of disasters: pogorzelec (someone who has lost everything in a fire), powodzianin (someone who has lost everything in a flood), topielec (a man who has drowned), wisielec (a man who has hanged himself).

Life / COMAPRING POLAND PRICES WITH PRICES OF OTHER COUNTRIES [10]

Doesn't look as if recent mirgatns will be heading home to Poland in droves any time soon!!!
Would you or anyone be able to present a comparative British-Polish typical wage scale: shop assistant, anaesthetist, bus driver, barmaid, plumber, computer programmer, etc.

Language / WHY IS @ CALLED MAŁPA IN POLISH? [13]

The @ sign is relatively new to many nations and dates from the start of the computer era, but it has been on typewriters in the English-speaking world for a century. Its normal pre-computer use was something like: 5 boxes of chocloates @ ₤3.79. Polish has used the French grave-accented à for that purpose: 5 bombonierek à 12.50zł.

Language / POLISH VERBS RICHER THAN ENGLISH ONES!? [12]

Plain lowing or mooing would use the basic form ryczeć. Dlaczego krowa ryczy? (why is the cow mooing?) Porykiwać is an extended frequentative (częstotliwa) form which conveys the notion of occasional mooing stretched out over a period of time: the cow nibbled, mooed, maybe swished its tail to fend off flies, then nibbled some more and mooed ever so often -- far richer and more expessive and descriptive than simply ryczeć.