Language / 'Na pole' or 'na dwor' ? [32]

What is the difference between:
na dwór,
na dworze, and
na świeżym powietrzu?

Poland = land of fields.
I don't know what all those towns, cities and woodlands and forests are all about.

Language / 'Na pole' or 'na dwor' ? [32]

I assume 'na pole' works fine for Poles from any part of the country if it really is a field out there, as opposed to a street, garden, backyard or just the exterior of your spaceship.

Life / What people from Poland know about South America? [15]

I know that both South America and Poland are predominantly Roman Catholic.
Samba, Bossanova, Tropicalismo and so on beat Disco Polo every time.
There are more donkeys in South America than in Poland.

UK, Ireland / Fao Poles living in the UK [107]

I don't have a patron saint. I don't need one.


No. His mother and father probably did that.

edit: His father died when he was very young, so St. George was really brought up by a single mum!

UK, Ireland / Fao Poles living in the UK [107]

St. George was from what is now Turkey (what continent is that on?)

UK, Ireland / Fao Poles living in the UK [107]


and of Palestinian Christians, Georgia (the one in the Caucasus), North Ossetia (within the Russian Federation, also in the Caucasus), in Spain he is the patron saint of both Aragon and Catalunya, Genoa (that's in Italy by the way), the Greek army and of boy Scouts!

Life / Grafitti in Warsaw [44]


Hasn't happened to me.


What about some colour to liven up the dull grey concrete of motorway bridges and the like?
Okay, so in Warsaw - I don't know, but I have seen a few places that have benefitted from a lick of paint.

Life / What is BIALYSTOK like to live? [19]

I've only been there for a couple of hours. It didn't look all that bad. A few interesting buildings... Nope! I really can't say much about the place.

UK, Ireland / Best county in UK and why ? [45]

Rutland because it's so tiny.

Surrey because it is England's most wooded county. There are so many trees and so much wood... Even some of the people - their heads are made out of wood.

Shetland, just because.

UK, Ireland / Best county in UK and why ? [45]


It's either because they like that particular brand of butter or because they all enjoyed the Bond films with the Jaws character.

Okay, so it is in the 'oo-ar' part of England where pretending to be a simpleton village idiot is, and has for a long time, been treated an an artform. Supposedly when hiding contraband booze, they would use village ponds. If they were caught in the act of hiding barrels underneath ducks or the beloved English royal swan, they would claim to be trying to rake the moon out of the water for a tasty cheesy snack.

Here are my favourite counties that don't exist due to various accidents of geology:

Viking, Cromarty, Forties, Forth, Tyne, Dogger, Fisher, German Bight, Thames, Dover, Wight (not Isle of), Portland, Plymouth, Lundy... Faeroes and South-East Iceland. Ireland can have Shannon, Bailey and so on, whilst I will allow... I will allow Norway to keep North Utsire and South Utsire.


I couldn't tell a lie... Westbury. Under the White Horse, not far from the corn circles (and the cement factory).

UK, Ireland / Best county in UK and why ? [45]

Avon, because it only existed from 1974 to 1996.

Or are we talking traditional counties, pre-1974, or the modern day counties since 1996 where some of the larger built-up areas have their own unitary authorities (Luton ain't in Bedfordshire no more)?

Wiltshire - Moonraker county, because it includes Stonehenge, the fine city of Bath with its Roman baths and nice architecture (and because I was born there - yes it was in the county of Avon at the time), Salisbury Plain - much of which is a virtual wilderness due to much of it being taken up by the army for training and stuff, the Westbury white horse carved into the chalk with some of the most legendary corn circles below, Warminster - the UK's UFO capital. Just ignore Swindon unless you want to accept that what happens in Swindon today, happens in the rest of the world tomorrow.

Hertfordshire - Because I live there and some of it is nice.

Tyne & Wear - Well, more of the Tyne than the Wear to be honest.

London - yeah, you can't beat it for a lot of things, but Hampstead Heath is no real match for the Yorkshire Dales. The Serpentine is no Lake District, and 'Ackney Marshes are not the Mississippi Delta.

So my final answer is either Somerset or Clackmannanshire (just for the name).

Life / March 5th: Mother-In-Law's Day in Poland! [14]

Happy 'second cousin three times removed day'!

Life / March 5th: Mother-In-Law's Day in Poland! [14]

Is there or has there ever been a strand of Polish comedy entirely about mothers-in-law?
I don't have a mother-in-law, so I'm not entitled to tell any such jokes. I'm of the wrong generation anyway.
Household appliances are much funnier anyway.

Happy ML day to all you porential mothers-in-law of mine anyway!

UK, Ireland / Question for Polish people working in UK? [15]


In need of a serious lunch?


Peripatetic? Periscopic? Philatelic? Or just pa-flipping-thetic?

UK, Ireland / Polish worker's excuse and a vacuum cleaner (UK) [79]

'Newspapers always have to mention certain details about the people about whom they report.' said Osiol, 31. 'It's a national disgrace. This country is going to the dogs in a handcart.' The horticulturist added bitterly.


The Eubank: A non-electric carpet cleaner, popular in the 1970s, along with flared trousers that worked much better on linoleum tiled floors.

It beats as it sweeps as it cleans.

UK, Ireland / Polish worker's excuse and a vacuum cleaner (UK) [79]

A powerful washing machine can be quite expensive. 1000 rpm? I'll take it.
It seems from the number of stories, you'd be better off with an old cheap vacuum cleaner that is NOT too powerful. Eubanks don't do it for you though.

UK, Ireland / Polish worker's excuse and a vacuum cleaner (UK) [79]

Washing machines for women are much safer.

UK, Ireland / Polish worker's excuse and a vacuum cleaner (UK) [79]


because they make your hands dirty.

History / Polish - Vikings relations [26]

There have been so many changes in culture, as recorded in the archaeological record throughout European pre-history. Some of these changes will be about cultural borrowing and/or innovation, others will have been movement of population. Vikingness was an innovation in its time!

There have been numerous languages of different groups spoken across Europe since ancient times, some of them unrelated to Indo-European. Slavic is an IE language, meaning that if Slavic has had unbroken continuity since the palaeolothic, so has Germanic, Albanian, Greek, maybe Celtic, in part Italic...

Love / Are Polish men more loyal than English men? [38]


I just need to see something shiny and I drop whoever I'm with like a hot potato.

Language / The only polish word a foreigner won't ever say correctly :P [113]


Sorry, but I don't find these words difficult. Not on their own anyway.

chcę isn't too bad, but other forms of the same word are a ******* to say right.
It's those consonant clusters that pose the most problems and words mixing

ś, ć, ź - type consonants with

sz, cz, rz type ones.

That is tricky.

UK, Ireland / Negative attitude towards Polish immigration in UK becoming stronger [90]

Where I work, we now have only 1 Pole. But there are 4 Lithuanians and a Slovakian who frequently get referred to as Poles.

Genealogy / Races of white people... [99]

I thought the Turks were more Greek than Turkic.

Genealogy / Races of white people... [99]


Where?


The population of the Russian Federation or the Republic of Russia, or ethnic Russians?

Genealogy / Races of white people... [99]

I'm not proud. But I do find it interesting. My ancestors were Celtic, Germanic, Roman, probably a few other things thrown into the mix, especially considering Romans were from all over the place, Insular Celts were unlikely to have been the same Celts who lived in Central Europe, Germanic could mean Anglo-Saxon and Viking, and Vikings probably included Slavs, Balts and Finns.

Some people are proud of 'ethnic purity'? Pah! Like being proud of all your family being inter-married cousins with an odd number of toes!

Feedback / why was my thread in the job offer forum deleted? [12]


I hope you find yourself a web designer who doesn't move everything to some random places that many people won't even be able to see.

This post of mine here will be moved to Random Chat because of what I'm about to type:

If you want a really good web designer, get yourself a spider.

Genealogy / Races of white people... [99]

My favourite Viking would probably be Eric Bloodaxe. Mostly for the name.

I'd still claim that the UK is number 5 in the list of the world's most Viking countries.

The side of Viking history regarding their origins or goings-on closer to Scandinavia are not well known over here. They must have had a bit of practise before they crossed the North Sea.

edit: Finland might be 5. I'd be happy to settle for 6th place if anyone wants a fight about it. Helmets with horns would be essential in such combat.

Genealogy / Races of white people... [99]

Vikings did get involved in just about anywhere they could reach by boat, so all the way round the Baltic from Finland and Estonia to northern Poland, they would have been doing their thing, then around the coast of Western Europe and even North Africa. Vikings from Sweden generally headed south and east, but let's not get into Russian history yet.

I had once heard that the phrase 'raping and pillaging' comes from an English text written in Latin. In translation to Modern English, it should be ravage and pillage, ie. destroy everything in their way and make away with the booty (not exactly the modern day 'booty;, although that may have come into it).

The Vikings did settle in all kinds of places, but Britain was settled much more extensively than other places.

editting more stuff into the same post:
The letter I mentioned that started the whole 'raping and pillaging' thing, I believe was a plea for help, from a Christian country under attack by pagans. The fact that at the time, the Vikings were not Christians meant that they had to be cast in as bad a light as possible. It is likely the Viking attacks were serious, but not as devastating as many historical sources have suggested.

Has anyone got any interesting stuff about Vikings hitting Poland?I'm not sure whether Poland had become Christianised by this stage in history.

Genealogy / Races of white people... [99]


We're talking small numbers.
Vikings did a bit of trade in slaves, especially British and Irish ones. Vikings settles in Britain and Ireland. Norwegians in Ireland, Scotland and Northern England, Danes in Southern England. Some genes may have been picked up on their travels, mostlt that of the mtDNA variety.

Genealogy / Races of white people... [99]


Chiefly Norwegian, a bit of Irish, British, and some of the other Scandinavians.

It seems the maps have been drawn up in a way that simplifies the data, and pulls together information that has not been sources uniformly across the areas studied. But as I can't access the site for more information, I can't say exactly how they did it.