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Posts by Ziemowit  

Joined: 8 May 2009 / Male ♂
Warnings: 1 - O
Last Post: 8 Nov 2023
Threads: Total: 14 / In This Archive: 0
Posts: Total: 3936 / In This Archive: 189
From: Warsaw
Speaks Polish?: Yes

Displayed posts: 189 / page 6 of 7
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Ziemowit   
13 Jul 2009
Genealogy / "-ski" last names more desirable in Poland? [28]

Noblesse oblige, oui, nevertheless specialists in genealogy say that the surname ending in -ski isn't in any way - contrary to common belief - connected formally to the nobel status of a family or person.
Ziemowit   
13 Jul 2009
Language / PRONUNCIATION OF ENGLISH WORDS IN POLAND [24]

Although you haven't, there are plenty of occurences of this word in "The Times of London": 429 results for "yuppie", the last one from 04 July 2009 (article: "Los Angeles profits from Michael Jackson stimulus""). They can possibly be found in "The Sun" and alike, but I haven't checked on that.
Ziemowit   
13 Jul 2009
Language / PRONUNCIATION OF ENGLISH WORDS IN POLAND [24]

You'd think there are now enough native English speakers floating about to correct this, but no, this has been going on for years.

This is just incompetence, laziness and lack of professionalism on the part of the advertising agency. If they can't pronounce it the correct way, they should look it up in a dictionary, if they haven't got a dictionary on the premises, they should hire a consultant, for example, John Cleese.

The adverts on Polish TV starring John Cleese were very good and intelligent and he was speaking ... English in them. These were directed at yuppies who were supposed to know English well. However, the yuppie responsible for the "Gilette Series" advert did not; she/he probably thought that everyone else in the world pronounces the word "series" the way he/she does, so he didn't even bother to consult a dictionary.

but they apparently thought English was somehow more upscale, trendy and snobbish

Yes, they did. But it is a privilige of the yuppie class and age ... to think that they know better, and to feel ... snobbish!
Ziemowit   
10 Jul 2009
Language / wysłać SMS-a / SMS-y [15]

"strzelić gola" means to score a goal, whereas "strzelić gol" would be to score goal, and therefore would be grammatically incorrect (and would follow why Poles sometimes make errors in English like "I want cup of tea please").

This comparison of yours is a very interesting remark showing how mistakes made by non-native speakers are "felt" by the native ones. It illustrates that learning is good only when it crosses the "scolastics" and gets into the "imagination". As, for example, the native speakers of English imagine seperated unidentified entities only as object which must be preceded by an indefinite article, a substuntial number of Polish learners would recklessly drop the "a" before an entity such as "cup of tea", just because the principle of a separated entity hasn't been "imprinted" into their imagination, while the meaning of a word has been imprinted into the "scolastic" part of their brain.

[I will comment on the remark of Krzysztof later on.]
Ziemowit   
10 Jul 2009
Language / Declination of feminine nouns ending in -ia [4]

For the -ii, not only of Latin, but more generally of foreign origin: Holandii, Norwegii, Danii, Bułgarii, malarii, Marii.

For the -i, please notice that nouns like szyja, nadzieja will also end in -i , droping its j in the relevant subordinate cases. Hence: szyi, nadziei.
Ziemowit   
9 Jul 2009
Language / wysłać SMS-a / SMS-y [15]

You've missed my point, though. Certainly, the word "gol" is not that old, yet it is much older than the word "SMS or esemes". Despite that, it declines according only to the "modern", as you call it, pattern while the "esemes" which is one of the newest words in the Polish language, declines - as you said - according to either historic or modern pattern. Personally, I don't know the explanation to the problem, but your theory of modern and historic usage in the declension of certain non-animate nouns doesn't seem to be accurate.
Ziemowit   
8 Jul 2009
Language / The Dative Case [62]

książe => księciu

Panu Bogu świeczkę, a diabłu ogarek.
Ziemowit   
8 Jul 2009
Language / wysłać SMS-a / SMS-y [15]

(*) Accusative case (biernik) of male nouns is typically identical
1/ with the Nominative case (mianownik), so no additional ending, for non-animate nouns, for example:
widzę/słyszę/kupuję/wysyłam (and many, many other verbs) stół, komputer, telefon, tapczan, list, żyrandol, dywan etc.

I'm just wondering how to explain "strzelić gola" ("gola" - the accusative of a non-animate noun) as it is not correct to say "strzelić gol", so the theory of modern versus historic usage cannot be applied here.
Ziemowit   
6 Jul 2009
Language / Share Perfective and Imperfective Polish verbs [105]

What's the difference between daj and dawaj then?

There doesn't seem to be any real difference between daj and dawaj in the imperative except - as has already been stated here - that the latter is stronger which will most often translate into being very familiar or just impolite. This is different, however, with the negative form of the imperative where the almost excusively heard form is nie dawaj rather than nie daj. Hence:

"Daj osłu marchewkę!" versus "Nie dawaj osłu marchewki!".

In sentences like: "Nie daj osłu marchewki ..." the imperative form "daj" sounds like expressing a certain condition in a conditional clause: "Nie daj osłu marchewki, a zobaczysz co ci zrobi", with the sense of: "Jeśli nie dasz mu marchewki, to na pewno coś ci zrobi". The same is true the other way round; "dawaj" will serve as a condition in sentences like: "Dawaj dzieciakowi pieniądze, a nie będzie chciał ich sam zarabiać." In the both given examples daj and dawaj seem to escape their literal meaning of a simple imperative.
Ziemowit   
3 Jul 2009
Life / Poles in Poland: How did you learn your English? [60]

I think many foreigners would see it as the logical plural of advice ...

Only "knowledge" will meet the English pattern in Polish (never such a form as "wiedze" for the plural). For the rest : rada - rady, informacja - informacje, mebel - meble.
Ziemowit   
3 Jul 2009
Life / Poles in Poland: How did you learn your English? [60]

Advice, in its pluralised form, is pieces of advice or words of advice, not advices.

Wow, not only Polish people use "advices" ! Dzięki Seanus, dobre rady ... zawsze w cenie!
Ziemowit   
30 Jun 2009
Life / Poles in Poland: How did you learn your English? [60]

This is a very interesting question! In my view it is essential that you combine practice and study. When I started at the age of 15, I acquired good basics of English from a BBC television course, fairly good British pronounciation included (they did exercises in phonetics all the time). At the grammar school I slowed down; since I was the best in class, I thought my English was sufficient. Then I happened to spent half a year in the North of England, surrounded only by locals and not communicating in Polish as there were no Polish people that could be seen in the north of England at that time.

Just as my English progressed much in that period and I was becoming increasingly fluent, I was again forgetting to study it in the "depths" of my own soul. You should do that by all means; reflecting on language peculiarities and typical features (which is even more difficult!) on your own is important as ordinary native speakers cannot point your attention to them.

This time again, I lack oral practice in English but my vocabulary is undoubtedely broader. My French which I study "en autodidacte" cannot go up beyond a certain level; it is the "lack of speaking practice" factor, I suppose, which is to be blamed. Thus, as I said before, combining practice and stydy is essential.
Ziemowit   
29 Jun 2009
Language / Formal "you" and Informal "you" : which is which? [46]

Capitalizing words in English seems to be an ineresting subject. What comes to my mind is that the English language inherited perhaps an old tradition of capitilizing nouns, a tradition that survived within the German language. The British an American press print capitalized nouns in paper headlines, don't they?
Ziemowit   
28 Jun 2009
Language / Polish Language Pronunciation - Example Words and Phrases [178]

after plosives rz becomes simply sh

Following only the voiceless plosives, however. The voiced plosives leave rz unaffected: grzęda, drzewo or brzeg are pronounced: gżęda, dżewo, bżek.
Ziemowit   
25 Jun 2009
USA, Canada / Popular US Newspaper offends Poles. [22]

Not being excited at all with who is Jewish and who is not (same with who is Scottish or who is American), I am eager to remind that being Jewish may be defined in either nationality or religion terms. In the former case we use the big letter in Polish (On jest Żydem), in the latter we use the small letter (On jest żydem). Also, according to the Jewish religion, someone is Jewish when his mother is/was Jewish; in this respect Adam Michnik is not Jewish. The decisive factor is whom the person judges himself; I think it's obvious to accept Adam Michnik as a Pole of Jewish origin (I cannot imagine people in America insisting that someone who thinks himself an American of Jewish origin is not an American, but Jewish only).

Confusing this with someone's or their parents political activities is just silly and boring. There exists lots of examples of Poles of Polish (and only Polish) having been communist murderers, just as examples of Jews not having been communists in Poland.
Ziemowit   
25 Jun 2009
Language / The Dative Case [62]

on : +u or for person : +owi

The prevailing dative ending in the masculine gender seems to be -owi for every noun, regardeless if it is a person or not. The -u ending has survived only in words most often used, for example: bratu, ojcu, księdzu, chłopcu, kotu, psu. Some people might still say the dative koniu, but the majority of them will say: koniowi; the same with osłu/osiołowi. I think some may have already started saying: kotowi, bratowi ...
Ziemowit   
20 Jun 2009
Language / SZCZ and ŚĆ HARD TO EXPLAIN [19]

Can a native speaker confirm or refute this?

What makes them sound differently (sz/ś ; cz/ć ; ż/ź) is the shape of the aperture in the mouth formed between the tongue and the palatum (not the longevity of the sound, as someone in the thread said; closing or not the teeth doesn't matter at all). To achieve this, the tongue changes its shape, with both tip and dorsal (middle) part of it being active at the same time. The difference may indeed sound somewhat unimportant to a stranger's ear (as I am now thinking about it), but it is nevertheless very clear to a native speaker (someone mispronouncing one sound for the other would sound extremely funny, except when she or he is a foreigner). To show the difference in its depths it would be best to have a formal description (which I may find in the book "Fonetyka języka polskiego" just as soon as I find the book itself) of the pronounciation of the sounds. A cross-section filming of the mouth while telling sz/ś would be of great advatage in explaining it as well.

Such short films showing visually the difference in the way English vowels are pronounced (a great problem not only for a Slavic learner) were produced by the BBC for their course of English "Slim John" broadcast on Polish TV. Though these films had proved extremely helpful for me, I occasionally did run into problems, mispronouncing, for example, "ration" for "Russian" (luckily enough, a certain Reverened S.J. of the United Scottish Reformed Church was then by my side to correct me), so I realize what difficulty the sz/ś pronounciation may pose to foreign learners of Polish.
Ziemowit   
19 Jun 2009
Language / Why do you have this weird grammar with y and i? optYka? magazYn? zYsk? why? [30]

As for sz, cz, rz, those were actually old Czech spellings (old Czech influenced the Polish alphabet very strongly).

Now I know why the English language uses the spelling "cz" in the word "Czech". Why doesn't it use its own spelling "ch" for it? Does anybody know? A name "the Chech Republic" would look great, wouldn't it?
Ziemowit   
19 Jun 2009
Language / Why do you have this weird grammar with y and i? optYka? magazYn? zYsk? why? [30]

... and that means Polish isnt pure Slavic language, its something like germanic-slavic language..

ok mission completed , now i know what i wanted

OK, your (impossible!?) mission has been completed, but with a slightly opaque conclusion, young man. In reality, Polish is something like a germanic-slavic language in the same way as Slovak is a hungarian-slavic one!
Ziemowit   
16 Jun 2009
News / Polish nursery rhyme book says Germans smell and gipsies sell their children... [28]

OK but what's the problem ? Nobody is forced to buy It.

The problem with them (and possibly with some of the Polish people replying here) is that that when they notice things like that in a German book ("all Polish smell, all Polish are dirty or sell children in the market"), they raise big alarm about the Germans being bloody racists, while when the case is the other way round, they play it down, simply saying that nobody is forced to buy such a book.

The book is disgusting and it should be clearly said so!
Ziemowit   
14 Jun 2009
Language / Już and jeszcze [36]

In the example "to ja już wybieram kino/to ja już wolę iść do kina", the use of "już" is quite specific. It means that of all other options previously mentioned, the speaker is ready to choose "kino", but he is not happy with this choice either. Here, the "już" has nothing to do with its basic meaning of "already/yet".
Ziemowit   
10 Jun 2009
Travel / Need assistance planning my travel in Poland [11]

pksbilety.pl/Route?source=Warszawa+Dworzec+Zachodni&dest=E%c5%82k

Warsaw - Ełk:
06:00 - 11:15
10:15 - 15:45
11:40 - 16:40
13:45 - 19:10
22:00 - 03:15

How to buy a ticket and places available, please check the site for information (in Polish only).
Ziemowit   
9 Jun 2009
Travel / Need assistance planning my travel in Poland [11]

All trains arriving at Warsaw from the western direction will always end their journey at Warsaw East as a rule, and vice versa; thanks to this rule all long-distance and international trains will always stop at Warsaw Central, though not all of them will stop at Warsaw West when setting off from Warsaw. In my view, it is more convenient to go to Ełk by bus in which case you will need to get off at Warsaw West and walk some distance underground to the bus station Warszawa Zachodnia (it is a main bus station in Warsaw integrated with the adjacent train station Warsaw West).

There is a direct bus service from Warsaw to Ełk (several times in a day, I should think).
Ziemowit   
9 Jun 2009
Language / Questions about Polish language and grammar - I can help you [16]

"Dzień dobry, cześć i czołem!
[Pytacie skąd się wziąłem!?
Jestem wesoły Romek,
mam na przedmieściu domek,
a w domku wodę, światło, gaz! ...]

is actually a citation from a very popular Polish comedy film MIŚ. "Czołem" alone is also used in the army as a salutation between troops and commanders: "Czołem żołnierze! Czołem panie pułkowniku!"
Ziemowit   
8 Jun 2009
Language / Jest/To jest - to jest is often abbreviated to just to [24]

Kolokwium jest dużo pracy - doesn't make sense because the full sentence will read "kolokwium to jest dużo pracy", and the only possible abbreviation of this sentence will be omitting the word "jest" in it, and not omitting the word "to".

"Samochód to jest biały" is a sentence in which the word order has been reversed to a highly unusual one (if ever, it may be found in poetry or in a theatre play). Its proper and very simple version will be: To jest biały samochód.

A very good example of an unnecessary change in word order can be found in Molier's comedy play of 1667 "Le burgeois gentillhomme" ("Mieszczanin szlachcicem"):

----------------------
PAN JOURDAIN:
A teraz muszę się Panu zwierzyć z jedną rzeczą. Kocham się w pewnej bardzo wysoko postawionej osobie i pragnąłbym, abyś mi pomógł napisać bilecik, który chciałbym upuścić u jej stóp. [...] Pragnąłbym napisać więc w owym bilecku: "Piękna markizo, twoje piękne oczy sprawiły, iż umieram dla ciebie z miłości", ale chciałbym, aby to wyrazić w sposób doborowy, żeby to było jakoś zgrabnie powiedziane. [...]

NAUCZYCIEL FILOZOFII:
Można wyrazić po pierwsze tak, jak Pan to powiedziałeś: "Piękna markizo, twoje piękne oczy sprawiły, iż umieram dla ciebie z miłości". Albo: "Iż z miłości umieram dla ciebie, twoje piękne oczy sprawiły, piękna markizo". Albo: "Sprawiły piękne oczy twoje, iż z miłości, piękna markizo, umieram dla ciebie." Albo: "Oczy twoje, iż umieram, piękna markizo, dla ciebie z miłości, sprawiły." Albo: "Dla ciebie, piękna markizo, iż umieram, sprawiły twoje piękne oczy, z miłości."

PAN JOURDAIN: Ale z tych wszystkich sposobów, któryż jest najlepszy?

NAUCZYCIEL FILOZOFII: Ten, którego Pan użyłeś: "Piękna markizo, twoje piękne oczy sprawiły, iż umieram dla ciebie z miłości."
Ziemowit   
5 Jun 2009
News / Euro Elections 4th June - Who will you vote for ? [110]

I am quite amazed to see that on a forum re Poland where many of the participants are either non Poles living in Poland or Polish people living outside of Poland, most of the votes seem to be going to anti European parties ...

The UPR, LPR and Prawica Rzeczypospolitej are the so-called "setee parties" (partia kanapowa). The brilliant and most eloquent leader of UPR, Janusz Korwin-Mikke, has been unable to seduce voters with his talk full of charm for several years. (When replaced with Mr. Michalkiewicz, the party turned out to be a little aniti-semite, as far as I can remember). The LPR has slided into some political emptiness when it turned out that they were secretely fond of the Nazi ideology. At present, they try to hide themselves behind Libertas, which is promoted in Poland by the chief of public TV, member of LPR, a certain Piotr Farfał, whom the press portrays as a former nationalist and sometimes a hooligan towards young ladies who wore too colourful clothes. (He no doubt doesn't like Jews or Blacks either.) Marek Jurek and his PR are too few to fulfill one, even not too long, settee in full. I don't think any of these so-called "political parties" may get out of the shadow they are in.

[I'm a Pole living in Poland, have been in the UK three times altogether: once for a half-a- year stay, twice as a tourist.]
Ziemowit   
4 Jun 2009
Work / Move to Warsaw and will teach English (advice needed) [23]

The demand for English language teachers in Poland changes as everything in the economy. Companies try to save money and they often cancel courses in English (or in anything else) organised for their employers. I've heard of a number of companies in Warsaw who has done that in recent months. As for language schools, they might receive fewer pupils so the demand for native speakers which has been quite big and unchallenged in Warsaw until quite recentely may also be vanishing (for that, the best option is to check in the Monday paper edition of Gazeta Wyborcza for the Warsaw area).
Ziemowit   
3 Jun 2009
Language / Jest/To jest - to jest is often abbreviated to just to [24]

I guess in English there is not such a difference.

Some other examples for you to contemplate the problem:
1. (a) Życie jest cudem. (b) Życie to [jest] cud.
2. (a) Tomek jest komunistą. (b) Tomek to [jest] komunista.
3. (a) Kolokwium jest (wiąże się z) intensywną pracą. (b) Kolokwium to [jest] dużo pracy.
4. (a) Samochód jest biały. (b) Samochód, którym jechałem, był białą limuzyną.
5. "Na początku było słowo, i słowo było u Boga i Bogiem było Słowo." (The Bible, J.1,1)
Ziemowit   
2 Jun 2009
Language / Textbook from 1938 - try these translations. [7]

This time, the charm of the 1930s can be felt in "wieczna ondulacja" instead of today's "trwała ondulacja". I wonder if there existed an "eternal wave" in the US at that time, as opposed to a "permanent wave" of today.

It seems that "monter wodociągowy" (from your first set of examples) has evolved into "hydraulik" (the famous "plombier polonais" in France).
Ziemowit   
1 Jun 2009
Language / Impersonal verb form [3]

You mean: "Dzieci uczy się dobrego zachowania" means "One teaches children good behaviour" or "Chldren are taught good behaviour"?

"One learns good behaviour through examples" can only be said by replacing "one" with a subject like: "dzieci, dziecko, człowiek, ludzie" here. We don't have "one" in this sense of the word. The sentence will be in active voice.

"One and one's wife", as Prince Charles sometimes said about hiself and Lady Di, can be translated into Polish as "człowiek i jego żona" or "mężczyzna i jego żona", or specifically in this context as "książe i jego żona" which would sound a bit silly in Polish, really.