USA, Canada / Looking for a place called home; staying in the US [21]

Dunno about now, but when I lived in NYC (a long while ago, mind you) quite a bit of its economy was one big under the table deal, and some of it for good money too.

USA, Canada / Looking for a place called home; staying in the US [21]


get a scholarship


legal schmegal. There are about 20 million illegals in the US.

Language / Any sweet Polish phrases [255]


aniołku:
tatuś:

Language / Any sweet Polish phrases [255]


if it's to address someone then:
aniołku (diminutive)
aniele (kinda formal, but can sound funny depending on context and mood)

News / Weak US dollar in Poland and other countries... [180]

However strongly I wish I would like to disagree, I can't. You have some valid points here.

News / Weak US dollar in Poland and other countries... [180]


Four years of US failed policies, the size of China, the power of Japan's economy and hugs and kisses between Iran and Russia do make a big difference.

Language / "Potrafić" and "móc" - what's the difference? [9]

potrafić - denotes the ability to do something
móc - persmission, abiltiy or will to do something

News / Weak US dollar in Poland and other countries... [180]


It probably isn't as much about being easy, as being very dangerous. That was the main mistake Saddam did (of course everybody knew he had no nukes)

Life / Queuing and Polish people [49]

Lining up appears to be anti-social. People isolate themselves from one another.
The Polish way is much more cuddly and induces socializing, and it also has thermal advantage in Winter. That should be good for many foreigners, some of whom post questions how to mingle with Poles. The answer is simple. Take a city bus ;)

News / Weak US dollar in Poland and other countries... [180]


Actually it is. In the US.
I'd have to think hard to think what else they manufacture here.

Now the US found itself in a position to be threatened by China's embargo on underwear exports to the US anytime the Chinese decide to show that the emperor has no clothes.

Work / Best Polish city to work as a programmer? [5]

Dublin

USA, Canada / Standards of Education in US vs Poland [22]


Don't you need facts as base for any conclusions?

I've also seen both side first-hand, and my experience was a touch different. I was unimpressed with English Lit. undergrads in the US (an Ivy League university) who weren't quite sure why I asked them to compare Ben Jonson with Shakespeare. They were at a loss what Ben Johnson had to do with literature, or literacy in general, for that matter.

Lost of funny incidents like that in colleges in the US.

UK, Ireland / Views of Poles in UK on Bulgarians/Romanians coming here? [62]


That land was stolen by USSR and given to Poland, to compensate (partly only) for lands USSR stole from Poland.

USA, Canada / Standards of Education in US vs Poland [22]

I'm not sure we can speak of American educational system. It all really varies from State to State, county to county, and sometimes among cities of the same county.

UK, Ireland / Views of Poles in UK on Bulgarians/Romanians coming here? [62]

it's smaller

Language / His and her (plural) [30]

Did you use any of those books?

UK, Ireland / Views of Poles in UK on Bulgarians/Romanians coming here? [62]


Lukasz has actually a good point there.

All nations have criminals but the statistics you linked to are deceiving. They show total numbers of crimes committed by nationals of various countries, but they fail to translate those numbers into per capita figures.

Let's use Home Office official data to complement those cited by you and let's compare Lithuanians, Poles and Romanians
(news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/22_08_06_migrantworkers.pdf page 11)

Poles:
62% of immigrants , 2310 crimes , 37 crimes per 1%

Lithuanians
12% of immigrants, 856 crimes, 71 crimes per 1%

Romanians
less than 0.5% of immigrants, 1087 crimes, 2174 per 1%

Do you still think Poles are really the worst offenders among the immigrant in the UK?

UK, Ireland / Views of Poles in UK on Bulgarians/Romanians coming here? [62]


The whole notion is bul$hit anyway.
Crime rate has been falling in UK for the past few years.
If crime rate has anything to do with immigration, the trend would counter the "1 in 5" claim.

Life / Homosexuals in Poland / Hands off (PETITION) [797]


First of all, this is answer to a question I didn't ask.
Second, how can you compare homosexuality to plundered? Have you been "plundered" by any?

Life / How much do you HATE POLISH PEOPLE and POLAND [1260]


we're getting there. Only 8 centuries to go. Bear with us :)

History / Poland-Russia: never-ending story? [1341]

is AP objective enough?

Travel / Wroclaw People, visiting tips needed! [11]

is Panorama Raclawicka still there?

News / Poles in Iraq. What's the point? [160]

The way I see it:
- Americans blew it by attacking Iraq. The decision was stupid and irresponsible.
- Poland joined them for some political gratifications which seemed worthwhile at the time
- The war blew up in the faces of both (and then some)
- Now it's too late to just pick up and leave with all the alQ within, and Iran next door. Staying and finishing the job (vs. leaving and risking a super major political and military issues) unfortunately appears to be the only proper course of action at the moment.

Language / Polish Gender in foreign word borrowings [26]

not sure about the count, but there is a fair number of those.
Some neuter nouns have been borrowed and their gender was preserved, others were polonized into masculine.

opus is an interesting borrowing. It should be masculine in Polish, but it actually preserved its neutral gender. Some consider changing that into masculine since it is commonly used among general population as masculine anyway, and justyfying that also by the fact that the word entered Polish often as a part of a phrase, for instance opus spicatum - a brick pattern (wzor) called "w jodełkę". In this case opus no longer coincides with Polish neautral "dzielo" but rather with Polish masculine "wzor".


you are correct, some examples:
mężczyzna
idiota
tata
hulaka
astronauta

Language / Counting of Polish currency [28]


Yes


No. That would be masculine. In Polish it would assume the form centym. Hence "dwa centymy".


OK, I think we've been talking about different scopes here. I meant culture and lanuage on a human scale. You seem to be comparing different cultures with different linguistic assets. In that case, sure, I think in some cases a clash like that may become cataclysmic. Some anthropologists maintain that this is what enabled the Cro-Magnon to hold the upper hand over Neanderthal (specifically physiological defficiencies of speech organs in the Neanderthal. The theory recently suffered a little booboo due to a discovery of some fossilized bone fragments, but still it isn't knocked out of circulation).

It's a very fascinating subject to me, and I will gladly continue the chat, giving proper answers to the other parts of your post. Of course that will depend on your continued interest, and on the admins who may decide we have hijacked this thread.

Life / How much do you HATE POLISH PEOPLE and POLAND [1260]


See Marcus Cunliffe The Literature of the United States. I don't have a copy anymore (it was >20 years ago), but I remember reference given by him in regards to that very issue. I also remember myself checking that reference.

Language / Counting of Polish currency [28]


Yeah, words are sometimes not enough.


That would assume that language is a driving force of culture, rather than its reflection. The idea could be probably defended, but first well... it would have to be defended. IMO, ideas are born inside our brains, not on the tips of our tongues. On a very fundamental level, spoken/written language is of secondary importance to the human species, although critical to human civilization.


That would take us back to a statement I made before (not my invention, but something that makes sense in my mind); each language always sufficiently serves the group that uses it.

Or perhaps I am meandering around a wrong idea of what you mean. Care to offer examples of "external agent"?

Love / i love you -why say it if you dont mean it [56]

some say that love is a trick nature plays on us to ensure the perpetuation of the species. In that sense every love that ends with... lets call it big bang... is true love ;)

Language / Counting of Polish currency [28]


I guess it could, but I don't think it could happen as a natural process. Otherwise we would be looking at a potential impossibility of communication among the members of the same language group.

On the lexical level though, it is happening pretty fast. See computer terms in various languages. It's mostly English with all kinds of foreign grammatical rules and inflections, linguistic calques etc. Again, my take is that languages develop as fast as they need to, but slow enough to let people continually immersed in it to catch up.


All for money :)

Language / Counting of Polish currency [28]

It started when I was 10. I read a book about Inca culture by Polish writer Zenon Kosidowski, The Empire of Golden Tears("Krolestwo Zlotych Lez"). The book had an annex explaining the meaning of a few hundred Quechua words and I noticed some similarities among Polish, German, English and Russian words (I had some rudimentary knowledge of those at the time). So I started digging. This lead me to some basic classes in Arabic, Spanish, French, Bulgarian and Greek. I took Latin at school. I speak few of those languages fluently, enough to get by and enough to keep on playing with linguistics.

Things just made sense but as a kid I had no direction. It was just a hobby I would cultivate when not playing injuns and cowboys with my friends. So there was this collection of information I had in my head but never tried to systematize. A few years later I took a second degree in the English Department at University of Wroclaw. Linguistics was a big part of it, although for me it remained only a fascinating hobby. My main forte at the time was the history of American literature (mainly the beginnings) and that's what took me across the pond.

To make the long story short I became disillusioned with literature as an object of academic studies and I made a 180 degree turn. I now work with languages again, although these are machine languages. I am a computa fella.

Now you know ;)