Life / The strangest things in Poland [468]

Poland strange? England's got to be stranger...

What's strange is that in the UK...you can't get real bread anywhere, it's only good for toasting and has no weight to it, rubbish for making kanapky with. A deli counter normally has about 5 different meats, and a really big deli counter maybe has 10. We eat dinner in the evening and not the afternoon :). April, which is meant to be the start of spring, this year had two days of snow! When you go to the sauna, British people don't talk to you, but Polish people do. People drink tea with milk in it - I mean, what are they thinking!. And if you want to go a mile down the road you'd drive and not walk.

Having just been in Poland a month, coming back takes a bit of adjusting to. ;)

Chris, Polish loving Brit

Language / A good learning book for Polish [44]

Hi there.

I've found these books very useful:

Polish in 4 weeks - a lot of info packed into a really small space, gives you a bit of headache, but there are some hilarious dialogues - the two girls talking about Waldek had me in fits. :) It's the best book for vocab I've read yet as well, there's a quite hefty list of vocab in every section that I try to write out and then pin to the fridge or something - takes about a week to properly learn the vocab and gives you info on grammar as well.

301 Polish Verbs by Klara Janecki - very very helpful, a must buy

Hurra po polsku is a much more informative, gentle paced book. My teaching in Poland basically taught me from it - has some quite helpful tables for learning cases better as well. Best bet would be find someone who's going to Poland to get it for you, or to get it from a web shop. It costs about 95zl in Poland for the podręcznik studenta and ćwicień, but they were trying to charge me £40 for it in the UK (over 160zl)! You can get it from eksiegarnia.pl in Krakow, and they delivered it to the UK for me.

Lessons are definately the best way though, gives you more motivation to learn - fear of the nauczyczelka! Teacher's are usually able to explain grammar to you much better than books - but the books are a good reference.

Haven't read any of the others yet, so can't comment.

Good luck
Chris

Life / The strangest things in Poland [468]


Last month, the local bakery I went to did this lovely chleb wielozarnisty. Bought two loaves a week and it's absolutely delicious with cheese, ogorki and kielbasa. Haven't managed to find anything in the UK like that. The closest was a mixed rye and granary loaf I found at Waitrose. The Polish delis sell white rye bread which is ok, but doesn't compare to the fresh granary a bakery does.

UK, Ireland / exchange rates - zloty to pound [16]

if that ever happens, I'll be leaving my UK job very quickly.

Language / A good learning book for Polish [44]

awesome, congratulacja!

hope you enjoy it. Just did excercises from lekcja 3 - Kim jesteś yesterday. good practice.

Chris

Language / A good learning book for Polish [44]

I ordered mine from the eksiengarnia site, didn't seem to have any problems. It's great if you already know some polish - if you're an absolute beginner you probably need someone to take you through it. I'm finding it really useful to brush up on my grammar. I'm alright at conversational Polish, but, according to my Polish teacher, my grammar is another story :). Just been going over narzednik again in the latest lesson. I reckon it's best used alongside other materials - like Polish in 4 weeks.

Language / A good learning book for Polish [44]

yeah, you have to select that, then ring them up (or find a Polish friend to ring them) and they will charge your card something like 25zl for delivery. It comes pretty quick once.

Just tell them your name and say something like: Przepraszam, nie mowiem duzo po polsku...Nazywam sie [DazzaMc] i zarabilem hurra po polsku podręcznik studenta (i kwiczenia), ale mieszkam w anglii. lle płacze? Mam karte kreditową.

Sorry, I don't speak much polish. My name is DazzaMc and I ordered hurra po polsku student book (don't know what podrecznik means) (and workbook), but I live in England. How much should I pay? I have a credit card.

(don't know how to say postage and the grammar is probably not right
Feel free to correct my broken Polish. :) )

Language / A good learning book for Polish [44]

yeah, phoning them was quite scary for me to, but great for improving the Polish. Didn't understand half the lady was saying, but managed to give her the correct details, with a few questions and 'nie rozumiem' s. Good luck with it.

Life / The strangest things in Poland [468]


You'd think so, depends on the person I suppose. When I tried to speak Polish to Poles in UK, they were like totally amazed, but when you're living here, you're kind of expected to speak Polish, so if you don't speak it perfectly I suppose you're more the silly foreigner who can't speak Polish properly.

I was in the supermarket the other day and the cashier was trying to ask me if I wanted a points card, and took me a while to understand her. When I said that Polish was a hard language, she said, nie jest asz taki trudny, 'it's not that hard'. Little does she know. :)

Life / The strangest things in Poland [468]


he he, i would love to speak that well. Having only been here for a couple of months it's still a bit of an uphill struggle. I do get quite a bit of respect from Polish friends, and they are constantly saying my Polish is coming on very well. Very encouraging. It's just in day to day life - shopping, asking for directions, as in this example, not everyone, is understanding of how difficult it is to learn for an English person.

Par example, Eu esterai seis mesas em Sao Paulo, ainde falar porque portuguese. Eu pensar que portuguese e muito mais faco que polonaise. Sorry probably a bit rusty, but hope that cheers you up. :) It's been 7 years since I've spoken it properly.