Language / Books for Polish speakers learning English [9]


This is the normal situation and probably inescapable in situations of mass language learning. Whether mass language learning is a good idea or not is another question.

UK, Ireland / Here comes the Anti-Immigration marches.... [114]


I apologize for misunderstanding. Perhaps you could elaborate on what it is that you are saying?

UK, Ireland / Here comes the Anti-Immigration marches.... [114]


Well, to be fair there certainly is no shortage of racist, chavish English folk. And I have sympathy for early Pakistani immigrants who were exposed to awful racism and were horrified at the dysfunctional lifestyles of many lower class English (with good reason).

Unfortunately the overall reaction (with many welcome exceptions) was to withdraw into tradition and extreme religious conservativism and to reject basic aspects of traditional British ideas of civil society (a reaction that has also become dysfunctional).

On the one hand, the melting pot model of immigration is dead (due to the nature of modern travel and media). On the other hand, no one has established a good working model to take its place. Multi-culturalism is a disaster as it decreases the level of societal trust (a necessary ingredient of a successful first world country).


Well, Poland has a couple of great blessings.
1. An esoteric language (I wonder if Irish people are starting to wish they'd kept Gaelic around as a discouragement to casual immigration). Everybody at least thinks they speak English (or can quickly learn enough to get by) that's one reason there's so much immigration to the UK from countries with no historic ties.

2. A poor (to non-existent) social safety net. Basically, a comprehensive social safety net and large scale immigration are incompatible. Even if Poland were obliged to extend benefits to foreigners, it's such a joke that no sane person would engage in benefit immigration. The immigrants that do come to Poland realize they need to be able to support themselves (and mostly do).

UK, Ireland / Here comes the Anti-Immigration marches.... [114]


Well it's not my government (though my government also has a similar attitude toward immigration - as much as possible regardless of what the citizenry wants or needs)


No, recession is not the fault of immigrants. But any intelligent discussion of immigration has to realize that there are downsides to mass immigration regardless of economic climate.

I believe controlled immigration can be a good thing overall but uncontrolled immigration is a poor idea in a small densely populated country with no labor shortages. Add a lack of assimilation pressure and you've got a recipe for disaster.

And, in assessing future policy, the behavior of current/past immigrants is absolutely fair game.

But if your primary concern is that nobody criticize immigrants for any reason, then a productive conversation is unlikely to take place.

UK, Ireland / Here comes the Anti-Immigration marches.... [114]


I appreciate your concern (I'm concerned too about the potential for scapegoating and violence).

Nonetheless, do you think current immigration policy in the UK is well-formed?

Do you think there isn't enough immigration to the UK? (If not, how many hundreds of millions of people do you think Great Britain could support?)

Do you think the UK government is really acting in the best interests of either the citizenry _or_ immigrants?

Do you think current immigrant groups are assimilating at reasonable rates?
Or alternately do you think a society made up of dozens of different ethnic groups with no common language or cultural assumptions about the role of the citizen and government can function?

What do you think should be done (and how?)

UK, Ireland / Here comes the Anti-Immigration marches.... [114]

There is a real problem with immigration even if you think/hope that ultimately it's a good thing (within limits as within the EU).

Namely, many short term immigrants are willing to live at bare sustenance levels. This works well in terms of remittances to the homeland (or saving a nest egg for a better future back home) but it forces locals to also live at bare sustenance levels in their own country or prices them out of the job market. Once enough employers go for cheaper-at-all-costs labor essentially all are forced to (look up tragedy of the commons).

Basically the UK has followed the US lead of mass immigration to cow the local population into not making uncomfortable demands (like a living wage) and to create an economy based entirely on credit and consumption (effectively eliminating savings and production). How's that been working out lately? Is this really a model to follow anymore?

Work / Non Polish nationals living in Poland - What do you do for a living? [23]


Depends on what you mean by 'tour guide'. To me though it implies either telling groups of tourists about local sights (in which case I'd be skeptical of a guide that didn't know the local language) or implies a sort of go to person for a specific group (again the questions are liable to require local knowledge).

Kitchen help and/or bussing don't require the local language but I would assume that it would be cheaper to hire locals (if they're willing) and if not to import temp workers from across the eastern border.

Work / Non Polish nationals living in Poland - What do you do for a living? [23]


I'm not sure how someone could function in those areas without a knowledge of Polish.

Travel / An experience on the train in Warsaw [30]


You don't? You've never heard of a shakedown before?

Life / Polish Police - my bad experience. [33]

Perhaps the police should have just arrested them and looked for an interpreter at their leisure?

Life / Polish Police - my bad experience. [33]


Wow, it sounds like you have some really dishonest friends. How do you deal with that?

News / WHARTON AND COELHO IN POLAND? [10]

I think Wharton was very big in Poland the 80's through a lot of the 90's, I don't think he's so big now though.

Coelho is still big AFAIK, though I'm not sure if his constituency is the university crowd. From a live call-in show a few years ago it seemed like more a new-agey than a student crowd.

Language / POLISH OR RUSSIAN -- MORE MODERN? [20]


Of course it can. It can also sound subjectively beautiful (many Polish speakers have told me they like the sound of Russian).

Also, as a general rule any Slavic language sounds a little crude and/or silly to speakers of other Slavic languages (just one of the many reasons crow's insane dream of a pan-Slavic state will never happen).

Life / 90-DAY VISA-FREE STAYS IN POLAND? [19]

Everybody should absolutely pay attention to what gtd is writing. He's very accurate from what I can tell about the new rules.

Yeah, sometimes you can get around the rules, but if you do get caught then no bitching and moaning allowed, man up and do things right next time.

When asking a Polish border guard for a stamp, just blame it on the local office you have to deal with: "I have to renew my permit and they won't like it if there's no stamp" always worked for me with no problems.

Language / POLISH OR RUSSIAN -- MORE MODERN? [20]


I'm a linguist and this just isn't true.

Modern and archaic are not concepts used at all in any modern linguistics I know of for a very good reason - there's no correspondence between degree of morphological complexity and anything else.

The specific differences between Polish and Russian could well have something to do with political history.

Basically, Polish has been a mono-ethnic language for a long period of time while Russian is polyethnic.
This means that Poland has largely been restricted for conducting the internal business of a single ethnic group and has been free to create and/or maintain quirky features that outsiders find .... strange.

Russian, on the other hand, has a long history as a lingua franca between different ethnic groups (a process that did not stop with the collapse of the USSR - Latvians, Georgians and Kazakhs are still more likely to communicate with each other in Russian than any other language). This often means that quirky local features are lost in the interest of easier mutual comprehension.

A couple of differences between Polish and Russian might be related to this.

- Russian has less free word order (compared with Polish that is)

- Russian requires the use of subject personal pronouns even when the form of the verb makes the subject clear ( ja govoriu po russkij not *govoriu po russkij )

These two features seem only to have strengthened in recent history and are the kinds of changes that are typical in languages that are used across ethnic boundaries.

Some of the other differences (lack of the copula in the present tense, a number of 'verbless' setence types)_might_ be due to this is as well, but I don't know the historical record well enough.

Life / Kashubia, Kashebe and Kashubians. . . [23]

I spent a few days around Kościerzyna some years ago. All I heard anyone speak was Polish (local variety but obviously Polish). A book store had exactly one book in Kaszubian which looked like Polish with some simple modifications.

A friend who'd lived in the area said that a lot of the time people (in Polish) used a weird past tense ( IIRC byłem pojechany instead of pojechałem for example).

Also an article on ethnic separatism I read a couple of years ago mentioned the Kashubians as an unsuccessful example. Although some locals tried to create a separate ethnic identity the Kashubians mostly rejected it, preferring to be Polish. Moravians in the Czech republic are another example of a group that declined to become a separate ethnic group.

Language / SAY TELL TALK SPEAK - HARD 4 POLES [22]

I think this thread is a good counterpart to the thread about Anglophones learning Polish (and discussions wherein on the difficulties of English for Polish speakers).

Two simple pairs of words and natives have some agreement (and clear disagreements) about when to use each member.


Well speak and talk overlap more than say and tell, I was thinking of linguistics (and studies of language acquisition) where it seems to me that 'begin to speak' is a lot more common, corresponding with a general principle that when both are possible 'speak' sounds more formal.

Language / SAY TELL TALK SPEAK - HARD 4 POLES [22]


Please note that I wrote "_can_ sound awkward" no "inevitably sounds awkward". Yes there are times when "say something 'to someone'" are okay, but there are times when it's not.

Also note that neither of these violates the 'say something' rule. Adding 'to ....' is more an afterthought and the sentences are fine without them

Say hello. Say thank you.

But unless you're carefull you'll open to the door to:

"He said to me to leave. " or "I'll say it to him" or "I'll say it to you again." which are understandable but awkward or at least not optimal.

Again remembering the rule that say has to include a reference to what was said while tell has to include who was told is a good basic rule. Refinements (like when you can add a 'to someone' phrase come later.

adding this due to the stupid posting policy:


I would just treat that as a separate verb that happens to be written and spelled the same. Or, if the students are up to it, a separate use of the verb unrelated to speech acts.

That is, a secondary meaning of 'tell' and arguably 'say' is (roughly) wiedzieć but this is limited mostly to set expressions.

I can tell. (Wiem i tyle. Znam się na tym)

It's hard to say. (Trudno powiedzieć. Nie wiadomo.)

One of the hardest things about English is the difference between productive meanings that can be freely used to generate new sentences and set expressions that have to be treated separately and learned one by one and which have no wider application.

Even native speakers (I don't exempt myself from this) can get caught up and forget about the latter.

Language / SAY TELL TALK SPEAK - HARD 4 POLES [22]


The problem with that is that it suggests the two are equivalent when they're not at all.

"Say something to someone" is not common and can sound awkward or stilted. Students need to know to generally stay away from it like nuclear waste.

A simpler rule:

Say something.

Tell someone (something).

Language / SAY TELL TALK SPEAK - HARD 4 POLES [22]

First rule might have to do with objects

say = you have to include what the person said, whether as a quote (direct or indirect) "He said he'd be here." or as a pronoun "That's what they said." "What did she say?" the person being told doesn't have to be included but can be (with 'to') "That's what he said to me."

tell = you have to include the person who was told. "Tell me." "Let me tell you." "I told him to get out." "Are you thinking of telling him?" (if the person being told is left out then the contents are obligatorily absent and the meaning is changed 'to inform on'. "I'm telling."

as for speak, talk

speak = a language or a more formal activity (with a 'to' object) (He spoke to the delegates. Her boss spoke to her about her lateness). As a general human activity it's equivalent to walking or breathing. "When the baby begins to speak ...."

talk = general human activity with no object but maybe a topic. "Let's talk (about) politics". Also a way to pass the time "We talked for a while"

Enough to get started.

Food / Butcher Shops in Poznan? [7]

I warned you, beef is not the meat of choice. Ground beef is sometimes available in supermarkets but in butchers shops it's usually big hunks of boneless beef (mostly good for stewing though Polish people don't go into for stew) and/or rostbef (kind of a thick chop more suitable to pot roast than frying).

Beware of ground pork from butchers you don't know as it might be from a boar and lead to indigestion.

Ask around Polish acquaintances and you might find something, but I wouldn't get my hopes up. Time to learn to love pork.

for Poloniuch 3, most butcher shops are either private stand alones or chains like Prosiaczek (or sklep firmowy for a particular meat producer). I usually buy meat at one of three good butcher shops within a three minute walk from my front door (in different directions though).

People don't buy as much meat from the supermarkets (which have gotten a bad reputation for low quality and/or selling meat past its due date).

Language / TYPICAL MISTAKES OF POLISH LEARNERS OF ENGLISH? [23]

A typical mistake or two from non-native speakers of Polish.

Jechałem z samochodem.

z przyjacielami

Znam pięć Polaków.

Dwa kiełbasy proszę.

Proszę jedną żeberkę.

Nie mam samochód.

Language / Help with pronunciation of Gorecki Symphony [41]

The first sound (cz) is like 'ch' in English 'chips' or 'tsch' in Deutsch.

The second sound (t) is not like an English t at all, it's made against the teeth as in Spanish or Italian (and at least some kinds of German, I don't know about yours).

The next sound (e) is like English e in 'get' or German nett.

The next sound (r) is like a single r in Spanish or Italian (not like English or German r at all).

The final vowel (y) is like 'i' in English sick or hit (this doesn't occur in word final position in English) maybe like German i in Mist or schicken (again it doesn't occur at the end of words in German).

Also important: Polish doesn't have long or short vowels, all the vowels are pronouned clearly, the word cztery has two syllables and the first is stressed but be careful not to make it too long (and to not make the second vowel too short).

Food / History of the Polish potato (what did Polish people eat before?) [17]


No, tabouli is a salad made with bulgur wheat

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgur

buckwheat is gryka, also known in the US as kasha (strange but true)

Language / TYPICAL MISTAKES OF POLISH LEARNERS OF ENGLISH? [23]

Where she lives?

I don't know where does she live.

Law / "Texas style" steakhouse in Poznan. Worthy investment? [35]

Problems with a steakhouse in Poland.

Poles aren't into beef as a rule, even very good butcher shops don't always have it. A natural result of this is that the beef isn't ..... great quality. I'm guessing that most beef on sale is from 'retired' dairy cattle. (when you travel you don't see herds of cows in the country side, there's an occcasional dairy cow staked out to graze).

So supplying a steakhouse won't be that easy or cheap and the prices needed to make it profitable will scare many away. Yeah, a lot of people in Poland have money but the people with the money to spend on imported quality beef are going to want an upscale establishment. And the number of foreigners (who spend a lot of time going out) outside Warsaw just isn't that big.

Real, quality hamburgers would have to contend with the debasement of the term in Poland. On the one hand, there's the ghastly memory of Polish "hamburgery" of the 90's (breaded) pork with raw cabbage(!) and a rock-hard bun or the present knowledge of McCrapolds.

I've done homemade hamburgers that have convinced a few Poles that hamburgers can be well-made and taste good but it's generally a hard sell.

USA, Canada / FIRST POL-AM CATHOLIC (?) PRIESTESS [72]


I hate to side with Krakowianka (who is conspicuously lacking in Christian fellowship and charity) but .... she's right.

The Catholic church sets the rules for being a Catholic and the rules they've set include regular church going.

That said, a person doesn't have to be a Catholic to be a Christian (despite what some Catholic church officials might imply) and one can be a committed Christian without ever going to church. Belief in the basic principles is quite enough.

And you're right (and Krakowianka's wrong) about the use of the word kosher. Kosher - it's not just for gefilte fisch anymore!

Life / POLAND'S QUASI-BROTHELS? [21]


Here's an idea. You might get more and better discussions if you didn't go out of your way to insult people who don't agree with you.

I really doubt if there's a group that could be called "Euro-apers" in Poland on any issue.
In regards to prostitution, various people of various political orientations have different ideas on how to deal with it. My concern is to protect those women (and young men) who go into prostitution on their own (usually out of a combination of desperation, dullness and dysfunctionality) and to prevent people from being forced into prostitution.

The current Polish laws (and most rightwing proposals and some leftwing proposals) do niether.

IINM individual prostitution is not illegal (though not really legal either).
This means that prostitutes who work on their own have to do so in dangerous conditions and making brothels illegal makes it easier to exploit and/or imprison women. No law will make prostitution go away, laws can be done to limit the harm done.

There's nothing that new in the Dutch drug situation either. For myself I think marijuana should be legalized and regulated (though personally I can't stand dealing with chronic potheads).

Food / What is your favourite Polish meal?! [64]

sałatka jarzynowa, used to eat it by the bucketful

Work / Soldier in need of advice about using Polish in a new career path. [11]

Here's a program in Polish studies (on Polish German border)

no costs mentioned, but there is contact info.

amu.edu.pl/nowa-eng.php?linkid=3294

Warning: some Polish universities (counting on the idea that most foreign students are being sponsored by governments) add on ridiculous charges for foreigners, but these can often be negotiated/petitioned away (or at least reduced).

Powodzenia!