Love / foreign gays in Poland [59]

Actually things are probably worse now than five years ago.

Gaydar has never been part of the general Polish skill set (which meant that even very obviously gay people were not necessarily suspected of being gay*). Also there wasn't much idea that homosexuality was bad morally. Negative attitudes were more about it being statistically uncommon (Poland is a _very_ conformist country and most people want to like what other people like and are embarassed by even pretty trivial deviations from the norm).

Then a couple of Polish political parties picked up on the fact that gay-bashing was a road to electoral success in the US (Polish politics is generally more modelled after American than European models) and things went downhill.

Still, unless you actaully make out in public no one's liable to notice or care that you're gay. If you tell people you're gay, a certain amount of responses will be negative.

*and a lot of straight Polish men are born metrosexuals, vain about their appearance or clothes in ways that are very gay-seeming to westerners and a lot of straight Polish men are attracted to fashion styles that are very gay-seeming to westerners (though they'll feign distaste once they realize that tight leather pants and a bandana aren't macho after all).

Work / Is it hard to find an English position at an office job in Krakow or Warsaw? [8]


That's because they want to thin out the Polish applicants to those who are fluent in English (fluency in Polish is assumed and also usually required to get the job).

AFAIK international companies in Poland overwhelimingly hire local people and the kinds of jobs where no Polish would be necessary are filled by people already working for the company and then posted to Poland.

There are some exceptions, but they're not common. I've known Anglophones who were living in Poland and hired by international companies for office positions but they did know Polish (and or already had lots of contacts in Poland).

The best option in Poland is to have a good resume and use headhunter firms (or get hired outside of Poland and manage to get posted there).

Work / Is it hard to find an English position at an office job in Krakow or Warsaw? [8]

In Poland, an English-only worker is a burden to other employees in a bilingual office environment and anyone involved in hiring takes that into account. Basically an English only environment doesn't exist in Poland when Poles are in the majority, they immediately revert to Polish whenever possible (I've seen this in action when the boss didn't realize this was happening when they weren't around).


I would not look for such a position as I am pretty fluent in Polish (and would use my position of being a native speaker of English who is also very fluent in Polish as a selling point - it's not a common skill set). Become fluent in Polish (and understand Polish culture and how to get things done here - which is different from how you get things done in the US or UK) and you can find a position. On the other hand, I'm not interested in office work (been there, done that).

I was just answering your specific question (why advertise in English?). Also, often English is listed as job requirement when the actual job position doesn't require any English (or give the job-holder any real opportunities to use the language if they wanted to, much less require them to do so). Again, the idea is to thin out the applicant pool.

Work / How are nurses graded in Poland and what is their typical salary? [14]

From talks I've had with people in nursing (warning: this is all second hand information).

1. Many, maybe most, not all Polish nurses begin by going to a nursing high school. Some then go on to BA, MA or other degrees while some begin with the BA degree (in general the BA degree 'licencjat' is an innovation in Polish higher education traditionally the MA was the first post high school degree). There are BA and MA nursing programs at more than one Polish university.

2. I don't think so. The Polish government purposely tried to make it as hard as possible for Polish nursing qualifications to be recognized outside of Poland for fear of hastening emigration by nurses. Basically, most of the people in nursing training programs now don't really intend on working in Poland anymore than they have to, nursing is what you might call an 'emigration degree'. That said, Polish nursing training does not suffer in comparison with training in Western Europe and when they can learn the local language Polish nurses are in demand across Western Europe.

3. I think there are some private schools .....

Language / LEARNERS REJOICE: NO MORE DUAL NUMBER IN POLISH! [12]

For that matter, weird 'plurals' of some body parts that come in twos in Polish also are etymologically dual.

eye - oko - oczy (instead of oka)
ear - ucho - uszy (instead of ucha)
hand/arm - ręka - ręce (instead of ręki - I'm not sure if 'w ręku' is etymologically dual or not)

Also there are some optional irregular forms that come from old dual forms like oczyma (alongside regular oczami).

Language / LEARNERS REJOICE: NO MORE DUAL NUMBER IN POLISH! [12]

For that matter, I that the old dual -ma forms had replaced the literary plural forms in speech (if not writing). (I might be wrong, I love listening to Czech but the dichotomy between literary and spoken Czech confuses the hell out of me).

Life / Queering Krakow's Culture - Same-sex pairs of iconic Greek sculptures [16]


According to this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Age_of_Consent.png

The age in the Netherlands is 16, one year older than in Poland.....

Life / Polish Radio and TV stations online? [68]

Try here:

delicast.com/radio/Poland/talk

Work / How are nurses graded in Poland and what is their typical salary? [14]


Actually IINM the UK isn't the first destination of choice for Polish nurses. Anecdotally, I hear of more going to Scandinavia, but that might be sampling size error. At any rate, that's why I wrote "local language" since English is not going to be so critical to a Polish nurse in Norway.

While here, do British nurses wear their uniforms outside the hospital? A Polish friend in nursing has seen that in movies and films and thought it was poor hygene (in Poland nurses change into and out of their uniforms at the hospital).

Life / Are there any expat Neighbourhoods in Poznan? [16]

Polish infrastructure doesn't lend itself to the idea of kinds of neighborhoods except in the most general sense.

I live in Poznan and the only pattern I know of among foreigners in general is that more or likely to live in either newer kamienica kinds of buildings (or maybe renovated older buildings).

IME not many live in willas, deskas or out of town.

Life / Polish hospitals and the medical system [10]


I've heard the same from both Poles and Brits with experience of both. Granted, as a foreigner from a high prestige country your experience was probably better than some everyday Poles get, but not necessarily hugely better.

Language / mizeria - cucumber salad? [23]

Several years ago I translated a paper on peasant food in Wielkopolska (fun fact: Poznanian 'rogale świętomarcińskie' are basically a fake folk tradition 'revived' so as to not have to honor the memory of Piłsudski who is not popular in Poznań due to his lack of support for the Wielkopolska uprising).

Anyway, about mizeria, details are fuzzy now, but if I remember right it was one of a number of joke names for food that stuck for whatever reason. Others included 'ślepe ryby' ( a kind of potato soup that AFAIK no one makes anymore).

Language / Pozdro & kasa? - examples of Polish word abbreviations [21]


In Poznan there's also siano (lit. hay) and bejmy (from German???)

Language / misleading differences between Polish and English languages [92]


that should be

I'm having a ball today.
I'm playing with a ball.
I'm going to the ballroom. (or a ballroom)

you're welcome.

Life / Wroclaw has too much Graffiti [8]


Pretty much yeah. European people have a long tradition of mimicking behavior from the US without understanding the cultural roots of what they're doing. So graffiti caught on big time (it was big in Germany before reaching Poland) and most of the little hoodlums responsible have no idea what they doing.

Basically spray paint graffiti comes in three varieties:

1. territorial marking of the kind that dogs and cats do, figuratively pissing to warn enemy packs away
2. a desire to make the urban environment as ugly and dysfunctional as possible (so that those with no interest in social order or progress can act unimpeded by social pressure)

3. symbolic stealing of property (you thought it was yours but any young thug with a spray can do what they want with it).

Graffiti has always been with us but I hate and despise the spray can kind as a direct assault on the social contract that makes cities liveable.

News / The Polish-Hungarian friendship is as well as poisoned [45]

Hungary is one of my favorite countries (where I would try to move to if they kick me out of Poland). Great food, drink, fun cities, weird and cool language, thermal baths. Fantastic place. I heart Magyarorszag.

But ... you have to be blind to not notice the dark side. Hungarian politics tends toward extremes and Hungarian nationalism has a definite ugly side to it.

It's surely an exaggeration to call any of the major parties neo-nazi but prejudice against gypsies is pretty wide-spread and accepted and they make a very convenient scapegoat for the many failings of Hungarian politicians.

News / The Polish-Hungarian friendship is as well as poisoned [45]


In Central Europe that's like not mentioning the fact that the people there breathe oxygen.....

Language / Using państwo and surnames. [8]

Of course, you usually don't actually say państwo in the third person, especially if the context makes it clear you're talking about a married couple: "Przyszli prawie wszyscy: Nowakowie, Kowalscy, Wiśniewscy, nie ma tylko Kowalczyków i Woźniaków."

Sounds more natural to me (though I'm not a native speaker).

Language / Why do you have this weird grammar with y and i? optYka? magazYn? zYsk? why? [30]

Tomaco


Poles write magazyn for the same reason Slovaks write víkend instead of weekend to reflect the pronunciation.

Polish uses w instead v for historical reasons.

As for sz, cz, rz, those were actually old Czech spellings (old Czech influenced the Polish alphabet very strongly). Czech orthography was changed later but Polish speakers didn't change with it (why should they?) I have it on good authority there wasserious thought given in the 1950's to replacing Polish sz, cz and rz with the Czech equivalents but the final decision was to retain the current spelling.


German influence on Czech (especially in word-building and syntax) is much stronger than on Polish.

Language / Grammar for "Grandma Cookie" [7]

One problem is you can't just slap nouns together in Polish as you can in English, you have to show how the two words are connected.

I'd say what you want is an adjective rather than a noun (like babunia), what you want is

babcine cookie (bahp-CHEE-neh)

literally grandma(adj) cookie (I used neuter singular because a close equivalent of cookie might be ciasteczko, another kind of cookie is herbatnik, which is masculine but not anything you'd want to associate with grandma.

Language / Grammar for "Grandma Cookie" [7]

Yeah, babcine is a little .... (and doesn't sound nice in English)

The problem with babunia (or babuni) is that sequence that sounds too much like 'baboon'.

I think overall the nicest sounding in English (grammar and fine points of Polish semantics be damned) would be "Babcia cookie".

Now just how Americans without specific knowledge of Polish would pronounce that is another question, probably BAB-see-ya (first syllable rhymes with cab or dab).

Life / The Polish police in my apartment, asking for my passport and phone number. [33]

I would say don't smile at them (older Polish people are likely to think you're making fun of them).

Just say dzień dobry (cześć is too informal) with a poker face (or a slight 'I'm dying inside' smile) and nod slightly. That's much better manners than grinning for no reason.

You should only smile if you've been introduced and know their name, "Dzień dobry Pani Leokadio!"

UK, Ireland / Friend told "just allow your son to forget Polish" by school. [96]

Okay.

1. The UK has the worst first language education system in Europe.

2. The UK has the worst foreign language education (for the local population) in Europe.

Obviously no one should listen to anything a teacher from England says about language learning.

There's every possibility that the kid in question will need Polish in the future (since he probably has family in Poland) and letting it deteriorate will not help him learn or speak English any better.

The parents should speak to him in Polish and make sure he can respond in Polish.

In short: Being bilingual will be good for him. Being just another monolingual English speaker will not be especially good for him.

ps: I'm a professional linguist, translator and language teacher if that makes difference.

UK, Ireland / Friend told "just allow your son to forget Polish" by school. [96]


I never need to _try_ to be offensive.

Are just another monolingual English speaker? If so are you happy about it?

Back to this case, I wonder if maybe the teacher in question just felt they had to offer some kind of 'helpful' advice and just said the first thing that popped into their mind without thinking it through very well.

UK, Ireland / Friend told "just allow your son to forget Polish" by school. [96]


My most offensive comments (of which I mean every syllable and can absolutely defend) were about first language teaching.

A few years ago on Linguist List there was discussion comparing how first languages are taught worldwide (Danish to Danish kids, Korean to Korean kids etc) and the overwhelming consensus was that first language education in English speaking countries was terrible and that in that sorry company the UK was about the worst.

There are complex historical reasons for this (short story: the traditional models of grammar are awful and make no sense but for various political reasons can't be replaced). The effect is what it is.

I do have sympathy for the poor teachers trying to do a good job in the English school system, totally unprepared for the influx of non-anglophone kids and given no help or preparation.

And I know first hand how often teachers feel the need to offer (unwanted, unsolicited) advice (that will not generally be followed). I've found myself doing it though I try to keep it in check.

UK, Ireland / Friend told "just allow your son to forget Polish" by school. [96]


Most of what used to be taught as 'grammar'.

- Don't end sentences with prepositions. ("That's the house in which I live." instead of "That's the house I live in."

- Whom is the object form of who (say "Whom did you see?" and not "Who did you see?"

- Don't begin a sentence with "hopefully"

- Don't use lay as an intransitive verb (don't say "He was laying on the couch.")

- Don't use the 'accusative' after be (say "It's I." instead of "It's me.")

Not a single one of those 'rules' makes any sense for English.

Actually the grammar materials for those who learn English as a second language are ten times better than those for native speakers and the reason is that it was impossible to teach anyone to speak real English by using those rules.

But if you try to teach children the real rules that govern their language a bunch of dinosaurs will try to have you burned at the stake for being a witch.

UK, Ireland / Friend told "just allow your son to forget Polish" by school. [96]

ShelleyS, there's every indication that this child will _need_ Polish in the future (considering how much family he probably has there and how many Poles in Britain don't stay there forever no matter what they may say). Telling his parents to let him forget Polish is not serving his best interests in the slightest.

And linguists have known for a long time now that kids mostly learn from other children (the parents are important but kids aim their language at other kids). I know parents in Poland trying to make sure their kids know some other language and how hard it is given that the language of the playground trumps mom and dad's language (even when mom and dad's language is pretty prestigious).

My recommendation (as a professional linguist and language teacher) is for the parents to speak Polish to him (and make sure he answers in Polish) while encouraging his acquisition of English from friends and school. As long as he's around mostly English speaking kids he'll be dominant in English (which helps at school) while still retaining full fluency in Polish (which he'll also need).

Food / Blueberry Pierogi's [30]

I agree that polonius3 often sounds .... out of date, but he does have a point here. For my money on the whole fresh fruit grown and sold in Poland is better than any of the overprocessed and bland fruit I've had in the US. I just had some black cherries bought on the sidewalk of Warsaw that were amazing.

I'm just surprised that Polish people are so into blueberries (too papery and harsh around the edges for me) and not as fond of blackberries (jerzyny) as I am.

Language / Things Polish people who speak English language say [180]

A couple of typical and recurring errors.

Where he lives? or Where he live? (instead of 'Where does he live?")

I don't know where does he live. (instead of "I don't know where he lives.") (This is more common than the first, very frequent among even advanced learners).

I thought she is rich. (instead of "I thought she was rich.") (This is because Polish doesn't use any kind of sequence of tenses - hooray!)

Are they riches? (instead of Are they rich?) (Not so super common but they clearly want to decline adjectives).

There's also a host of things that aren't technically mistakes but which are stylistically odd and not the way that native speakers anywhere would do things.

He is such a stupid one. (instead of He's so stupid.)

I think that I won't go. (instead of I don't think I'll go).

Finally, just search around the forums as many of the mistakes made in speaking happen in writing too.

Love / What are the perceptions of polish towards homosexuality? [106]


At least they're not Albanians.