Language / Slang words like man, dude [29]

... ziom...

Language / Slang words like man, dude [29]

Where I work we use the words ślimak, leniwiec and baran more often. None of these mean dude or anything like that.

Love / Why do Polish Women Think They Know Better? [134]

Why do Polish Women Think They Know Better?

Just because they do. A Polish woman told me that.
Still susceptible to the proverbial woman's prerogative though.

Life / WHAT DO YOUNG POLES SEE IN RAP CRAP? [63]


Retro chic amongst those who like brightly coloured things? At least the good stuff like Three Feet High and Rising might make a comeback.

Language / Does this look right? (Cases reference); co? kto?/ czego? kogo? [8]


Kupiłem ten rower. (same ending as nominative)
Skręcz mi jednego papierosa.
Już kupiłeś tę dużą książkę?

Masculine:
confusing, so I'll let someone else explain and maybe I might learn something
sometimes it's the same as the nominative, sometimes the same as the genitive, but with grey areas in between.

Feminine
adjectives -ą
nouns -ę


There are differences.
You will hear kids call to their Mum the vocative "Mamo" rather than "Mama" which would be the nominative. This a > o change is quite common. I'm not sure if it works for all feminine nouns (and masculine nouns with the nominative ending in -a, eg. poeta > poeto).

If you call someone a dick, you call them the vocative ch**u rather than just ch**.
Ksiądz is priest. To address a priest vocatively, the word is księże. Once again, masculine nouns are more confusing. For names, it seems common enough to use the nominative.

Love / Why do Polish Women Think They Know Better? [134]

A Polish man told me that all Polish men can do plastering and hang doors. I still have a knobbly wall with tramlines and an upside down door to prove his point. Maybe a Polish woman had told him he could do it.

UK, Ireland / Sad life of a Polish migrant in the UK. Ch. 4 - Language [66]


You took him to Australia?

History / Why are we called Poles instead of Polans? [29]

Where is Polanland?

Feedback / How far we have come on this forum... [9]

I found it interesting to browse my early days here and see a lot of posts by myself and others that have vanished forever (or so some of us had thought). I had shown a fellow PF member some of this and the result was quite unnerving. Luckily, it doesn't save everything, but you never know quite what might be able to come back to haunt you.

Language / Your Funniest / Strangest / Sadest Moments with the Polish Language [63]


But think of all the Poles who say they **** when they merely mean they can't.


I declared to my work colleagues recently that I am their rabbit.
I meant to say I was their king, but an extra syllable got in the way. Eek!

UK, Ireland / Sad life of a Polish immigrant in the UK. Ch. 2 - Stress [63]


Is that the same thing as a donkey sanctuary?

History / Solidarnosc (Two Decembers) [11]


I have a vivid and detailed knowledge of the spelling: Solidarność. Does that help?

News / The Lisbon Treaty and land reperations [74]

My own view is that unless every country that lost stuff as a result of WWII can claim back everything that it lost, then picking individual cases only creates greater unfairness for those alive today. There has to be a year zero across the board.

Food / Is there any other Polish seafood exept herring and carp? [30]

I hate to say it, but

a) Carp is a freshwater fish, and
b) I have eaten jellied eel in Poland.

Language / How does Polish sound to you? How to make Polish sound more pleasurable? [100]

It doesn't have the Bond-villain/villainess sound of Slovakian or Russian and nor does it have the high-in-the-throat projection of many German accents. It's not a soft language but neither does it sound particularly harsh. By soft, I mean something like Brazilian Portuguese or the more standard forms of English. Harsh being various forms of Spanish or German (although certainly not all forms).

"Polish sounds so much better than English, when it comes from a girl's lips" said a noted personage once, but that may actually have more to do with the girl (and the lips) than the actual language itself.

Study / POLISH CLASSROOM CHARACTERS? [3]

and feminine forms?


I'll let Seanus, Szkotja2007, dtaylor and one or two others fight it out for that title. Does the Polish Pirate of Scotland, Bartolome still come here?

Language / How does Polish sound to you? How to make Polish sound more pleasurable? [100]


In polysyllabic words, it's nearly always on the penultimate. Russian has more of a variable position in words for stress.

Food / Is there any other Polish seafood exept herring and carp? [30]


Do European species of carp live in the sea? No.
Do any carp live in the sea? Not that I have ever been able to find.

So the polite answer I have for you is yes.

Love / Polish Gay Life [142]

Get some Zoroastrians to join in and then gayness might be cured forever.

Genealogy / Poles have more Germanic Genomes than Germans! [18]

Curiously, I saw somewhere a couple of texts of an old Slavic language called Polabian. It was clearly Slavic, although it contained many more vowels than the modern Slavic languages and the word for father was Wader. Historians amongst us will probably know slightly better than I where these people lived, but I believe it to be somewhere in the area around eastern Germany / western Poland. It seems that if certain other languages had survived through history, then the case for the mixing of certain populations may have been a little clearer in some places.

On the subject of genomes, I believe these are rather more popular in Germany than they are over here. On one of my journeys leaving Poland, I vaguely remember seeing a roadside stall selling genomes and other garden ornaments close to the German border.

UK, Ireland / To Brits only trout are not coarse? [18]

Indeed, of the fish that exclusively dwell in freshwater habitats, I think it is only trout that is not considered to be a coarse fish. Don't ask me why, but it is said that these other species just don't taste very good. Do carp not require a cleaning process whereby they are kept alive for some time in clean fresh water? I know that farmed snails similarly require a clean run of bran or similar through their digestive tracts before they can be put to culinary use.

But what about the grayling, the lady of the stream?

Language / How does Polish sound to you? How to make Polish sound more pleasurable? [100]


Dżdżownica, unless you have a stammer in which case it could be dżdżdżdżownica.

UK, Ireland / To Brits only trout are not coarse? [18]

It looks, from the title of this thread, that P3 is trying to say that trout should be considered to be a coarse fish.
Do trout have bad manners? If so then they are coarse.

UK, Ireland / To Brits only trout are not coarse? [18]


I believe that there are a few American species of freshwater bass, whereas around Europe we're only familiar with what we call Sea Bass which is a seafish whose range extends only as far as estuaries rather than actual fresh water. I've tried Patagonian Toothfish, which is a South American sea bass which is not much better than a local sea bass other than having a cooler sounding name.

USA, Canada / Do you think Americans are idiots. [149]


There's nothing boring about large-scale whisky consumption with a visiting distant Canadian relative. Some things can take years of recovery and rehabilitation to overcome. I'm sure some Canadians are boring, just as some Americans are stupid. I for one am neither stupid enough nor boring enough to go and count just how many fit into such categories.

USA, Canada / Do you think Americans are idiots. [149]


Did they call it the USA?

USA, Canada / Do you think Americans are idiots. [149]

If someone was to run into an American, one or the other would have to be stupid, either for running into someone else or for getting in the way of someone running, although accidents do happen.

Life / Why is Polka music played in Poland so much different than in the USA? [36]


Maybe Polka not being a Polish style of music could have something to do with it.

půl - half in Czech
-k- diminutive
-a typical feminine noun ending

It's origins are Czech.

The Scandinavian Polska dance (and associated musical style) is named after Poland, as is the Polonaise. Both of these are in 3/4 time (waltz) whereas Polka is 2/4.

News / Slavic linguistic union inside of EU; Polish language official [95]

ec.europa.eu/education/languages/languages-of-europe/doc135_en.htm - European Commision - Multilingualism (that's what they call the page.)


The EU would have to really feel it was missing out on something to add another language to this list. As for official languages, it seems that each member state has an official language included in the list of languages official to the EU, except Ireland which has two and Belgium which has three.

Language / The final "ę" [29]

The trouble is that books teach learners of Polish to use a feature that is considered by many to be a sub-standard form. It would be as if books teaching English taught the letter t at the ends of words as a glottal stop - it is how many people speak normally, although in careful or refined speech, this sound would not be used by nearly as many people.

I only started learning Polish because it has nasal vowels. Navajo also has nasal vowels and even uses the letters ą, ę and ł, but somehow Polish seemed like a more sensible option as a language to learn to speak.

So pronounce your final ę. Nobody will criticise you for doing so, but people may look down on your pronunciation you if you don't.