UK, Ireland / If I was to move to Poland from Ireland... [92]

Lonely, i live in Dublin. Don't jump into re-locating to Poland on a whim, without friends, family, without the language you will be lost! You will sit in an Irish pub wishing u were home. Don't get me wrong, it's not a daft idea..15 years ago people (in Dublin) said "don't buy outside Dublin, it's too different", i listened & passed up so many bargains (Kerry, Mayo etc) & watched the property market balloon in Ireland until finally i paid 10 times what i would've paid if i had gone with my instincts...now i watch interest rates rise while property values fall??!! I hope/believe the younger generation of Poles will in time create a Polish Tiger economy as per Ireland (a glance round this forum alone shows you the brains/talent to do it is there). Perhaps u crave a new start... Poland could be 4 you...u could (still) be sitting on a fortune if u sell up/invest wisely, but u need to do this dispassionately! Start with making some Polish friends, try learning the basics of the language..pointing at a beer pump with one finger in the air will get u a beer but you are talking about living day 2 day in Poland? Study the impact Poland's accession to the EU has had her domestic property market. In short if u want adventure..rent your house in Ireland out & try Poland for a few months..if u thinkin of a new life..go armed with knowledge & a plan! Best of luck!

UK, Ireland / Chicken cottage staff speaking polish in East London [8]

In Ireland advertising in Polish only is commonplace..right now the nearest poster/billboard to my house reads "Sobieski....Król. Jest tylko jeden" it shows that the profile of Poland, Poles & Polish is raised in other countries when everybody knows a few words of Polish. Although we all know which Polish word is the best known throughout the world;-) Co to ----- jest? i hear you ask!

UK, Ireland / Immigrants trigger Irish rethink [71]


that's right osiol. the report suggests that Ireland saw immigration as the solution to it's labour shortage without thinking through about social provisions required. just heard on the news that unemployment is up by 14,000 which means worst figures in Ireland for 4 years. the nightmare scenario is if/when the Irish economy starts to fall apart..there would be a serious problem providing social funding for health/education/welfare payments etc..when Irish & immigrants are competing against one another for work. Ireland is experiencing immigration for the 1st time ever & no one can really predict how they will re-act to non-nationals if times get hard. My nephew works in a help-centre for immigrants...he see's many people every day (african especially) but hardly ever Polish. Poles in Ireland live & work amongst the Irish, have a good command of English generally, some even try to learn Irish, LOL. they're not (proportionally speaking) criminal..there are no Polish "ghetto areas", Poles don't seek to live only in areas where everyone is Polish. But some people (in this forum)..who read a report where the word immigrant is used and try to quote the findings of the report replacing the word immigrant with the word POLISH. its time for other European countries to open labour markets..we're supposed to be partners now aren't we? I hope someone else born in Ireland (who doesn't have a Polish parent like me) posts a reply to this because i can't really speak for most Irish when it comes to this:-)

UK, Ireland / Immigrants trigger Irish rethink [71]


I'll take your word for that Osiol..you seem a particularly well-informed, eloquent & articulate donkey, if i might be so bold! Incidentally the Gaelic Irish for donkey is "asail" which is pronounced ossil. I'm no economist but the Irish budget (yesterday) spoke of borrowing/steering a steady course/sustainable growth/maintaining competitiveness/challenges ahead...v Gordon Brown! A story appeared here last week with regards to the slowdown in the housing market (& consequently the building trade)..there was some talk of Irish based Polish builders commuting between Ireland & London (monday - friday) because of the work opportunities the 2012 Olympics has brought??

UK, Ireland / Immigrants trigger Irish rethink [71]


can you tell us more about this? I have found that having lived almost all my life in Ireland apart from 5 years in London that the media here & UK identify with a particular ideology...so you will get a different side to every story depending on where you read/heard/watched it? this is referred to in Ireland as brown envelopes, meaning undeclared donations & unwritten agreements.

News / Poland to Change the National Anthem? [22]

It is, of course important to have a national anthem that POLISH people can identify with, that is the most important thing. But there is a generation gap in Poland between young & old. Hide your parent's voting card...they're going to vote PiS LOL!! I have played mazurek dabrowskiego to Irish friends and they are amazed by its beauty, melody, lyrics..everything. Also it's hard to ignore Polish football fans singing it at tournaments..the passion associated with a proud nation & great anthem is there for the world to see. This forum shows me, with it's foreign interest in Poland, the culture, food, history, language that Poland is making it's final steps to being a nation amongst great nations....you can find Polonophobia throughout this forum. "bedziem Polakami". btw in Ireland the national anthem translates as "a soldier's song" and we have not been at war with the British since early 1920's!

Life / Please help me find this Polish song (moja droga ja Cie kocham)! [16]

could it be that your grandma made the song up herself? lullabyes are essentially folklore/family things and my Polish mother speaks really good English but never learned any lullabyes in English..so us kids were treated to a mixture of genuine Polish lullabyes & one or two home-made ones in English. moja droga ja cię kocham (my dear i love you) is repeated twice & mixed with English - the verse you quote is a lovely way for a polish grandma who can speak english to lullabye her english speaking grand-daughter. The verse is intended for English (not Polish) speakers to understand...if your grandma didn't make it up then it's most probably of Polish-American origin.

Life / Please help me find this Polish song (moja droga ja Cie kocham)! [16]


...wow!

UK, Ireland / Immigrants trigger Irish rethink [71]


Oh my God! Don't tell me EU citizens can live & work in the EU?

UK, Ireland / Immigrants trigger Irish rethink [71]


this thread is about Ireland...not Britain.

UK, Ireland / Immigrants trigger Irish rethink [71]


Thank you PolskaDoll. I really enjoyed to-day riding around Dublin on my bike even though it's cold. I met alot of Polish people to-day some of whom earn far more money than me. On the other hand, I have a very good friend here in Dublin who is from Lódź, she is absolutely fluent in Polish (obviously), German(she has a degree in it) & English and can read/write in all 3 languages..yet she works in a post-room sorting mail. This toilet-cleaner thing is mindless. People go into the jobs market in a foreign country & often end up settling...just see how teaching English is popular with English speaking people who settle in Poland. Common sense should tell us that they wouldn't all be teachers back home, they are just dealing with the realities, being sensible in fact.

UK, Ireland / Immigrants trigger Irish rethink [71]


Dude is right about this too.

Love / 5 months with my polish girlfriend now she's pregnant ! [21]


nice one ukpolska! i was thinking..."darling i could just stab you when you accuse me of mood swings, honestly honey"

Life / Legally changing my Polish name to English one? [55]

some people come into this world born as a male or female & later feel (rightly or wrongly) they need to change sex, others feel compelled to change religion (personal convictions). There are plenty of people who hate their name so much they feel belittled in the eyes of others so want to change it. But changing your name legally from Marcin or Wojtek to a trendy western equivalent (for the benefit of others??) should be seen for what it really is! It is a renounciation of your origins and a lame attempt at assimilation. All over the UK/Ireland Małgorzata becomes Margaret, Paweł becomes Paul & Marcin becomes Martin...I do sort of understand the motivation and reasoning for allowing English speakers to feel like they've pronounced your name correctly at the 1st attempt....as long as it stops short of legally changing your name by deed poll at which point you are opting out of your heritage/background - which is a decision you may later have to justify to friends of the same background as you or maybe even your own children...but I'm sure if you were happy with who you are, then even a name that's very hard to pronounce like Zbigniew Brzezinski for example wouldn't hold you back in an English speaking country!

Love / IS MY BOYFRIEND CHEATING? I went to Poland with him. [158]


missed that thread...if the guy is question is/was beating the OP then he need's a f*kin' good kickin' no doubt i would do it myself if i was near enough...he needs to be humiliated, stripped bare and left with as much confusion & lack of dignirty as blingin is feeling. I lost interest in this thread cos i thought it was a "how can i be even more of a doormat" thread... u know, a 19yo who needs to get hurt again & again to learn self respect..but if he beat her then i suddenly understand her insecurity, lack of clear thinking etc i advise blingin go confide your ordeal in some trusted male family/friends and let them deal with what should remain your EX-BOYFRIEND as they see fit

Language / How long to get fluent in Polish? [41]


good one!!

Life / Six degrees of Kevin Bacon w/ Polish actors [16]

joanna pacula & william hurt Gorky Park
william hurt & robert de niro The good shepherd
robert de niro & kevin bacon Sleepers

maybe Krystyna Janda next?

Life / Six degrees of Kevin Bacon w/ Polish actors [16]

this is controversial(ish)...
Jerzy Stuhr & Cameron Diaz Shrek (Polish version?)
Cameron Diaz & demi Moore Charlies Angels 2
Demi Moore & Kevin Bacon a few good men


(re Krystyna Janda)
thank u

Life / Six degrees of Kevin Bacon w/ Polish actors [16]

wojciech pszoniak & gerard depardieu danton
gerard depardieu & andie mc dowell green card
andie mc dowell & kevin bacon beauty shop

next
michal zebrowski

UK, Ireland / What's So Great About The UK? [416]


a bastard language?


like the British Empire? Oh, sorry, forgot, the white man's burden...wasn't it Kipling who wrote that, not sure?


LOFL! Margaret Thatcher (Baroness Thatcher, how very 21st century) tried peddling this idea in France, lest the French got the insolent idea that the French revolution might have had any historical importance..she was rightly laughed at!!! Who honestly (even in Britain) can find anything to say about the magna carta........wishful thinking on your part I'm afraid)..example for you! I am writing from Dublin, Ireland..a city which under British rule could elect 2 MPs to the house of commons in London...1 x MP elected by the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Catholic/Nationalists and another elected by trinity college..an exclusively (at that time) protestant university...result = 1 x nationalist MP & 1 x unionist MP...democracy indeed, and not so long ago.....


for which it's worth bearing in mind, they were widely seen as traitors with a short memory in their respesctive homelands...ie countries where Britain acted as a parasite, taking what she could while the going was good & then scarpered.

I write as someone with a Polish mother/Irish father/3 siblings born in England so no axe to grind here, we can all bash rhetoric around i'm sure...alas, you are espousing the very sentiment, i assure you, the very precursor, if you will, of modern US foreign policy...please think about the deaths/greed/rape/subjugation/gerrymandering/ethnic cleansing that was required so that I as someone born in Ireland, can respond to you in English...bypassing a much older/indiginous gaelic language in so doing?

UK, Ireland / TRUTH AND DELUSION ABOUT POLES IN UK [65]

Took me a long time to realise that the British media are free to demonize other predominantly white European countries at will. The Irish, French, Germans, Spanish have all been victims of this at some time. Once you're caucasian/European the British media feels (wrongly) that a "racial" slur cannot be implied. The Polish are the latest...newbies..fair game in their eyes. The Portugese recently fell foul of the British media when it covered the Madeline McCann disappearance. Elements of the British media wanted only to paint a picture of a lazy, swarthy, red-wine fuelled, unprofessional police force concerned more with taking a siesta than solving anything...it became for a time a sort of - this could never happen in UK - story. Of course it could happen in the UK..even innocent Brazilians can get shot by British police for nothing (a case in point)..but this media approach is neccessary in a sense because, being better than JOHNNY FOREIGNER is part of what makes Britain GREAT...and it sells newspapers!! I personally, believe Norman Davies in the islands when he suggests that Britishness is a flawed/artificial concept. An imperialist excuse for England's subjugation of it's Celtic neighbours..Ireland, Scotland, Wales. Under the banner of Britishness the idea of an Empire could be excused/encouraged/justified. Unfortunately, today..with the Empire gone and with the Scots, Irish & Welsh retaining some semblance of national identity..there is a crisis in the English identity...English people wonder why St.Patrick's/St.David's/St.Andrew's day is a bigger deal in ENGLAND than St. George's day. Why Notting Hill Carnival is so big? The English football team is one of the one last true expressions of Englishness...and it attracts everything from passion/fanaticism to hooliganism. But when drinking heavily in broad daylight prior to running battles with the local (foreign) police these England "fans" - the only fans btw who i've heard from "Britain" ever to sing.."rule Britannia", a lamentable dirge about how great Britain is...never Scots/Welsh

Summarizing, it's my belief, that the English alone bought into Britishness...the Welsh & Scottish are joined by land to an historically aggressive neighbour...and always, whilst massively outnumbered (must be 55million-ish in England (?) to 10 million Scots/Welsh - don't know the figures (sorry, i'm Irish/Polish...not from UK??) & overpowered, somehow held higher their own sense of nationhood than their place in the British family of nations. The Irish lived on a seperate island but it's continued Britishness was assured by taking lands/rights from the Irish and giving it to the "British" royalists/loyalists. DIVIDE AND CONQUER!!

Anyway, the newspapers/media to which puzzler alludes sell very well because they promote/prolong the idea of "us" & "them". The idea..often repeated by IDIOTS on this forum, that Britain holds a sacred place among nations...this is the lie the English people have been told & earnestly repeat to the Scots/Welsh..worse still, the message itself goes back to a time when rich people in England needed to give poor people in England a reason to serve them, a greater good so to speak...English people i must add are NOT intrinsically anti-foreign at all, there are plenty on this forum who prove this time and again. It's just that a lot of blood has been spilt by ordinary English people for supposedly high ideals & concepts, so... some young English guy goes to visit his Grandad in his council flat, they talk about the war, the local people that died, the sacrifice etc..and he comes away thinking.. my grandad didn't fight so a Ghanain family could move next door, he didn't fight so there would be a SUPERSAM at the end of the street, no, it was for the glory and the blah blah..English people have done their share for the good of the world as much as anyone else..now they look around.. for the world their forefathers spoke of... guess what...just when it was looking promising (according to the press) Millions(?) of Polish workers turned up...oh, my God, call the press, something must be done...blah blah blah. This is the reality of life in Britain...beware Polish people...you are new and therfore fair game...sadly, young open minded Brits love you for the differences that you bring & welcome you heartily.

In Ireland I have no recollection of my mum receiving anti-polish sentiments from Irish people..she came here in 1969...& though my parents met in England in 1953, my dad being Irish was a far bigger social problem in the UK (of course i mean England..and the south of England at that, where the newspapers are written) at that time, anyway as a family we've been in Ireland since 1969 & I remember from 1974 (5yrs old) to now..and i've yet to hear a genuinely bad word from the Irish re: Polish people..JPII visited Ireland and raised the Irish perception of Poland, so Martial law & Lech Walesa were watched with a brotherly/sisterly eye from Ireland & throughout the average Irish person's lifetime there are, at the very least stories of needing to emigrate for work, stories of being subjugated politically/ecomomically by more powerful neighbours..as a result Ireland receives somewhere between 7-10 times (per capita) the amount of Polish people the UK has received..with 7-10 times less crying/whingeing (per capita) about it.

UK, Ireland / POLISH ADMIRATION FOR THE IRISH GENIUS JAMES JOYCE [63]

Puzz, I think you would enjoy "Dublin literary pub crawl" it has it's own website. James Joyce, Yeats, O'Casey..etc & lots of beer!! I think Slomczynski producing a faithful translation of Ulysses in Polish is a remarkable achievement in itself!

UK, Ireland / POLISH ADMIRATION FOR THE IRISH GENIUS JAMES JOYCE [63]


I'm out of my depths here :( when my Polish friends have finished reading their copies of Angora they pull out the angorka section for me...i struggle hard to understand it & interpret it LOL!!


This may be a good comparison. I think Joyce (amongst others) is a source of great pride but would wonder how many have read him...I personally haven't, but intend to sooner or later. Joycean Dublin is now very accessible..with tours, websites & a James Joyce centre too.

UK, Ireland / POLISH ADMIRATION FOR THE IRISH GENIUS JAMES JOYCE [63]


Osioł, you are surely right about this..when what is truly being said is disputed even amongst scholars of the author's language. I certainly think, given Joyce's style..a little of which I'm familiar with..that a faithful/accurate translation into Polish is a monumental task...given that Joyce's works are internationally accepted as belonging amongst the truly inventive literature & ulysses generally seen as his masterpiece.


I find this sort of post very hard to interpret. In response to a thread about Polish appreciation of an great Irish writer - we are offered Communist Russian appreciation of a great Scottish writer??? Michał's posts portay a very, very unique grudge..unique on this forum..perhaps, it's the kind of grudge that started around 1989(ish) and really started to hit home about 3/4 years ago? Sorry, still interpreting it......

UK, Ireland / POLISH ADMIRATION FOR THE IRISH GENIUS JAMES JOYCE [63]


think Joyce was seen in a similar light...or perhaps a similar haze of smoke...lol

UK, Ireland / POLISH ADMIRATION FOR THE IRISH GENIUS JAMES JOYCE [63]


well done, good for you...why not start an orwell thread? His name is invoked often enough on this forum!

UK, Ireland / What's So Great About The UK? [416]

There are lots of wonderful things in the UK. The original poster is correct however when he wonders "What's so great about the UK?"...there is nothing "So Great" about the UK, it's a free, democratic country like so many others... there is however, alot of media re-inforced nonsense about greatness..

examples
an English guy plays well for his English club for 5 consecutive matches would be reported in Britain as "best midfielder in the world"...then he can take his place on the pantheon of British greatness like...

the British royal family..often called in British media - the envy of the world (give me strength),
British armed forces...the best in the world,
British legal/justice...model for the world.
Shame is there is a ready made (cultivated for centuries) audience for such rubbish...so it's only natural that a pea brain will show up here from time to time with claims such as "we won the war" and so the cycle continues.

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

quote=BubbaWoo] pani babcia [/quote]
are these words needed to make your ever so complicated (NOT) point comprehensible to a Polish person?


you are to blame. Not the bloke who suggested you walk instead of drive. In this case the Pope has told you not to drive...you would like him to advocate how you should drive...you are responsible for splattering that (knees up) mother brown not him!

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


that is a central tenet of the Catholic faith. As leader of the Catholic church he could hardly preach anything else, could he?


wasn't offensive...I was suspicious of your intentions, maybe I did interpret what I saw as superflous language as an unnecessary "dumbing down" by you & wrongly pre-judged your disposition towards Polish people...my sincere apologies if you were just having fun with the Polish language on a Polish forum...a quite natural thing to do

Life / Local Poles taking advantage of foreigners living in Poland [235]

wtf?? bribing, stealing, rip-offs, pushing/shoving, rudeness, poor driving, poor customer service?? Is this Poland you're talking about? What a bunch of whining, whingeing, moaning maggots!! I have absolutely no, I repeat no negative experiences whatsoever of Poland or Polish people no matter where I went in Poland or abroad...on the contrary I found people to be extremely courteous, friendly and helpful...and no one (not one) person has attempted to push/shove, bully, rob, con me...never! How could that be? How could I possibly have such a positive experience time and again and again? well, perhaps it has something to do with understanding the notion of being a guest? Some of you had better be careful that you don't contribute to turning this forum into a dark, dingy corner of a British ex-pats pub...empty except for a few bitter, tired Brits whose only contribution to the forum is to point out how much better Britain is to anywhere else. Every time one of you rants on...(Jezus did some one say TIP as in TIA in blood diamond? F*ck off!!)..I can read between the lines by your attitude why you might not be received like royalty. Have just a little respect...and when you've said too much, be a man..don't hide like a p*ssy behind the excuse...it's just British humour.