Regional traits in Poland

Now that all the threads about Jews have gotten so boring and predictable, I want to open a different kind of discussion. I've been curious about this:

Among Jews we have some stereotypes about the Jews of different regions of Poland. For example, Jews from Galizia were said to be cheerful, friendly people, but not very intellectual. (My grandfather said that if you see a Jew walking down the street smiling for no good reason, he's probably a Galizianer.) Jews from the northeast and Lithuania are said to be dry intellectuals, and the Galizianers think of them as being less than pious. Jews from small towns in the Lublin area were considered very religious and a bit backward (at least to the more urban Jews from Warsaw). German Jews were thought of as rigid and obsessive about their traditions and about neatness and respectability. We also have stereotypes about Hungarian Jews. My question is: Do any of these stereotypes reflect a similar stereotype about non-Jews from these same regions?

The german Jews sound like...well...Germans.....:)

What's the standing of the Ashkenazim in Israel of today? I've once read Yiddish is looked down upon and was even for awhile forbidden to push hebrew, is that still so?

do you have any stereotypes of american, ( todays ) european or israeli jews ( from different parts of the country )?

There are differences based on regions, for sure.

It was like that in the 1930s, but it's not like that at all now. Hebrew's position is much more secure now and there are much fewer Yiddish speakers than there were before the war (an understatement) so there's no supression of Yiddish. It's looked at now with nostalgia,but not many people still speak it – mostly older people from Europe and Haredim (young and old).

Ashkenazim and Sepharadim are overlapping a lot now and many people are half and half. But the stereotype is that the Ashkenazim are more successful and snobby. The Russians in Israel are technically Ashkenazim but they are so different that we have separate stereotypes as about them.

(I have to go now, but I hope to see some interesting comments in the morning.)

- Galicia: peasants, poverty, very multi-cultural.
- Silesia: Germans and half-Germans, talk funny.
- Eastern Poland: backwardness, religious zealotry, xenophobia. Also talk funny.
- Western Poland: cleaner and richer than east, more open-minded but very snobish.
- Southern Poland (mountains and highlands): live in a world of their own, don't know much about the rest of the country or the world. Talk very funny.

- Kraków: the REAL capital of Poland. Very snobbish. Talk funny.
- Everybody hates Warsaw.

These are of course stereotypes, I don't mean to insult anyone.

Poznan:Hot girls
Krakow:Hot girls
Wroclaw:Average girls
Katowice:Ugly girls

Poznan:More German look
Krakow:More ukr look
Wroclaw:Belarus look
Katowice:Silesian look very much like Morava Czechs

Both the Moravians and the Czechs would like to have a word with you outside... ;-P

Magdalena

He doesn't dare ;)

They don't look exactly the same with Poles.What do you mean?Moravans look more Germanic than Poles but if you think about it they show temperament much more similar to polish than to Bohemian one.And their tendency to drink is also similar(northern Moravans of course).

I only meant that, though they remain in rather friendly relations, Czechs are not Moravian and Moravians are not Czech :-)
I quite liked your "Morava Czechs" contraction ;-)
Two birds with one stone, as the saying goes...

They are not similar but they like each other.(although I have heard some negative comments about Ostravans) but everywhere happens the same.And Morava girls hot as fire.(I have one from these places very heavily Slavic).

Poznan, yes - but have you seen the state of some of the villages when you go from Poznan towards Szczecin/Germany? There's one particular village/osiedle/whatever on the way from Poznan to Kostrzyn that looks literally like hell on earth!

Here's a funny map over poland I found a while ago...

Dariusz

Crap....I found a cool picture...tried to link it...but was told it was too big (max 100kb), then i resized it, tried again...but it doesn't show up....help?

Ahh...must describe the name of the picture. Sorry.

Dariusz

Dariusz

And this is why nobody likes Warsaw xD

Can you give a link to a high-resolution version? The writing on the one you posted is to small to read...

Thanks southern. Here we go again...

If everyone talks funny except Galicia then, let me guess, you're from Galicia?


Among Israelis the stereotypes are more or less like this:
(By the way, when we refer to Moroccans, Russians etc. we mean Jews from Morocco, Russia etc. We don't bother saying "Jews" because that's understood without saying):

Morrocans: hot tempered, very concerned about their honor and get into fights
Yemenites: Good natured, street smart, but lower in social status
Persians (Jews from Iran are called Parsis): Rich, tight with money
Romanians: Theives
Polish: (this refers to Jews who came in the 1930s): Bourgeois values, over-protective parents. An over-protective Israeli mother is called an "Ima Polaniah" (Polish Mother). To sepharadi Jews, Polish Jews are considered a bit uppity.

Russians: Every Russian street cleaner here claims he was an engineer or a chess prodigy back in Russia. They keep to themselves and don't bother integrating. Tough guys. The girls dress like sluts but they are very educated.

Gruzinim (from Georgia): Violent
Kurds: Simple, stubborn, not too bright
Syrians (mostly from Aleppo): Marry among themselves, rich, snobbish about their culture and history, women dress well.
Americans: Smart-ass, speak bad Hebrew, naive, rich
Iraqis: Business people and bankers, but live modestly, known for wearing pajamas all day around the house.
Ethiopians: Quiet, good natured, bottom of the social ladder.
Regional Stereotypes:
Tel Avivis think that the world is Tel Aviv and know nothing about the country around them. Very western in lifestyle, leftist politically, vote Labor, anti-religious (this is a gross overstatement since there are all kinds of people in Tel Aviv that don't fit that description at all).

Jerusalemites: Insular people who never leave the city and get lost when they visit Tel Aviv. Jerusalemites don't know how to swim (no beach). They go to sleep early.

Tiberias (Tverianim): Low class, but good sense of humor, have strange local expressions.
Sderot: Simple, low class, honest people, salt of the earth
Kibbutzniks: They think they're big shots just because their grandparents were big shots.
Moshavniks (small farming villagers): Thought of as selfish kulaks by the kibbutzbiks

I think I've insulted enough people for one post. Of course none of these stereotypes are true.

delphiandomine

Yes because stereotypes refer to these map:



So Silesians are today UpperSilesians, and "Westerners" are inhabitants of Poznań area

People living west and north from these borders are a mixture of people from all over the country so the rest of the society doesn't recognises them as a group carrying some common traits... Maybe some negative stereotypes like unemployment, poverty bankrupt state owned farms... Unfortunately

Regards

Lukasz

Galicia isn't part of Poland anymore so the dialect doesn't exist. It's like Lukasz said - I was referring to past stereotypes, right now in many parts of Poland there's a mixture of people from other parts of the country and former eastern territories so we don't really have stereotypes about them yet.

I'm from Eastern Poland so I talk funny too^^

Aren't Tarnow and Przemysl in Galicia?

hahaha, thx mate. funny stuff

yehudi

Technically they used to be, but it was a very tiny piece of Galicia and on the border so they aren't associated with Galicia much.

True though, isn't it? If you compare Poznan to Gorzow or Kostrzyn, you can really see the difference. People from Slubice are surprisingly urbane though ;)

Maybe our classifications are out of date. A Jew from anywhere between Krakow and Brody would be considered a Galicianer, especially if he has a Hassidic background. We have in our family grandparents from Mielec, Ropczyce, Tarnow, Sienawa (pardon the spelling) and they considered themselves Galicianers. And they talked funny.

Perhaps it has something to do with demographics. After all Poles were pretty much a minority there, concentrated mainly in the western part. Much of Galicia was populated by Ukrainians so a stereotypical Galician Pole is the one who lived in a lone Polish village surrounded by Ukrainian villages.

yehudi


Yes. It's strongly connected to rulers of Poland during partitions.

As someone wrote - German - order; Russia - mess, and Galizia - poverty.

These are the stereoptypes I grew up with and how it was put in our history books.