News / Don't let Poland become like my country, France. [630]

The French election strikes me as more kicking the can down the road. It doesn't solve anything and could lead to a more dangerous situation down the road.

A large portion of the French electorate is clearly unhappy with the status quo and all the elites can think of is to join forces to keep their concerns from being addressed.

And quite frankly, the resutls are not those of a healthy society with a sense of self-preservation. There have been two major terrorist attacks in the country in the last year and people are still worrrying about Le Pen rather than the people carrying out the attacks.

Sick, tres malade est la France (nb I know that's probably not good grammar je ne care pas).

News / Poland to end state funding for IVF treatment [102]


But infertility does not threaten one's health or life (quite the contrary for women). That means IVF is elective. There are also ethical arguments against it (I don't agree with those arguments but that's irrelevant). And those arguments have followers in Poland (to keep this on topic to keep the reckless mods from dumping this in random).

Put them all together and depriving state funding for an elective treatment that many people have moral qualms with seems to be an entirely defensible position. Rather than try to force Polish taxpayers to pay for it against their will proponents of state funding for IVF should engage the ethical arguments against it.

News / TV Trwam to stop cooperating with Duda [17]


Gonna be hard. In my tv lineup TV Trwam is free and Republika is a pay channel, the miserly hordes that make up the PiS-erati aren't likely to pay en masse for what they can get for free.

News / Monthly Smolensk Commemorations in Poland! [34]


Most European patriotism is built around failure (massacres, failed uprisings, fallen heroes who made terrible mistakes etc etc etc).


He gave his brother an insurmountable guilt complex for planning the whole mess in the first place?

Endangering the Republic by having all the heads of military on one plane? (seriously that was a serious breach of basic security, the military survived but there's no excuse for such terrible sloppy planning).

Life / Are there any Muslim areas in Poland? [173]


Not necessarily but strict Islamic practice and European lifestyles do not seem to be a close match.


Sounds like all the work is on their side, what contribution do you make? Besides tolerating their immorality?

News / Demonstrations in Poland in defence of democracy. [2554]


I know. I've dealt with some. A particular problem is readjusting their attitudes and realizing the Polish education system (while plagued with many problems) is not completely and openly corrupt as in former USSR countries (I've heard stories of students having to collect graft payments to even get professors to show up for exams east of the border, passing the exam is of course extra).

Also, trauma from Russian military aggression and being separated from others and spending most of their time with each other could be a contributing factor (since I may have been a bit harsh earlier).

News / Demonstrations in Poland in defence of democracy. [2554]


Are they stupid? IME a Russian speaker (with no Ukrainian to help) living in Poland can become very fluent in Polish in just a few months of not too arduous study. And they should have some knowledge of Ukrainian which should help a lot (the way I distinguish between the two is I understand a lot more words when I hear Ukrainian).

Maybe they're crowded together and not getting enough interaction with people besides themselves?

Life / Are there any Muslim areas in Poland? [173]


So.... no integration then. To clarify, a society with religious groups that self segregate doesn't seem very healthy.

Life / Are there any Muslim areas in Poland? [173]


How secular are you? How do you deal with the presence of so many things in daily life that strict muslims think are immoral?

Almost all the muslims I know in Poland are pretty lax about following most things (as are muslim Tatars who've been here for centuries). How can very observant muslims hope to integrate in an environment filled with so many things that are haram?

Life / Are there any Muslim areas in Poland? [173]


Muslim immigrants to Poland are self-selected and mostly well educated and more secular in outloook. IME they are not necessarily pleased by the prospect of large amounts of their co-ethnics (they're often in Poland to get away from them)


It's perfectly normal to have muslim friends, but individual experience is not necessarily a sound base for policy decisions which are better made at the group level, no matter how uncomfortable that is for some.

Life / Is it common for Polish people to speak English in Poland? [122]


Why come you feelin' that way ese?

If I had the knowhow I'd create a random non-standard American English generator that you could type a regular sentence into and receive a "translation" into a random assembly of non-standard usage (regional, ethnic, slang, foreigner talk etc).

Life / Is it common for Polish people to speak English in Poland? [122]


I don't really think the US is the role model you think it is. A lot of what I call Euro Crap English feeds and grows on itself without much in the way of US (or UK) input.

The general situation is that knowledge of English is continent wide but extremely shallow (again, most don't need and/or are not really interested in achieving anything like really fluent status). Not a problem. Not nice to listen to for most native speakers but what are you gonna do?

News / Demonstrations in Poland in defence of democracy. [2554]


I have no idea how to even begin to parse that sentence....

News / Don't let Poland become like my country, France. [630]


I almost agree with Polly, will wonders never cease. AFAICT the mood on the ground at present in just about every European country is away from further European integration and the political elite in almost every country is determined to pursue further European integration.

A mismatch between popular will and elite goals is hardly a new phenomenon but when the political elite is so determined to ignore what voters want things get dangerous. The danger here is not Le Pen (not a patch on her father and the only one tackling a very big issue in a way that makes sense for many French) but mismatch between those in charge of the EU and what EU citizens want.

If democracy means anything then the powers in the EU will back off and give EU citizens some breathing room against the spectre of "we need more European integration".

How much harm could Le Pen do compared with the absolute harm done to Germany (and Europe) by Angela Merkel?

Work / Studies In Poland, is it easy to survive on part-time jobs? [259]


The "push' here is coming from administration, not so much from faculty.


They've fallen under the allure of an imperial language and imbibed a toxic ideology about its superiority?


So? a good teacher can overcome a lot of bad teaching materials, a bad teacher is not helped by great teaching materials. Learning (effective learnig for most people) requires contact with a human being.

I've heard wonderfully eloquent and effective teachers (in Polish) who operate at about 50% when they use English.

The single possible exception to the rule (education in Poland is a lot better in Polish than in English) are computer related fields at higher levels.

Work / Studies In Poland, is it easy to survive on part-time jobs? [259]


I'm fairly sure there are some private diploma mills up and running but have no hard proof. State universities are better but most are really not prepared to teach in English (no reason they should be, their mission is to prepare students to live in Poland.

Work / Studies In Poland, is it easy to survive on part-time jobs? [259]


Two points.

First, there is a Europe wide trend to try to monetize their higher educational system (which means attracting paying Asian students who think they can study in English).

Second, I think there are recruiters who oversell the ease of getting into the UK from Poland.

Life / Is it common for Polish people to speak English in Poland? [122]


Lighten up, I'm often a pedantic twit. Pedantic twits of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your shame!

Life / Is it common for Polish people to speak English in Poland? [122]


Well the point is that both "should've" and "should of" are pronounced the same ( [ ˈʃʊdəv ] in phonetic transcription)

People who get upset about "should of" in informal writing (letters between friends, message boards and the like) are pedantic twits. On the other hand, people who write "should of" in formal usage are indeed demi-literate.

Life / Is it common for Polish people to speak English in Poland? [122]


What's wrong with should've? It's what everyone says most of the time. Who pronounces the h in have in that expression?

In extremely formal writing (where you do no use any other contractions) then maybe should have is the only acceptable form but in more informal writing should've is fine. In very informal writing should of is fine.

Life / Is it common for Polish people to speak English in Poland? [122]


Do people in the UK write "should off"? In the US "should of" is a common way of writing "should've" (almost no one actually says "should have" except in very, very formal situations).

Life / Is it common for Polish people to speak English in Poland? [122]


It's not unique to Poland I should add. I've found it among many Europeans from many different countries. There's also an idea that "who cares how it sounds? it's just English". Polish or German or French? Those are languages where how you say something is extremely important, with rich traditions of elegant usage and users are expected to conform to stylistic conventions in given situations. It somehow never occurs to many non-native speakers that English also has such conventions above and beyond what can be learned in four years of highschool (or a few at a university).

For a neutral international language it doens't make much sense to have a lot of register specific vocabulary (for bureaucratic or academic purposes or even politeness purposes) but English as a national language needs them (and they need to be different in different countries).

Feedback / A special "for those living in Poland..." section. [33]


What a delicate and refined air you bring to discussions!

Life / Is it common for Polish people to speak English in Poland? [122]


Short answer is that the great majority of people aren't especially comfortable speaking English and that for many people the level of knowledge they have has little to do with how comfortable they are. Give an extrovert a hundred words and they'll talk your ear off give an introvert 10,000 and they'll sit an mumble something about not understanding.

Also, Polish people in general are kind of .... of two minds on foreign languages in general. On the one hand they profess to admire knowledge of foreign language and many spend a lot of time and effort learning one or more, on the other speakers of larger langauges (German and Russian) have a long history of trying marginalize or eliminate the language and telling Polish people to not speak Polish is a very sure way to get their back up.

Life / Is it common for Polish people to speak English in Poland? [122]


No, in my dialect the word police is always plural, like people. If a single police officer shows up looking for someone I'd say "the police are here". The words that go back and forth don't exist for me (except maybe 'family' in some very informal usage where it's synonymous with 'people' meaning 'family' if that makes any sense).


I'm not much interested in British usage and have not done the work necessary for me to produce a fascimile. I can make it less.... specifically American but that doesn't make it British.

Life / Is it common for Polish people to speak English in Poland? [122]


I wouldn't put it quite that way either, there are many however who are loathe to take the word of a university educated native speaker over what their high school teacher told them 20 or more years ago regarding usage.

Also I stopped getting editing work from one translation company (correcting translations into English by Poles) because I used forms that were too American (forms like "the government are" simply do not exist for me) and I usually think "to not do" sounds better (more euphonic) than "not to do". They hadn't specified they wanted British forms (or I wouldn't have accepted any assignments from them - I always make that clear) but they implied that some of my corrections were wrong which they were not.

Life / Is it common for Polish people to speak English in Poland? [122]


Ellipsis is, IME, a more American than British feature. American speech is frequently characterized by starting and not finishing sentences or starting a sentence, not finishing it but starting the next sentence as if the first had been completed. It makes spontaneous American conversation very difficult for non-natives to follow.

I once transcribed a three minute conversation between educated Americans that was full of incomplete sentences. Polish students couldn't make heads or tails of it, even with the transcription in front of them.

Life / Is it common for Polish people to speak English in Poland? [122]

There's no word for it in English (that English speakers actually use). Workplace harassment maybe.

One problem is that mobbing doesn't sound... very threatening or unpleasant (maybe it sounds terrifying to wimpy Swedes).

Life / Is it common for Polish people to speak English in Poland? [122]

What's wrong with "harassment" or "bullying" (with an adjective like "organized" or "collective"?

IIRC the word 'mobbing' was created by a Swede and has caught on in a few languages but not English as far as I know.

Life / Is it common for Polish people to speak English in Poland? [122]


American has more pop culture cachet but British is regarded as being more "proper" or "correct" (Poles love the idea of "correct" language more than any English speakers do).

Most Poles also don't realize that most British singers sing in American (a few like Oasis or the Proclaimers don't).