Language / Dzwoniono / Czytano [22]


But not as fun!

Language / Dzwoniono / Czytano [22]


'approximate' is the key word...

zadzwoniłem do ciebe = I called you. / I phoned you.

oops

Language / Dzwoniono / Czytano [22]


It looks to me like an adverbial complement describing an instrument.

But another reason for saying that -no / -to forms aren't true passives is that they can be used with intransitive verbs.

Jak tańczono przed wiekami.....


Examples from English are completely irrelevant for defining the internal categories of Polish.

I would provisionally say that direct objects in Polish can appear in up to four different cases.

accusative - mam samochód

genetive - szukam klucza

dative - ufam tobie

instrumental - pogardzę nim

Life / Who is poor in Poland? [720]


I'm not sure anymore. The original question was about poor people, but ime it's hard to call someone with a job and car poor in Poland.

Again, there are many more people in Poland who have the subjective experience of feeling poor than actually are poor (by local standards at least). Ths is to be expected in what is fundamentally a pessimistic culture.

Life / Who is poor in Poland? [720]


Then we're no longer talking about poor people in any real sense.

Life / Who is poor in Poland? [720]


What is a logistic center? It sounds like you're talking about work, where some people do need cars but that's different from commuting to and from work.

Life / Who is poor in Poland? [720]


Define remote. The people who want (and buy) cars in Poland largely fall into two groups

1. those living in cities where public transport is good

2. those employed (often upwardly mobile) who choose to live away from cities while having work there (that is, they purposefully move to areas with bad public transport)

Those who truly live in the sticks aren't hankering for cars especially (and the expense of buying and maintaining a car will eat up too much of the household budget).

Life / Who is poor in Poland? [720]


The number of Polish people who need cars to get work is nowhere near the number who want cars to get to work. Public transport is cheaper and works well, all things considered. I don't have a car and don't want one in Poland (the sheer number of dangerous scary drivers here is another reason to avoid driving).

Life / Who is poor in Poland? [720]

This question shows the inanity of many economic statistics.

In terms of food, shelter, clothing (basic needs) Poland is not especially poor (not rich but the number of homeless or malnourished people isn't that high - and some, not all but some, malnourishment is due to poor diet choices rather than lack of money for food per se).

On the other hand, probably a majority of people in the country have the subjective feeling of being poor and no economic statistics will convince them they're not.

Work / American ESL Teacher looking for Job in Warsaw/Krakow Area - i do not have a work visa! [10]


I don't know £ódź but Bydgoszcz is probably an okay place. I haven't been there in years but I occasionally went over the course of several years and it improved greatly in that time. And it has much better train connections than Toruń which is off the main lines.

Also for he OP if she's hell bent on Warsaw or Cracow, she could get her first work permit in a smaller place and use that to try to build connections that might help her find a job in a place she would prefer.....

Work / American ESL Teacher looking for Job in Warsaw/Krakow Area - i do not have a work visa! [10]


Maybe the crazy religious broadcaster with political ambitions makes them feel at home? More seriously, it is a nice town, a little neglected the last time I was there but potentially very liveable and pleasant.

Life / POLISH CARTOON INFORMATION (Pomyslowy Dobromir?) [8]

Here's Pomysłowy Dombromir

and Zaczarowany ołówek

Two completely different cartoons. IINM the episodes with the girl (sister? cousin?) are later. The earlier episodes it's just Domrobmir, the Grandfather and the bird. I like the earlier episodes better.

Language / Dzwoniono / Czytano [22]

Forms like czytano etc are impersonal forms with no real equivalent in any non-Slavic language that I know of. If you know some Finnish then the forms ending in -taan like puhutaan (was spoken, someone spoke) are semantically pretty similar. Nothing very close in Hungarian though.

Sometimes they are functionally like agentless passives in English: znaleziono ciało w parku = a body was found in the park

Grammatically they're not really passives the object remains in the object case (it doesn't become the subject of the sentence - the sentence can have no subject)

They're formed from the pasive participle with the ending -o which is adverbial. There used to be an distinction in some Slavic languages (and maybe modern Czech?) between adverbs that modified a verb or adjective ending in -(i)e like dobrze and ładnie and those that could be predicates which ended in -o like zimno, smutno. The distinction is lost in modern Polish but may have been in effect when these forms first arose.

You can also translate them mentally with 'someone X' though stylistically this will be odd for many examples....

Work / How can Americans of Polish descent get work in Poland? [22]


I'm not talking about strangers, but about relatives (even if they're not real close). And asking friends on behalf of a relative isn't weird either (ime, of course).

Work / American ESL Teacher looking for Job in Warsaw/Krakow Area - i do not have a work visa! [10]

Why are you so intent on Warsaw or Krakow (you do realize they're a couple hundred miles apart don't you)? The former is not an easy city for newcomers and the teacher market in the second is saturated. There are nicer places to live in and work in Poland.....

My advice would be one of the smaller of the larger cities Szczecin, Wrocław, Opole, Gdańsk, Toruń etc

History / What was it like in 1989+ in Poland when the Soviet house of cards fell? [237]


At the botanical level I'm prepared to agree (and I agree that Polish speakers can distinguish them).

At the linguistic and cultural level they're basically the same fruit in English (American English in my experience) and I have trouble distinguishing them (there are some varieties are clearly one or the other but others that I can't distinguish anymore than I can sz and ś...)

If I have a preference it's probably for wiśnie as they have a fuller taste and are more likely to be used in American cherry pie and (I think) chocolate covered cherries.

Similarly, in English both pieczarki and grzyb are mushrooms (if anything pieczarki are the default american mushroom).

Work / Easiest way for native English speaker to get a job in Poland? [35]


Connecitons, connections, connections. Try to get to know Polish people in the US with connections back in Poland and work them shamelessly. It's standard operating procedure in Poland so they shouldn't mind (they just might find it odd coming from an American....).

Alternatively, if you can afford it, sign up for a Polish course in Poland (not Krakow - saturated market) and cultivate connections and drop your cv everywhere you go. If someone in a hiring position knows you personally and likes you they'll be more willing to go through the extra paperwork a non-EU employee requires. Again, being upfront and assertive (and good at social banter) will help you a lot in Poland.

History / What was it like in 1989+ in Poland when the Soviet house of cards fell? [237]


Except I've had czereśnie that have a more sour taste than some wiśnie... Anyway, my conceptual framework refuses to classify them as separate fruit and thinks of them as different kinds of the same fruit (like different kinds of apples or pears).

History / What was it like in 1989+ in Poland when the Soviet house of cards fell? [237]


IME Americans (and Brits?) don't normally distinguish between wiśnie and czereśnie, we call both 'cherries' (a side effect of this is I'm not very good at distinguishing them as there is no once single criteria that works all the time). If you really, really want to distinguish the two you can call wiśnie 'sour cherries' but many English speakers will interpret that as a cherry that's gone sour rather than a different fruit....


I've seen all the fruits mentioned being grown in Poland.

Work / Some cold, hard facts about teaching in Poland for newbies [101]


From what I understand the general process is similar in Spain and Poland (in terms of small private schools) though the preferred teachers to exploit in Spain are not native speakers but university students looking for spending money (and who don't know labor laws and are easy to push around).

Don't know about Germany.

Language / Need advice on how to improve Polish language skills [134]

Poles don't mess up sz and ś or ż and ź. Those are different sounds (you'll never hear the difference but Poles do). They do frequently make mistakes with ż and rz and u and ó and ch and h (and a few others) but generally Polish spelling is far easier than English spelling.

Spanish spelling does have ambiguities:
- h does not represent any sound in the language) so that there is no phonetic difference between a and ha.
- both b and v represent the same sound (linguists have not found any speakers who can consistently distinguish them in spontaneous speech)
- in Latin America (and parts of Spain) s/c and z are not distinguished so that the spelling casa and caza has to be memorized.

- the difference between ll and y has disappeared for most speakers even in Spain (and is losing ground in the few places that still distinguish them).

Spanish spelling is still a lot easier than English spelling though.

Language / Need advice on how to improve Polish language skills [134]


wołacz, don't worry about the vocative, learn to recognize it but don't worry much about learning it until you're better at other things.


Yeah. Though 'To górnik' is more idiomatic.

Language / Need advice on how to improve Polish language skills [134]


You're making a mistake by equating 'using words to communicate' and 'using a language'. I've heard lots of people communicate with English words in a way that I would forcefully say is not 'speaking English'.

The fewer number of endings in English makes it possible to have a conversation like the following:

B: How much this cost?

A: That's cost forty Euro.

B: That too much. You make cheaper.

A: No is too much. Is very cheap. You buy, yes?

A; I not sure. Maybe later I come back and buy.

But I would argue that the conversation is a good example of effective communication but it's not in English, it's not in any language. It's just words thrown together.

I've heard similar convesations in Polish (though usually just from the buyer or seller, not both at the same time).

First advice: STOP TRANSLATING, you need to absorb lots of Polish sentences (and then learn how to modify them). Concentrate on absorbing patterns and only then try to express your own thoughts.

The old (first) version of Teach Yourself Polish by M. Corbridge-Patkaniowska was good for that (though a lot of the language was dated). Avoid the new version, which isn't anything special.

History / What was it like in 1989+ in Poland when the Soviet house of cards fell? [237]


In the transition period you could mix and match in paying (or getting change). So if you have to pay 25 new zloties you could pay with a new 20 and an old 50000.

You could also get mixed change though most stores made an effort to mainly give change in new zloties (and I assume old zloties were taken out of circulation when they made it to a bank).

History / What was it like in 1989+ in Poland when the Soviet house of cards fell? [237]

What a deal! What did you do with all the money you saved? : )

History / What was it like in 1989+ in Poland when the Soviet house of cards fell? [237]


I'd say 50,000 and 10,000 are more likely figures.

I remember the funny money (and kind of enjoyed about talking about how many million zloties I had).

The transition wasn't so bad either. After a couple of weeks and a a false start or two I could combine the old and new money (paying or getting change) with no problems. But someone trying to learn numbers in Poland at that time would have been truly out of luck since a lot of the time people would still use the old amounts with the new bills (but leaving out the word thousand because, who needed to?) So that if someone said pięćdziesiąt (50) it could be 50,000 old zloties or 50 new zloties (which would be worth 500,000 old zloties) the context usually made it clear enough (and you just added nowych or starych to clarify).

History / What was it like in 1989+ in Poland when the Soviet house of cards fell? [237]

I spent half of 1991 in Poland (and knew people who'd been through the whole change) it wasn't recovering from being hell on earth.

True, there was major, major disappointment as the dreams that many apparently had about Poland catching up with western Europe in a few months hit the brick wall of reality but it wasn't overall so awful. And I went all over the place at all hours of the day and night and was always safe (whereas I occasionally heard gunfire in my old US neighborhood).

Language / The usage and future of the special Polish letters: ą, ć, ę, ł, ń, ó, ś, ż, ź (Polish language) [203]


Well not all speakers are careful about distinguishing cz and trz in all contexts, especially in rapid speech. But almost all speakers can distinguish them (or tell when others don't pronounce them identicially).

Similarly, the Polish pronounciation of tsunami is not the same as if it were written cunami. I can't hear the difference but the Polish speakers I've checked with do.

Life / Observation of Polish drivers, by and English anthropologist. [94]


Read/heard somewhere that it had to do with knights passing on the road (it's easier to attack and/or defend yourself from the left side if you're right-handed).

I have no idea if that's true.

Language / The usage and future of the special Polish letters: ą, ć, ę, ł, ń, ó, ś, ż, ź (Polish language) [203]

koala, you've compared the graphic k of także to the g in words like tygrys, the point is to compare it to g before ż or rz.

Simple test,

także

(w) łagrze

are the sequences -akże and -agrze the same or different?