History / "I was more afraid of fellow Poles than Nazi German Officers", says Bartoszewski [130]

Soviet, delph, NOT Nazi! Big difference:-)
Please don't rationalize!

History / "I was more afraid of fellow Poles than Nazi German Officers", says Bartoszewski [130]

Unfortunately, Jan Gross' books have been causing considerable comment, both in as well as outside of Poland, most of it negative.
Fact remains, many Poles DID collaborate, and DID participate in cooperating with the Germans to slaughter Jews, (both during the War aka Jedwabne, as well as after aka Kielce)!!

The Poles though, to their eternal credit, had NO quasi-puppet government, as did France, Czechoslovakia, Hungary or Norway.

Life / Can many young Poles speak German? [72]

Hungarian too has "nemet" meaning "German", "Nemetorszag", lit. "German country" for "Germany", doubtless derived from the same root word:-)

Work / Swedish speaking job in Warsaw. Salary? [9]

Best of luck, bazz!

Work / Swedish speaking job in Warsaw. Salary? [9]

Lycka till paa er!

I trust the company's standards for Swedish (eventually even Polish) are higher than for English:-)

"...cause I am from sweden too and got a jobb...."

I know we all text these days and have forgotten how to write correctly, but, humor me nevertheless and tell me/us what's wrong with your sentence.

Language / Polish pronounciation of: cz vs ć/ci, sz vs ś/si, ź vs ż and dż vs dź/dzi - how to make these sound diff [79]

S.Szober - "Gramatyka języka polskiego" PIN Wydawnictwo (1995)

A wealth, a veritable Chinese box of essential info. about Polish grammar for both foreigners as well as native speakers!
Wouldn't be without it:-)

I should add, he has an exhaustive intro.section on phonetics and orthography:-)

Language / Polish pronounciation of: cz vs ć/ci, sz vs ś/si, ź vs ż and dż vs dź/dzi - how to make these sound diff [79]

I'm following Pan Profesor Szober on that one:-)

Language / Polish pronounciation of: cz vs ć/ci, sz vs ś/si, ź vs ż and dż vs dź/dzi - how to make these sound diff [79]

Precisely with the latter I had to struggle somewhat in the beginning:-)

We Wrocławiu
W Warszawie

etc...

Language / I NEED TO LEARN POLISH QUICKLY AND EFFICIENTLY! [45]

The latter I already know, of which, the Polish Verb Dictionary might be the most valuable, particularly for more advanced students seriously interested in honing their Polish:-)

News / Poland Parliamentary elections 2015 [1060]

I'm not surprised PiS won. Szydło had been gaining strength now for months.

Life / Halloween or Andrzejki - which is more popular in Poland? [14]

I think Halloween has become international. I know that when I lived in Germany, people would tell me that Halloween did not exist there. However for Martinmas, I remembered seeing in Northern Germany so-called "Laternen gehen" where children accompanied by their parents would walk the streets singing and carrying lanterns in exchange for grown ups throwing sweets, small candies and such in their direction. Completely harmless, actually, and not scary at all:-)

Anything of the like in Poland?

Language / Polish pronounciation of: cz vs ć/ci, sz vs ś/si, ź vs ż and dż vs dź/dzi - how to make these sound diff [79]

"Hard" vs. "soft", aka "hard"-/"soft"-stemmed consonants, seems indeed a phenomenon of the Slavonic languages, in particular Russian, Ukrainian and Polish! While Russian has those palatalized suckers in words like 'brat' ' and 'dver', Polish I found many times easier to pronounce than either Ukrainian or Russian (contrary to what some idiots have said that Ukrainian is really just Polish with a Russian accentLOL).

Language / Polish pronounciation of: cz vs ć/ci, sz vs ś/si, ź vs ż and dż vs dź/dzi - how to make these sound diff [79]

Aha! Of course, as in most languages, foreign imports are usually the exceptions:-)
Thanks.

I also believe to have read in some Polish grammar, that certain combinations, for instance "ćd" etc. are not possible, i.e. that the extent of consonant groupings is NOT limitless:-)

Work / Poland seeking more natural English speakers [54]

Such gaffers occur here in the States with dramatic regularity, even among supposedly college-educated native American English speakers. We call it being "non campus mentis"!!!LOL

Language / Polish pronounciation of: cz vs ć/ci, sz vs ś/si, ź vs ż and dż vs dź/dzi - how to make these sound diff [79]

Therefore, you're saying words like "siły" etc. for instance, written without "ś" but pronounced "sheewuy" fall under an 'exception' to the (unwritten) rule?

My specialty is Germanic, not Slavic phonology, but I've a modest to conversant familiarity with Polish phonetics:-)

Work / Poland seeking more natural English speakers [54]

How right you are, Ziemowit!

Work / Poland seeking more natural English speakers [54]

Native speakers of practically any language might well fail a language test in their native language as well:-)

There are no guarantees, and yet the educated native speaker, STILL will always have the last word on natural, culturally accepted and acceptable, idiomatic correctness, rozumiemnic!

Language / Polish pronounciation of: cz vs ć/ci, sz vs ś/si, ź vs ż and dż vs dź/dzi - how to make these sound diff [79]

Some Polish native speakers however, e.g. Mr. Tusk, pronounce an odd-sounding uvular 'r', suggesting perhaps a regional influence.
But yes, the average Pole knows ONLY the tongue-flap "r", as in Spanish, Italian, Finnish and certain dialects of German, namely, Bavarian some Austrian varieties:-)

Language / Polish pronounciation of: cz vs ć/ci, sz vs ś/si, ź vs ż and dż vs dź/dzi - how to make these sound diff [79]

Usually, although many times non-native speakers of the second language they're speaking use poor pronunciation as a crutch for inability to produce the sound correctly! Hardly any Poles uses the definite or indefinite article correctly either, yet, as I hope you all know, there's a heck of a difference in English between "in office" (być urzędnikiem) vs. "in THE office" (w biurze) etc..

True, nobody likes a Mr./Ms. Know-it-all, but at the same time, nobody likes an ignoramus:-)

Work / Poland seeking more natural English speakers [54]

@And so, rozumiemnic, therefore an English speaker like myself should correct an educated Pole's Polish, or a German's German, a Frenchman's French and so forth, eh?

Pretty damned arrogant, if I may say so, not to mention bleedin' silly:-)

Who, if not the educated native speaker, knows his or her language backwards, forwards and inside out, huh??

If your logic were the way of the world, there'd be chaos, every person thinking, believing they understand the foreigner, who's often (though not always) sufficiently out of his depth in the target language, thus needing the superior knowledge of someone else who knows BETTER, namely, the native speaker themselves!!!

No, I'm not being provincial, but realistic.

Language / I NEED TO LEARN POLISH QUICKLY AND EFFICIENTLY! [45]

Good one, Rafał!

Again, if one's not willing to invest the abundance of time as I mentioned before, might as well pack it in and forget about it.

Language / Polish pronounciation of: cz vs ć/ci, sz vs ś/si, ź vs ż and dż vs dź/dzi - how to make these sound diff [79]

cz = tch

ć = tongue gently touching roof of mouth
ci = nearly same as above

sz = sh (only a bit more distinctly, closer to British RP than American!)

ś = tongue pursed next to front teeth
si = nearly indistinguishable from the "ś"

ź = an almost pure velar, i.e. "voiced" consonant buzzing or vibrating against the glottis
ż = front teeth clenched and little release of air

dż = somewhere between the latter and and a velar!
dź = tongue touches front teeth ever so gently while glottis vibrates
dzi = closer here to a full dental

I'm not a native Polish speaker, but have studied Slavic phonology as a linguistics student and read copiously on the subject:-)

News / Poland - land of uni students? [11]

Oh, really? I thought it was attempting to show how dissatisfied young, student-age Poles have become with all this school-book knowledge leaving them uncompetitive in the world market, filling their heads with theory instead of practical application!

Guess I was wrong.....AGAINLOL

Language / I NEED TO LEARN POLISH QUICKLY AND EFFICIENTLY! [45]

The key vs. the "trick" aka useless gimmick to learning any foreign language is TIME + MONASTIC DISCIPLINE AND FOCUS!!!

Far too many so-called crash courses offer merely one level of functional conversation, scarcely the actual nuts and bolts of what is need to honestly, completely know a language, e.g. Rosetta Stone, among others:-) Speaking is but a single element in foreign language acquisiton! What about reading, above all, writing on a level commensurate with the needs of a target native speaker? Often, such courses regrettably teach only what they think you should, rather than what you need to learn in order to become literate in the new language. Herein lies the disconnect.

Polish is quite another story from Spanish, French, Italian, even German; it requires intense concentration in order to internalize all of its myriad permutations. Unlike French with its tenses, along with the other two Romance tongues or German with its dizzying word order, Polish sentence structure is fairly straightforward, at least for me as a bilingual English/German speaker.

The issues in Polish are more the question of verbal aspects, number quirks and declensions.

News / Poland - land of uni students? [11]

A recent movement among highschool students aka 'pupils' in Poland is called "MATURA, BZDURA!"

So much for the mass phenomenon of Poles going to university:-) According to the above survey, Poles feel that they, as well as their ever more successful European neighbors, go to school for too long and that the four-year US-college system after highschool may be superior:-)

Can't recall unfortunately in which Polish magazine or journal I read this.

News / Should recent arrivals to Poland, such as Syrian migrants, be required to learn Polish? [10]

I agree, Johnny Reb!

Age-old problem here in the States has always been our openness to receiving other cultures. As we slowly began to lose our sense of tribalism as well as our elitism (if we ever even had them!!), we turned irreversably lax on language standard, NEVER though to the extent that it has become today:-)

I can still remember watching re-runs of '60s TV news broadcasts when folks like the late, great John Stevenson or Charles Collingwood might gently "recast" the mangled syntax of their guest, were clarity an issue!

Sadly, gone are the days(:-

News / Should recent arrivals to Poland, such as Syrian migrants, be required to learn Polish? [10]

Well, as the Polish economy continues to improve, some might actually be induced to stay!!

History / Should Poland be given ANY credit for ALLOWING Jews into Poland for 1000 years? [195]

Poland ought to be given as much "credit" for allowing Jews into their country as any other country which offered sanction and safe haven to persecuted minorities. Sadly, Israel too see herself as a persecuted aka surrounded island in a sea of enemies, is however for that reason perhaps less than friendly to her Palestinian fellow citizens:-) Often though, it seems a bit of a rationalization.

We were discussing Poland, and I believe Poland has done more than many others in allowing (if not always welcoming) Jews along with others to live within its borders!

Travel / I discovered Poland - a nice country [62]

@InPolska,

Thanks for the reply. Didn't realize that things still had a ways to go there:-)
Enlightening to hear.

Appreciate it!