Life / Expat Communities in Far-Western Poland [46]


the gypsy population in Poland is much smaller (in absolute numbers not to mention proportionately) than in the Czech republic (or Slovakia or Hungary).

Smaller numbers tend to mean they're a bit better behaved at home and so they tend to do the things that make them unpopular neighbors away from home... (like in Germany!)

Life / Poland A, Poland B [75]


Maybe 15 years ago.... more and more the division is becoming urban vs rural (see the latest elections where the party that won the countryside couldn't win a single mayoral election).

and you need to define conservative (part of conservatism is suspicion of outsiders, especially ones who are traditional enemies - not letting go of past grievances is very conservative).

Life / Expat Communities in Far-Western Poland [46]


There's also an ongoing meth epidemic in parts of the Czech republic (close to the Polish border, I don't think it's crossed though I think it's starting to be a problem maybe)

drugabuse.gov/international/abstracts/methamphetamines-in-czech-republic-history-current-situation

the Czech republic has never really been any kind of conservative place. Poland has some conservative-ish elements but they also tend to make it unfriendly to foreigners who don't speak Polish (esp from Germany)

Life / Expat Communities in Far-Western Poland [46]


I don't believe she's going to willingly give up for a second, her allies have a record of coming to bad political ends and I think there's still room for that with this newest lamb to the slaughter...

Language / Student register = indeks in Poland? [3]

Until a few years ago, an indeks was what Polish university students had instead of transcripts. There were no central records kept (beyond recording whether students had passed all their courses each semester). Instead each student had a small indeks (link below). For each class they took they wrote the name of the course and the instructor and the instructor wrote in the grades (for classes and exams when those were part of the class).

Often class grades were plain 'pass' or 'fail' while grades were reserved for exams. Grading in Poland tends to be tough with most students getting the lowest passing grade most of the time (3 - 'sufficient')

I've never heard of a register for students to sign in modern Poland (instructors take attendance or not as they see fit and how they see fit - I pass around a sheet with people's names and they sign next to their name). I'm not saying that nowhere has something like a register I've just never heard of it...

pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indeks_(dokument)

Language / Opinions on Google Translate for Polish [28]


No, it's very good for some things. It has limitations but if you know what it's useful for and how to use it then it's a massive help. As I said, most people try to use it for things it's bad at and/or don't know how to use it and so they get upset and think it's crap...

Language / Opinions on Google Translate for Polish [28]


Yeah, it's not a language learning tool at all and using it for that will lead to frustration (unless your'e already fluent in a couple of foreign languages and know how to compensate for its shortcomings).

News / Will Polish people and Poland be forever slaves and nobody? [20]


In other words, you'll stop doing other things in order to read and write things here?

Don't bother, just leave and instead "stop writing and reading messages in this forum"

don't let the door hit you on the way out.

Law / Poland's ZUS/NFZ payments for businesses [27]


then what do you need NFZ for?

Language / Opinions on Google Translate for Polish [28]


Exactly, it doesn't give answers, it helps you think about the questions in new ways... that's its greatest use for me.

Travel / Can't eat onion and going to Poland, tips on food needed [11]

Only if you can see and idenitfy the ingredients, the salads that are chopped up in a sauce are liable to have onion...

Language / Meaning of "w tern" in Polish [27]

those look like tem's to me (the word search for those is visual not digital so rn and m can get confused...

Language / Meaning of "w tern" in Polish [27]


From memory from the time I first kind of thought of this... the first is się more or less as traditionally described and there's.... sie (never nasalized always a clitic) which always follows the verb. I was originally taught that unstressed się can't be the last word in a sentence unless there's literally no other place for it, but a few years ago in a translation setting Polish speakers were consistently producing sentences ending in this unstressed sie (with lots of places elsewhere in the sentence for it...)

Language / Opinions on Google Translate for Polish [28]

I use it a lot while translating as a kind of thesaurus, with individual words usually what it suggests is not right but one of the synonyms listed is just what I want.

Language / Meaning of "w tern" in Polish [27]


I think it's not a typo, but I think the text was scanned (and confusing m and r + n is a common problem in scanning, like distinguising t and f (or t and ł in Polish)

Language / Meaning of "w tern" in Polish [27]


I prefer armja (and the old ekonomja) on analogy with racja, misja etc.

Many people pronounce Dania (the country) and dania (plural of danie) slightly differently and the spelling Danja shows that in writing...

I've read that at one time fotografie! (vocative of fotograf) and fotografie (plural of fotografia) were distinguished by some people but unlike the previous example I've never met anyone who does....

I also think there are now two się's in the language that behave differently syntactically but I'm kind of alone on that one...

Language / Opinions on Google Translate for Polish [28]

Well for one thing, it's most useful to people who don't need it so much (the more you know the language you're working with the more useful google translate can be).

Go back and forth (english to polish/polish to english) and play around with things and reworking things, try longer and shorter versions (and check with google to see if the google translate suggestion is actually used)

there's more but that's a start

Language / Opinions on Google Translate for Polish [28]


It's an amazingly useful tool if you know how to use it properly.... unfortunately about 99.98% of users don't know that.

It's also not very good when one of the languages isn't English cause then it uses English as a bridge language (bad choice) and introduces other random errors...

Language / Meaning of "w tern" in Polish [27]


I've heard, but I forget the details of when and where. I thing there was a big reform early in the interwar period (doing things like allowing popular forms like latami insteady of literary laty).

At one point there were competing standards (at least two, one in Warsaw? the other in Kraków?) and one reform was to harmonize them.

I wonder when tą żonę will be allowed in writing.

Language / Sense of "duchowego" [13]


I might just go for a longer translation in English "human spiritual and psychological development" or "the spiritual and psychological development of a person"

Language / Sense of "duchowego" [13]

the whole point is that dusza (and duchowy) have a much broader semantic range than 'soul' and 'spiritual' would suggest.

Language / Meaning of "w tern" in Polish [27]


It's not slang, it's a stable form that remains non-standard and unacceptable in formal usage, a very different case from the other examples.

Law / UK born, want to move to Poland. Rules? [17]


How often have you been to Poland? As I always say it can be a great place to live, but only if you can adapt to conditions that are pretty different from what you're used to.

Also, without pretty fluent Polish, life in Poland is not liable to be very interesting or convenient.
Also, region and demographic conditions are important, a small village in the east is liable to not be much fun while not too far from a major city is a better bet.

Does hubby have family in Poland? Who and where?

Language / Sense of "duchowego" [13]


"the whole of the psychological, emotional and intellectual profile of a person making up their personality" (I'm avoiding disposition which doesn't fit in English I think)

Yeah, Wierzbicka's point is that English (unlike other European languages) doesn't have a word for that, that it splits the concept up into (roughly) 'mind' (intellectual) and 'soul' (spiritual) and maybe* 'heart' (emotional)

*don't remember if that was in AW but I would add it

Travel / What to do in Warsaw at Christmas? [21]

which network is hosting Warsaw's celebrations?

Language / Sense of "duchowego" [13]

Not exactly the same, but Polish is closer to Russian than English in this case.

Language / Sense of "duchowego" [13]


Anna Wierzbicka (Polish-Australian semanticist) once wrote an article (this is all from memory, exact details are fuzzy) on cross linguistic differences related to how people refer to the non-physical part of a person. English and slavic langugages fundamentally differ - duchowy is related to dusza, usually translated as 'soul' but actually a holistic notion 'the non-physical part of a person" with no single lexicalization in English.

Life / Babysitting in Poland - unwritten rules [7]


Short answer: No. It's also weird that they wouldn't say where they're going (or leave their phone numbers) etc.

Was this babysitting for money? More context would be needed to say anything more definitive...

Language / Meaning of "w tern" in Polish [27]

My guess: It's a scanning error and the original was 'w tem' probably an outdated variant of 'w tym'

or it might be an older way of writing 'wtem' (suddenly, unexpectedly) which may have been written separately at the time... (or by that author)

In other news, why are you using such an odd source to learn Polish, at a glance there is some very old fashioned (no longer standard) stuff there "w ekonomji" (modern 'w ekonomii' or "nietylko" (instead of nie tylko) or 'innemi' (instead of modern innymi)

There's plenty of more up to date sources...

Language / My American-Polish family says this word all the time! It sounds something like 'shnoodek' [4]


sznurek