News / EU confirms it will take action against Poland over court reforms [554]


That would be absolutely horrific! But I have never heard of it. What do you mean by 'last December'? Was it December of 2016 or is it this December of 2017? Could you provide a link to that news?

News / EU confirms it will take action against Poland over court reforms [554]


My index cards tell me that your true name was once identified on this forum, that you are usually late for an SKM train in the Tricity when walking your dog and that you love everything German in Poland and you would very much like Poland to be joined to the Reich - if not the entire Poland then at least the area of the former Westpreussen where the Tricity is located.

News / EU confirms it will take action against Poland over court reforms [554]


What is more to it: Sarmatia will persevere, too!

News / EU confirms it will take action against Poland over court reforms [554]


They were just too busy with plans to reshuffle the cabinet. Finally, our dear "polna Beata" decided to put a stop to it and has stepped down from her post of prime minister.

Genealogy / Trying to find any information about a town called Niskoleze - Polish spelling unverified [10]

A probable form of 'Niskolesie' for that spelling?

News / Poland's Party of Law and Justice (PiS) reconstruction [38]

She has resigned after a three-month long drama called "rekostrukcja rządu". The faction of Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro (the so-called 'ziobrysts') may feel to be somewhat weakened.

It seems the the hard-line electorate may be not very amused. Will a technocrat and a millionare like Mateusz Morawiecki look better to them than our dear "polna Beata" who remids them of a traditional "Polish mother"?

News / Poland's Party of Law and Justice (PiS) reconstruction [38]

Another quote from "Sami Swo" which may perhaps apply to PiS's judicial reform:

Sąd sądem, ale sprawiedliwość musi być po naszej stronie!
The court may rule whatever they want, but justice must remain on our side!

As for Szydlo's dismissal, I think that JK is more probable than MM.

Genealogy / Slavs are descendants of Sarmatians? [600]


I'd say it's fifty-fifty presently. There is a lot of doubt about it. The main argument for that is the so-called settlement gap (pustka osadnicza) that allegedly existed for about a hundred years before the 6th century AD (which doesn't mean there was no one in this land, but only that there were much less people than before that period). Anoher argument is that the type of settlement form the 6th centure onwards differs significantly from the type of settlement preceding the settlement gap. There is no doubt these are indeed very serious arguments which the so-called Turbo-Slavs tend to neglect.

On the other hand, genetic assesments seem to strongly suggest that contemporary Poles have been living on the territory of the present-day Poland for a period stretching far back beyond the 6th century AD.

History / When will you Poles give back German land and the cities which you robbed? [557]


A most interesting site. Thank you very much! Have you read the : The Conversion and Destruction of the Wends (1980) by E. L. Skip Knox provided in one of the links under the "History" section?

The book clearly states that for: [the] three centuries of alternating advances and retreats left the [north-eastern] frontier of the [Holy Roman] Empire in 1100 almost exactly where it had been in 800.

Thus the Western Slavs of Polabia (or the Wends) had managed to keep the Elbe-Saale line as a frontier between the Germanic and Slavic worlds for three hundred years until their culture and language vanished almost completely from the world!

So the real question should be: when will the Germans give back Slavic land and the cities which they robbed [among others: Halle, Leipzig, Dresden, Rostock and Berlin] ?


This is our wunderwaffe which is kept in great secret. Even the US doesn't know where those warheads are.

News / EU confirms it will take action against Poland over court reforms [554]

Yes, this is a very good idea which could commemorate all those victims. Possibly not all of the Palace as it is a big commercial place today. But demolishing it seems a truly absurd idea. Why not demolish the Warsaw citadel as well which was a sympol of the tsarist oppressions towards the Polish people where hundreds if not thousands of patriots were held and many died of whom Romuald Traugutt is the most known?

Life / Why are Muslims seen as a deterrent to Poland? [564]


I'm surprised to see several in Czechia.

I'm also surprised to see one in Belarus very close to the Polish border. Or it may be this large-scale logging in the ancient Białowieża forest which may be counted as a Muslim terrorist attack perhaps ...?

News / EU confirms it will take action against Poland over court reforms [554]

The current excuse for the government actions as described by the government propaganda on TV is that the EU is presently governed by the Left and that is why they despise the right-wing PiS party in power and hence all those resolutions against Poland.

On the home front the idea of demolishing the Palace of Culture in Warsaw caught the headlines in social media, the press and on TV. Promoting this idea now was Vice-Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki who said he had been dreaming of seeing Warsaw without the Palace of Culture for a long time. One may wonder if demolishing the Palace could be added to the above list in the resolution along with demolishing the ancient Białowieża Forest.

News / EU confirms it will take action against Poland over court reforms [554]

Ms Atch, could you explain that in some human language?

Language / Use of Duda in speaking [9]


Where did you get that from?


No surprise in it as Macedonian is a (southern) Slavic language. What were those words?

Work / Diary of a Teacher in Poland [181]

Do you? No news from him for the last couple of months or so, so there exists now a very big gap in his "Diary of a Teacher in Poland".

Polonia / Necessary things to bring while coming to Poland From India ..? [12]


So you cannot afford yourself internet banking which is readily available to everyone these days? How very strange of you ... Most of those who like to do "business in person" with the electricity or gas provider lay aside the business of paying their bills to the last minute. Queueing is their hobby and you can't deny people their hobbies.


There are shops where you can buy all the stuff, but if you are eager to save a few groszy and loose quite a lot of time, you are free to do shopping in a bazarek. And bring your own deckchair along, dear.


My guess is they had something special on offer, hence the queue. But that regularly happens also in the shops of the so-called "rotten West" on any such occasion.

"Endless queues" is really a term you can only refer to the communist Poland. At that time you simply had to join such a queue if you wanted to buy some stuff for yourself or family because you had no other choice and there was no real alternative to that as it exists today. No, Łyżko's phrase that in Poland you need


is utter rubbish aimed at defaming Poland on all fronts and Ms Atch's attempt to back him up on this is just pathetic. C'mon, people of the rotten West, go back to your senses again.

Language / A good place to start learning Polish? [29]



The very concept of the Present Perfect Tense is strange to a Polish person, so you have to point their attention to the phenomenon by giving a name to that phenomenon first. A lot Polish people who are able to grasp that concept - as simple as it is - on the theoretical level, are not able to make that concept work in pratice, however.

The same is true for the concept of the definite/indefinite or no article preceding the English noun.

A good place for learning Polish can be television. If you have a smart TV set, you can set the subtitles for those programmes of the Polish TV that have them. A public TV may have a set of language courses for people wishing to learn the language. The BBC does have them, but I have recently found an absolutely amazing range of language courses for learning German on the Deutsche Welle's website, perhaps even more impressive than the BBC. Unfortunately, this is not the case as far as the Polish public TV is concerned

Polonia / Necessary things to bring while coming to Poland From India ..? [12]


They have totally vanished from the Polish landscape now. Where did you get that from?


This is probably the closest to what you have in mind. Available in EMPiK stores.

Language / Plaque in Polish - Help with polish language [10]


That one is gramatically correct. One can say "w głuchej ciszy", so why not say "w głuchej żałobie" - in mourning so deep that you can't hear anything else beside your deep mourning?


In this one he probably meant "w mrocznych czasach", but since we are talking about the mourning, the deaths, the graves, you cannot guarantee that it is not some old epitaph where you can find the word 'czasze' nicely coinciding with the word 'czaszki' (skulls).


This is a cliché that has really become too banal in Poland these days (IMHO).

Language / Plaque in Polish - Help with polish language [10]



This sounds a bit ... weird? Well, at least it sounds rather old-fashioned. If the OP suggested some text in English, it would be easier to find something suitable in Polish perhaps.

History / Adam Mickiewicz. What is his motherland: Poland or Lithuania? [93]


Łyżko is a teacher ...

History / Adam Mickiewicz. What is his motherland: Poland or Lithuania? [93]


According to that logic, considered one of the best Polish writers, Mickiewicz was Lithuanian.


He was both a Polish writer and Lithuanian.


No, he considered himself to be a Lithuanian man:
Litwo, Ojczyzno moja
Ty jesteś jak zdrowie ...

Did he ever say: "Polsko, Ojczyzno moja"?

History / Adam Mickiewicz. What is his motherland: Poland or Lithuania? [93]


The term "Lithuanian Poles" has existed exclusively in Poland and most notably on Telewizja Polska. Perhaps the Lithuanian Poles have adopted it by now, I don't know. Typically they used to say of themselves "Poles from Lithuania".


But much more often than that, this state was referred to as "Rzeczpospolita" rather than "Poland". The term "Polak" was used mainly for a describing someone without pointing out to his territorial affinity, that is either "Koroniarz" or "Litwin". If you had read my previous post, you would know that there existed one essential formal obstacle for adopting the official term "Poland" for both parts of the state taken together, namely that old term still existed and "Poland" was officially applied to only one part of it: the Kingdom of Poland.

History / Adam Mickiewicz. What is his motherland: Poland or Lithuania? [93]


He was. His mission was trying to form a Polish legion. He stopped at Luxembourg Hotel first and then moved to the house of Mrs Rudnicka at Tatli Badem Sokak 23 where he prepared himself for a venture to Bulgaria and Serbia. This did not happen as he had died in this house from cholera (possibly) at the age of 57.

History / Adam Mickiewicz. What is his motherland: Poland or Lithuania? [93]


He obviously felt Lithuanian, but not in the modern sense of the word. He felt Lithuanian in the sense of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania which Duchy comprised all of today's Lithuania, all of today's Belarus, some tiny parts of today's Russia and some tiny parts of today's Poland. Here's an excerpt from PAN TADEUSZ (Book 4) which shows how the poet feels about his motherland through the trees which grow there. All these places mentioned where those trees grow (Białowieża, Świteź, Ponary, Kuszelewo) are outside today's Poland except Białowieża which was also on the Lithuanian territory in the times of the First Commonwealth, that is until 1795. In this excerpt he also names pagan Lithuanian rulers only who lived long before any unity between the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy came into being (Witenes, Mindowa, Giedymin).

Rówienniki litewskich wielkich kniaziów, drzewa -----[rówienniki = rówieśnicy]
Białowieży, Świtezi, Ponar, Kuszelewa!
Których cień spadał niegdyś na koronne głowy -----[koronne = koronowane]
Groźnego Witenesa, wielkiego Mindowy
I Giedymina, kiedy na Ponarskiej górze,
Przy ognisku myśliwskim, na niedźwiedziej skórze

Drzewa moje ojczyste! jeśli Niebo zdarzy,
Bym wrócił was oglądać, przyjaciele starzy,
Czyli was znajdę jeszcze? czy dotąd żyjecie?
Wy, koło których niegdyś pełzałem jak dziecię...

Ja ileż wam winienem, o domowe drzewa!

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]


This is because either 't' is different. One is hard (normal), the other is soft. Try to say the t, at the same time preparing to start the 'i', but not saying it.

In Polish the soft 't' has evolved into the 'ć' which is articulated higher than the Russian t' and not against the upper teeth as it is in Russian.

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]


This is no surprise at all, it does sound like that to the majority of Polish native speakers. Most of them would swear there they pronounce a (very) short 'i' in miał or biały. In fact they don't fully distinguish between the concept of a consonant and the concept of a vowel. For pronouncing a vowel you need a certain flow of air through your mouth. When you pronounce the soft b (b') or the soft m (m'), your tongue is positioned in the mouth as if you wanted to start saying the 'i' all along with pronouncing either of those consonants. And in fact you actually produce the consonant b or m while holding your toungue in that starting position of the vowel 'i'. But then you start to pronounce the vowel 'a' and not the vowel 'i'. The resulting impression experienced by most people, native speakers included, is that they actually utter a short 'i' after saying the 'b' and before uttering the 'a'.

Plus, their opinion is strongly influenced by the graphic representation of the soft consonants in Polish (in our case 'bi' and 'mi'). However, you start to pronounce the very true and real 'i' after the soft 'b' in words such as 'biwak', 'bić' or 'Birma'.

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]


This is in fact a soft b rather than b+i. One can imagine another way of recording softness of a consonant. For examnple, in Russian they do it by writing a specific vowel which reveals the softness of the preceeding consonant. Thus you would write белый in Russian which word in Polish would be written 'biełyj'. The softness of the consonant 'b' is attached to the following vowel, whereas in Polish the vowel 'i' is used for that purpose.

If you wanted to throw that softness out, you should write бэлый which word would be transliterated into Polish as 'bełyj' (without the i).

That's how the idea of softness works in Slavic languages. The Russian language doesn't employ the 'i' to indicate softness, whereas the Polish language does. Other Slavic languages may have other methods to record softness of which the most popular one is using the apostrophe after a consonant.

News / How will BREXIT affect the immigrants in UK and Poland. [1114]


Not really. What is more to that, Polish people are perfectly OK about buying German products. I have never heard of any calls aimed at boycotting those really.

There have been two incidents recently caused by morons protesting against speaking German in public or on trams to be more precise. The most recent one was in Poznań where some guy was verbally abusing a couple speaking in German. The woman who was Polish wore a burka and her partner was a dark-skinned man. It was the driver of the tram who ordered that moron to get out of the vehicle, but on getting off he managed to spat onto the man. The police is now in search of the offender.

In the earlier incident, some moron physically attacked a white man who was speaking German on a tram in Kraków. The person attacked turned out to be a ... Polish professor of the Jagillonian University speaking in German with a colleague from a German university while on a tram ride. The offender was promptly arrested by police.

Language / Best book for a language noobie? Learning Polish. [22]

Roz, you've abandoned Czech and its cases completely now, haven't you?