News / Officials in Poland are hailing an upcoming visit by Donald Trump [720]

The original article which Johnny got his info from (yes I sniffed it out like a bloodhound) mentioned that Poland wants to build a railway from north to south of the country but that the plan is considered unrealistic by economists.

News / Officials in Poland are hailing an upcoming visit by Donald Trump [720]

Could you be more specific Johnny as to how Poland will achieve the stuffing process?


I'll bet he does, nice bit of income for America. On the other hand Poland is not likely to get any money out of Trump, especially not the cash for that railway thingee they want to build. The USA is certainly not going to put billions into the Polish economy as the EU has done.

USA, Canada / Can you BE Polish without SPEAKING Polish in the US? [256]



"Ethnicity is the term for the culture of people in a given geographic region, including their language, heritage, religion and customs. To be a member of an ethnic group is to conform to some or all of those practices.

Race and ethnicity can obviously overlap, but they are distinct."
(from Live Science website)

If you dig around in the old 'scholarly articles' that I'm so fond of recommending to the literate but sadly ignorant, you'll find that your views are in line with those of anthropologists from the 19th and to a lesser extent, 20th centuries but not from the present day. Also if you were better read on world history in general, instead of the stuff you learned by rote from the Kremlin Handbook of Nonsense, you'd be able to see it for yourself.

Love / British girl only interested in Polish guys... [6]


But have no problem discussing your genitals on a public forum.


How right you are. That's the end of that then. Bye.

USA, Canada / Can you BE Polish without SPEAKING Polish in the US? [256]

Well now I know you live in the 1950s but in the modern world ethnicity is determined by the culture with which you identify, not by your DNA. And a very detailed survey of Poles (not a poll, a survey) revealed that 60% of a well selected sample group felt that Polish nationality was not what made one Polish but that speaking the language and embracing the culture were the essential elements, particularly language.

Classifieds / Looking FUN in Warsaw [7]

Why don't you just slut it up in a bar somewhere and pick a guy up? I imagine you've had plenty of practice.

USA, Canada / Can you BE Polish without SPEAKING Polish in the US? [256]

moved from

I'm fascinated at how the children of Polish parents in America anyway, I don't know about elsewhere, seem to grow up speaking such imperfect Polish. Is it because Polish grammar is so difficult? Mr Atch says that children make a lot lof errors and that when he was a kid they were taught in school the correct constructions. He remembers various question and answer forms they learned by rote which were supposed to help them to get the noun cases correct and also writing out lists of the plural forms of various nouns.

Life / Advice for an American from Los Angeles moving to Bialystok [7]

Rio you'll be ok, don't worry. I shouldn't think you'll have any real trouble even in Białystok. As Nathans says you'll be less obviously noticeable though in Warsaw. It's becoming increasingly diverse. I saw five Indian guys waiting for the tram in a fairly suburban area the other day, one of them wearing a turban and nobody was paying any attention to them. You're probably more likely to get your arse kicked for being a fashion designer than being mixed race :D Just be sensible, same way you would in LA, stay away from places and situatons where there are gangs of idiots and for day to day living you should be ok. If anyone starts taunting you, just offer to give them a makeover - girlfriend you so need re-styling! Best of luck.

Oh I just realised, Americans say Asian, when they mean Chinese/Japanese/Korean etc. I, being Irish, associate Asian with Indian. So yeah, no problems I would think. Not unusual at all to see people with oriental features.

Genealogy / Poland's distribution of I1 haplogroup (Germanic haplogroup) and influences from Europe [17]


There's no such thing as a Celtic gene as such. Can you provide more details?


But the language is also called Manx.


Well it depends on what you want from life. It's absolutely TINY, you could go bananas living there and the people are a bit odd, very insular. Do you know they refer to Catholics as 'left-footers' whatever that means. The best thing about it is probably the low crime rate thanks to the public floggings! They gave that up sometime in the 1970s I think but the memory remains and is quite a good deterrent. They could always bring it back.....so nobody wants to risk it :)

Genealogy / Poland's distribution of I1 haplogroup (Germanic haplogroup) and influences from Europe [17]


And in Irish sea is 'farraige' which is a nice example of how different the two languages are.


This is a very good link Ziem with loads of information:

khazaria.com/genetics/irish.htm

It mentions the R1B gene which apparently has the highest prevalance in Europe amongst Irish people.

We're very close to the English genetically but closer to the Sctos and closest of all to the Basque people because our DNA hasn't been mixed much with that of other nationalities since our most distant ancestors came from Iberia so many thousands of years ago.

Classifieds / FOR SALE lovely apartment on Grzegórzecka, 53m², 5min from the center, 5min from the shore of Wisła River [20]


But it was built in 2004. Would you expect the roof to be deteriorating already? Otherwise you have a good point, the condition of the roof is always important especially flashing around chimmneys, that's where water can often leak in. I'm not sure how you construct your chimmneys though in Poland, maybe they're more water-tight.

Work / Salary expectation for a Junior java developer in Krakow / Warsaw Poland? [17]

Could be as little as 3,000 PLN gross. You don't really have any industry experience and you probably don't speak Polish? You should really try to get a year's experience on your CV before changing jobs.

News / Thousands of teachers to lose their jobs in Poland [57]


If that's the case, then the correct approach is adaptation and reform of the present secondary school system, not a complete re-hash of the whole system from primary upwards.

News / Thousands of teachers to lose their jobs in Poland [57]


I'm not a great fan of standardised testing either and no advocate of teaching with a goal of passing such tests, but the point is that the present government is not proposing any substitute for measuring where students are in terms of standards and in fact it's also proposing an increase in rote learning. The whole thing is very poorly conceived. The Finnish education system, now there's an example of a system that works without testing or excessive homework and with no rote learning.

Language / Poles struggle with English vowels [42]


Perhaps to Polish ears :) which all goes to prove my point (thank you Ziem dear for your assistance in this matter) that there is difficulty for native speakers of one language in accurately determining certain sounds in others.

Oh but all jokes aside, remember I'm hearing and producing the English sounds from an Irish point of view and we speak with far less force. I had an interesting chat once with an Irish student of drama who was studying in the UK and she said that her vocal coach told her that the Irish don't project outwards in the way English people do, but they tend to swallow and soften the sounds.

News / Thousands of teachers to lose their jobs in Poland [57]

When Polish students were first tested back in 2000 they performed very poorly, scoring below the European average in the three core areas of maths, reading and science. Now they're among the best. This would indicate that it was the education system which was at fault, not that the students were less intelligent than their peers in other countries.

When the new draft curriuculm was seen by teachers earlier this year the Union said that the new curriculum emphasised rote learning and required reduced hours on the maths and science subjects with more time to be spent on history. The Ministry for Education said that it wanted to introduce a new model of education whose aims were for " children finishing school to value their mother tongue and culture, with all its heritage," it said. "We want to step away from common education methods that are all about taking tests." Now I would say, as a teacher myself, that the goal of education should be to prepare children for life and create well rounded, independent thinkers with useful skills and good general knowledge of the wider world.

News / Thousands of teachers to lose their jobs in Poland [57]


The proposed educational reforms are part of a two pronged attack. Together with a return to an old model which was failing, the new curriculum reduces time for physics, chemistry, biology and IT in favour of history. How will that help Polish industry and commerce?

Language / Poles struggle with English vowels [42]

Because if he could hear and thus say the sounds accurately, he would have known better than to try to transcribe them into Polish equivalents which do not exist. Simples - as Notty himself would say.

News / Thousands of teachers to lose their jobs in Poland [57]

Gumi you're taking a very superficial view of things and like so many, you simply read one article somewhere and see it as the whole story. You don't mention the year 2015 in which an OECD study showed that Poland was ranked fifth in Europe and eleventh in the world, ahead of both the UK and the USA. However, "Polish schools now need to focus more on group interaction, the ability to take risks and thinking outside the box," said Joanna Dębek of the Ministry of Education. Unfortunately the charming people at Wyborcza want me to pay to read the article in full which I am not preparef to do but the gist of it seems to be about poor problem solving and applying theoretical knowledge in practical form, exactly what the Minister was mentioning, which will now take an even bigger step backwards under the proposed changes.

Language / Poles struggle with English vowels [42]

Gumi those Polish sounds do not equate to the English. The 'a' sound in Polish Pan for example is identical the 'a' in a pan for cooking in English. But that is not the sound of 'ou' in rough or tough. That is the short 'u' sound in English. You can't render that sound using Polish spelling because the sound does not exist in Polish. That is a sound which as a speaker of Polish, one has to learn to produce correctly just as an English speaker has to learn 'cz' and 'ci' and clearly Nottie hasn't learned it.

News / Thousands of teachers to lose their jobs in Poland [57]

If that's the case (source please and details, which subject areas, how much of a fall etc), then the response should be to analyse the fall, try to find the reason and deal with it by adapting, not dismantle your entire education system from primary up to Matura and return to an old system that produced even worse results.

Language / Poles struggle with English vowels [42]

Gumi, sorry dear, but if he thinks that 'rough' is pronounced 'raf'............... and 'fought' is 'fot'.

News / Thousands of teachers to lose their jobs in Poland [57]


The reforms haven nothing to do with private versus public education. It's about changing the whole approach to state education and to the curriculum and returning it to what it was more than twenty years ago, when it was actually a failing system producing poor results.

The education presently offered in Polish state schools which most people attend, is good and the best way to ensure that continues to be the case is to build on the present model and improve it even further. It does not help to dismantle an existing system which has been in place less than twenty years and take a step backwards. It certainly does not help Polish children to be taught less science - which is one of the proposed changes to curriculum - in favour of more history.

Language / Poles struggle with English vowels [42]



And so freaking WRONG. Embarrassingly wrong. God alone knows what you sound like when you're speaking! Poles struggle to get to grips with the English short 'u' and the 'aw' sound. I think it's because you genuinely don't the hear the difference. Now that's ok, but to be boasting about how easy something is when you can't do it..........

Your written English is very good, almost excellent though you do make a lot of very elementary mistakes when you get excited or upset. But your spoken English........woah!


I think you mean native English speakers, not 'the English' as English is the first language of many nationalities. It is special in its remarkable flexibility and the richness of its dialects. It's simply amazing when you stop to think about it that each English speaking nation has not only the Standard dialect which they use for business and formal purposes but an extraordinary breadth of individual vernacular forms. Also I think the ability to create tone, atmosphere, subtext etc through the choice of vocabulary and syntax really sets English apart. It's a beautiful language and I say that as an Irish person who loves my own native language (although I was verboten by Mein Komandant to ever speak it, the cheek of you. Quite the little imperialist aren't we).

Polonia / Who still speaks pidigin Polish after many years in the country? [59]


Oh you big liar! You always try to wriggle out of things after you've said them - well to be fair, maybe not always, but quite often. Anyway maybe you can hear the difference between ship and sheep but a lot of your comptratiots can't because they tell me they can't.


May I help you with this? Czy mogę Pan pomoc? Not being sarcastic but this is a great example of where you need to use an article as not doing so gives your sentence the opposite meaning to the one you intend. English has few sounds.......etc would mean that English doesn't have many sounds that don't exist in Polish. Whereas what you want to say is that English has 'a few' sounds which don't exist in Polish, in other words it has some. So to clarify:

English has few sounds that don't exist in Polish = Most sounds in English are the same as Polish.
English has a few sounds that don't exist in Polish - Some sounds in English are different to Polish.

Mr Atch holds articles in the highest contempt as a lot of pointless nonsense. He once announced that he would no longer use them at all when speaking English, on a point of principle, but of course the habit is so entrenched at this stage that he couldn't stop himself! Mind you his use of articles is quite patchy, now you see them, or rather hear them, now you don't :)


Yes I did. I used to think I was saying them perfectly but apparently, according to the ukochany husband I was saying a kind of all-purpose version that was the same for both, probably closer to the 'ch' in English.

Work / Dutch translator job Warsaw- salary? [21]


Yes I know it's a mad place isn't it?


You can stop posting but you can't close a thread, only Mods can do that.


Small minded people are sometimes women you know. So now we can add sexism on top of your other sins :)) I'm surprised at you too with you being Dutch. If you pop back here (oh go on, do, you know you want to)you might enjoy this, it's very funny:

youtube.com/watch?v=oSZLGAuJTLQ

Polonia / Who still speaks pidigin Polish after many years in the country? [59]




Instead of lolling what about listening? The 'y' sound in 'szyp' is not at all the same as the 'i' sound in 'ship'. The 'y' sound in Polish is closer to the 'eu' sound in French, though not identical. If you say 'ship' with those phonetics you'll sound like Inspector Clouseau of the Sûreté. By the way due to all this controversey I asked my ukochany husband to listen to me saying the following sounds: cz, ci, sz and si in which he has assiduously and tirelessly instructed me in the past. He listened with that deadpan, impassive facial expression in which you dear and lovely Poles specialise, and then pronounced 'perfect'. So yah, booh, sucks to the pair of you - I rock and you don't :D Now if I could just get to grips with the grammar I'd be away in the proverbial hack.

Work / Dutch translator job Warsaw- salary? [21]


That's absolutely the key point.

Life / Long-term living and working in Poland [12]

Jovgov take a look at these old threads, if you didn't see them already, to get a better idea of expenses. They're only a year old so still relevant:

https://polishforums.com/work/krakow-living-working-78486/#msg1560220
https://polishforums.com/work/poland-phd-moving-krakow-salary-housing-78284/#msg1555695

I don't think you could save 1500 out of 5000 but you could give it a try I suppose. A grand is more realistic and even then it would be a bit grim I think plus you're not thinking of things like when you need to buy clothes or shoes. For anything of reasonable quality you will pay western European prices. As Dominic said cost of living in proportion to salary is high in Poland.

Work / Dutch translator job Warsaw- salary? [21]

Oh sorry, yes, Dutch. But the principle is the same, garbled Dutch into perfect Dutch, not French to Dutch ;) Ziemowit I don't know about Google Tranlsate, I find it ropey in the extreme and it certainly can't cope at all with Irish because I've tried it as an experiment and it cannot do the job properly either from Irish to English or vice versa. It's especially bad on English into Irish. Alot of the translations are not only absolutely incorrect, they're meaningless. Without knowledge of both languages you couldn't make the corrections successfully, I'm certain. But I'm sure there are professional packages that are far better.

Nonetheless I see replacing a human translator with a machine as a very bad thing. It seems that every skill and profession is getting dumbed down to make it possible for every Joe Soap to jump on the bandwagon. Not saying the OP comes into that category, she most certainly doesn't but she will, ironically, end up contributing to falling standards in her profession and ultimately edge herself and her legitimate skills out of the market.