Language / I was born in Poland and I cannot pronounce 'CZ' [35]

@Lyzko

It's the same in British, too. The "to" after "ought" in negative statements and questions has been gradually disappearing for some time now. The difference is that Americans use "ought" a lot less than Brits, and rarely use "oughtn't" at all.

Language / I was born in Poland and I cannot pronounce 'CZ' [35]

@NoToForeigners

It's not an issue of archaicism or rarity, it's an issue of using a word that has an underlying meaning that you are not aware of, and, as a non-native speaker, probably never will be. Like with using "must" instead of "have to", or "have got" instead of "have". You may end up conveying a subtle, but strong, meaning that you did not intend to. It's best to stick with the safer forms, and avoid the unsafe forms altogether.

In short, "ought to" means "should" plus, "have got" means "have" plus, and "must" means "have to" plus, where "plus" is something that is incredibly hard to define, but practically never necessary.

Language / I was born in Poland and I cannot pronounce 'CZ' [35]

@NoToForeigners

I can't think of a case where using "should" is not as good or better than using "ought to", at least in American English. You could live your whole life without the word "ought" ever crossing your lips. And "oughtn't", like "mustn't" is much rarer in American English. Quite honestly, I can't recall ever having used or heard "oughtn't" used in the States in my life.

Study / Concerning studies in Poland! Cheap options? [10]

@Tehreem Sajjad

It's rarely worth the time or money for an Indian or Pakistani to study in Poland. Courses taught in English are generally low quality, and the degree won't open up any doors for you at home or abroad.

It would be better to study in Pakistan.

Language / I was born in Poland and I cannot pronounce 'CZ' [35]

Both are common and normal, with and without the "to" in negatives and questions. The "to" is falling out of use on both sides of the Atlantic among younger speakers.

Lyszko didn't make a mistake.

Work / Tax and other deduction from Salary in Poland [8]

@samuel_j

About 10k PLN. It will decrease somewhat over the course of the year as you change tax brackets.

Work / Information about jobs for Indian students in Poland [286]

@dipak10494

It's all a scam. The poor students end up ripped off and in trouble with the law.

Work / Information about jobs for Indian students in Poland [286]


If that's what they are saying, then they are frauds, thieves and scam artists that are taking advantage of desperate people from poor countries. These people are common criminals. Report them to your local law enforcement authorities. If they are asking you for money, do not give them any.

Legitimate recruiters NEVER take money from prospective employees or students, and would NEVER make promises of the type you quoted above. Those promises are completely ridiculous.

Life / Would love to move to Poland [13]

@Serb5672

Poland is a great place to live, IF, and only IF, you can find employment that enables you to get a well paid job. To do that, you have to be highly educated, qualified and experienced in skills that are highly sought after on the Polish job market. It also helps a lot if you speak the language well.

If cash is tight, than you'll find that life in Poland is a lot harsher than life in the States. No amount of ridiculous romantic daydreaming is going to make you feel better.

My advice is too school up so that you can find a better job in the States and earn enough to come to Poland for vacations. Or to school up in some field that is highly in demand in Poland and learn the language.

Right now, the grass looks greener on the other side of the fence, but I suspect that the problem lies more with you than with the country you're living in. Work on improving yourself and your qualifications instead of wasting time on silly fantasies.

Poland ain't no bed of roses.

Language / I was born in Poland and I cannot pronounce 'CZ' [35]

One last thing. After I got to Poland I studied the language intensively forty, fifty or more hours a week, and it was two years before I could go to the knajpa and have a half-decent chat, in spite of the fact that I was reading at professor level already, and translating scientific papers with batting an eyelash. Even after twelve years of living in Poland, my spoken Polish is still hesitant at times, though the pronunciation is near perfect. I wish my parents had taught me the language when I was young. I lived twenty-two years of my life in a house where Polish was spoken every day, and I didn't learn anything because it was never spoken to me. There is no such thing as "absorbing" a language by "passive learning". You have to put in the work yourself, personally.

Language / I was born in Poland and I cannot pronounce 'CZ' [35]

@NoToForeigners

I call English a "Plug-and-Play" language. You learn a word, and you can just use it with little trouble. You rarely have to do any manipulation with endings and changing the word roots. Like "two". Compare that to Polish dwa dwie dwóch dwoma dwiema dwogiem etc, etc. Even what should be seemingly simple like I have a car, I don't have a car requires a bit of thinking in Polish, as does the idea that verbs could have gender (był, była, było). And how do you get "tnę" out of "ciąć"?

By the way, our experience may differ because I dealt almost exclusively with young academics and professionals that learned English in school, not on their own,and primarily by reading instead of listening. I found it odd at first that while most of them had typical Polish accents, there were quite a few that had unmistakable Russian accents. Then I found out that a lot of the English teachers in Polish schools were reschooled Russian teachers.

Language / I was born in Poland and I cannot pronounce 'CZ' [35]


I'd be happy to hear that. It's a lot better than the usual "Durink va weekent I took my kits to va park".

Not to many Poles use "d" and "t" for "th" nowadays. They use "v" and "f" instead.

Language / I was born in Poland and I cannot pronounce 'CZ' [35]

@NoToForeigners

The "th" thing is a major problem for Poles, even well educated ones. Oddly, I grew up around Polish people speaking English with a Polish accent, and NEVER once heard any of them say "f" instead of "th". (they all came to America a century ago). It was only when I moved to Poland that I encountered it, from practically every Pole I met.

It is a VERY, VERY distinctive and distracting trait of the modern Polish accent, and is extremely difficult for Poles to get rid of, which is odd, because the Polish "t" and "d" sounds are rather close to "th". A lot closer than "f" and "v".

I have a student who has been studying in the States for three and a half years now, and he still can't break the habit.

Language / I was born in Poland and I cannot pronounce 'CZ' [35]

@NoToForeigners

You're one of the few, then.

Language / I was born in Poland and I cannot pronounce 'CZ' [35]


For native English speakers, they are very easy to distinguish. For Poles, they are not. Very few Poles who learn English are able to pronounce these words differently.

Language / I was born in Poland and I cannot pronounce 'CZ' [35]

@sirena

Just like "f" and "th" sound the same to Poles, as do the words "bad", "bed", "bat" and "bet".

Work / Senior Business Analyst moving to Pila, Greater Poland in April - Need Advice [2]


Yep. You'll have no problems living comfortably on that as long as you avoid the Unholy Trinity: Alcohol, Tobacco and Girls. Live clean and you'll live well.


At $37,000 US a year, that's less than half of what you would make in the States or in a richer country, but about the best you can expect for Poland unless you have senior management or administration experience.


There's no point in making this sound good, but I believe the first word that would enter anyone's head when they hear "Piła" is "boring", followed by "dull", "dull" and more "dull". It's a small, subprovincial outpost in the middle of nowhere with little going for it. Not the worst place in Poland, but not in the top or second tier. Just boringly average, and as remote as you can possibly get in western Poland.

Biggest challenge you will face is that you will have to travel two hours to Poznań for anything resembling culture.

Biggest advantage is that the cost of living is lower than in the big popular cities, so your money will go further.

One word of advice: travel mostly in Eastern Europe, and avoid the very costly West, ESPECIALLY London and Paris, which are just outrageously expensive. There are lots of cool places to see in the Eastern European countries, including in Poland. You could spend two comfortable weeks in any of them for the same money you would spend on a frugal weekend in London or Paris.

Language / I was born in Poland and I cannot pronounce 'CZ' [35]


Not exactly. Actually, a sound that is near enough not to be confused with another sound is needed. Otherwise, the listener has to work to figure out whether you mean sound A or sound B, and that gets tiring really fast, especially if you have issues with more than one sound.

Work / Information about jobs for Indian students in Poland [286]

@dipak10494

That's complete and utter bull$hit. Practically no foreign students work in Poland. I've never seen any in my twelve years at Polish universities. Stay away from worthless and dishonest "counselors" like this. They are common frauds. They get paid for recruiting naive foreign students, and they lie through their teeth. NEVER pay any money to anyone who promises to help you find a job, anywhere in the world.

Poland is rarely a good place for Indian students to study. You're much better of staying in India.

Language / I was born in Poland and I cannot pronounce 'CZ' [35]

@adaarmada

Well, you have access to a native speaker, so sit down with them and keep saying Polish words with the sound you wish to master over and over again, while they say after each repetition of you are cold, warmer or on the money. It might take many hours over the course of several weeks, but there is no faster way. Oddly, most English speakers have a much harder time pronouncing ć than cz.

Work / Information about jobs for Indian students in Poland [286]

@dipak10494

Foreign students can only work during the summer vacation, when jobs for students are difficult to find even for Polish students. Being allowed to work and actually finding a job are two different things. It is extremely unlikely that you will be able to find a job. Your chances of getting struck by lightning, being eaten by a shark or winning the lottery are much, much higher. Being allowed to work doesn't mean anything if no one will hire you.

Like I said, if you need to work to finance your studies and stay, then forget about Poland. It's not a realistic option. Study in India, or in one of the rich countries of Western Europe, or an English-speaking country, or South Korea or Singapore.

Work / Information about jobs for Indian students in Poland [286]


Even that is out of the reach of an Indian student who can't speak Polish and can only work during the summer. Summer jobs are very scarce.

Work / Information about jobs for Indian students in Poland [286]

@dipak10494

It's practically impossible for a foreign student to get a job in Poland. Make your plans on the very safe assumption that you will never be able to earn a single penny during your stay in Poland. If you need to earn money to finance your studies and stay, then Poland is not the country for you.

Life / Libraries in Poland [20]


Very simple. You ask them to order it for you from another library. It's called interlibrary loan, and it's free.


You know wrong. The only books you can't take home with you are rare manuscripts and archival copies, and books put on reserve by professors so that they are available for the whole class to use. In other words, things that are pretty much irreplaceable. For the first, facsimiles are often available. For the second, you can copy them or have them copied. Most of them exist in scanned or microfilm form. For the third, you get off your duff and go to the library. Or buy it yourself at considerable expense, if it's available on the market at all.


Not at any library I heard of. Certainly not in Poland. I ordered hundreds of books that way during my stay in Poland.


If you had the cash to burn, good for you. For most students, that's a prodigious, or even prohibitive, outlay for mere convenience's sake.


I've been in academia long enough to recognize your story when I hear it. I've heard it countless times before. And get you eyes checked. Even after my patient explanation above, you are still thinking of a library as "books". It's a lot more than that, more than you can imagine.

Life / Libraries in Poland [20]


Of course you can simply borrow them. Are you that clueless?

And any library can get you just about any book in the world through interlibrary loan. You just didn't know enough to ask.

You're imagining a serious library as some kind of on-site collection of physical books. It isn't. Not even close. That's not even the tip of the tip of the iceberg. A library is a extremely sophisticated set of extremely effective tools for accessing information from reliable sources from anywhere in the world.

That you failed to realize this was a major failure on your part. You were certainly told, but chose not to listen because, like many undergraduate smarkacz's, you though you knew better and didn't have anything to learn.

Had you paid attention, your studies would have been a lot more productive and a lot more fun. And a lot cheaper, too, because you wouldn't have had to spend money on books that you could easily have read for free.


It's comically trivial to anyone who know how to use a university library. Not even worthy of being called a "challenge".

Life / Libraries in Poland [20]


Of course you can borrow any book in print even from your municipal library. For free. How can you not know this? They certainly covered it during orientation.


Even the newest books are available though inter-library loan, often before they are available to the public. They covered that, too.


Everything was available to you back then, no matter how long ago that was or where it was. This was all explained to you.


You never even bothered asking them, did you? I have never met an incompetent reference librarian. The ones I met in Poland were all extraordinary. There is a very special place reserved in Heaven for them.


Old and tired indeed. Once you know how to use a university library, you realize how meager and pathetic the internet is for serious research.

Life / Libraries in Poland [20]


Of course you can borrow any book in print even from your municipal library. For free. How can you not know this? They certainly covered it during orientation.


Even the newest books are available though inter-library loan, often before they are available to the public. They covered that, too.


Everything was available to you back then, no matter how long ago that was or where it was. This was all explained to you.


You never even bothered asking them, did you? I have never met an incompetent reference librarian. The ones I met in Poland were all extraordinary. There is a very special place reserved in Heaven for them.

Life / Libraries in Poland [20]


Any university library can get you any book you need, or a facsimile thereof. The on-site holdings may be tiny, but basically any book or journal in the world is at your disposal. On top of that, they have access to the truly useful parts of the internet, something you can't access from a home account without paying a fortune. And you have an eager staff of expert reference librarians to help you. You should have paid attention during your orientation, because they undoubtedly explained these thing and much, much more in excruciating detail.

Life / Libraries in Poland [20]

moved from


I don't think you're clear on the idea of what a university library really is capable of, even a small university library in a poor country. The books on the shelves are only the tip of the iceberg.

I sponsored and supported a student while I was in Poland. Actually moved to Wrocław so that he would be able to stay with me. During his freshman orientation, he brushed off the library orientation course, much to my consternation. I made him sign up for the next session. He came back a changed man. He had no idea the sheer megatonnage that the (old, rinky-dink) Wrocław University library packed.

Compared to that, the internet, or, rather, those parts of it that you could access from home, is a cheap penny firecracker.

Life / An Englishman wanting to watch TV in Poland [51]


My God, I have a twin out there! That sounds exactly like something I would say. Telewizor to ołtarz diabła (the television set is the altar of the devil).