Language / Some suggestions for Polish soft consonants and difficult word pronunciations [17]


The reason for that might be that you try to pronounce them separetly, while you should try to pronounce them as if they were one entity with the word that follows. The French accent is quite different from the Polish; the consonants are in general pronounced in a much more distinct way.


I'd say it shouldn't be much of a problem for your father.

Language / Some suggestions for Polish soft consonants and difficult word pronunciations [17]


While the Polish "ą" is definitely closer to the French "on" than it is to the French "en", it is, however, not the same. This French nasal vowel is much "deeper" than the Polish one, since you start to nasalize the sound "o" at a much earlier stage, almost at the beginning of the sound, while for the Polish vowel the nasalisation phase is shorter and weeker.

Pronouncing "ą" as a sound similar to the French "en" can still be observed in Poland even if it is evidently wrong. It is often heard in the word "włączać/wyłączać" and such wrong pronounciation has recently been picked up by a TV advertissment promoting energy saving in Polish homes. In this ad, professor Bralczyk, a renown linguist, declares: it is not so important whether you pronounce wyłączać [en] or wyłączać [on], the most important is that you should turn the lights off [wyłączać światło]!

The writing of ą - as the a with a mark rather than writing it as the o with a mark has its historical reasons. At the time when Polish diacritical marks were being introduced to writing, this nasal sound was pronounced like the French "en", thus the letter "a" was taken as a basis for writing the sound down. Later the pronounciation changed to its present one [similar to the French "on"], but its written form remained unchanged.

Law / Touched goods in Poland's stores are considered "sold"? [6]


Indeed, there used to be such notices quite a long time ago, but these were only about selling bread. Some customers were even paraphrasing it into "Towar macany uważa się za sprzedany" or "Towar macany należy do macającego" which sounded funny. But I haven't seen this notice for ages now.

There used to be quite a few funny notices in shops during communist times. An intelligent film "paraphrase" of that can be seen in one of Stanisław Bareja films where customers who were too annoying to shopkeepers in shops which had almost nothing to sell were caught by the staff and then taken portrait photographs of which later were zoomed in and displayed at the door of the shop under the big heading "Tych klientów nie obsługujemy" (Those customers will be refused to trade with here).

Life / Rydze - mushroom hunting in Poland - Help I need to find these suckers!!! [16]


Hi, maybe jon357 knows such a song. I do not.

Language / Imperfective verb question [9]


Your advice has been actually very good here, Pam. In my view, the OP tries to tackle too many problems at a time, so confusion arises, both in her and in people who try to help.

Language / Imperfective verb question [9]

The imperfective for read [czytać]:
Czytałem książkę (past) - czytam książkę (present) - będę czytać [or będę czytał/a] ksiązkę (future).

The perfective for read [czytać]:
Przeczytałem ksiażkę (past) - przeczytam książkę (future).

The conditional for read [czytać]:
imperfective : Gdybym czytała tę ksiażkę, wychowywałabym swoje dzieci inaczej.
perfective : Gdybym przeczytała tę książkę, wychowałabym swoje dzieci inaczej.

Language / Does pronunciation in Polish get easier with time? [9]

It is, but some theory which describes the pronunciation of Polish sounds and as a set of contrastive exercises is needed to that.

Life / Motorcycle Culture in Poland. [26]



Wildrover, how's your Bulgarian language skills now?

Life / Rydze - mushroom hunting in Poland - Help I need to find these suckers!!! [16]

I don't know, but I know this song about rydz (Lactarius deliciosus) by Helena Majdaniec which you may find nice::

Był sobie raz zielony las
A w lesie jakby nigdy nic
W zielonej chustce na jednej nóżce
Stał sobie rudy rydz

Rudy, rudy, rudy rydz
Jaka piękna sztuka
Rudy, rudy, rudy rydz
A ja rydzów szukam
Rudy, rudy, rudy rydz
Mam na rydza smaczek
Rudy, rudy, rudy, rydz
Lepszy niż maślaczek

Work / What is deducted from a salary in Poland apart from Income tax? [155]



Yes, some people are, but those people who are most certainly will not come to the PF to ask for tax advice, social security and insurance.

I think the OP meant 3750 rather than 37500.

Travel / Exchange Euro to Zloty - I am going to arrive in Warsaw [17]


Indeed it is. When my British friends once came to visit me in Poland in the 2000s, they had done it and after that they only looked in amazement at the kantor rate once and never more. But maybe the reason why they did not listen to my advice was that they thought the kantors might be some sort of the black market which - as respectable British students - they refused to deal with when they came to Poland for the first time while the country was under communist regime. So - as respectable British lawyers some 20 years later - they also preferred to exchange their money in a respectable British bank beforehand. Unfortunately, they were not told in the bank anything of the kind that Harry was so kind to put so bluntly on the PolishForum:


Another British couple of my acquaintances who arrived for a visit in Poland some time later did the same mistake. But this one reacted in a slightly different way to the kantor rate of exchange. They were checking the rate in virtually every kantor on our way in Warsaw in the apparent hope that the exchange rate quoted in the first one they had popped in was a mistake!

But there is hope that the British have at last learnt something from the post-communist world. Yet another couple from the UK who is to visit us in Poland very soon have promised not to go to a sh*tty British bank to buy zloties!

Food / Was Slonina (Lard) originally extracted from Elephant meat? [17]

An interesting discussion nevertheless! I would have never associated "słonina" to S£ONY before, but it seems to be quite accurate. But while explaining the etymology, one should have used S£ONY rather than SOLONY as in the latter the £ is absent.

All that comes from SÓL (salt) --> S£ONY (salty taste) --> S£ONINA(salted pork fat).
But SÓL may also develop into the verb SOLIĆ (to salt) and its past participle SOLONY (salted).


That seems indeed plausible! But I am not surprised that the Daily Mail or any other British paper could have been taken in by this unique similarity.

Language / Instrumental and byc - Polish grammar issue [46]


It would as it contains the "hidden" verb jest in it.
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In other words, we say:
- Paweł jest sympatycznym nauczycielem.
or
- Paweł to jest sympatyczny nauczyciel ---> Paweł to sympatyczny nauczyciel.

Work / Moving to Lodz - will my 2500 PLN salary be enough? [52]


Yes, I think so. You said your employer provides you with an accomodation, so that is an asset which saves you about 1000 zloties at least. I wonder if 2700 zloties is a net salary or an income tax will be deducted from it? Even if it is gross, I think you could still manage.

Real Estate / Poland's apartment prices continue to fall [1844]

Today's Rzeczpospolita says the mean price of 1 sq meter of a flat on offer in Wrocław has gone up from 5,42 K in July 2013 to 5,75 K in July of this year (data based on szybko.pl, metrohouse and expander). According to your posts, however, prices tend to go down in Wrocław, however. What is your comment to such data?

This same tendency has been shown for a few other cities, including Kraków, Poznań, Gdańsk, Gdynia, with Warszawa and Sopot on top of the list (Warsaw: 7,4 to 7,62 tys; Sopot: 8,4 K to 8,8 K)

Travel / First vacation in Poland [15]


That is true. Having been of the indigenous family of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, he never visited any areas of the former Crown [Kingdom of Poland] except for Greater Poland (Wielkopolska) to which he arrived from Dresden in 1831 planning to cross the Prussian-Russian border to join the November Uprising against Russia in the Congress Kingdom of Poland. He later on spent more than 20 years of his life in Dresden before moving to Istanbul in Turkey where he died in 1855.

Speaking of himself as "Lithuanian", he wrote in Polish (and later on in French) and it is not even known if he could speak the Lithuanian language. But in true fact the Duchy itself could be considered as being more Byelorussian than Lithuanian despite its proper name.

Work / Moving to Lodz - will my 2500 PLN salary be enough? [52]

It is even more than enough to survive if the company provides you with a place to stay. But I would advise you to buy your own beer.

News / Closet homosexual politicians in Poland [83]

You seem to be very inquisitive about all these gay affairs and so on. Are you a closeted gay?

Personally, I believe that if JK was gay, there would be some proof for that other than mere gossip. These days, people would be tempted to sell their gay love affaires stories with JK, if they had any, to "Fakt" or Super Express" or other tabloids to get a few cents. Those tabloids would in turn be tempted to pay them a few cents to have front-page stories running for several days. If this doesn't happen, the alleged gay affairs of JK are just gossip based on the fact that he has never been married.

Language / Polish Grammar - ile - ilu ? [9]


No, it depends on whether the noun is male humans or other than that. It is commonly said Ilu przyjdzie gości?, but I'm sure people will also use Ile przyjdzie gości? here as well. The former is better, I believe, as the noun describes male humans, technically speaking, and there is no feminine counterpart of it (in common speech one may sometimes hear the feminine term gościówa, but it denotes "a woman" rather than "a female guest") . Likewise, if you wanted to ask: How many doctors will be present at the conference?, you would say: Ilu lekarzy będzie na konferencji? knowing well in advance that there will be both male and female doctors among them. But again, people may also say; Ile lekarzy będzie na konferencji?, but I truly don't know if the latter is considered correct or not by the linguists. Anyway, the former sounds to me much more typical and much more elegant.

----------------------------------------------------

Ile kobiet jest w haremie wezyra? (feminine animate noun, personal)
Ile gęsi jest w gospodarstwie? (feminine animate noun, non-personal)
Ile słoni jest w zoo? (masculine animate noun)
Ile okien jest w tym domu? (neutral inanimate noun)
Ile książek jest w księgozbiorze? (feminine inanimate noun)
Ile sklepów jest na twojej ulicy? (masculine inanimate noun)

As you can see, the exceptional ilu? is applied only to nouns that denote male humans (or nouns used to denote them in the past).

Language / jest - są / female/male nouns - Polish Grammar help please [10]

There must definitely be a lot of confusion for a foreign learner of Polish with regard to the construction jest or są / nie ma which in English translates into "there is or there are / there isn't or there aren't".

Answering the question:
Czy jest tu (jakiś) dom? or Czy są tutaj (jakieś) domy?,
we really have no other choice than change the verb "be" into the verb "have" in case of the negative answer:

Nie, nie ma tu (żadnego) domu or "Nie ma tu (żadnych) domów".

One, of course, uses the verb "be" in the negative phrases, such as in the sentence "Nie jest to problem", but this phrase would rather correspond to the English "This isn't a problem". If we want to say: "There isn't a problem here" or "there is no problem", we would undoubtedly say: "Nie ma problemu".

News / Who are you voting for in the 2010 Poland's presidential elections and why? [82]

That's interesting. Thank you for that. But I guess these are just guesses based on the actual rational observations of the world. I would also agree that such observations may eventually influence someone's "visions", if they have them, as well. Did you have any "visions"?

I understand you predict that one of them (that is one in five) will materialize in the next five years which may be judged a good result.

News / Who are you voting for in the 2010 Poland's presidential elections and why? [82]


I think you may mistake prophesies for simple guesses or predictions based on some kind of analysis. A true prophesy must have a sort of a vision (or some kind of a particular feeling) behind it, just like seeing "a sleeping or lying man", but not being able to tell: "I can see him dead since he is in a plane that crashes over Smolensk". Have you had any of them even in a vague way? If so, why not share them with others on the PF? Let's hope the forum will exist in the next five years, so people will be able to confront them with real facts.

I've never had any such and I'm usually extremely sceptical about them. When I see a prophecy, my usual thoughts is not to believe it. But I wouldn't be so brave as to exclude a priori any "paranormal" forms communication which is unknown to modern science. Remember that in the world of physics there are particles whose behaviour is still described as strange.

News / Who are you voting for in the 2010 Poland's presidential elections and why? [82]

Since my original thread of July 1, 2010: "Clairvoyant Krzysztof Jackowski tells the political future of Poland" has been attached to this one here [Thread attached on merging - see my post 66], I would now like to suggest to the moderators to divide it back again since the discussions that followed the said post 66 did not center on the political future of Poland at all, but continued to discuss clairvoyant Krzysztof Jackowski and prophecies in general (dismissing them as rubbish altogether). And I am going to develop the subject even further now.

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If you look back at post 66, you will see I quoted Krzysztof Jackowski as saying in 2009 of a plane or planes crashing over Ukraine in not-too-distant a future. At that time (April 2010) people had dug up this vision of his and connected it to the crash of the Polish presidential plane with president Lech Kaczyński on board in Smoleńsk. But Smolensk is Russia, not Ukraine. Andrzej Lepper who went to the clairvoyant in 2009 to ask him if the acting president Lech Kaczyński would win the presidential election of 2010 got the following response:


Clearly, Jackowski seems to have had two separate visions, one of the lying and sleeping president and another one of the plane(s) crash over Ukraine. In April 2010 when the plane crashed in Smolensk (Russia) people (including perhaps the clairvoyant himself) were tempted to join one vision with the other, just thinking that Jackowski missed his geographical location by some hundred miles or so (Russia instead of Ukraine). But with the shooting down of the Malaysian passanger plane MH17 over Ukraine on the 17th of 2014, one may see his prophecies in a different light now. What is more to it, a Ukrainian military aircraft, the SU-25 M1 was shoot down over Ukraine shortly before that, on the16th of July at 19:00 hours. [Jackowski says he was indicating a crash of a plane or planes over Ukraine]. No other plane crashed in Russia or Ukraine on the 10th of April 2010 or the day before or after it.

There's a certain irony in the fact that poster calling himself MareGaea, one who was dismissing the abilities of clairvoyants the loudest in this thread, comes from the Netherlands, the country which had a lion share of the life lost in the crash of MH17 flight (193 out of 298).

Language / Do English-speakers sound funny when we speak Polish? [49]


Both German and French people are easily recognizable when speaking Polish. Those two languages are phonetically very "strong" (I'd say that English is rather "soft" in this respect). It is quite surprising that even those who master Polish perfectly as, for example, German actor and writer Steffen Möller (I haven't heard him making any grammatical or usage mistakes as of late) still have a slight German accent that give them away.

The Polish person trying to sound "natively" English is funnily shown in one of the film comedies by Stanisław Bareja (I've forgotten which one, however). That person is announcing arrivals and departures at Fryderyk Chopin airport in Warsaw both in Polish and English and when she finishes an announcement in Polish and begins in English, she takes a noodle or two out of a plate which stands ready for that in front of her and is then making her announcement turning those noodles in her mouth as if preparing to swallow them. This action of her is supposed to secure the proper native (or near-native) pronunciation of English words at the international airport. Eventually, it may give you an idea of how the Polish people "hear" or perceive the sound of English.

Language / Do English-speakers sound funny when we speak Polish? [49]


Oh yes, that one would sound "aggressively" funny. Also, widziałeś mój pies? or widziałeś mój psa? woud sound funny, although much less funny than the quoted one.


What is the difference between "stress-timed" and "stressed-timed"?

History / Restoration of Poland's Monarchy? [40]


I am for it (I'm Polish, born in Poland and having lived in Poland from birth). However, I think it not posible to happen in the forseeable future. The tradition of our monarchy has been abruptly stopped and in the period that followed Poland did not exist at all. Our royal crowns and other royal attributes were stolen by the Prusians from Kraków in 1794 and probably melted into gold by these barbarians who had no respect for such things. Notice, however, that neither of independent state which came into being in Central or Eastern Europe after the WW I restored or introduced monarchy (except, if I'm not mistaken, Yougoslavia and Romania) and some countries of the "old" Europe said good-bye to theirs (Germany) or even acted beyond that forbiding members of their royal families from entering the country (Austria).

Work / Career as an English teacher in Warsaw Poland [28]


You, English teachers (or former English teachers) on the PF tend to assign too much importance to themselves. And obviously, yourself and that friend of yours, Jon357, always tend to be au premier plan of it. Not without reason I mentioned in my previous post the BBC and the excellent English language learning service they provide. Times are changing and so is foreign language learning or teaching. Recently, I was truly shocked of how good the Google translate was when I submitted a text in law in Polish to it. This internet service came out with excellent and accurate translation of all legal terms and phrases, and it was surprisingly good in translating common language, so only a few minor corrections into their common English were needed to have the job done almost at once. I very seldom use the Google translate when I need to translate something into English, so the last time I did it was a rather long time ago, hence comes my astonishment at the progress they did in Google translate over the recent years!

Thus my point is: when you are board member, financial specialist, lawyer, medical doctor, or whoever else, in the long run you inevitably learn a specialized language of your profession by yourself (you are just silly and lazy if you do not). The common English language, on the other hand, you may learn quickly and efficiently with the BBC (of which I may serve as a sort of example as never in my life did I have a private tutor of English). Obviously, you may like to have someone for consultation to assist you alongside your BBC course(s) from time to time, but it's pretty damn clear to all that there is no need to hire someone who charges 125 zł an hour for that.

Work / Career as an English teacher in Warsaw Poland [28]

125 zł per hour! Good Lord! The BBC does it for free on their website and I'm sure they do it much better than you or any other teacher of English in Warsaw or anywhere else in the world.

They are silly and lazy learners those who used to come to you to learn English.

Genealogy / Where did most Germans live in Poland in the 19th century? [26]


Hi, Jon357! You say "one of them [those places] mostly still isn't". Does that "still" is your sentence mean that you think it is destined to become Poland sooner or later?

News / GERMANS WANT TO GERMANIZE KOPERNIK (COPERNICUS)! OUTRAGE! [1016]


Are trying to tell us that the Germans who have wanted to germanize Kopernik, they now try to germanize Marie Curie (by now, through the Polish Forum only, but who knows how far they are prepared to go ahead with it) !?

Good Lord! That is really outrageous!!!