Language / To make someone blush - how to express it in Polish? [4]

That's basically OK. I would most probably use "...że się zaczerwieniłam", but there's no any significant difference. The verb "rumienić się" is also used in culinary contexts, while "czerwienić się" is not.

I don't like "śmiała" for "uwaga" in this sentence of yours. I don't know why as the adjective is formally OK in this context, but I wouldn't say it this way. Probably I would use "odważna odwaga" instead.

Po polsku / Okres średniowieczny [7]

Tak, rozumiem. Jest kilka dobrych książek po polsku o okresie Średnowiecza. Jeśli chodzi o zabytki średniowieczne, na mnie największe wrażenie robiła zawsze katedra w Tumie pod £ęczycą ... może dlatego, że jest trochę na uboczu i idzie się do niej przez łaki, a tuż obok są pozostałości przedchrześcijańskiego grodziska. Fascynujący widok, który przenosi nas jakby w czasy średniowiecza.

Life / WHY DO POLES USE ENGLISH WORDS IN CONVERSATION? [396]


We do decline names ending in -o: okno - w oknie; Koło [miasto] - w Kole; Opoczno - w Opocznie; Maroko - w Maroku. We don't only if the names are foreign and not polonized: Ohio - w Ohio; Orinoko - w Orinoko; Sacramento - w Sacramento; Toronto - w Toronto. [But I like "w Toroncie"; it sounds really amusing!]

Life / WHY DO POLES USE ENGLISH WORDS IN CONVERSATION? [396]

All this discussion is useless. The majority, if not all, foreign people will find it bizzare to decline foreign names such as Johny Depp to which names they are used treating them as impossible to be changed. I believe that for them seeing those names declined is like seeing them "stolen" as the name looks so distorted that it seems faked. That is perfectly OK and doesn't surprise me. What surprises me is that some foreign people see it as "awkward and just downright stupid". That means these people tend to look down at a foreign language from an "upright", that is from a superior, position. But this is a purely psychological problem, not a linguistic one.

Life / Can many young Poles speak German? [72]

"Prijatnost" is not even a Polish word, Natasza.

Life / WHY DO POLES USE ENGLISH WORDS IN CONVERSATION? [396]


Actually, you are quite right. You would often hear the term on TVN CNBC, a channel devoted exclusively to economic matters. About 80% of "normal" Poles would not understand the term, about 95% would never use it in conversation. This is a term of the professional jargon of financial specialist which they use almost exclusevly among themselves and more or less occasionaly on TVN CNBC.

And then there come some crazy Americans to the Polish Forums who are completely unaware of the realities of the Polish language in use among the typical Polish population just to cry out their terrible frustrations on the terrible, almost lethal, overdose of English injected into the Polish language.

Thus, when you read things like


just be sure that the Yankees who have injected so much credit into their markets will sooner start to speak Chinese with near-native fluency (seems to be an inevitable logic of the negative cash-flow in the US trade with China) than the Polish will start to speak their poor pigeon English.

Language / Ambulans displacing karetka - similar meaning of different Polish words? [19]

An ambulance is something bigger than karetka pogotowia. In the case of a heart attack, they would most propably send an ambulance (and it is highly possible that those have by now replaced all the karetki once in use which were rather small cars), but I wouldn't even care to work out the difference. They will be sending whatever will suit them, I shall simply be using the term "karetka".

Life / Can many young Poles speak German? [72]

Anyway, your English as your first language has improved. This time you don't write "Can many young Poles can speak German".

Language / Help me understand Polish imperfective vs perfective verbs? [64]


So why this difficulty with the aspects of the Polish verb? Isn't it a bit like in this famous epigram by the Polish 16th century poet Jan Kochanowski:

Jeśli nie grzeszysz, jako mi powiadasz
Czemu się miły tak często spowiadasz?
;-)

And here's a bonus for those who try to understand the imperfective aspect: a song by Marek Grechuta!

youtube.com/watch?v=rW0TgYZn_tk

Będziesz zbierać kwiaty
będziesz się uśmiechać
będziesz liczyć gwiazdy
będziesz na mnie czekać

I ty właśnie ty
będziesz moją damą
i ty właśnie ty
będziesz moją panią

Będą ci grały skrzypce lipowe
będą śpiewały jarzębinowe
drzewa, liście, ptaki wszystkie

Language / Help me understand Polish imperfective vs perfective verbs? [64]

To illustrate the point in more detail: let's assume you are supposed to have dinner with your mother-in-law on Sunday; what would you tell your friend?

You may choose between : "W niedzielę zjem obiad z teściową" and "W niedzielę będę jadł obiad z teściową".

Both would be perfectly acceptable, so you may simply choose the former one. But the majority native speakers will subconsciously want to choose the latter while wishing to reflect the duration of the event. In doing so, they will say that they will be meeting and talking with others during this most supposedly family meeting to which their dearest or not-so-dearest mother-in-law will be come along. As this is perhaps an important or unusual event, people might - subconsciously again - say: "Mama przychodzi dzisiaj do nas na obiad" in which sentence all her and our preparation for the event that clearly takes a certain amount of time are rendered by using the imperfective aspect - the duration really MATTERS here! To say: "Mama przyjdzie dziś na obiad" will make it look quite common, and indeed would be fully justified when shown in perfective aspect, if such an event happens fairly often and we are rather used to it.

In reporting a similar even in the media, people will typically use the perfective aspect, saying, for example, "Kanclerz Agela Merkel zje dzisiaj obiad z premierem Donaldem Tuskiem", as it is quite irrelevant to underline the duration of the event here; the headline simply informs that Bundeskanzlerin Merkel "spotka się dzisiaj z premierem Tuskiem przy obiedzie".

Language / Help me understand Polish imperfective vs perfective verbs? [64]

Well, it has been some sort of deliberate exageration, I admit. All I wanted to say was that from the point of view of a foreign learner, it might be handy to assume that one aspect of the verb is "more important" than the other; this just for the purposes of learning only. In seeing this problem in that specific and somewhat distorted light, the learner may tell himself that the imperfective aspect is needed in particular situations only, those in which the duration of unaccomplished action should be clearly underlined, and thus expressed accordingly. So I was trying to encourage the learner to "give preference" to the perfective aspect in the process of learning. In other words, I was trying to tell him: "Try to think of the perfective as basic, while of the imperfective as rather peculiar (or less common).

The thing that made me do so was a quick look at the headlines on the wirtualna polska website which on that day all displayed the verbs in them (used in tenses other than the present tense) in perfective aspect.

Language / Help me understand Polish imperfective vs perfective verbs? [64]


It seems to me that the most essential of all verbs in any language, TO BE, is among them (or is both perfective and imperfective at the same time?). Thus we may arrive at the conclusion that being perfective is more important than being imperfective (at least in the Polish language!).

Life / WHY DO POLES USE ENGLISH WORDS IN CONVERSATION? [396]


It is so true. People would often say "cash flow" rather than "przepływy finansowe", a formal Polish term. But then they would say "dodatni/ujemny cashflow" instead of "pozytywny/negatywny cashflow" (from the interview in Polish of the French president of the plc Petrolinvest, Bernard Le Guern, to TVN CNBC channel)

Adam Mickiewicz already complained in the 19th century of the borrowings from foreign languages. But these come and go, since only one out of the four he mentions, has stayed as others dissapeared along with such types of troops.

Wojsko! Mówią, że polskie! lecz te fizyliery,
sapery, grenadiery i kanonijery,
Więcej słychać niemieckich tytułów w tym tłumie
Niżeli narodowych! Kto to już zrozumie!
(By the way, the "titles" he mentions are of French, not of German origin.)

Language / Help me understand Polish imperfective vs perfective verbs? [64]

Oups! I'm sorry, indeed I have confused things a little: in the last sentence of my last post, 'was being' and the part from the last coma (in other words this action...) should be thrown out. I think I must now get a rest from these damned aspects of Polish verb ;-)

Language / Help me understand Polish imperfective vs perfective verbs? [64]

To be honest, the concept of the perfective and imperfective aspects in Polish is really a very difficult one to teach it to a non-Slavic speaker. I am ready to admit that I will be failing to do so as I am pretty sure that a foreign learner will always have trouble in feeling "safe" within the subject, irrespective of the number of hours of study he has devoted to it. But I may be wrong as most probably there are foreign people who have managed to master it very well, if not perfectly well. In that case, they should be the best experts to tell us what the clue that leads to the depths of understanding the difference is.

As usual, it is good to refer to the most basic definitions, the "archetypic" ones, if I may call it so. For me, this may lie in the name of the aspects: "dokonany" will mean: "dokonać czegoś!" - 'I've done it or 'I did it' or 'I had done it' or 'I would have done' or 'I will do it' or 'I will have done'. The other end of the spectrum will be "niedokonany", so it will mean: "dokonywać czegoś" - 'I have been doing it' or 'I did it' or 'I was doing it' or 'I will do it' or I will be doing it' etc. This is in line with what you have aptly described above as DURATION, while with the former aspect we communicate to the speaker the fact that the result of an action 'has been' or 'was' or 'was being' or 'will be' achieved, in other words this action 'waits to be achieved yet'.

Language / Help me understand Polish imperfective vs perfective verbs? [64]


In a more general way, in learning a foreign language, it is extremely important to have repetitions of the language material you've already done some time earlier (it shouldn't be too quckly after that, however). Before you get to such material again, try to recall as much of it (by trying to write it down, for example] as you are able to do. You will see then how much of it you have forgotten. In my view, this is much more important then moving to new thing all the time. You really don' have to learn new words everyday as you will forget them sooner or later [ponieważ prędzej czy później zapomnisz je / ponieważ prędzej czy później będziesz je zapominał*] unless you don't memorize them pretty firmly which is why you should do regular repetitions.

*) this Polish sentence here is an example illustrating the fact that you are perfectly entitled to use either the perfective or the imperfective aspect of a verb in the same situation context, something about which foreign people learning Polish or Polish people advising them on that tend to forget.

UK, Ireland / Culture shock (my neighbours in the UK are Polish and Slovak) [88]


Hythorn has never been to Northern Ireland.

UK, Ireland / Culture shock (my neighbours in the UK are Polish and Slovak) [88]


Oops! It seems you are right, Gumishu. I think I was somewhat misled by the "Britocentrism" of the OP: her statement


made me at first think that she herself has always lived somewhere outside Europe (in India, for example); since in my naivety I was wrongly assigning the United Kingdom into Europe, I thought she would not be a resident of the UK of which I thought was in Europe; then I thought that since she was talking about the Polish and the Slovaks, she really must be living in Poland or Slovakia while wrongly assuming that neither of these two countries belong to Europe; next - as she has been addressing herself to the Polish Forum, I thought it can't be Slovakia where she lives, but it must be Poland.

I'm truly sorry for my mistake due for my insufficient knowledge of geography.

UK, Ireland / Culture shock (my neighbours in the UK are Polish and Slovak) [88]

It sounds very amusing, but I'm sure it is real. The "Pologne profonde" is not necessarily what the "Angleterre profonde" might be. In fact, it is completely different. I would not worry too much of a burglary; you and your "Englishness" are simply something to which the folk of the village are not able to adapt too quickly.


That really says it all.

I suppose your village is somewhere in the Spisz or the Orawa region in the south of Poland. You will be perceived as wealthy foreigners who have enough money not to even bother to spend it on any help received from them. But be aware when doing business with them; their offer of help may usually mean a kind of offer for doing something for which you are expected to pay.

Being a Pole myself, I am always rather suspicious when getting into business with country people. But I live in a big town and I know that country people from "la Pologne profonde" may be rather different from us, people of the "Pologne urbaine". Obviously, the difference between them and the English people in Poland has to be even greater.

News / Polish national lotto lottery (today 20 000 000 PLN to win) [16]

A ticket to heaven? or a ticket to immortality?

The plain truth is that if no one could win 20 million zloties, then no one could win 25 milion, then no one could win 35 milion, then someone is able to win 50 milion!!!

But then, apart from this someone or these few people who have won the 50 milion zloties between them, the rest of the milions who bought the ticket are not able to win the 50 milion jackpot. I'm sure you will not be among those who do not win this 50 milion jackpot on Tuesday.

To win or not to win? - that is a question ...

Law / 1 euro = 4,46637049 złotego polskiego [21]

The joint intervention of the NBP and the Ministry of Finance on the market on Friday has brought the zloty down to the 4.39 level against the euro. The central bank said they had done so by selling only a small amount of euros ...

But if the sentiment on the market doesn't improve at least a little bit on Monday, the zloty is certainly bound to undergo another "stress-test" next week, however.


Rather than going higher, "this" has gone much lower. The zloty today at 9:36 is at 4,0676. Surprise, surprise ...

Law / 1 euro = 4,46637049 złotego polskiego [21]

At certain times, the polski złoty was even weaker than that, at other times it was stronger. If you believe in speculation and bubbles - and you certainly do as your comments suggesting a bubble on the Polish property prove, than you must believe in bubbles anywhere else, including stock markets and currency markets. If you believe that a bubble may only exist in the property market in Poland, and then not in currency markets, you are inconsistent in your views.

The sentiment on the market is now that investors should run away from curriencies that are not regarded as strong enough. Obviously, all Eastern European currencies are in this basket. I may call the present situation a "reverse bubble" on Polish zloty. Frankly, I don't think it may go beyond the 4,60 for 1 euro as at this stage people should start to buy zloties (I think I myself should start to sell euros soon).

I think the Czech crown should be doing better than the Polish zloty in these hard times for Eastern European currencies.

Not only the Polish zloty is in trouble, but the main stock exchanges in Europe and elsewhere. This reflects a clear distrust of markets into a possible recovery from the crisis. The Footsie-100 in London is down 4.82%, the DAX in Frankfurt is down 4.40%, and the CAC-40 in Paris is down more than 5%. This has followed the Dow Jones Index loosing 2.5% and the Nikkei Index closing down at 2.07% below their opening levels.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Health in Greece reports that the number of suicides in this country has doubled in the three years from the beginning of the crisis late in 2008.

News / Polish national lotto lottery (today 20 000 000 PLN to win) [16]

The chances of guessing 6 out of 49 numbers is about 1 to over 13 million. That means that if approximately one third of the whole population of Poland buys the coupon, only one person among those 13 million should be lucky enough to win.

There is no way whatsoever to improve your chances of winning by employing statistics, so studying and applying past statistics is a waste of time.

There are few people among those who win very big stakes at lotteries who are able to "survive" such an event. A recent study in the US has shown that a majority of them have eventually gone bankrupt and today swear they regret very much they they had ever bought their lucky coupon. One such guy who happened to have won hundrends of millions of dollars now spends his nights at his friend's home who is kind enough to let him have a bed under his roof without charging him any fees for that (the guy is hugely indebted so he couldn't have aforded to pay his friend anything). His wife and his children have left this guy in the course of his "happy" life or shortly afterwards. His whole life is now in ruin.

So if you call these winners "lucky people", be aware of the other side of the coin, the one which lotteries do not tend to advertise.

Work / Job opportunities with Hungarian-Swedish-English languages in Poland? [51]

Indeed, but it's always a pity to leave the topic once it has developed another interesting dimension.

Not that teaching Hungarian or Swedish isn't an interesting topic in itself. It is, and as for Hungarian, the place I can seriously think of as a place for teaching Hungarian is the Hungarian Institute (Instytut Węgierski) in Warsaw in Marszałkowska Street. Anyway, it used to be there once, but it may have been moved to a more modest location, in a similar way as the French Institute was.

Another source of addresses is Gazeta Wyborcza (gazeta.pl) where language schools advertise, particularly on Monday in the paper version.

Work / Job opportunities with Hungarian-Swedish-English languages in Poland? [51]

The question of grammatical simplification of languages of which the English language is possibly a perfect example is fascinating. What is that particular moment that pushes an Indoeuropean language to losing its cases and at the same time making it develop definite and indefinite articles which had not existed in it before. A phenomenon which happened in the transition from classical to popular Latin, and one that occured in English as well. Could it ever happen to Polish? I doubt it, but - you know - you never say never.

Love / Help - evil Polish girl after my partner. [39]



A gutter journalist ?

Love / Help - evil Polish girl after my partner. [39]


is an attitude that very often leads to perpetrators developing a strong sense of non-punishment for their wrong-doings.

Language / Difference between bratowa and szwajgierka [10]

Wuj (wujek) is your mother's brother, but your father's brother will be stryj (stryjek). I heared people in the country using names such as 'stryjna' or 'wujenka' to distinguish these women from 'ciocia' which is basically your mother's sister, but has now become common name for all female siblings of your parents.

Life / The Blame Game (Have you ever noticed that a Polish person is never wrong!?) [205]

Despite being a Pole living in Poland (and, for that matter, one who has never chosen to go to live in America), I must to some extent agree with the above. Even my wife is a vivid example of that, and her brother is usually quick to spot it at family meetings - he then says to the rest of the company: "Look, it is never her fault! It is always everybody else's fault".

In a way, the "blame game" may be an Eastern European feature of character that makes us look so different from our Western European cousins. I remember reading once a book on Romania written by a Romanian writer praising the extraordinary (extra-terrestial, I would add) qualities of the Romanian nation to such an extent that I simply was unable to read the book even down to the middle of it.

Therefore I can understand the point of view of Westerners who are able to see that "a Polish person is never wrong", whereas we Poles are "incapable" to do it since we are simply too much used to the thing you call the "blame game". Historically speaking, there was one interesting example of an attempt to implement values that were common in the West onto the Polish soil by a group of people a little like you; this had something to do with Dutch farmers in the 17th or 18th century who emigrated to Poland to set up agricultural enterprises (this attempt is mentioned in one of the books by Polish socilogist Jadwiga Staniszkis - if you are interested, I may find it somewhere among my books). That attempt failed. A very serious attempt to adjust Polish "mentalities" to Western standards was the Third of May Constitution of 1791 which began to provoke an influx of foreign enterpreneurs into Poland, but failed as well as it had met with enormous opposition not only from foreign powers, but as well from domestic magnates who did not want to change anything in the "Sarmatian way of life and governance".

Law / Is running a business in Poland very profitable? [33]


Actually, Ant68 says he's unemployed. He is probably too lazy to walk out of his place to see any competition. Instead, he is ready to to sit at the computer typing rubbish about a £5 T Shirt in the UK that will cost you £40 in Poland.