Language / Myśląc "Polska" - Does new PiS motto.... really mean anything? [20]

Okay.....

perfect-english-grammar.com/stative-verbs.html

stative verb 'think' can be used in the continuous in American

"I'm thinking they're too young to get married." sounds perfectly normal to me.

maybe this is an emerging distinction between American and other varieties... "I'm lovin' it" didn't sound that bad to me, instead it had an informal layer of extra emotion. I would agree that it probably wasn't a good idea to use it in other places where it wouldn't have that meaning.

Language / Myśląc "Polska" - Does new PiS motto.... really mean anything? [20]


They do in AAVE... not always, but they can (and in more general American English too sometimes --- do British people ever say "I'm thinking that..."

Language / Myśląc "Polska" - Does new PiS motto.... really mean anything? [20]


there is no infinitive in "I love it", I'm fairly sure that "I'm lovin' it" comes from AAVE (African American Vernacular English) which often uses continuous forms with habitual/intensive meanings.


I'm assuming that "Kasa za głosy" would be a bit too obvious...

Language / Myśląc "Polska" - Does new PiS motto.... really mean anything? [20]

@Bratwurst Boy

dat's da hole problemo....

Myśląc Polska = Denkend Polen (auf Deutsch)

weird, huh?

UK, Ireland / Polish traffickers in the UK jailed for enslaving hundreds of their own people [58]


Leave it to RM to side with the slavers....

UK, Ireland / Polish traffickers in the UK jailed for enslaving hundreds of their own people [58]

When and where do you see Polish gypsies? A couple look a bit like there might be some gypsy ancestry but generally no, they don't like the gypsies that you see in Poland...

Granted there are cases where gypsy criminals in WEurope get labelled by citizenship rather than ethnic group (especially from Slovakia and Lithuania it seems) but in this case I don't see it (and I've had gypsy neighbors and used to live in a part of town where they were more concentrated)

e3.365dm.com/19/07/1600x900/skynews-slavery-gang-polish_4710564.jpg?20190705125251

UK, Ireland / Polish traffickers in the UK jailed for enslaving hundreds of their own people [58]


There seems to be some gypsy involvement but at least half of the defendants don't look like gypsies (to me)

There is no shortage of scuzzy bottom feeder Poles eager to rip off their countrymen... lock them up and throw away the key!

Language / Looking for meaning of a phrase ("Yatz Gatz Spetagamie") [47]


But did Jews want to be looked upon as "Poles"? It does take two to tango...

Travel / Poland in photo riddles [3134]


małpka...

Travel / Poland in photo riddles [3134]


his elbow?

Law / Existing Polish bank accounts for clients without PESEL number would be frozen starting August 2019? [23]


did you use a number or link from the email? This sounds a bit like phishing to me.... I'd look up mbank independently (or use a number from bank statements) and then call them...

Travel / Poland in photo riddles [3134]

looks like a fur coat or rug to me...

Life / Everything this guy says I feel about Poland [69]


Personal space is sometimes physical and sometimes mental.... Polish people are mostly pretty good at staying out of the latter even if they don't pay much attention to the former. One place they might want to pay attention the physical space is when they're walking by themselves in a secluded spot with their own thoughts which don't include greetings and/or small talk...

Life / Everything this guy says I feel about Poland [69]


See... this is where doug misses things in his blind fury that Polish people don't act like Brits all the time. There is an interaction that's subtle (but real) but based on keeping your distance and not infringing on the other person's personal space (when they may well wish to be alone with their thoughts rather than pretending to be long lost acquaintances).

When in Rome.... (I guess Doug and your version completes that with 'insist that Romans do it just like you did at home, dammit!)

Thinking in British or American or GErman terms (and expecting British or French or Danish behavior) while living in Poland is the least productive strategy possible....

Complain in private to friends, but maintain some dignity in public while you're learning how things work locally.

Life / Everything this guy says I feel about Poland [69]


According to who? Poles might well perceive it as getting in their faces and forcing your presence on them... co kraj to obyczaj...

After a few years most people learn to deal with a foreign country as it is (and not as a deformed version of their home country).

Life / Everything this guy says I feel about Poland [69]

I've said it before and I'll say it again, the British (far more than other peopels IME) are driven to anger (or even blind rage) at norms of behavior that are different from their own....

And it's only (some) long time Brits in Poland who are perversely proud of their poor knowledge of Polish....

USA, Canada / Thoughts on moving to Poland from USA [62]


hate speech! intolerance!

Language / "Pan" or "Ty" - how people address each other in Poland? [55]

What about a student age person learning Polish and meeting Polish student age people?

Language / Pronunciation question: ę at the end of a sentence [5]


There's a fair amount of variation in how people pronounced ę at the end of a word. Most speakers most of the time pronounce it exactly as e, but most speakers do have some kind of nasal sound at times especially in certain words and positions... As far as I know no one has carefully studied this.

My impression is that nasalization is a bit more common around breaks in speech (at the end of sentences) and when otherwise the first and third person verb forms would be the same (piszę vs pisze) and się when it's a bit emphasized. I have the idea that the feminine accusative ending is nasalized less often.

In more formal contexts nasalization is a lot more frequent. It's also common 'spelling pronunciations' where ę is pronounced... like ę in the middle of the word (pronouncing będę instead of the usual spoken pronunciation (bende)

Some years ago I translated a paper by a well-known Polish phonetician who said (paraphrasing) that never nasalizing final ę sounds too colloquial and always nasalizing it sounds artificially formal and the best style is to nasalize some and not nasalize others... (but with no info about which to nasalize).

Language / The rule determining pronunciation of " sprawdź " in the Polish language [3]

@mhurwicz

in final position dź sounds like ć (which causes the w to be pronounced like f).

all consonants with voiceless equivalents (b, d, g, dż, dź etc) are devoiced in final position (are pronounced like p, t, k, cz, ć etc)

in connected speech they aren't devoiced if the next words begins with a voiced consonant.

there's also a kind of spelling pronunciation where the the voicing might be retained but this is used only in isolation (or to let someone know how the word is written).

don't worry too much about voicing assimilation yet, a lot of it comes naturally once you know the basic principle

Life / In North Praga, Warsaw people are paranoid [16]

Some people don't understand personal boundaries...

Travel / Poland in photo riddles [3134]

Judging by the colors.... Wrocław? (I seem to recall blue trams there) unlike the red used in Warsaw or Green in Poznań Can't remember what color they were in Kraków/

Travel / Is it safe to drive in Poland? [43]


It depends on what crime has been committed.... speeding? not sure, hit and run? DUI and hit and run?


helping to make sure that those who commit infractions have to face the consequences of their actions =/= tyranny

Travel / Is it safe to drive in Poland? [43]


somebody's in trouble..... somebody's in trouble....


concealing the identity of someone who broke the law is called aiding and abetting, a crime in most places...


Not how US police work. You need to own up to whatever it is you did and pay up. Be a man and not a lawbreaker!

Travel / Is it safe to drive in Poland? [43]


I was in Spain last year and the driving was surprisingly sane. Unlike Malta (love the country but horrible, terrible, awful drivers... did I mention they're terrible?) Once on the way to the airport (after dark) a car with no lights on barreled straight through a traffic circle missing our taxi by less than 5 meters...


not all, I have driven with some very good Polish drivers... they're just not a large majority...

Law / Surname Question - ski/ska [6]


In the UK it would probably be better to use 'ski' so that it matches your husband. People in Poland (and the bureaucracy) realize that outside the slavic world women are likely to have names in -ski rather than -ska...

On the other hand it might make it easier to travel with your daughter if the last names match....

Up to you.

Travel / Is it safe to drive in Poland? [43]


What struck me in the 1990s was just how stressful driving was physically for the driver.. I remember more than once ending up with a tension headache because the driver just seemed to be a bunch of raw nerves the entire time...

Or course I've been in the car with lots of safe drivers too, but angry, impatient stressed out make up a much higher percentage than in the US... and of course the process for getting a license used to be very corrupt and so there were drivers who'd bought their licenses and barely knew the first thing about road safety...


Maybe more than in the US but nowhere near as much as in Romania (Bucharest is a never ending medley of different car horns).


A former colleague from Scotland described their adaptation: I just always expect the worst possible behavior from other drivers... and I'm usually not wrong.

Travel / Is it safe to drive in Poland? [43]

@SafeDriver

Are you in the US? I was trained in the US and have never wanted to drive in Poland because of the very different driving culture. Defensive driving is pretty much a no go. It's all rules and how can you break them and how fast can you go? Then go even faster!

Public transport (occasionally augmented by taxis) are a much better option.

Life / Political correctness in Poland [210]


i1.kwejk.pl/k/obrazki/2019/05/zNntnT7s7gd2COSX.jpg

Pleae tell me you voted for Bosak, please, please, please tell me you voted for Bosak....

wprost.pl/_thumb/0d/36/4a22bd4280b34e70cc37c9a579d3.jpeg