News / Which French candidate for president will be best for Poland? [512]


As bad as Le Pen is, I can't find anything positive in Macron (financial insider) either.

My prediction: The public will grow disenchanted with him very quickly and he will do less than nothing to address legitimate voter concerns on a number of issues and either Le Pen will grow (even in defeat this is a far better showing than her father managed) or an even more rightist candidate will take her place.

Not much of a happy ending for anyone who can see three moves into the future....

News / Berlin terrorist attack -- Poland's ethnic homogeneity a true blessing [436]

People who are desperate to minimize muslim violence, however _need_ it to be about religion so they can play "moral equivalence".

And Americans have never gotten anywhere near enough information on the conflict to form informed opinions. It was only after moving to Poland (and watching sky news in the early 90s) that I even realized how much pro-unionist violence there was (never got any coverage in the US).

News / Which French candidate for president will be best for Poland? [512]


Oh yes, just what the world needs, a financier with no real governing experience who denies that his country has a specific culture and who praised the policies that helped bring about the biggest terror attacks in Europe of the last decade.

It's very sad that France is reduced to this choice, nothing happy about it.

Work / What qualifications are required to teach English in Poland? Completed 2 week TEFL course [53]


No skin off my nose, it's the student that try to learn from bad British materials I feel bad for....


Americans aren't bad when they're motivated (I've known a lot more Americans who became fluent in Polish as adults than Brits). The Spanish are pretty dreadful at it as well....

Work / What qualifications are required to teach English in Poland? Completed 2 week TEFL course [53]

"I've always wondered whether those staunchly anti-grammarian, rogue, fun-loving ESL-instructors whom I worked with for so long would have learned their own beloved English language the madcap way in which they taught it to others."

Of course not. the de-emphasis on grammar means that many become communicative but get stuck at a level that prevents real mastery. Fine if someone just needs it for occasional face to face communication, not so good if they need to be able to write in a way that will be taken seriously....

I have a lot of experience with learning foreign languages and find the monolingual textbooks from the UK to be essentially worthless - except as practice for those who will never need real mastery....

News / Which French candidate for president will be best for Poland? [512]


The saying (in modified form) is: democracy, multiculturalism, welfare - pick any two because that is more or less workable but the conflicting demands of trying to practice all three work at the same time are not wortht the eternally diminishing returns...

Work / What qualifications are required to teach English in Poland? Completed 2 week TEFL course [53]


those usually happen in English speaking countries and so a monolingual approach makes sense.

What doesn't make sense is that EFL classes in places like the US tend to be filled with people who've spent years learning English in their home countries but have largely failed - yet the methodology employed is no different from that used in regular classrooms.

It also doesn't make sense to develop a single methodology from that context and then assume it should be employed in classrooms where everybody does have the same first language...

It also doesn't make sense to put the world's worst language learners (the British) in charge of foreign language teaching and learning in Europe..

EFL/ESL as a field has so many wierd innter contradictions that it's fascinating to watch them play out - or would be if the students were not the ones to suffer from the inherent dysfunction running riot in the field.

News / Which French candidate for president will be best for Poland? [512]

"Russia is dedicating considerable resources to breaking up European and American unity"

I have the impression that a bunch of European leaders (incl Merkel) have the same goal....

Food / Making American cheeses (Polish and EU ones are terrible!) [100]

"I was staggered at the OP's comments that EU cheeses are terrible!"

Comparing American artisanal cheeses to EU mass-produced cheeses might result in such an idea (or simply the familiar and not-so-good being more wanted than the novel and unwanted).


Real, qualtiy American cheeses don't make it to Europe (and casual visitors to the US won't know about better local varieites) so European prejudice is easy to understand.

Work / What qualifications are required to teach English in Poland? Completed 2 week TEFL course [53]

"most schools want to employ native teachers who have no idea about Polish."

which also means it's easier to take advantage of them because they don't know their rights or how to get things done....

"There are thousands of teachers teaching in Asia and very few have an idea about the local language."

Maybe that's one of the reasons their results are generally so dismal?

Work / What qualifications are required to teach English in Poland? Completed 2 week TEFL course [53]

"no it isn't, the whole point of TEFL training is that you learn to teach without using the target language."

Is this a new definition of "target language". I've always understood "target language" in a language teaching situation as "the language being learnt".

"In certain countries such as France, Italy, even Germany, target language knowledge is a must as well. Not sure about Poland nowadays, and so you'd best make certain prior to signing on:-) Merely a suggestion!"

I think that France, Italy and Germany are countries where it's not possible to carry on many/most life activities without pretty good knowledge of the local language. Wanting teachers to know the local language is just good sense because if they don't you have to hold their hands and take care of things for them like the little children they are.....

Law / Going in and out of Poland on a non-Polish passport [11]

"Okay I looked into it and it's referred to as 'the passport trap'. Is this still practiced?"

It's not a "trap" it's basic political policy. If you have a passport for a given country you are required to enter and leave it with said passport and not some other (if you have more than one).

If you don't have a Polish passport then they will not care what your name is (lots of people with Polish names and no Polish passport visit and have no problem whatsover).

And how Polish? If you're a woman and the name in the passport ends in -ski or -cki then that's a very clear signal that you wouldn't have a Polish passport. If you don't speak Polish (or speak in a way that makes it clear that you haven't spent much time in Poland recently) then that would also be a clear signal that you don't have a Polish passport.

Poland does not require ethnic Poles or people with Polish names to use Polish passports. It only requires people who actually are Polish citizens (regardless of name) to use Polish documents at the border (both ways coming and going).

News / Which French candidate for president will be best for Poland? [512]

"Right now there is a HUGE number of economic Muslim immigrants in France that need to be taken care of making them priority workers over foreign workers"

Rotsa ruck! No country in Europe has managed to do much with immigrants from Muslim/AFrican countries.

By foreign, you mean European (according to Macron's own agenda Poland is not a foreign country)

It just hit me: One reason governments in Western Europe don't like Eastern European (like Polish) immigration is that they do far better than the immigrants they've been so determined to bring to the continent and show what I lie the idea that large numbers of North Africans are needed.

History / Polish-Hungarian border exchange? [60]

"Yes, the Slovaks were quite scared in the early 1990's of what Hungary could do, especially as they had been stirring the pot in Romania"

Considering what Romania had become in the late 1980s (and the fact that Romania largely actually resembles what Polly claims Poland is) what's the problem?.... one of the signs of communist collapse was the Hungarian communists accepting ethnic Hungarians from Romania as refugees, almost important as the breakthroughs in Poland.

Tensions between the Slovak authority (representing a very small language without much literary or cultural history) and the Hungarian minority go back to the 1980s at least.

"Wasn't Posen still very much a Polish city despite being in Prussia? I thought the German presence there was only a minority?"

I think that's largely propaganda talking. The uprisings made it part of Poland (rather than Germany) after WWI but it also arguably has the most Germanized population (in terms of culture and habits) in Poland (one reason it gained a reputation as being better run than most cities in the commie days and 1990s).

History / Polish-Hungarian border exchange? [60]

"Quite sensible really, given Hungarian revanchism and the rise of Jobbik"

This predates that back to the early 90's (and possibly helped fuel the likes of Jobbik, Hungarians in Hungary tend to be concerned about their co-ethnics in neighboring countries much more than Poles care about Poles in Lithuania, for example).

"It's always fascinated me how Bratislava went from being a Hungarian-German city to a Slovak city."

Poznań (Posen) went from being Prussian to Polish which is also pretty interesting.

History / Polish-Hungarian border exchange? [60]

"Slovakia is Slovakian, not Hungarian"

Officially, about a third of the population is historically more Hungarian ethnically and cultrually.

"The people aren't Hungarian"

A concentrated campaign by the Slovak government to weaken Hungarian is starting to bear fruit. I was briefly there with a Hungarian last summer and while there plenty of adults who still spoke Hungarian not many younger people did....

"so no chance of any change, nor is Poland likely to cede any territory""

Probably true since borders won't change in Europe now without bloodshed and only crazed and deranged freaks want wars.

Food / Making American cheeses (Polish and EU ones are terrible!) [100]

Take a small tub or cottage cheese, lightly sprinkle a little salt and pepper, drop some roasted sesame oil and then top off with some light soy sauce.

Don't stir, but move the spoon through the mixture. It sounds weird, but is very yummy.

Food / Making American cheeses (Polish and EU ones are terrible!) [100]


I'll throw in here that the cheese referred to as cheddar US is not really like the "English" cheddar I've had. American cheddar is more like what gets called mimolette in Poland, not sure what that's called in the UK.

News / How will BREXIT affect the immigrants in UK and Poland. [1114]


Yeah, there's pretty much no example of a multicultural society that isn't constant low grade ideological warfare of each group against all the others (with occasional alliances - politics makes strange bedfellows as it were).

The US doesn't count since until the 1970s immigrants were expected to assimilate in language, social practices etc (or to stay out of the mainstream and not bother other people like the Amish and Orthodox Jews).

Multiculturalism also tends to put suffocating restrictions on the individual's educational and occupational and marriage options. Who wants that sh1t?

The one and only and single perk that multiculturalism brings are increased dining options (and maybe live music options). No one can point to any other particular benefit....

Work / I have to decide between two job offers, Berlin vs Wroclaw [44]


Why? Poland can be a good destination for some but hardly all. It's not a user friendly kind of place (a quality I actually mostly like).

dominic is no ray of sunshine but his logic is hard to argue with (though he doesn't take into account other factors whcih might be important for some).

But you just seem to want as many non-Polish people (doesn't matter where or why or how) to come to Poland as possible which doesn't seem to serve anyone's interests very well.

News / Which French candidate for president will be best for Poland? [512]


It's amazing how few people understand* the concept of "World Reserve Currency" and how important it is to the US. People are often surprised when I say the US has and will go to war to protect the dollar as WRC.

*You can expand on that to "how few people understand the ideological and economic infrastructure affecting everything they do"

Travel / How available is internet/wifi in Poland? [24]

Loosely: "That would be just what we needed for him to not be able to" (though weirdly, although each part is easy enough to translate it's hard, for me, to put them together gracefully... (and nb the first part is sarcastic - I don't know if similar expressions are normal in British usage).

Love / English proposing to a Polish lady [31]


Engagement rings are a scam that have mostly not a big deal in Poland. The idea of proposing with a ring isn't a Polish tradition AFAICT.

The stupid quote is due to the dumb quote limit, less than a line and a half apparently is too long now....

News / Which French candidate for president will be best for Poland? [512]


source?


Probably and the tensions bubbling under the surface will only get stronger (ensuring that when they do erupt it will be far worse than you can imagine).

The real takeaway from this election is that large scale low-skilled immigration (a cornerstone of neoliberal policy) hollows out the middle in the political system leaving only the extremes (as the UK might find out in June....).

Law / Poland three year residency [30]


In my experience Americans aren't that bad at it when they have a real reason (like living in a country) while Brits seem to be philosophically against the very idea... under any circumstances (those are the general trends IME with some exceptions going both ways).

News / Which French candidate for president will be best for Poland? [512]

Put yourself in the place of a German taxpayer who sees more and more government resources diverted away from German citizens in need (some of whom have paid into the system for many years) and into migrants who receive far more than they contribute....

Put yoursel in the place of a German woman who's afraid to go out at night because of the sexual harassment from migrants.

Put yourself in the place of a German whose wife or daughter was sexually assaulted by a migrant just to seem them let off for some bvllsh1t reason (examples provided on request)

Is your attitude fair to them?

Language / What are some loanwords in the Polish language? [24]


What about wielkopolska bejmy (money) or bimba (streetcar)? Supposedly German loans but from what?

News / Only 37% of Poles read a book in 2017 [13]


It's even worse. If the parents don't like reading then they really dont want their children to read either (this from an article about research on illiteracy I read many years ago).

On British literacy went for a trip on a budget airline recently and didn't take as many books because I was sure it would be easy to find a book for the trip home on the hotel bookshelf. But although the hotel was mostly British guests (65-75 % maybe more probably 90 % white middle classish [lower end maybe]) the bookshelf had almost nothing in English (despite me checking every day) and what was there was cheap romance and more expensive romance. Most of the books were Scandinavian and misc, the book I picked up ended up being Polish...

News / Which French candidate for president will be best for Poland? [512]


This is not good news. A dearth of moderate nationalists is just going to strengthen the extremes.

News / Which French candidate for president will be best for Poland? [512]


And you can't count on Germany to put European interests above their own... There's a seed of destruction in the German polity that never goes away just morphs into new forms and slogans...

The Euro might be okay for a few countries but putting _any_ southern European country (except again tiny Malta) in it was pure hubris and excrable planning.

The Euro as a non-negotiable requirement will probably be the end of the EU (I too am in favor of many/most of the basic ideas but not the nasty thing it's become).