Life / Political correctness in Poland [210]


Taking that one personally? Are you or yours benefiting from PiS raiding the treasury to buy votes? How else can one describe the PiS platform beyond "vote for us and we'll give you free money!" ?

Law / Are foreigners with kids on work visa in Poland eligible for the "Family 500 PLN" benefit money? [36]


Not surprising, people are remarkably ungrateful for handouts and will only ask for more.

I have no problem with trying to shore up a social safety net and/or help families in trouble, but note that that's not what PiS has done, they've degenerated into naked vote buying via handouts to their base.

There is no way that this can end well, what more can they do in the fall when the base is wanting even more 'free money'!

Law / Are foreigners with kids on work visa in Poland eligible for the "Family 500 PLN" benefit money? [36]

Remember how mad Polly got when I suggested many Polish voters had sold their dignity for 500 plus? I stand vindicated! I do miss Polly though...

Law / Polish citizenship - translation of birth and marriage certificates - MSF or sworn translator? [7]

Sorry, the one time I need that type of translation I knew a sworn translator who owed me a favor or two, so....

The problem with MSF might be differences in translation terms - what a sworn translator does with an official document is turn it into categories that Polish bureaucracy can deal with (that is there might be specific terms used by sworn translators in Poland and if different ones are used in this other system then... that could cause problems).

Law / Polish citizenship - translation of birth and marriage certificates - MSF or sworn translator? [7]


My guess is they won't recognize any translation except for one by a Polish sworn translator (which is not even a real accreditation but let's let that one slide....)

News / Poland blocks any action on climate change [569]

The problem for me is that I cannot discern that any of the powers that be are _really_ concerned about climate change. The piddling half measures trotted out usually seem to involve collecting extra charges that go to undisclosed organizations.

Also the scale of proposed action cannot possibly have any real effect. I've read that two airline flights a year cancels out any carbon reduction a person otherwise engages in.

I'll believe that those in power are really concerned when they propose grounding over 80% of all jet travel or something similar with a large enough scope that it might make a difference...

Law / Changing the name on a Polish passport [6]


In ths US I think adoption doesn't automatically change a person's legal name, that's a separate procedure. Did you have your name legally changed?

Work / Dental Student moving with wife to Poland, how difficult will it be for her (IT degree) to find employment? [10]

There are people who can hold their breath for 10 minutes.... that doesn't make it a practice worth emulating.

Work / Dental Student moving with wife to Poland, how difficult will it be for her (IT degree) to find employment? [10]


how does he propose to communicate with patients? normal people living in their own country do not want to have to speak a foreign language when they're in pain or sick...

for this to work you'd both need to become very fluent in Polish...

News / Poland A and Ukraine B. Compare how far Poland has advanced. [282]


Closer to Germany = farther from Russia.... same effect. Germany is a functional European socio-economic entity - Russia is its own dysfunctional thing, mired in corruption and tyranny.

News / Poland A and Ukraine B. Compare how far Poland has advanced. [282]


Also Poland encouraged contacts (within strict limits) with Polonia and between westerners who might visit Poland and Polish people. That was absolutely not the case anywhere in the USSR where a person could be imprisoned for talking to a foreigner...

News / Poland A and Ukraine B. Compare how far Poland has advanced. [282]


It's a factor in as much as Poland qualified for EU membership (which has requirements about governmental transparency) back in 2004 and Ukraine is nowhere close to that because of the all-pervasive corruption which the choice of individual Ukrainians...

News / Poland A and Ukraine B. Compare how far Poland has advanced. [282]


My hypothesis:

Poland divided between Russian, Prussian and Austrian influences during the partitions and independent (to a greater or lesser degree) for longer and Roman Catholic.

Ukraine under direct Russian-Soviet-Russian control and only independent since 1990 or so and Eastern Orthodox.

All the other differences stem directly from those different founding principles, it's the same reason that areas of Poland under Russian control during the partitions (except for the capital) tend to lag behind the rest of the country in terms of socio-economic development - Russian influence is basically never benign.

Language / If nominative singular noun ends in "-(not -c-) + ha", is dative & locative singular ending still "-sze"? [16]


wataha ? (locative watasze according to one dictionary site I consulted)

Language / If nominative singular noun ends in "-(not -c-) + ha", is dative & locative singular ending still "-sze"? [16]

@Lri
I don't understand your question, but...
pracownica - pracownicy (loc)

Are you asked if a word ended in (for example) -kha? or -lha?

I'm not a native but I think the two most likely options for the locative would be

-ksze -lsze

-kha -lha (not declined, foreign words that don't fit in the system are often not declined even when it might be possible)

-khy -lhy

(on the model of gatha a very rare word found here:

zakonczone.pl/

and then checked here:

sjp.pl/gatha

Travel / Poland in photo riddles [3134]


kult in Polish is not the same as 'cult' in modern US English (which would be 'sekta' in Polish).

the same meaning sort of exists in English (though it's mostly fallen out of usage because of the 'crazy people' meaning)

but:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_(religious_practice)

USA, Canada / Polonia shows the way - 4/5 of PolAms for Duda - the new President of Poland [25]

Actually he's been doing everything possible to push this feeling of guilt onto everyone else... but no, it's on him.

Polonia / Who in here yesterday said Lithuania is worse than Poland? [13]


I was in Kaunas for a meeting and at night we went out to eat. After waiting almost an hour (and repeated queries) they finally said there were problems in the kitchen and we left and at the second place they first forgot about us and then got half the orders wrong... so I'm skeptical.


Why would anyone sane want to do that?

Polonia / Who in here yesterday said Lithuania is worse than Poland? [13]


that could be an effect of greater stratfication (the richer are richer and the poor are poorer).

I've only been in Lithuania once for a couple of days a few years ago (flew into Vilnius train to Kaunas and back) the cities seemed broadly comparable to Poland (maybe a half-notch behind) but the countryside... it was very pretty but most of the houses looked oooollllddd and like they'd fall down if you breathed on them too hard. I think there's probably a similar gap between cities and the countryside as in Poland, maybe a bit more extreme.

Kaunas was okay but in terms of service was mostly like Poland over 10 years ago, very curt and uninterested in customers....

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


yes, the way that także is actually pronounced tagże... but this (on TV) definitely sounded like [pg] which is allowed in English but not Polish...

similarly I was in a German class once in Poland where the students kept talking about the 'ezban' in Berlin and kept doing it even after the teacher kept asking them not to...

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


what's also weird is that many of these sound dreadful in English even... most of the time they're business or trade jargon with better alternatives in English

Italian is also full of weird English borrowings that are used in different ways from English so that trying to read modern Italian newspapers is awful..

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

most terrible English borrowing I've heard this week?

Ugrade'owałem.... (Apgrejdowałem?)

What was especially jarring was that the voicing was as in in English [pg] and not [bg] which would be expected...

Language / What "YOU" is the correct one? Polish language question. [50]


Yes, just using ty by itself would not have that connotation, there were probably other things going on that he missed (or they were just messing with him)

I remember years ago a friend rewrote a conversation in a Polish textbook for me. The conversation was supposed to be between two male students... but the book was written by a middle aged lady and the register was so old-fashioned and flowery he said that a man using it would sound pretty gay...

Language / What "YOU" is the correct one? Polish language question. [50]


these are different cases of the pronoun ty (you, singular, familiar, like Spanish, French Italian tu, German du)
tobie - date case 'to you' 'for you',
ciebie - accusative and genetive (you, your)
ty - nominative case (you, by itself or as the subject of a sentence)

Dla tobie - mistake no such form exists

dla ciebie - for you

dla ty - mistake, no such form exists

o tobie - locative case (about you)

o ciebie - for/about you preposition o 'about' and ciebie 'accusative of ty'

o ty - vocative 'oh you...' (should be followed by a noun in the vocative case

News / LGBT hate speech to be banned in Poland [208]


nonsense 'gay' functions in American English the same way 'black' does, an adjective while gays and blacks are plurale tantum nouns.

Is "She's gay." acceptable in the UK? It is in the US (which sometimes surprises Polish speakers since 'gej' was adopted into Polish as a noun and only refers to men)

News / LGBT hate speech to be banned in Poland [208]

It's like black....

*She's a black (wrong)

She's black.

Three blacks were arrested for sitting in the white section of the bus.

Feedback / What makes an excellent forum? [119]

The English only policy of the forum discourages Poles from posting (and constricts discussion in other ways as well).

The way that new threads are often attached to old (minimally related) threads with misleading names discourages people from starting new threads.

No guest posting should be allowed (maybe two or three levels of members?)

When people break the rules and/or are unable to discuss Polish issues the ban hammer should be brought out.

News / Schools in Poland to strike tomorrow [235]


you've obviously never been a teacher... material needs to be tailored to the group (teaching the material exactly the same way to every group is a recipe for failure) this means additional materials, updating materials (using the same materials unchanged year in and year out is another recipe for failure)

and grading written work is often best done not in an office setting but in two or three rounds with time between them


then who are the customers? the students? it's a service profession in which, like medicine, where lay and professional diagnoses tend to not coincide...


then they need to pay teachers more, the problem in poland is everybody wants to do things on the cheap so healthcare is underfunded and education is underfunded and then people complain about the results of the population's miserliness...

News / Schools in Poland to strike tomorrow [235]

Teaching is not like working in a store or office or factory. It's not about putting in X number of hours a week, but about carrying out specific tasks, of which classroom teaching is only part.

People that respect education realize that teachers are professionals who play an important role in the smooth functioning of society, even if some teachers aren't that great.

People who don't respect education think of teachers as semi-skilled grunts who should be paid by time (as in an office or factory or store) even if, as often happens the teacher spends more time preparing, grading etc than by the blackboard.

Standardizing teacher times is the enemy of real education.

News / Schools in Poland to strike tomorrow [235]


Well not many might... which means either not enough teachers or school closures and not enough kids being educated, but PiS has an election to buy so money for retirees and the bribeable comes first!