Language / Can you recognise the nationality of foreign Polish speakers by their accent? [43]


You mean Pascal Brodnicki...? For me, native speaker of Polish, Pascal Brodnicki doesn't sound irritating at all. He speaks with French accent, nevertheless his Polish is outstandingly good. His mild French accent is really an asset for a TV cook, knowing of the qualité of the French cuisine. Apart from his accent, he chooses a wrong case in the declination of a noun from time to time, but these mistakes are rare and sound really charming. Personally, I like the way he speaks Polish, much as I like the way other foreign speakers on Polish TV pronounce the Polish language (they are usually very good at it, but their foreign accent, be it rather mild, gives them away).

It is usually easy in any language to recognize a non-native speaker, but ... . A British friend of mine of Manchester once told me he had met someone at a conference in London whom he culdn't recognize as a speaker from any given part of the UK. When he asked the guy whereabout Britain he was from, he told him he was ... a Frenchman from Paris!

Life / Do expats living in Poland speak Polish? [233]


Still, it builds up your vocabulary and grammar thus speeding up your progress in listening and speaking when you arrive at the country whose language you learn.

English in this respect is by no means easier to master than Polish or any other language. When on arriving in the UK I found myself in a strictly English-speaking environment, I just couldn't uderstand a word from conversations at dinners and meetings to which my English friends took me. But then I was the best in English at school in Poland! Without any previous knowledge of English, however, I suppose I couldn't have made substantial progress in listening and speaking comprehension in a comparetively short time, though for the first three months of my stay, I just felt like being surrounded by a glass surface around me which allowed air and light through it, but stopped understandable sounds.

Language / WHY THE HELL CANT I LEARN POLISH?? [64]


While continuing to learn the language (but not too intensely, I should add), you should leave it to your brain to work out this competence and come up with it in its own time. My wife who as a girl used to hear people speaking Croatian at her Polish home, started to speak this language all of a sudden after several months of listening to it.

Real Estate / Is there a Real Estate bubble in Krakow? [60]


I think he didn't buy when the prices were at their lowest, then when they climbed up waited until they return to their lowest, and as it hasn't happened yet, he is trying to put a spell on them in the hope they return to their lowest or even they down to less than their lowest.

Isn't he a Pole hoping to return to Poland and to make an investment in real estate?

Law / How will the Zloty be against the British Pound over the next 6-12 Months [45]

On the 29th of October, the bank Goldman Sachs calculated the fair value of the zloty against the euro at ... 3,54. That was a substantial improvement on their previous fair value valuation at 4,09 (I don't know the date of this, however). Since the "fair value" is a purely theoretical concept, it may have nothing in common with the real foreign exchange now or in the future, nevertheless its level compared to today's market value of 4,2498 zloties for the euro indicates that the zloty might be "undervalued" in terms of... I don't really know in terms of what! Also, the direction in which their new calculation goes shows that they think the zloty should be strenghtening rather than weakening.

Law / How will the Zloty be against the British Pound over the next 6-12 Months [45]

It is good if we write down today's exchange: 4.7366 (bid) 4.7406 (ask) for the sterling at 9:09 CET. Most predictions here are that the zloty will strengthen against the euro and the dollar in the coming months. If the pound is likely to be achieving the same, may we expect the zloty/pound pair remain at a fairly stable rate between 4,70-4,80 down into the first quarter of 2010?

Real Estate / IS IT A GOOD TIME TO INVEST IN POLISH REAL ESTATE? [83]


By the time they envisaged them, their programme of "3,000,000 new appartments" had unexpectedly turned into a - as the popular saying had it - "three millions for a new appartment" thing, thus tarnishing further their image of a party-which-is-destined-to-be-right.

Real Estate / IS IT A GOOD TIME TO INVEST IN POLISH REAL ESTATE? [83]


It is not true. On that mandate (3,000,000 new apartments/houses over a period of their term) was elected the past Polish government of PiS. That government was voted out of office in the middle of their 4-year term in 2007. The present government, although it promised "miracles" in a very vague sense of the word, did not promise anything of the sort of 3.000.000 apartaments/houses.

The promise of three million appartaments was nothing more than a worthless electoral promise which no one at their senses was taking seriously.

Real Estate / IS IT A GOOD TIME TO INVEST IN POLISH REAL ESTATE? [83]

"Poor but sexy" is a very good slogan. Why everyone who is sexy should be rich?

It is unlikely that the real estate market in Poland will burst in a bubble. Most predictions here are that prices will sooner or later go up as the developpers start very few new projects, so the supply side will become week. I don't believe it to come up quickly as the demand side is likely to remain weak as well. Yet, the financing of mortgages by the banks is growing steadily up.

Food / Problem to find "cream" in Poland [23]

I think this has already been already explained. According to what has been said, I believe it's "śmietana kremowa" or "śmietana słodka". It can also be "śmietanka" (diminutive of "śmietana"). It seems to me now that using this word diminutively, the Polish language would most often indicate cream which is not sour, while with "śmietana" it tends to denote something which is most likely to be sour; if not, it is accompanied by the adjective "słodka" or "kremowa".

The French "fraiche" is "fresh", so it may indicate that the thing hasn't become sour yet, which needs some time and no conservants in it. In other words, it is still "sweet", just as it will be with the Polish term "słodka śmietana".

Work / Does it make sense to move from the UK to Wroclaw for this salary? [50]


Have just come back from a shop ... 5,40 zł for a kilo of tomatoes


A kilogram of excellent ham from a country butcher (nothing to do with the stuff they sell at Tesco) at the same shop near an Auchan hipermarket in Warsaw is 33,60 zł ...

Kiltmaker
They may want you more in the UK than in Poland, that's why the 4500 zł brutto a month? As ShelleyS says, since you do not speak Polish you will be at the "mercy" of your employer ...

News / The chances for Warsaw to become capital of eventual Slavic confederation? [183]


Crow's idea of a pan-Slavic confederation led by Poland is absurd for the forseeble future. Yet, the idea is not such in the long run. We simply can't tell if that will happen or will not happen. We may speculate and so it is just what Crow does. If you call it nonsense, I shall remind you that once Russia didn't even exist as a state and when you had told someone in the Middle Ages she would have become a superpower, you might well have been accused of talking nonsense as well (burned alive or beheaded, too).

Genealogy / POLISH NOBILITY NAMES IN -SKIi [82]

Not every name in -ski is a nobility/gentry name. Many of them are also names formed on a common name (although this rule was mainly used in forming the very first peasant names in the 18th century):

Chrząszcz, Lis, Sokół, Struś, Kos, Dzik, Odyniec,
£oś, Wilczek, Kozioł, Zając, tych pełny zwierzyniec [...]
Jelec, Jawojsz, Grabianka, Konopka, Papara,
A Kiszka, Strzała, Wąż, Wężyk to już szlachta stara [...]
Wyszotawka, Zaremba, Szczuka, Soczko, Karsza,
Wrzosek, Zbrożek, Skorupka, to już szlachta starsza,
Ożga, Wyżga, Olizar, Mniszek, Mier, Orzeszko,
Pełka, Pausza, Wessel, Odrowąż, Maleszko,
Wąsowicz, Pociej, Radziwiłł, Sapieha, £aszcz, Tarło,
Tych imię nieraz Polskę w złym przypadku wsparło [...]
------------------------------------ "Herbarz szlachty wierszem opisany"

As early as in the beginning of the 17th century there appeared a widespread belief that a nobility/gentry name is a name in -ski or -cki. However, these, considered as "better" ones, were also commonly taken by the middle classes or bourgeoisie, as well as peasants, paicularly those aspiring to a higher status. The gentry protested against it, but to no avail:

[...] szlacheckie przezwiska
Używają częstokroć i rzemięśniczyska;
Dobrze rzemięśnikowi mieć przezwisko na -wicz,
nie na -ski, szlachecka to rzecz.
------------------------------------ Władysław Jeżowski, "Zabawy ziemiańskie"

In the 19th century, names in -ski were adopted en masse by the peasants in the north of Poland, particularly in the regions of Mazovia and Podlashia, where the influence of the villages inhabited by the small gentry (szlachta zagrodowa) on those inhabited by peasants was the greatest. The greatest percentage of names formed on common names can today be found in southern Poland. A high percentage of such names could be once observed among the gentry of the Great Duchy of Lithuania and south-eastern voivodships of the Crown.

(information in this post is based on the book by Bogdan Walczak, "Zarys dziejów języka polskiego", 1995.)

History / Does Poland deserve credit for the 1989 Revolution? [87]


Yes, another myth is that Silesia was German for nearly 800 years, while the province was grabbed from Austria only as late as in 1741.

History / Does Poland deserve credit for the 1989 Revolution? [87]

Anyway, me as a Pole, I would like to drive Volkswagen Scirocco TDI, Berlin to Warsaw in one tank, in spite of whatever those bad Germans (and of course the not less bad British) may feel about it ...

History / Does Poland deserve credit for the 1989 Revolution? [87]

No, soooooo Polish is blaming the Polish!!!

Anyway, I've just been reading a most funny story in connection with the Polish always blaiming and complaining ...

The Polish embassy in London has just complained against the advertisement of "Volkswagen Scirocco TDI" in Jeremy Clarkson's programm "Top Gear" on BBC2. - "We understand that Jeremy Clarkson often makes fun of other nations, the French and the German in particular - says attaché Robert Szaniawski - but this time we think he has gone off limit". The advertisement shows the Polish people in a panic run to trains and buses, leaving their unfinished meals in canteens. All this desperate panic is caused by the supposed German attack on Poland in September 1939.

A big title appears then on the screen "Volkswagen Scirocco TDI. Berlin to Warsaw in one tank".

And indeed, the Polish blame the British again (it is so good they do not blame the Germans this time)!

Language / Polite forms in Polish vs English [49]

It really depends on the intonation of the speaker! The first two are roughly the same. The last one is the most polite of the three.

[Don't you think that moderators are not that good at German as they are at Swedish?]

Language / Polite forms in Polish vs English [49]


Neither have I, but it is obvious that different forms of politness are present in the Polish language. One of the most common is using the conditional mode:

Czy mógłby Pan zamknąć drzwi?
Czy mógłby Pan na mnie chwilę poczekać? [formally a question, but truly a kind request]

In my view, the difference in using formal politness shows itself on the level of close relantionship. The Polish tend to use less polite forms (but it doesn't mean they are rude, intonation is something that counts!), while the British tend to stick to their formal language politness here as well.

Language / Future tense with bawić się [34]

Why, the moderators don't know Swedish? How silly of them!

Love / SHE'S 25, HE'S 85 (Polish actor Andrzej Łapicki) -- ANY FUTURE? [82]

It's a free country (since more or less 1989) and everyone does as they please. The future ahead of them may be bright and prosperous as genetics hasn't said its last word yet. May the couple live another 85 years (she will be 110, he will be 170)! God bless Poland, America and the happy couple! [The only worry, however, is that she is blonde.]

Language / Future tense with bawić się [34]


I agree with you. The use of preposition in any language is a real challange. The Polish "do" versus "na" may be tricky; you never say "idę na pracę", but "idę do pracy". Another important example is "oglądać coś w telewizji" (never "na telewizji", although this may be proper among Polish Americans in Chicago). You say "idę na koncert", but "idę do kina/teatru". You say "idę do opery" with the meaning of spending the night in the opera, but you may say "idę na operę X" meaning a particular piece, just as you say "idę na sztukę X do teatru Y" or "idę na film Z do kina W". So generally in the above contexts, you use "na" meaning the performance, while you use "do" meaning a place where the performance takes place. Idę na przedstawienie do cyrku.


I'm a little amazed that the aspect of the verb may cause so many problems to non-native speakers of Polish. Having never analyzed the problem before, what comes to my mind is that the perfective aspect expresses the attitude of the speaker towards the result of an activity he performs/is performing, while the imperfective aspect underlines his need to express the continuity.

In your example, you can say: "Jak będę szedł na operę (przedstawienie), wstąpię po ciebie"; here you underline the continuity of the action using the imperfective aspect. In "Pójdę na przedstawienie (operę), jeśli uda mi się kupić bilet" you are describing the result of your action. Typically you will not say: "Będę szedł na przedstawienie, jeśli uda mi się kupić bilet", although - strangely enough - this sentence is perfectly correct; such an utterance will depend on the specific context and the attitude of the speaker in the given circumstances.

Language / Future tense with bawić się [34]

Still, I would opt for the first one as it stresses the "continuity" rather than the outcome as with a perfective verb.

News / Polish Mom claims daughter got pregnant from swimming in pool! [162]

Or "kurewka".

Study / Is Poland a good place to study for Black Africans? [90]

I think it is generally OK. Unfortunately though, quite a number of racist incidents against black and coloured students have recently been reported in the town of Białystok in eastern Poland. The local authorities have of course been denying this as merely isolated incidents, but this wasn't true as heads of all higher schools in that city have signed a joint letter to the mayor pointing out that the incidents were frequent and demanding tough action with the view of putting an end to them. I think such a letter couldn't be ignored with the result that something has been done about it as I can no longer read any new reports on this in the national press.

Language / Old Polish Vs New Polish [29]

Are you sure that a 40 year-old book has the word "jaje" in it!? It seems that "jaje" is a form of "jajo" in the dual, the grammatical number that ceased to exist in Polish long time before that.

Some other forms of the dual: dwie słowie (modern Polish: dwa słowa); dwie jabłce (dwa jabłka); dwie głowie (dwie głowy); dwaj kmiecia (dwaj kmiecie); dwie babie (dwie baby). The latter form had been used ironically as an already archaic word in "Pan Tadeusz" (published in 1834).

Work / Belgian applying for a financial job in Poland with question [7]

I am curious what happened to all these foreign people who have posted on this forum saying they were looking for a job in Poland. Most of them were looking for a job in teaching English, and some of them reacted with disbelief when I told them that the market changed and companies in Poland were cutting down on overheads ... You will probably not get many replies, as those who have not been successful will not bother to come back, for others the process may still continue ... The financial sector here has been not in such a trouble as elsewhere in (Western) Europe ... If I were you, I would be trying banks such as SocGen (they have an office in Warsaw) or that what has remained of the Belgian Fortis Bank. Fortis offices were once visible in all major cities of Poland, but I don't know what has happened to them since, whether their Polish operations have merged with or have been sold to another bank ...

Bon courage à vous !

Law / What can I do with 250000$? [33]

There are always more people with money than people with good ideas about how to make business (Bernie Madoff could not complain that clients didn't come to him, he had to select them instead). The present crisis opens up possibilities for new innovative business ideas - so they say! As a typical financial investor you need someone who has his own precise idea for business, but he has no money to go on with it. I'm not sure if you can find them through this site, but you can always try. I should probably try to look for them in "business-to-business" sites (if there are any Polish ones) or perhaps in the "money.pl" site or something of that sort. There are American private equity funds who succesfully operate in Poland or Eastern Europe (I know of one small one which, for example, hires a team of five Polish people who carry their [industry and financial] operations in Poland.

It is interesting that people associate investing only with futures or options these days, not even with somewhat simple, old-fashioned stocks.

News / 20 YEARS ON A BETTER POLAND -- ALSO BETTER POLES? [21]

I am not sure, either. Changes in mentality are slow and take much longer time than any economic change. It is in the US that one researcher (of Polish origin) strongly argues that we, Poles, still show the mentality of citizens of a post-colonial country. Indeed, for 122 years we were in true fact "colonies" of Russia, Prussia and Austria. Before that, things were not on a good path either, with our doubtful "gentry" parliamentarian democracy of 10% of the nation in which the famous "liberum veto" played a vital and most destructive role. The few magnates had too much land and power and could buy everyone; they used to teach their sons the alphabet by teaching them firing bullets at shields having individual letters on them (I think this "attitude" can be seen among many of the Polish members of these forums, too).

Language / Problems Polish People Have with Learning English [63]

That's true: advices, furnitures or evidences look very silly. But the fact that we use such forms, isn't it beacause of poor quality of teaching? And it could have been sufficient to evoke to those Polish learners who use such forms some Polish nouns that behave exactly in the same way as English uncountable nouns. One of them is the noun "pieczywo". We never say: "dwa, trzy lub cztery pieczywa". We may say "dwa rodzaje" or "dwa gatunki pieczywa"; one might even say "dwie sztuki pieczywa", which can serve as a perfect example for promoting expressions like "two pieces of furniture" among Polish learners as the only correct way of saying it in English.

When I stayed with my British friends in London as a student, I used to say: "I'm going to make toasts". All Her Majesty's subjects being indeed very reluctunt to correct foreigners with their usage of English in England, my friends have only recently reminded me that I frequently made this mistake - and it was not until they had arrived in Warsaw to pay me a visit that they felt safe enough to do so.

Language / Use of A/An/The ...... Articles [186]

Generally, I believe there are "hidden" reasons behind what we call exceptions in language. They are exceptions because language has changed, yet the old, logical and easily explicable forms survive, but are called "exceptions". (One example of this is that we say "we Wrocławiu", but we say "w Krakowie" in Polish, although both are masculine names of towns ending in -w.) Reasons for exceptions may be thus historical or may find their causes in our ancestors' "mentality", one that we don't share any longer. I believe that the ancestors of English people had perhaps their own reasons to put the before names of rivers or mountain chains, while they did not do so with names of towns or individual mountains (I would very much like to discuss it some other time). An example of ancestors' mentality would be using names of countries or regions in Polish. If we go back to the 10th century, we discover that only the names of the then neighbours of Poland are used either with "na" or in plural or both together. Names of the rest are typically in singular and preceded by "w" in the locative case, as in "w Anglii, we Francji, w Rosji". If we travel clockwise from the north-east, we would find names with the "na" preposition and in the singular : na Litwie (na £otwie per analogiam), na Rusi, or na Ukrainie, na Słowacji; then the plural appears and the na is continued : na Węgrzech (a neighbour of Poland those days), na Morawach, then the na is abandoned : w Czechach, although na £użycach (!), w Niemczech, and w Prusach.

Interestingly enough, the "outer" regions of Poland are treated in the same way, as neighbours of Poland. In the language, Poland confines itself only to Wielkopolska and Małopolska (which was in fact quite true in the 10th century), so we have : na Mazowszu, na Śląsku, na Pomorzu, na Kaszubach, na Kujawach.

[It is my own hypothesis, however, so it is subject to challenge.]