Language / Dzwoniono / Czytano [22]

yes dzwonione does not exist as a word in Polish but you add a prefix wy- and you get wydzwonione which your Polish friend should understand perfectly - wydzwoniono is also a word in Polish

the better pair to exemplify my point could perhaps be 'znano' and 'znane'

Language / Need advice on how to improve Polish language skills [134]


yes pięć would be pronounced differently to pięci (though no such word or a word form exist) - it is because 'i' is a vowel here (and not just the way to express palatalization - to put an 'accent' over a final 'c' is enough to show it is a 'soft' consonant)

there is a similar actual pair for this 'spięć' - 'spięci' - 'spięć' is a genetive plural of 'spięcie' (a run-in (a shor fight), also a short circuit) and 'spięci' is a plural nominative of past participle of 'spiąć/spinać' (but also acts as an adjective meaning 'stressed' (more or less))

Language / Need advice on how to improve Polish language skills [134]


'i' in Polish is not always a vowel but sometimes only a palatalizing agent - it makes the consonant before it palatalized ('soft' in Polish)

'i' acts this way (as a palatalising agent) even in cases it depicts a syllable forming vowel

letts compare a bit - in the word 'ciapa' you don't hear a 'j' (or English 'y') contrary to the Spanish pronounciation of Chiapas - (or contrary even to Polish 'miasto' ('miasto' and 'mjasto' are actually homophones in Polish - another source of possible ortographic mistakes --- 'ciapa' and 'cjapa' (there is not such word as 'cjapa' in Polish) are not homophones - 'i' in Polish ortography has palatalising value while 'j' does not )


Antek - do that if you can - I'm sure it helps ranrod a bit

Language / Need advice on how to improve Polish language skills [134]


if you hear a 'ć' in a Polish word (as I said not all foreigners can) and it is followed by an 'e' - then you write it as 'cie'

like in the word 'cień' (shadow)

the same goes for 'ć' and all vowels - 'ć' + 'a' > 'cia' (ciasto - dough; pie); 'ć'+'u' - 'ciu' (ciupa - a prison (dialectic)) and so on and so forth

Language / Need advice on how to improve Polish language skills [134]

ćisza and cisza are pronounced the same - but many poeple can be confused as to how should one pronounced ćisza because Poles are not accusstomed to such a way of writing - as i said before 'ć' is redundant there

Language / Dzwoniono / Czytano [22]

dzwoniono, czytano - are impersonal constructions reffering to the past (it says nothing about who was the doer - sometimes (but not always) it suggests that many people were doing that perhaps habitually) - historically it is a neuter (neuter gender) form of a passive adjectival participle (now the actual neuter form of a passive adjectival participle has a different ending (-e not -o)

Language / Need advice on how to improve Polish language skills [134]


you don't put such letters together - 'i' in Polish ortography (save for some foreign extracted words) serves a palatilasation agent so if you write

'cisza' you have a palatalized 'c' which is the same as 'ć' (or roughly the same) - you don't need to write ćisza (and polish ortography rules advise against it)

Language / Need advice on how to improve Polish language skills [134]


you are contradicting yourself Marysiu

after all there is a difference between 'słońce' and 'słonice' as there is difference between - pardon my French - 'ćpa' and 'cipa' (the first is a one syllable word the other is a two syllable one)

Language / Need advice on how to improve Polish language skills [134]


this is just not true - as is shown by many foreigners who managed to learn Polish - some speak it very good (many Russians are able to speek Polish with very little accent (but it is true that we share tonns in the field of grammar and vocabulary)

Norman Davies speaks Polish
youtube.com/watch?v=x22Alfgv0DY

Norman Davies is a British historian for whom Poland is a major field of interest

Language / Need advice on how to improve Polish language skills [134]


come hear my dear - I will tell you ;)

Language / Need advice on how to improve Polish language skills [134]

I think there is very little in terms of conscious memorization when children learn to speak Polish - it is a completely different thing to learning to write (especially in Chinese) this thing actually requires a very conscious approach - but still I think it developes many faculties of mind and not inhibits

Language / Need advice on how to improve Polish language skills [134]


Poles can pronounce czi or szi but it never is a part of Polish words (only some words directly taken from other languages like the Chineses qi/chi which is pronounced as czi in Polish

Language / Need advice on how to improve Polish language skills [134]


how did you actually do it? if you tried to pronounce Polish sounds yourself I'm pretty sure some people could get confused

if Poles couldn't tell the difference btw sz and ś there would be no such discrimation in the language (either written or spoken)

Language / Need advice on how to improve Polish language skills [134]


the guy also writes a blog in English - linguatrek.com

Language / Need advice on how to improve Polish language skills [134]


and the best way to do it is talking a lot, reading a lot - there is a videoblog of this American guy who learned Polish (quite well) youtube.com/user/dsnopek#p/a/u/0/BbgjZKZSjLI

well - the blog is in Polish :)

Language / Need advice on how to improve Polish language skills [134]


you don't have to use perfect Polish grammar to communicate in Polish - if someone serves you or can spare a moment to talk to you to help you s/he will be most often able to understand what you need even if you don't use the right cases - Poles most often will even understand the kind of 'infinitive talk' when you use verbs in their infintives - sure such communication is not perfect being pretty much restricted - (you still need to learn pronouns and knowing their declination cases helps a lot - knowing aspects of Polish verbs also helps though mafketis stated once that it is not that important

Language / Need advice on how to improve Polish language skills [134]


most of these are not ambiguities - if someone makes a mistake involving ć - ci - s/he is just anaware of the rule which is actually quite simple

and as for sz = ś - hardly any Poles can have problems distinguishing the two sounds and so most of them will spell it correctly consequently

the real ambiguity is in case of rz-ż, u-ó, ch-h and also ł-u to some extent - but even here pretty consistent rules apply

and some problems with ortography arise from the phonetics of the language - like devoicing of final consonants (próg is spoken as pruk ) (devoicing also appears in a couple of other situations and often leads to mistakes in writing (chlep instead of chleb) - still you can't change the ortography of such words as 'chleb' to the actual way of speaking because it will create even more confusion: in most declination forms the 'b' is pronounced as it is written (chleba spoken chleba, chleby spoken chleby, chlebom- spoken chlebom)


trochę will always trump - becuse it forms a phrase? (a block) on its own - for example 'trochę cukierków' - u can use this block i many contexts: Potrzebuję trochę pieniędzy. - simply the verb comes last to the sentence (historically 'trochę' is a noun in accusative actually (the nominative was 'trocha' but it is not used anymore - that can explain a thing or two

Language / Need advice on how to improve Polish language skills [134]


Ten, ta jest .. - instrumental

Tam jest ... - nominative in singular (but a bit complicated in plural - with extensive use of genitive)

however Tam jest ... - is a completely different matter to To jest .. - To jest.. is a descriptive sentence (you describe a person/object) Tam jest ... is not such a sentence

Language / Need advice on how to improve Polish language skills [134]

you nearly never say 'To jest samochodem' (it is a plausible sentence and has a certain nuance meaning to it but it is never used in every day speech)

simply in 'To jest ....' use nominative - period

the story is different with personal pronouns (which in many cases get omitted), names/titles - jest then requires instrumental

(ja) jestem studentem - (ty) jesteś Anglikiem?
ona jest nauczycielką języka angielskiego
Jacek jest informatykiem
Profesor Kowalski jest wykładowcą bilogii molekularnej.
wszyscy jesteśmy mieszkańcami Ziemi

Language / Polish past tense and masculine personal [4]


sorry, for the mistake

Law / Looking to open Polish Office - Advice Needed [7]


probationary period in Poland is only 3 months - you can by-pass the thing by hiring the person for proabtionary period for a different position but it won't be seen favourably by the employee

the Hayes table seems pretty reasonable - I think if you want to attract good people you can't pay them less than 2000 even for the proabtion

News / RHD cars in Poland - my campaign to change the rules in Poland [128]

you are a good driver and a responsible guy - can you say the same thing of all Polish people you know? - imagine drink driving in a RHD in Poland - pretty horrific I would picture - and well English used cars are cheaper than those from the rest of Europe - and the consequence: a couple hundred tousands of used RHD cars registered in Poland in just few years (a million in ten years?) -

- so no, thank you - and well RHD car is not part of constitution neither in Poland nor in Europe (some chemicals are not readily available on market - because they may be very dangerous (especially in the hands ill-skilled or irresponsible people) - I think the analogy is perfect here)

Language / Polish past tense and masculine personal [4]

kgoess

(I used mieć as a generic example, but I don't think there's anything special about it here, right?) -
yes mieć is completely generic in terms of conjugations

you got all examples correct

the only thing


should be 'Koniu, miałeś kwiat' (and similarily Rybo, miałaś kwiat). - in sentences like that you sometimes need to use vocative (it is a direct adress) - I think historically you always needed vocative in such cases - now most male first names tend to be used in nominative in such personal adresses, female first names can be used both in vocative or nominative but vocative is perceived as affectionate contrary to vocative in such, then you very often need to use vocative if you are addressing non-persons (animals and objects) cause nominative looks strange (of course you don't see people addressing objects that often ;P)

News / RHD cars in Poland - my campaign to change the rules in Poland [128]

don't you need to be resident in France or Germany to register a car there?

using a RHD car on Polish roads is just dangerous - perhaps there is little problem with the English using their cars in Western Europe (as there are no multitudes of the English there) - but if you let Poles register a RHD here you will end up with millions RHD cars - and this is just hmm dangerous?? - so actually this closes the issue for me

a thing to consider - would you allow nuclear propulsion for cars?

Language / The usage and future of the special Polish letters: ą, ć, ę, ł, ń, ó, ś, ż, ź (Polish language) [203]


there was a moment in the developement of proto-slavic that there were long and short vowels (the short vowels were the yers AFAIK - I think you can look up 'yer' in wikipedia - yers developed so that there were no closed syllables in Proto-Slavic (words looked like CVCV(CV) like in some Polynesian languages or Japanese) - the era is long gone - I don't know what was the situation before the appearence of yers (whether there were differences in vowel length) - anyway now in Polish all vowels are the same length (vowel length is not phonological?) but many Slavic languages retained vowel lenght differences (like the Czech language)

History / Poland's biggest historical blunder? [341]


yeah, sure - everybody got destroyed but still they managed to drop seeds like drying mushrooms - those bloody Ukrainians spread like weed :P

History / Poland's biggest historical blunder? [341]


and the rest were Jewish with some 2 per cent Lithuanians

Love / Any particular Polish customs or traditions that I should know about in my relationship? [45]


some do - but it's nothing really popular

History / Poland's biggest historical blunder? [341]

you have interesting sources - btw there were almost no Lithuanians to rob in Wilno A.D 1920 (except for the military pesonnel)

History / Poland's biggest historical blunder? [341]

I think Sokrates already mentioned it before - the biggest mistake Poland ever made was to let the Brandenburg Hohenzollerns overtake Prussia (after the lineage of Albrecht Hohenzollern died out) - instead of just taking the Prussia over