Law / The official Web pages are confusing in telling me exactly how many years I need to obtain Polish citizenship. [16]

I for one scarcely "hate" the Romanians for any of the above reasons you've given:-)

Were I however a Hungarian, what with the Trianon Treaty to brood over, then perhaps yes, I would hate Romanians.

Law / The official Web pages are confusing in telling me exactly how many years I need to obtain Polish citizenship. [16]

In certain EU-countries, having a spouse from that country automatically guarantees citizenship. Not sure though to which countries that refers:-) Perhaps too it's an outdated ruling. That could be also.

Law / The official Web pages are confusing in telling me exactly how many years I need to obtain Polish citizenship. [16]

Some already have, BIM, although perhaps not the way you meant it:-)

Don't feel slighted by my innocent query in the least! With your nearly perfect written English, you should have no trouble whatsoever securing gainful salaried employment anywhere within the EU!

Never once did I imagine someone with your skills would be changing diapers in a retirement village etc...

In truth though, much like Poland, Romania has been long consigned to the backwaters of Europe, often associated here in the States with "Dracula country", Ceaucescu's failed regime, the Iron Guard and lots of other less then favorable impressions:-)

Few know of (much less care about!) people such as George Enescu, Eugene Ionesco (later in France), Mirceau Eliade, as well as lots more significant cultural figures.

Law / The official Web pages are confusing in telling me exactly how many years I need to obtain Polish citizenship. [16]

Had forgotten Romania is part of the EU.

I'd contact your local consulate first. After your documents are in order, you'd do well to take a crash Polish course prior to entering the country.

Europe's getting so crowded with everybody and his brother looking to gain access that knowing at least the mimimum of the target language can only give you leg up in the application process, not to mention, seeking employment, usually a pre-condition for permission to stay in the country:-)

Varog!

Study / Academic year start and end months in Poland English medium schools [8]

Nagh, are you intending to study English in Poznań?

Is English an official language there?
:-)

News / Americans try to defame Poland yet again. [93]

Germany clearly and unequivocally instigated WWII. But without the collusion of Hitler's accomplices throughout Occupied Europe, his heinous deeds might never have come to full fruition in as hideous a manner as they did!

An aggressor also needs helpers to carry out his dirty work:-)

News / Americans try to defame Poland yet again. [93]

As a counterforce to Jan Gross' "Fear" (Strach)?? Sure, I'd be glad to read it. Just finished reading Roman Dmowski's 'Kwestia Żydowska'.

Should prove enlightening, thanks!

News / Americans try to defame Poland yet again. [93]

Thank heaven, you got me worried for a bit:-)
LOL

News / Americans try to defame Poland yet again. [93]

"Jedwabne is [A] well-acknowledged fact.."

Glad to finally hear one of youse admit it!
:-)

News / Americans try to defame Poland yet again. [93]

Correct, TheOther! The Final Solution essentially "began" with the Wannsee Conference, at which time, the wheels were set into motion, thus facilitating the most massive displacement of an indigenous population since the time of the Voelkerwanderungen across Europe. Prior to the Conference, mobile gas vans and killings of Jews were done sporadically and, from the Nazis' point of view, far too inefficiently.

Then, in that fateful summer of '42, Heydrich handpicked Eichmann for the grisly task of eliminating the Jews of Europe, all 11,000,000 of them, in as brief a span as possible.

News / Americans try to defame Poland yet again. [93]

As to the first part of your "rant" in which I see perhaps some slight justification would be that while it is true (my own granddad told me this as well) some of the young Yeshiva boys in small-town Europe who grew up in shtettls exlusively, WERE in fact told by their cheder etc. that it is allright to blaspheme, even to spit on, a statue of the Holy Virgin along with various symbols of the Catholic faith, said blasphemy, although surely repugnant and unjustifiable, somewhat understandable too, as revenge for gentiles in neigboring villages who'd often throw stones at Jewish houses and hurl epithets in front of Jewish homes, yeshivas or place where Jews typically congregate!!

It's not as if the Jews of Poland, for instance, woke up one fine morning in May and decided to wreak havoc on the Christians! The dye was already cast long before the Jews arrived in Europe, whereby the image of the Jew burnished into the Catholic liturgy was that of a demon from hell, above all, a Christ killer.

Life / Do Polish people like Turkish people? [66]

Sure, 'cuz things have gotten a lot worse in the past five years:-)

News / Americans try to defame Poland yet again. [93]

It's a reasonable question, Ironside! After all, the Poles are always whining, "The cursed foreign press are spreading lies about Poland!!!", yet while the national tear duct of Weeping Willow Wilanowa keeps churning out the sob stories, I notice Poland continuing to spread vicious lies about both Israel as well as the Jews themselves, e.g. Jedwabne was an exaggeration, the Poles were all coerced into playing footsies with Hitler, the Jewish Resistance consisted mainly of criminals etc.., all of which might contain a kernel of truth, though scarecely justification for what I've been reading today here on PF:-)

Again, it cuts both ways.

Life / Do Polish people like Turkish people? [66]

Tansu Cillar! Where are you when Turkey needs (someone like) you??!

News / Americans try to defame Poland yet again. [93]

Do Poles try to defame America? It cuts both ways, you know:-)

Study / Do they have schools where they have subjects in English for expat children in Poland? [11]

Fine. The child will thank you in years to come. Hearing native speaker English from BOTH parents in the home can make all the difference so the youngster doesn't grow up confused in their cultural aka linguistic identity:-)

Life / Do Polish people like Turkish people? [66]

Righto, Marsupial! Looks like it's going to become even more of a dictatorship until Tayyip Recep Erdogan's finally ousted from office!
Ataturk'd be turning over in his grave (unless he was cremated):-))

Study / Do they have schools where they have subjects in English for expat children in Poland? [11]

Pity, cij! I trust that at least at home, English as a primary native language was spoken to counterbalance the "English" they were/she was learning (for lack of a better word) in school:-)

Study / Do they have schools where they have subjects in English for expat children in Poland? [11]

Were her teachers native English speakers, I hope?

Travel / Which cities in Poland are nice to visit [80]

Of course, I always heard "Na urlopie byliśmy w TatraCH..", silly orthographic slip...AGAIN!!!!

Travel / Which cities in Poland are nice to visit [80]

For sheer natural beauty, I'd love to visit the Tatra Mountains! Just looked at some pics from a Polish friend and much of the scenery's a knock out:-) WSPANIAŁY WIDOK!!

Life / Do Polish people like Turkish people? [66]

Ever since Erdogan, Polish-Turkish relations have naturally become a bit, dare we say, strained.
lol

Law / Blackmail is legal in Poland? [23]

Blackmail isn't legal, but then neither is bribery, yet it goes on everywhere:-))

Language / Nice to meet you all. I have a question about Poland's Accents? [18]

Perhaps some can distinguish between those two sounds, but the ability to produce them correctly is another matter entirely:-)
In order to produce a foreign sound, one first must be able to cognitively recognize aka hear it before uttering!

The older we get, after the age of nine or ten usually, the less we retain the ability to reproduce certain sounds or phonemes not native to our mother tongue, hence, the "foreign accent" most non-natives have when speaking a second language.

Although scarcely impossible, only relatively few can sound indistinguishable from a native speaker, at least in regard to pronunciation.

Study / Do they have schools where they have subjects in English for expat children in Poland? [11]

BC (British Council) sponsored schools have native-English-speaking teaching staff and are considered tops, but EXPENSIVE!!!

Language / Nice to meet you all. I have a question about Poland's Accents? [18]

Polish is one of the the Slavic tongues with no long vowel sounds any longer! Therefore, English "no" sounds more like "naww" to a Polish speaker who typically cannot say the gliding dipthong of the English word and for this reason, Poles, much as with Spanish speakers for example, often can't hear (hence enunciate) the difference in English between "pEAce" (pronounced in English pEEss) with a long or closed vowel as contrasted with "****" which in English is a short or open vowel:-)

Polonia / Work in Denmark? Do you want it? A versatile builder who can speak English needed. [55]

Nor should they, Atch! Like the Swedes, Dutch, and Germans, the Danes have historically an extremely high level of handmade workmanship which has been and continues to be severely compromised by the import if cheaper-wage, lesser-skilled labor.

While I'm not comparing Poland per se to a Third-World service economy such as Mexico, for instance, the standard of workmanship in Poland may well fit into English society, it most assuredly doesn't into Nordic countries:-)

Language / "Wszystko w porządku?" - How do you Say? I can't hear the "w" sound. [5]

Sometimes, certain consonants sound as though they are merged with the following letter! Wszystko w porządku looks "phonetically" like FSHISTKAW V PAWZHAWNTKOO to an English native speaker:-)

This happens a lot in spoken in Polish!

Language / Nice to meet you all. I have a question about Poland's Accents? [18]

Nice points, Bejma. Indeed, consonant clusters as well as those nearly half-sounds in "ć", "ń", "ś", and "ź" can drive an Anglophone Polish student to distraction, as the differences between, say, "ź" vs. "rz" can often seem ever so subtle for a non-Pole to grasp:-)

For this reason alone, my first (and still my best) Polish teacher INSISTED from day one of our initial Polish lesson on constant dictations, followed by slightly harder ones until I could practically hear the distinction between "trzy" compared with/as opposed to "czy" etc. Believe me, I never thought I'd get it. Eventually, I did.

However, learning to write "góra" instead of the jarringly incorrect "gura" and the like took many months to master, concomitant though with my acquisition of new vocabulary!

Language / Nice to meet you all. I have a question about Poland's Accents? [18]

English is just the opposite! There are more letters which needn't be there phonetically speaking than a person can shake a stick at:-)

We're full of "silent" vowels, especially, schwa-sounds, and similarly confusing stuff, whereas in Polish, the pronunciation is almost predictably transparent. This is why Poles speaking English often sound so chirpy and mechanical, e.g. "Aj amm f'ramm PolAND..." vs. "I'm fr'm Pol'nd", because it's anethema to Polish to drop final phonemes or not pronounce a sound which is written:-)