Life / Lack of Spacial Acuity in Poland [69]

Different culture have different spatial awareness. Private zone in Polich culture is slightly smaller than in UK, but luckily for us - still greater than in Latin American or Arab culture.

Moreover Polish society isn't so monolithic. There are many cultural differences between social classes and regions including private zone or politeness.

But you're right. There are many louts in Polish streets and public spaces.
We can partly blame Soviet era - with scarce buses & trams going with no regard for timetables, with scarce merchandise in shops, attacked by crowds to get anything.

And - of course - bad education.

It could sound pompously posh, but I also hate these loutish crowds but learned how to avoid them. For example I'm not going to malls during peak hours.

UK, Ireland / Brits to protest against foreigners in the workforce, including Poles. [289]


Yes, indeed.
Socialism and nationalism are both collectivisms and statisms.
The former gives an extra authority to the state to fight for lower class at the expense of middle class tax payers - and of course - to decide who is who.

The latter gives the same extra authority to build walls against foreigners at the expense of both foreigners and countrymen.

Moreover special rights for local workers fueled by socialism support or lever discriminatory actions against foreigners.

We should remember that exact name of the Nazi party was Nazional-Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter-Partei and that Mussolini was a socialist activist at first.

UK, Ireland / Recently beaten up in England by 3 Polish guys [93]


By the way - Fakt is German owned newspaper.

Language / Slovio - the international simplified Slavic language [37]

Slovio could be interesting linguistic experiment - if only the etymology and rules were well founded. However they weren't.

Slavonic languages are only languages. There is so many dramatic differences between nations speaking them. The language similarity does not build any deep unity in this case.

There is almost nothing more. All these small liaisons between Slavonic nations are due to the neighborhood not to the common ancestry.

There are no Slavs. It isn't a race nor DNA-based group. There is no common history. There is no common civilization. You rather have here 3 or 4 civilizations fighting for these people: Western, Eastern, Muscovian and Muslim.

In terms of civilizations: Slovenians are closer to Lombards than Sicilians are - and by no means close to remote Russians, Croats are closer to Abruzzians, Slovaks are closer to Hungarians, Czech to Germans, most Poland to Germans.

Panslavism is stupid because it ignores the reality.

Genealogy / Kozlowski / Krzysik in the Korczyna / Krosno or Wapiersk / Lidzbark [18]

KOZ£OWSKI is a male form, while KOZ£OWSKA is exact form for a female in Polish.

Anyway KOZ£OWSKI has origin in a proper noun KOZIO£ or KOZIE£ meaning a billy-goat or a male goat. But it also could be from a toponym: KOZ£ÓW (16 localities) or KOZ£OWA, KOZ£OWO.

It's quite popular name with 34 204 persons with male form & 38 658 female form. Here you have a map with geographical distribution.
And here you have something about localities wiith names Kozłów dir.icm.edu.pl/pl/Slownik_geograficzny/Tom_IV/560 (in Polish).

News / Poland: In Top First 15 Countries in the WORLD by the number of CRIMES [286]

It is really safer now in Poland.
Before 2005 there were many violent crimes here.

There were big problem with Russian and Polish (Wołomin, Pruszków etc.) mafia. It was connected with:
- liberal policy in law enforcement performed by excommunists and left-wingers,
- many secret service officers dismissed and without well paid job,
- Russian soldiers without pay but with good knowledge of Poland, where they garrisoned,
- and maybe some infiltration by Russian secret service.

There were some machine gun fighting and car bombings. Even Chief Police Officer was killed by mob. I remember one car bombing and one police pursuit with gun firing on my housing district. I've heard about forced tributes from business, mostly restaurants.

But now it's quite different. Main criminal group were smashed.

However it's true that Police tends not to register small criminal acts notified by victims. They don't want to worsen traceability statistics. The pay depends on it.

There is still many problems: police staff is underpaid, prosecutors politically dependent, the courts procedurally archaic, many judges with lack of moral qualifications and practically unpunishable and last but not least awful laws.

I was never robbed or beaten in Poland, and last year while in Madrid I lost all credit cards and ID, in London almost beaten and in Rome almost deceived. Nice string. In Madrid I have visited my daughter in a student house - all parents visiting her colleagues had some petty theft incident.

But on the other hand I did feel very safe there even by night. And the same in Poland.

Genealogy / Kozlowski / Krzysik in the Korczyna / Krosno or Wapiersk / Lidzbark [18]


Yes, indeed, Kozłowski could have Jewish origin in some cases - all depends, when they left former Poland.

As you may know, Jews in Polish Commonwealth of Both Nations (ie. Union of Kingdom of Poland & Great Duchy of Lithuania 1569-1791) used to speak a German dialect called Yiddish. Jews had by royal privileges far reaching autonomy in laws and ways of live. They hadn't even last names - they used to call each other by first name and reference to father's name. For example: Mosze ben Jakov (Moses son of Jacob).

After the partitions of Poland (1772, 1793, 1795) all the territory fell under the new police order of Prussia, Austria and Russia. Comparing to Polish liberty they were police states. They even wanted (what violence) to list all people, and in order to do that they all had to have last names.

Christians used to have last names. But Jews had none. So then it produced many ad hoc creations made by occupational administrations clerks. Sometimes it ended with quite well sounding last names like Kohen, Schohet (from profession name) or Lemberger, Tarnopoler,

jewishgen.org/JRI-PL/psa/plock_surn.htm
Kozlower (from locality name).
(By the way the clerks were underpaid and found the way to get some extra money. They invented many derogatory or funny names like Pommeranzengelb (Orangeyellow) to force bribes from guys who wanted to escape such an abasement. But many Jews were very poor so their descendants still must grapple with conseqeunces.

But returning to your case. Some guy form the township of KOZ£ÓW, could be presented with the last name of KOZLOWER, KOSLOWER or KOZLOVER.

However, having in mind that all these territories were still under Polish cultural influence, many Jews chose to be a Pole and be a part of local elite. So they changed names to KOZ£OWSKI.


Yes. Firstly you must determine when they emigrated and from which part of EE. You can start with Ancestry.com. They have many immigrant listings form XIX and XX centuries.

Saczek could be SĄCZEK or SACZEK.
SACZEK is a diminutive from SAK = big travel bag (pannier, purse) or purse seine for fishing.
SĄCZEK is for filter, drain but more probably it's from a nasty moniker for a guy who sips or trickle (Polish verb SĄCZYĆ), maybe he was drinking very slowly or even doing all very slowly.

News / Poland: In Top First 15 Countries in the WORLD by the number of CRIMES [286]


Yup! You must have good sources, some Deep Throat.

But I haven't. I only read newspapers (online of course), watch TV news and look around. And you know, there is silence. The only clamour is from politicians barking on each other.

Language / Old Polish Vs New Polish [29]


Isn't it a German or Yiddish: Wie geht's? [vee-gates] meaning How is it going? or How are you?

Language / Old Polish Vs New Polish [29]


Yeah. But yers were vocalized in XII-XIII century or so. You have very scarce written material from this period.

Polish flourished and stabilized in XV-XVI century. Jan Kochanowski (1530-1584) was the greatest Polish poet and the most part (I think >90%) of his works is still comprehensible.

Later trends consisted of simplifying of consonant groups, elimination of accented vowels, uniformization of grammatical forms, adaptation of common European set of neologisms.

There were some downfall in clarity during the late Baroque-Rococo periods when Polish text were heavy interleaved with Latin words and erudite antique allegories. Much smaller drawback can be met in XIX century were some artificial syntax fashions were popular in literature and administrative language.

Much greater changes were made in dialectology: Polish regional dialects are nearly extinct now. As an effect quite big lexical resources and word forms are not used anymore. Moreover many words for tools or activities, which together make up material culture are dead as well.

News / Polar bear attack - a Polish guy survived [38]

I met bears two times in 80s in Tatra mountains - first seen from large distance while eating berries on the slope, second when he attacked a mountain shelter home Dolina Roztoki in the wake of food. In fact it was Eurasian brown bear (PL: Niedźwiedź brunatny, LA: Ursus arctos arctos) not grizzly, which is a larger subspecies. Third time there were only an alert from national park service about some bear winding in vicinity and attacking sheep.

So don't try to make fun of it. It's very serious ;-)

News / Polar bear attack - a Polish guy survived [38]


Damn! They were doing a really big job. I was totally taken in. Even the paw traces on the doors. Perfection. No wonder that they managed later to grab so many jobs in England from Englishmen, who hadn't such an opportunity to practice so hard.

Language / Old Polish Vs New Polish [29]


I've tried to interpret it as if the Vistula must to rethink its horny behaviour. But OK, it's quite enigmatic line. The master had a bad while (deadline factor or one chalice too far). Pity. It would be so light and funny verse.

Language / Slovio - the international simplified Slavic language [37]


Yes, indeed. Quite a good bite of the old new brave world. It would be so nice to be the ancestor of the whole mankind. Yes, why not. Why not to assume that Adam was a Pole.

Many Polish noble families tried to present they roots directly in Roman equites. They even were able to point a precise family as ancestors. And it was why many of noblemen learn to speak Latin. Especially Lithuanian nobles liked to link Latium with Lituania, cause it's obviously the same while the name is almost the same.

Language / "Zaraz wracam" - Why not "zaraz wrócę" ? [32]


Yes, in some extent. But, in my feeling, here it's little more about how sure you are about what you say.

Jadę - I've just decided, I've even maybe started to prepare, at least mentally
Pojadę - it could sound like some project to go, but now don't speak about it.

You have some more pairs:
biorę - wezmę
robię - zrobię

But it doesn't work with every verb.

History / Is Jozef Pilsudski the king of modern Poles? [138]


Most of them just escaped from their ugly, overpopulated and claustrophobic statelets, full of violence to exercise their right of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in more friendly immense kingdom of opportunities. Just as in America later...

The other, masters in their arts and skills Germans, Italians, French, were just headhunted by Polish monarchs and magnates.

OK with it?

History / Is Jozef Pilsudski the king of modern Poles? [138]

BB.
Stoss Veit from Nämberch was a headhunted one - young and promising artisan, which made some money and coined name in Kraków and Gniezno.

Language / "Zaraz wracam" - Why not "zaraz wrócę" ? [32]

You're right, SzwedwPolsce, of course ;)

However we're discussing here some elusive distinctions between Zaraz wracam and Zaraz wrócę in this thread. So there is a space for some more subtle and sophisticated lucubrations.

Language / Slovio - the international simplified Slavic language [37]

I'd prefer patronymic after the Creator ie. Adam Bożewicz

Language / Polish and Hungarian, how similar? [53]


The only one trail which can lead us to the statement that Hungarian is intelligible for common Poles is that before the end of the WW1 Slovaks where citizens of the Kingdom of Hungary for more than 900 years. There were even no province of the name Slovakia and the area was called Felső-Magyarország (Upper Hungary) or Felvidék (Upland).

It is proven that people from the other side of the frontier on Karpaty Mountains were addressed as Węgrzy, Węgrowie, Węgrzyni (Hungarians) in local Polish dialect of southern borderland people. But they spoke Slovak dialects which are very similar to Polish dialects and are bilaterally intelligible. And yes there were also many Jews in different state of assimilation or enrooting in emerging national sociaties: German Jews, Hungarian Jews, Yiddish Jews, Slovakian Jews and Hebrew Jews (zionists).

On the other hand - if I dare to add you some background or ideas - in this really multicultural regions of former Imperial-Royal Austro-Hungarian Monarchy knowing languages was one of the most important skill useful not only in career planning but in every-day use with shop-owner Yiddish speaker, bureaucrat - German, wagon-craftsman Slovak, nobleman - Hungarian or Polish and wife - Ukrainian.

A good example were:
1. my great-great-grandfather Austrian officer who knew "deutsch, ungarisch, wallachisch u. polnisch" (German, Hungarian, Romanian & Polish).
2. my grandfather small shop owner who knew Polish, Ukrainian, some Yiddish/German, some Russian.

Language / Polish or any Slavic language key to any other Slavic languages? [126]


Yes, but it used to have the exact form wrzemię in 13th century. However 100 years later was completely unknown and misinterpreted.

For example in Holy Cross Sermons.
K niemuż gdaż człowiek grzeszny rozpamię[taję grzechy z]stąpi, to czu sam siebie wspomienie, z tajnego sirca [strumienie gor]zkich słez za grzechy wylije i to uznaje, kiegdy sgrzeszył, w kakie wrzemię sgrzeszył, kilkokroć sgrzeszył, którymi grzechy twórca swego na gniew powabił; a jakokoli to grzeszny człowiek uczyni, tako nagle sirce jego jemu doradzi, iżby grzecha ostał, swojich grzechów sirdecznie żałował i [z] świętą cyrekwią dzińsia zawołał: Veni, Domine! et noli tardare; relaxa facinora plebi tue Israel! Toć to i jeść prawda, iże idzie tobie kroi zbawiciel, iżby nas ot wieczne śmirci zbawił.


Funny question. And what is the most Germanic language?

Language / Polish and Hungarian, how similar? [53]


He could mix facts or misinterpret but there were Vlachs in Slovakia and Poland of Romanian origin ie. from Walachia. They migrated in search of new pasturages in late medieval period.

Vlachs (Wołosi in Polish) wandered along Carpatian ridge to former Poland, Hungary and even as far as to Moravia and got place to live, when villages in mountain regions emptied due to climate change and exhaustion of soils. Vlachs were granted with autonomy under the Ius Vlachonicum (Walachian Law, Prawo Wołoskie), professed Orthodox faith and spoke eastern slavonic dialects Ruthenian, which they caught during their long journey, however with many borrowed words from Romanian.

Life / Ripped Off in Poland? - Expose here: [185]


Polish service sector never was as good as in USA. Nobody even try to say something like that. In fact American services are widely regarded as the best in the world. So I'm not surprised you're nervous here dealing with shop workers who don't care. I feel your pain. But you are overreacting. I think you should just depart from Poland as soon as possible. Otherwise your allergy on Poland will intoxicate you totally and the forum posters as well.

Life / Ripped Off in Poland? - Expose here: [185]


Yes, false smile isn't so nice as sincere one - still better than scowl.
However I haven't meant face grimacing but the getting things done attitude. German service workers are stiff. If you're late with something and need extra quick service, you can forget about it in Germany as I remember from printing industry. But it's only my personal observation. I'll be happy to hear what are yours.

Language / Polish or any Slavic language key to any other Slavic languages? [126]


Yes, it was true. There are many borrowings from Low Saxon in Danish, Swedish and Polish, maybe some in English and Flemish. But it was in XII-XIV century and only in limited region.

Polonia / POLISH People IN SPAIN ....... [12]


Erasmus - they refinance your accommodation.
Technical University of Gdansk has exchange programs with Barcelona (beware Catalan), Madrid, Alcala de Henares, Murcia, Granada

History / Is Jozef Pilsudski the king of modern Poles? [138]


Yes, unfortunately, there is no direct evidence. There are only clues and hints: one letter mentioning French refusal of "something", some trails of German counteractions, some memoirs, changing foreign minister from pacifist one to more devoted one, the Ensign Incident in Gdańsk...

Dariusz Baliszewski wrote about it


What does that have to do with anything?
The hypothesis about preventive action is quite plausible. And if you treat seriously diplomacy language it was at least to fly a kite if France wish to stop German remilitarization. The answer was negative and immediately after that new FM Beck started the equal distance policy with Germany and Soviets.

It's not a Michael Moore post-modernistic rubbish goulash or red-green gobbledygook on Man Made Great Global Warming.

History / Life magazine 1.09.39 and sattelite pictures? [3]

Wonderful piece, indeed. Thanks TIT.

It's cartographers work, of course. I've seen this kind of shading the mountains from 30s and you can find some similarity in Austro-Hungarian crosshatching the mountains. But you're right it's excellent artistic quality.

But look! How fascinating it is - even Life guys didn't believe that drole de guerre is possible and the Western front will be the most peaceful place on earth till the spring 1940.

All these bombings expected and never made.

History / The relations: Church and III Reich (Kosciol-NS Niemcy) [16]


The very old RED tune. Boring. Facts please, not factoids. I found a novel from the Stalin times - very long (1000 pages or so) and the language that defends this 'piece of art' from being read. However there were some illustrations: guys in Nazi caps with hakenkreuz shaking hands with ugly mugs in cardinal's hat and patting big fat cigar smoking capitalist, and another with bishop having blood on his hands. Wow, thriller.

Pope never supported Hitler. If you found some facts denying it, please be specific and share with us and don't disseminate memes. If he was very cautious in open attacking Nazis it was to protect laymen from regressive measures. However:

- in 1934 in the Christmas Eve sermon Pope condemned Nazi,
- in 1935 after Nuremberg statutes were imposed Vatican Radio broadcast a plea to pray for persecuted Jews.
- the Pope's encyclical "Mit brennender sorge" read in 11500 parishes in Germany - Goebbels in response noted in his diary "Now priest must learn our order and tenacity".

- 1938 during meeting with pilgrims from Belgium Pope said: "Antisemitism is unacceptable, we are all Semites spiritually".
- in 1938 cardinal Initzer of Vienna said something positive about Nazis and he was immediately forced to correct it publicly.
- in January 1940 Pope made an instruction for Vatican Radio to show horrible excesses of uncivilized tyranny against Jews and Poles . "Jewish Advocate" - newspaper of Boston wrote about this broadcast as an open condemnation of German crimes made by Nazis in Poland stating that they were insulting moral conscience of the mankind.

The fact is that Catholic clergymen and Catholic laymen saved more Jews than any other institution, organization or state. And the clergyman paid the price. Thousands were imprisoned even archbishops and bishops, many died - 20% of Polish clergymen were executed or killed in Konzentrationlagers (in some Western Polish bishoprics more than 50%) and Polish bishops Kozal & Goral died in KZ.

History / Books on the Partitions of Poland? [5]


You can start with:
- Robert Howard Lord's The second partition of Poland: a study in diplomatic, 1915 - I know it, it's good indeed but some remarks on the first partition I disagree.

- Herbert H. Kaplan's The first partition of Poland, 1962 - I haven't read it yet.
- Baron George Shaw-Lefevre Eversley's The partitions of Poland, 1915 - some way old
- Jerzy Lukowski's The partitions of Poland: 1772, 1793, 1795, 1999 - not read

... and then maybe something in Polish.

or feel free to ask for some details here.