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Posts by boletus  

Joined: 13 Apr 2011 / Male ♂ 		Last Post: 10 Nov 2012
Threads: Total: 30 / In This Archive: 27
Posts: Total: 1356 / In This Archive: 958 		From: Canada, Toronto
Speaks Polish?: yes

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boletus   
13 Apr 2011
Language / It's just semantics! - in Polish or otherwise [15]

First of all - greetings to all of you. This is my first registered post here, after lurking around for quite some time. I must say I have seen many great posts here, and unfortunately - quite a number of hateful and ridiculous messages. Nevertheless, I am taking my chances with this crowd. :-) I am not sure whether or not I would be able to contribute much to this forum, but I'll try my best.

I realize that many of you are English teachers, translators, novelists, poets. My command of written English is not even close to your standards, so please go easy on me, language-wise. I hope I can reciprocate somehow in some other respects.

For this post, I have actually prepared two related questions, prompted by a discussion I saw on this forum:
1. How would you translate to Polish the expression "It's just semantics!"
2. What does it actually mean in English?

Before you come up with some contemptuous answers I must say that I know a little bit about it, since I know how to navigate Internet, etc. :-)

But what actually bothers me is a deeper sense embedded in this expression. Some of my background is in the computer science, and I strongly think that semantics is much more important than anything else in that field - be it the grammar or the syntax. I can expand on this issue if requested.

So when I hear or see it written - Oh, it's just semantics - then I am not sure whether the person has no clue what semantics actually means, or whether the scientific and artsy worlds never intersect.
boletus   
13 Apr 2011
USA, Canada / Opening a small shop, and selling many Polish items in USA. Do you think this would work? [32]

Polish chocolate is good to, plus honey (but again, there are strict laws in a lot of countries about importing honey).

I don't know much about your area, but dried mushrooms would be good to import due to being long-lasting and lightweight. Just be careful about following the laws of your country concerning food importing.

Polish chocolate is good to, plus honey (but again, there are strict laws in a lot of countries about importing honey).

What chocolate? Two days ago I was given a little gift ("I shopped specifically for you for some good Polish chocolate, since I thought you might have missed it"). Now, that was some bad Wedel's product. Made of some nuts and raisins stuff, embedded in some ridiculously overly sweet mumbo jumbo. Who owns Wedel now? Cadbury? The worst stuff I ever tasted - and I had to smile all the time and be thankful. To be truthful, if I were doing the shopping myself I would have never touched anything looking so bad. I hope you can still buy a black bitter chocolate from Wedel and other places, and also the traditional Wedel's cake. But to be frank, I have not been into any Polish shop here for the last four months, so what do I know. Being too busy ...

Honey used to be quite a good and popular item in Toronto's shops. I have not seen any honey from Poland for the last two years or so. This has something to do with that terrible viral bee disease, which kills many, many bee swarms all over the world. Now they sell here mostly the stuff from Australia (being the primary suspect to actually proliferate this disease) and from New Zealand. The last good buckwheat's honey (strong, for people with an acquired taste) I bought here was from Ukraine, one year ago. Gone ...

On the positive side - mushrooms might be a good business for you. Over here, the Porcinis (Boletus Edulis), the Italian competition to Polish "Borowik", are sold in little packets - and they cost a lot. Polish shops still sell them, as they used to do it for years and years.

I have seen all sorts of marinated mushrooms coming from all over Poland - ranging from cheap low quality stuff, as well as the expensive chanterelles (kurki). One major reason that this is still a good concept is this: (and I do not know about the American side of the Great Lakes) On the Canadian side there used to be a very destructive clear-cut lumber-jack industry. Evidently, what we see around here, tree-wise, is no older than 80 years old or so. The point is, when the ecosystem is destroyed the mushrooms suffer as well, and they need a LOT OF TIME to come back again.

As an anecdotical evidence I should add that in my former 7-acre property in Northern Muskoka all I could find on my wooded property was a little patch of "kurki" - 1x3 meters. That's it! Ok, some occasional porcini, but nothing to call home about.

In conclusion, the mushroom business in USA seems a good idea to me for few reasons: non-availability, modern cuisine (French cooks on both sides of the Great Lakes).
boletus   
13 Apr 2011
Language / It's just semantics! - in Polish or otherwise [15]

A person was eaten by a river dwelling reptile, arguing about whether it was a yellow snouted crocodile or a red crested alligator

I liked your layered explanation but did you really mean the part I (mis)quoted? :-)

I like Ziemowit's ".. cokolwiek by to miało znaczyć". It is not dismissive and opens the door to possible future clarification of details. On the other hand, a carbon copy translation of the phrase in question: "kwestia semantyki czy czysta semantyka" sounds to me unnatural, quite pompous actually, in Polish.

Semantic web? That was a good one, alexw68!, I am sure many semantic web scientists or designers must hear that phrase quite often, as a joke.

But playing a devil's advocate for a while… I am often tempted to say, "It's all about semantics!", or "It's just syntax!" instead of "It's just semantics!".

When I design a piece of software I am very deeply concerned about its meaning. I have to decide what is its purpose, what it should deliver and what is its interface to a user. The rest is superficial. Once I decided on the meaning of the procedure I have designed I can then take one of the gazillion programming languages - all having different syntax - and implement the idea. Of course, the beauty of the program is mostly based on the syntax of a programming language one uses (so called programming language wars are mostly about syntax), but the usefulness of the program is in its semantics.
boletus   
13 Apr 2011
Language / It's just semantics! - in Polish or otherwise [15]

Put simply then: human language != computer language (whether on a syntactic or semantic level). Human life != a computer program, not even close.

I am not going to debate this, because those two statements represent tautology.:-)

Now, this could be a good reason to start some heated debate unless I have first explained to you that I meant the "tautology" as the "universally unconditional truth", not as something with a negative connotation, such as in "you are repeating yourself, sir". So I still claim that semantics matters very much in real life, not just in programming.

Oh, and I agree that some foreign concepts has been adopted to Polish with wrong semantics. I wonder why? My classic is "awantura".
boletus   
14 Apr 2011
Language / Polish Poetry: Should one only translate into one's own native tongue? [39]

Marit MacArthur in her essay [1] recalls an obvious and accepted truth among most translators that one should only translate into one's native tongue. She concludes with the suggestion that the ideal solution in navigation of the poetry translation traps is collaboration between:

two poets or literary scholars representing each language and poetic tradition, such as Miłosz (whose last name, incidentally, means "love"), and Robert Hass, or Miłosz and Peter Dale Scott, or Magnus J. Krynski and Robert A. Maguire, who have, in my view, produced remarkable translations of Szymborska. There are also some examples of effective collaborative translation in Sommer's Continued, mentioned above. John and Bogdana Carpenter, translators of Zbigniew Herbert also come to mind, though they also present another problem.

I know many of you are multilingual and some of you write or translate poetry. What do you think? I am really curious. Are Polish translators incapable of delivering Anglo-Saxon poetry by overusing Latinate vocabulary and struggling with male rhymes and monosyllabic rhythms in English? Are English speaking natives capable of restraining themselves from converting Polish poetry into something that sounds uniformly international English and is generally lost in translation?

I know, this sounds like overgeneralization, and there are probably many good examples of Polish natives doing good job translating classical poets, such as Galczyński, Tetmayer, Tuwim. There are plenty of blogs around that produce translations from Polish to English that sound good to me. But I am not a native English speaker, and that's a point - I cannot really judge the products.

I have seen several good translation from Polish to English, remarkably well done by an American, Walter Whipple[2]. His rendition of Tuwim's "Lokomotywa" is excellent, in my opinion, and I do not care that all the rhymes are male and rhythms are monosyllabic. I can still sense the great onomatopoeic effects, sounding almost as good as in original Polish. Well, but this little poem is special, almost designed to be easily translated to English. But Walter Whipple handles other Polish classical poets remarkably well: Słowacki, Norwid, Tetmayer, Szymborska...

[1] "Some Problems with Modern Polish Poetry in Translation"[1] , posted on 23 December 2010 in Contemporary Poetry Review,
cprw.com/some-problems-with-modern-polish-poetry-in-translation

[2] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Whipple
boletus   
14 Apr 2011
Language / Polish Poetry: Should one only translate into one's own native tongue? [39]

I'd go further. The only person who should translate poetry into their native tongue is a poet.

Polish poetry has been for too long ignored because most of the translations have been done by academics.

Yes, that's what she (Marit MacArthur) said as well.
boletus   
14 Apr 2011
Language / Polish Poetry: Should one only translate into one's own native tongue? [39]

good translation could not be made owing to too many abstract French terms in the verses

But this seems to be something else. He apparently was capable of doing the translation, but he did not want to do it. Maybe his uncle's messianic philosophy did not fit his view of the world? Just guessing.
boletus   
15 Apr 2011
Language / Polish Poetry: Should one only translate into one's own native tongue? [39]

I understand that mine is the minority position but there's no arguing with taste.

Well, I am just a poor peasant, but I am fascinated by work of masters.

But I can easily guess that there is a fluid border between the original source and the translation output. How far you, as a translator, are allowed to interfere with the original structure of a poem? Is a form as important as a content? And what do we call the content? Surely it's not just a story! There is something over and above over there.

I can imagine that in some cases the outcome is so different from the source that the two might be completely unrecognizable as "a couple". So in effect the translator has transformed the original text into something else - becoming in a way a co-author of the poem. Is it fair? Some say yes, some say no.

Some literary products are strictly about the form, like - for example - creation of many volumes of text, subjected to some formal rules. Volume 1, all vowels are just "a", volume 2 - we are using only e's, etc. Is this literature? Sure it is. We may not like it, but we do not have the power to categorize it is "non-literature".

Let me describe one little item. There is a book:
Le Ton beau de Marot, In Praise of the Music of Language, by Douglas R, Hofstadter.

It has more than 600 pages of incessant talking on hundreds of subjects. but it circles around one major topic: translation of one very short poem by an obscure 16-th century French poet "Clément Marot".

Here it goes

A une Damoyselle malade

Ma mignonne,
Je vous donne
Le bon jour;
Le séjour
C'est prison.
Guérison
Recouvrez,
Puis ouvrez
Votre porte
Et qu'on sorte
Vitement,
Car Clément
Le vous mande.
Va, friande
De ta bouche,
Qui se couche
En danger
Pour manger
Confitures;
Si tu dures
Trop malade,
Couler fade
Tu prendras,
Et perdras
L'embonpoint.
Dieu te doint
Santé bonne,
Ma mignonne.

This poem has the following properties:
1. The poem is 28 lines long
2. Each line consists of three syllables
3. Each line main stress falls on final syllable
4. The poem is a string of rhythmic couples: AA BB CC ...
5. Midway, the tone changes from formal "vous" to informal "tu"
6. The poems opening line is echoed precisely at the very bottom.
7. The poet puts his own name directly into his poem.

TRANSLATE.
This was the challenge issued by Hofstadter to many people around the world. And guess what? All had major problems. English-specific, Polish-specific, Italian-specific...
boletus   
15 Apr 2011
Language / Polish Poetry: Should one only translate into one's own native tongue? [39]

I loved his "Goedel, Escher, Bach". Mind-boggling stuff :)

Intriguing, you actually loved it? Nice! I did not read it but I know more or less what it is all about. Bach and Escher taken for granted, but Gödel is not on everybody's top ten list.
boletus   
15 Apr 2011
Language / Polish Poetry: Should one only translate into one's own native tongue? [39]

You don't even have to take my word for it, as I do not need to prove anything to anyone ;-)

I hope you are not irked by anything I wrote. At the risk of repeating myself: I really appreciate good work translators generally do, especially in literature, and particularly in poetry. I am just asking questions, as is clearly shown in the title of the thread. It fascinates me to see what kind of obstacles a translator must face and what methods are used to overcome them.

The little poem I quoted was just one example, where the formal structure does not fit well into some languages. Imagine translating it to Italian: one must forget about the original three syllable rhythm - four syllables are more likely.

Japanese haiku, with its 5-7-5 syllable structure, does not map well into the "stress-timed" English. Here is a quote from "Haiku, An Anthology of Japanese Poems" by Stephen Addiss, Fumiko Yamamoto and Akira Yamamoto:

Take for example, the most famous of all haiku, a verse by Basho (1644-94):

Furu ike ya
kawazu tobikomu
mizu no oto

Furu means "old", ike means "pond or ponds", and ya is an exclamatory particle, something like "ah". Kawazu is a "frog or frogs'; tobikomu "jump in"; mizu, 'water; no, the genetive "of"; and oto, "sound or sounds (Japanese does not usually distinguish singular from plural). If using the singular, a literal translation would be:

Old pond--
a frog jumps in
the sound of water

Only the third of these lines matches the 5-7-5 formula, and the other lines would require "padding" to fit the usual definition:

[There is an] old pond--
[suddenly] a frog jumps in
the sound of water

That does not mean that one cannot write good haiku verses in English or in other languages. The only thing is - they will not be strictly the Japanese-like haiku.
boletus   
15 Apr 2011
Life / Embarrassing Polish parents/relatives stories [5]

Merged: Polish stories: Oh, that famous jump from Kasprowy

A funny story is being told on the blog "Blog narciarski Krzysztofa Brunetki". The original source is the book "Sklep potrzeb kulturalnych", Kroh, Antoni, 1999 edition [I guess].

Here is my (long) English summary:

A legend has it that during the WWII, one of the local skiers from Zakopane area, Józef Uznański, jumped out of the gondola of the cable railway at the vicinity of the upper station at Kasprowy Mountain, with the skies on, and successfully ran down the rocky gully downhill, escaping SS bullets. Some local guides still tell this story to tourists, hailing him as a heroic Home Army courier.

Upper station of Kasprowy cable railway

Old gondola of the Kasprowy cable railway

In fact the story is not quite correct. During WWII Józek was quite a handsome boy and also an excellent skier. If it was not for the war he would probably become an Olympian. Girls were after him all the time. One of those was a daughter of a kindly Tyrollean, a German border guard, stationed near the Kasprowy's upper station. He has learned about the love affair of Józek and his daughter and they had a man-to-man talk. Papa adviced cooling down until the war is over - pointing out all sort of dangers facing all of them if Gestapo learned about it.

Well, since the two lovers continued meeting secretly, the papa decided to teach Józek a lesson and set a trap at the upper station, pretending to be away on some assignment. He and his two buddies simply decided to beat Józek up. When Józek saw them waiting for him at the upper station he did what was described before: he jumped down and run down the gully. No, nobody was shooting at him. German papa was not that angry.

Józef Uznański, a legendary skier and TOPR rescuer
(TOPR - Tatra Volunteer Search and Rescue)

After the war Józek was still an excellent skier and even a better rescuer. Nobody denies that, but he has never been a Home Army courier.

But one day a French delegation of rescuers visited Zakopane and Józek was one of their hosts. They must have had few drinks and the French - being French - bragged about general and specific French superiority. Józek got angry and told them his story with all the embellishments he could think about: SS, bullets flying, couriering for Home Army and all of this. The French were really impressed, took plenty of photos, and then - after a big article with pictures of Józek appeared in some French magazine - some organization of Maquis veterans decided to pin some medal on him. And when the Polish newspapers learned about it, they started another avalanche of stories. What initially looked like an innocent bragging now became a real embarrassment. It was too late to admit the bragging. And this way Józek has become a national hero - with another medal for bravery (Polish this time) and interviews abound.

In the sixties a movie was being shot on site about Józek and since nobody was willing to repeat what Józek originally did a stuntman was given an easier task: jump down from the gondola near the lower station and slide down of the branches of a mighty spruce. This worked fine first time, but during the second shot the stuntman missed the spruce and landed in hospital. Till this day the passengers of the cable railway look for two places: one where the stuntman jumped, and the other where Józek jumped.

Locals in Zakopane knew the real story and Józek was quite sensitive about all of this. Many years ago, Antoni Kroh - the author of the book describing the events, a historian, became a volunteer rescuer in Tatra Search and Rescue Mission, Zakopane. As everywhere in the world, newcomers are usually tested and often become anti-heroes of practical jokes, such as snipe hunt, wild-goose chase or fool's errand. [A famous bucket of prop wash comes to mind]. Somebody pointed Józek to Antoni, described to him his heroic WWII deed and suggested that this would be a good material for some historical scientific paper. Antoni jumped into such opportunity, run after Józek, presented himself and asked for interview. Józek looked him up and down, thought a little bit, inhaled some air and then proposed: "A w mordę chcesz?" [Would you like to get punched in the face?]

[The Google translator just made me laugh: "In the face you want?".]
boletus   
15 Apr 2011
History / Civilian life in Poland (Krakow) during the WW2. [30]

What was the color of the soldiers' uniforms?

So many questions. I advice you to go some specialized fora: history buffs, reenactment groups, even internet actions, such as eBay, where they sell little items, such as buttons, field caps, etc.

For a start, here is a pointer to a thread about WWII uniforms. You can see there plenty of colors and many details. But watch it and make sure to read the captions - some of them are German or Russian items.

militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?81050-WWII-uniform s-equipment-and-gear
boletus   
16 Apr 2011
Language / Polish Poetry: Should one only translate into one's own native tongue? [39]

The link bellow points to some department of Gonville & Caius, a college of the University of Cambridge. The content of the subdirectory .../Chinese/ suggests close interaction with some academic and cultural institutions in China.

Tips on translating poems (into or out of English)
babylon.acad.cai.cam.ac.uk/students/study/english/chinese/trans-po.pdf

This short tutorial touches some of the points raised in this thread, and provides many tips. My first impression was that of Master Po advising the little Grasshopper, but I have to admit - it has its charm.
boletus   
16 Apr 2011
Language / Too many English words in the Polish language! [709]

It's not even a hundred years later and an average Pole needs a dictionary to understand this.

Or this:

ENGLISH/ POLISH/ DUTCH

Sailing points/ Kursy/ Zeirichtingen

close-hauled / bajdewind / aan de wind
beam-reach / półwiatr / halve wind
broad-reach / baksztag / ruime wind
down-wind / fordewind / voor de wind

Rigging/ Osprzęt i takielunek/ Onderdelen van een boot

mast / maszt / mast
spreaders / salingi / zalingen
boom / bom / giek
centreboard/ miecz / zwaard
rudder / ster / roer
main sail / grot / grootzeil
jib / fok / fok
spinnaker / spinaker / spinnaker
forestay / stag / voorstag
backstay / achtersztag / hekstag / Achterstag (GERMAN)
running backstay/ baksztag / backstage
shroud / wanta / (staat) want
halyard / val / fał
sheet / szot / schoot
guy / bras / loefschoot
spinnaker pole/ spinakerbom/ spinakerboom
camcleat / knaga / klemkikker

From:
ilo.org/public/french/snl/nautica/dictionary.pdf
boletus   
17 Apr 2011
Language / Too many English words in the Polish language! [709]

Yes I know that they are still in use, but not where I am now. New Polonia is not familiar with it. This is a big headache to unlearn the middle column if one used it for years. Most of them are foreign anyway, with few exceptions, such as "ostrzyć", "odpadać" and few more.

I cannot find any link now, but I was told long time ago that in early 20s Mariusz Zaruski and others were seriously considering replacement of all the Dutch/English/German terminology by its Polish equivalent, but they had to give up after few unfortunate choices.

He helped to establish the Marine Terminology Commission which included representatives from Marine Academy and Universities. The Commission edited six volumes of the Polish - English - French - German - Russian Marine Dictionary. In Poland, before the Second World War, boy scouts movement was important part of marine educations among Polish youth.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariusz_Zaruski
boletus   
17 Apr 2011
Language / Too many English words in the Polish language! [709]

English. Mixed crews are not unusual here and many Polonia youths do not even speak proper day-to-day Polish. Typically there is very little formality on board of day cruisers, but when a command is issued the response must be automatic; there is no time for translation or explanation.
boletus   
17 Apr 2011
Language / Too many English words in the Polish language! [709]

Absolutely not! But I'll take a bait!

Sailing terminology is just an exception to general rules. One cannot be any worse by replacing one loan word by another, especially when a situation demands it - as I described before.

I used to have plenty of objections to using technical English words in computer terminology; such as fajle, bajty, fajerłols -- and I still have. This is simply an aberration, in my opinion. But I am more relaxed now because I rarely read Polish technical papers, so such things do not affect me that much. But when I see such abuse, I still feel pain.

In writing - if I do not know a Polish equivalence of an English term I usually use the original term in quotation marks, and I do not attempt to decline or conjugate it. There is a marvellous mechanism in Polish that acts as an escape clause and is applicable to phrases like "na rzece Wisła", or "powieść Benois Dubois". This takes a little bit more time, but it does not look ugly at least. This technique would not be so easy to apply in speech, but fortunately I do not have to go through such hoops on daily basis.

I think that an operative expression that should be used in this thread is "mental laziness" - so much displayed by Polish technologists, media (including bloggers) and politicians. Add to it the everyday's posers ("developerów" but not "budowlańców", "menadżerów" but God forbid "zarządców", or "kierowników") and political language manipulators (I will not name anyone here, since this post is apolitical, but I have seen a plethora of dozens polonized English words in one document alone, which did not make any sense to me) and we have the ugly picture indeed.

I bet you that after taking any English word and appending some Polish ending to it you can easily find it in Google; meaning - some lazy fellow has already come with similar idea.

Let's see... How about "surwiwaliści"? Here you go: 144 results. "Surwiwaliści nie walczą jednak z rządem federalnym", Polityka. Polityka? One of the best Polish magazines?
boletus   
17 Apr 2011
Language / Too many English words in the Polish language! [709]

I am sorry, Magdalena, but I can only agree with you on one point only:
"budowlaniec" indeed is not a "developer" - it is a builder. But the line between "developer" and "buider" is not that sharp since "development" translates to "rozwój, rozbudowa, postęp".

"Research and Development", R&D, "Badania i Rozwój". Hey, I use to be a "developer" for quite some time, so I should know what it means exactly. And I do not build houses, nor "zagospodarowuję tereny". I still dislike phrases like "konferencje deweloperów", etc. - this therm is ugly, pompous and funny, in my opinion.

But "manager" actually means both "kierownik" and "zarządca" - and before you ask me what dictionary I used, here is the pointer: translate.google.com.

Megabyte is fine. I was objecting to "megabajt".
"Deletować"? I never used this term in my last post. But since you mentioned it: 289 cases on google. "A ja bardzo proszę nie deletować"=> Last post: 3 Jul 2010.

So this was not "ages ago". Same goes for "kancelować".

Magdalena, the essence of what I said before is: some people are really mentally lazy. There are ways to express oneself in plain Polish.
boletus   
18 Apr 2011
Language / Too many English words in the Polish language! [709]

Magdalena

I would love to learn more about this "plain Polish" of yours

One day, hopefully. :-)

I am going out for a glass wine now, before we start real nitpicking.

BTW, nothing important: I was thinking about why do you use "cofać" for "cancel" and not "zanulować", "unieważnić", "skasować" and then I realized that this might be related to the PC keyboard layout - with "backspace" key (cofać) and "delete" key (usuwać).

But not all keyboards are like this: Apple computers have just "delete" key and this works fine in editing. In other words, there is no "cofać" key. Something to think about...
boletus   
18 Apr 2011
News / Could Poland be self-sustainable in energy? [56]

Adding few facts:

The installed wind power capacity in Poland is ~1181 MW (on 14.01.2011). Wind energy density in Poland is one of the smallest in Europe. Installed capacity per capita is 0,012 kW, whereas per km2 of land area the figure amounts to 1,44 kW.

psew.pl/en/wind_energy.htm

However, a capacity is not the same as an actual power output. I could not find any data on current wind power output in Poland, so I will provide some estimate based on Ontario, Canada. Ontario's wind power capacity is roughly 1240 MW (planned 2600 MW by the end of 2011), quite comparable with that of Poland.

Current Ontario wind power output is 131 MW; that is, about 10% of the current capacity. Data taken at 12pm-1pm, Apr. 18, 2011.

ieso.ca/imoweb/marketdata/windpower.asp

Clickable map of wind farms in Poland:

psew.pl/en/elektrownie_wiatrowe_w_polsce.htm

Map of wind power in Polish voivodships in Poland 2010:

psew.pl/en/map_of_renewable_energy_sources_in_poland.htm
boletus   
19 Apr 2011
Genealogy / VILLAGE OF PIOTAKOWICE [3]

Could it be that you have misspelled names of villages you are searching for?

Piotakowice? This does not look good to me. Something is missing here.
Piotrkowice - 275,000 google entries. Wikipedia lists 11 such places in Poland.
Piotrowice - 835,000 google entries. Wikipedia lists 23 such places in Poland.

There is also a village Petrovice u Karvine, Polish: Piotrowice koło Karwiny, Moravian-Silesian region, Czech Republic - just on the border with Polish Cieszyn Silesia. The reason I mention it is related to your another name place "Choramnice", which could be also misspelled.

Choramnice does not sound Polish. But there is village of Hromnice in Plzen Region of Czech Republic.

Any place name with the root-word "chram" could be also acceptable - both in Polish and in Czech, since this is an old name for a church. However google search does not lead to anything significant here.

Coincidently "chram" and "hromnice" are somehow related.

Hromnice, officially Uvedení Páně do chrámu, is a church feast celebrated as Candlemas in English speaking countries.

The day of Hromnice is an important day for Czech weather-related folklore. It falls on February 2nd, the same day the popular Groundhog Day is celebrated in the United States.

myczechrepublic.com/czech_culture/czech_holidays/hromnice.html

The only additional information for Czech Hromnice is the origin of its name. Hromnice or diminutive hromnièky (from hrom = thunder) are church candles lighted during thunderstorms, i.e. the Czech name is analogical to English Candlemas.

myczechrepublic.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=29564

The Polish equivalent of "Hromnice" would be "Gromnice". However, there is no village with such name in Poland, as far as I can tell.

Surnames Slovik (Czech), Słowik (Polish) and Pazucha (both) are quite popular in both sides of the border and they correlate well with any place names mentioned here.

One advice though about Peter Pazucha search. Peter is not a Polish first name. It could be Czech, but more correctly it would be spelled Petr. If you are sure that your Pazucha is Polish, then Piotr is the correct Polish name.
boletus   
19 Apr 2011
History / Why did communism in Poland fail? [180]

what's scary is to what lengths will China go to sustain its growth and what will they do if/when that growth is over? revert back to Mao days? Do a Myanmar?

See: China and the end of the Deng Dynasty, Stratfor site:

stratfor.com/weekly/20110418-china-and-end-deng-dynasty
boletus   
19 Apr 2011
Language / Polish word "Dom" and its similarities in different languages [46]

Recent article from "The Economist"
Quentin Atkinson, of the University of Auckland, in New Zealand, has been looking at the evolutionary issue, trying to locate the birthplace of the first language. Michael Dunn, of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands, has been examining ontology. Fittingly, they have published their results in the two greatest rivals of scientific journalism. Dr Atkinson's paper appears in Science, Dr Dunn's in Nature.

economist/node/18557572

I followed some links. Apparently, not everyone is happy with the methods used and the findings. See for example this:

newscientist.com/article/dn20384-evolutionary-babel-was-in-southern-africa.html

Those phonemes again! Atkinson talks of Africa as a mother of all tongues, but Turkey is close enough.
boletus   
20 Apr 2011
Language / Too many English words in the Polish language! [709]

Sławomir Mizerski is a funny guy. Here is a small excerpt from: Następni do raju, Polityka - nr 6, 2004-02-07
archiwum.polityka.pl/art/nastepni-do-raju,382850.html

Kasting zaczyna się rano o dziewiątej, tłum zapisuje się przy stoliku, otrzymuje numery na przylepcu i pisze w skupieniu CV, które uśmiechnięci disnejlendzi uprzejmie zbierają, prosząc w obcych językach o zajmowanie miejsc, gdyż za chwilę nastąpi prezentejszyn z udziałem rzutnika oraz pani Madeline, menedżer talent kasting, i wtedy każdy się dowie wszystkiego.

On the site of "The Council for the Polish Language" (Rada Języka Polskiego), rpj.pan.pl there is a page devoted to linguistic advices. Prof. Bralczyk, the council's chairman, is a self-declared linguistic liberal, but even he cannot stand pretentious names sometimes.

Here are some examples of names rejected by the council: "szynek" (to be used as name of a product), "wielopak" or "multipack" (suggestion: use existing "zgrzewka"), "energetyzujący zapach" as a Polish translation of "fresh energy", Przysmak Świętokrzyski SNACK do smażenia, or "market".

A marketing director (...) asked for the council's blessing with respect to the word "market", which is customarily used in the name of a commercial network he manages. The chairman gave the negative answer:

[...]I cannot, unfortunately, share your opinion related to the usage of the word "market" in the name of the commercial network XXX. Contrary to what you write - this is not "a word functioning in Polish for a long time", and one could hardly find it in any Polish dictionary published before the year 2000. My own dictionary "Easy dictionary of difficult words" (Wilga, Warsaw 2000) lists it, but only in order to explain it to older people who do not understand what it means, and with an attached note that this is a pretentious word. I also disagree with your statement - sent to the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (OCCP) - that the word "sklep" (shop) has some association with a room equipped with "lada" - a counter, but not with a space for self services. Now, newer dictionaries of Polish language, commencing with "Słownik języka polskiego" edited by Witold Doroszewski (vol. 8, p. 280, year 1966), provide a phrase "sklep samoobsługowy" (self-serving shop) but nowhere it appears that the "counter" (lada) is a necessary element of such "sklep" (shop). Therefore, I agree with the opinion of OCCP that the word "market" should be replaced by the word "sklep" on the signboards of the commercial network XXX.
boletus   
20 Apr 2011
Language / Too many English words in the Polish language! [709]

Funny :-)

Wielopak has the truly Polish 'wielo-' in it, as well as its other part 'pak' is rooted firmly in the language [see the verb: pakować or the nouns: pakunek, paczka]

According to Bralczyk, this actually brakes the standard for Polish combination of "wiele/o-" with nouns - not the verbs, as in "wielomian", "wielopust", "wielościan", etc. But he says: "Wyraz wielopak nie jest zatem utworzony wzorcowo, niemniej sądzę, że można go dopuścić jako nazwę używaną środowiskowo." However, he still advices to use "zgrzewka" instead.

Over here we like to be more specific: 6-pack, 12-pack, as in twelve pack of beer. :-)

boletus
na na na na na
breaks, of course
boletus   
21 Apr 2011
Language / Too many English words in the Polish language! [709]

I do not know French, but I have the impression that the text you quote is just a little flick on the Sarkozy's nose and the English words are used here intentionally as a joke - in the similar manner as the Mizerski's quote from my post #239.

Besides. the word «coaching» is enclosed in guillemets, so this would not count as an argument that the French just gave up. :-)
boletus   
22 Apr 2011
Language / Too many English words in the Polish language! [709]

What are you like, modern Polish?
static.unilang.org/babelbabble/index.php?n=20&t=8#up

The question being the title of this article was uttered by one of the greatest modern Polish linguists, Professor J. Miodek, during one of his lectures. According to the Professor, the influences of foreign languages constitute the largest danger to the Polish language, and the most dangerous is English.

Chart 1. What annoys you most in the modern Polish, used in public?
(A public opinion poll conducted by the CBOS)

Chart 2. The number of English loanwords in Polish in the course of time.


  • Chart 1

  • Chart 2
boletus   
22 Apr 2011
Language / Too many English words in the Polish language! [709]

Well, I am the last person to provide advice on such matters - usage of definite/indefinite particles is not my strong point, to say the least. :-) What I really meant was "THE NOSE", the one and only one. :-). If it was an error I stand corrected. But I have seen the particle "the" in front of proper names, as in "This defeat really challenged the Merkel's government".

The idiom in question actually exists, in both figurative and direct sense, as in: "Russia received the next flick on the nose" or "With a young puppy, a flick on the nose most of the time will work". This subject was even discussed quite recently on some translators' forum, here:

proz.com/kudoz/polish_to_english/idioms_maxims_sayings/4085344-dać_prztyczka_w_nos.html

By the way, you must have caught my previous message during the editing stage, when I was correcting "this expression" to "the impression".
boletus   
26 Apr 2011
Language / się - explanation needed ? [13]

But myć się -> idź się myć, 'go and wash' is OK, right?

Or more common: "umyj się!", perfective aspect.
boletus   
27 Apr 2011
History / Poland Lithuania - current relations [124]

Speaking about minorities rights it is a very tricky thing, in my opinion.

Today's Gazeta Wyborcza re-prints an open letter of Lithuanian intellectuals "Litwini do Litwinów", dated April 10, 2011:

With blazing anxiously and sadly observe , as in Lithuania every day is destroyed and desecrated the germ of European Christian civilization : the wisdom and tolerance , humility and charity.

I have seen something similar few weeks before, published somewhere else.

It is an appeal to Lithuanian society to stop playing short term political games and to start seeking agreement with Polish-Lithuanian minority, which are, after all, the citizens of the Lithuanian state, and who wish to live in piece and take care of future of their children.

... Nawołujemy do przezwyciężenia politycznych sprzeczności, do uśmierzania ognia wrogości wzniecanego przez krótkotrwałe cele polityczne, do szukania porozumienia z Polakami z Litwy jak z obywatelami jednego państwa, pragnącymi, jak wszyscy inni, w zgodzie i spokoju układać swoje życie, dbać o dobro swoje i swoich dzieci na tej ziemi.

Signed by:

Antanas Gailius - an intellectual, philosopher, poet, translator, member of the Foundation's Thomas Mann, a former editor of Catholic ed. IDEAS,

doc. Irena Vaišvilaite - Rector of European Humanities University, an opposition activist, former advisor to President V. Adamkus,

prof. Alvydas Jokubaitis - prof. of Institute for International Relations in Vilnius, a political scientist,

doc. V. Paulius Subaeius - expert in Lithuanian affairs, president of the Catholic Academy of Sciences,

prof. Danute Gailiene - prof. psychiatry;

Julius Sasnauskas - Franciscan friar, philosopher, former dissident, songwriter about multiculturalism of Vilnius,

prof. Rimvydas Petrauskas - medievalist historian at the History Faculty of Vilnius University