Language / Polish/Ukrainian words similarities [209]

My first language is English but I speak Polish fluently, and I often watch documentaries and entertainment programmes in other Slavic languages and have occasionally watched Ukrainian stuff like Ukraina Maje Talant or whatever on YouTube. Apart from the narrator, who speaks Ukrainian, the most-used language is Russian, except maybe if the show was recorded in Lviv, which is a shame, because I think Ukrainian is a nice language and it's sad to see Ukrainians using Russian instead, but still, I've got a fairly good idea of what both languages are like.

In any case, Ukrainian is definitely NOT a transitional language between Polish and Russian in anything but vocabulary. In terms of pronunciation, it is more similar to Czech than it is either to Polish or Russian. It's a different and unique slavic language in its own right.

So, as I've said, Ukrainian is quite similar to Polish vocabulary- and grammar-wise, but Russian is actually more like Polish in terms of pronunciation. So, in short, for me, as a Polish speaker, it makes it much easier to pick words out from Russian than from Ukrainian, but the words I do pick out from Ukrainian, I am more likely to understand.

Ukrainian and Czech have much less palatisation than Russian, Belarusian, Polish, and Slovak. Out of both the East and West Slavic language groups, Russian and Polish are also the only ones to use 'g' instead of 'h'. But palatisation is definitely more important to me in terms of comprehension.

Let's take a simple word like "idziecie" in Polish, which means "you (plural) go/are going."

Slovak: vy idete (pronounced "wi idziecie", because Slovak palatises 'n', 'd' and 't' if followed by 'e')
Russian: вы идёте (pronounced "wy idziocie")
Ukrainian: ви йдете (pronounced "wy jdete")
Czech: vy jdete (pronounced "wi jdete")

Ultimately, I initially found spoken Russian easier to decipher. Only once I got used to the sound of Ukrainian did I find it easier, mainly due to the similarities in vocabulary.

In any case, the East and West Slavic languages are extremely closely related and it takes little effort for a speaker of one language to learn to understand another. Obviously, speaking is another matter.

Language / Quick question on Polish language fundamental [40]

Przeczytałem książki (I read the books)
Czytałem książki (I was reading the books/I used to read the books)

In general, the fact that some case endings are identical is not a problem, because the alternative cases wouldn't make sense.

In "przeczytałem książki", the verb already specifies the subject ("ja"), so the nominative case wouldn't make sense. It would be like saying "I the books read" in English. The genitive case wouldn't make sense either, because that would be like saying "I read belonging to the books" in English. The only case that makes sense is the one that specifies the direct object - the accusative.

Genitive marks the owner of an object "To papierosy PAW£A" (Those are Paweł's cigarettes)
Nominative marks the subject of a sentence "MĘŻCZYZNA je" (The MAN is eating)
Dative marks the indirect object of a sentence "PSU dałem kość" (I gave the bone TO THE DOG)
Instrumental marks the instrument of a sentence "D£UGOPISEM napisałem list" (I wrote the letter WITH A PEN)
Accusative marks the direct object of a sentence "POD£OGĘ umyłem" (I have washed THE FLOOR)
Locative is a prepositional case, used to describe the location of an object. "Na STOLE" (On THE TABLE)
Vocative is used to address something directly "Chodź, PIESKU" (Come, LITTLE DOG)

Life / Why are Poles obsessed with shame? [19]

Actually, it's a perceptive observation, and something I myself have noticed in the Polish media. I think those are symptoms of an inferiority complex, being constantly concerned about what people in the West are saying.

I think Polish culture is amazing. It is rich, varied and colourful, and largely unknown and vastly underappreciated at home and abroad. I find the Poles are frequently ashamed of being Slavs, of being Catholics, of having a rich folk culture and, quite simply, of being different. Many of the things wrong with Poland are historical, because of foreign, and later communist domination, and not a result of Poles being Slavs, Poles and Catholics. In fact, those very things are what once made Poland great, a synthesis of the very best of the West and the East, priding itself on the peaceful co-existence of people of various religions, nationalities and languages, oftentimes enjoying more freedom than either the East or the West. The fact that Poles nowadays don't conduct themselves well abroad is unfortunate, but it is precisely because they are ashamed of the things that make them Polish that there has been a wholesale importation of the very worst models from the West on top of the worst cultural imports from the communist East.

Russia is a counterexample. The Russians don't care. The Russians are increasingly proud of their language, culture and religion. The latter two have been all but destroyed by communism, but we see both being revived from the top-down. In a country where the population is massively secularised and churchgoers make up a tiny minority, we see increasing restrictions on abortion and highly illiberal attitudes towards many modern, Western novelties, simply because they have no place in Russian culture. One can say what they will, but the tacit implication is that these things simply aren't the Russian way, and Russia's proud of being different.

Poles needn't be ashamed, but need to recover its identity, and rediscover its virtues in synthesising the very best of Western values, which it inherited from Catholicism, with the very best of its Slavic roots, which come from the East.

Language / Żelfix po Angielsku? [2]

Żelfix is pectin with sugar. You can find pectin under various brand names close to jams and marmalades in supermarkets. You could also try substituting with gelatin, which has a somewhat different texture. You can also use potato starch as a gelling agent, but it won't congeal until heated.

Life / How many children is a good number in Poland? [12]

A lot of women would like to have more than one kid, but having more than a couple is generally impractical, because if you work hard enough to be able to afford more than one kid, you're not going to have any time left for child-rearing. If you have a good work-life balance, kids are unafforable, especially since the State does very little to support parents apart from give a one off payment on birth and maybe give you a tiny top-up if you get less than 500 zł per family member per month - i.e., you live in absolutely extreme poverty. And there's a huge amount of insecurity - you never know when your employer might make you redundant, and becoming pregnant is just asking to be fired.

Wages are typically around half of the EU average, whereas child-rearing costs are huge, from clothes, to school books, to paying for preschool, etc. And the government helpfully increased VAT on kids' clothes, just to make sure there won't be any more of those little b*ggers around.

As for squaring it with the Catholic teaching on contraception, well, you have close to half of the population who take the Church seriously enough to attend weekly, but the proportion falls among the younger generation. Some simply have more kids, if they can afford it, some may attempt to space births using natural methods, which have varying levels of effectiveness from quite good to pathetic, and others use artificial birth control as a practical means to avoid conception and abstain from receiving Holy Communion. Even though the Church condemns ABC as sinful, it is understanding and there is no stigma attached to not being able to receive Communion. It will happily grant reconciliation to anyone who stops using ABC when they are ready, which may well be once their fertile years have passed.

Poland is a terrible place to have children, since in the last 20 years, it managed to import the insecurity and instability of Western capitalism with but a few of the economic advantages, and it managed to dismantle many of the family-friendly policies of the former communist government.

Life / Why are Poles obsessed with shame? [19]


Of course some Russians don't like Putin. But to say that most do not is misleading. Yes, he has a shady past and is hardly a darling of the Western media. But most of the time he's been in government, he's been the most popular leader of any major country. And with good reason.

During the Yeltsin era, money from Russia's natural resources, namely oil, was being siphoned off by Western companies. Putin put a stop to that, and turned Russia from a bankrupt giant into one of the best-performing economies in the world. The average Russian wage has risen over 10-fold under Putin.

Russia's fertility rate, which, as in most of the post-communist countries, was catastrophically low at 1.2 has so far increased to 1.6 thanks to Putin's aggressive demographic policies, and Russia has recorded natural population growth for the first time in 20 years. Russia went from being on course to becoming a poor, desolate wasteland that would have been broken up and picked apart by vultures in 50 years' time into a country with a future.

Putin has consistently promoted the interests of Russian citizens outside its borders, including pressing for the use of the Russian language in other nations, for whom doing such a thing would be tantamount to linguistic and cultural suicide. And he has succeeded. Belarus is now irreversibly Russophone, and Ukraine has partly reversed its Ukrainisation policy, with Russian becoming a regional official language.

Whatever one can accuse Putin of, he is certainly a Russian patriot, and he has reversed many of the catastrophic Western economic reforms (such as privatisation of natural resources and strategic industries) that proved so damaging to Russia and the rest of the Soviet bloc in the 1990s, and halted what looked like Russia's terminal decline. For all the accusations of being undemocratic, Russians continue to have the opportunity to vote him out at every election.

This is no consolation to Poland, which is still on course to becoming a hollowed-out carcass picked apart by its "friends" in the West and what increasingly looks to be a resurgent Russia. But there is good news in this story too - if Russia could change course to avoid sinking like the Titanic, so can other countries.

Which brings me back to the point of the thread - Poland is not going to turn around by being ashamed of being Poland. It needs to look within and use its incredible cultural heritage to build up its future.

Language / Polish/Ukrainian words similarities [209]

That's actually a really cool thing about Slavic languages.

For example, here's the word for "blue" in various languages:

Russian: синий (sinij)
Czech: modrý
Polish: niebieski

They're completely different.

Except "siny" and "modry" also means "blue" in Polish. Sure, their use is limited to specific contexts, such as poetic language or botanical names, but they're there. And "niebieski" means "sky-like" so it's not a too much of a stretch for a speaker of another Slavic language to figure out that it actually means "blue".

When I get a blank stare talking with Czechs in pseudo-Czech (essentially Polish with a Czech accent, mixed with whatever Czech I do know), I find that listing synonyms is a great way of being understood.

Language / Polish/Ukrainian words similarities [209]


Thank you for the undeserved praise. Unfortunately, I always seem to use the wrong case in my subordinate clauses in Polish, but it doesn't detract from my love of the language and culture, and of Slavic languages in general.


"Blue" is just the first thing that came to mind that worked. Błękitny is a nice word indeed.

Life / Why are Poles obsessed with shame? [19]

Lol, I don't understand the moaners at all. If everything's so sh*tty in [insert country here], why did they go there?

The stupid thing is that those same people who moan about everything are the ones with the inferiority complex, who have foresaken everything good in their own culture and who criticise everything everywhere apart from their own petty little selves.

And quite often Polish women like to see themselves as paragons of virtue when they are anything but.

As for shame, they're ashamed of everything that's uniquely good about Polish culture and yet feel entirely entitled to take everything that's far from admirable to the worst extremes.

Of course, those are sweeping generalisations, but they are certainly accurate stereotypes of a very large number of people, and not, unfortunately, exceptions to the rule, so it's a sorry state of affairs.

UK, Ireland / Are you a Pole Living in the UK? Have some questions. [4]

Well, having been born in Britain and self-identifying as both British and Polish, my answers might not be representative.

1. Which city do you live in?
London

2. Where do you mostly shop for products from your own country?
I don't. I can find everything I need in Tesco or ASDA.

3. Do you watch TV from your own country? If yes, which service do you use? e.g. POLSAT/VIASAT. Which channel do you mostly watch?

I watch Polish TV when I'm in Poland. It's just as bad as everywhere else, but with three times as many ads.

4. Do you listen to any EU radios in the UK? Please list.
No.

5. Do you use Facebook? Do you use any other social website which is specific to your country, for example, Draugiem.lv, NaszaKlasa.pl . Do you take part in any discussion forums? Please list.

I use Facebook.

6. Are you a member of any other online forums? If yes, please list.
I've been a member of too many forums to remember.

7. Can you buy your local newspapers or magazines in England? If yes, what do you read and where do you purchase it from?
I haven't purchased a newspaper ever since I've been able to read anything I want online for free.

8. Are you a member of a community center or social club? If yes, please list.
No.

9. Which community events do you usually take part in?
None.

Language / How similar are Polish and Romanian languages? [75]

Romanian is a unique and interesting Romance language, with considerable Slavic influence manifested by the presence of a considerable number of loanwords ("gospodar", "iubire", cognate to "gospodarz" and "lubić" in Polish, but with slightly different meanings) and some grammatical features, such as the partial retention of the Latin case system, which is likely due to the fact that the neighbouring Slavic languages have well-developed case systems too.

Polish is a Slavic language, moderately influenced by Latin, as evidenced by the presence of a significant number of loanwords and some grammatical features, such as the "-cja" suffix added to Slavic roots, as in "pielęgnacja."

The main similarities between the two languages will be the result of Latin loanwords in Polish and Slavic loanwords in Romanian, but aside from that, the languages come from two different language families and are completely mutually unintelligible.

Just because Russian borrowed the word, "file," "computer" and "businessman" from English and English borrowed the words "troika", "taiga" and "intelligentsia" from Russian doesn't make for a meaningful relationship between the two.

News / Poland braces for economic slowdown [30]

Poland managed to avoid the crisis by massively increasing its national debt in the last four or so years. Comrade Gierek must be turning in his grave. He is fondly remembered by many as the prime factor in the glory days of communism in the 70s after borrowing a paltry 20 bn dollars and massively improving the quality of life in Poland (albeit temporarily), and now they've managed to rack up 100 bn dollars extra debt in a couple of years for little apparent gain.

But debt can only go so far in papering over the cracks, so a slowdown or a recession is likely inevitable. Let's hope it won't be too severe and the overall trajectory over the medium term will still be up instead of down.

News / Poland braces for economic slowdown [30]


I agree with you that Keynesian economics can provide a welcome boost. The problem I see is that it looks like Poland went down the Gordon Brown route - racking up debt when times are good and spending it on bureaucrats and handouts. Now, Poland's been stingy with the handouts, but they have managed to add some 150,000 new bureaucrats to the Polish state's machinery in the last few years, so it can't have all been good value for money.

News / Poland braces for economic slowdown [30]


That's only likely if the Polish economy continues to outperform the British economy in terms of growth. I'm not convinced. If Poland suffers a significant economic decline, I imagine people will continue on leaving in droves in search for greener pastures abroad.

News / Failures of Poland and Tusk`s government [191]

Failures of the Tusk government?

What about "3 x 15%"? They pledged to lower VAT, income tax and corporation tax to 15% a long time ago.

So when the f*ck are they going to start lowering taxes instead of raising them to pay for their ever-growing inbred bureaucracy?

I've got to hand it to them, though - I don't think the world has yet seen a country that can raise taxes, rack up debt like there's no tomorrow and do it when the economy is GROWING. And maintain popularity among the electorate! Insanity!

News / Poland braces for economic slowdown [30]

I wasn't saying the Poles might leave. I was suggesting the influx might slow if the Polish economy continues to outperform the British. And I seriously doubt that.

News / Lech Wałęsa's empty fridge? [9]

Oh, gosh, I can't take the guy seriously after I heard an interview with him on Radio ZET some time in November with him gabbing on about something along the lines of how Polish people have too many freedoms and how these must be sacrificed for the sake of security. It might as well have been Jaruzelski speaking. What is that guy on?

News / Poland braces for economic slowdown [30]

I agree. The Poles just undercut British workers' wages. I guess some companies posted greater profits as a result of a reduced wage bill. But that's about it.

News / Failures of Poland and Tusk`s government [191]


I agree to an extent. And even if it does, as long as it stays out of the Euro, it will be able to print money to inflate the debt away. Heavy overreliance on debt, even if it can be printed away, is not good fiscal policy, though.


What evidence is there for that? And don't you see, even if the other parties were worse, the ruling party have always been parading themselves as economic liberals, and yet what we've seen from them is increasing taxes from an already high level and increasing spending even faster and running up debt, so that future tax rises are inevitable. Tax and spend is not liberal policy and runs the risk of choking the economy in the future. And it's a complete failure and utter hypocrisy of the Tusk government to fail to live up to its purported values and, in fact, to do the very opposite, regardless of whether the other parties are better or worse.

I myself am not an economic liberal and tend to lean towards more of a middle ground, recognising that state involvement in the economy is sometimes beneficial, but whatever hopes I had for Tusk's party reducing Poland's tax burden were completely dashed.


I can't imagine a worse thing for Poland to do. To run up debt in inflatable złoty and then convert it into a hard currency the NBP has no control over and be at the mercy of the German-controlled ECB is complete and utter madness.

If you're running up debt, at least run it up in your own currency so that, if the sh*t hits the fan, you can inflate it away and stop the Mario Montis and Angela Merkels blackmailing you into wrecking your economy.

It is mindboggling that the prime minister of a country can act in a manner so contrary to its national interests. But Poland is not alone in this. Greece and many other EU states have been doing the same all along, with the Germans most certainly enjoying a bit of schadenfreude and benefiting as a result.

News / Failures of Poland and Tusk`s government [191]


Let's say that were true. Claiming the opposition is worse does not exonerate the party in power. That's like saying, "Just because Jeffery Dahmer killed and raped lots of men, he should be set free and let off the hook simply because there's another guy who I say would have done even worse things if he were in Jeffery's shoes."

Such claims do not exonerate Tusk's government from betraying their electorate by doing the exact opposite of what they pledged they were going to do. That's by far the most glaring failure of the Tusk government - they failed to do what they were elected to do.

Language / Polish/Ukrainian words similarities [209]

Jeez. What's the problem with Russians?

Sure, Poles have historically regarded Russia as a threat to their survival and have been hostile to and suspicious of the Russian government, with good reason.

And the Russian government has historically considered Poles difficult to integrate and a major pain in the ass, also with good reason.

But, at least anecdotally, I've generally met with positive opinions of Russian culture and the people themselves, insofar as they didn't somehow represent the Russian government.

As regards genetic similarity, this information may be useful in understanding the history of Slavic migrations, but otherwise, it has little bearing on what people identify as. I have blood ties with Hungarians, Jewish communists and Far Eastern Siberian Ukrainians. I don't identify ethnically, spiritually or ideologically with any of these groups.

News / Failures of Poland and Tusk`s government [191]


No. Enlighten me.


So what if it's a leftist site? Even if it were a revolutionary communist site, it doesn't necessarily mean they're lying about something or wrong about a particular matter.

Anyone can distort facts to suit their own ends, left, right and centre.

Language / Polish/Ukrainian words similarities [209]

Lol, I only need to look at a few generations of my family history. One side are devout Marxists, the other devout Catholics. Needless to say, they never got along, and I identify more with the latter than the former, lol.

Language / Polish/Ukrainian words similarities [209]


Someone already mentioned that another word for "tongue," the organ, is "ozór."

I agree that unusual grammatical patterns and non-Slavic vocabulary do play a part in the problems other Slavic speakers may have understanding Russian. Polish has considerable East Slavic influence, so those differences aren't as significant as for other Slavic speakers. For example, using "u mienia jest'" to indicate possession is odd, but not completely alien to Polish. "Czy tylko u mnie jest problem?" vs "Czy tylko ja mam problem?"

I think accent plays a much bigger role. I'd imagine most Polish speakers would agree, for example, that Slovak is much easier to understand than Czech, even though on paper, the written languages are almost identical and almost completely mutually intelligible. The main difference between Czech and Slovak is that Slovak tends to palatise consonants more, shorten some long vowels and in certain dialects, stress falls on the penultimate syllable as opposed to the first.

In Russian, I think it's both, the unpredictable, dynamic stress and the akanie (the reduction of unstressed vowels to 'a' or schwa) that make it difficult to recognise word boundaries, and make otherwise familiar words sound very different to Polish speakers. Ukrainian doesn't have akanie, which makes Ukrainian sound a lot less Russian and more familiar as far as vowels are concerned. Russian has more palatisation than Ukrainian, however, which makes Russian consonants sound more familiar. So the relative importance of vowels, consonants, accent, grammar and vocabulary to a person's individual understanding will mean people's opinions will vary as to which is easier to understand.

Life / Is Poland a poor country? [578]

Depends what you mean by poor.

If you compare it to a country like Norway, then yeah, it's pretty poor, with an aging infrastructure and with people getting a relatively low income for long hours of work.

If you compare it to a country like Mali or Afghanistan, then Poland's streets are paved with gold, with free healthcare, more than adequate infrastructure and a relative absence of serious starvation, malnutrition or disease.

News / Failures of Poland and Tusk`s government [191]

Now, now. The PiS guys have a point in criticising the ruling coalition for political naiveté; altruism on the international scene is not how things work, and if you bend over, you're gonna get f*cked.

But what PiS have failed to realise, and what many have pointed out before, is that you can't burn bridges with your neighbours, Russia and Germany because then you are also gonna get f*cked.

Life / Is Poland a poor country? [578]

gumishu


Oh, I agree. That's why I said a relative absence - i.e., a lot fewer than in Afghanistan or Mali. Malnutrition is still there, but it's not as significant as in truly poor countries, such as, say, Poland soon after the war.

Life / Do Polish people know a lot about the world ? [16]

Sounds like you live with someone who is possibly a little, how shall I put this gently...

...ssssslow?

I don't care if you're a troll or not, I just imagined your poor face when you realised the woman thought you're from a favela and have never previously had access to clean water. Oh, how your blood must have boiled.

And on account of being an EU citizen, she has the right to milk the State of whatever country she chooses to reside in, so has decided the Supreme Soviet of the European Union. Oh, I can feel your blood boiling even more!

Life / Is Poland a poor country? [578]


Well, I compared it with Norway, which is one of the richest countries in the world, and with Mali, one of the poorest.

The worst and most undeveloped countries of the world probably do not resemble Poland at any point in its 1,000 year history. But Poland still has a long way to go to catch up with the richest of the Western nations.

News / Failures of Poland and Tusk`s government [191]


:D

ROFL. Brilliant.