Myśląc "Polska" - Does new PiS motto.... really mean anything?

Okay, I'm stumped. The new motto for PiS is "Myśląc Polska" which kind of... doesn't make any sense?

The form myśląc is an adverbial participle (which must share a subject with a following finite verb). An English example might be: "Reading the report, the director began sobbing." (Czytając raport kierownik zaczął szlochać) here 'reading' and 'began' have the same subject 'the director'.

The problem here is the "Myśląc Polska" puts Poland (Polska) in the subject position for some finite verb to follow "Thinking, Poland [did/does/will do X]" and I can't figure out how people are supposed to finish the sentence...

I asked one native speaker (Phd in a non-language related field) and he just said it was probably supposed to sound 'poetic' but couldn't pin down what exactly was meant.

Anyone here have any ideas about what (if anything) the phrase is supposed to mean?

What does that mean in English?

@Bratwurst Boy

dat's da hole problemo....

Myśląc Polska = Denkend Polen (auf Deutsch)

weird, huh?

That's exactly what it is supposed to mean. The rest (or the beginning) of the motto is implicit. The full sentence is going to look, for example, like this:

- Myśląc "Polska", będziemy troszczyć się o najbiedniejszych.
- Wszystkie nasze zamierzenia podejmujemy myśląc "Polska" [podejmujemy z myślą o Polsce]. etc., etc. ...

The aim is to convince the voter that PiS while doing things thinks about Poland first of all and all the time. Of course, inverted commas are ommited from the motto which in its very precise literary form should look like this:

Myśląc "Polska", ...

Weird!

A little like "McDonalds - I'm loving it" as opposed to the correct infinitive form in "I love it."
Slogans have no grammatical sense. After all, they are patronisingly aimed at the dumb masses, "who wouldn't know the difference anyway."

The shortened version is supposed to sound as a catchy slogan and I think a copywriter did a good job.
The fact that the slogan is purely false is another matter - those traitors don`t think of Poland, only about their positions. .

there is no infinitive in "I love it", I'm fairly sure that "I'm lovin' it" comes from AAVE (African American Vernacular English) which often uses continuous forms with habitual/intensive meanings.


I'm assuming that "Kasa za głosy" would be a bit too obvious...

state verbs don't go into the continuous.
For example you don't say 'I am liking my friend' unless you come from Delhi.
I blame MCd's

They do in AAVE... not always, but they can (and in more general American English too sometimes --- do British people ever say "I'm thinking that..."

' think ' isn't a state verb.

Google it.

grammaring.com/state-verbs-and-action-verbs

here ya go, Maf

Okay.....

perfect-english-grammar.com/stative-verbs.html

stative verb 'think' can be used in the continuous in American

"I'm thinking they're too young to get married." sounds perfectly normal to me.

maybe this is an emerging distinction between American and other varieties... "I'm lovin' it" didn't sound that bad to me, instead it had an informal layer of extra emotion. I would agree that it probably wasn't a good idea to use it in other places where it wouldn't have that meaning.

It may sound weird (in translation) to the Germanic ear, but in Polish it is not. The prototype for the motto might be the title of Kartol Wojtyła's narrative poem: "Myśląc Ojczyzna" published, work published in 1974.


They've been already paraphrasing the motto into: "Myśląc władza".

you haven't read the page then..

That helps it make sense to me. Vielen Dank!


I can't wait for the memes to start


Why would I have to read a page to tell me what's acceptable in my own language (American)?

Put "I'm thinking they're" into google and you get over 400,000 hits

I'm thinking they're doing a "reunion" show because they were obligated to do

"I'm thinking they're pretty spendy to repair," Behn said

" I'm thinking: They're playing a joke on me "

etc etc etc

Don`t believe anything what PiS says, if they didn`t mention my country in their motto.

If you prefer to think of it as a present simple form, please do. I was referring to the base form of the infinitive ( not to split hairs).

An Americanism, sure. Still dumb though of McDonalds to misuse the Queen's English 😂

As I've written before, I think of American and... insular varieties as independent languages that are mostly still mutually intelligible (like spoken Norwegian and Swedish or written Norwegian and Danish or Czech and Slovak). They are developing independently rather than together... this is just one more example of that...

Very good. I was under the impression that the 13 States spoke better English than the British ( initially)
We all know the story of McDonalds from one of the princes of storytelling, Mark Knopfler ("Boom - just like that") and, like PIS's "slogan", theirs' is culture bound and a blatant language mistake imo. To draw attention to themselves - and in that way, it is brilliant advertising.

PIS are in no way as tasty as a Big Mac albeit Burger King is superior, and their new image building is disturbing ( as Crow said on another thread).

Never thought I would agree with the geezer about squat, know what I mean?

There is no such language as "American".
You speak English.Yes, there are a few subtle differences, but they are being shared in both directions.


Nah,not initially, not ever.
Americans have created an English that is simpler, more accessible and because it is easier to learn, their version of English is taking over the world.

But it is still English.