Poles - don't fall into the French/Spanish trap re pronunciation/accent!

What is this meant to say exactly?

>All those kids learn those languages? and learn them with ease?

What do you mean?
You wrote about your niece changing schools and having to start from the scratch another language every time she starts a new school. It's the same in Poland. We have the "stop-starts" as you do.

What you "stop-start" learning English?

You all learn English.

When I started elementary school I was learning French not English.
I'm not up to date with current curriculum but 20 years ago not all kids were taught English.

*Why would Polish people learn French 20 years + ago? You wer under an oppressiv Government that would not allow you out of the country and certainly not to travel to France, a Western country.

Are you saying Polish children are cleverer than British children because they can speak English? That seems to be what you are saying.

Sure, Citizen, they all "learn" English, just as we all "learn" compulsory arithmetic/maths in school. Doesn't mean though that most of us are all that good at itLOL

hardly
poland even during communism was very big on teaching languages
as for getting out of the country
many people did
the border was not as sealed as you might imagine
foreign currency transfers to poland did a lot to keep the country solvent
especially in the 80's

english was very commonly taught as a compulsory subject in university for instance


same today
schools in rural schools are still teaching russian first
due to excellent russian teachers
and poor english teachers

Lyzko, I don't think you get the point I am getting at. Even since I was 18 and first went aboard, to a Kibbutz in Israel 31 years ago, I come across this constant sneering about British (and other English speakers British, Irish, American, Canadian, New Zealand, Australian, Jamaican, West Indian, Guyanese, South Africans, so on and so forth) not speaking other languages, the implication is we are not intelligent, but I ask you (again) what language do you want us to learn?

If there was Two World Lingu Francas we would learn the other one.

WoW! Oh..L-O-L!
I'm sorry... my family and the towns they call home didnt subscribe to Wikipedia and live ONLY off the Bay of Biscay and the Pyranees. ^_^

Granted...maybe I should have said Basque enclave? settlement? village? ghetto?

as to not be confused with modern day Basque Country recognized as everything but sovereign.

Sorry that not many blood related people to me are red scarf wearing, Franco period gun-toting guerillas in the Pyranees squeezed by territory changes to live there there like on some frippin govt Reservation.

We were sailors as most Basque famously were for ages. My family stayed, did not give up the language or move despite the Portuguese Inquisition. The last full fluent speaker of Euskara in my family stateside died in 1984.

Is that like saying a Polish person with ancestors born during that..um 100+ years she wasn't on map...when another owned a piece of it through occupation cannot be Polish? RLY?

I guess I better inform my daSilva family living around Braga and Porto they better get back on the Rez! Only allowed to live in Bilbao! Because some net-troll who knows ALL about Basques, Portuguese on the web says so. 9_9

Though I guess the Castillian/Portuguese Morenos in my family can stay around Coimbra still.

LAWLZ: But happy to provide you an opportunity to feel temporarily superior to someone and informing me of my own heritage

i think its safe to say
that rysavy

has an incredible imagination
certainly worthy of the nobel prize

^_^ ..oooh so true!
I am US Citizen but english was not even my second language...I didn't get a cool euro accent but I do speak it oddly..plus I have Southern drawl.

Before the recent influx, I had met ONE Polish guy in my whole life, again on a kibbutz in Israel by now in my twenties, he told us what he had to do inorder to "escape",(pretend he was going to Yugoslavia) - you didn't travel, certainly not like we in Western Europe did at the same time and certainly not as much as you do now, that's not your fault, that's Stalin's fault! (not Churchill's incidently) and it was incidently, on that same trip that i met my first Russian, we treated him like some rare exotic specimen, we wer fascinated by this guy from "Russia", saying inane things like , "hello" to him. Unlike you Poland, we wer very familiar with People from other countries, my Best Friend came from Guinea, another best friend parents came from Guyana, we had West Indians, Indians, Pakistanis, 1 Chinese, Italians, Greek, a Turk or 2, an African, (we didn't hav many in those halcyon days), and even some boys from Chile and of course all the sons and daughter's of Irish immigrants including boy George's Brother, Gerald at my schools, I don't think you had that in your school. I lived in London nearly all my life and we hardly ever met people from behind the Iron Curtain, almost absolutely never! i suspect the few that did get to Britain wer the sons and daughters of the privilege Ruling Communist Party Elite, the spoilt Brats of the Communist Aristocracy. We used to feel sorry for you, and worry about you, and prayed one day you would be free! We wer over-joyed with the collapse of the Iron Curtain.

ismellnonsense
Ah, LOL, so you also are in the court of ...impossible for a Basque person to live ANYWHERE else but the region between Spain and France?

My fathers main family came thru Germany and Brasil and are Bohemian ethnically. Weiss
Weiss married a Cherokee. His daughter married a Scot/German.
Her son married into a family that was known Borquez which a gerneration earlier was Baquez and Boggnes depending which son. which in Brasil Sao Paulo region was Bagnes and Baginski- which in Portugal also was Bagnes and Baginski. Who had come from Prague and before that Boheme. His wife Delphina DaSilva was Basque. Their children ...all 16... spoke Castillian, Portuguese and Euskara as well as Boheme. Czech if you prefer..they did not prefer so.

I am born as an American, I identify with the culture and language that was most around my household. Boheme, Portuguese and Cherokee. I am in contact with cousins of 4th and 5th degree that live abroad because the families never broke away totally.

And no matter how much you try to **** in my cornflakes. You can't change where I came from. and I still think the French people I have met were total arses, specially about "correcting". I still love german food.

Rysavy, you are a fraud your English is worse than mine and certainly not American.

Point well taken, Citizen!

Suffice to say, lots of people who learn English abroad (even British), do only a mediocre job:-)

Excuse me? Where have you read it in my post?
I merely corrected your wrong assumptions about Poland


Pardon me? 20 years ago was 1993.


Nobody sneers at English speakers, it's just you having a chip on your shoulder.


There are several threads about life in Poland during communism. You may want to read it:

https://polishforums.com/history/poland-life-communist-personal-relations-63967/
https://polishforums.com/history/poland-westerner-ridiculous-beliefs-time-62751/
https://polishforums.com/history/american-studying-medicine-prl-story-49762/

Many people from other communistic (Asian, African) countries studied in Poland

,,and before that was? hence the plus sign, you was ruled by Russia (via a puppet government) from 1945-1990, you had only just got out of it.

What assumptions did i make about Poland?

Well, fact is, that Eastern Block nations had in fact harsh travel restrictions until round about Glasnost. Scandis had basically grown up with English practically from grade school on, the Dutch as well, the Germans less so and the Slavs, nearly zilch exposure whatsoever, except for the most priviledged classes^^

This is not to say that the Scandinavians ALL speak, write and understand English uniformly well! Quite the contrary. They make frequent mistakes and seem hellbent on NOT learning from themLOL

Fall of communism in Poland was in 1989.

You made wrong assumptions about languages taught in Poland both before and after fall of communism in 1989.

did you hav Black children in your school? your first class? I hav a photo of me in a pram with some Black girls looking at me, 1964. I had foreign neighbours until i was 14, i had everything, Indain then African, then Italian, Indian/finnish and finally Chinese.

There was an Arab boy in my school and a Lebanese girl, but that's not my point. I have said "study" meaning attending a university.