Who still speaks pidigin Polish after many years in the country?

Can there be aynthing more laughable than someone trying to prove they are Polish when they haven't learnt to communicate in Polish properly after 22 years of constant exposure. That a person can be so enamoured of his boring, run-of-the-mill Anglo-jabber that in all these years he has yet to contribute a single post to PF's Po Polsku section.

And now your link (run to Google translate!)
wiadomosci.onet.pl/kraj/morawiecki-20-mld-zl-wiecej-z-podatkow/rjrlvwc

Well I was tempted to mention this while being hounded on another thread, how can someone feel that they can take up the high ground on all thing Polish when after 22 years in Poland they cannot pass a simple language test to get a passport.

Surely after all that time living and working with Polish people the language would rub off enough to pass a very simple test.

I can only assume that the person has no contact with the nation that he resides in , hence no leg to stand on when it comes to debate on Polish matters ,

Perhaps you should ask yourself why someone doesn't apply for one despite not even having to take a test in the language.

There's more than a language test that needs to be passed. For a start there's the criminal records and background check. Personally I've got nothing to hide when it comes to that but clearly other people are far more worried. I can think of one particular person who will in two and a half years go into his seventh decade in Poland but still isn't Polish, because he can't pass all of the tests.


Isn't the test for everybody who wants to naturalise, whether they are married to a Pole or not?

Maybe after years of living in Poland and still traveling and writing about Poland, family interest lies within the US, I can relate to that I had to take care of family before I was able to make my move.

On the otherhand some who live in Poland that purport to to be all things Polish, make no effort to learn the language or to fully integrate with social life here, they spend their days in expat bars speaking english , making assumptions over what is going on , no life really, I have seen this in many of the countries that I have worked in abroad, a very sad existance indeed.

After twenty odd years why do you not speak fluent Polish are you taking lessons?

Jon managed to do it , I dont see the problem.

Nope, not in his case.


I can't even remember the last time I was in an expat bar, possibly the year before last. There's no reason to go to any of them, they all have rubbish beer. Although I suppose some people are more interested in the effect of beer than the taste of it.

In your 50-beers-a-night lifestyle how many brews do you have to down before the taste buds are totally numbed beyond all ability to taste any difference?

Not if it's by descent, which the person in question might be able to claim.

Clearly he can't do that; if he could get one by descent, he wouldn't need to pass that tricky little check. People who are Polish by descent are born Polish and so don't need to take any tests, whether as to their language or morals. Also, if he was Polish by descent he wouldn't have surrender his precious American passport.


I don't remember the last time I had even a fifth that many. There certainly wouldn't be any point in having even 0.05 litre glasses of that many beers, one's taste buds would be far too confused.


Just one would be more than enough to kill my taste buds if it was that 7.2% "VIP" rot gut some people use to self medicate.

well,i been in the UK for like 15 years,and my english just stopped improving at some point.first 5 years was rapid and then last 5 years i feel like i didn't improve at all.i never went to school,and i been only learning by talking to people,thats why my grammar is non existent .but last few years there is no progress whatsoever anymore..brain gets slow with age i guess.

Time and again PiSlamic earns his title of Liar Laureate. VIP lager is 4.2% ABV.
Background checks were run on all correspondentss. Check with IPN or the Interior Ministry if interested, and say "cześć" to good ol' Mariusz for me.

Pray tell us, PiSlamic, why yo have not applied for Polish citizenship?

Your native language.

Worth mentioning that I know a Polish lady who has lived in the UK since the war and hardly speaks a word of English, the language of Shakespeare, Milton and Woolf.


This is normal enough - in fact you probably were improving; it's simply that you didn't feel it at the time.

So your suspension is over and you're back on the brit bully tag-team. That's good because your guru PiSlamic was getting the business from the PF's more decent posters.

Anyway you're wrong. Since my parents were busy setting up a new business (a pharmacy), I began life speaking Polish and was raised largely by four Poish-born grandparents who spoke very little English.

Maybe you know? As you well know, PiSlamic is busy sticking his big misshapen nose into other peoples business, homes, earnings and even citizenship. Perhaps you know why he hasn't applied for Polish citizenship althouhg he is constantly urgimng pothers to do. Can't pass the Polish language and culture test?

The language of Jack the Ripper, Charles Manson, Harry, Hopkins (FDR's Soviet plant), the Rosenbergs, Lord Haw-Haw, Tokyo Rose and PiSlamic. Best to keep at least a barge-pole's lenght away.

Down to 10 beers a night, are we? Five litres ain't that much. You can probably even walk a straight line after such puny libation.

And you

Apart from your compatriot who is still in jail, did any of those produce literature?


Your frequent typos aside (the ones that become worse and more frequent as the day progresses), I wonder if anyone can see the irony of an erstwhile English-language amateur journalist writing that on an English-language forum in which he frequently posts.


What 'suspension' is that? Looks like you're seeing things that aren't there again, like armed attack dogs in pl. Zbawicela.

Re typos - pot kettle.... As you know it is Plac Zbawiciela (pronounced roughly (zbah-vee-CHE-lah, not zbah-vee-TSE-lah).

I'd say that 'zba-vee-CHEE-el-ah' would be more correct wouldn't it??

but "CHE" isn't really adequate at all to describe the Polish "cie" sound.


Who? Harry?

For once I agree with you. But you have misattributed your quote.


Was a comment you were replying to completely deleted (I can't see anything in the bin)?

Everyone who knows anything about Polish would agree with that simply because it's a FACT and your approvement is not needed at all.

Excuse me, it's Polly the Pole who said 'che', I said it should be 'chee-e' which is correct. 'Che' is sloppy pronunciation. Every sound must be pronounced separately in Polish.

Can you year the diference between czeszę się and cieszę się? (roughly: I comb my hair, I'm glad) Cause I really can't... maybe in isolation spoken extra slowly yeah but in the middle of a sentence spoken at native speed.... nope. no way.

maybe CHYEH might be better than chee-e which suggests that the i is heard as a separate vowel (it's not)

Well I can if the person speaks clearly but there are plenty of native Poles who are sloppy about it. I think maybe my ear is attuned that way from teaching reading in English to young children through the phonics method and spending years breaking words down into sound.


Yes absolutely, much better.

Well, for one thing he can't pronounce "cie" in Polish. For another there are those other tests one needs to pass in order to get citizenship, and failing those badly enough can lead to being deported.

chee - e isn't correct either


most Poles have no problem distinguishing the two

This of course is a popular, not academic, phoneic rendering. Of course cie and cze are different sounds, but without special phonetic symbols it isn't easy to render them on the typical keyboard. Anyone interested in fathoming the basics of Polish phonology may visit:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_phonology#The_consonant_systemhtoming Polish
This is how those two sounds are presented phonetically:
/t͡ʂ/ cz czas ('time')
/t͡ɕ/ ć/c(i) ćma ('moth')
The difficulty in illustrating this the popular way is that English is pronoucned differently by different speakers. Cz is close to the ch in chat, whislt there is no easy way of popularly rendering ć. However, manyAmerican speakers pronounce the ch in cheese close to ć, so the English could be be rendered in Polish as ciz. The same speakers have no close equivalent of Polish cz. Many Americans esp. in the interior would pronounce This cheese is cheap quite close to Đys ciz yz cip.

Polly is right that it's hard to render in English! Believe me I do know how to say the 'cie' sound :) Maf's 'chyeh' is a much better rendering.