Life / Poland vs Hungary for an expat? [41]


which means that case is indicated by word order and/or prepositions... it's not like a language without the _idea_ of case (like Vietnamese)

Life / Poland vs Hungary for an expat? [41]


yes, even French and English have case driven grammars since case can be indicated by a) morphological changes to the nominal b) word order c) prepositions

There are languages that don't seem to be based on case (like Vietnamese, maybe Thai, maybe Japanese*) but they're not native to Europe

*topic and comment structure seems more important in those languages than case

Travel / Which places in Praga, Warsaw are MOST DANGEROUS at night? [15]


Well, to be fair, until a few weeks ago I'd assumed Praga was

a) crumbling kamienice

b) seas of deski

c) areas of post industrial hideousness

d) shady and desperate characters slipping out of and back into the shadows as they carry on their shady and desperate business

My main Praga experience had been in the 90s (when I loved the outdoor bazaar at the stadium) and a few work related visits to an office located around Dworzec Wileński which was a pretty shady area.... at least for Poland.

But I wanted to check out a store selling Hungarian delicacies that I had an address for. The bus turned south by the stadium and was shocked - a pleasant leafy neighborhood with buildings of 3-5 stories, well maintained, full of ethnic restaurants and coffee shops. If I ever need to move to Warsaw I could easily imagine living there...

History / What do Poles owe to Germans? [451]

Should it feel indebted to the CCCP (ZSRR) or Russia?

History / Do Polish people in general dislike Russia or Germany more? [369]


Okay.... the invasion of Donbass (I know people with relatives living there, it was not about separatists but an invasion)

second chechen war,

Or the coverup of the recent nuclear missile mishaps?

News / PiS candidates are losing positions in EU Parliament. Will they keep power in Poland? [358]


Capitalism is always boom and bust... prudent people take steps to avoid exposing themselves too much to downswings... bankers playing with other people's money know no such restraints...

History / Do Polish people in general dislike Russia or Germany more? [369]

He's a bit too subtle to be caught puling the trigger himself...

mediaite.com/trump/putin-with-whom-trump-joked-about-fake-news-has-seen-26-journalists-murdered-during-his-reign/

Tell yourself that Putin had nothing to do with any of those murders and you're admitting he's an incompetent boob unable to protect citizens... an unwilling to address the countries third world murder levels (not to mention sky high levels of drug addiction)

History / Do Polish people in general dislike Russia or Germany more? [369]


he kills civilians?

History / Do Polish people in general dislike Russia or Germany more? [369]


Sounds like a national myth. Yeah the cyrillic alpahbet was created for a language in the area of modern Bulgaria for an ancestor of the modern language but... the rest? no.

IINM Bulgarian went through a few hundred years of non-documentation (that is there was no writing based on what people were speaking) and when it began to be documented again the language had mutated to something like its present form - with the almost complete loss of the case system and the appearance of articles and a verbal system that's far more complex that other slavic languages.

I don't know if serious historical linguists have any idea how that happened...

News / How could PiS better spend billions instead of 500+ ? [280]


yeah, weal 500+ isn't doing that and neither is PiS since it's pouring all its resources into its innovative vote buying scheme so there's nothing left over except empty promises ad hot air...

News / How could PiS better spend billions instead of 500+ ? [280]

government handouts =/= financial independence...
financially independent people vote thinking about the long term consequences for the country - not to keep the handout faucet running...

Language / Harmless old-fashioned Polish swear words/phrases [159]


not psiakrew ?


I'm old enough to remember when a single out loud 'kurvva' was enough to shock an entire streetcar full of people into silence.... now by 12 years or so it's kurvva this, dvpa that hvj the other... spiced up with the occasional łał or mega...

News / Dodgy PRL-holdover judiciary finally reformed [420]


shouldn't they start with..... you know who....

News / PiS candidates are losing positions in EU Parliament. Will they keep power in Poland? [358]


I actually saw him in person recently in Warsaw... he was eating in the Bambino milk bar* dressed in a linen suit (which looked like something the cat drug in at 19.00 after a hot day) and when he left he got on one of those rental scooters infesting the sidewalks and rode off into the traffic... very surreal.

I first heard of him back in the early 1990s while I was still learning to read newspapers - he gave a speech where I live and I couldn't believe someone was actually saying what they were reporting (beginning with the idea that women should not have the right to vote and devolving into screaming madness form there....)

My other JKM story as a former colleague who found herself an aisle away from him on a plane - he kept fussing and flitting and famboozling about trivia and an apparently non-Polish passenger leaned over and asked my colleague "Is he ill?"

*I often try to eat there when I'm in Wwa, the atmosphere is... what it is, but the food is super cheap and well prepared.

News / PiS` magic tricks - the first budget without deficit in Poland [39]


isn't this the usual case in the modern world? we are in an age of fluid capital where companies have no ties to the countries they are headquartered in.


there were mistakes made, but most of Polish industry in the early 90s was incapable of supporting itself and hemorrhaging money (that the state didn't have).

how would/could you have done anything differently?

Life / Do you know these characters from Polish movies? [223]


hmmmmm Psy!

News / Scandals, conflicts, tensions, arguments - real life examples from Poland [543]

he's not a politician..... and Poles are conservative and don't support degenerate sexual shenanigans like those that you support!

Life / Do you know these characters from Polish movies? [223]


rodzina zastętpcza - foster family

the one on the left was supposed to be mongolian... I forget the other's ethnicity but part of the show was that they both considered themselves completely polish

pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodzina_zast%C4%99pcza_(serial_telewizyjny)

News / Scandals, conflicts, tensions, arguments - real life examples from Poland [543]


To quote from Downton Abbey: "I don't like to say..."

But look up the genealogical and pro-PiS threads (from the first year of the current government) and it will be clear.... around christmas this same poster would go off on anti-Santa Clause rants, claiming the figure was created by coca cola (no, he dates to the first decade of the 19th century)

News / Scandals, conflicts, tensions, arguments - real life examples from Poland [543]

I always wondered if he was on the pad... did they finally realize how irrelevant this place is and pull him?

News / Scandals, conflicts, tensions, arguments - real life examples from Poland [543]


Not as long as they keep the money flowing to their feckless voters...

Why isn't the opposition making more of the steady stream of scandals coming out?

I think they know an economic downturn is coming and don't want to be in office when that happens, they wan to see PiS squirm once they have to stop being Daddy Warbucks....

History / Modern myths and legends about communist past in Poland [250]


meh... kind of an irrelevant question, I don't trust communist record keeping about SB informants one bit more than I would trust old issues of Trybuna Ludu

and his biggest... accusers have very fish stuff in their past as well., so it's not something that I think is of vital importance one way or the other

the idea that SB was some kind of ruthlessly efficient organization is another myth: it wasn't run any better than anything else in the PRL,

FWIS I was just editing an article about one aspect of the PRL past that involved the SB (and which used SB records as partial sources) and the only conclusion possible was that it was a typical commie enterprise, staffed by an occasional competent person, a majority going through the motions and a large minority of nitwits (who might be in charge since promotions were not based on competence).

I'm very interested in the nuts and bolts of the PRL period, how people lived at ground level and how the system worked overall (as a system) but I'm mostly not interested in score keeping for modern policy...

News / PiS candidates are losing positions in EU Parliament. Will they keep power in Poland? [358]


And to be clear.... PO (as bad as they are, which is.... pretttttttty bad) created a lot of the prosperity.

If PiS wins and the economy goes south they'll just blame the opposition and their feckless voting core will stay with them until the bitterest of ends - PiS cutting off the voter bribery system (Which they'll blame on everyone but themselves, of course)

History / Modern myths and legends about communist past in Poland [250]

As I often say, Poland despite material inconveniences was generally one of the more... liberal and livable east bloc countries and only during martial law did the levels of repression approach the norm of East Germany or 1980s Romania.

But there's a cost to everything and the generally less repressive nature of communist Poland (compared to most neighboring countries at the time) meant that it was much harder to sort out the paper party members (who had to join and didn't really actively take part in repression) from the real evil bastards...

Vetting everyone would be exhaustive and expensive and excluding everyone who belonged to the party (and their circles) would have meant a much more difficult and lengthy transition...

The decision was made (for the sake of a peaceful transition) to let some bastards go... you can argue about whether that was the optimum choice but you should do so from the point of view (and only with the information available to) the people that made that decision in good faith.

It's easy for keyboard inspectors to sniff out soviet commie jewish conspiracies everywhere and dictate what should have happened with 20/20 hindsight and forget that what happened in 1989 was essentially a world first.... try negotiating out of a totalitarian system yourself before assuming the worst of all involved.

History / Modern myths and legends about communist past in Poland [250]


I read a book on the "Vampire from Zagłębia" (by Przemysław Semczuk) one of the interesting takeaways is just how many crazy homicide and/or serial murderer cases there were going on in Katowice at that time... a bunch of non-related cases were ascribed to the vampire because that was apparently less scary than the reality... the most disturbing was the 'lord of the flies' case... yechhh

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zdzis%C5%82aw_Marchwicki

History / Modern myths and legends about communist past in Poland [250]


I often had the idea that when PiS was talking about Poland it was really talking about Romania - the scenario they described was certainly closer to Romania (or Ukraine) than anything going on in Poland.

I think the Romanian movie "A fost sau n-a fost" (given the terrible title 12.08 East of Bucharest in other countries) is one of the definitive films on the post-communism era in Eastern Europe, a bit slow and confusing in the beginning but the TV discussion that dominates the second half is just amazing...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12:08_East_of_Bucharest

History / Modern myths and legends about communist past in Poland [250]


I've heard that before... the PRL was often a fun place for the children of families who were not subject to extreme poverty or targeted for political reasons. Back in the US I knew an American (non-Polish) guy who lived in the PRL for a couple of years with his family (I forget what they were doing) around age 10 and he said it was much more fun than in the US at the same time...

It was more in the late teens when the less... entertaining aspects of the PRL came to the fore

News / Poland's LBGT Seen as Dangerous Foreign Idea. [39]


No, it's meant to give PiS voters an excuse for voting for the horribly corrupt neo-PRL party. Some want to pretend they vote for PiS for reasons not related to handouts and this is meant to help them maintain that fairytale...

News / Poland's LBGT Seen as Dangerous Foreign Idea. [39]

PiS is going after LBGT people because... what else do they have? They can't keep on bribing the voters with "free" money forever, Smolensk is a dead end and the entitled nature of PiS elite with Air Kuchciński (probably just the tip of the iceberg) will alienate some.

when in trouble political hacks like to find a scapegoat and LGBT are this year's model - no matter how backward and primitive it makes the Polish public seem.

And, in case you missed it, rumors about JK's orientation have been circulating for decades (and none of them are about women....)

Food / British food products in Poland? [334]


well brand loyalty is pretty spotty in Poland* and people seem to like finding new things in stores (another reason for things like French days at Lidl etc) The British beer would be a novelty for customers who would not expect it to be continually available. I'm happy that biedronka now has an approximation of fresh guacamole but don't expect it to be a permanent addition to the shelves...

Ketchup and mayonaise seem to be among the few things with strong brand followings, I have one friend who makes a point to shop in stores that carry kielecki mayonnaise and I've heard people argue about different brands of ketchup