UK, Ireland / Why are Polish people, especially women, so disrespectful toward the English? [442]


Okay, the second line looks like someone just got a mouth full of seawater...

UK, Ireland / Why are Polish people, especially women, so disrespectful toward the English? [442]

Oh, being disrespectful to them (esp the Wlesh) is just right and good.

Real Estate / Where to look on the internet for Poland Real Estate [114]

Also sometimes Polish real estate offices use the term 'immovables' in English (it's a direct translation of 'nieruchomości' which might be a direction translation of the German term 'Immobilien')

Life / Why do Silesians hate Poland? [41]


More revived than survived. In the early 90s I knew a German guy in Poland who had been a social worker and became interested in Poland after working with a bunch of "Germans" from Silesia who'd migrated to Germany... and they didn't know any German when they arrived. They spoke standard Polish and Silesian... A former colleague who lived there in the late 1990s early 2000s said they'd put up German signs and some people had started speaking German (going back and forth between the two countries a lot)

There's also the question of Czech Silesia..

Life / Babcia or Busha - any social class difference? [359]

dziadzia yes, but bushia (busia?) is not used in Poland, babcia is the normal word.

Love / How do guys from Poland flirt? [47]


They'll give the man every opportunity to make the first move, but if he doesn't.... then they'll go ahead and make it. They're not the type to wait around for years waiting for some guy to initiate.

Love / How do guys from Poland flirt? [47]

A lot of the better Polish guys tend to the shy side and will wait for very clear signs of interest or just wait for the woman to make the first move (Polish women are mostly not very shy and have no problem with making the first move)

Find/invent a reason to ask for help/advice. If he's possibly interested he'll be happy to help, if he says he can't help (without trying) he's not interested.

News / How strongly are Poles sure that president Duda defend Poland's interests ? [265]


All former Soviet countries where Russian is a first or second language. Russian speakers learn survival Polish with very little effort and there was a long history of Armenian immigration (which everybody forgets because they assimilated so thoroughly even taking Polish names*).

Poles worrying about Russian speaking immigrants is like the Dutch worrying about German (or Afrikaans) speaking immigrants.
Georgians are another kettle of fish but I'm not expecting many to show up in Poland.

I'm not expecting most Indian students to stay in Poland. A big difference between Poland and the Netherlands is that there's not much of a social safety net so non-western immigrants (for the time being) have to stay on the good side of the local population. Infrastructure and skimpy housing options make the formations of ghettos very unlikely.

Immigration from predominantly muslim countries is not and most likely will never be encouraged, despite historically good relations with Turkey and some Arab countries (esp Syria, there's long been a small Syrian minority in Poland who are largely in medicine and building if I'm not mistaken).

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenians_in_Poland#Notable_Poles_of_Armenian_descent

Life / Why Do You Love Poland? [907]


an imaginary event that no one here believes, you silly Mazurek.


yeah, you're more like what they leave behind in the fields...

News / How strongly are Poles sure that president Duda defend Poland's interests ? [265]


Yes, they're economic migrants who work for a while and then go back home (some percentage will surely stay on for good but no one I know is concerned about that). Where I live there are about 10 buses a day going to and arriving from Ukraine (and you can't walk down the street for 10 minutes without hearing someone speaking Russian). Again, this bothers almost no one.

Work / New Job at Warsaw International School as an English teacher - Advice? What should I expect? [26]


Which makes you look like an incompetent boob to the class (and/or an unsuccessful language learner, hardly a great role model). I just take care of the interruption as quickly as possible and get back to the lesson.

There's a lot of weird folklore about teaching languages that doesn't help learners in the slightest - the idea that a teacher should pretend to be monolingual is one of them. It's perfectly possible to have a monolingual classroom (except for extraordinary circumstances) without that silly charade.

News / How strongly are Poles sure that president Duda defend Poland's interests ? [265]


That's the population as a whole, any kind of slavic fellowship or pan-slavic feeling is all but non-existent in Poland.


Cause that's what they want to be?

Work / New Job at Warsaw International School as an English teacher - Advice? What should I expect? [26]


Saying "I don't speak Polish" when you can is lying.

What happens if someone comes into the room and asks them something in Polish? (this definitely happens a lot in Poland)

Work / New Job at Warsaw International School as an English teacher - Advice? What should I expect? [26]


These are children, if he claims to not know Polish and then they realize he does, then they'll perceive him as another grown up liar.

Not responding in Polish during class is okay but it's rarely a good idea to outright lie to students of any age.

Work / New Job at Warsaw International School as an English teacher - Advice? What should I expect? [26]


Dumb rule. They'll figure it out anyway and it makes you look like a liar.

Work / New Job at Warsaw International School as an English teacher - Advice? What should I expect? [26]


Very very true. Also, if you set out firm boundaries in the beginning you can occasionally, when the situation warrants it, be more lax, while if you start off to lax it's much harder to establish discipline later on.

News / Political life of Poland [135]


They recently won elections in Austria and Italy... and every new deal that Merkel makes to not stop migration into Germany strengthens AfD...

It should be noted that in the US the leadership of both parties wants permanent massive levels of unskilled migration into the country although a solid majority of the country is against that.

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1539]


In SovietSpeak 'nationality' is roughly 'ethnic group' but historically in Russian speaking lands if Jews who converted to christianity were still Jews and never Russians.

In Poland there was never such a clear national policy and lots of folks in modern Poland have some Jewish ancestry they're unaware of. the communist period probably strengthened the idea that Jewishness had nothing to do with religion and everything to do with ancestry.

And if you were really Polish you'd know that 'nationality' in the Soviet Union is normally translated as 'narodowość' because (among other reasons) there were obligatory Russian classes when you supposedly lived here..

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1539]

In the Soviet Union "Jewish" was a 'nationality' and not a religion.

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1539]


Ie individuals, the country of Poland is not responsible and bears no guilt for the actions of some individuals at a time when the country was under hostile military occupation by two foreign powers.


They were trying to stay alive when that was very, very difficult?

Again, they were individuals acting on their own and the current government of Poland bears no responsibility for what they did then (if any are still alvie)

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1539]


And what role was that (considering there was no functioning Polish state at the time)?

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1539]


The radio show This American Life had a show on a young Jewish woman who went to Poland (actually she was in a couple of episodes). Anyhoo, at one point she decides to visit the people who concealed her mother. Her mother had never spoken well of them saying they only did it for money and when she visited them they spoke of how much they had like her mother and were sad she never tried to contact them after leaving.

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1539]

Poland played no role in the holocaust. Period. Israeli (and more broadly Jewish) opposition to the law was based on the fact that Poles feel no collective guilt over the holocaust and that drives them insane with rage.

I was against the law from the beginning, but I'm also against holocaust denial laws, the truth has nothing to fear from open discussion.

Life / Understanding Poland's Birthday Tradition [66]


During the communist period artists could say things in comedies they never could otherwise, "ile jest cukru w cukrze" is a jab at the poor quality of almost everything made during the communist period (due to, among other factors, the lack of incentives for improvement)

The first time I was in Poland (mid 80s) there were lots of drunks lying around the city passed out on sidewalks or parks or at bus stops etc. That still happens occasionally but nothing remotely like back then.

History / Whom do the people in Poland hate more: Germans or Russians? [871]


What about all the muslim immigration to Moscow (from Central Asia and the Caucasus?)

History / Whom do the people in Poland hate more: Germans or Russians? [871]


It's the same overall system, a Big Man in charge with the power of life and death over the citizenry, a coterie of treacherous suckups and the great unwashed placid mass of serfs. In structural terms Russia hasn't changed it's form or functioning since the Tsar, the labels change but the strucutre remains the same

History / Whom do the people in Poland hate more: Germans or Russians? [871]


No. Germany is not the same country it was in 1939... Russia however is still essentially the same country as the CCCP just with different labels.


It gets lonely being the only non-Polish Russian suck up here?

History / Whom do the people in Poland hate more: Germans or Russians? [871]


Russia doesn't do "reasonably good relationships" it does "Master and servant" relationships and Poland has no ambitions to be a Russian vassal state.

History / Whom do the people in Poland hate more: Germans or Russians? [871]

That's a nuance that Rysiek just can't get, all he can do is barge into rooms and shout questions at people. So his limited emotional repertoire gets limited and 'doesn't trust' is conflated with 'hates'.

History / Whom do the people in Poland hate more: Germans or Russians? [871]

So given the hundreds of years of history there's no need for Polish people to like or trust any Russian government. That's what.

Poland and Russia are not going to be allies unless Russia drastically changes and starts to become a civilized, civil society (like Germany has done).