Work / Are there any jobs for Americans in Poland? [46]


your Polish needs work (esp written) how often do you read online news and stuff like that?


Dziękuję .... rodzice przyjechali .... wiem cieżko .... znaleźć....kicał (jak królik?) ale chciałbym

Food / 'Wigilia', the traditional Christmas Eve supper in Poland [77]

Okay that makes sense, it's a remnant.

Food / 'Wigilia', the traditional Christmas Eve supper in Poland [77]


Yes, that's my point. I had assumed it was catholic doctrine but the other day was reading about Christmas Eve in other countries and in a bunch of catholic ones people eat meat on that day. The Polish tradition is more likely an orthodox borrowing or folk catholic practice.

Food / 'Wigilia', the traditional Christmas Eve supper in Poland [77]

I have a question that never occurred to me before (since I'm not a catholic).

Why no meat on Christmas Eve? Other nominally catholic countries (France and Spain and Latin America) have meat on that night (Italy seems a bit all over the place on that issue) so I assume it's not part of Catholic dogma

In Orthodox (Prawosławne) practice abstaining from meat is a thing on Christmas Eve, is it maybe borrowed from them? Anyone know?

News / EU triggers Article 7, could strip Poland of voting rights [91]


By making them stay in the good graces of the current government?

News / EU triggers Article 7, could strip Poland of voting rights [91]


Okay how will the judicial "reform" actually address that?

How will it make the system less politicized?

How will it make the system less corrupt?

News / EU triggers Article 7, could strip Poland of voting rights [91]


That's PiS party line rhetoric with no real basis in reality.


Doubt that will happen unless Orban actually starts enacting policy that most people don't like. Several months ago I was talking with a Hungarian who also has Polish citizenship, they're not crazy about PiS but they tend to admire and support Orban. Aslo don't forget that the government he replaced was far worse than anything Poland has had post 1990...

News / EU triggers Article 7, could strip Poland of voting rights [91]


A. The idea that the EU is oppressing Poland is ridiculously stupid

B. Opinion polls show a majority want to stay in the EU and more blame Poland for its current problems with article 7 than other actors...

Life / Why Do You Love Poland? [907]


When was the last time they were on TV?


It's hard to rebuild those connections and the first three sound to me like they're running away from Polish traditions as much as connecting with them (don't recognize the last, I'll try to check them out).

Life / Why Do You Love Poland? [907]


In terms of music Poland is very cut off from and alienated from its own past. Much more so than other countries in the region. There was no Polish Maria Tanase

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_T%C4%83nase

Life / Why Do You Love Poland? [907]


Yeah, I think it's probably a combination of communism and over-fascination with western music. Church choirs, they hardly seem to exist anymore. I do remember once visiting in the countryside (near Sandomierz) and before the service began the congregation was singing along with the organist which was nice.

Life / Why Do You Love Poland? [907]


The standard "Merry Christmas" in Poland is "Wesołych Świąt", literally "Happy Holidays" (sometimes people add in words like peaceful and happy and only much more rarely do they actually say the words Christmas in the wish). And Christmas Eve (Wigilia) is more important than Christmas Day in Poland.

Harry's playing word games as usual.

Life / Why Do You Love Poland? [907]


A friend of mine (originally from the countryside in Świętokrzyskie) makes a delicious wigilia soup with buckwheat (kasza gryczana) dried mushrooms and żurek... he said where he's from they just call it 'barszcz'... is yours similar?

for me kutia is kind of disgusting and inedible I've had it twice and it was differently nasty each time....

News / EU triggers Article 7, could strip Poland of voting rights [91]


Direct political appointment of judges and (de facto) mass firings of sitting judges. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck it's probably partisan political control of the court system and the dismantling of the rule of law (also see Ziobro's use of public prosecutors in his jihad against a private doctor who was cleared of any wrongdoing).


Yeah I want a healthy gin and tonic that makes me lose weight and improves muscle tone, wishin' and hopin' won't create a healthy system.

Please provide the opinion of international experts who say the reform doesn't like a third world (or communist era) horror show.

News / EU triggers Article 7, could strip Poland of voting rights [91]


How so? The current government is trying to bring the court system and judges under direct partisan control so that they will issue judgement according to what the government wants at the moment and is jettisoning any judges that might no be willing to rule in the government's favor. It could not be clearer that that's what they're doing in violation of EU and international legal standards.

They also helped force this issue hoping it will turn the public against the EU (rather than against them).

I realize that being Serbian you don't understand concepts like 'rule of law' and 'civil society' preferring primitive tribal loyalties above all else but that's not the world that most Polish people want to live in (I hope....)

It's also worth noting that the reform is making businesses jittery because once it's finished the government can go after private businesses and loot them for their political cronies at will.

Genealogy / What does my Polish name mean? [402]


I've read that that was largely a myth that name changes had other sources...

smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/ask-smithsonian-did-ellis-island-officials-really-change-names-immigrants-180961544

Also here

ancestralfindings.com/changed-name-ellis-island

Genealogy / Americans of Polish descent. How many of us are on Polish forums? [216]

The word 'catholic' is related to Greek 'kathe' (all). If catholicism is not all-ecompassing it's no longer real catholicism.

Genealogy / Americans of Polish descent. How many of us are on Polish forums? [216]


The church has no one but itself to blame for that. compulsory religious lessons in schools have had the effect of massively undermining support for the church (which flourishes in Poland as an alternative to official power insitutions and not part of them).

Talk to some young polish people if you can about how they remember religion class...... it was a major own goal (gol samobójczy) by the church if the hierarchy had any sense they'd make religion classes illegal.

Genealogy / Americans of Polish descent. How many of us are on Polish forums? [216]

I've never denied the homogenous and Christian majority part I might say that I don't think Poles on the whole are nearly as religious as some people think they are (people I know who attend church regularly say attendance is down) and most young people are not especially conservative.

Genealogy / What does my Polish name mean? [402]


A long time ago I knew someone with a different last name than the rest of her family (she would have been born in the 1970s) whoever registered the birth at the hospital spelled the name wrong (let's say using ż instead of rz or the reverse). the family looked into having it legally changed but ultimately decided it would be more trouble than it was worth (communist bureaucracy......).

Genealogy / What does my Polish name mean? [402]


Yeah, that's very reasonable.

Genealogy / What does my Polish name mean? [402]


When did the ethnic group start identifying as Polacy (as opposed to Lechici or whatever they called themselves earlier)?

Genealogy / Americans of Polish descent. How many of us are on Polish forums? [216]


Your boy crush on Putin is not very representative of Polish thought nor is your hatred of the EU. There are things that a lot of Poles don't like about it but there is nothing close to widespread belief that the country should leave it.

And only Rydzykites really care about Jesus as King (when did that happen? it was certainly unremarked upon by any of the people I know....)

Genealogy / What does my Polish name mean? [402]

My guess is that family names were often created on the fly, so a single Pole among a lot of Germans (or whatever) might be so used to being referred to that way that when they have to think up a family name for a census or church or whatever they just supply what other people call them.

Lengyel (Pole) Cseh (Czech) Szlovak (Slovak) Horvat(h) (Croat) and Szerb (serb) all seem to be relatively common family names in Hungary and were probably formed in similar ways...

Genealogy / Americans of Polish descent. How many of us are on Polish forums? [216]


If you're going to let some weird website with no real connection to Poland (very few Polish people actually post here) question your commitment to Polish traditions then you've already decided to junk them and you're just looking for an excuse, no matter how flimsy. Fine, just be honest with yourself.

I'm a (non-Polish) American who's lived a long time in Poland and the amount of "America bashing" that goes on is very minute and trivial. Poland is about as pro-American a country as you'll find in Europe (including the UK and maybe Ireland). In over 20 years residence the number of instances of 'America bashing' I've heard (in the media or in real life) can be counted on the fingers of my hands (or maybe one hand).

There are some anti-Americanish folks from the British Isles here and a few Putin-paid-trolls and a couple of permanent grouches - but overall this place is not representative of Poland anymore than Ottawa is representative of Mexico....

Language / Dziadzia / Babcia - help me with spelling/pronunciation [81]


I got that right away! German loans are easy and as are some Czech words like kamrat (probably from kamarad - kolega) others are harder. My favorite part of Silesian is the first person singular past tense with -ch in some varieties (instead of -m) probably a holdover from the old aorist .

Language / Dziadzia / Babcia - help me with spelling/pronunciation [81]


I regularly read books in standard Polish and translate a few academic articles from Polish to English every year.

But Silesian hardly at all.... Standard Polish being so widespread and so uniform across the country has it's benefits but a big drawback is that I'm useless with dialects because I don't get enough exposure to them....

I've bookmarked the article and will give it a shot in a day or two.

Language / Dziadzia / Babcia - help me with spelling/pronunciation [81]


weird spelling, should it be starzyk or are there dialects where rzi is possible?

Life / Why are Poles always so miserable? Why do they never smile? [512]


that's your problem, not theirs (unless you actually give in to your violent wishes) why so angry?

Life / Why Do You Love Poland? [907]


Who's next in the line of succession?