Language / Polish Language Exchange Thread [145]

Hey, Rich!/ Cześć,Panie Ryszku!

I teach English as well, although not on Skype, not yet anyway:-)
Certainly be interested in exchanging thoughts on methodology, since I teach English, German, and have tutored Polish professionally on occasion, more US-born beginners, at this point.

Poles tend to learn other languages more phonetically than Anglo-American native speakers, I've found. As English is so chaotically UNphonetic, Americans at any rate seem to learn by reading, rather than by listening.

That's been my experience though.

Hope to hear from you, if and when you have a chance.
marekzgerson@yahoo

Language / In search of Mówimy po polsku audio files [6]

I never used that book, but I'm here in the States. To be frank, that's a fairly old textbook and the language has changed quite a bit since then.

Guess though for bread-and-butter basics, such as grammar, it'd be allright. Slang and colloquialisms however, might get you more of a good laugh than an earnest respone these days:-)

Not knocking the book in itself, only the 60's are a long ways away.

I'd try bookbox,com for almost any language. The plethora of on-line material for Polish also is rather staggering!

Off-Topic / What is funny about this picture? [31]

I am and I did and I stand by my post!

Off-Topic / What is funny about this picture? [31]

Obviously from their own fears:-)

News / Britain - problem for Poland and Poles? [121]

Well, for how long is it "staying", (...and finally, when is it leaving)?
LOL

D'you mean perhaps "It CAN BE FOUND in the title of THE article"?
You're translating again, old man:-)

News / Britain - problem for Poland and Poles? [121]

@rozumiemnic, I keep up with the news! 'Course the average Brit isn't going to trash their own country any more than the average American isn't going to admit to the fact that our nation is in a state of civil war and that things are going to hell in a handbasket!!

:-)

News / A better Polish solution: aiding refugees in their home region [29]

...but, to paraphrase Sir Winston Churchill, "have we anything better"??

No:-)

News / A better Polish solution: aiding refugees in their home region [29]

Amen:-)

News / Britain - problem for Poland and Poles? [121]

Look with your eyes, man! When last across the pond, the IRA was the big ticket issue. Poles weren't really a problem, as I recall, more the Hindus, the Pakis and your occasional crackpot sounding off in Speaker's CornerLOL

News / Britain - problem for Poland and Poles? [121]

Post-Brexit Britain is an entirely different place than over a hundred years ago, when Joseph Conrad came to England and became one of the best prose writers in the English language:-)

Today, Britain has become a xenophobic jungle, probably worse than it was nearly twenty years ago when I was there last.

News / A better Polish solution: aiding refugees in their home region [29]

Makes sense to me. This would seem to eliminate the need for refugees to come to Poland etc. when they are being aided in their home country!

On the other hand, who's stopping ANY group of people from visiting or even making a sojourn abroad for either limited touristic or study purposes:-)

Love / Are Polish men handsome to you? [182]

Polish men tend on the whole to be tall in comparison, say, with Southern Italians, Greeks or certain Asians as well as Hispanics.

As a man, I can't honestly comment on whether I find them "handsome" or not, only that most are easily recognizable to me by their distinctive lozenge-shaped head and squarish facial bone structure along with light eyes and coarse, fair hair:-)

Polonia / Let's talk about Sweden and other Scandinavian countries [236]

Sure does:-)

Isn't it true though how the more complicated the language aka grammar, the more conservative and above all, homogeneous, the speakers, e.g. Polish, Icelandic, Lithuanian, Finnish etc? It's been theorized that ancient peoples who felt themselves especially threatened by surrounding hostile populations used the difficulty of their native tongue almost as a protective shield against perceived enemy forces around them. If their speech seemed impenetrable to outsiders, they could more easily protect themselves from harm.

Sorta make sense?

Polonia / Let's talk about Sweden and other Scandinavian countries [236]

Didn't you find that it was helpful knowing Swedish, Rustygun?

Polonia / Let's talk about Sweden and other Scandinavian countries [236]

To which country are you referring, Rusty? Sweden or Poland?
:-)

Polonia / Let's talk about Sweden and other Scandinavian countries [236]

Indeed, Polson!

Oddly enough, I once heard a youngish woman speaking to her American husband in English, and her accent reminded me uncannily of Ingrid Bergman.
I happened to address her in Swedish, quite by happenstance, and it turned out she was from Poznań:-)

Polonia / Let's talk about Sweden and other Scandinavian countries [236]

@Maf, Swedish is probably the most widely-spoken of the extant Scandinavian languages aka the most "practical":-) It's also spoken in much of urban Finland, and was at one time more popular then English, German or Russian.

Most Swedes up till round about sixty-five or over, speak (or at least THINK they speak) nearly fluent conversational English, often with even a slight American-style accent, compared, say, with the Danes, Germans or Dutch, who often sound rather British!

Swedes on the whole are critical of foreigners who speak their language, as relatively few non-Swedes actually have bothered to learn it, thus, are liable to be a bit on the corrective side concerning mistakes.

I too speak several Scandinavian languages, though find Swedish to be far and away the most melodic.

Genealogy / Why are some Polish people dark complected, and others very light [511]

...possibly intermingled with Laplanders, themselves known to be dark-haired and somewhat yellowish complected:-)

Language / Slavic languages words similarities with Polish [240]

Prekrasno = prekrasnoy in Russian, right?
:-)

Always found it intriguing how close the Russians words are for "red" and "beautiful".

Love / What do you like most about Polish girls? :) [120]

From where then did the pervasive myth arise that women's lib has never reached Poland?? At least make the (not so subtle) distinction between Polish women living in the countryside compared with those urban professionals living and working in the larger cities:-)

Language / Slavic languages words similarities with Polish [240]

Translation, please?

OK, let me try: "Poles and Serbians belong to essentially the same language family. It's only natural that there will be certain similarities in vocabulary what with our borders constantly changing hands......"

Is that about it, Crow? It was hard for me to wade through the thicket of your somewhat 'dense' Serblish prose.
lol

Language / Slavic languages words similarities with Polish [240]

Thanks!

Could've sworn I either heard (or read) "Boli mi głowa". Then again, I might have been dreaming, perhaps simply not paying enough attention:-)

"Boleć"!! Of courseLOL

Language / Slavic languages words similarities with Polish [240]

Curious as to whether or not it should be "wszystko MI boli", since I thought "bolić" requires the Dative:-)

Language / Slavic languages words similarities with Polish [240]

True, Polonius!

@Ziemowit, d'you honestly think the average marginally educated Pole could actually recognize the similarities between those two phrases you quoted?

I'd be quite surprised!

Language / Slavic languages words similarities with Polish [240]

Not even mutually intelligible, Serbian and Polish! Rather like asking whether or not French is "another version" of Italian, or German a dialect of Dutch:-)

A famous Yiddish linguist, Uriel Weinreich, once described the difference between a language and a dialect: "A language is simply a dialect with a navy and an army!"

lol

Life / Will Poland ever be multicultural like Sweden, Germany or France? [283]

Unlikely, at least for the foreseeable future. Hope springs eternal:-)

Genealogy / The typical Polish look, or all Eastern Europeans [676]

I can usually recognize Polish people by their facial bone structure, for both men and women. Italians tend to have rounder faces and more acquiline features. Germans are often extremely tall and large-boned, with squarish body types and faces, even if many have dark-colored eyes or skin:-)

Love / What do you like most about Polish girls? :) [120]

I suppose if I had to hazard a gross generalization regarding Polish vis-a-vis German, French, Russian, or Italian women (on the whole) upon pure observation over the years, I'd have to conclude that Polish women seem much more guileless and curious than the other nationalities mentioned, who look to have "been there, done that" etc.

If I were to further compare Polish women with certain Scandinavians aka Swedes and Danes, or with Dutch women, I'd again have to conclude that the latter act more worldly wise, a trifle jaded perhaps and less enthused about the attention being given them.

The above are based solely on personal experience:-) Obviously, there can be no acid test.

Life / Polish movies with English subtitles [87]

Yessss! English movies with ENGLISH subtitles on close-caption TV. Now why didn't I think of that? A no-brainer:-)
LOL

Language / Short Polish<->English translations [1050]

Now you need to "translate" from SMSese into standard English. You should charge a fee for it, you make a bundle:-)
Forget learning a second language until the first one has been mastered!