News / Poland to return to Catholic tradition? [177]


I'd say CONVINCE for each of those examples. I have nothing wrong with the church trying to CONVINCE people to follow their doctrines (or using whatever coercive power they have with their followers), I have a major problem of them wanting to use the coercive power of the state to make non-catholics follow specifically catholic doctrine (regarding things like abortion, in vitro etc). I also think mandatory religious lessons in public schools is immoral but it's also been a major tactical mistake as its actually driven many, many young people straight from the church...

Again, it's not just catholicism I feel the same way about all religions and varieties thereof. Do what you want in private (within the boundaries of individual rights) but don't try to boss other people around.

News / Poland to return to Catholic tradition? [177]


That is weird. I have no particular interest on the internal affairs of the catholic church as long as I'm left alone to be as non-catholic as I desire. this is pretty much my attitude towards all religions - practice them in private and stop trying to force others into observing your daddy issues.

Language / How well do Polish people understand Slovak? [88]


You mean pozor! and uwaga! (the Polish cognate of pozor is not pożar, but rather pozór - appearance (among other things) especially used in the expression 'pozory mylą' (appearances are deceptive).

Language / How well do Polish people understand Slovak? [88]


I mean "passively understand the general meaning" of even fairly official announcements without being able to do much actively besides speak Polish a little more slowly clearly than ussual and hope for the best.


Exactly.

News / Poland's post-election political scene [4080]


She'll be dumped the second she's seen as a hindrance to the PiS leadership by disagreeing with JK about anything and/or developing a power base of her own (or if it just seems expedient for any other reason).

As long as she's compliant and is not her own woman she'll last in the job...

Language / How well do Polish people understand Slovak? [88]


probably the latter, partly because Slovaks are used to hearing different dialects of their own language on a daily basis (most Poles aren't) and they're used to Czech as well. They have broader reception skills.

IME Polish speakers can passively understand Slovak pretty well (though some of it sounds ridiculous because of the different meanings common roots have taken on).

As a non-native speaker of Polish I can understand some Slovak (was once on a project with a bunch of them - when they spoke together I understood most of the roots but couldn't put it together fast enough to really understand the content).

As for which to learn, Polish has a lot more speakers (about 6 times more) and so there will be more materials but Polish is less useful for learning other Slavic languages. Slovak will be harder to find materials for but it will be more helpful if you need to learn another slavic language (esp Czech, Polish or Ukrainian).

My advice is to start both and see which one takes your fancy more and/or look up some youtube videos (movies, audio books) and see which you like listening to more.

News / Poland to return to Catholic tradition? [177]


While those who support PiS and their whack-a-doodle policies are punished right here on earth (by getting just what they say they want and getting it good. and. hard.)

Love / Valentines Day & Polish men [130]


Genuine spirituality is personal and spontaneous and doesn't need a money-collecting institution telling people what to eat or how to live or who to love or a day set aside to collectively express it (or any building whatsoever).

I fail to see your point.

If mindless consumers didn't have VDay they'd find another thing to be silly about and spend money on. It's easier to ignore it rather than rant about it.

News / Poland's post-election political scene [4080]


Didn't they have a chance already and royally screw things up? Why will things be better now?

UK, Ireland / The "Paracetamol Myth" - Polish people hesitate to visit UK doctors. [51]


I said as much but my friend was not calmed by this news (in his view the nurse was in danger of infecting anyone and anything they come into contact with and the idea of throwing the uniform in the family wash was kind of sickening to him).

UK, Ireland / The "Paracetamol Myth" - Polish people hesitate to visit UK doctors. [51]


It can and does happen anywhere, my point is that it's more likely to happen in a cultural setting where people think most patient complaints are probably trivial things that will work out themselves than in a place where anything out of the ordinary comes under immediate (often intense) scrutiny.

Side question for someone who knows Britain, do nurses wear their uniforms outside of the hospital? A friend (working in healthcare) was watching a British tv show in which a nurse arrived home in her uniform and was aghast at the lack of basic hygene (in Poland all medical personal change in and out of uniform at work).

UK, Ireland / The "Paracetamol Myth" - Polish people hesitate to visit UK doctors. [51]

do you have any evidence that the stories are untrue?

Perhaps the telegraph reporting same stories will reassure you, or probably not. If you simply don't want to believe then no evidence will suffice (rather like Smolensk to bring this back to Poland a bit).

telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1329487/Man-whose-cancer-doctors-missed-dies.html

telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/10866416/A-mother-of-four-died-after-doctors-misdiagnosed-her-cervical-cancer-30-times.html

Language / Polish was chosen the HARDEST LANGUAGE in the world to learn... :D [1558]


My description (single process/event that hasn't ended yet but will) is a lot simpler and covers about 98% of the usage with bothering with stuff about present intent and the like.

(you would probably faint at my descriptions of Polish but they're effective).

UK, Ireland / The "Paracetamol Myth" - Polish people hesitate to visit UK doctors. [51]


Alas and alack, must take that back!

After about two whole seconds of googling....

dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2644019/Mother-four-33-died-doctors-missed-cancer-THIRTY-TIMES-blaming-nerve-pain-anxiety.html

dailymail.co.uk/health/article-44308/Cancer-missed-doctors.html

eveningtimes.co.uk/ne ws/13301027.Patient_died_after_doctors_missed_cancer_diagnosis/

mirror.co.uk/news/real-life-stories/why-are-cancer-signs-being-missed-three-1380806

Language / Polish was chosen the HARDEST LANGUAGE in the world to learn... :D [1558]


My general rule, the present continuous describes events or processes that have an end point but which have not yet ended.

I'm reading an interesting book. (I've started but haven't finished)

I'm living in Brokesville now. (it's a temporary situation and I'll probably move)

I'm meeting George next week. (we haven't met yet).

What's interesting is that English doesn't have a clear equivalent of the simple present tense as it appears in almost all other European languages, as the English simple present is more gnomic or habitual tense, describing general things that happen more than once or that are generally true.

I read detective novels.

I live in Brokesville.

I meet George every Tuesday for coffee.

An underestimated difficulty for European learners is knowing what to do when they're thinking of their own simple present tense...

UK, Ireland / The "Paracetamol Myth" - Polish people hesitate to visit UK doctors. [51]

Isn't this largely a matter of overall optimism vs pessism in the culture influencing medical practices?

In the UK, a more optimistic society traditionally, the assumption is that the patient will get better on their own and it's better to just let nature take its course.

In Poland, decidedly more pessimistic, the assumption is that there is danger lurking everywhere in the human body and any abnormalities need to be rooted out ruthlessly.

the first time I went to my 'family doctor' (an outpatient clinic at a research hospital) I had a sinus infection (I'd worked that out already) and the first thing I said was "I'm pretty sure that I have a sinus infection" before I knew it I had referrals for two other types of treatment (in addition to the business of diagnosing my sinus infection) and several prescriptions.

You won't often find stories of the "17 different doctors fail to detect stage 4 lung cancer" type that seem to litter the British press.

I'll add that British co-worker some years ago had some work done while at home and their Polish doctor was _scandlized_ at the lack of follow up care (which amounted to 'go home and don't bother us anymore' in more polite langauge).

Language / Polish was chosen the HARDEST LANGUAGE in the world to learn... :D [1558]

The general rule on learning various languages, the easier the first year is the harder the fifth year is and the harder the first year is the easier the fifth year is.

English is easy to start and learners can become 'communicative' relatively quickly. But mastery by learners is very, very rare.

Polish is super difficult to start and it takes learners longer to become communicative but the longer the learner sticks with it the better they get.

This is related to the fossilization trap - just because somebody understands something you said doesn't mean it's right. English learners are more likely to to fall into this and think they are very fluent will throwing off all kinds of mistakes while Polish is less forgiving and so a mistake that worked out once might lead to misunderstanding later and so longtime learners are more likely to keep getting better.

News / Poland's post-election political scene [4080]


Huh? Sure it makes more sense for the state to retain profitable businesses and only privatize those that are losing money. Privatization for the sake of privatization doesn't seem like a very well thought out plan...

Language / Polish was chosen the HARDEST LANGUAGE in the world to learn... :D [1558]


Yeah, I checked after posting... I had first heard of it in connection with Wielkopolska and hadn't realized it was more widespread. Was there anything similar in the second person plural?

The first person plural forms seem esp unstable since the complex ending -śmy is partly homophonous with the pronoun 'my' (unlike their other first and second person endings).

I'll add the name of an old album by Kukiz'es group for another example of first person plural weirdness - My już są Amerikany (maybe: We's Americans now)

Language / Polish was chosen the HARDEST LANGUAGE in the world to learn... :D [1558]

I've seen -ch for Silesian (though I don't think it's everywhere ) but don't know about the distribution of -k and -f.

The exact forms of the complex past were in flux for a time but I have no idea how/when the current set was formalized. I do know there were forms like sąśmy and jestechmy (-chmy also from the aorist) for a time in comeptition with jesteśmy (I rather like sąśmy and wish it had won) though I don't know when are where. In western Poland there was an old -m plural as in robilim (instead of robiliśmy).

And more analytic forms rather like russian can be heard in the countryside like my byli

Language / Polish was chosen the HARDEST LANGUAGE in the world to learn... :D [1558]


Not sure if that's a great idea beyond a few scattered words, basically rz is always related morphologically or etymologically to r (so morze - morski) while ż is frelated g (mogę and może or on a very different time scale żona is a cognate of Greek gynaika IINM) or borrowed words like żaluzje.


I heard, form someone who would know, that reforming the alphabet along the lines of Czech was seriously considered as late as the 1950s maybe 1960s even but finally the decision was made to not go ahead. *see below for a sample

Also, IINM there was a fairly significant reform some time around the interwar period, which is when the instrumental plural -(a)mi replaced the old -y ending in writing (it had long supplanted it in speech. A couple of fossilized examples of that are 'innymi słowy' or 'przed laty'. I think that was also when -yja was replaced with -ja as in Maryja -> Marja

I'm wondering when tą will become acceptable instead of tę in writing and if it will become acceptable to write spoken variants of numbers like dwajścia instead of dwadzieścia or szejset instead of sześćset...

Here's a random paragraph with haceks and v instead w (no other changes) (mods - this is just a visual sample and doesn't need to be translated AFAIC)

Eteryčny zapach kviatóv unosił się vraz z ciepłym viatrem. Řeźby aniołóv ješče nosiły ślady palcóv dzieci, nievidočne, a jednak Ilona zdavała się uśmiechać bardziej znad opravionej v ramkę fotografii. Kobieta zapalająca znič chłonęła specyfičną nostalgię miejsca i tovařyšące jej ukojenie. "Abyś była ščęśliva i žeby nic nie zakłócało spokoju tvojej dušy" - vyšeptała.

Language / Polish was chosen the HARDEST LANGUAGE in the world to learn... :D [1558]


It's my understanding that in general the old Slavic aorist and imperfectum were used more or less the same way that past perfective and imperfective are used now. That is, they were replaced by the complex past tense. Had the complex past had new meanings you'd expect the older tenses to survive.

In other Slavic languages the Serbo-Croat gang still has an aorist though it's mostly only used in formal writing. Bulgarian still uses the aorist and imperfectum as the main past tenses and the complex past tenses have taken on other meanings (including evidentiality, a grammatical concept probably borrowed from Turkish).

In Polish the main remnant of the aorist/imperfectum is the use of -ch as a first person singular ending in the past which is still found here and there (sometimes chaning into -k or -f(!)) The Czech conditional bych (Polish bym) is another example of that.

News / Poland's post-election political scene [4080]


Which women would those be? I don't care whether or not he's gay (I actually lean toward thinking of him as asexual, he's into power, not people).


I would highly doubt that LK was gay.

News / Poland's post-election political scene [4080]

Jarosław K has never been married or publicly linked with any female partner (unless you count whatever was going on with Jolanta Szczypińska - who always looked delighted when he was embarassed in public...)

News / Poland's post-election political scene [4080]


Well those people wouldn't think of being gay as something bad. I'm not a Brit and don't think there's anything wrong with being gay but I assume that JK is..... not heterosexual (whether bi or gay or something else or even just plain asexual I don't know or really care). If he is gay then he's probably in the self-loathing camp (so to speak).

Language / Polish was chosen the HARDEST LANGUAGE in the world to learn... :D [1558]


I kmow what you neam.

Language / Polish was chosen the HARDEST LANGUAGE in the world to learn... :D [1558]


And I thought it was "Chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie"


I'm a foreigner, non-native speaker of Polish and the other two are more difficult to say for me, 'Chrząszcz brzmi w trzcine' certainly looks more intimidating to those who don't know Polish spelling, but it isn't that hard to say.

News / Poland's post-election political scene [4080]


But the free movement of goods and services means that it's not in the interest of a functional government to raise taxes too much.....as people in Poland will soon find out.

Language / Polish was chosen the HARDEST LANGUAGE in the world to learn... :D [1558]


w trzcinie


It's actually not that hard to say, I find

"Stół z powyłamywanymi nogami" (table with broken legs) to be much harder, as is

"Wyindywidualizowaliśmy się z rozentuzjazmowanego tłumu" (we stood out from the enthusiastic crowd)

News / Poland's post-election political scene [4080]


At least they'll be happy that people who were more successful than them are suffering (that seems to be the goal of PiS, not to help the less well off but to make them feel better by punishing the better off). Social poison it is....