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....

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


In my experience Polish people will work very hard if they think they will be suitably rewarded. That is not usually the case in Poland....

This also feeds into the equality gap (not terrible in Poland but growing) which feeds into large portions of the population thinking they're being cheated out of their birthright which leads to daft behavior like voting for PiS.

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

So you've never been to Poland, you might not realize this, but... the number one issue of voters is job creation (esp in the private sector) that's why they voted against PO because it wasn't doing enough to facilitate the private sector in creating jobs.

To the extent that PiS doesn't deliver on increased employment it's support will whither (except for its hardcore electorate of those who have not really adapted to post PRL life).

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

and just how many jobs in the private sector are these going to create?

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


When are these good changes going to start coming? The number one good change that most Poles want is job creation and everything they've done so far means more unemployment....

I may say you're a dreamer, but you're not the only one. Perhaps some day you'll all join us in the real light of the sun.....

Work / What would be a good salary for an MBA graduate in Poland? [27]


There is no demand for "news anchors" in either Gujarati or in Indian English in Poland so your average salary would be ... .nothing.

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


You can try to minimize it while realizing that doing away with it entirely takes generations or you can glory in it and exploit it for all it's worth (as PiS is doing).

Quite a difference in practice. And to be clear I mean that patronage always exists everywhere but can be ameliorated by meritocratic (if that's a word) considerations or not. In terms of patronage PiS is like travelling back into the early 90s whereas PO was trying (slowly and not always effectively) to keep up with the present and head toward the future.

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


Patronage has always been the rule in Poland (and PO indulged as much as anyone) but PiS is just so blatantly obvious about it:
In the PiSiverse

skills + experience = nothing

loyalty - scruples = everything

Language / [SEX] Polish sentences/expressions [41]

The old Czech song Láska nebeská (heavenly love) was interpreted by many Polish speakers as referring to a blue peener, causing jokes like

Dlaczego laska jest niebieska? Dżinsy farbują.

Of course the Polish cognate of Czech laska (love) is not laska but łaska (grace, clemency etc) as Czech lost the distinction between hard and soft l (ł and l) long ago (I think they're still distinct in Slovak).

There's also a story (apocryphal?) of Stan Borys making an impression in Czechoslovakia by singing Szukam przyjaciela (I'm looking for a friend) not realizing(?) that it sounded to them like "I fvkk my friend".

Language / [SEX] Polish sentences/expressions [41]


I do have to admit that I'm a bit surprised that you're so familiar with that phrase..... Oh yeah! Catholic school! I totally get it!

(just kidding: I was quoting smurf's mistake as an excuse to write the joke)

Language / [SEX] Polish sentences/expressions [41]


There's an old joke: Did you hear about the ambitious blonde?

She wanted to make more ice cream than Algida.

Life / Living like a local in Poland - What does it even mean? [30]


They used to do a lot of home canning of fruits and vegetables for that reason but I don't think it's so common anymore with produce being shipped from southern europe now.

News / Jacek Kurski, the new chairman of TVP (Telewizja Polska) [37]


Family values, a la PiS!

News / Jacek Kurski, the new chairman of TVP (Telewizja Polska) [37]


Silly me, honest people are convicted of libel all the time.

As for nasty, there are the reports about the time he pulled down his drawers to prove he wasn't Jewish to some LPR types.... No sleaze there!


Actually he said the grandfather volunteered (rather than being drafted and deserting and then fighting with Polish forces the first chance he got).

News / Jacek Kurski, the new chairman of TVP (Telewizja Polska) [37]

I sometimes wonder if PiS has a reverse vetting process - the nastier and more dishonest you are the more likely they are to appoint you to an important position.

no, neither of them has been convicted of libel....

This is an old management technique - appoint incompetent or dishonest people who owe their job to you (because no one else will have them) in order to ensure their loyalty.

Sometimes I think they're just playing an elaborate game of "Psych!" on the Polish public.

We're putting the younger generation like Duda and Szydlo in charge - Psych!

We're against former PZPR members being in government - Psych!

We're not going to obsess about Smolensk - Psych!

We'll create jobs - Psych!

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


Some years ago, not long after the first PiS election victory a co-worker referred to one of the K brothers (forget which one) as a "stary komuch"* meaning that he learned his management style from the communist period and had never updated it. I've never come across any data that would lead me to think otherwise.

*old commie, but worse

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


Good point, he's broken the law for PiS which puts him forever in their power (as they will not hesitate to use that against them should he ever show signs of independence).

And that's what I dislike about JK's PiS, it's a horrible form of negative selection - the brownnosers thrive and those with principal (or their own support bases) get exiled. Very PZPRish when you actually think about it.

I'll add that Duda's body language in his recent address to the nation was a mess, like a frightened child more than a statesman. From the looks of it, he didn't believe what he was saying himself, how could anyone else?

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


It actually only shows the hubris of JK, he's a proven loser with youth (as is Macierewicz) hauling them out of mothballs and hamstringing Szydło (and maybe Duda*) was a major blunder. Younger people were possibly going to support a new generation of PiS in a more general Christian Democrat mold, they're not ever going to warm to JK or AM (or Kurski) or other experienced troughers.

*it's too early to tell if he simply has no backbone or is a true believer