Life / Do Polish people have a good ear for music? [90]


I have a bunch of clannad records, but no Enya except for fuaim which she appears on (as aithne? the original Irish spelling I assume).

Life / Do Polish people have a good ear for music? [90]

The problem is that Polish people mostly are conformists.

This means that even though there is (or used to be) some good stuff around many Polish people wouldn't listen because they want to like what people in other countries like and who in other countries is going to listen to Polish music?

Also, there's this weird idea that music that sounds pleasant is inevitably superficial so many people cultivated a taste in the less melodic and in unappealing hoarse voices. Leonard Cohen and Tom Waits were respected as _singers_ for chrissakes.

I stopped listening to Polish radio many years ago (mostly because I want the speaking and singing to be in the same language). Had there been a station that only played Polish music I'd have listened but there wasn't s I didn't.

Law / How to get custody of my children? I am a foreigner on a Poland's karta pobytu (temporary residence card) [29]


How so? She's only talking about what she wants in the first post, no thought at all about the kids (except that she wants them with her).

It's quite possible that their problems can be settled through therapy. Not for sure, maybe not even probably, but she owes it to her children to make more of an effort than she indicates has been made in the first post.

Law / How to get custody of my children? I am a foreigner on a Poland's karta pobytu (temporary residence card) [29]

With two daughters you really should try couples therapy first before wrecking their family life.

Life / Gifts from Poland (I'm returning to my country after a year in Poland) [37]


You can't go wrong with flaczki!!!!

News / The Political Circus of Poland [309]


Rżnіjmy Polaków ???*

Just being helpful

*Let's scrеw the Poles

News / The Political Circus of Poland [309]

My thoughts on the current situation of PiS.

This is probably a mistake. Unlike the PJN people (who the core PiS voters didn't care about) Ziobro has a real grassroots following and enough voters are liable to drop their support for PiS that the party will be gutted. If I didn't know any better (do I know any better?) I would assume Kaczynski wants to retire from politics but wants to make sure no one else can have his party so he's purposely destroying it...

Life / Polish comedies created by Bareja, are they understandable for non Polish people ? [12]

Brilliant is a good (US) equivalent of genialny, not sure about British usage where it's often used to mean something like 'great' or 'awesome'.

Bareja is a little hit or miss for me and he gets some really bad ideas (esp with any non-white character) but at his best he had a better understanding of the day-to-day Polish national character (and how to deflate it) than anyone else.

Life / Polish comedies created by Bareja, are they understandable for non Polish people ? [12]

genial =/= genialny (you can find that meaning in the dictionary but it's outdated and I've never heard a native use it that way)

genial = sympatyczny (meaning for native speakers of english)

Due to changing social mores and political systems Bareja's movies are probably funnier for non-Poles who knew something of Poland then than for younger Polish people.

Life / Poles speaking English - examples [263]

I guess I would be a lousy diplomat (despite being a native speaker of English) cause I can't understand what you're trying to say....

Life / Poles speaking English - examples [263]

I would much rather that Polish diplomats use Polish and qualified interpreters rather than trying to use English. I'd make an exception for those with substantial life experience in anglophone countries but it's too dangerous to try diplomacy in a foreign language (it's far too easy to agree to something you didn't intend to or don't fully understand).

The only alternative would be for Poland to self-colonize and make English the number one priority of the entire education system (like a lot of former british colonies do). But that's not a good strategy either.

UK, Ireland / Raising Bilingual Children - How are you teaching your children? Your experiences? [74]


You have a button for that!?!!??!

What? Where? How?

UK, Ireland / Raising Bilingual Children - How are you teaching your children? Your experiences? [74]

Wroclaw confessed


For me (who's pretty fluent in Polish) what happens is this: My brain starts to work in English but then the Polish starts and since it's "on top" of the English (and I know it well enough) my brain can't just tune it out but starts to process it too but that interferes with processing the English so in the end I have a couple of incomplete messages (usually overlapping and missing information) and if I keep it up long enough a headache.

If the movie is in a language I know well (but which I'm not native in) then my second language processing starts and is simply overidden by the Polish. Since my brain processes them in the same way the stronger audio (Polish in which I'm also more fluent) wins out.

I assume that it would be similar with a Polish movie with an English lektor; the English being dominant in the audio would make it easier to tune out the Polish. But I'll probably never know for sure.

UK, Ireland / Raising Bilingual Children - How are you teaching your children? Your experiences? [74]

Varsovian bragged


That's understandable. I'm interested in an informal question (I usually ask of bilingual people in Poland):

How do your kids react o a movie in English with a Polish voice over?

Why I ask. Bilingualism isn't really a discrete phenomenon and 50/50 bilinguals are pretty rare. Usually there's more like a 60/40 split with the speaker being more comfortable win one or the other. Anyway, the less they mind the lektor the greater the chance that they're either Polish dominant (or very close to the 50/50 average). If they dislike it (as in not being able to process it properly) they're probably more English dominant.

That is, it's not a question of aesthetics but that hearing the two languages in that configuration (one language 'on top of' the other) causes processing problems. There's a lot of evidence that the brain processes a person's first language(s) differently than any learned later. If they have no processing problems then either they're Polish dominant (and tuning the other language out) or close to the 50/50 mark. If the Polish voice over causes problems in processing the English then they're English dominant.

To really test this, you would also need commercial quality versions of Polish movies with English voice overs but they don't make those (thank heaven for small mercies).

UK, Ireland / Raising Bilingual Children - How are you teaching your children? Your experiences? [74]

Trixity said:


From the point of view of a child acquiring a first language there's no credible evidence from linguistics that they find one language harder than another (to speak that is, reading and writing are another story). All languages are really hard and it takes a lot of time and effort for children to achieve native mastery.

Looking at one word out of context doesn't tell you how the whole system works. There's a ton of stuff in English that's just as tough as Polish endings for children learning a language natively.

It's generally accepted that childen will virtually always prefer the language of other children in the enivornment to mom and/or dad's (when they're not the same). I've known speakers of several different languages trying to make their kids bilingual in Poland and it generally works but the kids still all prefer Polish because that's how they interact with the enivornment outside the home.

UK, Ireland / Raising Bilingual Children - How are you teaching your children? Your experiences? [74]


Temporary delays in language development in some areas (which very from child to child) are frequent in children being raised bilingually. They're almost always temporary and eventually followed by speeded up acquisition. For that matter, temporary delays in language development are not that rare in monolingual children either. Language acquisition is a very individual process and almost every child will differ from the standard schedule.

My first thought is there's nothing to worry about as long as she's responsive and making progress.

Also if you're planning on staying in Poland long term you might emphasize English more at home (following the minority language model more). If you're living in Poland she's gonna start preferring Polish once she hits the playground with the other kids so the second language needs all the help it can get. Reverse that if you're living in an English speaking country when she starts interactnig with the world beyond mom and dad.

Life / How far apart do Poles stand when they talk? [46]

IME going from closest conversational distance to biggest (just a few mentioned here)

Arabs

Latin Americans

Southern Europeans (esp Spanish, Greek)

Poles

Americans

Japanese

Some are surprised by the last but Japanese seem to have two settings for personal space : in some public contexts it gets shut off completely but when talking to people they like lots of room.

Language / Why is the Polish language so difficult? [309]


This is true as far as it goes. But in spoken English contrastive stress is also used. Unfortunately there's no convenient way to write this incredibly important feature of speech.

The _dog_ bit the _postman_.

Theoretically Polish has contrastive stress too but it's not nearly as important as in spoken English.

In some kinds of very colloquial American, there's also something like "The postman, the dog bit him."

Genealogy / Former Poland PM Donald Tusk - A Kashub or a German. [71]


Do you have any ... evidence for these 'facts' or should we just take your word?

Love / The Pole -- a mummy's boy? [10]


To me, that sounds less like him being a mommy's boy than him being gay. I can't say I've heard rumors about him (Poles don't gossip much about possibly gay celebrities) but it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest. Not that there's anything wrong with that....

Life / Why Polish people should be proud of being Polish? [370]

pûrnstache FTW!

Food / Origin of the pierogi [127]

Pierogi are only fried after being boiled. Usually it's a way to reheat leftovers.

I've never heard of any kind of baked pierogi in Poland.

Food / What is your favorite Polish Vodka? [653]


I think they have to redo the slogan:

Alcohol, helping ugly people get laid for over 5000 years!

Love / Polish Pet Names For Girls. [156]


isn't that żabka?

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

What Bulgarian lacks in noun morphology it makes up in verbal morphology, it has a much more developed tense system than the other Slavic languages, reminiscent of Spanish or Italian.

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


Far more preferable (in the sense of being simplied yet very Slavic in feel) to Slovio, which has a very non-Slavic kind of grammar. I cannot get past the plural in -s.

News / Polish President Lech Kaczynski and gov officials die in a plane crash in Russia [686]


ding! ding! ding! We have a winner!!!!

Seriously, I'd like to make him an offer: Have the body exhumed and if DNA tests indicate it's his brother then he pays for it.

Off-Topic / Random movies (not Polish) proposed by forum users [95]

It's from Russia.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavrilov_translation#In_Russia

Off-Topic / Random movies (not Polish) proposed by forum users [95]

The version you linked isn't Polish, it's Czech (or Slovak?)

While Polish film practice was influenced by Russia (lektor) Czechs being more influenced perhaps by Germany prefer dubbing (as do I).

Food / Origin of the pierogi [127]

The idea of raw dough wrapped around a filling of vegetables and/or meat and/or cheese and then cooked can be found just about everywhere where grains with gluten are cultivated.

Pierogies as made and enjoyed in Poland (with the particular dough and fillings and cooking methods can be thought of as Polish.