Life / Babcia klozetowa alive & well? [35]

I can stand watching movies with lektors if they're not in English. But the lektor destroys the movie for those who speak the original language as their native tongue (no matter how well they know Polish).

And .... when two different languages are being spoken at the same time it just sounds ... ugly, it's a very unaesthetic experience.

Sometimes I wish someone could get a native speaker of English to do an English lektor track over a Polish movie so Polish people could understand how terrible it sounds to other people.

As for babcia klozetowa I can't say I've met any recently. My two favorite memories:

Wrocław train station (early 90's) all the stalls are filled and i'm in a .... hurry. The helpful babcia walks up to one stall pounds on the door and yells at the guy to vacate ASAP.

Near Warsaw old town during 2002 WC, the sociable babcia starts talking to me and handicapping the WC from her post just as I'm getting down to business. I try to keep up my end of the conversation but it wasn't easy.

Life / Polish movies with English subtitles [87]


Nigdy w życiu starring Danuta Stenka, for my money, one of the most sensual of Polish actresses.

imdb.com/title/tt0400688

Not great but pleasant enough
(the Polish imdb reviewers are entirely too harsh, typical of Poles who love to criticize their country to foreigners and somehow don't realize this shapes Poland's international reputation).

There was a sequel or two as well but I haven't seen those.

News / RUSSIA TO MAKE PUBLIC THE KATYN FILES... [274]


I'm not an apologist for Russian strong-arm tactics and paranoia (both of which exist) but in the Georgian case, it's pretty well established that Georgia was the agressor.

Yes, a rational person can argue that the Russian response was too extreme (and I certainly would) but Georgia did initiate force in that particular case and Kaczynski's support of Saakashvili did him no creidt.

News / Do Poles in Poland really feel betrayed because there won't be any US Shield? [288]

Haven't read the whole thread or anything, but my anegdotal evidence:

I haven't spoken with that many Polish people about this topic (and when I have it's been a transitory kind of topic) but not a single person I've spoken wanted the US shield.

My sample leans _heavily_ toward the urban and well-educated.

My first, best guess is this is a policy question that Pollish people who live elsewhere feel most strongly in favor of.

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


Yeah, i think gier is ugly, but it's completely regular

gra + genetive plural = subtract the -a

- this leaves you with the unpronounceable gr so you insert an -e- between them,

- the sequence ge- istn't allowed in Polish roots (only in some borrowings) so it becomes -ie-

which leaves gier, completely regular

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

pieć gier???


Well on purely _linguistic_ grounds, there's nothing wrong with 'se' 'poszłem' 'jest do góry' etc etc etc

If a significant number of native speakers say something, then by definition it's correct grammatically. That's a fundamental tenent of linguistics, without which the science of language could not exist.

On the other hand, they might not be socially approved of anymore than spitting on the sidewalk or eating bigos with your fingers are, and that's fine, but at the same time that's a very different set of criteria.

By all means correct a teenager who says 'poszłem' if they want a good job, but don't use linguistics or grammar as your excuse (anymore than you would use physics to discourage people from scratching themselves in public).

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

'w cudzysłowie' is 'correct' in the prescriptive sense, though you can hear both in use.

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

My gut instinct (in the absence of other compelling information) is that this was, in fact, an accident, a combination of bad equipment and forced pilot error (even if the president wasn't pressuring him to land, the memory of the azerbaijan incident had to be on his mind).

I'm as interested in conspiracy theories as the next guy, but I do realize that accidents happen too (for hardcore conspiracies nothing is ever accidental).

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


Your good will might be more believable if you respected the dead enough to spell their names correctly. Polish is not Russian written in English letters, it has its own alphabet that you're disrespecting by misspelling the name of Kaczyński. Not having the ń letter is excusable but ch for cz and y for i are not.

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


Probably elections soon. And Poles don't fall into chaos easily, they're experts at carrying on in unsure situations.

Technically, the president isn't that powerful a position and most on board were not in active governing positions since this was a PiS mission and PiS is in the opposition at present. It's a horrible tragedy, but not any kind of 'decapitation'.....

My main concern was : why so many military leaders on one plane?

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

And it just eats you alive, doesn't it?

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


Odd. Is it related to szewc (cobbler)? Is it an old alternate plural?

Judging by ghits, it does appear that the alternate form 'Szewc' is also in common usage.

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


I'm pretty sure that all the plural toponyms ending in -ce in Polish are actually neuter (or feminine?) at any rate, the expected genetive plural is - zero.

Food / Do you call it kiszka or kaszanka? [61]

If I remember right (no guarantee that I do) in Wrocław, kiszka refers to a kind of kebab. I seem to remember a ton of kiszka stands in and around the train station.

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

I see a problem here in that people are trying to carry over the gender of the singular into the plural and Polish just doesn't work like that.

Basically if a language has both gender and number there are a few ways they may be distributed, in Polish different criteria apply for determining gender in the singular and plural.

In terms of government, adjective and verb agreement, Polish has four genders in the singular and two in the plural.

singular:
masc. animate
masc. inanimate
neuter
feminine

plural
masculine-personal
non-masculine-personal

The distinction in the plural is between noun phrases that include the following semantic features:

+human
+male
+adult
+plural

and those that don't.

That is if a noun phrase modified by an adjective or a noun phrase used as the subject of a verb contains all those features then it's masculine-personal (męskoosobowy) and if it doesn't, then it isn't. There are some borderline cases where different people disagree but that's the broad rule.

Slight complication: sometimes the genetive plural is substituted for the nominative but that's a question for a different post.

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


Not in everyday, mainstream usage it doesn't. Specialist vocabulary takes on different meanings and can generate new forms that aren't part of mainstream usage.

If you go around speaking to non-specialists saying things like:

"That movie is set in outer spaces." or "That new telescope can see further out into the cosmoses than ever before."

People will understand you, but you'll sound weird and the great majority of native speakers (let's say 98% give or take a few points) won't produce those sequences naturally.


Okay, usually a collective singular noun is made up of a set of potentially discrete individuals of the same class.

family = individuals of the same species
team = players on the same side
herd = (usually fourfooted) animals (usually) of the same species

furniture is an odd duck, kind of a collective, but made up of individuals of different classes (chairs, tables, beds etc) it's more a cover term like 'mammals' but for hard to determine reasons remains stubbornly non-count for native speakers.

space in the classic sense doesn't necessarily refer to celestial bodies, but the matter between them. ('outer space' might refer to celestial bodies and the matter between them and cosmos might, but the plain word 'space' even in the SF meaning doesn't. The planets and stars etc are _in_ space (like islands in an ocean) and not part of it.

I'm not a semanticist and I'm rapidly reaching the end of what I can confidently say on the subject without working out a theoretical model or doing some checking on references and I don't have the slightest intention of doing either :)

On the other hand, the very well known (in linguistics) Polish born Australian semanticist Anna Wierzbicka has written a lot on the boundaries in English between individual items and collective and substance nouns that address a lot of these issues. If you're interested look her stuff up. She's not the easiest read in the world but she's far from the worst writer in linguistics (that would be Chomsky, Noam who's writing is disorganized, opaque and aimed only at those who follow his work obsessively).

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

collective usually means a group of things, government (in the American sense), family (a set of related individuals), herd (a group individual animals). They're all singular and can take the indefinite article and have plurals. Again singular is a meaningless concept unless there's a plural (that's a technical point of linguistics - no contrast, no category)

Space is more a substance like milk or air.

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


Not to pull rank or anything, but I am a linguist... It's not a collective singular (some popular teaching materials might use that kind of terminology but it's not really accurate here).

I do agree that 'spaces' (in the meaning of 'outer space') is not normally pluralized. If it were, it could only mean (for me):

a) different dimensions (as in SF)

b) different parts of the cosmos

'cosmoses' just can't exist in my dialect without some kind of SF meaning (I can imagine it as astrophysics jargon or something like that, but jargon and everyday usage are two separate things).

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


Technically they're not singular (which can only exist in opposition to 'plural') they're non-count, which means they have no number. They take singular verbs but can't be used with the indefinite article (required in some cases for true singular nouns).

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

One problem is that there are many, many words in English that can be used as count or non-count with a large or small difference in meaning.

In the case of space:

space, count = a particular place, reserved for something; part of a surface marked off on more than one side; (more rearely) an item on a list

space, non-count = a) a dimension (not the right word, but close enough) b) the cosmos beyond the earths atmosphere

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


In English,

radio, non-count = that which is broadast over the radio set
radio, count = electronic device used to listen to radio broadcasts

There's similar usage in Polish.


Well, the sources I've seen suggest 'radioodbiornik' or 'odbiornik radiowy' for radio(set), but some people do use 'radio' for the object and suggest that 'radiów' is the preferred genetive plural.


You're taking away the wrong message here. The right message is that for forms that are very rare but theoretically possible Polish speakers can come up with more than one possible way that's clear and unambiguous. They are not necessarily sure about which one is approved of by grammar authorities, who might argue among themselves as well.

In other words, 4 different ways for describing a phenomenon that is not likely to ever be needed is not a sign of linguistic inefficiency or poverty. It is a sign of richness and flexibility.

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

Piec radiów, what's the problem. The form pięc radio also exists but wouldn't be accepted by most authorities.

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


uh ..... who counts milk? other folks in your therapy group?

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


I'll take that bet. How much?

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

Actually the Ukrainian sound in question (Which does show up where Polish has 'g') is more like the gamma in Modern Greek before a, o or u (or g between vowels in Spanish as in hago). It's more of a voiced velar fricative.

Depending on the transliteration/transcription used, it's romanized as h or g.

see:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_transliteration

and

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_Latin_alphabet

and

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro-Ukrainian_alphabet

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


Some reasons for this:

1. most beginning courses don't spend any time on intonation (incredibly important in spoken English and knowing about it will help your writing too). It's hard so it's left out. Other nuances like the count/non-count distinction and the meaning of articles are also left out. After a few years of learning, it's too late - most learners have fossilized bad usage so they have to unlearn a lot of what they think they know (and unlearning is harder than learning).

2. a lot of what is included in basic courses isn't real ..... English (any variety). It's a made up artificial version of the language that doesn't match anyone's real usage.

3. many learners take a 'who cares? it's only English!' approach. this is a direct result of mass learning by fiat - many learners just don't care and think any words they string together are fine as long as they're understood. To an extent they're right, but they shouldn't call the dumbed down pidgin that they use 'English'.


Well the _sound_ of h in old Polish was probably the same (more or less) as the current Czech h, but I've never heard any speakers that distinguish ch and h. Also, Polish speakers tend to hear Czech h as Polish ch.

Supposedly there are some dialects in the east or southeast that still distinguish ch and h but again, I've never heard them.

This is different from the old ł cause I have heard some older or kresowy speakers with the old 'stage ł', although they tend to not use it 100 % of the time and alternate it with the modern, mainstream pronunciation.

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



Actually Czech 'h' usually corresponds with Polish 'g'

hlavni = glowny, hlas = glos, kniha = ksiega etc

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

The dative does seem to be less used than some of the other cases. I've read (cannot vouch for accuracy) that some of the functions of the dative in other Slavic languages have been taken over by the genetive (with a preposition) in Polish. There are also fewer prepositions that take the dative than genetive, accusative or instrumental.

I'm willing to bet that in a large corpus study that the dative occurs a lot less than what I think of as the big three cases (nominative, accusative, genetive).

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

a) I'm not a poetry person (it's all assumed bad until proven otherwise).

b) I had no idea that Keats and Shelley wrote in Polish. Oh well, live and learn.

c) I'm was especially referring to contemporary usage, which none of the citations are examples of. Now you know ..... No, I didn't make that clear.

Okay, I'll try. Komputerze! Lodówko! Ściano! Ekranie!

... mmmmmm doesn't quite work for me.

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

Leaving aside how often the vocative is used, it is pretty limited to proper first names and some nouns referring to people. Theoretically forms exist for other nouns but they're extremely rare outside of bad poetry.

It's also not considered a true case in some schools of linguistic thought (case being limited to changes that indicate some relation to another part of the sentence, whether the verb, a preposition or another noun).

The weirdest thing about the vocative in Polish is how it subsitutes for the nominative in some very limited circumstances (basically a few masculine personal names in diminutive form).

quick google examples

"Kiedy Jasiu czekał w sekretariacie, nauczycielka wyjaśniła dyrektorowi całą sytuację."

"Metamorfozę przeszedł także Stasiu Pieczonka"