News / Kukiz and Petru - newly emerging political stage in Poland [57]

It would however be a surprise to everyone in Poland if he "pulled it out". Interesting that you mention


- I wonder if you can give examples and explain how


differs from the endemic corruption within PiS or explain how and why corruption levels have fallen since PiS were kicked out ?


Indeed. What worked best in the past was not voting for that shower and after they crept in by the back door, dumping them as soon as possible.

This thread is wandering to a different discussion - get back on topic about Kukiz and Petru

News / Kukiz and Petru - newly emerging political stage in Poland [57]


Again??? It never rose anywhere in the first place. In fact the Polish voters dumped its proponents at the first opportunity - the voting public were very clear indeed they didn't want any such thing.

Hopefully, the two new political groupings (uff, we've all heard this before somewhere) will make a difference and we will hear less and less of PiS as their core support heads for the graveyard.

News / Kukiz and Petru - newly emerging political stage in Poland [57]


Makes all the difference. Not.


Not for the first time, you're mixing the symptoms with the illness.

One thing that I did like about the old PiS regime is the way so many ordinary people mobilised against it in order to vote them into the dustbin. I can still vividly remember the cheers in the street when the result was declared and the really positive atmosphere that followed.

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

There you go again - perhaps you didn't notice the post addressed to Pol3 about not playing daft games.

Both extremely easy sentences by the way...

News / Kukiz and Petru - newly emerging political stage in Poland [57]

Do you not remember the (fortunately) short-lived PiS/LPR/Samoobrona regime? The one that was dumped from office as soon as possible with a particularly high turnout at the election because people were desperate to see the back of them.That same regime that almost turned Poland into a laughing stock. The one which emphasised traditional morality despite the prime minister abandoning his wife for a young woman half his age only for him to be replaced by the (foul-mouthed) president's identical twin. The one that kept the media busy with the constant infighting they caused. The regime that tried to ban Teletubbies and banned wine/beer from railway dining cars and station buffets. Plus numerous other weirdness.

And yes, PiS getting in again (through the back door as they did last time) is a danger because of people voting for minor parties like the Kukiz faction or even (the much better) Petru/Balcerowicz party.

Work / What kind of CV for a job in a multinational company in Poland; Europass or traditional one? Address problems. [19]

Skills based is fine, and would make up for you being fairly early in your career. It might very well impress too, though the golden rule with CVs is to keep them concise. With careful use of margins/line spacing/indents/font size you could probably keep it to 1 page (HR people like that).


A lot of competition for jobs in Poland but don't be put off. It would be a shame if you gave up after sending 1000 CVs and number 1001 would have been the one to get results.

Work / What kind of CV for a job in a multinational company in Poland; Europass or traditional one? Address problems. [19]

Skill based CVs very good and Polish HR people are familiar with them, however all that stuff can be covered in the introductory paragraph that comes before you list work experience. Keep it concise thought - recruiters have a hell of a lot to sift through. About 'Europass' ones, if there were a lot of CVs I usually just threw the 'Europass' ones away and looked at the real ones. Or looked at them last if I had time. Bear in mind that the person who reads the CV sees lots (really lots) of them and won't dwell on little details (unless it's the kind of company that wouldn't be much fun to work for anyway) but may notice any glaring omissions. Re. not speaking Polish, you'll need to make it clear but also shouldn't tell them - sounds strange but isn't: just present it positively, meaning listing the languages you do speak. The recruiter will see that Polish isn't among them.

Btw, photos are sadly common on CVs in Poland (I've had CVs on my desk in PL with holiday/beachwear/wedding dress photos!) and you will also have to put your date of birth. Good to put a LinkedIn address on if you have one (though most people in Poland don't, and a busy recruiter probably won't look unless they call you for interview and even then maybe not. Needless to say, stuff on your CV and LinkedIn profile should not be in conflict). No need to put gender on.

For format, I use (and ran this by the HR people in a large company and got a few tips)
1. Introductory paragraph saying who you are and what you can do/have done. Keep this very brief.
2. Current work,
3. Rest of the work experience starting with most recent and working back with just job title and employer for stuff more than 15 years ago - the further back, the less info, unless a particular job you once had is especially relevant to the one you want.

4. Education and training, following the same principle of working backwards
5. Personal/contact data (OK to include languages here although you can put it separately just after the education/training). For contact, an email address is enough, a phone number is a good idea and a LinkedIn address should go here. I don't include a home address, however many choose to.

I don't include stuff about hobbies (though it can be a good idea, especially if you're young and your CV's a bit thin), nor do I put contact details for current or past employers since they will ask for names, email etc if they want to take up a reference. I do include the city/country though since that's important. Also, education/training means post-18. Nobody much cares which school you went to when you were 16 unless it's Eton/Harrow/Lancing/Roedean/Hogwarts etc in which case you should put it though frankly if you'd gone somewhere like that you wouldn't be asking here anyway.

Also, common sense but you'd be surprised how many people don't do it, be conservative about fonts/text effects. NO pretty borders or weird typefaces (TrueType only unless you don't care what sort of a mess it looks to the HR person using a different computer operating system). Use no more than 2 typefaces or font sizes ever (one perhaps for headings/titles and one for the rest) - I use the same one for everything except the title at the top saying Curriculum Vitae - Fred Bloggs and just bold the employers' names, schools etc and Italic the job titles/course taken. BTW, Calibri, Trebuchet etc look great however serif fonts (Times New Roman, etc) are easier on the tired eyes of the person reading CVs.

One last thing. In Poland CVs include a brief paragraph (at the end, tiny font size, often Italic) required by Polish data protection laws. If the recruiter gets plenty from abroad he or she won't absolutely expect it, however it is a VERY good idea to include this since omission would be noticed (and a problem) whereas inclusion would stand out positively if the pile of CVs are all foreign. The text is:

"Wyrażam zgodę na przetwarzanie moich danych osobowych dla potrzeb niezbędnych do realizacji procesu rekrutacji (zgodnie z Ustawą z dnia 29.08.1997 roku o Ochronie Danych Osobowych; tekst jednolity: Dz. U. z 2002r. Nr 101, poz. 926 ze zm.)."

In English:
"I hereby give consent for my personal data to be processed for the purposes of recruitment, in accordance with the Personal Data Protection Act dated 29.08.1997 (uniform text: Journal of Laws of the Republic of Poland 2002 No 101, item 926 with further amendments)"

Language / Slavic languages words similarities with Polish [240]

Remember that much of that is about orthography - as you perhaps know there are different conventions for transcribing from Cyrillic. When transcribing that word into English, the i is largely redundant.

News / Kukiz and Petru - newly emerging political stage in Poland [57]

The option that half the voting public take - i.e. not voting. The danger is that due to the elderly and small town residents not taking that option, the PiSuarzy could get in by the back door as they disastrously did for a short time a few years ago.

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


There you go again, Pol3. Must be a quiet day for you. I will say that a. ponalewał sounds uncomfortable - you wouldn't hear that often and b. you wouldn't hear anyone say that sentence much either.

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

Pol3, how would you know what I sound like in Polish since you've never heard me speak it? We've only spoken in English...

You really do seem determined to make people think that Polish is impenetrably hard to learn. This flies in the face of all evidence since plenty of people from other places speak the language fluently and often beautifully, inducing plenty from your country

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

Then you recall wrong if you remember any foreign accent when speaking English though maybe a you mean that as an American, God's own earth of Yorkshire is foreign to you.

I would agree that mastery is about expression and feeling (for some anyway - it depends why, when, where and to whom you speak it) but mostly about being functional in every circumstance you come across - i.e. having a linguistic reserve greater than ones need. I disagree though about pronunciation - when that's so bad that it impairs communication it's hardly mastery is it? Perhaps you're confusing pronunciation with accent - nothing wrong with a foreign accent as long as it isn't so strong an average urban user (forget people who never meet people from outside their village, and other extreme examples) has difficulty understanding. Mine in Polish isn't particularly heavy however it's worth mentioning that almost any proficient second-language speaker can deliberately vary it to advantage and effect.

As for writing, I'm of the generation who were taught in school to write and read a language rather than to speak and listen. I'm very glad that educational philosophy has changed, not least because I find I can read and write French but seldom have to more comfortably than I speak or listen to it, which I need to do quite often. We should be thankful for modern language teaching methods and dispense with certain traditions as quickly as humanly possible.

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

Interesting that you (a foreigner too!) can comment on the 'linguistic ineptitude' of someone you've never spoken Polish withandin fact only met briefly several years ago, but someone who talks about


and


in the same post isn't to be trusted as a judge of anything.

Moving back to the topic, there should really be a different title. It says 'why is the Polish language so difficult'. Difficult for whom? A Belarusiananda Malay would have a different perspective. We've established already that compared to English, it has a smallerandmore straightforward vocabularyandtherefore has less to remember. If you can use one word you have access to all that word's variations.

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

You'll be waiting for a long time then. I don't play games online (edit)

@Lyzko, I'd use


too. An obvious sentence really.

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


An even better question would be at what level someone has "mastered" a language. Has a Polish lady who's lived in the UK since 1946 but still has a strong Polish accent "mastered" English? Has a Ukrainian who scored near 100% in their exam to get Polish citizenship "mastered" Polish? Or not, because of the question they got wrong. I'd say that if you're fully functional in a language, for a significant chunk of your time use only that language and never need to translate anything (or have it translated), if you live with someone who doesn't speak English so you speak it day in day out then yes, you've mastered it; I fall into that category. Worth mentioning though that for all second language speakers (even for example Joseph Conrad who with the help of his English wife wrote a large corpus of literary novels) there is still scope to learn.


Perhaps, and one with a very affirmative answer. You'd be surprised how many people who were originally from other places speak Polish. It isn't Basque or !Kung or Ostyak, no one country or nationality 'owns' it and in Europe it isn't a minor language. I can think of plenty of people (like myself) who use Polish as their main language but haven't always...


Having come to Polish as an outsider, I'd disagree that the learning process is so steep - in fact it gets much easier as time goes on. The fiddly bits that defeat some people are early on in the learning process for speakers of non- or lightly inflected languages.

The relatively small and straightforward vocabulary of Polish is a great help for those who have to learn it from scratch.

News / Polish parliament refuses to consider shack-up draft between both traditional and same-sex couples [96]

Same with millions - few of whom witter on constantly about it as if that's all that's swilling around their mind.

News / Kukiz and Petru - newly emerging political stage in Poland [57]


Sounds an excellent idea. The political environment in Poland has a lot of interest from the public (soooo much discussion about trivia and minutiae in the media without much ever really happening) and Balcerowicz and Petru are both highly respected economic heavyweights.

News / Polish parliament refuses to consider shack-up draft between both traditional and same-sex couples [96]

Why not? In so much of the world marriage isn't limited to couples, inter species relations are far from new (and not unknown in Poland) soif that's how people want to live, whoever shouldn't they.

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

Nope, nothing to do with "the technical field" at all.


You perhaps missed the bit in the post you were replying to that covered that. Those examples are just variants of the same word - if you know even one, you know the rest from the context.

English has a far larger and richer vocabulary than Polish - makes learning Polish easier and English spoken internationally a limited register of the language.

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

And many words from Ancient Greek before that. Plenty of such words in Polish, however vocabulary similarity isn't the biggest factor about whether a language is difficult or not.

Fortunately for those who have learnt the language, Polish has very few words compared to English - if you factor out changes in word endings, gender influence, etc it has far fewer so much less to remember.

News / Polish parliament refuses to consider shack-up draft between both traditional and same-sex couples [96]

Youth (meaning anyone under 60) will eventually mobilise as you mention - if there's the threat of PiS having a crack at real power it will bring people out to vote as happened last time.

Equal marriage will happen anyway, probably sooner than anyone expects.

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

And vice versa

History / Good enough for British - Joseph Conrad? Poland-born novelist. [30]

Textual analysts disagree. Good that you feel Conrad is worthy of analysis. Those writers who influenced his style are well enough known, however his own texts are of a quality to look at - particularly to identify the role of his wife.

History / Good enough for British - Joseph Conrad? Poland-born novelist. [30]

It works well for textual analysis and Conrad's works are worthy of this. The only issue is the cost.

History / Good enough for British - Joseph Conrad? Poland-born novelist. [30]

Not sure how that's relevant, R.u.r.; the various influences that one writer receives from another are well enough discussed and nothing new - in Conrad's case both the influences he has on others (I'm glad you mentioned TSE) and the influences on him from others. One worthwhile project (can't be far away since it's so simple) is to run his oevre through textual analysis software to identify which passages are in his wife's voice.

Language / Is the term 'Polak' derogatory?? [254]

Nothing to theorise about, O God of Fire. Those jokes are all universal, old, and told about the nearest group at hand. They exist in Poland too about a particular group.

"Escaped Nazis" indeed! Did they goose-step while they were telling them?

Language / Is the term 'Polak' derogatory?? [254]

That's beyond clutching at straws, isn't it, to pretend that Polish jokes originated with Nazis "who escaped to USA". You say that's "one theory" but frankly a laughable one. I wonder if they wore their armbands when they were selling the joke books.

At least we know what happened to Martin Bormann now...

Language / Is the term 'Polak' derogatory?? [254]

That post doesn't say what you're thinking at all. The first comment makes no sense whatsoever - why would any wartime anti-Polish propaganda from Germany be in English? Britain declared war as soon as Poland was invaded and although it took the U.S. much longer they wanted nothing to do with Poland - certainly no reason for the Germans to make Polish jokes as propaganda in English-speaking countries.

You seem to be clutching at straws - that or you just don't know what you mean.

Language / Is the term 'Polak' derogatory?? [254]

Why not? Do you know many jokes in English made by Germans?

As for theories, I know abstract thinking doesn't come easily to you, however I wonder if you've ever noticed that those jokes tend to be universal ones; for many years and in many places about many groups.

Language / Is the term 'Polak' derogatory?? [254]

Any Polish jokes made up by the group you mention would doubtless not be in English. Also, I've never heard a Pole say 'Polock' (though I rarely hear them speak English these days) - I suspect you've never heard the word in Poland either.

Are you confusing it with Polak? Though remember, that's a Polish rather than an English word.