History / Origins of Polish Slavs [139]


Such an argument is irrelevant. According to many specialists, those names are of Indoeuropean origin. If they are so old, we may say they may have been formed in a language which is now called the Proto-indoeuropean language. This language had splitted over time into many language groups, one of which was Proto-slavic (and earlier Balto-Slavic). If the Proto-slavic group (and language) has evolved in situ, that is on the territory of the present Poland or Ukraine or Belarus, their people may have retained the older Proto-indoeuropean names of rivers of that territory, while their own language has changed so much that none of those name resemble any word in any of the Slavic languages at present. Thus, "former inhabitants" may well had been the ancestors of the Slavic people themselves.


This is only partly true. That source identifies them as Slavs beyond doubt, though as far as I can remember it does not even use a name similar to "Slav/Slavic" (if you can quote this source precisely, I shall be grateful). Yet, ancient chroniclers name people living in Central and Eastern Europe befor 550 AD, but the problem is we cannot say for sure they were Slavs, neither we can say for sure they were not Slavs.

Language / Owna and Owa name suffix [15]


I wil not, maybe Magdalena would.

Language / Owna and Owa name suffix [15]



Yes. If the father's surname was JEDLIGA, his wife would be referred to as JEDLIGOWA, whereas his daughter would be referred to as JEDLIGÓWNA.

A joke on a similar note: Back in the communst time in Central and Eastern Europe three Swedish men whose surnames were LARS, LARSEN and LARSODEN wanted to escape from their oppresive country, so one day they fled to Czechoslovakia. When they arrived in Prague, a Czechoslovakian official tells them:

- Gentelmen, if you don't want to live in Sweden any more, but you want to live in our peace-loving country and become Czech people, you must change your names to such that will sound purely Czech.

- What names shall we choose then? - asks one of the Swedes. I really don't know.
- I know! - suddenly exclaims one of the others - let everyone of us read his name from the end to the begining and we shall obtain the names that sound Czech!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Since Magdalena is half-Czech, I'm sure she will be able to explain to you the point of this joke!

Polonia / POLES vs BULGARIANS [160]


Yeah, you seem to have found your promised land in Bulgaria! And what about your Russian lady; is she with you in Bulgaria or does she prefer to live in Moscow?

News / Local elections - anyone care to comment? [75]

8800 people voted for PSL, this traditionally farmers' party in Gdynia, a town of two hunderd fifty thousand inhabitants. Four years ago, they only got 800 votes in the local election. Even the PSL itself has been unable to explain this 1100% increse of votes.

8,800 of votes in a town of 250,000 is not that strange, but a 1100% increase over 4 years with no particular reason for that may sound a bit suspicious.

News / Local elections - anyone care to comment? [75]

Here is how professor Jadwiga Staniszkis (my favorite political analyst) comments the results of the local elections:

- This is because people are tired of PO and also because of the hopeless campaign led by the new prime minister Ewa Kopacz under the "Closer to People" (Bliżej Ludzi") banner. And people do remember the ever worsening health services and higher prices of pharmaceuticals.

- The increase of PO's results in opinion polls just after the departure of Donald Tusk for Brussels must have been misleading for them - said Jadwiga Staniszkis. - Such an increase also resulted from the joy that Tusk was not here any more - added the sociologist who for long has been known as a PiS, be it critical, supporter.

wiadomosci.onet.pl/kraj/wybory-samorzadowe-jadwiga-staniszkis-komentuje-slaby-wynik-po/0ppnt

PiS chairman Jarosław Kaczyński said that if it were not for the so-called "Madrid affair", the election result of PiS would have been even better.

Anyway, I am surprised that the result is so good even with their Madrid scandal. But I am glad that Adam Hoffman would no longer be preaching his tirades on TVN about how bad his political opponents are, suggesting that he himself together with his PiS colleagues are angels who fly over Poland keeping a watchful eye on the PO politicians and their sins.

Language / Busha and JaJa [140]



Stannon caled her Busha because the surname of his great grandpa was probably Bush. Who knows? - maybe Stannon's family was that Bush family!

Anyway, that's my two cents to the discussion!

History / East Prussia - German Poles who lived in pre-second world war in this area [6]


I doubt it very much. The article to which Szczecinianin points out explains it very well.

Szczecinianin, is sz-n.com your web page? I found the article you quoted very interesting and extremely informative. However, I don't agree with the statement I have marked in bold:

It was during the Nazi period that the well-known Polish journalist, Melchior Wańkowicz, made a much publicised visit to Mazuria, which he described in his journal, Na Tropach Smętka. Describing the Mazurians as 'a hopeless mongrel people', he found the Mazurians astonished to discover their 'Mazurian' was much the same as his Polish. Most Mazurians could receive radio broadcasts from Radio Warsaw, most could understand, but none listened in.

I read the book "Na tropach Smętka" by Melchior Wańkowicz a long time ago, but I still remember he said something quite opposite to "but no one listened in". In his book he also told quite a number of horrifying stories how those Masurian activists of Polish language who were for the teaching of the Polish language in some of the East Prussian schools were brutally tortured and then murdered by the Nazis (officialy by unknown murderers). So I would say the picture in this article seem to be painted in one colour only.

[BTW, Szczecinianin, how do you manage to pronounce the word 'szczecinianin'? I always have some dificulty every time I try to write it down, haha]

Love / Do Polish men date black women?? [69]



Yes!

Love / Do Polish men date black women?? [69]

Roz is a beautiful name ...

History / Royal Family still in Poland? [79]


With Napoleon promoting the grandson of August III, the aforementioned Frederick Augustus I to the title of Duke of Warsaw in 1807. The daughter of the latter, Maria Augusta, was earlier nominated by the 3rd May Constitution of 1791 as Infanta of Poland whose husband was to become the hereditary King of Poland (the Constitution uses the term "King of Poland" only without mentioning the term "Grand Duke of Lithuania" alongside as it abolished the dual character of the Polish_Lithuanian Commonwealth) if Frederick Augustus had no son.

Frederich Augustus had indeed no son and Maria Augusta never married, so the House of Wettin has no legal claim to a Polish throne, if any such is re-created, on the basis of the 3rd May Constitution.

We are bound to be a Republic. God save the (British) Queen!

And yet, the Constitution goes on declaring the right of the Nation to elect another House after the first dies out! And as the initial House did indeed (by the understanding of the Constitution) die out, we still have the right to elect another House (not a King! - this is the great difference to the former rule of electing kings) whose members will become hereditary Kings of Poland. So - I should think - anybody can go for this contest, just as for the Eurovision Song Contest, but only if they are members of a certain House.

[Dla czego Marię Augustę Nepomucenę, córkę elektora, za infantkę Polską deklarujemy, zachowując przy narodzie prawo, żadnej preskrypcji [żadnemu ograniczeniu - Z.] podpadać nie mogące, wybrania do tronu drugiego domu po wygaśnięciu pierwszego]

God save the (Polish) King!

It should be noted that the Polish throne was never abolished 200 years ago, but re-shaped to become hereditary.

History / Chances of Moscow becoming part of Poland again? [102]


Why do you say "twice"? As far as I know, it happened only once. And the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Russia stood a pretty good chance to form some kind of a union then, if only Sigismundus III had not been so stupid as a fervently catholic Polish king of the Swedish Vasa dynasty.

Po polsku / Ruscy sieją propagandę na polskich portalach? [29]

Tak, w przepowiedniach przepowiadają wielki popłoch i zniszczenia w Jukeju, więc to nie jest najlepsze miejsce do przeczekiwania. Ponadto, Włochy czyli La bella Italia zostanie całkowicie zrujnowana (to nawet było w dwu przepowiedniach), a jeden Niemiec wieszczył, że po Niemczech to ślad nie zostanie. Come back to Poland, my friends!

News / PO support drops by 4 pps after tape scandal according to WBJ [18]

JK-M strongly resents PiS as a "socialist" party. But in his latest interview (with Monika Olejnik in her "Kropka nad i" programme on TVN this week) I heard some mild conciliatory tones in his answers to the interviewer as to the forming a possible coalition with them (or better say not excluding such a coalition after all). Whatever you may think of him, he is extremely logical and consistent in his views and the so-called "socialism" is his worst enemy, much in the way as it was for the late unforgettable milk-snatcher Maggie Thatcher. Asked by Mrs. Olejnik if he would like to become Prime Minister of Poland after the election, he said that most of all he would like to become a dictator. - "I am perhaps a bit too old for this post of prime-minister which is of executive power by character" - said this 70-year old politician, but quickly added - "but you will be very much surprised to hear what I am still capable of doing at this age of mine" to which very vivid and seemingly sincere statement this very experienced lady journalist blushed as a schoolgirl. - "I feel best at strategic thinking" - went on Janusz Korwin-Mikke, father of six and the Country Master in the Game of Bridge.

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

And you've just started the 48th page, stupid!. So it's heading towards the total number of states within the Union ...

Genealogy / I have Jewish DNA, but only know of Polish ancestry . [120]


This is partly true for the members of the Jewish religious movement, Frankism, set up by Jacob Frank (1726-1791), being in opposition to traditional Judaism. Of the Frankists who remained in Poland after 1772 (24,000 people), the majority of those who converted to Catholicism in Warsaw in 1795 adopted the surname Majewski since the act took place in May (in May of 1795 the Polish capital was already under Prussian rule); I have no idea of their exact number, however, but I'm sure it must have been established by the historians.

Otherwise, Majewski is a purely Slavic surname. It is also worth noting that the Jews who were baptized in Poland often received the surnames of the nobel men who were "adopting" those Jewish families, for example, Branicki, Baranowski.

Life / Public Masturbation now allowed in Sweden, Would this work in Poland? [43]



As he has placed his account precisely in this thread, it is obvious that they were checking if public masturbation would work in Poland. It didn't and both the ZTM and the police called them "Murzyn" for doing that which - as all the Brits living in Poland - they took for a racist word and now complain of Polish racism on the Polish Forum. NOTHING wrong with this!

Law / In Poland on National Visa, want to visit London - how can i apply for travel visa to UK [22]


Three hundred quid for a British visa!? That is shameful robbery by the daylight. If I were robbed in a dark street and lost 300 GBP as a results, I would feel happier than when having to pay this amount for a British visa. Besides, given the amonut of wealth taken out from India to Britain by the East India Company in the past, Indian citizens should be given the British visa for free or even should be paid for having applied for one!

Law / In Poland on National Visa, want to visit London - how can i apply for travel visa to UK [22]

Depends what country you are from. If you are a US citizen, you don't need a visa to the UK, for example.

Life / Being a Jew in modern-day Poland; Israeli Jew who is of Polish descent [279]


Maybe the man I saw was a rabbi. It wasn't a mater of kippah only. He was all in black, I am not even sure if he was wearing something on his head. What was pecular about him was that he was all orthodox Jew, from head (still not sure about the head) to feet, and he had what we call in Polish "pejsy". He was as if taken out from a film; I never see Jewish people dressed like that in Warsaw, though I am not saying that you can never meet them (especially near a synagogue).

Contrary to that, if I saw "a young man in a baseball hat and raiders top", I would not even think of him as arriving from the USA. Most probably, I would not even notice him or take any attention of him, and if you asked me if I saw anyone like him, I would have probably said to you "No, sir, I haven't seen anyone like that".

If it's a "regular occurence to see men walking on the streets of Warsaw wearing a kippah", I promise I will try to pay utmost attention in the coming weeks to spotting people wearing kippahs. And of course I will be happy to report each of the spotted case to you in this thread. I promise to be very honest about it as I feel truly sorry about the fact that Warsaw has lost its Jewish heritage which was so lively before the WW II. I would wish more Jewish people to be still living in Warsaw now since if you know its history, you would feel that Warsaw is in a way an empty or hugely disfigured place without them. So from now on, I will report to you every kippah I spot in the street of Warsaw. I usually move about (but not every day) in the center of the city (- square between the streets of: Marszałkowska, Jerozolimskie, Nowy Świat, Świętokrzyska; - the Royal Route from Staszica Palace to Zamkowy Square; - occasionally the Old Town and the New Town, Zawiszy Square and the district of Praga west of Warszawa Wileńska railway station). Maybe you are right when saying that it is a regular occurence to see men wearing a kippah in Warsaw, so it is going to be a really exciting exercise for me to try be spotting them in those streets.


I like you, too. But I won't be coming to Poland with you since I am in Poland all the time and am writing this post from Poland which a moderator can confirm by checking my IP (unless it goes through some bizzare service provider in the Bahamas).

Life / Being a Jew in modern-day Poland; Israeli Jew who is of Polish descent [279]


People on this forum are mostly foreign people living in Poland or Polish ex-pats living abroad. The former group does not command Polish sufficiently enough to follow the real Polish life in full, the latter group live abroad for a sufficienly long time to have lost their touch with the ever changing Polish reality here (occasional tourist visits cannot help). The two groups carry an ongoing tribal war against one another on the forum. I am one of the very, very few real Poles on this forum now, which means a Pole who has never lived abroad (except for a six-month period in the UK in my twenties), has a pure Polish ancestry and a purely Polish wife. If I have to, I usually take sides with the latter group since many of the former present this nasty megalomaniacal attitude towards Poland and the Polish singing this well known British post-colonial tune "We are better than you. We are British" of which they do not even think as post-colonial.

Yet some of the living in Poland ex-pats' opinions seem to be close to reality as the one expressed by warszawski:


Surprisingly enough, such a view is also held by some Jewish people whose accounts I can sometimes read in this "Jewish" newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza (the biggest circulation among the Polish "heavy" papers). Jewish people are a rare species in Poland these days, most of them are assimilated, so you will not see them in their Jewish traditional dress in the streets of Polish cities as you coud before 1939. If you see them dressed like that, you will instantly think that they have just come from Israel. I once saw such a man near a synagogue in Kazimierz, the former Jewish district of Kraków, and I was sure he came directly from Israel. And it was not until he spoke in Polish that I realized he was an orthodox Jew of Cracow since every language nuance in his Polish was perfect.

Kraków has the biggest population of "real" Polish Jews who or whose families survived the Shoah. As far as I know there are around 400 of them living in the ancient Polish capital. When you go to the cemetery bordering Kazimierz, you will see a lof of contemporary tombstones (dating from 1950s onwards) bearing the Star of David on them.

Life / Being a Jew in modern-day Poland; Israeli Jew who is of Polish descent [279]


While I occasionally read stories in the press about anti-Muslim sentiment, I have never read about anti-Jewish sentiment except hooliganism at football matches or anti-Jewish inscriptions or occasional vandalism at Jewish cemeteries. However, I do not deny it may happen and I don't think everyone is going to report it to the press. But I can observe that anti-semitism tends increasingly to become a thing of the past. If you evoke rank and file Polish Christian citizens, I have met none among my circle of acquaintances except the two cases I have described in my previous post.

Life / Being a Jew in modern-day Poland; Israeli Jew who is of Polish descent [279]

As a Polish citizen living in Poland (unlike Harry and InWrocław who are both foreign ex-pats in Poland) since the moment of his birth (now for over 50+ years), I would not be afraid to advise you to come to live in Poland. I personally know two anti-semite people in Poland in my circle, one is of my family, though not blood-related, and the other is a friend of mine whom I have known since the primary school. The first one is also a driver by profession who regularly goes to Auschwitz with Jewish groups coming from Israel and he says he is generally on very good terms with members of all those groups while driving them to the camp and other places. Their anti-semitism is an economic one which - I believe - they directly inherited from their families. Even if their anti-semitism irritates me enormously, I wouldn't say they would ever offend or insult any Jew(s) when they met them in person even in the very dark part of a town. But they both believe in the "Jewish plot" reigning the world economy and blame the Jewish people as the driving force for the excesses of capitalism. I think it is something that was very common among the older generation of Poles.

The new generation of Poles seems to be completely deaf to all this type of argument. The two daughters of the said member of my family (both 20+) simply mock and deride the opinions of their father every time he tries to play this tune. Anyway, research (the results are occasionally published in "Rzeczpospolita" and obviously in "Gazeta Wyborcza" judged by the local anti-semites to be the "Jewish newspaper" as its chief, Adam Michnik, is Jewish) on anti-semitism in Poland shows its steady decline. You will see, however, anti-semitic inscriptions in Poland or antisemitic shoutings at football matches. On the other hand, I think a Cracovian football club has a Jewish footballer from Israel among them. The former chairman (1992-1996) of the Kneset and also former Israeli ambassador in Poland (2001-2003) Szewach Weiss is frequently present on Polish TV speaking in Polish.

Even if I myself have no Jewish ancestry, I feel in a way part of the Jewish life in pre-1939 Poland. This is becuase my grandpa talked a lot to me as a child about the Jewish people of the southern Masovia village where he lived. He was even taught yiddish by his Jewish friends of the village, but once the rabbi got the news about it, he forbade them to teach him the Jewish language (as my grandpa said, his Jewish friends explained to him that the rabbi did not want the non-Jewish to understand what the Jews of the village say). My grandfather always thought about his Jewish neighbourghs as "people who just live beside us"; I never heard him telling anything anti-semitic, though he was telling me about the common Jewish saying to the Polish in those days that "the street are yours, but the buildings along them are ours", neither was my grandpa filosemitic in any particular way. I am sure many people in pre-war Poland were just like him, but I must say I learned after the death of his brother-in-law that the latter was anti-semitic (and a devoted Communist at the same time, actively fighting the Germans in the Gwardia Ludowa communist underground army). When I went to see Andrzej Wajda's film "Ziemia Obiecana" in the 1970s or 1980s, I suddenly realized that I was looking at the Jewish world I know perfectly well, a world which was nevertheless gone a long time ago.


If you read in Polish, you should read the book by Teresa Torańska "Jesteśmy. Rozstania '68". This book is precisely about the people who shared the fate of your grandma in 1968. One day I hope to visit Israel to meet some of these people.

Genealogy / THE MEANING AND RESEARCH OF MY POLISH LAST NAME, SURNAME? [4500]

The name sounds Silesian. And indeed, it mostly occurs on both sides of the former border between Silesia and Little Poland (Małopolska).

Language / IS "MURZYN" word RACIST? [686]


The word isn't avoided by cultered people. Racist contexts are avoided by cultured people.

The phrase "Murzyni to tacy sami ludzie jak biali" is not avoided by cultured people. Likewise, the sentence "Moimi sąsiadami są dwaj Murzyni" is not avoided by cultured people. Re-write this sentence replacing "Murzyni" with anything else - you will show you are an expert in Polish.

To Harry, the wisest of ...
"Nigger" isn't the equivalent of "Murzyn". Its equivalent is "Czarnuch". How nice of you to really show your ignorance.

Language / IS "MURZYN" word RACIST? [686]

The fact that there are people in Poland who are racists towards the black people doesn't mean that the word "Murzyn" is racist. The fact that some Polish racists would use the word "Murzyn" means that there is simply no other word in Polish for describing a black person. They could use "czarny", but that would really look somewhat offensive in view of the fact that there exists the literally correct word "Murzyn" which is perfectly neutral and accepted as such in every old and contemporary dictionariy of Polish. If they used "czarnuch", it would reveal the racist attitude towards black people in this very word.

But, if someone writes or says "Murzyni na drzewa", it is the contexts that makes the saying racist, namely the phrase "na drzewa" attached to "Murzyn", and not the word "Murzyn" itself.

Likewise, the phrase "Żydzi do gazu" is racist not because the word "Żydzi" in it is racist (it is perfectly neutral in Polish), but because the part "do gazu" in it builds the ugly racist context. There is simply no other word than "Żydzi" to use in Polish for describing the Jewish people outside and inside Israel ("Izraelici" or "starozakonni" are religious terms, while "Izraelczycy" is a much narrower term describing the citizens of Israel only).

----------------------------------------------------------------- -
It is a real pity that our two friends, the "All-Know Two Stooges" (known as "The All-Know Three Stooges" until the time Delph was infamously expelled from the PF for revealing personal data of other members) cannot comprehend these basic things. Are they really that "All-Know" as they want to pass for?

Language / IS "MURZYN" word RACIST? [686]


I have never emmigrated from Poland. I have been living here since the day of my birth and have been totally totally immersed in Polish for 50+ years, have never left Poland for more than six months, and am not using any other language in speaking than Polish in my everyday life, so I'm perfectly aware what I am talking about when I'm talking about the word "Murzyn" (and I don't prefer Polish to be a frozen language). "Murzyn" as a "racist" word is a pure invention which will never catch on (of which fact black Polish MP Godson is indeed a very good example).

Language / IS "MURZYN" word RACIST? [686]

MURZYN has been a neutral word for ages and I hope it still is. However, some people try to create (or better say: invent) a new linguistic reality and assign a rasist meaning to this word. There is really no need for that since other offensive words like "czarnuch" or much worse version of it, namely "asfalt" exist already. "Murzyn" has long been established in Polish literature as a neutral description of a black person, just as other descriptions which denote humans of non-white skin colours such as ""mulat" or "metys" or "indianin". The most known example of this neutral usage in literature is a poem for children written by Julian Tuwim (Polish poet of Jewish origin):

Murzynek Bambo w Afryce mieszka,
Czarną ma skórę ten nasz koleżka.
Uczy się pilnie przez całe ranki
Ze swej murzyńskiej Pierwszej czytanki.

It is worth noting that the first Polish black PM John Godson (came to Poland from Nigeria) who commands the Polish language very well often uses the word "Murzyn" for desribing himself in a perfectly neutral sense.

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


It is because Polish propaganda on the subject is much better than Czech propaganda is. I am sure that if only "dobrý voják Švejk" insisted on Czech being the most difficult language in the world, that language would have been commonly thought of as "the hardest".

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



The fact that you confuse word spelling in one language, but you never look up the spelling in other languages can hardly be any proof for one language being more "difficult" than another. This is only something which may be called a personal language "trait".

What is the rule for the use of ú versus ů? And what is the rule for the use of ó against u or the rule for the use of rz versus ż? In Polish the reason behind the different spelling is purely historical just as it is in English, French or many other languages, so I bet it must be such in Czech as well. Many Polish people have to look up the dictionary to check the correct rz/ż or ó/u spelling, but often they don't bother at all, they just send their "golden ideas" to the inernet interwoven with appalling spelling mistakes. Are they justified to complain that Polish is the "hardest language in the world to learn"?