UK, Ireland / Agnieszka Pomaska, beautiful Polish politician [43]

Rest assured that she's almost certainly photogenic and looks worse in the flesh. Radoslaw Sikorski looks like a Hollywood film star with legions of adoring mostly female fans if the photo's a good one. In the flesh, he's of noticeably modest height, has terrible skin and has a complexion you only really get from one activity.

Life / Do Poles have a problem understanding American English? [76]

That doesn't necessarily mean the sts pick up their accent or their errors. Krashen and Chomsky have spent plenty of time trying to figure out why it's like that.

Unfortunately both are determined that the reason they find fits in to their wider hypothesise and only one of course will be right.

Genealogy / Bernatowicz surname? (I am starting to wonder if anyone in my family was American?) [85]

Yes. Just google 'bernatowicz armenian'. It comes up on the first page.

Genealogy / Bernatowicz surname? (I am starting to wonder if anyone in my family was American?) [85]

A quick look on the internet suggests it may once have been Peŕnat'enc. Though you'd have to go back many centuries since they stopped being Armenian.

Genealogy / Bernatowicz surname? (I am starting to wonder if anyone in my family was American?) [85]

Are you sure they're Armenian?

If there's an Armenian connection at all, and that's far from certain, one of your ancestors could have moved there any time from the 17th Century onwards. And for a big chunk of that time, Poland wasn't on the map. You'd need parish records, and even then, it could have been just one guy who moved. And not necessarily directly to PL.

Do you use ancestry.com?

Genealogy / Bernatowicz surname? (I am starting to wonder if anyone in my family was American?) [85]

No. It didn't really happen like that and in any case you'd have known already.

Life / Do Poles have a problem understanding American English? [76]


Dont forget that ability with the finer points of a language isn't the same as the ability to teach. For two reasons. Firstly, a teacher's own ingrained mistakes aren't necessarily passed on to their students (a fact that in interesting to linguists right now); and secondly, if we're given a choice between a teacher who is perfect in the language but can't teach for toffee or a teacher who is far from perfect in the language but is an excellent teacher, most of us would choose the latter.

Study / Humanities no longer in the top 10 of the most popular fields of study in Poland [36]

I wonder if that reflects economic uncertainty. A very great shame, since there's a strong tradition of the humanities in Poland and a good rounded education prepares you for many fields of work.

UK, Ireland / How has Polish immigration into the UK helped Poland? [48]


That's part of the immigrant experience - very few suddenly find members of the native population resigning their jobs as judges, finance directors, town planners, media consultants, civil engineers, bishops etc to make way for a guy from a village who left home in search of work.

The only exceptions are academia, medicine and any field where there is a shortage of locals. Merit rarely comes into it.

Law / The right to own guns: would you support such legislation in Poland? [2237]

Your 'fuller information' unfortunately adds nothing to the discussion, not least because it's an irrelevance. There is only one issue here the fact that there is not political will in Poland to have easy access to guns.

Love / Are Polish men handsome to you? [182]


Or indeed may not be.

Law / The right to own guns: would you support such legislation in Poland? [2237]


No. You rather ineffectively tried to introduce a red herring. There are no significant crime issues with minority communities in Poland.


Perhaps you didn't notice that we aren't talking about the wartime Polish Army. Despite your suggestion that householders in occupied territory might have used guns to repel someone who came knocking - pure fantasy land. We are talking about whether or not the law should be changed. The thread title makes that clear.

Life / Do Poles have a problem understanding American English? [76]


I suppose it depends very much which American English (as you mention the Inland North accent) - as well as the speakers own speech patterns.

Law / The right to own guns: would you support such legislation in Poland? [2237]


Have nothing to do with guns in Poland...


A suicidal one.

Law / The right to own guns: would you support such legislation in Poland? [2237]


A total irrelevance. As you say the ław should be the same for all.


Nobody forgets. Yet it's never led to a gun lobby. In Poland we just don't want them around.


If you need to ask why, then you are truly naive. That or disingenuous. I wonder what you think would have happened to someone between 1939 if they fired a gun when the knock on the door came.

Law / The right to own guns: would you support such legislation in Poland? [2237]


'The emphasis' obviously isn't working very well. You've had 200 years of governments, 200 years of easy availability of guns and still you have a high murder rate. Whatever your 'emphasis' is, you've clearly failed badly at it.


So what? Unless you propose different laws for 'minority communities' which as those 'minority communities' become the majority may very well rebound on you.


Don't make me laugh! That was a world war 70 years ago! And a time when a homeowner shooting at an intruder would have been a very, very bad idea.

Language / Extremely Hard - Polish the hardest language to learn [226]

They do already and have done for decades. From age 7 at the school I went to which was an ordinary state primary school. And a second foreign language from age 11.

Law / The right to own guns: would you support such legislation in Poland? [2237]


Eloquent as ever.


Some scientists certainly suspect that


And how many innocent people in your country (or just Chicago) have been shot dead? No accident that the murder rate is so high.

Fortunately, in Poland we don't want easily available guns and there is no significant lobby for that.

Law / The right to own guns: would you support such legislation in Poland? [2237]

If anything it's conservatives who are ruled by their emotions and the rest of us by what is sensible:
telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/8228192/Political-views-hard-wired-into-your-brain.html

Interesting though that you use the phrase 'do gooders' disparagingly. One would hope you don't prefer 'do badders'.

Life / The Polish Dream - move out from Poland as fast as possible [73]


It's a net exporter.

But i don't suppose you'd know what Poland does or doesn't do.

Love / Questions about Polish Men - flirting, cheating, liking? [44]

Cheating seems to be a bit less unacceptable in PL than it is in the UK. Flirting is normal; not unusual for married people to do it. The third question is anybody's guess however Polish men (hard to generalise and as Ironside says, not everyone is the same) have quite fragile egos and for many, how things look is as important as how things are.

Genealogy / Bernatowicz surname? (I am starting to wonder if anyone in my family was American?) [85]


Bernat is French, though I have known Hungarian Jewish people with that name.

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


Not that far at all and plenty of movement between the two places over the centuries. But nevertheless, spellings change and there's certainly a surname Zirwen. Not Polish though.

There's also a Polish word


, to break off, split, renounce etc and it could have come from that.

Law / Study in Poland with family on my student visa? [8]

You would need a separate visa.

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

No need. Jarosław Kaczynski and the rest of that party do it every time they open their mouths in the vicinity of a microphone.

Law / The right to own guns: would you support such legislation in Poland? [2237]


Ah, the tea party reactionaries love to avoid the truth. Fortunately we don't have so many in Europe.

Easy availability of guns does nothing at all to protect and does everything to increase the murder rate.

Law / The right to own guns: would you support such legislation in Poland? [2237]


Hardly.

Despite all your homeowners being able to protect themselves, crime rates are higher where you are.

And gun crimes are very, very, common.

Life / Do you think that Polish people are rude? [951]


I'm not sure. People can be very abrupt with strangers and bonhomie is certainly lacking.

Life / Do you think that Polish people are rude? [951]


Seems pretty sef-explanatory, I-S.


What, all of them?

Law / The right to own guns: would you support such legislation in Poland? [2237]

We don't live in a "Mad Max world'.

Nor are crime rates in your country where guns are relatively easily available any lower than those in Poland where they are not.