News / Donald Tusk's Government of Poland Continues to Oppress Poles [161]

do you really think this is so typical for work force in this country?

and btw do you earn in PLN or euros?

Life / Weird names Polish parents give to their kids [43]

Lenin and Stalin were popular first names given to children born to some politically driven people in Latin America some time ago (I guess it was 40's and 50's)

Life / Weird names Polish parents give to their kids [43]


it is a historical one - in many Polish dialects of the past 'a' sounds in certain positions developed into o's

this is certainly evident in comparison of some Polish and Czech words

krowa - krava (cow)
głowa - hlava (head)
broda - brada (beard)

the forms with a's are evidenced to be historically older so Czech retained older forms inherited from 'Common Slavic' while Polish (and similarily Russian) have introduced o's in the place of some a's

in some Polish dialects the phenomenon continued for much longer historically and has much broader scope therefore- that's why standard Polish 'ptak' (a bird) is 'ptok' in Silesian and many other Polish southern dialects like that of Górale (which sounds Górole in their speech - Górale speech also has different way of accenting words - most get accented on the initial sylable) - standard Polish 'krowa' turns into 'krowo' in Silesian as a further example

the use of the name Aleksandra and Aleksander in Polish dates back to the times that a-> o sound alteration was still active in those dialects that influenced Polish literary language - however the name Alicja was adopted later and the short name developed was Ala - no further a->o sound alteration was active by then in the standard literary Polish (as far as I know more northern dialects overtook as those that were recognized as 'proper Polish')

News / Donald Tusk's Government of Poland Continues to Oppress Poles [161]

are you British HITMAN? - if so how on earth are you so 'PiS-minded' - I mean it in an approving way

News / Donald Tusk's Government of Poland Continues to Oppress Poles [161]


as a once-supporter of UPR I should ask you a serious question - have you ever seen any realistic strategy or programme of changing this society from current state to a near libertarian one as Janusz Korwin-Mikke would like it to see without causing unpredictable turmoil and chaos - as much as I think many of the points Janusz Korwin-Mikke raises are valid and at least need re-thinking I pretty much notice he and his followers don't have any realistic strategies to achieve their various claimed goals - and hmm I actually don't think unrestricted capitalism with everything private is the goal we should be heading to - and to my little brain such system of liberalism will quickly act to destroy itself (its ideological fundamentals) - as even JKM has once stated 'capitalists are the worst enemies of free-market'

News / Donald Tusk's Government of Poland Continues to Oppress Poles [161]


heh - I appreciate your sense of humour warszawski :) quite as much as I do not appreciate sponsoring 'friendly' private media by PO representatives in power

News / Donald Tusk's Government of Poland Continues to Oppress Poles [161]


but government-sponsored media is pretty accurate description - president of Warsaw (you know her) subsidied the privately-owned Legia warszawa with some 400 million złotych for their new stadium - the owner of Legia is ITI group

the government also spent similar round sums on various promotional campaigns in the private TVN and Polsat or contracted these media groups to produce such campaigns (instead of using the state-owned TV) - an example of this here:

Campaign in Poland to promote math bought by the government mostly in private TV - and its largest part of the niche stations - kilometer stinks gigantic scam.

Why ? Firstly, the campaign will run on channel TV4 at 18.55 . RSS is a niche , a small reception - guaranteed. No sense. How much would it cost , and so the money goes clearly in the mud. Secondly - just cost. Employee TV Bogdan Bear, who spent a quarter century in various fairly important positions on TV , says that about 20 thousand . gold per episode is a gigantic amount . This campaign is planned for 75 episodes which should cost up 1.5 million. The cost of purchase of airtime in TV niche should not exceed several million , especially when the order is large. The second part of the campaign are advertising in more media , this cost may amount to little more . Meanwhile, the cost of the campaign is planned for up to 113 million zlotys. EU funds , that is also ours. Why not show this campaign belongs to your TVP , only money is output to the stations belonging to the holding Polish Media Andrew Kuchar , in which 90 % belongs to the Polsat television and approx. 9 % is held by TVN ???

Language / Polish Accusative / Genitive case [20]


don't get intimidated by such attitudes - just accept some people have trouble understanding nominative case+infinitive speech which most people seem to catch pretty quickly - you can figure out ways around such obstacles as the woman you mention

the search option in this forum seems not to work properly but you can try to search this forum through google - you just need to enter the address of the forum as one of the arguements (inputs) of the google search - hope this works for you - you may find many previous (including archive) posts useful to your endavours of learning many aspects of the Polish language

as for the google search again - when using the method I described - like searching for 'polishforums.com accusative' for example - you have to look at the bottom of the first result where you shoold see a tag 'More results from 'polishforums.com' - click it and you have just gained entry to the language treasuries of polishforums.com (you may have to try ' polishforums.pl' instead of 'polishforums.com' if the latter doesn't produce much result)

News / Polish PM Tusk- dictator or not? What Poles think? [421]


it is always wise to add 'some' before these 'people' unless you want to slight the whole political movement (I don't claim all the PO are fraudulent and cynical types - I only claim majority of them are ;)


what you perceive enemies of Kaczyński I mostly call enemies of the Polish nation - you see how diverse view points can be

(I wonder for example what you called the former WSI 'military intelligence' (yes it deserves the so called description in my view)

and how about the long-term gas contract the governmant (mainly in the person of Waldemar Pawlak) has struck with the Russians - especially the shyness of the government to speak openly about it - are they perhaps waiting for the last days of the current Sejm to silently it pass it through the parliament (they have enough voting power to do it - and it can have much less of an impact on the election results being 'ratified' that late)

oh and I don't claim Kaczyńskis were spotless and to a certain degree they were cynical too - it is difficult not be at least a bit cynical (call it populist) and get elected - and they have made grave mistakes being too cynical - in my opinnion it was possible to form a more stable bloc with Samoobrona making some concessions to their positions-thirsty ranks instead of trying to take it over from Andrzej Lepper as Jarosław Kaczyński envisioned, planned and pushed into materialization - I have to explain that Samoobrona in my view was much less harmful to Poland's interests than PO is (I don't have equally mild oppinion on LPR though being an entity of personal ambition of one man (or just few people) when the whole environment shared so much with PiS save for a couple of prejudices LPR members harboured - but the political practice of 2005-2007 often made these people lose their prejudices - see for example Krzysztof Bosak's case)

News / Donald Tusk's Government of Poland Continues to Oppress Poles [161]

ok I found news from December that the government cancelled the planned withdrawal of tax deductions for children for 2011 - I think they realized such move would be suicidal in the election year - the move however escalates pressure on the FM to fight for OFE's money ( from what I gather the commission OFE's impose on money put into their 'personal accounts' deems them white collar robbers - they make HEEPS of cash not investing a single penny and regardless whether their investments are profitable ) - and in my personal view the drive by the government to seize large proportion of money that goes to OFE's is the main reason Tusk lost its media 'umbrella'

I reapeat it after an edit of my previous post so it can live some life in the discussion ;) (that's how vain I am) or rather to let the participants know (and that's so modest of me hehe :)

News / Donald Tusk's Government of Poland Continues to Oppress Poles [161]

Torq I think your focusing too much on a minor issue that is in fact no or little fault of the Tusk government - I am not 100 per cent sure but I have heard that our current FM J.V. Rostowski cancelled the tax deduction for couples having children (it was about 1200 PLN per child a year) for the tax year of 2011 (and if PO rules on possibly coming years) - this is really a hard blow for low income famillies with children - 1200 out of hand - anybody correct it if I am wrong on the issue

edit: ok I found news from December that the government cancelled the planned withdrawal of tax deductions for children for 2011 - I think they realized such move would be suicidal in the election year - the move however escalates pressure on the FM to fight for OFE's money ( from what I gather the commission OFE's impose on money put into their 'personal accounts' deems them white collar robbers - they make HEEPS of cash not investing a single penny and regardless whether their investments are profitable ) - and in my personal view the drive by the government to seize large proportion of money that goes to OFE's is the main reason Tusk lost its media 'umbrella'

Law / Old Polish money banknotes - what's their value today? [415]

try allegro.pl - this is the polish counterpart of ebay - you just need to know a couple of right words to look for things that interest you (banknoty -easy - monety- coins stare- old przedwojenne - pre-war powojenne - postwar) - there are probably (more) dedicated sites as to trading historic money (numizmatyka is the right term) but I don't know them personally

News / Polish PM Tusk- dictator or not? What Poles think? [421]


Enterprise Publishing "Rzeczpospolita" and two members of the Board of Presspublica submitted on Friday to the court petition for dissolution of the company - said Marek Olender , a member of the board of directors . Presspublica is the publisher of , among others, "Rzeczpospolita " .

PW " Rzeczpospolita" and two members of the Management Board, on the recommendation of both companies believe that " the objective of the company has become impossible , and other important causes occurred due to the relations of the company" - Olender said in a statement. The lawsuit filed in the commercial court in Warsaw.

an excerpt - Według Presserwisu, działanie PW "Rzeczpospolita" może też oznaczać próbę odzyskania tytułu "Rzeczpospolita" przez Skarb Państwa.

this is the first thing I found - Gazeta Prawna is a competitor of Rzeczpospolita (it acquired Dziennik the year before last)


tell me what was the gap between Kaczyński and Komorowski in the final results of the second turn - it is even more interesting how much this gap was in actual number of votes and not necessarily percentage

and consider that those who try to manipulate/alter the results of an election do that for fear they might otherwise loos

edit: ok I have found the figures myself and presidential elections don't seem to be possibly manipulated - there were 200 000 invalid votes of about 17 million ( not much more than 1 per cent then) - the gap in votes was about 1 million - unless there was some different way of lowering Kaczyński votes like getting rid of votes for him and not counting them at all like it must have been the case with those ballot cards from Włocławek (the paper mill) but the necessary scale would make it rather impossible


well ridiculing people works only so far - as I have stated the electoral fraud when it comes to UPR is even well documented in one instance (you can find it in the link I previously posted) and it happened as late as 2009 Europarliament election - the reports of previous such instances were common enough to suggest some systematic behaviour on part of many electoral committes

I don't know much about Korwin-Mikke stabbing incident - but what I gather from the covering on the internet he haven't stabbed himself but was attacked by somebody he later wouldn't name (or even mention) instead claiming it was an accidental stabbing - here's my source [asme.pl/serwis/arch/6-2001.html] it carries citations from various newspapers of the time

News / Polish PM Tusk- dictator or not? What Poles think? [421]


because I meant a different election in the 90's -as I have said I don't recall which election this was - it may have been a couple years before internet was widely popular - I have read about it in a paper edition of a political paper

btw here's the link to the news about voting cards found over 100 kilometers from their electoral committee found near paper mill which also recycles old paper (all of the cards were votes for Kaczyński in last presidential election) - the article mentions a previous article in Toruń edition of Gazeta Wyborcza (must have been paper edition - don't know if it also appeared in the internet edition):

W£OC£AWEK . With the factory of paper ballots are from last year's presidential election. Marked on them the name of Jaroslaw Kaczynski.

Wloclawek found ballots in the last presidential election. At all marked Jaroslaw Kaczynski. The documents lay in the mud . Nobody knows where they came from here.

News / Polish PM Tusk- dictator or not? What Poles think? [421]


like being driven by media hype (PiS is winning - let's save Poland)
this can be this simple - as the psychological mechanism in many Polish people is simple (the way the media wanted it to be) - they are utterly fed up with PO but the fear (I call it irrational you call it what you want - well for some people it is actually rational but they are in big minority) of PiS winning can be enough for many to go and vote in PiS's spite - this is perfect media training I'd say

my point is simple - those who want to vote (with marginal exceptions) were always able to do so

News / Polish PM Tusk- dictator or not? What Poles think? [421]


so you find it that simple yes? - so if voting is twice as long as before the turn out should be like twice as much, yes?

you think this 50 per cent turnout is because these poor people simply could not get to vote yes??
God save us from compulsory voting amen


childish behaviour of Gazeta Wyborcza hehe - I call it simply manipulative and cynical (cynical because the fine for such act is petty in comparison to GW money)(what kind of example this gives to the society at large) - and equating a couple of ardent PiS supporters with a national (and arguably the most influential) press title - btw most (if not all other) national newspapers and even internet media restrained from violating the electoral law by publishing the latest voting preferences on the eve of the election -


what do you call bi-partisan media I'm pretty curious - and how do you call PO attempts to overtake (and presumably silence) 'Rzeczpospolita' - btw I would say Rzeczpospolita seems to harbour a diversity of views as opposed to GW (but I am just an internet reader)

News / Polish PM Tusk- dictator or not? What Poles think? [421]


explain that to me delphi?
how in your view was one-day election hampering turnout?


how this corresponds to Gazeta Wyborcza printing voting preference polls on a saturday before the electoral sunday - this is a known fact (well know to all those who follow politics in Polandmore or less closely for a good couple of years) - but I would have to dig for the exact date


where? - on my blog - do you know how to magically attract people to your blog jonni? how do you post in the mainstream internet?- you know - the best known portals - do they differ much from other mass media in the way they fill their news columns -

btw jonni you may have heard of Kataryna - the best known independent Polish political blogger - she is quite firm supporter of PiS since about 2005 - and if you can read Polish you can hardly call her mentally ill or perhaps lacking in intelligence

News / Polish PM Tusk- dictator or not? What Poles think? [421]


how do you spread stuff on the internet tell me jonni - is internet much different to the media - would you buy an e-mail database and then spam pepole with your news (it's not me who would think of you as a spammer but a great proportion of those who would receive the e-mails) -

I have already mentioned how the prosecution can work in Poland - the FOZZ case - there are many other instances of prosecution not doing the right job - there are aslo instances where prosecution seemingly actively acted against people who were guilty of no crimes nor offences - see Roman Kluska case (the creator of Optimus (Optimus was once the biggest privately created company in this country and that from scratch) and onet.pl) - Kluska didn't put up a fight - maybe he knew he could not win - onet.pl was acquired from Kluska by the owners of TVN (ITI group) - I wouldn't be surprised if it was much below the standing price of the business) - to your knowledge Kluska is a mild supporter of PiS (PiS planned to introduce 'Kluska plan' - a plan to decrease obstacles to small business)

News / Polish PM Tusk- dictator or not? What Poles think? [421]


I have personally witnessed fraud when I voted for UPR as I have mentioned here before - I never thought much about it until I quite recently have read of many of such instances where despite people voted for UPR their votes have been somehow 'vanished' i.e. no votes for UPR for certain local electoral committee - imagine that there were more imaginative or intelligent 'agents' in committees who just 'decreased' the number of votes for UPR (or perhaps some other 'unconvenient' political party) - and you suddenly can start to see some 'bigger picture' - in case of PiS the 'more imaginative' way of counting their votes has to be applied so as not to make it very suspicious

you may have never heard of filled voting cards in dumps found in the next voievodship but I have (recently - can't give the written source now but it was reported somewhere - and I heard it from somebody)

now, ask yourself why is PO pushing for two-day election??? one day was always enough for those who wanted to vote before - I am not for voting on the last of October as PiS wishes as this is much in the way of traditional Polish way of celebrating the All Saints Day

in general - read more and think more before judging - and remember Poland is not Britain - there so little civic control of the government in all its forms and branches here - there is hardly any civic society in Poland ('społeczeństwo obywatelskie') - forget about watchdogs pal

and sometimes remind yourself what certain 'champion of democracy' once stated - "It is not important who votes for whom, it is important who counts the votes"

News / Polish PM Tusk- dictator or not? What Poles think? [421]


in municipal+regional elections you have to count it differently - cause you actually vote up to 5 times (three levels of local authorities +mayoral election (which can have second turn) - still this amount of votes (2 million) deemed invalid is highly suspicious

that's why I'm quite curious what was the amount of 'invalid' votes in the presidential election of last summer


pretty interesting who this man votes for

News / Polish PM Tusk- dictator or not? What Poles think? [421]


would it be a surprise to you that the former head of PKW Ferdynand Rymarz is suspected of having been an informer of the communist services - he retired last year due to his age:

Is Ferdinand Saddler , chairman of the National Electoral Commission , the agent PRL security police nicknamed Black and Fred? When the public learned of the existence of corporal SB memo suggesting that Andrew Carrier could be a contributor to SB , chairman of the Institute of National Remembrance college Slawomir Radon announced that he should not apply for the post of head of the IPN ( carrier nevertheless decided to run ) . He explained that in relation to the president should not be even the slightest suspicion of collaborating with the Police .

to your knowledge jonni the most famous 'corruption' (I don't know the proper English word for the kind of affair it was) affair of FOZZ never reached the courts in time to judge its perpetrators - it only reached courts in 2005 or 2006 a while before it was deemed 'przedawniona" (outdated???) - seems like there was no will to judge the bad guys before 2005

there exist many reports of electoral frauds and Korwin-Mikke in the article beneath mentions why it is hard to annul election because of these (is to annul a good English name for this action???)

News / Polish PM Tusk- dictator or not? What Poles think? [421]


what do you mean by 'spoiled voice' - I don't quite get it


I have made a quick search and PKW post-election protocols clearly state the number of non-valid voting cards like here

pkw.gov.pl/katalog/artykul/16243.html


that you are prejudiced is no news to me - actually it is you who spouts unverifiable nonsense about Kaczyński - like you sat in his head

News / Polish PM Tusk- dictator or not? What Poles think? [421]


well I haven't checked it with Polish Electoral Comittee but Kaczyński mentioned a figure of 2 million non-valid votes in the last municipal and regional elections - this figure really gives food for thought - and to your knowledge 'disallowing' a vote in Poland is pretty easy - you just need to enter one more X or any other kind of a symbol in any other box besides the one that the actual voter used - and I have myself witnessed an electorial fraud back in the middle 90's - I voted in a small place where I lived - me and my mom voted for UPR - a small liberal (verging on libertarian) party - the committee is (was back then at least) obliged to display a summary of votes per party - it proved that there were 0=nil votes for UPR - strange huh? - I was than as literate as I am now (or even more literate back then) - there were of course no representatives of UPR in the committee which can explain a lot

btw I am quite curious how many invalid votes were counted in the presidential election of June/July

News / "To understand Poland you must understand Frederic Chopin" (Stratfor Friedman) [74]

it's an old frozen discussion I know

but you perhaps don't know some facts of quite recent history rychlik
the most startling fact is the Treaty of Asociation to European Community ( well I can't remember the correct name of the Treaty and my source on the internet somehow vanished) negotiated back in 1991 which started functioning in 1992 (in its commercial part and in 1994 in other aspects like legal adjustmenst) - the treaty opened Polish market to almost any imports from the west giving no return privileges for Poland - there were high duties on agricultural produce from Poland for example right up to 2004 - - the treaty ended in 2004 with Poland entering the EU - during this time Polish industry and economy in whole suffered badly - for example in 1992 the deficit in Polish trade with the EU was 1.2 billion dollars whereas in 1997 it was as high as 7.5 billion dollars

Life / Womans day in Poland? [242]

must be your birthday Harry ;)

Life / Best over the counter flu medicine in Poland? [24]

antibiotics can't fight flu - anitbiotics are only necessary if you develop some bacterial infection (like throat inflamatory or pneumonia) in the aftermath of a flu

what I would recommend is buying lime blossom or raspberry leaf herbal tea - they both lower fever (I think lime blossom herbal tea is more effective) - they should be available in you drug store - if not there are special dedicated stores which sell herbal products

lime blossom tea is also said to help one to get to sleep

also home-made raspberry juice and jam work to counter fever (and also contain some vitamine C)

Language / -ski/-ska, -scy/ski, -wicz - Polish surnames help [185]


hardly (or actually the other way round): - icz suffix is of Slavic origin and has a definite meaning - (owicz , ewicz are further extentions of the suffix for historical grammatical reasons)

-icz (and -ewicz, -owicz) means a son of (also later as descendant of ) as in:

pan -> panicz - a son of a pan i.e. lord

Jarosław -> Jarosławowicz - a son (or later historically also a descendant - which later turned into a surname) of Jarosław

Mickiewicz - a son/ descendant of Mitko - Mitko being some Ruthenian first name

carewicz - a son of a tsar (pol. car)

this is also the origins of Russian patronimia - Ivan Petrovich - Ivan a son of Peter

-iczius form is actually a lithuanisation of a Slavic form of name. period
I honestly doubt -icz (or -ic) suffix exists (and has a definte function ie. meaning in
Lithuanian)


I am not that sure but I guess Mickiewicz knew little Lithuanian - never left anything written in Lithuanian to my knowledge - if he considered himself a 'Litwin' it was in now obsolete meaning: a citizen of the former Duchy of Lithuania which extended much further than the current extent of Lithuanian language territory

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

if it were just those who are unbalanced that would get hurt after letting people at large own guns it would be not much harm in my eyes - still it is plain to see that many different people would get hurt shot and dead just because in a wrong time in a wrong place meeting a drunken rage of a gun holding bastard or having an alcohol driven crazy guy in their family

Po polsku / Nasza Bufetowa wymiata ! [16]

Malopolanin - ludzie którzy coś tam kiedyś o PiS słyszeli często mają problemy z uszczegółowieniem swoich zarzutów - taka idosynkrazja ;)

w każdym razie i tak robi się dziwnie Rostkowska z kolegami popiera PO w pomyśle likwidacji finansowania partii z budżetu - albo im się coś pomieszało albo mają jakieś brzydkie zamiary - jakby mi kto z nich potrafił sensownie to wytłumaczyć to bym to może przełknął a tak to taki absmak pozostaje

History / Vikings in Pomerania (near Gdansk area)? [19]

there are some indications it was Mieszko I who invited Vikings to Wolin - he badly wanted to take control of Pomorze especially Odra estuaries - Vikings could have also played a role in creating Polan's country and its expansion (at least as mercenaries but maybe in a similar scenarion as in Kievan Rus) - as far as I know Vikings never settled Slavic Pomorze in great numbers because of Pomarzanie resistence though the Danes tried to conquere at least western part of southern coast of Baltic and they were succesful for a time - I guess it was 11-12 th century - they also managed to conquer some lands in easter Baltics - at least the islands off the coast of Estonia