Food / What do non-Poles think about eating the following Polish foods? [1450]

the creamy ones look like wild champignons to me (aka pieczarki)

don't know these brownish shrooms

edit: no the creamy stuff are not champignons - some kind of borowik?

Food / What do non-Poles think about eating the following Polish foods? [1450]


and I know why - because it is some kind of gołąbek - but careful some gołąbki are not tasty at all

Food / What do non-Poles think about eating the following Polish foods? [1450]


maślak? czerwony kozak? to szare to nie wiem wogóle

w sumie to coś mi na czerwonego kozaka jednak nie wygląda

Food / What do non-Poles think about eating the following Polish foods? [1450]


I would read them a bit before going out picking mushrooms - I think it is better to learn from people who are in the know eventually - I am not a mushroom expert - I only pick those that I know to be palatable

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

you should never use public transportation in Poland then, Daisy - it would be too traumatic for you - and I mean what I say - methinks some people can't abandon their habits in a new country ( I have always been a good queuer if you ask unless in Poland ;)

Life / Polish authors, books & literature. [95]

Andrzej Sapkowski - a fantasy writer (mostly) - The Last Wish - translated into English by a Polish translator - I heaven't read it in English though - just read it in Polish quite some time ago but I did like it - still I have read many favorable English reviews on the Amazom

Travel / Places open in Poland on national holidays [24]

you can definitely do some shopping on Saturday - hours can differ I guess - Saturday and Monday is a lost cause

Life / How is red hair viewed in Poland [37]


it does unfortunately - a saying goes for example: rudy znaczy fałszywy - red hair- must be a fake guy

i was personally prejudiced against red-haired people when I was younger - I am not now consciously but you know such things tend to cling to your subconsciousness

Polonia / What about the Poles living in Germany? [65]

well, in Russian (and in Polish) rozbić/rozbit' means to smash/to break like to break a glass - actually in Polish we wouldn't say rozbić czołg like Russians would say but rather zniszczyć czołg (to destroy a tank) or more colloquially rozwalić czołg - just imagine a guy smashing tanks with a hand grenade ;) - then again I thought it can be funny for an English speaker imagining a guy 'knocking' out tanks with blows of a hand armed with a HG (actually knocking at them) ;) - the funny idea for Poles is that Russians could really try doing this and actually succeed in it hehehe :)

Polonia / What about the Poles living in Germany? [65]

you wanted a WWII joke?? ;)

WWII - Russian bunker - there is some heavy knocking on the steel door -

Kto wy? (Who are you??) Swoi! (Friends (as in friend or foe) A skolko was?? (And how many of you are there?) Ein-und-zwanzig :)

the dialogue of the joke is normally said in Russian and German - it is much more funny then for Poles

or another one hehe

WWII - Russians sitting in a buker on a frontline playing cards drinking 'spirt' (say a strong booze ;)) - at one moment a growing low buzz of motors is heard - Starszyna ( a sergeant) says: Sasza, słyszy, tanki jedut. (Sasha can you hear the tanks coming?) - Da, słyszu (Yes, I can hear them) - Sasza wozmi granat iz połki idi rozbij tanki (Sasha take the grenade from the shelf and go knock them out) - Sasha takes the grenade and leaves - After a while several cracks and blasts are heard - After next couple of whiles Sasha returns

Starszyna (The sergeant) asks - Sasha, tanki rozbity??? (Sasha, are the tanks knocked out?) - Da (Yes) - To położy granat na połku (Then put the grenade back on the shelf)

Language / A software which converts Polish text to audio? [8]

you can use the ivona.com - a text-to-speech website - explore it - i think you should find it useful

Travel / Storks - the Symbol of Poland [59]


cranes are usually back a couple of weeks before storks

Language / Future conditional (converting some sentences into conditional form with "gdyby") [5]

this exercise I think is to show that if in English conditionals translates two different words in Polish conditionals

jeśli is used only if the outcome/result is still a matter of future

Jeśli się nauczę (będę się uczył) na egzamin to go zdam. or Jeśli się (na)uczyłeś na egzamin to powinieneś zdać.

if actions already led to some result and you speculate what if you had taken different actions then you use gdybym

Gdybym się uczył na egzamine to (pewnie) bym go zdał.

Travel / Do Poles like to hunt? Hunting in Poland. [205]

there is Hunters Association in Poland- and millions are members
you cannot hunt here unless a member or paying for "hunting party' marketed to foreign hunters (Polish hunters organize and have pretty close supervision over the whole thing.

there may be no great variety of game and there are periods set up to protect animals in certain times of the year

appart from shooting animals Hunters' Association feeds them in winter, cultivates some plots of land for winter food for animals (mostly within forests where I live) in certain areas it also provides fences for protecting farmland from animal intrusion and devastation or organizes shooting 'patrols' during most vulnerable times for crops shooting once a quarter of an hour so scare of

animals

actually Polski Związek £owiecki had little above 100 000 members - I took the previous fiugrefrom the top of my head

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


there are plenty of parents who would rather keep to traditional names instead of Nikolas, Paulas, Kewins and the like

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

and my mum just told me she's seen petrol a couple of groszy above 5 PLN - if it wasn't BP ultimate then it's not quite cheap

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


I haven't mentioned those little Lenins and Stalins to suggest anything involving the fate of that poor Adolph Hitler kid - I would be very much for giving the parents a lecture on how they have adversely affected the lives of their children calling them such names - I don't know if it be somehow legally regulated

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? [455]


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? [455]


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