Life / Do expats living in Poland speak Polish? [233]


Uh ...... you do realize the Consulate General of the Republic of Poland in Chicago is not an arm of the US government don't you? Don't you?

You also realize the main purpose of most consulates is providing services for citizens of the consulate's country who happen to be in the host country, don't you? Please, tell me, yes, for the love of God, PLEASE!!!! you know that and the above is just a very subtle joke...

Life / What is going on in Polish Music [128]

A song Polish people should like more than they do:



bonus: pre-fame Kayah, a backing vocalist at the time.

Life / What is going on in Polish Music [128]

Another Polish song I like a lot more than I probably should:

with lyrics:

Life / What is going on in Polish Music [128]

See and raise:
...

Life / Typical Examples of Polish Parking Entitlement (post yours) [57]

Polish people,

Cars,

Good manners.

Pick any two, it appears there's no way to get all three together at the same time.

Life / Do expats living in Poland speak Polish? [233]


Without looking at the original, I don't know. I'm pretty sure the law doesn't say that government authorities have to speak in however many languages and I would imagine having printed materials and some form letters in EU languages should be enough for 98 % or more of all cases, especially since IME the government doesn't care anymore about EU citizens living in Poland.

And, of course, it doesn't apply to non-EU citizens.

Language / Polish words difficult to translate into English [66]

Of course there is no one translation of 'loser', it's not any kind of basic semantic category like 'red' or 'good'. There are a number of ways to translate it depending on context.

Nieudacznik is good for a lot of the time, but other times frajer, dupek or something else might be appropriate. The range of uses of particular words in Polish stubbornly won't match up and there's nothing that can be done about it.

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


Guess I'm a genius, then bitch! Pocałuj mnie w dupę, debilu.

Too bad you're too dumb to learn Polish and the only way you'll know what I just wrote is to ask someone who's smarter than you! Ale ja rządzę!

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


I'm not Polish and have no Polish family background and didn't start learning Polish until I was an adult. I'm just smarter than you, I guess.

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


That's actually more likely to be : "We speak English, okay? Is more easy!"

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


English is not 'fairly simplistic' in it's structure. But the greater reliance on word order and overall fewer inflections means that the structure can be pretty mangled but still understandable. Native speech and writing has a lot of structure that natives themselves don't recognize. But learners don't have to respect the structures that natives use to make themselves understood (especially to other learners).

This backfires badly on more advanced students who may be pretty fluent in day to day spoken English (they think) but cannot break the intonation barrier (a lot of the structure of spoken English depends on stress levels and choice of stressed word) or ever learn to write formally (without a native double checking) or do half a dozen other things that they might be able to learn if they had really had to work at it early on. The price of early ease is that hardly any learners ever really master the language.

For a lot of everyday uses, this doesn't matter, but it does lead to crap like the following passing for (academic!) English:

"The article aims at defining the notion of amateurism phenomenon. The basic forms of musical amateurism are also considered here. Amateurism appears in the article in its development, particularly, in its transition to professionalism. Characteristics examples of regeneration of amateurism into professionalism (jazz, rock, bard's song and other kinds of mass music) are given here. Special attention is being paid to such a form of modern amateurism as computer composing."

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


Is it Langenscheidt? IME The old Langenscheidt Polish-German dictionary is pretty bad (hint: think of the last syllable in British English). I think it may have been good once, but was not kept up to date. Many times I had the experience of looking a German word up and being puzzled by the Polish translation, and so off I would go to my Polish English dictionary and find out it's a synonym of a better known word.

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

I think it's more likely that lyzko simply was momentarily confused by a bad dictionary, the German definition probably includes an idiom that he took literally and transferred into English.

Even langauge professionals can get caught up in the trap between literal and figurative meanings (or between which idioms are transferable and which aren't). I've made my share of mistakes in that area (which there is no need to examine here).

Has little to do with the relative complexity of Polish and English.

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


It's pronounced like sz in chcesz, yes, that's a completely predictable rule, rz after p is always pronounced as sz (just as w is pronounced like v or f depending on it's position in the word and/or what sounds are around it. It's called voicing assimilation, a basic principle of spoken Polish. There is a not very large group of rules to learn and then you can tell the pronunciation of any Polish word by its written form. That is, if you have basic level of human intelligence. If you're a moron, you'll just notice that some sounds are pronounced differently sometimes and no amount of repeating the simple rules will suffice.

And the si in Kasia is a completely different sound to Poles as any Pole will tell you that Kasia and kasza sound different to them.

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

Oh pleae, you're an idiot and your English isn't .... very good. It's hard for me to imagine that a native speaker (who isn't drunk) would make the mistakes that you do. Please pay attention to my corrected form and maybe you'll learn something - or maybe not.

"You just contradicted all the other "Polish native speakers' who claim that rz is always pronounced like s in casualty or rz in morze.

No wonder that 98 % of Polish people have a medical certificate for 'disortografia', an illness unique in the world."

Once you learn English beyond the pidgin level, maybe I'll take your rantings seriously.... maybe.

Oh, and many native speakers of Polish aren't especially aware of the voicing assimilation that goes on in the language. The principle is very simple to learn however (unless you're dumb as a box of sand). Then again, native or very fluent speakers of English (a category you obviously don't belong to) are mostly unaware of voicing assimilation or stress placement rules in English either.

Overall, I suppose it's easier and more fun to make silly and inaccurate claims about Polish than admit the grim truth that you just don't have brains enough to learn it. Just not very bright, I suppose.

USA, Canada / REFUSED A HOLIDAY VISA TO THE U.S CAUSE IM POLISH [323]


For the howmanyeth time I'll ask: What makes you think the US government cares about illegal immigration? All the evidence I can find, would indicate the government doesn't care at all. The public might care, but the ruling class in the US is actively in favor of illegal immigration.

The overstaying the visa issue (while valid, yes, an honest person leaves when their visa ends) is just an excuse for a policy that has its origins elsewhere.

USA, Canada / REFUSED A HOLIDAY VISA TO THE U.S CAUSE IM POLISH [323]


But strangely, the only thing ever really done is that they're given amnesty. Find me a national politician, in a position to get something done, who's not into amnesty or any kind of immigration 'reform' that doesn't involve mass importation of third worlders.

As some might say, the US government has elected a new people and the current population realizes they've been voted off the island.

USA, Canada / REFUSED A HOLIDAY VISA TO THE U.S CAUSE IM POLISH [323]

Basically, the opinion of all those who have a real voice in making decision in the US are in favor of widespread illegal immigration (for different reasons).

Most American voters are not, and would, I'm sure, drastically reduce all immigration if they had a say in the question, but they don't.

USA, Canada / REFUSED A HOLIDAY VISA TO THE U.S CAUSE IM POLISH [323]


I'm a born US citizen who's lived over 30 years there, though I haven't been back in [mumble, mumble] years.

I agree that the majority of the US population is against mass immigration, illegal or not. If the matter were put to a popular vote then US policy would be very different. But it has not been put to popular vote and will not, because the leadership of both parties (and the political commentary class) are all firmly in favor of illegal immigration and don't care about the majority opinion of the citizenry.

What part of this do you not agree with?

USA, Canada / My boyfriend is being deported to Poland because his US visa expired, help needed [53]


1. Go back where you came from and go through the legal steps to emigrate to the US (or get a visa that will allow you to stay longer)

2. Try to convince US immigration that you're Mexican, change your name to Covalsquez or Gonzalska.

3. Go elsewhere looking for sympathy in your endeavor to break the law to suit your whims. By overstaying your visa, you're subverting everything that built what you find so attractive. US culture is founded on people OBEYING THE LAW, WHETHER THEY LIKE IT OR NOT!!!! It's not based on just doing whatever you want to do.

My sympathy guage is on ........ minus 2.

Travel / Poland to Romania (and back!) [18]

I flew from Warsaw to Bucurest last year (came back by train). The passengers seemed to mostly be Russian/Ukrainians, probably using Bucurest as a hub for further travel.

Bucurest is a strange city.... Interesting, but kind of odd. Seems to not have recovered from the communist times as much as Poland has (but then they were hit much harder than Poland, Poland in martial law was about like Romania duirng normal Ceausescu times.

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


Except .... it hasn't. The current Romanian case system doesn't really have anything to do with the old Latin case system. For nouns, it's a stripped down Balkan style system (with nominative-accusative and genetive-date mergers) expressed only on articles.

Life / Bilingual kids in Polish schools [30]

Generally, up to age four or five bilingual kids can have some delay and it can also take them time to figure out how to separate languages in different contexts, especially if both parents speak both languages. Conversely, his vocabulary might be patched together with holes here and there (things he can say in one language but not the other). These issues usually resolve themselves, but the effects can be long lasting. Some explicit tutoring by the parents to cover linguistic gaps might not be a bad idea. At this stage the priority should be Polish so the native Polish speaker should make sure to go through story books, picture books (with labels) and the like to make sure he knows what's what.

And ... are you sure it's the bilingual thing? Some kids just are less social and adept at mixing than others and it can take them longer to fit in with other kids. As a monolingual kid I was just kind of awkward and not very social and had some rough times in my early years of education. If I'd been bilingual I can imagine my problems being blamed on that.

Finally, as a general rule, make sure you keep any kids with home English out of English class at otherwise Polish schools. The teachers are liable to feel threatened by them. And, as Wroclaw mentioned, they mostly don't know about the kinds of things that English speaking parents say to their kids.

Life / Bilingual kids in Polish schools [30]

And doesn't mind failing English in the process.

Life / Bilingual kids in Polish schools [30]


I haven't thought of British English (as spoken by everyday Brits) and American as the same spoken language for quite some time. I think of them more like Swedish and Norwegian - autonomous standards that are mostly mutually intelligible, especially in face to face situations. If I eavesdrop on spontaneous British conversation I understand 50-90 % (never 100 %). Face to face, things go easier, but I realize I'm missing some discourse cues.

What's needed is an American standard that's differs more markedly from the written British standard.

USA, Canada / REFUSED A HOLIDAY VISA TO THE U.S CAUSE IM POLISH [323]


Well, English starts easy then gets really hard and the longer you study it, the harder it gets (kind of the opposite of Polish which starts hard, gets harder and then gets a lot easier, you're probably not at that stage yet). No language is 'easy' and in the case of English early ease is more than paid for by later failure to master.

Collocations are a lot harder (more irregular) in English than in Polish and so is almost any kind of embedding (putting one sentence inside another). There's more, but that's a start.

And, since proper intonationn (which is difficult) and the distinction between count and non-count nouns are mostly not part of early instruction (which would make early instruction a lot more difficult). It's almost impossible for more advanced learners to actually .... learn them well.

There's also the little fact that many who take English classes just aren't into it as a language (generally unhelpful for longterm learning). Actually those who take German or Russian (not to mention Italian, or French or Spanish) are more likely to be genuinely interested in those languages and do well in them (compared to the indifferent results of most English learning).

And most English learning materials (unlike materials for German, French etc) are not meant to substantively help students learn English. The random hodge podge of hard to assimilate usage and McLessons are meant to satisfy English course requirements and (give the illusion of learning while keeping the students as ignorant as possible for as long as possible so they'll still keep paying for classes).

Life / Bilingual kids in Polish schools [30]

US usage is far more uniform than the UK, regional differences exist but not to the same extent. The big difference in the US is between SAE and AAVE.

British speakers are more likely to understand American better than the reverse. I've known university educated Americans who didn't understand at least a third of the dialogue in Mike Leigh movies (Life is Sweet comes to mind).

Life / Bilingual kids in Polish schools [30]


SAE : Standard American English, sometimes called General American English a pretty uniform and largely class neutral spoken standard. For formal versions listen to NPR or national news broadcasts. For informal versions listen to the lead characters in most American tv shows or movies. Largely indistinguishable from standard Canadian usage.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_American_English

AAVE : African American Vernacular English an ethnolect or sociolect mostly unique to the US.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AAVE

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


"Nie zrozumiałeś mnie" or maybe "Mnie nie zrozumiałeś" remember that nothing can come between nie and a following verb. The only way what you wrote makes sense would be to add to and get 'To nie mnie zrozumiałeś' "It wasn't me you understood (but rather someone else)"

I'm also not so sure about that 'jeszcze co?' I think that 'co jeszcze' is better.

You can make the case (get it? get it? hee hee) that in Polish the masculine gender is breaking up into two separate genders animate and inanimate with koń and mąż in the first (along with banan, papieros and some other inanimate nouns that are virtually always treated as animate) and most other masculine inanimate in the other. That's clearly where things are headed but the change is far from complete. (though you can defend the position that Polish has three morphological and four syntactic cases in the singular).

Also, gender is just one system of noun classes and many (though not all) linguists call the noun classes of Bantu languages 'genders' and most Bantu languages have a half a dozen or more (sometimes many more) genders than European languages.

Note here:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_gender#More_than_three_grammatical_genders

Language / Polish slang phrases - most popular. [606]


For starters:

Odczep się! (get away (from me))

Spierdalaj! (f*ck off!)

Spieprzaj! (the same, but maybe not as rough?)

To pluralize, just add cie

Odczepcie się!

Spierdalajcie!

Spieprzajcie!

Special bonus, if you want to sound presidential the next time some guy is hitting on you:

Spieprzaj dziadu! (very roughly: fuck off, loser; dziad is very hard to translate)

plural

Spieprzajcie dziady!