Off-Topic / Ukrainian language [50]


I think it's logical that if you want to move to Ukraine, you should learn to speak Ukrainian in the first place. Russian won't hurt (you can take advantage of the opportunity to learn them both, since they're pretty close) too, particularly in Kiev and in Eastern cities of the Ukraine. Although in the West speaking Russian may bring you into troubles or have you treated not as well as you expected.

Ukrainian if not spoken by everyone is understood by everyone. Go for it and good luck.

P.S. If you are Polish, then studying Ukrainian will be easier for you than studying Russian for it's sort of bridge-language between us two. And I'm Russian.

Work / What is a good salary in Wroclaw? (coordinator position for an IT company) [27]


Thanks for the reply, Piotr!
Looks like life in Wroclaw is indeed cheaper than in Moscow when it comes to food and rent. Gas is a different story, of course.

By the way do Poles living close to the border drive to Belorussia to pump gas? It costs there half as much.

Polonia / Belarus in comparison to Polska? [5]


Friendly people, cheap food/accommodation/well... everything, it's usually cleaner than in Moscow, may be boring though if you stay too long. Depends on what you expect to see there.

Genealogy / Is Leonczuk/Leonchuk Леончук a Ukrainian surname common? [4]

It's pretty common I think (in Russia too). Can't say the exact fugures but Ukrainian yellow pages gave me 722 results (=families, not persons).

nomer.org/allukraina


May or may not belong to a Ruthenian. I don't think one can always tell the nationality basing on the last name only. My guess is that it could belong to families that had close ties with Western Europe (possibly from Western Areas of the modern Ukraine), hence the base "leon"="lion" which is not Slavic. In Russia it turned to a very common last name "Leonov".

Love / Unmarried couples in Poland = pathology [310]


By stating that you're drawing a government into equation to the injury of an individual. Let's see... who are the government to decide your children are bastards or not? That's you who should decide that, isn't it? You, providing you're a fine person, would love your children anyway and treat them like a particle of your own.

In my country (Russia) children who are born out of marriage still go as "illegitimate birth" which would denude them of some rights and governmental financial support. So I'm sort of blackmailed by the government to register my relationship which I find backward.

I'm all for civil marriages just like it is in countries like Sweden (which still btw has a higher birthrate than Poland).

Love / Unmarried couples in Poland = pathology [310]


I dare say going with flow in this case is sticking to traditional marriages. What can a signature and a stamp in one's id change?


Hard to disagree with you (particularly with that in paretheses). But I don't think Swedish legitimized civil marriages eat into the birthrate in their country.

Love / Unmarried couples in Poland = pathology [310]


Do you mean that given you have a partner you love you are still free to have someone on the side? But that's ignoble!


Could you back it up somehow?


Are you a slave to need to have a government that would allow the aforementioned? A tsardom thinking.

Love / Unmarried couples in Poland = pathology [310]


I may have confused you. Of course they're not deprived of basic rights like to vote or something. But it would make it a way harder to set up a claim for decedent's estate, it would make it hardly possible to get alimony payment, state supplements, rebates and privileges.

Love / Unmarried couples in Poland = pathology [310]


It probably won't. I am not a lawyer. What I know is that there're so many bureaucratic twists and turns on the way of acknowledging one's fatherhood which one may or may not overpass, that in the upshot it's simpler to register your relationship.

There's also a thing known as juvenile justice gathering pace in Russia, which makes it easier to terminate paternal rights for those who are not married.

What I'm trying to say is that there are many red tapes aimed onto making you register your relationship before the government, make you co-habitation merely inconvenient. But again... that's in Russia. I don't know how things are in Poland.

Love / Unmarried couples in Poland = pathology [310]


The only thing I can't understand is that why you so strongly believe that registering your relationship is a compulsive step in this chain. As was said it doesn't guarantee one's morality. It won't change you. It cannot affect your children.

USA, Canada / Can you BE Polish without SPEAKING Polish in the US? [256]


I don't think one can be anything without being culturally adhered to this. Unless speaking a language you cannot understand the culture of its country. Nationality is rather a cultural thing than ethnic.

Language / Polish language would look better written in Cyrillic Script? [212]


It looks bizarre. :) But it's more natural for a Russian. It gives me an illusion that I got to understand Polish better. :)


The Serbs have found a good way out. If one wants, it will fit even non-Slavic languages.
Further fate of Cyrillic Alphabet will largely depend on how strong and authoritative Russia will be compared to the Western Europe and the US.

USA, Canada / Can you BE Polish without SPEAKING Polish in the US? [256]


Only "plastic", sorry.


According to my observation the US too "confused" about these matters. There're no such a thing as "Russian Americans". They are either Russians or Americans. That depends on which cultural environment they were raised in. You would probably be surprised but speaking Russian is oftentimes doesn't make a Russian out of you too. I've got a friend of Russian ethnicity in the US who speaks and understands Russian (was raised bilingual) but he can be called "Russian" only by a stretch of imagination and he himself never do so. Plastic Russian? Perhaps. Not Russian for sure. He can't imagine living here, he knows nothing about the Russians who live in Russia, he speaks funny Russian as if trying to project American habits, expressions, gestures onto a Russian turn of mind. I'm not saying it's bad, but that inevitably reveals him a non-Russian.

Love / Unmarried couples in Poland = pathology [310]


I don't find it natural, nor I want to be on a string.

Language / Polish language would look better written in Cyrillic Script? [212]


I think the biggest problem to accept would be that it's time-consuming. Szcz=щ. Szczecin=Щецин.

UPD: Just listened to Polish pronunciation on wiki. If transcribe with Cyrillic it will be more like Шчечин.

Love / Unmarried couples in Poland = pathology [310]


I don't see connection between being monogamous (is that what you meant?) and marriage. Monogamy implies that I wouldn't take part in the upbringing/nirture of my child but I will. This is what seems natural to me.

USA, Canada / Can you BE Polish without SPEAKING Polish in the US? [256]


Yes, but it's formed by a constant impact of Polish culture, language, people's behaviour, various social factors, in other words mingling in Polish society. If you rub shoulders with Polish immigrants you get a totally different state of mind which is glaringly obviously on this forum.

USA, Canada / Can you BE Polish without SPEAKING Polish in the US? [256]


It depends. They may not be traitors but they are definitely not patriots if they're leaving their homeland for a better life elsewhere. Is it a bad thing? I don't know. Perhaps. If it was for the safety of my family I would try to leave Russia immediately (which I honestly speaking would love to do).

I believe that living in a country different from the one of birth changes one's way of thinking. Moreover reading foreign literature in its original language may change one's turn of mind. One day you wake up and realize that you are actually far ahead (or probably behind) your (ex-)fellow countrymen. Can you consider yourself be yet one of them? Yes, technically you can but given that you are going to be a minority with your turn of mind in your homeland and they will still be a majority it doesn't make much sense.

A couple of years in total spent in the US changed my turn of mind drastically. Another five or ten could erase the most of russianness in me. It certainly depends on a person with his ability and will to integrate but I think many people who live abroad for a long time can easily put a prefix "plastic" before their original nationalities. Those who cannot integrate usually come back..

Love / Unmarried couples in Poland = pathology [310]

The US is the best proof of that you can't get rid of divorces by means of promoting marriages. The country has the highest rate of both marriages and divorces. The more people get married the more people find their wedlock not a happy one. Hence good and happy relationship are not equal to marriage.

Language / Polish language would look better written in Cyrillic Script? [212]

neither of these is a Slavic language.

Language / Polish language would look better written in Cyrillic Script? [212]


I know I just pointed out that it's wrong to draw linguistic parallels between Slavic and Roman languages.


That doesn't theoretically restrict using a non-Latin alphabet, does it?


save for that Rurik wasn't actually a Slav. :)

USA, Canada / Can you BE Polish without SPEAKING Polish in the US? [256]


In theory no one can deprive you of a right to be seen as Polish. Another question is how would you feel about the howling difference between you and those Poles (not necessarily ethnic ones) who have lived all their lives in Poland.

In my mind one's citizenship may have nothing to do with one's national identification. In Russia the best backup for the said is the Chechens brought up in Chechnya (formally Russia).

Life / Are Poles mentally more Eastern European or Western European? [171]


True. There's only Eastern Europe which gets more westernized as one goes westwards. :)

History / Slavic vs Germanic thinking.... and the philosophical differences [251]


Because you're an example of such an alliance?

Off-Topic / Book: Gogol's Taras Bulba [37]


It's one of the greatest Russian writers who ranges with Pushkin, Dostoevskiy, Tolstoy and some others. To label his work "Polonophobic" would be too shallow. However for some it doesn't bear any other content but Polonophobia.

Btw I believe TB is not the best thing the master have created.

Off-Topic / Book: Gogol's Taras Bulba [37]


If you mean ethnicity then yes, but if you mean nationality i.e. cultural affiliation then it was rather Russian.

Off-Topic / Book: Gogol's Taras Bulba [37]


Isn't that an approach of any empire?




Gde? :)

Love / Why marriage ring on the right hand finger in Poland? [11]


lol what are "Soviet countries"? :)) Since when Norway is a Soviet country?

In Latin "sinister" is "left" and "dexter" is "right". Here is whence a tradition to use right hand fingers came. Right hand is more associated with positive things in some countries and in Orthodox faith.

Left hand is less used, that's where I see the reason to wear wedding rings on left hand fingers.


Not all of them. E.g. Greece, Germany, Spain, part of Netherlands, Austria etc.


Jason's right.

Life / Can most people in Poland speak Russian? [43]


ROFL :)))) That was a hillarious tit for tat.

News / Does Poland support the idea of Slavic unity? [129]


There're roughly 300 mln Slavs in the World. Roughly 300 mln people in the Wolrd speak Russian. So you're certainly not correct.

Alex, unity based on ethnicity is probably the most feeble one these days. Even religion matters more, not mention money or any financial interest.
Besides, it takes will of millions to build any sort of union and it takes just one spiteful man to shaken the balance.
I don't really mind Slavs living as one big family but I think it would last long.

Btw, panslavism is not a Russian invention, it's Czech as far as I remember, though it was well taken up by the Russians.