UK, Ireland / WHAT IS SO SPECIAL LIVING IN U.K [90]


Everybody's got planes. Even in Poland, we've got LOT.


Tulips?

Language / Pronunciation of "lepiej" [13]

no, sorry, I can't ;) I've never had to learn Polish conjugation groups.
Probably it's some exception.

Love / Is she genuine? - I would like some advice please re a Polish girl. [130]


I certainly hope so too :)

Genealogy / THE MEANING AND RESEARCH OF MY POLISH LAST NAME, SURNAME? [4501]


It's a big aristocratic name and hence another possibility: in the 19thc. there were a few armed uprisings and fights with the Russian forces occupying parts of Poland, all of them unfortunately lost. After that, in order to punish the aristocrats who supported these uprisings, the Russian tzar (or tzarina) gave their names to numerous Jews. Lots of Potockis, Czartoryskis and others appeared then. So if you know nothing about your ascendants coming from an aristocratic family, then there are good chances that one of them might have been a Jew.

There are many "real" Potockis' descendants alive now though. You may also look them up in Wikipedia - a lot of important historical figures there.

Love / Is she genuine? - I would like some advice please re a Polish girl. [130]


All right, but that's a great way to become paranoid. Just watch your wallet and personal data until you know what you're doing, and that's it. Common sense should suffice. As you've said yourself, what do you know about somebody you meet in a bar? They might be a serial murderer for all you know, but it's not a reason to lock yourself up at home and stop talking to people. I know some great people that I've met on the Internet first, they're very real and we remain good friends - yes, I've met them in person too. And there is a married couple among them, who also met on a net forum and it wasn't even a dating site.

Am I to believe that all the nicks here on PF are boots and scammers? ;)

Genealogy / What certificate is this?; birth certificate from the greek catholic church [63]


Could it be Tarnawka? "Tarnawce" would be an inflected form - "born in Tarnawka" - "urodzony w Tarnawce".
pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarnawka_(powiat_przemyski)


No harm in trying ;)
It's interesting. A detective-like stuff. Proves that internet forums can actually be useful :)

Love / Is she genuine? - I would like some advice please re a Polish girl. [130]

Oh come on, give the guy a break. A Nigerian scammer wouldn't have a working mobile with Polish number. As for her honesty, this remains to be seen, but it's exactly the same as in "real" life. There are normal people using the net too, not everybody is a scammer.

Genealogy / What certificate is this?; birth certificate from the greek catholic church [63]


Thanks for this one! I've always wondered what the dashes are for and where you should put them.


Kinia? But again, if you look at the K in Kostia, it's very different.


It is, but they use strange names too.


It's the place of birth of Iwan Michalczyk.


There are two Śliwnicas in Poland, close to each other:
pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Śliwnica

Language / Pronunciation of "lepiej" [13]

jem, jesz, je, jemy, jecie, jedzą

Language / Pronunciation of "lepiej" [13]

because there is no z in them: lepiej, najlepiej.

I think you've confused them with lepszy, najlepszy, which are adjectives. Lepiej and najlepiej are adverbs (they answer the question: how?)

Life / Polish Brand names in everyday usage. [6]

elektroluks for vacuum cleaner - I think Electrolux was the first available brand here
neska for instant coffee (Nescafe) - not so much now, but it used to be in the past, when there weren't that many brands available

Life / Best-looking Polish post-war celebs.... [12]

Tomasz Kammel

yupi! it works
so:

Paweł Deląg

Marcin Zakościelny

Bogusław Linda

Zbigniew Zamachowski

Life / Best-looking Polish post-war celebs.... [12]

I'm not a girl anymore, but hey...




nauseously sweet and cheesy


just irritates me, so I'm not even sure if he's good-looking or not


he's a good actor and I like him a lot, but good-looking? come on!!!


:D the flag macho of III RP


no. please...


is he male???


now you're talking. he's getting old though, used to look better a few years back.


just OK

Life / Lack of Spacial Acuity in Poland [69]

Yep. Try it and you'll stop bumping into people so much.

Maybe the Brits subconsciously apply the left-hand rule and hence the problems?

Language / Too many English words in the Polish language! [709]


Make it a 0.7 l and you'll find a relation to "chilly" too :)

There might be some common ProtoIndoEuropean root though.


really? and what does it stand for in Greek?

Language / Too many English words in the Polish language! [709]

I thought she was asking about "kimono"?

Genealogy / What certificate is this?; birth certificate from the greek catholic church [63]


I admit it was a miss. I didn't know that October was also called "zhovten" (in Polish that would be "żółcień", a beautiful name indeed), so just by comparing all the months' names to the writing I thought "fiewral'" to be closest. Kudoz to you for this one.


Could be "t" but I can't think of any name that would fit then. Besides, "t" in "Kostia" is written as "m".

The fourth letter could be also cyrylic "g".
As for the ending, it's -ji therefore in Nominative would be -ja - and that's fine - before WWII some Polish female names were spelled and pronounced this way, e.g. Zofija, especially in the east of Poland.

So - Osinja, Asinja - ??? Might be some Eastern name. The Eastern Orthodox believers have a lot of names which sound strange to Poles (Eastern saints' names). But I can't Google anything similar.

The name Michalczyk is quite popular in Poland too.

And what's your take on Tyszowce/Tarnawce?

Genealogy / What certificate is this?; birth certificate from the greek catholic church [63]


I'm not sure. I can read contemporary Cyrylic but this is written with the old calligraphy, which is sometimes hard to read. Besides, there are not enough words to properly compare the letters. But if the first letter of the mother's name isn't O, then I don't know what else it could be. I tried D but it doesn't make sense, as the second letter is "c"(Cyrylic for s).

For me it looks like Osinia.
I know it would be a rare name but stranger things have happened, and the last name Biel doesn't sound Polish either - the mother might have been of Byelorussian origin and I don't know Byelorussian names well enough to be sure.


Could be either... But I'm for Tarnawce on this one, mostly by the look of the second letter. "Y" in Cyrylic looks different. Unfortunately, again, there's no other "y" to compare it to.

Language / iec conjugation [47]

wiję means I weave or I writhe. Infinitive: wić.

There's no way around verb conjugations, really, unless you want to always use the infinitive+personal pronoun+tense qualifier (ja mieć teraz, ty mieć przedtem, on mieć potem). It would sound funny, but I guess people would understand it.

Or how about learning conjugations of at least basic verbs? For example, "mieć" and znać" conjugate the same way, so by learning one set of endings you get two (maybe more) useful verbs at once. Not a bad deal, huh?

mam, znam / masz, znasz / ma, zna / mamy, znamy...

When I was learning English irregular verbs I groupped them into patterns (buy-bought-bought, think-thought-thought...// drink-drank-drunk, sing-sang-sung...) It's easier to memorize them in groups.
You don't need to learn all the 17 000 verbs at once. Find the basic ones, the ones you'll most probably need, and group them in patterns.

Genealogy / What is a scultetus/soltys in Poland? [15]

one correction to what Asik said, sołtys is not a governmental function, it's local - self governmental one (central government administration and local self-government are two different structures in Poland, like federal and state administration in the US).

Sołtys is elected by the villagers. Any adult inhabitant of the village can run for the position.

Life / What I miss and don't miss about Poland [64]


Sure. They also play the piano, speak French, crochet and dance minuet from the age 1 on. All instinctively.


A black sheep?

Life / What I miss and don't miss about Poland [64]


are you serious?


LOL :D

looks like you haven't been here for a while...

Language / WHICH AUNT IS THE WUJENKA IN POLISH? [9]

Come on people, these names are hardly ever used in contemporary Polish, it's just wuj/ciotka. Read what Krzysztof wrote above.

For those who would still like to know just for the sake of it, look at the pink and purple diagram halfway through the page:

pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relacja_rodzinna

Language / Too many English words in the Polish language! [709]

Trevek

Thanks, great site!

Language / I need some encouragement from Polish language speakers! [30]

I'm not a native English speaker, but I do have some experience with teaching English and my advice for you would be for now to do what you're already doing and not change anything.

You're getting exposed to some Polish - let it soak in. Guess the meanings, check up a random word in a dictionary when you're curious about it, pick up whole ready-made phrases, gather some vocabulary and don't worry about the grammar. Just get familiar with Polish now. This is the first, expository phase, often completely overlooked by people who approach a language armed with a grammar book from day one and then want to learn it all at one go. But the phase is very important. That's the way of children. Passive knowledge - listening, recognizing and understanding - goes first, before they even start speaking. But when they do, they already have a significant amount of passive knowledge to build on, and then it goes fast.

An adult won't probably become quite fluent in a foreign language without learning some grammar, but it's a long way yet for you. Don't try to learn grammar rules before you need them. As you've already noticed, the Polish grammar can overwhelm an English-speaking beginner. So instead of letting it discourage you, try to get some feel of the language first. Then check up the things that you feel you need to know and don't get overzealous about grammatical correctness. This will come later, if you're persistent enough. In time you'll probably feel that you need to have some things put in order and then your grammar book will come in handy. And you'll be much more successful with it when working with material you already have some knowledge of.

So, just remember that good memory and right brain (as opposed to left) is equally important in getting to know a language as grammar books, and stay tuned :)

Now I see that Polonius has already written it all, in a much shorter form :) He's absolutely right.

Language / Too many English words in the Polish language! [709]


Yes, French was another abundant source of borrowings, especially in the 18th and 19th c., when it was spoken on everyday basis in most aristocratic and noble homes.


Still I struggle trying to remember any word that might have been a borrowing from either English or Scots inserted into Polish by these immigrants... apart from the word "kilt" :) Well, there must have been some. The thing might have been that the Scots assimilated very well, they never formed any kind of ghetto or diaspora so they probably just learnt Polish and mixed with the rest of the population. It's an interesting issue, actually, I'd like to read more about it. Did he Scots bring their families to Poland with them? What I know about it comes mostly from Sienkiewicz's books - there was a Scottish regiment at the court of Prince Radziwiłł, and there was the handsome Ketling, rivalling with Wołodyjowski for Krzysia's hand. Shame that I don't know much more.

There were many ethnic groups in Poland in these days, we had Scots, Armenian merchants, Ruthenians, Hungarians, Vallachians, Germans, Dutch groups, even Turks and Tatars - a true multi-kulti, each group with their language and insertions into Polish. And Polish is very good with assimilating borrowed words, they soon acquire various endings, prefixes and suffixes and get assigned their proper place in the tables of declinations and conjugations :) So, all in all, I'm not particularly worried about the future of the Polish language, it will survive and manage very well.

Language / iec conjugation [47]


Will the knowledge of why they belong to different groups actually help you memorize these conjugations?

The answer, as usual, lies somewhere in the realm of historical grammar, but I doubt if it could be very helpful to you. Being just a native speaker, I can't explain it anyway... it would take somebody who has studied historical grammar of Polish in depth.

Genealogy / What certificate is this?; birth certificate from the greek catholic church [63]

I think the mother's name is Osinia (Osinja) Biel and the year of birth 1888.
Father is definitely Kostia (Konstanty), and Iwan was born on February 8th 1918.

I'm not sure, though, if Konstantego is a real name even.

It's a declined form of Konstanty (Constantine). In Polish "syn Konstantego" means son of Konstanty.

Language / Too many English words in the Polish language! [709]


actually these words did not come into Polish via English but directly from Latin, which was the language of the educated from the Middle Ages on, until as late as 19th/20th century. Polish didn't have much contact with English then. But due to this common heritage many words from the so-called higher register of English seem obvious to a Polish learner now, and it probably works both ways.

As for the total number of Polish words, I've seen figures ranging from 170 000 to 225 000, depending on whether you count obsolete words no longer in use and specialist vocabulary. Practical Dictionary of Current Polish, which I have at home, has over 130 000 entries and it doesn't include archaisms nor highly specialized terms. I really don't know why many foreign speakers of Polish claim that the number of Polish words is so limited. It might be that when trying to translate English words you always encounter the same simplest equivalents and never come across many other, less obvious synonyms, so it rather says a lot about the quality of English-Polish dictionaries - and that, I agree, is not the best.

Genealogy / Where in Poland is the town of Laka? [20]

Galicia was the part of Poland which fell under the Austrian rule in the time of the partitions. Out of all the £ąkas only one would have been in Galicia then:

£ąka - wieś w woj. podkarpackim, w pow. rzeszowskim, w gminie Trzebownisko
£ąka - a village in Podkarpackie region, Rzeszów district, Trzebownisko gmina
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/£ąka,_Subcarpathian_Voivodeship

This would go along nicely with your grandfather's name, which seems to be most frequent in the very area: moikrewni.pl/mapa/kompletny/tomaka.html

But the other part of the story (your grandmother) is more complicated.
Szwilisa could be Silesia - Śląsk. Then you have 4 £ąkas to choose from:

£ąka - wieś w woj. dolnośląskim, w pow. bolesławieckim, w gminie Bolesławiec
£ąka (Wiesau) - wieś w woj. opolskim, w pow. nyskim, w gminie Otmuchów
£ąka (Lenke) - wieś w woj. opolskim, w pow. oleskim, w gminie Zębowice
£ąka (Lonkau) - wieś w woj. śląskim, w pow. pszczyńskim, w gminie Pszczyna

Only the last two villages from my original list can be now skipped as they're located in what used to be West Pomerania, near the Baltic Sea.

Silesia was under the German rule so the name was probably Germanized back then. Might not be £ąka but something else. There's also a place in Estonia called Lauga.

Can't help you more now. Hope at least some of it makes sense.