Language / Difference between "i" and "oraz". [6]

It's similar as with "że" and "iż". "I" is much more natural and is usually the first choice; "oraz" appears when there are too many "i"-s, to avoid repetition. Stylistic matter.

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


It comes from "kreska" and means more or less "a thick line". It's not a first name, could be a last name or a nickname.

A similar word, Krycha, is sometimes used as a shortened form of Krystyna, but that's Christine in English.
Or Kacha - actually from Katarzyna.

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


that's right, but some girls don't like these diminutives as sounding too childish and prefer augmentative forms: Kacha, Krycha, Gocha.


No, actually, it could be a perfectly good Polish nickname.

The name Pygota doesn't show on the map of Polish names, nor in Google in general.

It should be possible to find the gallery where she works and check if she's really working there, or even confirm that she really writes to you.

Still, assuming that she's a real person, there is an ethical question. Andy, would you be willing to provide her with the same kind of information and be subject to the same kind of check-up?

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


It happens here, I've even seen a Gocha on a TV programme technical cast list.


I understand that and it's fine as long as you're willing to do the same for her.
And I think that honesty and straightforwardness could be the best option. Just tell her about your Nigerian experiences and ask if you could get some proof that she's real. I think she shouldn't have any problem with that. And though she might be hesitant about giving all her personal data to somebody she doesn't know well (wouldn't you be?), an internet camera might be the perfect way out for both of you.

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


yes. 0048 is Poland and we do have a mobile operator whose numbers start with 5.

Language / When do you use 'się'? And what does it mean? [37]


it means directed towards self, as in: I wash myself, look after yourself.
Compare to: Mary washes dishes, mother looks after a child - the action is directed towards some external object, not self.

Language / Can accidentally using the wrong gender form cause offence? [26]


Niech żyje Polska!

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


please do :) and good luck!

Work / Teaching English in Zakopane, is it safe? [45]


Yoga and Aikido haven't been spared either. It's the Dominicans who are responsible for the anti-sect propaganda and they really go over the top sometimes. Not that many people treat that seriously though, apart from some die-hard Catholic fundamentalists.

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


When giving someone a mobile number many people in Poland start with 0048 or +48 in order not to get it confused with fixed line numbers, where you need to put one zero before the area code. I do it too. And I'd definitely do it this way when giving my number to somebody from another country, just to save them the trouble of looking for the country code. It works for Europe, you don't have to put in any additional codes.

As for the number starting with 5, that's the case with half the numbers in my phone book, the other half begin with 6 and I've got two numbers starting with 7. I think that's about all the possibilities. Two of the three big mobile operators here have numbers starting with 5. So the phone story seems perfectly plausible to me.

Anyway, now that Andy has the girl's number, he can call her and check if she's real, right? :)

Language / że & iż [16]

Obywaciel for me sounds like cielak - obywacielak anybody?

Somehow I don't have such connotations with nauczyciel and przyjaciel.

Food / Polish culinary dislikes [83]


You can get it in some stores, bottled:

But it's full of chemical add-ons, at least the products that I've seen. No better that coke actually.
People generally know about it - I mean, know it's drunk in Russia and Ukraine, but not many here drink it.
It may be different in the families resettled from Kresy after the WWII.

Language / Can accidentally using the wrong gender form cause offence? [26]


Strzygo


Tak myślałem, ale napisałem słowa w błędnej/niewłaściwej kolejności


Good :)


Także pamiętam, że 'pomóc' to czasownik a 'pomoc' to rzeczownik

Anytime :)

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

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Kochanowski

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

Andy_McRae

She might still be a he, have a big black moustache, beer belly and insatiable greed for your money. But at least she's in Poland and not in Nigeria :))

Language / Can accidentally using the wrong gender form cause offence? [26]


It's all right, the last sentence was faultless. Do you still want me to lead you to perfection? :))

Polish version: Czy nadal mam być upierdliwa?

Language / Can accidentally using the wrong gender form cause offence? [26]

Wow, you're doing great! Not a single mistake :)

co to jest "upierdliwość "?

I've just come across a nice English expression - "Dutch uncle" - which seems to be the exact equivalent of upierdliwiec.
Upierdliwość then is being a Dutch uncle.

To all the Dutch who might be reading this: nothing personal! :)

Czy ta istnieje?

Definitly it exists. And in this life too. I should know. I can be a perfect Dutch uncle if I choose to.
:)

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

Ellie

Do you have any idea from which part of Poland your granfather might have come?
Laka most probably was £ąka, meaning "meadow", and there are 7 villages of this name in Poland now.

7 miejscowości w Polsce:
£ąka - wieś w woj. dolnośląskim, w pow. bolesławieckim, w gminie Bolesławiec
£ąka - wieś w woj. opolskim, w pow. nyskim, w gminie Otmuchów
£ąka - wieś w woj. opolskim, w pow. oleskim, w gminie Zębowice
£ąka - wieś w woj. podkarpackim, w pow. rzeszowskim, w gminie Trzebownisko
£ąka - wieś w woj. śląskim, w pow. pszczyńskim, w gminie Pszczyna
£ąka - wieś w woj. zachodniopomorskim, w pow. drawskim, w gm. Czaplinek
£ąka - wieś w woj. zachodniopomorskim, w pow. goleniowskim, w gm. Stepnica

Lauga might also be a distorted form of £ąka, written phonetically by some English-speaking clerk.

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.

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 / 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 / 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.

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 / 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]

Trevek

Thanks, great site!

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

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...

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?

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.

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.