Language / Etymology of the word "brat" - in Poland and other Slavic countries [21]


The Oxford Dictionary of English gives us this origin:
<ORIGIN> 16th century: perhaps an abbreviation of synonymous Scotts brachet 'hound, b*tch'; or perhaps from dialect brat 'rough garment, rag', based on old Irish bratt 'cloak'.

Study / Various education and school issues in Poland. Opinions, stories, controversies. [1006]

I remember Radek Sikorski once asking Mrs Thatcer this question on Polish TV:
- Mrs. Thatcher, what is thatcherism for you exactly? [Czym właściwie jest dla Pani taczeryzm?]
She couldn't tell precisely what it was.

Po polsku / Najprawdziwiejszy film o komunizmu? [40]

"Człowiek z marmuru" [Man of Marble] Andrzeja Wajdy?

News / Ryszard Czarnecki - Poland's politician and Member of the European Parliament [30]


What is the "dobra zmiana" then for if not for putting an end to it?

Why has Notty, the OP of this thread, been suspended for so long !!!?

News / The Left wing (not-so Slow) death in Poland [120]


God forbid even though I love Hungary and Budapest.

Budapest is a splendid city!

News / Ryszard Czarnecki - Poland's politician and Member of the European Parliament [30]


Well, he wasn't as his fraud is claimed to be at 80k zloty whereas that of Czarnrcki stands at 100k euro.

History / Kashubians are nation in Poland? [124]


This is debatable. There isn't a very distinct line beyond which you can tell that the dialect becomes a separate language. Some liguists say that Kashubian is a language, some say that it is not. If you take Silesian, for example, when you listen to dialects spoken in villages, they differ no more from standard Polish than the Mazovian dialects spoken in Mazovian villages do. They are very easy to understand for every Pole. But if you listen to the Silesian dialects spoken in towns, you can immediately hear a lot of words of German origins which make these dialects much less comprehensible to a standard Polish speaker, so they immediately think: oh, my God, how it is different from Polish!

One of the major obstacles for recognizing Silesian as a language is the many existing variants of Silesian which are likely to differ a lot between themselves too.

As for Kashubian, Pomeranian tribes had been separated from the rest of the Lechitic dialects in the Middle Ages, so they may have developed more distinct features from standard Polish than Silesian dialects. But I guess the grammatical structure of Kashubian is exactly the same as in Polish: the same set of cases, and of tenses, with diferences in vocabulary only. Or am I wrong?

News / Ryszard Czarnecki - Poland's politician and Member of the European Parliament [30]

He was asked by the Commission to submit evidence for his travels. I think he produced some strange receipts, but don't remember details of this fraud of his.

Anyway, it wasn't a Wyborcza-only issue. The PiS-controlled media obviously did not pay any attention (in case this is your only source of information on Poland).

Language / English sentences into Polish (want to test my knowledge) [27]


Yes, that's the way a typical Polish customer would put it.

Language / Short Polish<->English translations [1049]

Hasn't Romania taken it away from Ukraine yet?

Language / Short Polish<->English translations [1049]

The document was made in Kołomyja (Polish name) in 1831, now in ... God and Google only know where the city belongs now, possibly to Ukraine. Letters are too small for me to decipher the text. Possibly it is in German. Please make an enlarged image of this piece.

Language / Short Polish<->English translations [1049]

This is a book by Charles Oman, an Oxford scholar, which was written in 1893, first published in 1898 by Rivingtons. Charles Oman is introduced as M.A, F.S.A, Fellow of All Souls College and Lecturer at New College, Oxford. The language is fine and the book reads as well as if it were written these days. The narrative feels truly modern except for a few archaisms, for example: using the term 'host' rather than 'army' or 'ere' instead of 'before' and a number of some other.

The title of the book is "The Dark Ages. 476-918" and it has been made into an e-book in 2017. So this mistake in it might be due to the transcription of the original text into the electronic version perhaps.


Yes, this makes sense to me as it goes well with rest of this passage on superstitions of the time.

Language / Short Polish<->English translations [1049]

Now my question re eng-pol tanslations. The following sentence is somewhat incomprehensible to me. Here is the whole pasage:

The freaks to which image-worship led were often most grotesque: it was, for example, a well-known practice to make a favorite picture the godfather of a child in baptism, by scraping off a little of its paint and mixing it with the baptismal water. [text refers to the times of Byzantine Emperor Leo III the Isaurian]

The sense of this piece in bold is unclear to me.

Language / Short Polish<->English translations [1049]


Don't believe what computers tell you!
'O ile wiem' and 'z tego co wiem' are synonymous.

Travel / Your best memory after visiting Poland [41]

I think there were plans to mount a GPS transmitter on Jesus' head, but they abandoned the idea after a flash of criticism.

Po polsku / Kobiety odrzucają politykę kościoła [56]

No to jakim przechrztą jesteś?

Chyba nie jesteś faszystowskim neobolszewikiem jak Iron?

Po polsku / Kobiety odrzucają politykę kościoła [56]

No proszę, buddysta a kibicuje PiS-owi.

Przypomniała mi się w tym momencie scenka z Kiepskich, gdy Ferdek przemalowany na Murzyna, chodzi po parku, zataczając się niemiłosiernie. Zobaczyły go siedzące na ławce dwie bardzo eleganckie starsze panie i gdy już Ferdek je minął, jedna z nich mówi z oburzeniem do drugiej:

- Patrzy Pani, co się w tym kraju wyrabia. Murzyn, a pijany jak Polak!

Po polsku / Kobiety odrzucają politykę kościoła [56]


Niezłe. Nie słyszałem wcześniej. Pasuje jak ulał do Irona hehehe.


To Ty nie jesteś już rzymskim katolikiem, tylko jakimś tybetańskim przechrztą?

Genealogy / Silesian, old Polish heritage? [49]


Actually, there was quite a number of Lower and Upper Silesian towns which survived the war unscathed.


Do you know what Goethe said on hearing the news of the HRE dissolution?

Po polsku / Kobiety odrzucają politykę kościoła [56]


Prawidłowa forma to: nie robić sobie jaj [z czegoś lub z kogoś]. To potoczne i idiomatyczne wyrażenie i może sprawiać trudności, dlatego pozwoliłem sobie zwrócić Ci uwagę na błąd.

Genealogy / Silesian, old Polish heritage? [49]


You are right. Besides, there are many dialects in Silesia rather than a standarized version of the so-called Silesian language.

No wonder they feel different as they had lived outside Poland's borders for about 700 years. There was a remarkable number of Polsh economic migrants to Upper Silesia in the 19th century which strenghtened the Polish-speaking population there. These people adopted Silesian dialect later on rather than vice versa.

For a Pole like myself it is quite easy to understand Silesian dialect since I know a bit of German. But quite often, they use old Polish/Slavic words that no longer exist in Polish and would be strange to a Pole.

On TV there is a show on Silesian cuisine in which the cook speaks a softened version of Silesian. The way he speaks sounds really funny. For example he says: A teraz przirichtuja ten dressing, which is in fact a mixture of Polish and German and English (teraz - now; przirichtuja - ich mache richtig / I will make ready; ten - this; dressing - dressing)

Genealogy / Do I look Polish? (my picture) [375]


So your problem was not whether you look Polish, but how to find a girl-friend in Poland hahaha.

Genealogy / Do I look Polish? (my picture) [375]


If I'm not mistaken, Kraków has the highest percentage of people of Jewish origin of all Polish towns today. On visiting the Nowy Cmentarz Żydowski once, I saw quite a number of contemporary Jewish burials there.

Genealogy / Do I look Polish? (my picture) [375]


Oops, I missed that post, that's why I was asking about Flanders/Wallonia.

Genealogy / Do I look Polish? (my picture) [375]


This is my impression too. He suddenly looks much less Polish than before. This new tint of his hair makes him look much more Germanic now, sort of Nieder Sachsen/Nederland mixture. I guess he would be R1b genetically.

Komt u uit Wallonië of Vlaanderen? [Ik zou naar Vlaanderen wijzen.]

News / Unfulfilled promises by PiS [559]


Szymon Hołownia (Polska 2050) is still gaining in the polls, whereas differences within the United Right deepen all the time. JK has just said he cannot exclude an election in autumn ...

History / The restoration of Polish cities from WW2 destruction [123]


The old town of Kołobrzeg (Kolberg) has been rebuilt in the same style. It looks pretty nice indeed, though, since the magnificent old cathedral has been restored (not sure how much of it survived the WW II) and is now a piece of authentic reality from the time before the war.

The worst was when the commie authorities built socialist-style blocks of flats as a replacement for the old buildings.

Love / Are all Polish guys like this [48]


You mean Wrocław Boy? No, I think Aemilia is a real and authentic girl. Read one of my previous posts where I put the reasons why Aemilia is doing it and what is behind her story. In her short post a while ago she seems to corroborate what I have said.

Love / Are all Polish guys like this [48]


She's not a troll. This is her dream that rebounds in her again and again ...

Well done, Paulina. I'd have never thought this was a recurring case, probably because I usually don't open such threads. This time, as new posts and threads on the forum are scarce, I felt tempted to open it ... and to post my two cents (or trzy grosze or at the current rate of exchange, osiem groszy).

Love / Are all Polish guys like this [48]


Why, interested in Polish males and not gay? Hahaha, I wonder what Johnny Reb will tell about this.
----------------------------------------------------------

@Joker @Новичок (Novichok)
You are not that clever and witty, aren't you? But you've been trying to pass as such on this forum for years ...

The true story behind Aemelia is this. She met a very good-looking boy whom she felt very attracted to. But the boy didn't take any notice of her. She dreamt he would at least say hello to her one day, but he wouldn't. So she developed an illusion that he did not because he was very shy, too shy to say hello to her. In this illusion the boy constantly watches her and is presented as equally attracted to her even if she is "not so good-looking". Notice this statement of hers. It in she reveals the truth about their relationship in real. The boy is beyond her reach. To release her sorrow and unhapinness with the situation she creates this illusion in which the boy has been attributed many features of shyness that are so unrealistic and exagerated that they must clearly be fake. Finally, in an attempt to add some rationale to her story, she entitles it "Are all Polish guys like this?".

This is a sad story, but a good thing in it is that she has decided to share her illusion about the boy whom she is infatuated with with other people. It is much better than if she kept it only to herself. It may help her to get rid of an illusion which at her age is normal and passing.

I think she will never return to post a comment on all the "findings" people gave her, but I'm sure she will read all our comments on the forum.