Language / Is it too late for me to learn Polish..? [65]

There are not 40 million people in Poland and I was in Radom recently and the streets on a Saturday, which used to be full are now almost empty as people have gone abroad to work and very few now return. Czech is an even smaller country though their economy is in a better shape-the language is just an old fashioned version of Polish. Languages have never been very important in the U.K but there are lots of languages in Eastern Europe not only Polish. There are many Polish people working and living abroad-where do you all think that WE come from!! We come from Czestochowa and are now in Surrey.

Language / Is it too late for me to learn Polish..? [65]

It is really a wast of your time though as the language is dying as so many of the young are moving out of Poland. A lot of work for little if any real return. What about Chinese? A very interesting country and the future world dominant power. The Poles do not even produce the Polonez motor car any more!!

Language / Is it too late for me to learn Polish..? [65]

Learning a few words of Polish should not be very difficult if that is your final aim. At 20 you should not be too old, after all, a lot of people only start university at around 20. Your memory may start to fail you though when you get to around 90!

Language / Polish Past Tense [47]

You are right! I can also talk to my Polish wife in Polish too when she comes home from work in about an hour's time!

Language / Polish Past Tense [47]


I do not think that it is a question of complaining and yes, I agree it is very easy to read something and look for mistakes but one or two of your examples are not written in good English. Are they your own examples or do they come from a text book of the English Language? Some of the examples look very familiar to me.

Prawde, mowiac, ja jestem anglikiem i mieszkam w Anglii pod Londynem. Nie mam zadnej kropli polskiej krwi.

If you prefer for me to write lessons on grammar, I will gladly make a contribution but as I have already said, there are lots of good text books and you can go to any library and learn Polish 'inside out' for yourself. It is not a very difficult subject, after all.

Language / Polish Past Tense [47]

Yes, I have proof, I make mistakes all the time. If you are talking about the examples that Ivonka gave, I would imagine that they have come from a standard Polish text book as I think that I recognize some of the examples, but it is of no importance where they come from as long as they are right but sometimes they are not. Yes, I have proof that they are not right. Does that answer your question?

Language / Polish Past Tense [47]

I think in fact that most of what Ivonka writes is coppied out of a Polish grammar book. Some of her examples of English sentences are also incorrect. I am not sure though of everything-I too make mistakes-its just me!!

Language / Polish Past Tense [47]

Is 'it's me' bad English? I ask as I say it all the time all my life. I have never really thought about it but when I hear ir said or say it myself I am not aware of making an error. Iy is always good to learn something new.

News / What's the stupidest question asked about Poland? [414]

What sort of a question is that? What does that mean?

Life / Why are Poles always so miserable? Why do they never smile? [512]

Thank you, Miranda, you have made my day.

News / What's the stupidest question asked about Poland? [414]

In England too, we have a strong and thriving Polish community. We have burial sites for the Polish as well as statues and memorials for the Polish dead of World War 2. In Ealing and generally that western area of London there is a thriving Polish community with their own shops and churches.

News / What's the stupidest question asked about Poland? [414]


You really seem to have an inferiority complex. Who is so concerned about Poland or the Poles in general? When you say 'repay in kind' that is quite aggressive talk.

Life / Why are Poles always so miserable? Why do they never smile? [512]

Yes, I agree, they say that a sense of humour and a laugh once in a while is a good antidote to the stresses in life.

Miranda, nothing in Poland is for free!!!

Life / Why are Poles always so miserable? Why do they never smile? [512]

Quoting Puzzler, who lies and says he/she is Polish? Is this a comment addressed to me? I do not know if I am to answer this or is it addressed to someone else?

Life / Why are Poles always so miserable? Why do they never smile? [512]

I am always miserable and never smile so I do not know the difference.

Life / Why are Poles always so miserable? Why do they never smile? [512]

How do you know that a wealthy man has earned his money through honesty and hard work? Does a rich man necessarily deserve to be rich? Does the man Abramowich (if I have spelled his name correctly) who owns Chelea Football Club- how has he earned 11 billion pounds? Working the land or down a coal mine? Are rich people always honest and how much money does a rich man deserve. These are two different aspects Like paul McCartny of the Beetles, does he need or deserve 800,000,000 pounds? Did he earn that money or did he receive that money through royalties? Someone can be honest and rich or poor and be dishonest-there is no guarantee either way. Is it too difficult to understand this point? Has this got anything to do with sad Polish faces, which was the theme of the discussion anyway? These is no thesis on my part. The end of this discussion, please.

Life / Why are Poles always so miserable? Why do they never smile? [512]

Rich people can be dishonest too not only poor people as those in Poland. Wealth does not guarantee honesty either. However, as an example, I know of a man polish man living in Denmark returning home by train through Poland with presents. He went to the tioilet and returned to his seat. His drink had been 'spiked' whilst out of the compartment and he later woke up in his underpants! Everything had been stolen so a warning to the travelling public in Poland-never leave an opened drink and then return to it later-you never know what you will find! Of course, I can not say if the guilty were Polish or just using a Polish train. Ask the poor man in question if I am 'spewing garbage' when he woke up and was at first arrested as they (the police) believed that he was drunk. A very nasty situation.

Life / Why are Poles always so miserable? Why do they never smile? [512]

The Polish are not used to taking responsibility and I think that they are unhappy because they know that their jobs are unimportant so they have no motivation. They always blame someone else. It is always the fault of the Russians or the Americans or failing that Churchill. To twija wina-Churchil sprzadal Polske do Stalina! I have heard this saying more often than their national Anthem. A very sad country with so many dishonest people.

Language / Polish Past Tense [47]

Dlaczego znowu 'ta piosenke'? You write like lech Walesa!!!

I would imagine that the examplesi given by Ivonka have been coppied from a book as the English is very good with small mistakes. Nie jestem pewien ale wydaje mi sie, ze...

Language / English borrowings in Polish [38]

The fact is, the Polish Language must adapt its languages to embrace new needs-otherwise it will end up like Latin and it will not be able to adjust to new technology and social needs. There is an institute in France, of course, which tries to see that the French Language is kept pure. Maybe Poland will have to do more on the same lines. Polish dance groups and singing is very nice but the decay in the Polish Language is seen everywhere in Poland now. First generation emigrees will have lubs ect but it is the third and fourth generations that go their own way-and I suppose that it is natural for them to do so. There used to be a thriving community of Polish in Sheffield but their club now looks very sad indeed. Not a word of Polish is spoken, if fact out of all the drinkers there now I doubt if one could even point out on a map where Poland is! When you have time , watch a programme like to M jak Milosc! The English words that have come in to the language 'casting' is just one that springs to mind.

Language / English borrowings in Polish [38]

If you come from the airport in Warsaw and drive in towards the town centre, you will see loads of bill boards with advertisements for cars ect. It is interesting to see how the Polish people have so successfully destroyed their language since the fall of Communism. Why does someone need to do a BA or Phd to see the corruption in the language? There is no 'przepraszam' only the English word 'sorry'-very, very strange. I wonder what the reaction would be in Guildford if I go in to shops and say 'przepraszam'!! There is the English word 'marketing' and 'leasing', I am sure that I could think of hundreds of other examples if I had the time to think about it. After all I speak very good English-ja jestem nativespeakerem!!!!!! The Poles never had much pride in their language or culture.

Language / It is not possible to translate names into English or Polish! [52]

You can get very thorough lists of names in the back of good dictionaries to convert from one language o another. It is unusual to translate names from one language to another though. Who would call Alexander Solzenitsin Alex, for example. Juri Gagarin is always Juri NEVER George. Iljich Lenin is always Iljich. How can you change such proper names to another language? John Major would never be Jan Major in Poland!! At least Albert Eistein can get away with his name, though.

Language / Polish/Ukrainian words similarities [209]

Are the Polish nasals 'a' and 'e' a difficulty? Is the stress pattern of Polish difficult? To me, I find it quite logical. Why is the subject of Polish such a problem? Why have you got to use language like ' intricate morphology', 'phonological structure' and 'proto-slavic'-good God, do you think like this every time you drive a car? When I visit Slovenia I will remember at the border to tell the customs man when showing him my pasport about their 'vestigial "dual" form! Why is it necessary to make simple slovanic languages so unbearable complicated and boring?

Language / Polish/Ukrainian words similarities [209]

The matter of a different alphabet in Russian does not in itself make Russian easier or more difficult than any other language. Russian is not at all phonetic with a shifting stress patern, which makes it much harder to learn that Polish. Polish stress is almost always set on the last but one vowel.

Language / The Polish language - it's bloody hard! [210]

There is a good book by B.W. Mazur called Colloquial Polish and it is very good. Otherwise there is a book called Mowimy Po Polsku written in the 1960's. It too is very good. No one course can teach you everything though Polish is not difficult and you should certainly not have to pay for lessons to learn it-that would be the worst thing you could do. The language is logical and phonetic and produces few if any problems for the learner.

Law / Hiring a Polish Worker - Pros and Cons [107]

I think at the end of the day it supports capitalism to bring down the wall and flood England with yet more cheap labour. It keeps the British working class in bay by threatening them with 'if you do not want the job I can get 10 poles to do the same job for half the money'. America would not have ended Communism in Europe unles it benefited us in some way. The Poles can work hard but only in doing simple jobs. They tend to overestimate their abilities. We have some bad experiences of their work in house electrics-nearly burnt down the house! They will say 'yes I know how' in order to get the contract but in practice they can not. They would be good in a warehouse where they just sort things but I would not allow one under the bonet of my car!

Study / Good cheap course to learn Polish in Warsaw [44]

There is a very good little course of Polish produced a long time ago called Mowimi po Polsku. It was written in the 1960's and there was a set of records with it. I would strongly recommend it if you can get hold of a copy. I would think that it might be out of print now. The Berlitz travel guids are very good for information on the country and give an excellent vocabulary. you could learn a chapter per week and set yourself a target but it is not worth paying for lessons. I would never pay for language lessons. Po prostu nie warto. Rob wszysko sam!

Language / Polish or any Slavic language key to any other Slavic languages? [126]

The russian past tenses change like polish. On byl, ona byla, ono bylo, oni byli. True, polish has an addittional one one byly for feminine plural in the past but ja rabotal odako ona rabotala torze so why is there no difference in the past tense? Ja goworil, ona goworila, ja skazal, ona skazala i to samo po polsku ja powiedzialem, ja mowilem i tak dalej.

The Russian numeric system after five is also the same as in Polish.

Language / Polish or any Slavic language key to any other Slavic languages? [126]

Russian is much harder than Polish because the stress moves in the words unlike Polish, which is fixed. Czech is more like serbo croation. If you know Russian you could learn these languages easily. I think that slovak is nearer to Polish as someone above has already written. I thought Russian to be the hardest not really very phonetic and the stress moves in genetive and plural forms. I do not know Ukranian but I have been told that about 80% of the words are similar to Russian. Polish grammar is difficult at the beginning but once you get used to it it is like a set of mathematical tables you never really forget.

Language / The Polish language - it's bloody hard! [210]

I do not know how easy it is to find now but Poland produced a very good book in the 1960's entitled Mowimy Po pOlsku. It came with records but is a very good course if you can get hold of a copy. There is a course called Linguaphone and their Polish course is very good, Perhaps you could get a copy from a library? Polish grammar is logical and is not so difficult as French.