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Posts by WhizzKid  

Joined: 4 Jun 2010 / Male ♂
Last Post: 7 Oct 2010
Threads: -
Posts: 9
From: P(r)oland, Szczecin/Poznań
Speaks Polish?: Native
Interests: Languages? :D

Displayed posts: 9
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WhizzKid   
21 Jun 2010
Genealogy / Funny Polish surnames [63]

I knew an attorney: R. Oszuścik, a girl B. Bosko-Ruchała and a teacher Z. Chłystek :P

eems like you don't. Głąb is a regular Polish word meaning cabbage or, colloqually, an idiot.

It is actually primarily an idiot, and it is archaic/regional for stalk (cabbage, cauliflower etc.) ;-)
WhizzKid   
11 Jun 2010
Language / Nazwy mieszkanców - the names of a city/country residents in Polish [14]

Actually, I would use the term Krakowiak only in regards to a village man in the traditional costume.

Actuall, USJP, a dictionary based on language corpus, says that the primary meaning of "Krakowiak" still remains "an inhabitant of the area surrounding Kraków".

who live in Koło ?

Mieszkaniec Koła :-)
WhizzKid   
4 Jun 2010
Work / The most popular job (and not only) advertising sites in Poland? [55]

Hello, could someone provide me most popular sites in Poland, where people search for a job?

Try some of these:

google.pl/search?q=og%C5%82oszenia+internet
olx.pl

Also, in THE EU. As you are an international agency, I suggest you polish your English :-)
WhizzKid   
4 Jun 2010
Language / Polish people: did you struggle learning English - differences between both languages [75]

english is a lot harder than polish -coming from an english national

English is a pidgin. Pidgins, as a rule, are usually simple languages. It has its share of difficult things, but why do you think English is so popular as an international language?

Actually, which language is difficult is just a matter of perspective. I have seen an arbitrary (but scrupulous) list of 100 most difficult languages. Polish was second - I don't recall English even being recalled there.

Your inflection is practically non-existent, there isn't much to learn in English. It's the differences we have to learn about - they are pretty difficult, like the fixed word order, creation of compound nouns, future/past infinitives, tenses reflecting different view of chronology etc. But in the long run, I can say that English is actually very easy, at least for me - I have been learning almost a dozen foreign languages so far, from three continents, English is the easiest so far.

But then again, it takes years to master a language, including English - I still happen to make pretty nasty mistakes after 12 years... At least English learning framework is highly developed :-)
WhizzKid   
4 Jun 2010
Language / Is czarnoskóry acceptable? [21]

It will come with time and wealth...

Not necessarily - this stems from the unique history and social structure of the USA. Afaik they don't have the same problem with calling black people "black" in France.

The media didn't mention he's skin color because it matters for them, but because it used to matter for Americans. So they were just saying: Look, America is changing.
That's all.

One might argue with that. Still, vast amount of Poles, if not majority, consider black people to be slightly inferior, using examples such as Africa or that the highest crime rate is among African Americans. I do not aim at saying whether or not this is true, but this is opinion of a fair share of the population.

Another thing is that as Obama comes from a Muslim family, it changed the relationship between USA and mainly-Christian Europe. There are other social factors implied as well.

But bottom line, "czarnoskóry", "ciemnoskóry" or "Murzyn" are not considered pejorative in a normal context, as has been said previously. However, if you called a white person "Murzyn", it would be rather offensive (implying they are slaves and/or stupid). Still, Poles really don't care about black people, so this is not a major issue.
WhizzKid   
4 Jun 2010
Language / A little Polish grammar. Masculine, animate objects. [64]

The thing with Polish accusative is that we have a kind of a case shift ongoing in the language. "Pies" is by all means animate, but retains "irregular" (for its animacy) features.

A similar thing is English - twelve most often used verbs are irregular:
be, have, do, say, make, go, take, come, see, get, know, give, find

Same goes for broadly used Polish nouns - they tend to evade rules ;-) But don't worry, there is only a couple of words with irregular inflection (well, certainly less than 500) and other nouns should easily succumb to the inflection :-)

As for grammatical descriptions, these are the proper names of genders and their subtypes:

1. Masculine
a) masculine personal (= animate)
b) masculine impersonal (= animate) (this one actually varies from source to source)
c) masculine inanimate

2. Feminine

3. Neuter

4. Masculine-personal

5. Feminine-objective (aka clunky Nonmasculine-personal)

Other than that, z_darius has explained this properly :-)