News / EU triggers Article 7, could strip Poland of voting rights [91]

The system starts from the impartiality of the judge and uses that to assess the guilt of the suspect.
It doesn't start from the guilt of the suspect and use that to assess the impartiality of the judge.

News / EU triggers Article 7, could strip Poland of voting rights [91]

You have no argument against the point I'm making so you decide to go on a fishing trip through my past posts to dredge up some kompromat. How very pre-1989 of you.

News / EU triggers Article 7, could strip Poland of voting rights [91]


Brexit's not going well is it? Do you envisage that Polexit would be better?

News / EU triggers Article 7, could strip Poland of voting rights [91]

@Ironside
Your approach is to start from the obvious guilt of certain individuals and proceed from there. PiS will not govern forever. How would you feel if a future

government decided that Beata Szydło was obviously guilty of unconstitutional behaviour in not publishing the judgements of the Constitutional Tribunal and punished her without a trial? If what is obvious to one person were obvious to all, there would be not need of a court system at all.

News / EU triggers Article 7, could strip Poland of voting rights [91]

@kondzior
It's exactly the sort of issue that should be concerning the EU. The single market relies on a common regulatory framework. Any regulatory framework

relies on the rule of law. Therefore, if the rule of law is threatened, as the EU believes it is in Poland, the single market is threatened.

News / EU triggers Article 7, could strip Poland of voting rights [91]


It's not an assumption. You wrote


The logical inference is that any judge who doesn't find him guilty is not worth his salt. As noted above, a future government could decide that any judge who didn't find

Beata Szydło guilty of breaking the constitution was not worth their salt and take appropriate action against them. Would you be happy with that?

Language / Verbal Aspect - "składała" vs. "złożyła" [15]

Thanks for your answers.

@Barelle - it seems that you are saying that the imperfective/perfectie distinction in the case of składać/złożyć corresponds to subtle differences of meaning and not just incompleteness/completeness. This is a bit like zdawać egzamin/zdać egzamin, where zdawać means to sit an exam but zdać means to pass it. Even if you have completed the action of sitting the exam, you still need to use zdawać until you kmow that you have passed. Of course, if in English you define zdać egzamin as "to successfully sit an exam" the difference goes away. In the same way, according to my understanding of what you have written, we could define "złożyć wniosek o wotum nieufności" as "successfully submit a motion of no-confidence". whereas składać would mean attempt to submit. Is this correct? In the present example, the motion was actually submitted. Would it actually have to be voted through for złożyć to apply?

@DominicB - repeated events cause me the biggest headaches with verbal aspect. Before I read your post, I would have said all the following are correct:

1 W zeszłym roku przeczytałem pięć książek.
2 W zeszłym roku przeczytałem tę książkę pięc razy.
3 W zeszłym roku przeczytałem "Quo Vadis", "Blaszany Bębenek" i "Powrót Króla"
4 W zeszłym roku czytałem książki cały czas.

I would even have stuck my neck out and said that

5 W zeszłym roku przeczytałem książki cały czas

might be OK if I wanted to emphasize that I was indeed reading the books cover to cover. (Maybe I had previously a habit of starting books and not finishing them)

However, your 1 minute rule seems to rule out all but example 4. Is this right?

Language / Verbal Aspect - "składała" vs. "złożyła" [15]

I think the key is to see the cabinet reshuffle as a culmination of ongoing efforts rather than the vindication of past (finished) efforts.
They were saying, "we did this, and this and this and this ... and in the end we were rewarded with the ministers losing their jobs"

I originally understood: "we did this. No one took any notice. But see - we were right after all because the ministers lost their jobs"

Read this way składać sounds natural even to my ears.

USA, Canada / I have a Canadian and Polish passport. Travel on Polish / Canadian passport in Europe? [10]

If you are a Polish citizen you can stay for ever in Poland

Law / Polish girl does abortion in the UK, is it a crime in Poland? [8]

Even in Poland, women who undergo abortions are not punished. The law applies to the doctors.

Language / Why 'walczy' and not 'walczą' - Polish language question [20]

You are probably aware that the numbers five and above, when quantifying the subject of a sentence, take the genitive case and not the nominative that an English speaker might expect. For example: "pięc kotów" and not "*pięc koty". The fact that the cats are not in the nominative is a hint that they cannot determine the number agreement of the verb, a job which now falls to the quantifier itself. The quantifier is singular so the verb is also singular. Therefore we say, "Pięć kotów siedzi na macie" and not "Pięć kotów *siedzą na macie" Perhaps a good analogy from English would be "a box of". "A box of cats is (not *are) waiting to be fed".

You are probably also aware the nouns in the plural divide into a) masculine personal and b) all others. Dwa/dwie, trzy and cztery correspond to b) and when quantifying the subject of the sentence take the nominative plural. Thus "Trzy koty siedzą na macie". The equivalent forms for a) are dwaj, trzej and czterej and these also take the nominative plural, so in the example you give we could write "w tym filmie dwaj mężczyźni walczą na skrzydle podczas lotu." HOWEVER, the above mentioned rule for five and above can be applied to two and above where the gender of the things quantified is masculine personal but here the quantifier itself also has to take the genitive form: dwóch, trzech , czterech. As before, the number agreement of the verb is singular so we finally get to "w tym filmie dwóch (gen. form) mężczyzn(genitive) walczy (singular) na skrzydle podczas lotu."

A couple of other observations concerning agreement. In the past tense, where the verb must also agree in gender with the subject, it takes the neuter form because the quantifier itself if neither masculine nor feminine: "w tym filmie dwóch mężczyzn walczyło na skrzydle podczas lotu." (However we would still write, "w tym filmie dwaj mężczyźni walczyli na skrzydle podczas lotu." etc) Perhaps the most surprising thing for me is adjectival agreement. Despite the fact that we have just said that the verb agrees in number and gender with the quantifier, for some strange reason the adjective agrees in number and case with the thing being quantified giving "Dwóch mężczyzn(gen.plural) jest(singular) mądrych (gen.plural )", "Pięc kotów(gen. pl) było (neuter, singular) głodnych(gen. pl) " etc.

Travel / Two Older Polish American Sisters to visit Poland 1st Time [29]

You could travel from Prague to Wrocław by PolskiBus or train and then by Ryanair to Gdańsk. You could then fly to Kraków and back to Prague all with Ryanair.

Law / PESEL number, passport, and ID in Poland [16]

@Documaster
You don't say where you were born, but if not in Poland, I've got some more bad news for you. You need a Polish birth certificate. You get this by sending in (or taking in) your foreign birth certificate. The snag is, you don't get it back so if, like me, you don't want to surrender the original, you need to allow time to apply for a copy in the country where you born. You will also have to have this translated because even if you had your birth certificate translated for confirmation of citizenship, the number (and quite possibly the wording) of the new one will be different.

Law / PESEL number, passport, and ID in Poland [16]

@Documaster if you could start the process in two different offices, you would have a point but as Delphiandomine says, you need your ID card before you can apply for a passport so that scenario would never occur.

Law / PESEL number, passport, and ID in Poland [16]

The one that was registered will have been kept. Your birth will now be registered in the polish records so you now need a copy of that registration.

Law / PESEL number, passport, and ID in Poland [16]

You can just order more.

Law / Does having a Polish Father qualify for dual citizenship? He came from Poland to the UK in 1948 [23]

It sounds like he renounced his Polish citizenship in 1960. Were you born before or after that? If before, then you have Polish citizenship

Law / Cajun from Louisiana state seeking refuge/new life in Poland? Wishing to become Polish (is it possible?) [34]

Someone who is unhappy with immigration who wants to become an immigrant. What could possibly go wrong?