UK, Ireland / A new mayor in London: opinion of Polish people in the UK? [317]

London, Paris, Berlin, Stockholm, Amsterdam, above all, Copenhagen (all cities which I know!) are indeed massively changed from the late '70's, even the start of the millennium to be sure! No, my view isn't "outdated" and yet I know that Europe is NOT America, nor should she be, and so again, multi-culturalism sounds wonderful, but it has it's limits.....in America also:-)

UK, Ireland / A new mayor in London: opinion of Polish people in the UK? [317]

Face it, folks! The melting-pot culture may well work in much of the US, it is still foreign to Britain as well as much of the Continent.

For the average ethnic "Anglo" Londoner aka Brit at large, the mayor a major urban center still ought to reflect the majority culture, and that means white and Anglican (or Catholic). Jews barely gained acceptance during the 19th century, Muslims continue to be just a bit of a stretch for Mr. and Mrs. John Bull:-)

Work / South African wants to move to Poland, please provide some input? [59]

@Adrian,

Turkish has become a semi- (un-)official "second" language in Berlin for nearly two decades now:-) It's status throughout many of the larger German cities is a lot similar to Spanish here in the States (especially in New York and LA)!

:-)

Work / South African wants to move to Poland, please provide some input? [59]

Just do yourself and your new neighbors the respect of learning some of their language! Polish may not always be quite as transparent for you as English, but your efforts to learn Polish will be well worth it in the long run:-)

UK, Ireland / A new mayor in London: opinion of Polish people in the UK? [317]

Think the next mayor then will be "of color" aka black? And how would the diversity-friendly Brits feel about a black royal in the future?

Think about it! Diversity also has her limits:-)

UK, Ireland / A new mayor in London: opinion of Polish people in the UK? [317]

Again, I can only add that I hope that Londoners, to be sure all Englishmen, will come to accept a Zadiq Khan as readily as a Boris Johnson, but it's scarcely going to be an easy adjustment! Were I am enlightened Londoner, certainly I'd welcome a presence such as Mr Khan's compared with the likes of a Ken Livingstone and similar polarizing forces, yet one must realize that having an unknown factor in charge of one of the world's major capitals is going to require a significant period of adjustment:-)

Britain aka England had already long since gotten used to Disraeli as PM along with numerous other non-Christian statesmen, including Dublin's Lord Mayor Briscoe (from an Orthodox family, no less!!!). A PRACTICING Muslim however definitely throws a monkey wrench into the works. To deny this is quite simply burying one's head in the sand.

News / Germany - We won't let Poland drown! [28]

Why though, Paki Lahore? Despite an admittedly contentious history Poland and Germany both share, haven't you ever heard of neighbor helping neighbor?? Perhaps they don't share as common an ethnicity as Pakistan and India, for example, but nevertheless, there's never a "bad" time for a little bridge building, is there?

:-)

UK, Ireland / A new mayor in London: opinion of Polish people in the UK? [317]

Szalawa, perhaps it is different in London, yet, here in New York we too have dozens of minority groups, brought in by boat lift to the shores of this country, many of the Islamic faith, others not, yet still empowered with the feeling that being a Pakistani, Hindu or Chinaman makes them identical with a native-born, tax-paying US citizen. While we may all be equal as human beings, surely we are not all equal as people and anyone who can't understand the anger at dealing with a heavily-accented customer service rep at their local bank as opposed to the locally-born English native-speaking rep whom they've dealt with for many years, merely because the foreigner is cheap labor for the bank has got to be a little slow:-)

UK, Ireland / A new mayor in London: opinion of Polish people in the UK? [317]

All I'm saying is let's be TRULY equal! If a Western Christian or Jew were to (somehow) become head of a caliphate, he or she'd better be TRIPLY circumspect about their public comportment as well as their pronouncements! Same with Mr. Khan. As a Muslim in an essentially majority white, Christian metropolis, he must be exceedingly circumspect about his own person as representative of a presently most unpopular group:-)

In order to distance himself from such, he must do his level best to bend over backwards to show that he understands both his role as well as his position in a society in which he will remain an outsider for sometime until he gradually becomes more accepted.

I think these are reasonable sentiments, after all, London, Paris or Berlin are NOT New York, D.C. or Chicago and anyone who honestly believes we're "all the same" in some sort of kumbaya knee-jerk liberalism ought to do a quick reality check!!!

UK, Ireland / A new mayor in London: opinion of Polish people in the UK? [317]

In this poster's humble opinion, the English brought it on themselves! Britain is certainly more a "Judeo-Christian" nation than she is a Muslim one.

No, if I were an average ethnic British Londoner, I'd be rather dismayed, culturally speaking, that is.

No doubt the bloke's capable enough, but one can't help feeling that his loyalties may lies on the wrong side. No, it's not the same as were it a Jew or even an open agnostic, for instance. Britain is still an Occidental Western nation and Islam represents a different stream from the mainstream.

Language / Slavic languages words similarities with Polish [238]

Would the Polish noun though not be "pozÓr" in the singular? Probably just a typo:-)

@Polonius, indeed that could be fatally embarrassing, as could Polish "pukać" vs. Russian "pukat", as doubtless referred to prior on PF!

Language / Slavic languages words similarities with Polish [238]

More embarrassing is the Czech vs. Polish distinction between "stały" and "staly" or "zapach" and "zapach":-)

Need I say more?
LOL

Language / Slavic languages words similarities with Polish [238]

Indeed, the Polish Vocative essentially no longer exists in present-day Russian! Whereas in Polish, it's used daily, both in speech (Cześć, Krysiu!) as well as writing, in contemporary Russian, I believe I learned years ago that the Vocative is confined to literature:-)

Apropos similarities of Slavic words with Polish, there's Polish "pożar" (fire) vs. Czech "pozor" (danger). Lexically unrelated, but semantically linked.

An endlessly intriguing thread for the Slavic linguist.

Language / Slavic languages words similarities with Polish [238]

Correction. The counting systems in Polish and Russian are nearly identical (as with much of the daily basics in most Slavic aka related languages). The pronunciation is different here, I'll grant you, as is much basic vocab.n but a great deal of the grammar is similar enough:-)

Work / Soon in Warsaw from Budapest. Job opportunities for a musically-trained person and proofreader in Poland. [9]

Remember also that employment standards may vary slightly, especially outside the EU! Even among neighboring countries, qualifications are not cut and dried:-)

Work / Soon in Warsaw from Budapest. Job opportunities for a musically-trained person and proofreader in Poland. [9]

CELTA has become quite common too:-)

Any of you guys familiar with the BEC (Business English Certificate) Program? I understand in Italy, for example, it's highly respected and an acknowledged certification for professional abilty in English!

Work / Soon in Warsaw from Budapest. Job opportunities for a musically-trained person and proofreader in Poland. [9]

Jed77, I take it then you know both Hungarian and/or some Polish, is that right? If so, you have some valuable skills indeed, both for travel as well as business:-)

Powodzenia! Mindent jo!

Love / Do women in Poland change their surnames to a feminine form of their husbands' surnames? [40]

Yo, there's a village in Austria called ****! They gotta deal with it too ( and they have for many centuries)!!!
Where d'ya think English gets the word?
))

Study / Any Erasmus students in Poland? [16]

I roundly concur, kpc! In most Slavic languages, at the very least counting is more or less recognizable:

Polish: jeden dwa trzy, cztery
Russian: odin, dva, tri, chyteri
etc.

While English ALONE might well get you around the Linguistics Dept. of a university among enlightened, well-traveled student types, in the rest of the country, you might actually find more resonance with Croatian than English if you still feel shaky in Polish:-)

Study / Any Erasmus students in Poland? [16]

Good for you!

Anyway, even though Croatian's also a Slavic language, there's never a substitute for knowing at least the basics of the local lingo:-)

Study / Any Erasmus students in Poland? [16]

Good luck! Do you speak any Polish perchance?
:-)

Love / Do women in Poland change their surnames to a feminine form of their husbands' surnames? [40]

The family name "Semelli" is perfectly valid in its country of origin! That it by coincidence sounds like the perjorative English word, has no merit in and of itself:-)

Language / Polish verb aspects: to memorize pairs or not? [8]

Whatever works, Cleiton 1996!

Many such programs turn out to be somewhat gimmicky in my experience and therefore of limited value. Admittedly, verbal aspects are a particularly difficult part of the language for foreigners, owing to the confusing, yet deceptive (and FALSE) similarities with English tenses:-)

While memorizing in pairs may appear a helpful learning aid, often the aspect pairs themselves may be so different from one another that only contextualized usage could tell them apart, e.g. "brać" vs. "wziąć". A non-Polish dictionary in a language which has no such equivalent, usually will give only one definition/translation which can be quite misleading, and thus inaccurate. Both of the above verbs mean "to take", yet one is not interchangable with the other.

For this reason, I'd be slightly wary of those sorts od apps.

As an erstwhile student rather than a teacher of Polish, I can only surmise that there's probably some mnemonic "code" or clever memory device for Polish native speakers as well as for foreigners to help in the rote acquisition of aspect pairs, but hanged if I know what that could be:-)

Language / Is Polish amongst the best-sounding languages in the world? [123]

Polish often sounds almost chirpy to my ears, particularly when spoken by women.

Love / Do women in Poland change their surnames to a feminine form of their husbands' surnames? [40]

Probably because Germany has been more socially emancipated than Poland, and for a considerably longer time:-)

Life / Warsaw is a difficult city to adjust to (coming from Canada and having lived in South Africa) Prague? [46]

Ziemowit, you misunderstand! I was saying the Szczecin is a provincial, if large, city in comparison with Praha:-)

Life / Warsaw is a difficult city to adjust to (coming from Canada and having lived in South Africa) Prague? [46]

More Americans live and work in the Czech Republic than in Poland, I believe:-)

Life / Warsaw is a difficult city to adjust to (coming from Canada and having lived in South Africa) Prague? [46]

As an American, Praha seemed to me a more "western" Central European city than Szczecin. Then again, Szczecin, though a larger city by any standards, seemed relatively provincial and compared to Czech Republic, had more of an Eastern European feel to it.

I've never visited Kraków or Warsaw however, true cosmopolitan areas I'm told, and so I reserve any final judgements up to this point:-)

Life / Warsaw is a difficult city to adjust to (coming from Canada and having lived in South Africa) Prague? [46]

Czech-Canadian, how hard (or easy) was it to learn Polish? You never quite answered my question before:-)

Apropos your ancestral home, I visited Praha and like most, fell immediately under her spell, particularly the Haradzin, Vaclav Nemesti and the Karlovy Most. Praha and Budapest probably are the most unspoiled beautiful European capital cities!

Love / Do women in Poland change their surnames to a feminine form of their husbands' surnames? [40]

In some countries, Germany for example, the husband may choose to take his wife's family name IN ADDITION to his own surname, e.g. Arndt Braun marries Annette Mueller, thence becoming "Arndt Braun Mueller":-)

Normally though, this is only done where both of the couple are working professionals.

I know of a woman from Kraków, married to a man with a different family name, yet the woman still identifies herself as "Jola Adamowa", instead of "Jola Adamowa Pocztowska" or even "Jolanta Pocztowska", thus assuming only her husband's surname "Pocztowsky".