Off-Topic / AfD Party is growing ever more powerful throughout country [46]

Again, Rich, you make no sense.

Off-Topic / AfD Party is growing ever more powerful throughout country [46]

An opinion though CAN, indeed SHOULD, be predicated on fact as much as possible. Experience is necessarily limited to that which you and you alone have experienced

on your own person.
There is such a thing as an intelligent opinion as there is an educated guess:-)

Law / Rejecting Inheritance [44]

Untrue, Joker!
There are any number of instances in which the offspring, that is, the sons or daughters
of a debtor will have to pay off what their parents owed, either the gov't. as well as private
creditors.

It is true that such will stop with the children, not on down to grandchildren. Nonetheless,
in the US, the law is fairly strict in this regard.

Off-Topic / AfD Party is growing ever more powerful throughout country [46]

Why am I an idiot, Rich? 'Cuz I make sense??
Come on, fella, quit trolling and be a man for a change!

Language / Bilingual Polish-English books with audio for listening and reading learning method [75]

Amen, Maf.

Language / Bilingual Polish-English books with audio for listening and reading learning method [75]

Amen, Maf. Spot on with that last comment.
Naturally, for short aka guided day trips, one might argue that language itself is not a necessity!
Anything more longer than several days, a week, a month?? At some local lingo's a necessity.

Off-Topic / AfD Party is growing ever more powerful throughout country [46]

Hitler represented the abject failure of an all too shaky democracy during the ill-fated Weimar Republic, Rich, you know that!
Trump represents the Reagan Era failure of a society which has long since lost her moorings and has cut her loose from the gravitational pull

of sanity, choosing a world of infantility, violence, and child like fantasy in which every school yard bullying tactic has now somehow been
given credence. "If I want it, I'll take it, so whatcha gonna do about it, weakling?"

It's you funeral, kiddo! Only don't come to me wide eyed and uncomprehending when white collar theft, violent backlashes and the like overtake

the country.

Whoever thinks that "kinder, gentler.." is only for losers, shows themselves to be the real loser.

News / What Polish diaspora need and expect from Poland, from Poles in Poland? [43]

I should hope not, Alien! For Rich's sake, I have to be as graphic as possible LOL

Language / Bilingual Polish-English books with audio for listening and reading learning method [75]

Rich, what you meant was that in your opinion, English was all that was needed in the Netherlands!
Aren't you the slightest bit curious about your global neighbors, dude?

Perhaps some teen trauma zapped your natural curiosity concerning our fellow beings
and turned you into some gung ho jingoist.

News / What Polish diaspora need and expect from Poland, from Poles in Poland? [43]

Would you be talking like that when you become old? Definitely not.
Just remember, it's not up to you, it's up to G-d!

The Nazis felt the same way until we bombed their asses back into the Stone Age:-)

Off-Topic / AfD Party is growing ever more powerful throughout country [46]

Your ignorance is obviously put on. It's shock value pure and simple.

Language / Bilingual Polish-English books with audio for listening and reading learning method [75]

Rich is merely babbling his usual ethnocentric nonsense solely for shock value!
How one person could be so naive is beyond me. Obviously faking.

Language / Bilingual Polish-English books with audio for listening and reading learning method [75]

Is that what life is all about, Rich? Have you no aspirations besides your stomach??

Language / Bilingual Polish-English books with audio for listening and reading learning method [75]

@Rich, again, it depends on what type of English you mean. I suppose if you dumb down your conversation one-syllable words or less, one might have a near flawless

conversation with the run-of-the-mill foreigner abroad. Anything higher, not so sure. LOL

Rich: How do you like living in your city?

Foreigner: Yes, yes!

Rich: No, I mean HOW DO YOU LIKE LIVING HERE IN MADRID?

Foreigner: No. I like Madrid.

Rich: Why?

Foreigner: Why.

Rich: Do you understand me, you #%$^in' moron???!

Foreigner: Yes, you like Madrid too?

etc.....

And that's what you have the nerve to call communicating world wide in English? Apparently you don't have very high expectations.

Language / Bilingual Polish-English books with audio for listening and reading learning method [75]

@Rich, once again, NO language is "useless"!
It is statistically true that English has every other language on the
planet beat in terms of sheer recognizability. This is a fact and sadly
I know many colleagues who've actually left the field on the basis of
statistics that fewer Americans are studying foreign languages.

While such may be the case, the latter certainly doesn't mean that learning
foreign languages isn't useful. All it means is that it's going to be an uphill
battle trying to convince Poles, Germans, Frenchmen or Spaniards etc. that
their English is somehow less than perfect and that the double standard
must be abandoned.

Language / Bilingual Polish-English books with audio for listening and reading learning method [75]

Your circle of conversation partners is growing ever smaller, I see.
Obviously, you are lexically or maybe DISlexically challenged, as
the words I used and use in all of my English-language posts are
plain to anyone who graduated from a decent US high school, forget
even about college or university:-)

Life / Jerzy Kosinski: Are his works popular in Poland? [48]

jon, the answer to your question is more than likely YES!!!

Language / Bilingual Polish-English books with audio for listening and reading learning method [75]

@Rich, you missed the humor, the complete armchair security in knowing that
your Dutch conversation partner was as sure of his English as a native speaker, as well
as being armed with the knowledge that that partner was naturally, conventionally
expressing, rather than approximating, their feelings only in order to prove a point!!

Doesn't it sort of gall you when people of any age substitute an f-bomb for a perfectly
respectable English vocabulary word, merely in order to sound "cool"?

Bugs the bejesus out of me, that's for dang sure.

As I said at the start of this post, don't you want to know for absolute certain if
somebody from a another country's yankin' yer chains? What better way than by
knowing their language.

Life / Jerzy Kosinski: Are his works popular in Poland? [48]

I roundly disagree, Rich!
A Polish ESL student of mine, when asked whether or not
she had any Jewish classmates at her university,
the Catholic University of Lublin, replied that she
didn't know of any off hand. If there were any, they'd
be in the section of the school exclusively for foreigners.

Does that answer your question?

Language / Bilingual Polish-English books with audio for listening and reading learning method [75]

@Novichok, and everybody needs English??
I see you haven't kept up with the news of late,
but Germany has been the number one migrant
hot spot in Europe for the last ten years and counting!

If Germans all knew, at least spoke, English as though
they were educated native American English speakers,
you might have a small point. However, nothing could be
further from the truth.

Life / Jerzy Kosinski: Are his works popular in Poland? [48]

Honestly couldn't care less what his original family name was, Poloniusz, nor should you.
Fact is, he changed or had his name changed in order to sound less Jewish, this is clear.

You do love to play the Devil's Advocate now, don't you

Language / Bilingual Polish-English books with audio for listening and reading learning method [75]

However, monolingual texts or readings w/accompanying dialogues in the language being acquired must be
supplemented exclusively with visuals in order to make clear what the learner is learning in a language
not their own. The danger is that the learner simply learns to translate into their native tongue instead of
learning the language they wish to know.

Otherwise, it can be an exercise in frustration, that's obvious.

Life / Jerzy Kosinski: Are his works popular in Poland? [48]

I'm only familiar with Borowski's text in translation ("This way to the gas, Ladies and Gentlemen!") I never ran across the
original, unfortunately.

Life / Jerzy Kosinski: Are his works popular in Poland? [48]

Jewish, albeit hidden Jewish, heritage. Surely nobody here is foolish enough to believe that a Jew in Poland, even an assimilated one,
has had the identical experience with that of a rank-and-file Polish gentile!

By the way, those who claim others are "projecting", are usually guilty of same, but are unwilling to admit it.

Off-Topic / 75 Years of Israel and the War - part 2 [363]

When living, indeed, growing up constantly with and in danger,
one's instincts tend to kick in without thinking!

Such is scarcely uncommon in similar situations. For this reason,
the army typically doesn't want older recruits, instead, it prefers naturally
those who are still teenagers, so that they don't have the time or the inclination
to think, but simply to react.

Life / Jerzy Kosinski: Are his works popular in Poland? [48]

So true, jon ol' man, so true indeed.

Language / Bilingual Polish-English books with audio for listening and reading learning method [75]

If Poles all learn English as you do, I shouldn't be at all surprised LOL
Truly knowing a language goes way beyond merely the idiom, the slang, the grammar
or the vocab, Ironside!

The reason your English is workaday fluent, yet will never be native, is precisely because
your language breathes, bleeds your Polish mother tongue.

Such passionately, blithely unbridled arrogance bordering, indeed often exceeding, pure
nastiness in my direction, reveals little of the more space giving Anglo-American, the irony
which allows the other bloke the benefit of the doubt, even if you hate their guts.

Conversely, my Polish will probably always be stymied by the mere fact that I by nature
tend to hold back my unbridled passions and am usually quick to compliment rather than
insult, indeed will apologize instead of keeping up the attacks.

Back to the thread of bilingual education, again, having taught German for umpteen years,
learning to translate only serves to satisfy the momentary need to "understand" a spoken
utterance, yet in the end doesn't allow the student to express themselves independently in
the target language.

Life / Jerzy Kosinski: Are his works popular in Poland? [48]

Poloniusz is wrong. But it's hard to convince others of the truth.

Language / Bilingual Polish-English books with audio for listening and reading learning method [75]

I've taught college level German to US students for nearly twenty-five years and find
that source language texts prove more valuable in the long run, often frustrating
as they can be in the beginning for reasons which I stated.

Language / Bilingual Polish-English books with audio for listening and reading learning method [75]

As a foreign language teacher, I caution against the down side of bilingual education for adults learning a second language.
While it can be useful while learning to see the trot in one's native language right alongside the language being learned,
in my experience, this can also serve as a crutch which can actually slow down instead of speed up the learning process.
When the mother tongue has been removed and the learner is then forced to communicate in their "new" language, frequently
they can become tongue tied and rely more and more on their first language, gradually losing idiomatic control of the language
they are trying to acquire. The result is that the learner will be looking for someone to constantly feed them the words in
English, or whatever their native language and the new language will never become a reality for them.