Language / Polish people: did you struggle learning English - differences between both languages [75]

No, it wasn't a joke, Rich!
Bad English usually seems "fine" when there's something in it for the American for whom a favor, pleasure aka money or sex will be exacted:-)

Our institute just welcomed a multi-mega-million Chinese tycoon into one of my Business English classes.
His English skills are as ****-poor as his business skills are impressive. Am I going to tell him his English stinks and risk LOTS OF MULLAH coming into our school??

When he apologized through an interpreter for his "poor English, I of course immediately chimed in that his English was "good" in order to ensure a steady stream of classes.

In point of fact, most foreigners on the average speak English badly. This is an honest assessment. Business though has rarely much to do with honesty and this nameless Chinaman's "poor" English promises to make all of us "rich.

Back to the topic at long last, I've found in my many years of teaching, Poles to be far more modest and willing to admit to lacking English than the Russians.

News / Abortion still under control in Poland [2971]

Sad isn't it when emotional psychological game playing influences rational argumentation concerning the entire abortion issue.

How many times can one single person stand being shouted down as a "baby killer" when all they do is enter an abortion clinic? Is what just happened in Texas actually comparable with having an abortion??!

Come on, folks!

Language / Short Polish<->English translations [1033]

"Narabiac" off the top of my head without checking in my dictionary
means "to earn", I think.
Wonder if it's somehow a related verb w/"(z)robic". What with perfective vs.
imperfective verb stem changes ("f.ex. "mowic"/"mawiac" etc.), I often get confused as a foreigner still
perfecting his Polish:-)

Language / Short Polish<->English translations [1033]

Doskonale, Lenko!
Dzieki:-)

News / Abortion still under control in Poland [2971]

The Church hath spoken.

News / Abortion still under control in Poland [2971]

Cojestdocholery, the Church has nothing to do with science, but only with (outdated) ideology! The Good Book was the first attempt to explain the physical world to a bunch of ignorant illiterates who didn't understand what was going on around them.

Back to my evolution analogy, in the Bible, it is stated that the world was created in seven days. Yet, do we actually know how long "a day" was measured to be? How can we be sure?

News / Abortion still under control in Poland [2971]

Not that simple.

News / Abortion still under control in Poland [2971]

The abortion question is based purely on religion, not on science.
While I realize that many scientists believe or believed in G-d, e.g. Albert Einstein, and that science and religion are both seeking the same truth, certain physical laws, hard, cold facts simply cannot be denied.

One fact is that abortion is NOT "murder", which suggests in this country anyway, a methodical, brutal end of a human life of which the victim is aware (even while asleep, it has been proven!). Abortion is the ending of a "life which has not yet begun", two completely different realities.

Another fact is that women who seek abortion do so with a sense of almost malevolent glee, mad killers intent on going on some sort of spree. Nothing in my experience could be further from the truth.

Lastly, if abortion can save a woman's life from rape, something not intended by the woman, then by all means go for it.

News / Abortion still under control in Poland [2971]

Bottom line is that the folks who stand intimidatingly with "BABY KILLER" banners in front of many US abortion clinics, are by and large religious fanatics, probably with zero education, the rest likely illiterates!

News / Abortion still under control in Poland [2971]

In the sense of ending that life which has not yet begun, most assuredly!
Killing?? Yes! Murder?? Absolutely not.

Seems your conflating two separate, if related, concepts, Rich.

News / Abortion still under control in Poland [2971]

One doesn't have to be a PhD to know right from wrong, so what's your excuse?

News / Abortion still under control in Poland [2971]

Same difference! You likely have no PhD and seem to know neither fact from fiction.
A person can be over educated and just plain stupid or under educated and show some good ol' fashioned horse sense!
Apparently, you show neither, save for often acting like a horse's ass LOL

Motto of this post? Education or schooling is never a guarantee of intelligible and cogent argumentation, but it sure can help:-)

News / Abortion still under control in Poland [2971]

The analogy's not applicable. Life exists before birth, but not as a conscious being!

News / Abortion still under control in Poland [2971]

The question remains as to whether the gov't. or the individual woman should be free to choose the right over her OWN body!

Naturally, enlightened, free-thinking folk would agree. Don't know about the rest of you people. Men should have nothing to say, after all, it's women who do the childbearing, men who do the inseminating.

Language / Short Polish<->English translations [1033]

Most informative, ForumUser!

Then the "robic"/"rabiac" example is comparable (if not exactly equivalent) to
"mowic"/"mawiac", if I'm not mistaken.

Language / Short Polish<->English translations [1033]

Great! My, what an excellent source of useful info!!
I take it you are an educated Polish native speaker, yes?
Trust my constant queries don't irk you:-)

News / Abortion still under control in Poland [2971]

Is bearing unwanted children through the GOP-condoned proliferation of starvation-wage McJobs throughout the country, forcing families to have children whom they cannot possibly afford, thereby having to give them up for adoption, any less immoral, Korvinus?

Where once a young mother might actually have been able to raise a family modestly yet relatively comfortably, working at a Walmart, for instance,
such is only the case in some Republican dream world of men and women living off the fat of the land as once in a mythical pioneer fantasy over a hundred-and-twenty odd years ago. Such is NOT the reality of today's world.

Unwanted pregnancies don't point to this stereotype of the "evil woman", rather to the need for greater reform in our society by allowing abortion so that women have more control both over their lives as well as their bodies!

An incredibly puritanical and primitive country the United States, certainly as regards basic issues such as weapons' possession and women's rights.

News / Abortion still under control in Poland [2971]

@Rich, as usual, you're merrily comparing apples and oranges here!
If either couple is earning only $15 per hr. at a McDonald's, Walmart (same difference) nowadays, how in heck can they afford kids??

Typicallly robotic US-thinking! Y'all sure likes messin' up, but y'all ain't so hot on cleanin' up yer mess:-))

News / Abortion still under control in Poland [2971]

And by your illlogic, you'd punish a young couple, guilty of nothing other than the poor judgement of callow youth?! What have you solved other than to turn a presumably non-felon into a criminal but criminalizing their errors instead of allowing them to learn from them?

News / Abortion still under control in Poland [2971]

An embryo, for the BAZILLIONTH time, friends, is indeed a living, yet not (yet) a conscious, being! Satisfied?

Except to the boneheaded Fundamentalists of whatever religious stripe, the exact moment when life begins is to be sure one of the oldest questions extant, and is likely to be for as long as the human race exists.

As my college philosophy prof (a former broker, incidentallyLOL) once put it, "Always seek the company of those who seek the truth; run from those who've found it!"

Furthermore, interesting that the US punishes just reg'lar folks for every infraction under the sun, from parking violations to non-payment of rent, yet almost never for those inhuman violations which also occur every day, such as taking away a woman's right over her own body, the patient's basic right to be treated both courteously as well as honestly by her primary care physician, and a the day-to-day incivilities or indignities to which many of us are subjected on a normal basis.

The latter go unpunished since nearly everyone can be paid off these days somehow.
In former times, such was not so rampantly the case.

News / Abortion still under control in Poland [2971]

.....and the opposite of brilliance is stupidity, RIch ol' boy LOL

Language / A study on how bilingual Polish-English speakers think [86]

Sounds interesting, Lenka.
I once participated in a similar study conducted by the German General Consulate in New York for Americans such as myself born in the US with German as quasi-mother tongue.

The researchers subjected me to a light battery of questions regarding how I react to various cross-cultural stimuli in addition to the usual questions as to in which language I dream etc.

Figure it's the same here, although the criteria obviously wouldn't apply in my case:-)

Language / A study on how bilingual Polish-English speakers think [86]

No, I'm not suspicious in the least, Paw.
How come? Ought I be? Had the study applied, I might have offered to participate.

Po polsku / Staram się polepszać się po polsku :) [85]

N.p "Poprawiam moje znajomosci polskiego."?

Language / A study on how bilingual Polish-English speakers think [86]

I only "acquired" Polish long after the age of childhood, more like end of my 20's. Furthermore, I'm certainly not a true bilingual, therefore again, I'd scarcely be a qualified participant in your study, unfortunately.

Language / A study on how bilingual Polish-English speakers think [86]

jon, I'd even qualify further by saying that the natural ability to seamlessly think as well as function within the target language context, that is, of the second language acquired vs. the need to translate from the source language or mother tongue, is what distinguishes an authentic native bilingual speaker from someone who learned the language even in young adulthood!

For instance, I have never claimed and would never claim to be a bilingual in Polish, regardless of reading fluency, as I acquired it comparatively late in my development as opposed to German which was the first language I heard although schooled in English from roughly first grade until college:-)

While I could negotiate my way through daily situations with monolingual Polish speakers during my all too brief sojourn in Poland, the language continued and continues to control me rather I controlling it.

In addition, I'm aware of myriad errors in daily usage which was never the case with German.

Language / A study on how bilingual Polish-English speakers think [86]

Thanks, jon.
I'll go with Bloomfield's definition myself:-)
Ck. out too the Canadian linguist Prof. Steven Pinkert, in case you're not entirely familiar with his work.
He talks about native speakers of different languages as being, quite literally, "circuited" differently from each other, which he mentions at length in "The Language Instinct".

Language / A study on how bilingual Polish-English speakers think [86]

Amen there, Maf!
Don't know how often on this very Forum, I've decried to distraction the number of Europeans encountered over the years claiming to be bilingual, yet speaking often atrocious English, like rapid-fire bubble gum chatter masquerading as culturally correct usage.

The actual "BI-linguals" I've met abroad are rare indeed.

Po polsku / Staram się polepszać się po polsku :) [85]

Dziekuje za Twoje poprawienie, Alien:-)

Off-Topic / Best posters [701]

Noticed my name's conspicuously absent from the list.
Guess I'm too much of a gadfly, not to mention general pain in the butt LOL