Language / Letter 'ą' and 'ę' pronounciation before 'z', 's', 'ś', 'ź', 'ż [21]

Many thanks for the links, lunacy!

Language / Is there a traditional expression used as a welcome? [18]

You're most probably correct, TheStranger! Dictionary vs. accepted standard colloquial usage can often be chasmic:-)

Language / Letter 'ą' and 'ę' pronounciation before 'z', 's', 'ś', 'ź', 'ż [21]

An interesting overview article indeed for those who know Polish. As I glanced through it, although I know Polish, I wondered about the MYRIAD umpteen exceptions to the instances given. I wondered after reading it whether I would necessarily be able to guess that "odpowiedź" for example is a feminine noun!

I still have to puzzle over the gender of certain nouns.

Language / Is there a traditional expression used as a welcome? [18]

Or "Gość jest Pan Bóg w domu."

Language / Is there a traditional expression used as a welcome? [18]

I'm not a native Polish speaker (not even close!), but I've mostly heard "Witamy!" = Welcome! Maybe something like "Serdecznie witamy do domu!", but this is strictly by the book and not at all regional or colloquial:-)

Am curious myself.

Language / Polish was chosen the HARDEST LANGUAGE in the world to learn... :D [1558]

Quite right, to each his own. See? We can still be of different mindsets and yet nonetheless respect the other's point of view.

Just an aside though. Pomposity fifty years back, while still pompous, was not looked upon the way it is these days. I'm still old enough to remember how my grade school friends would interact "way back when" (he-he!!) and I honestly don't remember the sort of brain-dead junk as I hear it today among average fourteen to fifteen year olds. One must admit that standards everywhere were higher back then than now. I recall being constantly challenged by both peers and profs to get the correct word out and failing to do so usually meant merciless (if never vindictive) ridicule. But hey, we got over it, sucked it up and owned up to our inadequacies like young men and women rather than overgrown children.

Spanish I won't touch. Polish would read:

DobrY wieczór! Mam na imię Jan.(N.p. Mam na imię Bogdan ale nazywam się Lipiński) Jestem z Austrii i mieszkam we Wiedniu. Mówię po niemiecku, po angielsku, po hiszpańsku a trochę po polsku.

I must say I'm impressed by your cache of languages:-) Forgive my Polish "corrections", but as you are fond of saying "Wie du mir, so ich dir." = Tit for tat

Take it my earlier remarks concerning your English weren't misunderstood.

Good luck!
Powodzenia!
Buena suerte!
Viel Erfolg!

You could just as easily introduce yourself with "Jestem Jan." = I'm Jan. (Ich heisse Jan). "Nazywam się Jan" again would sound odd to a Pole. In this way, Polish and German differ from, say, English. In English, "Hi, my name's Mark. We understand "name" to be either the full name, the surname or just the given name. In Polish as well as German, "name" (unless specified as "first name") almost always means the last or family name.

:-)

Just to back up a ways. I certainly didn't mean to imply that "Nazywam się Jan." is in any way wrong, merely that both the latter as well as "Mam na imię Jan." is equally possible as well. Often my fingers race faster than my thoughts:-)

Language / Polish was chosen the HARDEST LANGUAGE in the world to learn... :D [1558]

Scottie, let me reiterate. What you all seem to call "bombastic", "pretentious" English is merely your misguided perception as a result of the watered-down excuse for 'World English' which we have today. This same language some fifty years prior, was considered literary, delightful and perhaps just a trifle highfallutin:-) The questions REALLY is, what's wrong with that? Oughtn't language challenge our sensibility and rouse us from our self-induced torpor? The answer to this blatantly rhetorical question is a resounding YES!!

Compare any YouTube program from the late Jack Paar TV talk show with Conan, Letterman or Leno and I think you have your answer.
Your generation has become so anesthetized by mediocrity that the bad sounds good, the good sounds "weird", i.e. no longer recognizable, and all that once smacked of class is denegrated.

There used to be a gentleman named Monty Woolley who was known for his supercilious, skewering, ascerbic wit. Rather than being reviled by others as an irritating, homosexual pain in the ass, it seems that people loved his skewer wit and often would skewer right back at him; it was all good, clean fun. He's been dead since 1964 and methinks to myself that we need more like him today.

O' George Carlin, where art thou?

Language / Polish was chosen the HARDEST LANGUAGE in the world to learn... :D [1558]

I repeat my guffaw, TheOtherLOL

Genealogy / I have Jewish DNA, but only know of Polish ancestry . [120]

Some think of Judaism as a religion, others as an ethnicity.

It can go either way. Frankly, "Jewish DNA" does sound a bit strange to me as well:-)

Language / Polish was chosen the HARDEST LANGUAGE in the world to learn... :D [1558]

Typo!

Language / Polish was chosen the HARDEST LANGUAGE in the world to learn... :D [1558]

I respect your opinion, Paulina. I wasn't aware that I was being nasty, merely mildly sarcastic.
My apologies!

Language / Polish was chosen the HARDEST LANGUAGE in the world to learn... :D [1558]

I only ask the same standards be applied to me as to any other on this forum. Can you honestly say that my paultry errors in German are any "less" egregious than Jan's occasionally off sentence structure??

Let's just keep things on a more or less equal footing. If Jan and others here are ready,willing and able to admit their errors, then I am certainly as glad to admit mine:-)

Language / Polish was chosen the HARDEST LANGUAGE in the world to learn... :D [1558]

And what would YOU have preferred, pray tell?? So far, JanMovie hasn't commented.

Love / Are Polish men handsome to you? [182]

Eckenpfeiler:-)

Language / Polish was chosen the HARDEST LANGUAGE in the world to learn... :D [1558]

Same thing, dude! Just a different stand. All of us appreciate correction, so long as it's done constructively.

News / Don't let Poland become like my country, France. [630]

"Judeo-Christian" indicates the foundations of what is called the Occident. Judaism gave birth to the Christianity which has served as the cornerstone of much of the Western World. Modern-day Turkey, as I'm sure you'll recall, was originally a Christian nation (Constantinople) before being taken over by the Muslims.

Love / Are Polish men handsome to you? [182]

Quite so, McDouche! Let's have a looksie: wars, plagues, holocausts, crusades, destruction..

Have I left anything out, old man?
)))))))

Language / Polish was chosen the HARDEST LANGUAGE in the world to learn... :D [1558]

My point entirely. How is the lad to progress if he isn't corrected? I was being a tad sarky in the sentence you quoted, it's true. I only meant that how he's unwittingly mangling the English language, hopefully he isn't doing to the other languages he's learning as well.

My college profs could be snide as all hell on my papers. Didn't bother me a bit, 'cause I was thankful for the help!

News / Don't let Poland become like my country, France. [630]

For whatever my two cents are worth to this discussion, I see the problem as essentially what happens when a core Judeo-Christian society (in this case, Western Europe) becomes gradually overtaken by a culturally alien body, namely Islam? It's a no-brainer not to see that scores of both Jewish and Christian French, German, Scandinavian, Dutch or other citizens feel a threat from Muslim groups who insist that the Koran is a tool of forced conversion of Jews, Christians or other "infidels", if necessary, by wanton violence.

Clearly those Muslim extremists who believe this dogma aren't the majority. Yet, this vocal minority could wreak havoc if left unchecked. What this thread title means is, "Please, Poland! Stay alert and don't fall asleep at the switch. These people can be dangerous! What's occurring in France, could happen here as well."

Language / Polish was chosen the HARDEST LANGUAGE in the world to learn... :D [1558]

Oh, but there was! I specifically stated that my aim was to "slow Jan down", not deflect the focus of his interests.
Indeed, he seems as interested in improving his English as well as his Polish, Spanish and who knows which other language skills.

Since when is forty old? I think of myself as middle-aged:-)

Language / Polish was chosen the HARDEST LANGUAGE in the world to learn... :D [1558]

The assertion is not the issue, Pam, but rather the direction of his comment. I think it's great that he enjoys learning languages, just like the rest of us. I simply wished to gently caution him that while he has stated other times that he considers himself solid in English, having been learning it since the age of ten, his English still has plenty of gaps of which he should be aware before going ahead with Polish, Spanish or what have you.

In applying the "brakes" so to speak, my intention was scarcely to dampen his enthusiasm:-)

Language / Polish was chosen the HARDEST LANGUAGE in the world to learn... :D [1558]

A foreign language enthusiast I definitely am. I merely wished to slow JanMovie down a little. While his English is generally quite fluent, he still makes umpteen interference errors to which I merely wanted to draw his attention:-) Like yourself Wulkan, Ironside, Paulina, Patrycia and many other members on PF, Jan was practicing his English, much as I enjoy posting in Polish to practice my language skills. Likewise, I was under the impression that he too would appreciate some correction. I take it I'm right!

Language / Polish was chosen the HARDEST LANGUAGE in the world to learn... :D [1558]

"I have a talent for learning languages.."

?? How modest of you, JanMovie:-) Do you in fact speak/write your other languages the same way you do English?
LOL

Life / Public Masturbation now allowed in Sweden, Would this work in Poland? [43]

Blimey, it's contagious!!!!

Life / Public Masturbation now allowed in Sweden, Would this work in Poland? [43]

Amusing to me that the State Church hasn't cracked down a bit. Spilling seed and all that...
Such a double standard.... *Guess we're no ones to talk:-)

Language / rules for genetive declension of female nouns ending in 'a' [8]

Good idea! Not so sure the feminines are any "easier", they seem however a bit more consistent, i.e. a tad less quirky, than the masculines.

Westfal is but one of several reliable sources. The very disclaimer to the introduction remarks on how complex Polish must be for the foreigner if an entire text is devoted to the final letter distinction for just one single noun gender!!

Problem too might be that for a foreign learner, it's not always that clear which gender is assigned to which noun. Take "odpowiedź" (answer, reply). I know I've encountered nouns with a "-dź" ending which are masculine (although none neuter, to my knowledge), yet seeing a new word for the first time, it wasn't always intuitive for me when I began studying.

This is where a native speaker is always super helpful!

Come to think of it though, we may only be complicating things a trifle.

Language / rules for genetive declension of female nouns ending in 'a' [8]

Stanisław Westfal offers an exhaustive commentary on "a" vs. "u" for masculine endings in the genitive singular alone, but I've yet to encounter a similar treatise in English for the feminine endings per se!

Language / Polish was chosen the HARDEST LANGUAGE in the world to learn... :D [1558]

Aha! Nice to know that a fellow native speaker's on hand. Indeed, "der Ekel" has many (dis-)guises and can indeed be "gemein" (common):-)

We both then freely admit that JanMovie merely mistranslated from his native tongue and therefore gave a less than felicitous rendering into English.

"Eklig", of course. Another typo, I fear.

Cheers, brother!

The latter statement is only semi-correct; I am in fact a bilingual, native US-born English-German speaker. As concerns various posts in this regard, merely because certain of you haven't heard of various collocations by no means signifies that they don't exist. Lack of familiarity oughtn't be occasion to pronounce the other person defective:-)

Language use has grown unconscionably sloppy over the past decades, in almost every language with which I'm familiar. It's not only English which bears the sole brunt of this decline. Germans growing up today can't spell their own to save their lives either, many of them, so don't expect their English to be much better!

The Finns and Icelanders are the exception in this respect. Interestingly too, their mother tongues are hardly world-class competitors compared with English, Mandarin, Russian, Spanish, even German.

Language / Polish was chosen the HARDEST LANGUAGE in the world to learn... :D [1558]

Wulkan, he's translating from the German, old man! See the problems when folks start flying off with the keyboard and don't apologize in advance for their misunderstandable errors??

He meant probably, "That was UNFAIR of me." (Jan literally translated "Das war ja ekelig von mir.") By "slaves", he was clearly translating "Slaven".

A clearer instance of first language interference would be hard to match:-)

@rozumiemic,

Considering that perhaps you are indeed a sixty-something former Oxford professor, I'd be more than happy to concede your academic superiority......maybe! You don't appreciate my slicing wit, do you? You really should bone up on "The Man Who Came To DInner" by Kaufman & Hart and deny that I don't remind you of Sheridan WhitesideLOL

Language / Polish was chosen the HARDEST LANGUAGE in the world to learn... :D [1558]

I second my thanks to Pam:-)

And NO, Włodzimierz isn't trying to appear more "posh", merely speaking/writing in a higher-level register than is common nowadays, as erudition seems to have all but gone out the window!

Since about the end of the 60's, anything that smacks of European culture or refinement has become suspect. A pity really, for think of all the interesting conversation and company out there which has been tuned out by the lazy and desensitized among us, i.e. the sons and daughters of the post-Woodstock Era.