Language / How to say 'more' in various contexts [9]

nouns - więcej
adverbs and adjectives - bardziej

As it comes to verbs, you could use both depending on the verb - więcej to describe more quantity (Powinnam więcej ćwiczyć. - I should work out more.) and bardziej to describe the quality/attitude/feelings (Powinnam bardziej się starać. - I should try/strive to do sth more.)

You'd say:
Jeżdżę więcej od ciebie. - I drive more than you do.
but e.g.
Kocham bardziej od ciebie. - I love more than you do.

Genealogy / THE MEANING AND RESEARCH OF MY POLISH LAST NAME, SURNAME? [4501]

It was, most likely, slightly deformed (for pronunciation reasons). Google shows me a lot of Jarneskis in the States but none in Poland.
Original spelling would be: Jarnecki.

Either way, it's derived from:
- jary(adj.) - spring/vernal, young, strong
- jar(n.) - ravine (landform)

Language / A little Polish grammar. Masculine, animate objects. [64]

Well, if it helps, you can't forget that there's always a difference between male and female nouns.
odpowiedź (f.) -> odpowiedzi
zapowiedź (f.) -> zapowiedzi
łabędź (m.) -> łabędzie
śledź (m.) -> śledzie

The pączek case is a relatively easy rule, considering that (traditionally) -ek ending was added to create diminutive forms:)
-ek ALWAYS becomes -ki in plural forms, that's just the rule (at least i cannot think of any particular exceptions at the moment).
(pąk ->) pączek -> pączki
(znak ->) znaczek -> znaczki
(robak ->) robaczek -> robaczki
(szlak ->) szlaczek -> szlaczki
Some of the diminutive words from above gained a new meaning over time, like "pączek" isn't a small bloom bud only, but the sweet treat everyone knows:) (they were traditionally filled with rosebud jam in the past)

Language / A little Polish grammar. Masculine, animate objects. [64]

A little thing for the very beginners:

Some time ago I stumbled across a nice video about (I'd say) the very basic concept of declension from an 'English' perspective - it's very short and recorded in relation to Czech language but on that level (it's only about the concept of declension really) the word 'Czech' in the video could be actually replaced by 'Polish':

youtube.com/watch?v=NdePxj9J3NA

Sharing, because recently it has helped a friend of mine to understand how awesome declension is:P

The point is: in Polish language (or Czech and many others) the order of words in a sentence isn't as important as in English.

The author of the video shows a simple example:
Dog bites man.
Man bites dog.
Everything's clear in the two sentences above - we know who does the biting and who is being bitten, because it's stressed out by the position in the sentence.

In Polish we don't have to care so much about the position (or raising the tone of voice to emhasize something) in the sentence.

We use declension to show the relations between subjects and objects.
The examples from above would be adequately:
Pies gryzie człowieka.
Człowiek gryzie psa.
The subject doing the action (biting) is in Nominative case - so 'normal' (pies, człowiek). But the object that's being bitten has to be declined to show the subject's 'relation' to it. In this example it's biernik - Accusative (whom does he/she bite? psa, człowieka). Position in a sentence isn't as important, because we have all the informations gathered within the grammar.

The first sentence:
Pies gryzie człowieka.
could be also written for example in those ways:
Pies człowieka gryzie.
Człowieka gryzie pies.
Gryzie pies człowieka.
and it still means exactly the same - dog bites man - because the declined object (człowieka) always shows which one is bitten.

It takes a long time in the beginning to learn how to 'unwrap' the sentences in your mind, find the relations between nouns (who is doing the action, who is being affected by the action, what is being possessed, and so on). Krecik wrote a very good list of the basic rules:)

News / Germany returns WW2 loot to Poland [14]

There's a whole website dedicated to the wartime losses: MKiDN. They are putting there plenty of photographs with descriptions from the pre-war albums/catalogues/etc. but a lot of art wasn't documented that well.

Genealogy / Russian Poland-what general area would this be? [30]

The maps jon posted are great, however they don't put the partitions in context. Second map shows only the situation in 1795, after the 3rd partition.

For some reason I couldn't find any good maps showing the partitions on the outlines of present-day borders (by "good" I also mean the resolution).

A bit of google search and I only have those:

1. Phases of partitions and the situation in 1795. As you can see, none of the present-day Poland was under the Russian rule:



Here's a good map (in Polish) with names of the most important locations:



2. Then the Duchy of Warsaw was established (1807-1815), created by Napoleon Bonaparte:



en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duchy_of_Warsaw

Duchy of Warsaw (Księstwo Warszawskie) again:



3. After 1815 it lost a significant territiorial area to Prussia as shown in the German map below (it became the Grand Duchy of Posen)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Duchy_of_Posen
and turned into a Russian protectorate. In this phase it was also a duchy but to differ it from the previous phase it was called Congress Poland

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress_Poland
and was meant to be an autonomy state, but de facto was functioning as a puppet state and later was oficially annexed by the Russian Empire (after the 1863 uprising):



After 1867 it was usually called 'Vistula Land'
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vistula_Land
and (from the link) "in the 1880s, the official language was changed to Russian, and Polish was banned both from official use and education".

Here are maps that show the situation in relation to the present-day borders and a map of Polish borders after the 1st World War:



There's much more to that and yes - the borders were kind of always changing in the 19th century. That period of time was well described by Norman Davies in the volume II of his 'God's Playground' book (a huge publication but strongly recommended to anyone who wants to learn about Polish history!)

Language / Correct way of saying "Again please"? [7]

"Proszę powtórzyć" is rather a formal phrase, followed by more polite-sounding "Mógłby Pan powtórzyć? / Mogłaby Pani powtórzyć?".

When talking to friends or close family (of similar age or younger), it's perfectly normal to ask "Jeszcze raz?" or just to say "Powtórz. / Powtórz proszę."

The most common I use and hear are variations of "Możesz powtórzyć?"

Genealogy / Do I look Polish? (my picture) [375]


I'd say a mix of both. I actually have a friend who looks a bit similar to you and 'smirks' in the same way. Was you mother's Polish branch from the south / south-eastern Poland perhaps? Just curious.

Language / Perfective vs Imperfective - grammar [150]

OR if it's an repetitive future event:
W przyszłym miesiącu będę jeźdźić na delegacje do Warszawy.
(several times in the next month)


It could be for example:
Od przyszłego miesiąca jeżdżę na podróże służbowe do Warszawy.
(I will be regularly going there, starting next month - we don't know for how long)

Language / Perfective vs Imperfective - grammar [150]


Since it's in the past (learnt), the corrrect and more natural-sounding (at least to me) sentence would be:
Podczas kursu każdego dnia uczył się dziesięCIU nowych słów/słówek.


Exactly. But you always could add for example the word "wcześniej":)
Będąc już w domu, Jan poczuł, że ktoś tam wcześniej był.

Language / Perfective vs Imperfective - grammar [150]

To be fair, this is pretty clear. But in Polish we use much more phrases determining the time, like "wcześniej", "przedtem", "w tamtym momencie"etc. to make things more obvious.

Few examples, all correct:

1. Będąc już w domu, Jan poczuł, że ktoś tam był.
2. Będąc już w domu, Jan poczuł, że ktoś tam wcześniej był.
3. Będąc już w domu, Jan poczuł, że ktoś tam musiał być.
4. Będąc już w domu, Jan poczuł, że ktoś tam jest.

How do you understand them?

[BTW don't forget about the comma after "Będąc już w domu", it's a dependent clause - and yeah, there are a lot of commas in Polish writing and a lot of people don't think about half of them]

Hope it's more clear now. Especially as it comes to feelings, we don't change the tense of the subortinate part of sentence. For example:

Jan poczuł, że jest głodny.
[Jan felt that he was hungry.]
Dopiero po zjedzeniu poczuł, jak bardzo był głodny.
[Only after eating he felt how much he had been hungry.]

Genealogy / THE MEANING AND RESEARCH OF MY POLISH LAST NAME, SURNAME? [4501]


I explained the meaning of that surname earlier in this thread, Wójcik is a very popular name in Poland:


One possibility that comes to my mind is "Chrząszcz" (which means beetle), currently there are over 3,5k people of that surname living in Poland: moikrewni.pl/mapa/kompletny/chrz%25C4%2585szcz.html - I might be wrong so maybe someone has a better suggestion?

Life / Would getting a PW tattoo be seen as disrespectful in Poland? [7]

It's not even slightly disrespectful and I second everything written above. As a Pole, I can say that I feel honoured knowing that someone can still find a great inspiration in our history, as it seems you learned a lot before choosing the Polska Walcząca symbol.

The ideology behind it, simplified, was to never give up and reach for the freedom, therefore as a person who struggles with chronical depression I understand your choice. Besides that, there were many foreigners fighting for Poland back then. I didn't find any good version in English, but here's my rough translation from an excerpt taken straight from the Warsaw Uprising Museum's site (I'm not a native English speaker so sorry in advance for any mistakes):

"Along with the Poles, numerous representatives of other nationalities were fighting in the Warsaw Uprising. From the very first hours of the fight, in pursuance of the slogan "for our freedom and yours", they joined the Polish units. Among them, there were foreigners living in Warsaw before the war, soldiers escaped from POW camps, refugees from the forced labour in the Reich, as well as deserters from the German and Red armies. The most numerous among foreigners were Slovaks, Hungarians and French volunteers. There were also a few Belgian, Dutch, Greek, British and Italian people, one Romanian and one Australian."

1944.pl/o_muzeum/ekspozycja/1_pietro/39_obcokrajowcy_w_powstaniu/?lang=pl

There was even a Nigerian man (who was working as a jazzman in Warsaw before the outbreak of the war) participating in the Uprising, of a nickname Ali.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Agbola_O%27Browne

The point is, you don't have to be Polish to fight for Poland nor to embrace the meaning behind PW sign.