Life / Differences between Irish, British, Polish, American and other nations culture, tradition, music - loose talk [241]


You're right that internet translators are generally rubbish. It's impossible to fake a knowledge of Irish through such a thing because it translates literally and Irish for the most part can't be translated literally from English for many reasons.

Just for the craic I took a simple phrase 'put on your coat' which in Irish is 'chuir ort do chóta' and put it through Google translate and what did I get? A chur ar do chóta - never heard anyone say that in Irish! Another very basic example would be 'she is happy' In Irish this would be 'Tá áthas uirthi' (which literally means happiness is on her, emotions are always 'on' a person in the Irish language). Google Translate will give you 'bhfuil sí sásta' which is completely meaningless. However you could have 'AN bhfuil sí sásta?' which means 'is she pleased?'. Sásta means satisfied or pleased with, as in 'Tá sí sásta leis.........' she is pleased with something or other. If you want to ask if she's happy however, you'd say 'An bhfuil áthas uirthi? So yes, I do know more than 'a bit' of Irish. Tá níos mó ná beagán Gaeilge agam which translates as 'I have more than a little Irish' although of course poor old Google can't cope with that either! There you go now, ceacht a h-aon in our lovely language for you :)

Life / Why there is always around a horrible smell of sweat in Poland [220]


A little girl whom I was teaching, who had only recently arrived in Ireland, proceeded to go to the toilet in the school yard, though in fairness she squatted over what we call a 'shore', the drain thing under the water pipe on the outside of the building. Obviously she was from a poor family who had been unaccustomed to indoor sanitary arrangements.

At the same time during the summer I saw an American tourist squat on the pavement outside Park Łazienkowski within not more than 20 metres of a public toilet facility and proceed to her business, with her rear end facing the traffic! Now I'm sure she wouldn't do that in New York or Washington. Why does she think it's ok in Poland? Unfortunately it was one of those occasions when there wasn't a policeman in sight.

Life / Why there is always around a horrible smell of sweat in Poland [220]

Well she had that very special sartorial style favoured by American tourists! Also I heard her husband speaking to her, he was standing by waiting for her to finish......of course you're right, that doesn't mean she was American but it might be fairly assumed that she was. Anyway her American husband allowed her to commit this act so guilty as charged!

Life / Why there is always around a horrible smell of sweat in Poland [220]


As I said previously. I know you Americans don't understand the metric system but......... :D

Life / Differences between Irish, British, Polish, American and other nations culture, tradition, music - loose talk [241]


I'm just teasing Polly same as when you make those comments about the Irish 'whiskey soaked Micks' etc. Now what was the topic of this thread again - oh yes, smells in Poland. Can't say I've noticed it. You come across the odd whiffy person everywhere in the world.

Life / Differences between Irish, British, Polish, American and other nations culture, tradition, music - loose talk [241]


The Scots of the Highlands would refer to the English as 'Sasanachs' but that just derives from the Gaelic Sasanaigh meaning Saxon. Mind you it was said with a certain contemptuous tone. Very subtle. The Irish word for England is Sasana. I never heard the English called anything other than 'the English' or maybe Brits. We only insult our own!

Life / Differences between Irish, British, Polish, American and other nations culture, tradition, music - loose talk [241]


Eh, they had guitars back in the 1950s and they were played in rock and roll back then.
I think when you talk about rock and roll, you're talking about the development of rock music since the 1960s?


Now why doesn't that surprise me? I'm afraid it doesn't count as music though.

Life / Differences between Irish, British, Polish, American and other nations culture, tradition, music - loose talk [241]


Now, now, to jest bardzo nie ładne to call a lady 'rubbish'.


Ireland was an English colony for 800 years. The first wave of colonists were the Olde English as we call them, the Normans. They were Catholics of course and it was their practice to adopt the language and customs of the lands they colonised and to intermarry. The Irish surnames which begin with Fitz such as Fitzpatrick are Norman in origin,the Fitz deriving from the French 'fils' son, thus Fitzpatrick the son of Patrick etc. So although there was great resistance to the Normans we got on better with them than the later wave of English settlers who began to arrive in the 16th century. T

he final straw was Cromwell in the 17th century. These settlers persecuted the native Irish to an extent almost beyond belief. We stuck to our customs, language and culture despite their efforts to forcibly Anglicize us but the Famine of the 1840s took its toll on the language with around a quarter of the population dying or emigrating. The language went into decline and a period of revival began in the 1880s but by then English was firmly established. We had been bilingual for centuries before that but that was the end of Irish as a language in daily use to a large extent. That's one of the reasons why our Gaelic culture is so important to us because we managed to hang on to it through centuries of colonization by the British. Our language is probably actually the only thing that we lost and even at that, people like myself at least still have some knowledge of it.


Yes, and we don't have that problem in Ireland. Despite being not only a Catholic country, but one that Christianised much of Europe, the old pagan traditions survived alongside the Catholic ones. As for Hallowe'en (Samhain to give it its proper name) that dates back to Neolithic times.

Life / Differences between Irish, British, Polish, American and other nations culture, tradition, music - loose talk [241]


You are :) As Roz pointed out Fitz simply means 'son'. It derives from the French 'fils'. And as she says Fitzroy is a name for a royal bastard son, the 'roy' deriving from the French 'roi' meaning king. Irish names are quite complicated really, especially the feminine forms.

For unmarried women, the Irish patronym Mc (Irish word for son is 'mac') also has a feminine form 'Nic' (daughter)which is rarely used nowadays but you do come across it from time to time. Most women simply use the Mc form though some Irish speakers prefer to use the traditional feminine form. Then there's Ní also meaning daughter of. It's a corruption of Iníon Uí meaning daughter of.

It was the custom in the Irish education system to use the Irish forms of names and we always addressed our unmarried teachers as Iníon Uí......... for example Miss Ryan would be addressed as Iníon Uí Rian. Married women are Bean (pronounced ban) literally meaning 'woman of '. Some of the older teaches still like to use the Irish forms, especially the ones who are very keen Irish speakers.

The childrens' names also are written in their Irish form in the school registers and the roll is called in the mornings using the Irish forms. Although I have a very old Saxon surname (there's not many of us in Ireland despite what Sussexguy thinks!) it was ruthlessly Gaelicized, a Ní was stuck in front of it and the actual name was altered to try to make it sound more Irish! I remember the dilemma we had when the 'new Irish' as we now call them began arriving from Poland amongst other places as there was simply no way to give an Irish form to the surnames so they went into the register in their original forms.


Succesive governments have tried very hard to promote the Irish language and it is the official language of the country. However at this stage Irish will never be our first language again and to be honest it was a good thing for us that we adopted English.It was having English as our first language that allowed Irish emigrants to prosper to the extent that they did in places like America and Australia. It's what allows us to operate globally in business and so on.

The problem lies with they way Irish is taught within the education system. You know how hard it is to become fluent in a second language and that's basically what Irish is for Irish people. If the teaching methods are bad, then people don't learn effectively. At primary school level the Irish teaching is very good and the children really love Irish but once they reach secondary, it falls into the trap of way too much written work, formal grammar, boring texts to read etc. The kids simply lose interest and as the language becomes more advanced, it's more difficult, they're not making progress, they stop trying, you know what I mean. The summer colleges run in the Gaeltacht (native Irish speaking parts of Ireland)do a brilliant job of total immersion and the kids love it. Did you watch that clip of Coláiste Lurgan? It helps of course that the Irish are musical people so they can learn to sing this way in two weeks. I think it's great the way they take dance music or whatever, translate the lyrics to Irish and incorporate the Irish instruments like the fiddle and 'box' the melodeon. The video of 'Wake Me Up' sung in Irish is great stuff.

irishcentral.com/culture/entertainment/irish-college-teens-amazing-talent-cups-song-and-avicii-video-222995071-237775231.html

I know that Poland has much more culture than just 'folk' culture but to me there's two problems, one is that Polish folk culture is very regional. It belongs to the people of those regions but I don't think the nation as a whole really 'feel's that culture. It's something separate, to be observed or watched as a spectacle. For example Polish folk dancing is beautiful and so colourful with the magnificent costumes and you know you're watching living history, but, these dances are 'performed' if you get my meaning and you're not going to walk into a pub or a house and see people in their t-shirt and jeans get up and do those dances. Whereas in many parts of Ireland (where my own sister lives for example) this kind of thing still goes on regularly in people's homes. And it's cross generational. A child of seven will be playing the fiddle alongside a neighbour who's in his seventies. Now I'm sure that's how it was in Poland a hundred years ago, or perhaps not? Did people only dance and sing at festival times, dressed in their special costumes? Or did they dance every Saturday night as they did in Ireland? Could someone answer that question maybe?


Irish cuisine as such isn't the most exciting although it has improved greatly in the last twenty or thirty years. Certain traditional Irish dishes are delicious but the range is limited, nothing like the variety of Poland. The main reason for this again is historical. As a small island, we didn't have the influence of the bordering countries to east and west that formed Polish cuisine, as an English colonly our cuisine was influenced greatly by England but for the majority of people it was influenced more by extreme poverty. To give you an example Jonathan Swift wrote in 1720 about 'the miserable dress and diet and dwelling of the people' and how they were charged such enormous rents by their English landlords, that they were reduced to 'living in filth and nastiness, on a diet of buttermilk and potatoes without a shoe or stocking to their feet or a house so convenient as an English hog-sty to receive them'. Jonathan was of course an Anglo-Irish man and one of many such who saw the evils done by his own people and sought to draw attention to them and to right those wrongs. Indeed, after the departure of the last great Gaelic chieftains into exile, it was ironically, the Anglo-Irish middle classes who championed the cause of the poorest native Irish and led the fight for Irish freedom.

Anyway having said that, Ireland despite being so tiny, is one of the main producers of beef in the world, ranks in the top five. As for quality, as I said the cattle are fed entirely on natural pastures. They are hardly ever brought indoors because the climate is so mild and for the few weeks of the year that they are brought in, they're fed on natural silage harvested by the farmer from his own pastures. They are not given hormones in their feed or antibiotics. Every piece of beef you buy in Ireland is traceable (it's written on the pack you buy) back to the farm and the herd that it came from. Ireland has one of the best food safety records in the world. Our dairy products too are exported worldwide, even to China, because the quality is so high.

I've actually lived on a sheep farm (was renting a cottage there) so I've seen how the animals are kept and how well they're treated. I've seen the lambs in spring, I've seen the sheep being shorn outdoors in the fields in the summer. Three generations of the farmer's family would be there, really lovely to watch. Also there were cows in pasture across the road. They basically have a stress-free existence, fresh air, green grass, lots of space. Totally organic lifestyle, not crowded into sheds and pens.

But our public transport system is abysmal. That'll bring you some comfort I'm sure!

Life / Differences between Irish, British, Polish, American and other nations culture, tradition, music - loose talk [241]

That's very interesting Ziemowit. It's almost like two sides of the same coin. Ireland lost its language but retained its musical traditions, Poland vice versa. I was reading a bit about it and the conclusion was the wartime death toll and shifting of ethnic groups within Poland severely disrupted the continuity of folk traditions. The Communists endorsed folk music as a wholesome expression of national identity but controlled it in the form of 'official' folk troupes who gave (and still give) highly polished but somewhat stagey versions of the original. It said that 'for the most part the real stuff withered away as the image of folk music became tarnished by the bland official ensembles'.

Life / Differences between Irish, British, Polish, American and other nations culture, tradition, music - loose talk [241]

Up until about the 1950s the Irish would meet at the crossroads of the neighbouring villages and towns to dance every Saturday night. They'd often dance all night and go straight to mass on the Sunday morning. The Dancehall Act of the 1960s brought the dancing indoors but recently the custom has been revived. The great thing is that as it's an informal outdoor party, there's no age restrictions so the very young children can take part and all generations get together which is the natural way for people to live, not boxed off in age groups.

youtube.com/watch?v=ZZ0LUZUtziM

Ooh Ziemusz that's fun, guess the dance! I know what the Polonaise looks like so it's definitely not that. It looks pretty boisterous so I'm guessing oberek?? Their costumes look as if they've been heavily influenced by Riverdance, I doubt that decorous Polish maidens ever wore their skirts that short! And thank you very much for the information regarding the distinction between folk and national.

Life / Differences between Irish, British, Polish, American and other nations culture, tradition, music - loose talk [241]

Oh you are evil! I did say their costumes were influenced by Riverdance though! Yes, now what you've shown us there is the form of Irish dancing costume that became very popular in the 1960s, the costumes became every more elaborae and the false hair pieces were introduced at some point. I have seen kids dressed in this gear but it's becoming less popular now, thank God. However there are unfortunate mothers who spent hundreds of euros on these costumes and are determined to get use out of them so we'll see them being handed on for a while I'd say! I think it was an attempt to create a 'dancing costume' as worn by the European nations such as Poland.

We didn't have such fancy costumes again I suppose because of poverty. In Wicklow where I lived for a time, the old people would talk about how as recently as the 1950s many poorer children went barefoot and kept their shoes for schooldays. There was a woman with ten children and the kids stored their shoes amongst some rocks a couple of miles down the road from their cottage, carried their stockings with them and changed into the shoes and stockings when they were nearer to school, in order to save wear and tear. Shocking really isn't it?

Life / Differences between Irish, British, Polish, American and other nations culture, tradition, music - loose talk [241]


Well the four provinces do have differences but they are less marked and not quite so obvious than it might be in other countries. Also with the country being so small and the tradition of itinerant musicians and poets travelling around from place to place, I suppose songs, dances, stories etc spread around the country in that way. Then again we didn't have the ethnic diversity that old Poland had, one people, one culture I suppose.


The only way to get this kind of practice going again is for schools to organise it and get the kids out there doing it. The only problem I can see with that is that the Polish tendencey for perfectionism might take the fun out of it and turn the kids completely off. But the kids won't learn it at home so school has to take over the role of promoting these things and revitalise the customs. There's something very wrong when a Polish kid is clamouring for Irish dancing lessons (and they do you know) because they've seen Riverdance but they know nothing of their own folk traditions.

Life / Differences between Irish, British, Polish, American and other nations culture, tradition, music - loose talk [241]


Now that's a very good question. For some reason I always imagined it referred to a tuft of grass but I've just checked and apparently it can be either a tuft or clump of something (such as grass?) or a low footstool, so we're none the wiser as to what she was actually sitting on!


Yes, in the context of the sentence we would. We've seen enough of those old cowboy movies in our part of the world :)

Life / Differences between Irish, British, Polish, American and other nations culture, tradition, music - loose talk [241]


To be truthful it's more a tendency to neurosis. Poles are very neurotic and rather obsessive, just look at the hypochondria and constant worrying about their livers. Also Poles treat things like folk dance with a sort of reverence which strips it of its original function as a form of celebration and expression of joy.


Ok then Citizen Troll.


He did indeed, fair play to him. Good man Ziemusz. Sadly, CT you can't understand that Irish people love that kind of thing and it only endears Ziemusz to me even further. As for the pic he posted, I thought it might be a kind of new wave in folk dance, you know the younger people trying to do some fusion thing, make the costumes a bit funky (in the Riverdance style) etc.

Life / Differences between Irish, British, Polish, American and other nations culture, tradition, music - loose talk [241]


We don't have time..........


I see you've been influenced by my illustrious countryman Oscar Wilde. Now tell me to which of Oscar's epithets I refer.


Can you tell me of a few such Polish dances?


Now that is the sort of silliness up with which I will not put - Winston Churchill.

Life / Differences between Irish, British, Polish, American and other nations culture, tradition, music - loose talk [241]

Heavens to Betsy! You've been suspended, now how did that happen?


It's a quote attributed to Churchill. An overly zealous young assistant (probably much like yourself) altered the text of a speech that Churchill had written because one of the sentences ended with a preposition. Churchill made a note in the margin 'this is the kind of nonsense up with which I will not put'. Churchill was thus demonstrating to the minion that he was well aware of the rules of grammar and that he would write as he chose and scatter his prepositions wherever he wanted them to be and that one altered his words at one's peril. Stalin on the other hand, wouldn't have said anything, he would have just sent him to Siberia for fifty years.


In what respect does it commemorate a sad event? From what I can see, having looked it up, it's a slow, gentle dance in the nature of a lullaby, not a lament. I've never heard of a folk dance that's in the form of a lament, though there's plenty of 'sad' dances in more formal dance forms, such as ballet. Perhaps Ziemowit could enlighten us as he's very well versed in cultural matters relating to Poland.


Well sadly as it turns out, none at all, as I most unaccountably confused Wilde with George Bernard Shaw. This is a constant problem when one has a plethora of illustrious countrymen. It refers to a quote regarding dancing which has been attributed to Wilde, Robert Frost (but he doesn't count because he's American) and Shaw, but Shaw is the most likely source.


Well, he didn't wear dresses so in what way did he dress like a girl? If you mean the long hair, floppy bow round his neck and his cloak, that was standard dress for Bohemian types at the time, artists, poets, musicians, many of whom were very much heterosexual with a string of ladies in tow. It was part of what was known as the Dress Reform movement, a reaction against the stiff, uncomfortable, restrictive and often unhealthy clothing of the Victorians. For ladies it meant soft, flowing dresses worn without corsets, for men loose suits with soft collars instead of the startched things around their necks.


If I were Ziemo.......if you're going to go around correcting the English of native speakers your own must be above reproach. The alternative is to hand in your trolling badge at the Kremlin customer service desk, relax and find another way to engage with people.


I think you're confusing him with Polly (Polonius). I'm constantly scolding him for the good of his soul whilst I get along famously with Ziemowit apart from the odd mild and very civilised difference of opinion.

News / Kukiz and Petru - newly emerging political stage in Poland [57]


Polly it's simply ridiculous to hear you referring to English as Anglo-Jabber especially when it's your native language as much as Polish.

Now having said that, I agree that Polish deserves to keep its diacritics just as Irish does. We are beginning to see them disappearing as people drop the 'fadas' from tneir names in order to make them easier for foreigners to deal with. I don't agree with that at all. Here's an interesting and rather amusing discussion (in Irish with subtitles) which could apply equally to Polish. It's only four minutes long.

I even know a second generation Polish woman in Ireland (in her mid thirties) who can't pronounce her own surname properly, stumbles over it when she attempts to say it and wha's worse, doesn't care! Mr Atch was disgusted and despairing. He still talks about it!

youtube.com/watch?v=BRi31M-7Id8


But it's not an English surname and unless you anglicize it completely and translate it (something to with ducks isn't it??) then I feel the accent should be retained.

Polonia / Let's talk about Sweden and other Scandinavian countries [236]

Did the OP say that he only plans to visit occasionally?? I don't see how he could set up a construction and development company on that basis.


That's funny! I'd say the exact opposite. A wonderful place for a holiday but not that great a place to live for various reasons.


And they're a mixed bag. Their spoken English is frequently anything but fluent, very halting and hesitant and their verbal translations are sometimes not completely accurate. I remember once using a translator for something (I was required to by law to use one for the business in hand) and he mistranslated something I'd said. It was something quite basic (which was how I could tell he'd cocked it up!) so God only knows what a mess he may have made of the more complicated stuff. To be fair I don't think he made a mistake so much as took liberties in unnecessarily paraphrasing what I'd said, but it resulted in an inaccurate statement. Anyway the business didn't need to proceed any further so there were no dire consequences. But all the same........

News / A better Polish solution: aiding refugees in their home region [29]

Polly humanitarian aid to Syria is not an alternative that Poland has come up with as a solution. It is standard practice for all European Union members, all of whom have already contributed significant aid to both refugees and those still in Syria.

News / Abortion still under control in Poland [2986]



No it's the truth. It's what lead to the death of Savita Halappanavar in Ireland a few years ago. The foetal heartbeat was present so although she was extremely ill, the hospital refused to perform a termination despite her husband's repeated requests. He was informed 'this is a Catholic country'. The medical team did not detect that Ms Halappanavar was suffering from septacaemia which would under Irish law, have actually allowed the termination. Both mother and baby died. Very sad. So even though our law was more liberal than the presently proposed law for Poland, it's such a tight margin that tragedies like that can occur. If the purpose of abortion controls is to prevent loss of life, it's very ironic when it actually contributes to them.

News / Abortion still under control in Poland [2986]


Not solely a medical error. Read the facts of the case. The mother was admitted to hospital suffering a miscarriage. The pregnancy was at seventeen weeks and the foetus would have been unlikely to survive. The team could have induced labour but didn't as a foetal heartbeat was present. Although the mother was becoming more and more ill, they did not recognize that her life was in danger, the only circumstance under which they could have performed an abortion. The woman was admitted to hospital on a Saturday night and the baby did not die until the Wednesday by which time the mother was so ill that it was too late. If they had been able to abort the foetus during the initial stages of miscarriage, the mother's life could have been saved.

News / Abortion still under control in Poland [2986]

The mother died on Friday so she was clearly very close to death by the time the baby died. The pregnancy had already gone into crisis when the woman arrived at the hospital and the baby could not be saved so even on compassionate grounds alone you'd think they would have induced labour. That was what the woman herself requested, not an abortion as such. Instead they let the child die inside her during which time the mother was in severe pain. The whole thing was horrendous and the country was absolutely shocked by it.

News / Abortion still under control in Poland [2986]


Not sure what you're claiming here. According to her husband it was her first pregnancy. But even if she had miscarried a child previously that does not necessarily mean that she can't have another child. Many women do. Some are advised not to. Was that so in her case?


Are you suggesting that the mother had an underlying medical condition which made it inadvisable for her to become pregnant? Reference was made to her underlying medical condition in the Catholic media but in the context of the infection which killed her, in the sense that it was not the baby per se which killed her, but rather E-coli resulting in septicaemia. If you have additional reliable information about this case then provide a link, it would be interesting.

There are two pertinent issues in this case. One is 'medical misadventure', that is failures in her treatment. The other is the abortion law.
The abortion law in Ireland allows for termination when a mother's life is in danger.
The medical team did not detect the threat to the mother's life.
Therefore a termination was not performed.

However, and this is the crux of the matter, the medical team, did know that the child was not going to survive, that miscarriage was inevitable and yet when the mother and father, requested that birth be induced, doctorrs felt unable to proceed simply on that basis due to the foetal heartbeat being present, as it would have been 'abortion on demand' and against the law.

Inducing the birth would not in itself have saved her life, but once the child had been delivered, it might have been more obvious to the medical team that the mother's pain was the result of something other than the miscarriage. She arrived in hospital on the Saturday having already been ill for two days, but the child did not die until the Wednesday. So for all those days her infection was taking greater hold till it reached a point of no return. If the law were different and the hospital had been able to induce birth on the night she arrived in hospital,who knows? And that's the point.

The coroner in the subsequent inquiry recommended that the law be reformed to provide additional clarification. If the abortion law were not an issue in the case, the coroner would not have felt it necessary to make that recommendation.

Finally and take note, the results of the subsequent inquiry by the Health Service, concluded that

'The interpretation of the law related to lawful termination in Ireland is considered to have been a material contributory factor'


And there's an example of the disrespect shown towards a woman who is herself a mother. Roz is a mother of two children whom she has carried through pregnancy, given birth to, loved, protected, nurtured and cared for to young adulthood and for most of that time, without the support of their father. She is far better placed than you to discuss this issue. She knows what it is to be a mother and to have the life of a child grow within her and love it even before it is born.

The huge stumbling block in this debate is that a man can never know what it feels like to be a woman and to be pregnant. There are not many women who trot off happily without a care in the world to casually abort their child. There are not many women who treat abortion as a form of contraception. There are a few nut jobs (Sinead O'Connor springs to mind with her three abortions is it?) but they are very much the exception. Abortion is an exceptional and last resort for most women. I, like the majority of normal women, would be horrifed and disgusted to see a world where abortion was treated as a casual thing that wasn't a big deal. It is. That's why most women carry on with their unplanned pregnancy and have the child anyway.


As for that crude, sarcastic comment about severely deformed or disabled children........

Have you ever spent time around the parents of a severely disabled child? And seen the love and devotion and suffering of those parents? Mothers do not abort disabled children because they are an incovenience. Have you reflected at all on the shock, the grief, the fear that a woman experiences when she's told that her child, the child that she has possibly longed for and planned for with her partner, will be born severely disabled. And whether she terminates the pregnancy or goes ahead, her life and the life of the father, will be permanently marked by that tragedy. I don't think any mother or father can ever get over it. You demonstrate such a total lack of empathy, compassion or understanding of human beings that you're simply unfit to be debating this topic. You're entitled to your views of course but you're not actually capable of engaging in any meaningful debate on the topic.

News / Abortion still under control in Poland [2986]


Ireland has probably the most restrictive abortion law in Europe. Over 90% of the indigenous population of Ireland identifies itself as Catholic and yet 87% of those polled earlier this year, stated that they want to see our abortion laws reformed. That hardly sits very well with the image of the 'loonie lefties' and 'radical feminists'. It's ordinary, normal people who are pressing for these reforms, not nutters.

I doubt very much indeed whether you have the patience to read the following link, but one can live in hope I suppose. Here's the full report. The survey was conducted by one of Ireland's most highly respected pollsters.

redcresearch.ie/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/157316-%E2%80%93-Amnesty-International-Feb-2016-040316-Press-Release.pdf

News / Abortion still under control in Poland [2986]

Polly what's the source of your claim that Poland leads in foetal surgery? America leads in this procedure and it's hardly known in Europe. The Americans trained the physicians in the few European centres where it's peformed and although Poland has expressed an interest they are only novices, certainly not leaders in the field. Spain and Switzerland are the European leaders in the field.

News / Abortion still under control in Poland [2986]


You don't really know your history very well do you? Women had far greater freedom in the West a thousand years or fifteen hundred years ago than they had five hundred years ago. Christianity and its reinvention of the female ideal (and yay Christianity, I am soooo a Christian) robbed women of a good many freedoms they had previously enjoyed. For example Viking women had all the independence and freedoms enjoyed by twentieth century women, Irish women under the old Irish system had equal rights with men including the right to enter all professions open to men and served amongst other things a judges under the Brehon legal system.

Also Irony, Susan B Anthony et al are not 'early feminists'. They come very far down the line. The early feminists are women like Mary Wollstencraft. You could also say that some of the founders of the religious orders and the Abbesses of the great convents were also feminists. They managed to get out from under the patronage and control of men to a great extent and forge an independent existence at a time when Christian women were chattels of the men in their families. Also the later ones like Nano Nagle and Catherine McCauley went out into the world from their convents mixing hands on with the poorest and roughest people at a time when women of their class usually maintained a safe distance. Charity was ok as long as you sat at home and sewed garments for the poor or dropped a shilling in a begging bowl but women were not encouraged to involve themselves with the destitute. Those women who abandoned a comfortable middle class extistence to do so went against the social norms of the times as much as a woman who wanted to study science or smoke a cigarette in public.

Language / The "end piece" of a loaf of bread in Polish [80]


What I find very odd is that there's no Polish word for pastry. Everything is ciasto 'cake' in my understanding. Thus puff pastry is 'ciasto Francuskie' which literally means French cake. It's not very specific is it and French pastry is often used for savoury dishes so it seems odd to refer to it as cake. Also what would you call shortcrust pastry? Ciasto Angielskie? Steak and kidney pie made with English cake!

Language / The "end piece" of a loaf of bread in Polish [80]

Thanks very much for the explanation Kpc. That makes more sense, ciasto as dough in that context ie French dough but then again, why is there no separate word for dough? Why is it interchangeable with cake?

Ciasto as a biccie I already understand although again it seemed odd to me at first, the same word for two very different things. Many biscuits are not at all cake-like. I know the difference between herbatniki and ciasteczki but it does seem to me that there are biscuits which are in neither category, not quite substantial enough to be ciasto but not quite small and crispy enough to be herbatniki, but they have to be ruthlessly forced into one or the other!

Language / The "end piece" of a loaf of bread in Polish [80]


Yes I do understand that. I think pastry is not really a part of traditional Polish dishes is it? The 'pie' is a very British thing. Also the way in which meat is butchered so differently in Europe is something very hard to get the head round. I really miss being able to buy a nice joint of beef on the bone for roasting.


To me they're just two different varieties of cherry, one being slightly sweeter than the other. I think the sourer one is lighter in colour. I made jam in the summer using the darker one. It didn't set very well so I used it to sweeten rhubarb crumble. I had much better success with the raspberries and the plums gave the best set. All very yummy though!