Food / Your all time favourite Polish Dishes! [108]


OMG, I'm busted :(

Life / School system in Poland? [59]


I have no idea if these schools are good, I don't live in Poznań, it's just what I found on the net:

pbis.edu.pl - Poznań British International School[/url]

and another one (it's rather a Polish school, their web page seems to be still under construction)

I Prywatne Liceum Ogólnokształcące - IB School No 1002

akademiasmyka.pl - A kindergarten[/url]

Language / Word order; simple & continuous tenses; definite/indefinite articles [13]

1. you're more or less correct, not only verbs, but also nouns are highly inflected, so you usually have a few options in Polish sentences, although some word orders sound more "natural" and some are used in very specific contexts (like poetry) or to to put an accent on a part of the statement. Generally, we tend to use the "simple" word order (subject + verb + object) the most.

another (short) thread about Word Order

2. Usually rendered with the verb aspects (imperfective and perfective)
"niedokonane"/imperfective - repetitive, incomplete actions, often correspond to continuous tenses in English (kupuję = I'm buying, kupowałem = I was buying)
"dokonane"/perfective - usually complete actions often correspond to simple tenses in English (kupię = I'll buy, kupiłem = I bought / I've bought)

Unfortunately, there are many exceptions from that simple rule: https://polishforums.com/archives/2005-2009/language/share-perfective-imperfective-verbs-17963/

3. A tough one for Slavic learners, as there's no such thing, we usually don't need any distinction, unless the context really requires it (then for "the" you can add in Polish "ten (masculine) / ta (feminine) / to (neutral)" = this. And for "a/an" you can use in Polish "jakiś/jakaś/jakieś" = any/some), but the articles are definitely a foreing concept for a speaker of Polish, and it takes much time and practice to understand the need in English for those pesky little words.

https://polishforums.com/language/use-articles-21114/

Food / Do Polish people really love cabbage ?? [78]


I'm afraid your boyfriend went to the cabbage in disguise of pierogi, in order to make you less worried about his cabbade-addiction :)

Food / Poland's Patyczki (meat-on-a-stick) [33]


that would be "paluszki", but I agree with pgtx, it sounded like szaszłyki description (if a voice from a vegetarian matters), maybe "patyczki" was a regional/dialectal name for it used in some areas.

Life / Which on the list of Polish girl's names do you like the most? [67]

I like Julia and Klaudia on that list (also Izabela and Emilia, but less).
And you could create a poll (with single or multiple choice option), there's such an option when you start a new thread.

Life / Which on the list of Polish girl's names do you like the most? [67]


Yes, you are.

Life / Mobile phone companies in Poland [21]


Yes.

Language / The Polish language - it's bloody hard! [210]


no cheating? then congrats, this sentence is 100% correct (also stylistically)

Language / Ukrainian language similar to Polish? [236]


Witam was. Rozumiecie mnie po ukraińsku?
of course the Russian word (that I remembered from my school times) ponimat' was useful in this case :)

Language / Idiomatic Polish [65]

Just one, I don't want to make a long list,
Pluć sobie w brodę (to spit in one's/own beard) = to regret

Law / "FART" shop in Poland - WHAT DOES THIS SHOP SELL? [55]

Fart shop in Poland is not a problem, what is bugging me is the Norwegian lightbulbs company that sells its product with the original name (Osram) in Poland. I'm sure they had been informed what it meant before they started their business here.

Law / Online Payment in Poland [13]


Do you speak (or at least read) Polish? If not, then the whole project might be too hard (as you'd need too much things translated).


Well, I think it hasn't much to do with the transaction costs. (althoug I don't have a first-hand experiences and information) I believe eBay simply screwed up, they entered our market (with the localized Polish version) too late, Allegro was already well-established and trustworthy (as much as online auctions can), being on the market for several years, it had a big client base, so nobody was rushing to sell/buy at eBay.

Besides (according to my friend, a regular seller at Allegro) eBay started badly in Poland, they had some serious problems (technical or organizational - the whole comments system was flawed and people were abusing it to boost their positive image as sellers), so many people, who checked them out of curiosity, returned to Allegro that was running more smoothly.

I'm sure they'll do well in the future, because they are big enough elsewhere, but they lost much time, just like for example PayPal, not present in Poland for too long, and when they entered the Polish market, you could basically only use them to pay, not to receive money. I opened an account with them but was disappointed with the limited offer, so I used them a few times and forgot about my account :)

And another problem with eBay and similar foreign companies (not depending on them, but influencing the market) are the spedition costs of European posts to Poland, I don't know if it has changed, but for years it was twice cheaper to send from Germany to let's say Sicily or Greece than to Poznań that is only 300 km away from Berlin.

Food / Mother of all hangovers....Polish Beer! [71]


Aren't Lech and Tyskie made by the same company (Kompania Piwowarska, of course with some foreign owners/shareholders)

Language / Idiomatic Polish [65]

An idiomatic expression for today:
"wyskoczyć jak filip/Filip z konopii" (to jump out like a hare/Phillip from hemps - the spelling with maiuscule "f", Filip, has been common, but according to the linguists, filip here is an old Polish word for "zając" = a hare, not a male first name) - it means to come with something out of the blue, to say/propose something surprisingly enough, and usually this "something" isn't connected with the previous discussion.

Language / Does anybody know of a list of Polish-English False Friends and True Friends? [60]

Winston Churchill was a false friend :)

Travel / Getting from Krakow to Warsaw [99]

I checked too, for an IC (3 hrs journey) you'd have to pay 136 PLN in 1st class and 102 PLN in 2nd class, I think you can safely choose the 2nd class :)

for "Express" (8.00 AM from Kraków Główny, 10.55 at Warszawa Centralny) the prices are 121 PLN (1st class) and 87 PLN (2nd class)

Love / Polish Pet Names For Girls. [156]


Do you mean those?



Well, all of them are diminutive forms, in the Vocative case.
żabko - little frog,
kotku - kitty? (little cat),
rybko - little fish,
kwiatuszku - little flower
aniołku (aniołek is Nominative case) - little angel.

There's also "misiu" (little bear, teddy bear) - I hate it, but I've heard many couples using it.

Language / What are some loanwords in the Polish language? [24]

Too many to start a list. Name a domain of life in which you're interested, so we can narrow the list.
Other important influences:
First of all the Latin, it was only in the Renaissance (14th century in Italy, but 16th century in Poland) when people started using their own languages for "noble" purposes (so not just everyday speech, but also literature, philosophy, sciences etc.), so it's natural that also Polish has many Latin terms. Ancient Greek is important in scientific names, especially prefixes and suffixes (for example tele-, -logia) often combined with stems from other languages.

Germans were popular settlers on Polish lands, and many cities were located (=founded) on German laws, hence the terminology is often borrowed from German (ratusz for Town council, burmistrz for a mayor).

Italian left many words in Polish culture and some in cuisine (and I don't mean only pizza, but also words borrowed in 17th century, when a Polish king married a woman of the Sforza family who introduced vegatables here, previously unknown, because Poland had no overseas colonies, so we weren't eating for example "pomidor"). Many terms in music, like anywhere in the word, in big part thanks to the Italian invention of opera.

After Italian the French (Enlightment) became the cultural capitol of Europe, so we naturally have many French words as well.
Other maybe less significant as for numbers:
Years of fights with the Ottoman Empire resulted in borrowing many military terms from Turkish.
Also in the Middle Ages we were borrowing from Czech, but I guess those words are harder to trace, because our languages were quite close, so many words do "look" like typically Polish after so much time.

Some Hungarian, Russian (especially because of the partitions of Poland between Russia, Germany and Austria, 1772-1918, also another wave of strong German influences).

Of course you can find other source languages too, but those loanwords came mostly indirectly (like Arabic words via Spanish, Turkish, Italian).

Edit: I probably omitted Lithuanian and Ukrainian (although I'm afraid Ukrainian wasn't considered a separate language), we had a POL-LIT Commonwealth going for 400 years, which included about half of the current Ukraine, so there must have been some influences from the locals as well.

Language / DOES POLISH LACK A WORD FOR STEPSISTER & STEPBROTHER? [15]

If two divorced people marry each other, but they don't adopt the child(ren) of the new wife/husband, then the children are not related at all, they are just underage strangers leaving under the same roof :(

So I guess the word "przybrany" could be used here, because it's not a legal term (which would be "przysposbiony/adoptowany" for a child).

Language / DOES POLISH LACK A WORD FOR STEPSISTER & STEPBROTHER? [15]


I don't agree.
Przybrany refers to something "taken as your own", "assumed", it's not a legal term, it's not restricted to parent-child relation, it can be also used in other contexts, like "przybrane imię" (about a pseudonim/nickname).

As for


- it's too subjective to decide. In my opinion a sentence like "My stepmother is leaving for holiday" conveys absolutely no information about your emotional stance towards your stepmother.

Travel / Poland wildlife and similar wild life where you live. [240]


You could open a free account on photobucket (or some similar site), upload all the files in the original resolution and post links here :)

Love / The age of consent in Poland is only 15 [147]

This thread needs reviving, because of today's news No.1

Language / ssać - please conjugate [15]


I disagree,

Present tense
singular:
1. ssę
2. ssiesz
3. ssie
plural:
1. ssiemy
2. ssiecie
3. ssą

Imperative
3. person plural
niech ssą (other forms given by JustysiaS are correct)

Language / ssać - please conjugate [15]


It's regional, I guess.
I'm from central Poland and I always use 'ssę', 'ssie' etc.
There are some verbs with different endings ("-ę" / "-am" opposition in 1st person singular) depending on the area where they are used, for example:

depczę - deptam
głaszczę - głaskam
I've been using "depczę", "głaszczę" for the most of my life, then living in Wielkopolska I found out that the forms like "deptam", "głaskam" are correct too (because at first I thought it's a common mistake in Poznań :)

Language / WHY IS SATELITA MASCULINE? [25]

Guys, learning Latin (or at least Italian/Spanish) never hurts :)

With some exceptions (like "mężczyzna", "sędzia", "oferma") those words were borrowed from Latin, where they also presented this irregularity (-a ending and male gender).

Since this combination isn't natural for Polish, so the rarely used words (like "asteroida" or even "planeta") switched to the common sense gramatical gender quite smoothly.

Trying to change the gender of "mężczyzna" to female (because of -a ending) would be much more difficult :)
Originally it was "mąż" for a man (today "mąż" = husband), I don't know why they applied the typically female ending to it (or more precisely to the adjective "męski" = manly, you may find the ending -yzna in other words, "ojczyzna", "ojcowizna", "£emkowszczyzna", "golizna", "blizna", "łatwizna" etc., they are always femele gender).


Well, in German "das Weib" (a woman) and "das Mädchen" (a girl) both have a neuter gender, so Polish isn't the only language with such "problems".

Life / Polish Nursery Rhymes [243]


look at the first page of this thread, there's a similar question in this post (link)
and you'll some answers below (page 1, but also page 2 - aguha's post, there are many different versions of this text, so you have to choose the one that has most resemblance to what you remember.

btw, Aguha wrote:


that's incorrect, she got confused with another verb ("ważyła" - she weighted), but "warzyła" has nothing to do with measurements (weight), "warzyć" means "to boil, to cook" ("gotować" in modern Polish), the pronounciation of "ż" and "rz" is identical, hence the error.

History / What Was Poland like in the year 1988? [50]


Well, I don't know the life in a real prison, but you can read or see (in the movies) about people who spent years behind the bars and when they are released they struggle, because they learned how to live with the harsh, but simpler rules during their imprisonment and now the "real world" is too overwhelming, too complicated to start anew.

That's what this short poem (parable) was about. Those who were born in an oppressed country ("in the cage") didn't know any other life, so they tried to rationalize it, to find the positives (the owner supplied food and some basic security), while those who knew the life in a free world (with all its difficulties - like having to take care of themselves) still missed the freedom.

Ptaszki w klatce by Ignacy Krasicki, published 1779, after the first partition of Poland, 1772, before the second (1793) and the third partion (1795), so when only parts of Poland were divided between Russia, Preussia (today's Germany) and Austria)

"Czegoż płaczesz? — staremu mówił czyżyk młody —
Masz teraz lepsze w klatce niż w polu wygody".
"Tyś w niej zrodzon — rzekł stary — przeto ci wybaczę;
Jam był wolny, dziś w klatce — i dlatego płaczę".

English translation by Christopher Kasparek (from Wikipedia).


Written in the 18th century, it pretty much reflects what was happening under the communist rule in the years 1945-89. And what is happening today - many of the people born in the cage can't adapt to a new reality, where they are no longer given, what they need, but have to fight for it (like wild, free animals).

Poland, after so many years, or even centuries, under foreign rules, isn't as strong as it should be, so we won't have soon the western European standards of living. The price for the political freedom is a lower social security (lower wages, pensions, more unemployment), and loosened social/familiar relations (along with other cultural changes mentioned by Polonius3), hence many people (especially older ones) are unhappy with all what happened after 1989, because they had adapted well to their lives in the cage and then they had to adapt to a new situation, and quite often they failed. I think, we can't really blame them for it, still it pisses me off sometimes, and I wished they could all travel back in time to their idealized cages.

Those sentiments are strengthened especially when people see how the long-time oppressors were able to arrange their lives: most state-owned companies were privatized and the ex-communist prominents, including the cruel secret police members, got the lion shares in those companies, thus gaining the economical power, or rather keeping it, which gave them of course strong influences in politics as well.

So I can risk a statement that the transition to an indipendent Polish state in 1918 (after the WWI), after over 100 years of occupation by Russians, Germans and Austrian, was still easier than what Poland had to face in 1989, because the commies left for the next genarations only bare bones of a country.

Life / Polish movies with English subtitles [87]

Yes, they are. I PM'ed eras77, so she knows more about the recent releases (I know she got her hands on Barwy ochronne, but I'm not sure if she still needs any of the other films).

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


We say "trzy grosze" (for "two cents") in Polish, inflation :(