Polish Nursery Rhymes

Yes!! Oh my gosh! That's it! Eee! I'm going to keep hunting for the rest - THANK YOU!! 😊

Is there a song about a goldfish?

Mama złotą rybkę, rybke rybke ryba?

Does that sound familiar or part of a song?

@Kushy82▲ 0▼ 0

Trying to understand what a few words of this rhyme or song my father would sing;
"Na zielony ( Green)" then the next word is the one I cannot recall, but it sounded like "wensa" or "wansa".
He was born in 1923 his parents were from Poland. I think he knew this song or poem when he was a child.

@girlscientist▲ 0▼ 0

I'm searching for a child's fingerplay rhyme which names various grains, then ends with "and the rooster says, 'Cookedy Coo.'" My husband tries to repeat what he recalls his mother and grandmother saying, but I'm pretty certain his pronunciation/recall is off. My daughter and her children would like to learn it, but we'd like to get it correctly. My husband says something like "Bobek, groshek, vitchka, sneetchka, Okem starkey Cookedy Coo." Is this familiar to anyone. Would love to learn it correctly!

@bookworm▲ 0▼ 0

Impossible to track down. Must be a local rhyme which didn`t make it into popular culture. There were hundreds if not thousands of such rhymes coz each family could invent their own ones.

@pawian▲ 0▼ 0

I don't know the rhyme either - but bobek is faba beans (diminutive of bób), groszek is pea(s) (diminutive of groch), wyczka (diminutive of wyka) is vetch - no idea what sneetchka is - I have no idea what "Okem starkey" is supposed to mean either (Okem may be o kim (about whom) or okiem) - the Cookedy coo part is spelled kukuryku in Polish

@gumishu▲ 0▼ 0

that's "na zielonej łące" most probably (Polish ł is the same sound as English w)

@gumishu▲ 0▼ 0

aka fava bean or broad bean...

@mafketis▲ 0▼ 0

yes, indeed - I don't think it has ever been actually called faba bean in English - think it's always fava bean - my mistake

@gumishu▲ 0▼ 0

I think most Americans only know 'fava bean' from Hannibal Lecter... I'd always called them broad beans. I'd never had them fresh though before Poland... In the US I had only had snacks, some from Peru where they just throw it into a fire (very hard, tooth hazard) and Chinese (where they deep fry the total crap out of them).

@mafketis▲ 0▼ 0

I understand it is completely off-topic, now - but I honestly thought fava beans is some American borrowing from some Latin American speech - and from what you say I gather it's a British word

@gumishu▲ 0▼ 0

well fava comes from Italian.... I think fava was used some in America (esp Italian Americans) but not a common name, I had no idea what fava beans were when Silence of the Lambs came out and though I did know broad beans I didn't connect the two

@mafketis▲ 0▼ 0

The same. Over here they're called broad beans.

@Feniks▲ 0▼ 0

@bookworm
My grandmother also recited something really similar! She always said that it was about various types of green beans, and the last one got 'ejected', flew away? She said something similar to "snetchka", but her pronunciation was closer to "swineczka", which is a colloquial diminutive of "swinska", meaning little hog/piglet. Which could very well be part of the rhyme, and my or her memory of the rhyme's meaning was faulty. She came from a part of Bucovina (now Ukraine), but her mother was from Poland, and her side of the family lives in the western part of Poland as we last heard from them (around 40 years ago). Would love to know the proper speeling of this rhyme...

@Fecskelany▲ 0▼ 0

@crazyamyraz
For your question #96 on 26 Mar 2009 - Here is what my family recalls from my Polish American grandparents and parents:
In Polish:
Abraham, nie chodz tam, dziobie myszka robi - amm
In English:
Abraham, don't go there, the mouse is pecking - amm (and little pinch on the baby's nose)

@jmcar4▲ 0▼ 0