Moving to Poland from Canada

For Hungarians and Icelanders especially.
When first in Budapest in the mid-90's, I was seated with a friend at the bar in Gundel's.
When I proceeded to order in Hungarian, the barkeep claimed he couldn't understand one bloody word I said!
Meanwhile, his English pronunciation was nearly incomprehensible 😄

It depends where.. in small towns maybe yeah but in larger cities I don't think foreigners speaking Polish isn't that unusual anymore.

Warsaw might be different since capital cities usually are and is currently undergoing the transition from Polish to International Capital City that's more like other Capitals than other cities in the country that usually accompanies increased prosperity.

Right, particularly with migrants.

What migrants?

Yes, though depends where. On the Targowek estate for example or in Szmulki or the bit behind the women's prison where the city put rent dodgers that they have an obligation to house, it's a bit different.


Remember, some acquire the language by speaking it, some had learnt to a conversational level or more than that before and some in between that. Some have partners who speak their language, some don't. Language acquisition is a strange and wonderful thing. Maf wrote about semi-natives and I'd argue that there's a semi semi semi native status involving some limited exposure at an early age. There are white people in Bradford etc who speak a bit of Punjabi because they played with schoolfriends when they were 9 or whatever and lots of people who didn't hear enough of a language to acquire it but heard enough at an early age for there to be some sort of 'imprint'.

Maf,
Poland too has her share of "Gastarbeiter", though way, way far fewer than, say, Germany".

I wouldn't call them migrants (which in modern parlance refers more to a different kind of person who either doesn't intend to work or who is unemployable, hardly any of those in Poland).

I sometimes like to go to a local flea market held on saturdays on the edge of town by a shopping center in an area with lots of 'logistics' centers and warehouses. The bus is one of those that goes about once an hour on the weekend and not many passengers. But often there are obvious non-Poles on the bus who appear to be going to work. There are also some bus drivers from India, once I overheard an Indian driver address a couple of other Indians as they got off... I think I overheard the words Kairala and Tamil so I'm assuming they were saying where they're from. I've also heard Spanish speakers on the same bus (couldn't hear enough to place the accent but I think they were Venezuelan).

Most of these workers are here temporarily (or it is assumed they are) and people are mostly not concerned about whether they know Polish or not as long as they dont' deal with the public.

On the other hand, children have always been the engine of assimilation. Last summer visiting a botanical garden in town there was a couple who seemed to be Pakistani or Indian muslim and they were with a very small daughter who was happily singing children's songs in Polish... and even back in the 1990s Vietnamese kids here mostly spoke to each other in Polish.

Same in Berlin during the early 2000's and those Vietnamese news dealers. They didn't know German from a hole in the wall!

Frankly, I'd prefer to live in Poland or EU than in Canada. There is no advantage to being in Canada right now. It is cold too and you have to learn basic French.

Well, in Poland you have to know Polish, so your argument's not clear.

Largely among nihilistic racists. Weaponising words.


That's sort of how it is everywhere. Those Brits, Seppos and Anzacs in the compounds in Saudi usually can't even order a coffee or give directions in Arabic.


Always always. People often need reminding that nobody learns anything faster than a child acquires language.


Piece of p1ss. Ce n'est pas du tout difficile pour un locuteur des polonais ou anglais, et de toute façon, la caste économiquement privilégiée en Pologne et en r*SSie le parlait, y compris entre eux, pendant très longtemps. Bien sûr, ça aide si tu as eu des cours deux fois par semaine entre 7 et 20 ans; cependant, ce n'est pas putain de sorcier.

Not only that, but a type of French that's far cooler than that spoken in France.... I don't know French but I've always thought that if I had to learn I try to make Quebecois my base... I can easily distinguish Quebecois and French French. In the last few years I've watched several series from Quebec and they're wild.

This is true. They seem nice people too.

West African French is nice too and they're forgiving of mistakes, unlike in France. very different from the 'le plume de ma tante est dans le jardin' French they taught badly in British schools.

It's based on Picard dialect from the 18th century, Canadian French.

What a ridiculous statement! The Canadian climate is not that different from Poland, warm summers and cold winters.
But why would any Canadian need to learn basic French?I speak French fluently and have to listen very hard to understand French Canadians.
Why would the average Canadian need to learn this minority language in Canada?

Go to Montreal and speak no French then you'll feel like an American speaking no Spanish in Mexico.

A sop to mitigate Quebecois separatism.

I speak French fluently but struggle to understand Canadian French.But I am sure that more French Canadians can speak English than English Canadians can speak French.

@Miloslaw
Some don't. It's traditionally the poorest and least educated part of 'white' Canada.

Jon, you didn't say what part of Canada you were referring to.

Quebec? One of the problems was that Montreal at least was richer than a lot of Canada and attracted English speakers who weren't eager to learn French so now there's an English speaking minority.

Still there are a lot of bilinguals. Some years ago at a conference I befriended a trio of women from Quebec all of whom were bilingual to various degrees. One was an English speaker who also spoke fluent French (with an audible accent), another a French speaker who spoke fluent English (with an accent) and the third was close to a 50/50 bilingual (beloved in linguistic theory and very rare in the real world).

@mafketis

Yeah, but Canadian French is still a challenge for French speakers like me.

Paradoxically, West African French is a great way into the language for English speakers.


Quebec and the small towns outside Montreal.

Off to le lit now due to a maly powrot tomorrow to la terre même de Dieu, à savoir le Yorkshire

I can understand them much better than French Canadians.

I know someone who's fluent in French and says their brain doesn't recognize Quebecois as French.... I'm the same way with written Argentine Spanish, I can read things from Spain or Mexico easily enough but from Argentina.... my mind just kind of clouds up.

Canadian French is merely archaic French, time warp language, which has changed little since the first settlers to Canada.

There is no such language as American.

It is English, but in a bastardised form.

Americans take their language for granted and indeed don't usually refer to it as "American", but simply as English, period.
As I stated in a prior post, Americans don't like it if foreigners live here with zero knowledge of our national language, whereas by the same token Poles for instance aren't crazy about foreigners arriving in their country expecting everyone automatically to know English.