Can you BE Polish without SPEAKING Polish in the US?

Knowing that one's ancestors are Polish and thus referring oneself as a Polish-American is not nonsense.


What a stupid bigoted generalization about Polish-Americans' knowledge of European history.


Anyone who puts forth such a stupid staw-man fallacy regarding Polish-Americans deserves to be ridiculed. The vast majority of Polish-Americans know that they have Polish roots because their ancestors were immigrant Poles that told them so, and not because they found out their ancestors' birthplaces and then inferred it. Delphiandomine you are being ridiculous.

Let's see - you're the one who comes on here, spouting off "limey" and other racist nonsense - and then you hysterically accuse posters (who are involved in pan-European projects) of being racist. Hahaha. ha. ha. ha.

Sorry, I am racist - I think anyone who says the word "Busia" should be banned permanently from Poland.


So in other words, your education system is so bad that it's teaching people that they are "Scottish" - when in reality, "Scotland" was formed from several very different, distinct tribes invading, as well as the locals?

We know for certain that Scotland was made up with Picts (the natives), the Gaels from Ireland, the Norse from Scandinavia and the Anglo-Saxons from England. "Scottish" is nothing but an artificial construct, an idea, a philosophy - there's certainly nothing "blood" there, because there's been centuries of mixing.

I suggest starting with your teachers, and perhaps continuing with your media. This stupidity must stop!


Des, I know your knowledge of Poland is weak, but you really ought to learn the basics.

The average American is highly unlikely to be able to definitively state that they are Polish, as for many years, Poles mixed with others quite freely. Even today, we see a lot of mixed Russian/Ukrainian-Polish couples - and in areas such as Cieszyn, there are plenty of mixed Polish-Czech couples. And in the Opole Province, there are plenty of mixed Polish-German marriages too.

The modern Polish-American is nothing but a mongrel genetically, like all of us.


Mods?


Oh my. You really do need to take a course on European history, specifically in terms of self identification.

Here's a start - why don't you research why, in 1931, a significant minority of people identified their mother tongue as "Tutejszy" and yet would have said "I'm from Poland?" if asked?

It's the exact same reason why many Lemkos and others were lumped in as "Ukrainians" - even when they weren't.

In the USA there is a different perception of ones ethnicity. I would explain that to somebody in Europe as an additional identity as another layer of cultural self-identification.

When they say - I'm Polish it means - My ancestors and my roots are Polish therefore I'm Polish even if born and breed in America and America is my country.

Cannot explain it better.

So what are you going to do? Get angry when someone sees a Vietnamese born in the US but from Vietnamese parents and calls them Vietnamese even though they might not know the language? It's the same sort of idea. Get over it already because you cannot change the world.

You think you "know" this but you are wrong. I have studied Polish history and I come on to this site to learn more of it. You are being rude and presumptuous.


Wow what an illogical claim! You acknowledge the fact that it was Poles who were mixing with these other ethnicities and so even if many Polish-Americans also have some other ancestry as well then they are still also "definitively" Polish.


No, you need to realize that Polish-Americans were not told by their immigrant ancestors that they were merely "from Poland" but rather that they were Polish. If they came from a non-Polish ethnicity then they would tell their families that they were of that specific non-Polish ethnicity. Believing that immigrants would lie to their own families about their origins is crazy.


Why are you crying for the mods? If you don't like your inane racist assumptions about Polish-Americans critiqued then don't post here. If you can't stand the heat then get out of the kitchen.

And it's quite possible that the "Polish" part was actually German-Russian who ended up living in Poland as a practising Jew. Really, to claim any sort of "blood" in Europe is insanity to say the least.


I think you really are unable to understand that minorities often identified with the larger group, even if they weren't. For instance, Lemkos - they often identified with Ukrainians, yet they weren't. I know you don't understand it, but that's exactly how it is - it's the same reason why some Scots did and still do identify as British.


Mods?

Some were and some weren't - that is a different kettle of fish delph.


Not necessarily, if some immigrant to the USA was Polish by his own free admission who are you to claim otherwise?
To infer that said immigrant wasn't Polish because his grandma (busia lol) could be German or Russian and therefore said immigrant wasn't Polish at all but possibly Jewish is indeed "bloody" insanity!

I think you are taking the pissh here.

It's not fair because no one hassles a Vietnamese like this. Why does everyone pick on the Polish?

It is possible but highly unlikely that many Polish-Americans are really of German-Russian-Jewish and Lemko or Czech ancestry whose ancestors decided to adopt Polish surnames and convert to Roman Catholicism upon their arrival in America and tell their progeny that they were Polish while keeping the secret of their completely non-Polish ancestry from them.


I think you fail to realize that Poland has minorites that are also part of the larger group and they can be identified as both. I have Gorale ancestry and the Gorale are a minority in Poland but they are Polish as well. You even provided an example yourself:


Because Scots are British. Scotland is a part of Great Britain.


Lemkos that came to America told their sions that they were Lemkos. The Pop artist Andy Warhol was one and he attended a Uniate Church with his fellow Lemko-Americans all his life.

In order to prove that Polish-Americans can't call themselves Polish you have provide a plausible reason for a widespread bizarre ancestral masquerade of origin and you are not doing it delphiandomine. Polish-Americans think they are Polish because they are descended from some sort of ethnic Poles perhaps even Kashubians or Gorale but Poles nonetheless.

As for you other claim:


It seems you want to deny the viability of national ethnicity all together and so no one is Scottish or Polish and thus it doesn't matter if one is fluent in Polish because no one can ever be Polish, but I suspect you don't really mean this. You really just want to deny Polish-Americans their Polishness and in you irrational fervor you've overstepped yourself. If we take your argument seriously we may say that this belief that national ethnicities must be ethnically "pure", and not an amalgam of Picts, Celts and Norse, nor a melange of Polanie, Masurian, Gorale, etc. for their claims that they constitute an ethnicy to be valid is, at best, akin to that of a loopy physicist who would argue that molecules do not exist because they are constituted of disparate atoms, and at worst it smacks of a sort of racism that posits "mongrelhood" because it believes that "purebred" ethnicities do exist.

The answer is YES you can be Polish without speaking Polish just like someone can be Innuit without speaking Eskimo or Comanche without speaking Comanche or Chinese without speaking Chinese. Europe is the only place that gets confused about such matters.

Hmmmm. So let me see if I am following.....you absolutely CANNOT be truly Polish if you do not speak Polish......yet we are all genetic mongrels so nobody can really say they're Polish by blood because of all the mixing......just trying to put it all together......

So I guess I'm wondering now, are you Scottish?

You speak English, but lots of countries speak English, so that's out.

Does your accent make you Scottish? Scottish and say Irish accents differ, sure, but not by as big of a margin as say the North Dakota-American accent in comparison to the Louisiana-American accent. But if that were true, that you can live in the same country with totally different accents and still be the same ethnicity then the accent couldn't be what makes you Scottish, no? Not to mention, I'm sure the Scottish accent varies from region to region as well as dialect like most countries so that would add even more variation. In fact, it's possible that certain regions of Scotland have dialects/accents that are more similar to Irish accents than say another dialect/accent of another region in Scotland. Let's go on.....

Knowledge of family history/country of origin seems to be getting mentioned a lot too but hell, I know plenty of Americans that don't know a thing about American history, so geeze, that can't have any connection to ethnicity/race either because those people are surely American.

So what are we left with? Bloodline doesn't make you one or the other. Knowledge of one's heritage/family history doesn't. Language doesn't. Accent doesn't. Dialect doesn't either.

So what's left? If knowing the Polish language is the most important criterion, well hell, I had a young girl in one of my younger classes that spoke native Polish yet she had French parents, so where does that criterion leave us now? She surely isn't "Polish" but hell.....we're all "mongrels" anyhow, so what's the difference? There surely can't be a magic minimum percentage of Polish blood you have in mind before you can officially be considered Polish because hell, all that blood is mixed anyhow, no? Us being "mongrels" and all. In actuality, you claim to have a "Polish" wife but because of all this mixing, is it possible that the French girl actually has more "Polish" blood than your wife? Is it possible that the French girl's parents had a Polish grandparent or two mixed in there whilst your wife could have Ukranian, Russian, Lithuanian, Italian, German, maybe even French blood....to the extent that she is actually less "Polish" than that little.....dare I call her "French" girl!? But wait, that would be impossible....there is no such thing as real Polish blood, right?

Good night.

Thank you. Asked and answered. Finis.

Except it isn't. In the case of Poland - one country, one language - language and identity are inextricable. Some foreigner with Polish antecedents can identify as Polish or indeed anything that takes their fancy, but without the language, they are compromised. A kid in Warsaw, fluent in Polish, but with Vietnamese parents is far more Polish that they are or without the language can ever be.

They are no more compromised than the Vietnamese waitress down the street who cannot speak Vietnamese. Why is this so hard for people posting here to understand? I went to college with a girl from Russia who had Polish ancestry. She told me she had Polish grandparents but she was born and raised in Russia. She also spoke fluent German. Does that make her German? No, just a girl born in Russia with Polish ancestors who learned to speak German at some point. Case closed.

Without speaking Polish, one can be Polish only in the same way as a man whose links to Ireland go no further than drinking Guinness on st. Patrick's day and has a great-great-great-grandfather who claimed to have been to Dublin is Irish. Of course one can claim to be Polish, but as the OP's wife shows, people who know better than to talk about Busia and golumpkies will just laugh at you.

Being Irish is perfect example. Irish generally speak English while their native tongue is gaelic yet you would insult them if you called them English based on their language. Language is meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Its use is communicative only. It has nothing to do with anything else or you might as well call Americans, Canadians and Australians English since that's the language many of theem speak or all of Latin America Spanish since that's what they speak. Oh, if only life were that simple simon!

My wife's point, if I understood her correctly (NOT a guarantee), is that there's more to lean on, culturally, than just having Polish blood. There wasn't any nationalistic, or "purity" nonsense, inherent to the argument. At least, not originally...

Wow, what a stupid hyperbolic analogy! You have really made yourself look like an idiot here, Harry, Polish-Americans have Polish ancestors that lived in Poland for centuries, they didn't merely visit Warsaw once.


Good for you! You've managed to mention the two words that you are freakishly fixated upon. That is good for your mania and also good for everyone else on this forum that finds your bigoted anti-Polish-American mania funny. Hahahahaha what a head case!

It's banal, true, but more so than using "Zionist" as an invective in 2012? Nah.

""Polish-Americans have Polish ancestors that lived in Poland for centuries, they didn't merely visit Warsaw once."
And we know their ancestors lived there how? And we know it was Poland how exactly? I know that as an American this is hard for you to comprehend this, but the borders of Poland were not exactly known for their stability.

" Hahahahaha what a head-case"
Can a mod please advise whether it would be acceptable for me to reply to that in kind? And if it would not be acceptable, why is Dessie permitted to flame and insult to his heart's content?

That is why a Polish surname is so important when determining if someone is Polish or not. Maiden names work just as well btw. Polish last name = Polish Ancestors.

Because they told their progeny that they did and they had no reason to lie.


Because they came from areas that were once part of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth.


Don't patronize me regarding my comprehension because I am American you ill-mannered person. Alot of Polish-Americans' ancestors came from areas that weren't always Polish ruled but they were still Polish because of their culture. If they were Ruthenian, or some other ethnicity, then they wouldn't have told their families that they were Polish.

" Polish last name = Polish Ancestors."
Try telling a Varsovian that a Pole oversaw the destruction of their city and see how far you get with the 'must be Polish because he had a Polish name' line of debate.

Oh, and Dessie,if they were Polish, they'd have know what the Polish word for grandmother is.

Yeah, the Polish surname thingy is a poor Litmus test, I have to say. My wife's surname doesn't sound in the least classically Polish, and her lineage basically swims in the Odra.

"they'd have know" really? You can't even type in proper English but you feel you are smart enough to deny people's ethnic heritage! The various Polish words for grandmother do include "busia" as has been shown on this forum numerous times but you are too idiotic to acknowledge this fact.

" Polish surname thingy is a poor Litmus test"
A fairly good one is whether their ancestors used the Polish word for grandmother.

" "they'd have know" really? You can't even type in proper English but you feel you are smart enough to deny people's ethnic heritage! The various Polish words for grandmother do include "busia" as has been shown on this forum numerous times but you are too idiotic to acknowledge this fact."

I'm not typing. As for what is and isn't Polish, look in any dictionary: Busia isn't there and never has been, not Polish dictionaries anyway.

I don't think one can be anything without being culturally adhered to this. Unless speaking a language you cannot understand the culture of its country. Nationality is rather a cultural thing than ethnic.

I agree with you.

" Nationality is rather a cultural thing than ethnic."
But where does that leave the uncultured? Eternally doomed to claiming to be a nationality they clearly are not? And of course hurling insults at those who laugh at them.

No one accuses American Poles of being Polish nationals! This is mixing apples and oranges. It's Polish ancestory, not nationality, that's in question.