Posted by Anna Ikeda
I woke up this morning humming the theme song from “Czterej pancerni i pies” (Four Tankmen And a Dog). Don’t ask me why - I must have had some really wacky dreams last night. Mercifully, I remember nothing. So how did this song get stuck in my head this morning? A total mystery to me.
It’s an even greater mystery that I still remember all the words to it. And that is truly scary – the last time I heard this song was sometime in 1981.
Oh wait! You have no clue what I’m talking about, now do you?
Sorry, my bad! Let me explain.
“Czterej pancerni i pies” was a Polish TV series from the late 60s. It was based on a book by Janusz Przymanowski and was about, well, four guys in a tank and their dog. And you could say that as far as Polish TV series go, this one was very successful. So successful in fact, that it achieved a cult status, of sorts, in Poland. Even though only 21 episodes had been made, they’d been rerun and rerun ad nauseam - every year to be exact, up until, oh maybe 1989. Then after the fall of communism, people suddenly got better things to watch on TV, yet still “Czterej pancerni…” remained popular.
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Posted by Anna Ikeda
Today’s topic is actually a little off topic but Thomas made a very interesting comment under the last post, and I thought it would be worth taking a closer look.
I’ve always assumed that the “house” and “home” confusion was exclusive to foreigners who learn English. And for some very strange reason it’s never even occurred to me that English speakers learning a foreign language might have exactly the same problem. Duh!
Actually, Thomas’ comment ruffled my fierce Polish national pride a bit. That a teacher, a Polish teacher at that, was either unwilling or unable to provide appropriate explanations was simply inexcusable. And for a teacher stating that SHE understood the difference was definitely a not good enough answer. I’m sorry Thomas that you had this experience.
Now, I’m not a certified teacher, and I don’t even play one on TV, but let me take a stab at this home/house translation issue into Polish.
When you look in a dictionary, you see that both those words are translated into Polish as “dom”.
- dom (noun, masculine, non-person, plural: domy) = house, home
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Posted by Anna Ikeda
This past Monday I was listening to the funeral services for Bronisław Geremek. Only listening, because I’m not into state funerals with full honors, unless of course, it’s one of the world’s famous despots who’s dead – their funerals are always fun. But the service on Monday was very dignified, sad and solemn.
Bronisław Geremek was by all accounts an outstanding man and a distinguished politician. You might have heard of him as one of the figures behind the Solidarity (Solidarność) movement. To many people, and especially to people abroad, Solidarność has become synonymous with Lech Wałęsa, but of course as with any political movement, it wasn’t just a one-man show. In 1989 Mr. Geremek participated in the Round Table negotiations, which resulted in the first free and democratic Polish elections after WW2.
Later on, he was appointed as the Minister of Foreign Affairs (1997-2000).
In addition to being a famous political figure, he was also a respected medieval historian. Actually, that’s how I became familiar with his name. I’m a total political ignoramus, I freely admit it. When exposed to political news of any kind, my brain performs an immediate emergency shut-down. And when exposed to Polish political news, the results are even worse.
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Posted by Anna Ikeda
Since we’re in the midst of a little grammar kick, I thought we might as well continue. But to keep things interesting, we should let the adjectives rest for a while and talk about something else. Remember when we discussed the genitive case – dopełniacz? Yes, I know, it was a while back. So here I’m going to give you some time to go and read the past entry about dopełniacz. It’s no rush, I’ll be here when you’re done. In the meantime, while you’re busy reading, I will prepare some new interesting dopełniacz examples.
OK, you’re back? That was quick!
Last time when talking about dopełniacz, I said that it has five different functions in Polish. And I think we discussed two of them in that post. Let’s review:
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Posted by Anna Ikeda
In my last article, while talking about “grand beaver dwelling places” (oh yes, we talk about some strange things here) I briefly touched on the subject of adjectives. So I suppose it’s only fitting to finally give those adjectives a post of their own.
Polish adjectives get a bad rap among foreign speakers, but totally undeservedly so. Compared to other parts of speech, adjectives in Polish are practically a cake-walk. It’s true that they are marked for number and gender, but so are adjectives of many other languages. And just like in other languages, some adjectives can be used as nouns. And just like in other languages, they also have comparative and superlative forms. So far, so good, nothing unusual here.
But what’s different in Polish is that our adjectives decline. Oh yes, they do. Luckily, they decline in a more or less regular manner.
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