Posts from July 2008

Bobrowniki Wielkie

Posted by Anna 10 Comments
Jul 14 2008

One of the readers, Ed, had a question about a village called Bobrowniki Wielkie, located somewhere near Tarnów. Ed’s mother was born in Bobrowniki and he wanted to know more about the place. Initially, I was stumped, I never heard of it myself. But no worries, after a bit of searching, I found some info.

I was surprised to learn that the village still existed, in the same place nearby Tarnów where it had been for centuries, and with the same name today as back in the olden days. What were the odds of that? Huh? But that’s not all! I even found a whole web page dedicated to the village of Bobrowniki Wielkie. Now, what are the odds of THAT? There’s a wee little village in Poland, it has all of 700 residents and one of them decides to set up a web page! Lucky for us!

Unfortunately, the page is in Polish only, so you will be stuck reading my English summary.

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Pronunciation Samples

Posted by Anna 21 Comments
Jul 11 2008

At last!

I know you’ve been asking about pronunciation, and I know you’ve been requesting phonetic equivalents for all the Polish words I’m introducing in each post.

The problem with phonetic approximations is that if we use English sounds, then for those readers who are not native English speakers, such examples will not make much sense. Also, how would we transcribe such gems as ś ń ć or ę and ą? Those sounds simply don’t exist in the English language.

The only other option would be to use those real phonetic symbols. You know, those you see in foreign dictionaries. The little scribbles in square brackets that require an advanced degree in linguistics to pronounce them correctly. Yeah, those! I don’t know about you, but I just tend to zone out when I see them.

So I thought the easiest would be to simply give you the correct pronunciation, you can listen to it, and then transcribe it any way you want. Sounds good? I hope so!

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The Many Polish Greetings

Posted by Anna No Comments
Jul 8 2008

In all this excitement with grammar and country music, I totally forgot to tell you about the intricacies of Polish greetings. I realized that last night when a friend from Finland skyped me and very indirectly pointed out my oversight.

My friend is an older lady whose brand new daughter-in-law is Polish. The girl’s Polish parents came up to Finland for a visit, which brought up the subject of greetings in our conversation.

To be able to communicate with her daughter-in-law, Tiina (my friend) is busy learning Polish and understands most of the basic expressions. So I was very surprised when she said that the girl’s parents used a Polish greeting that she was not familiar with. Of course I wanted to know what it was that they said that so confused Tiina, but she didn’t remember and couldn’t ask them, because they didn’t speak any English, Finnish or Swedish.

Through the process of elimination, we determined that they didn’t say:

  • Dzień dobry – which basically means “good day” and can be used from morning to afternoon, because Polish does not have a greeting for mornings only. In the evening, “dzień dobry” morphs into:
  • Dobry wieczór – which means exactly “good evening”.

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Plural, Singular or Something In-Between?

Posted by Anna No Comments
Jul 4 2008

This last post about wakacje (holidays) made me a little bit confused. OK, not a little. A lot. While writing it, I was unable to fully determine the grammatical gender of “wakacje”, and a random selection of my countrymen to whom I posed that question just looked at me with utter bewilderment.
“You mean it has a gender?” and “I’m sure it’s not masculine” were two of the most sensible answers. And mind you, we’re Poles discussing Polish grammar.

The “wakacje” question eventually turned into an even bigger problem when we discovered just how inconsistent Polish grammar books are. And boy! Are they ever!

We finally determined that the grammatical gender of “wakacje” is not quite neuter in the strict neuter sense, but can be called neuter for all intents and purposes here. It’s also an uncountable noun, which exists only in the plural form. And guess what? It’s not the only one. There’s more.

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A Little Bit About Mrągowo

Posted by Anna 8 Comments
Jul 1 2008

One of our readers is going to Poland this summer, and that in itself is nothing unusual, tons of people visit Poland every year. But not very many of them go to Mrągowo. In fact, I was rather surprised to hear that anyone from abroad would actually know where Mrągowo is. Because I’d bet that even most Poles wouldn’t be able to tell you much about the place, either. Pity, as Mrągowo is definitely worth more than just a passing glance.

One thing that for most Poles is probably synonymous with Mrągowo is country music. Yep. American style country. Hats, cowboy boots and all. People, who may not be able to point the town on a map, can tell you the place is famous for a big the country music shindig. And they’re right.

The country music festival, called Piknik Country (piknik = picnic) is indeed a very fine event. I know, because once upon a time I used to go there quite religiously. Back in the olden days, when I was a high school student and when on-line ticket sales didn’t exist, I would make a yearly trek from Trójmiasto to Olsztyn to purchase concert passes for me and my friends. Oh, the memories. It was definitely fun. I bought my first Akubra style hat at the festival, it cost me a fortune, too. But… we were supposed to talk about Mrągowo, not about me. Let’s get back to the topic. Read More »

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