Posted by Anna Ikeda
Today is a public holiday in Poland, the Feast of the Assumption, which is an important Catholic celebration, I presume. Though when I asked my friend this morning about the reason for a day off, she mumbled something about the Battle of Warsaw instead. That battle, also known as the Miracle at the Vistula, took place in August (naturally) of 1920 and is considered as the most decisive turn of the Polish-Soviet War. A guy by the name of Józef Piłsudski was one of the Polish commanders. You might have heard of him. Some Polish-Americans think of him as “the George Washington of Poland” with which I must respectfully disagree. Piłsudski was definitely better looking.
But neither one of these occasions can match the truly important event that happened on August 15 in 1898. That day a guy named Jan Wiktor Lesman was born in a podunk little Galician town somewhere in the middle of nowhere. My Polish readers will recognize him as Jan Brzechwa.
And here I can just imagine them emitting loud snorts and feeling sorry for those of you who are not fluent in Polish.
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Posted by Anna Ikeda
After all the grammar stuff last week, I don’t know about you, but I think we‘re long overdue for something more entertaining. Yes, I know that grammar is essential when learning a new language properly, though personally, I’ve never been the kind of student who sits down and dutifully memorizes different verb endings. In whatever language. And besides, isn’t it odd that the first words we tend to master in a foreign language are normally of the not-so-nice variety?
But no, don’t worry, we won’t be discussing anything vulgar today.
One of our readers went to Poland and, by all accounts, had a great time there. He also took lots of pictures. And one of them I will share with you today.
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Posted by Anna Ikeda
Ok, so today I’m supposed to tell you how to figure out the gender when it comes to plural nouns and adjectives. But first, we need to talk just a tiny little but about those plural nouns and their genders.
You see, those plural nouns can be confusing. They are even to me. And I should know this stuff, I’m Polish. But even so, I sometimes have to stop and think about it.
That we have three genders in singular you know already. However, in plural, those three genders become two. And they’re no longer so nicely organized into masculine, feminine, and neuter. Oh no! Polish can’t be THAT easy!
Instead, our plural nouns have two bizarre genders called:
- personal masculine
- everything else.
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Posted by Anna Ikeda
In my last post I quoted a Japanese lady who is learning Polish in Tokyo. She kindly gave us several examples of why she likes Poland so much. And to show off her Polish grammar, she even used a variety of adjective-noun combinations. I don’t know about you, but if it was me speaking in a difficult foreign language to a stranger, I’d stick to one gender and one number, just to keep things simple (and not to make a fool out of myself). But not our new Japanese friend. She had to really show off. And by “really show off” I mean use all three genders in singular and one in plural. How’s that for ambitious, huh?
So let’s take a closer look at what she said. She said that Poland was a beautiful country.
piękny kraj = beautiful country
Now, remember what I said about Polish adjectives? That they have to agree in gender with the nouns they describe?
“Kraj” (country) is a masculine (non-person) singular noun, so the adjective “piękny” (beautiful) must also be masculine and singular. This is actually easy, because it just so happens that our wonderful Polish adjectives are listed in dictionaries in their masculine singular forms.
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Posted by Anna Ikeda
I’m always very surprised when I hear that people with absolutely no prior connection to Poland want to learn Polish. It’s one thing when someone has Polish roots, or a Polish name, or a polish spouse, or plans to move there. But it’s completely another when someone wants to learn Polish “just because.” Just because they think Polish is a beautiful language, or just because they love Chopin. And it really does happen!
It’s happened today, as a matter of fact. I got a phone call from my old friend in Japan. He’s not Polish, he’s very much Japanese. So he woke me up (hello! Forgot about the time difference!) and said:
“An acquaintance at work wants to rearn Porish. Can you help her?”
How dude? How? I’m a few thousands miles away!
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). And young people often use it's shortened form "nara" (just like you said) 