Posts in January 2009

I’m Hungry, Let’s Make Bigos

Posted by Anna Ikeda
Jan
31
2009

I’m cold and I’m hungry and that’s always a very bad combination. And I’m not in the mood to write about grammar today.
So, let’s talk about food instead.
I found half a cabbage in the fridge (leftover from making okonomiyaki the other night) and I’ve been thinking what to do with it. I hardly ever make bigos, because my guy doesn’t like it. But he surprised me today by saying “you could make that cabbage thing, you know, the one you like and I can’t stand.” And I know he’s just trying to be nice to compensate for the fact that he left a plastic bag full of souvenirs on the floor in our hotel room in Antigua, but hey, what so I care? He told me to make bigos and that’s all that counts. I’m off to the kitchen…

Now, there isn’t one proper bigos recipe, instead there are as many as there are families in Poland. It’s one of those dishes that everybody knows and everybody has an opinion about. So, with that in mind, I’m going to share with you MY bigos recipe. No, it hasn’t been passed down for generations (my mom couldn’t make nice bigos if her life depended on it and hence avoided it like a plague), it’s entirely mine, but it’s been tested and approved by fellow Poles the world over.

So, here we go:

  • ½ kg or less (about 1 lbs) white cabbage (świeża kapusta), thinly chopped
  • ½ kg or less (about 1 lbs) sauerkraut (kiszona kapusta)
  • a couple of sausages (around ¼ kg or ½ lbs), can be polska kiełbasa, can be something else, I use chorizo and nobody can tell the difference, chopped into pieces
  • bacon, cut up into pieces, I use quite a bit, because it’s yummy (bekon, boczek or skwarki)
  • pork (hmmm… I’m estimating - around ¼ kg should be fine) chopped into pieces (wieprzowina)
  • proper bigos recipes call for veal, but I don’t use veal so I simply ignore it and add more bacon, or sausages. But if you like veal, then less then ¼ kg should be fine. (cielęcina)
  • a bunch of dried mushrooms (I use a handful, and if European mushrooms are hard to come by, I’ve been know to use dried shiitake) (grzyby suszone)
  • chopped onion (cebula)
  • tomato paste (koncentrat pomidorowy)
  • salt (sól)
  • pepper (pieprz)
  • bay leaf (liść laurowy)
  • a couple of whole grains of allspice (ziele angielskie)
  • dried juniper berries if you like (jagody jałowca)

Ok, let’s get started:
Throw all that sauerkraut into a BIG pot, pour some boiling water over it and simmer for about 1 hour.
I can’t be bothered to cook fresh cabbage separately, because that means more washing up later on, so I just dump fresh cabbage (thinly chopped) into the simmering sauerkraut and add dried mushrooms. You may have to pour some more boiling water if the mixture is too thick.
In a separate skillet cook bacon, onion, pork, sausages and then add into the cabbage pot. Add bay leaf, allspice grains, a few dried juniper berries, whatever else you like.
Cook for about 40 minutes on low heat.
If the mixture is too runny, you can thicken it with a bit of flour. I’ve never done it, because my bigos is always nice and thick.
Add some tomato paste and red wine if you like.
Simmer for a bit longer.
Taste it and see if it needs more salt, pepper, whatnot.
And voila. Ready!
Serve with nice crusty bread.

Generally, the longer you cook it, the better it is. Just be sure you don’t burn it.
The more kinds of meat in it, the yummier it is.

Smacznego! (Bon appetit!)

 
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“A Grammar of Contemporary Polish” by Oscar E Swan

Posted by Anna Ikeda
Jan
28
2009

A couple of weeks ago Ron asked about my thoughts regarding “A Grammar of Contemporary Polish” and to tell you the truth, I’ve been struggling how to honestly evaluate this book.

There are so few Polish grammar books out there so I feel that just for existing alone I should give it a high rating. But… there’s always a “but.” So, here we go:

  • 1. The language.

The author, Oscar E. Swan is a professor of Slavic Languages at the University of Pittsburgh. And unfortunately, it shows. (explanation - it doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with Prof. Swan’s command of Polish, heck his Polish is better than most native Polish speakers I know, but that he talks like a specialist in his field forgetting that the little people are not.)

Even though the book claims to “be accessible to the non-specialist,” I get the feeling that Professor Swan and I have a vastly different understanding of this phrase. True, he does make an effort to explain stuff for those who don’t have advanced degrees in linguistics, and it may have worked even if it had been any other language, like Swedish. But unfortunately, we’re talking Polish here.

Take this sentence, for example:
“With natural accomplishment and logical-result verbs, the structurally and semantically basic form of the verb is almost always the perfective, whether prefixed or not, and the imperfective form will be derived from it by suffixation.”

Yeah, right. Like non-specialists will get that. Totally. But if you can put up with and understand that sort of stuff, then this is an excellent book. It does have a glossary of grammatical terms at the very end, where you can look up all those fancy words you don’t know. But that glossary brings us to:

  • 2. Poor organization.

This is indeed a very comprehensive grammar book, but why is it so poorly organized? Wouldn’t it be more convenient for the dummies among us to stick the definitions right in the chapters that actually cover that stuff?

  • 3. Tables and examples.

Excellent all around. That alone makes this book worth looking for. And most likely, if you want to buy it, you will have to dig around on-line, because it’s out of print. I found it in a second-hand book shop in Washington state.

What could make it better?
Simplifying the language in which stuff is explained – ideally by assuming that the reader knows nothing, or very little about grammar, in any language. But until someone comes up with “Polish Grammar for Dummies” this is what we have to work with. And as far as grammar books go, it could be worse.

ISBN: 0-89357-296-9
Publisher: Slavica, Indiana University

 
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Overhearing Polish

Posted by Anna Ikeda
Jan
24
2009

My trip to the islands (and I don’t mean the UK and Ireland here, though we did stop in London briefly) was delightful. I didn’t want to come back home. And Mister has started making plans of quitting the life as we know it and starting a new one on the beach in Antigua. Or maybe in St. Lucia. Or St. Kitts. He hasn’t made up his mind yet.

Normally, during my travels, I always run into some Polish people somewhere. Be it in Kolkata, or in Nepal, or in Dubai, or anywhere pretty much including Bhutan, there are fellow Poles to be met along the way. But not this time. In the Caribbean the closest to Polish that we got was a Slovakian wife on vacation with her British husband.

London, on the other hand, even though we only transferred between Heathrow and Gatwick felt just like Poland.

I have a confession to make here. I’ve never actually been to the UK. Back in the olden days I used to change planes at Heathrow every now and then, but that was it. And this time I’m not sure if commuting between Heathrow and Gatwick actually counts as “being” in the UK. Technically maybe – yes. But only technically.

Still, both airports felt oddly familiar. Polish could be heard everywhere. Now, I knew there were a lot of Poles working in the Kingdom, but I’d never realized just how many.

The woman at the Scandinavian Airlines desk, Agnieszka, upon seeing my passport the first question she asked was “Pani mówi po polsku?” But because I didn’t feel like translating for my husband I told her to continue in English.

The girl at Krispy Kreme, Monika didn’t say anything at all (at least not to me) when I pointed at the donut I wanted. She was too busy talking on the cellphone.

The waiter at Ponti’s, Łukasz was simply delightful. He owned the floor. He sashayed (because saying that he “walked” would be an injustice) between the tables and chatted with everyone in that curious mixture of Polish and English: “Proszę Pani… errrr… Madam, your coffee już coming.” We left him a nice tip. He was fun.

There were Polish women working everywhere, in every store and café and behind every counter, or so it seemed. There were Polish guys (many of them in hard hats) walking back and forth.

What surprised me was how careless they were when it came to talking about others in Polish. With almost a million Poles in the UK, don’t they think that some of their customers, even if they appear to be speaking English, might actually be able to understand them? That’s what happened at one of the places, which mercifully will remain nameless.

We couldn’t quite decide what we wanted and the girl behind the counter was getting restless. She had to momentarily pause the conversation with her co-worker and was not happy about it. When we finally made our selection and were about to pay, she remarked to her colleague, “No w końcu! Daj tej babie resztę i niech spierdala.” (Finally! Give this broad her change so she can get the hell out of here.) And then turning to me with a big smile on her face she added, “anything else?”

Needless to say, I gave her a piece of my mind. Po polsku.
What would you have done?

 
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Even More Perfective and Imperfective Goodness

Posted by Anna Ikeda
Jan
20
2009

Yes, I am still enjoying myself in Antigua and Barbuda. But I couldn’t just go away and leave you without a new post.
So, I thought we might as well continue with the perfective and imperfective stuff. It’s always a pain to learn, and I’m pretty sure we could keep talking about for the next 10 weeks and not get bored.

Remember how I mentioned once before that some Polish verbs turn from imperfective into perfective through the use of prefixes? I read somewhere that there are about 18 of those prefixes, but fortunately for us, these eight are the most common:

  • na-
  • z-
  • za-
  • po-
  • u-
  • o-
  • prze-
  • wy-

And I know you’re just itching to see them in action. So, here they come, just a few examples:

  • czytać (imperfective) – przeczytać (perfective) – to read
  • golić (imperfective) – ogolić (perfective) – to shave
  • słyszeć (imperfective) – usłyszeć (perfective) – to hear
  • pisać (imperfective) – napisać (perfective) – to write
  • rozumieć (imperfective) – zrozumieć (perfective) – to understand
  • robić (imperfective) – zrobić (perfective) – to do
  • płacić (imperfective) – zapłacić (perfective) – to pay
  • pić (imperfective) – wypić (perfective) – to drink
  • jechać (imperfective) – pojechać (perfective) – to ride, to go (not no foot),
  • dziękować (imperfective) – podziękować (perfective) – to thank
  • gotować (imperfective) – ugotować (perfective) – to cook
  • prosić (imperfective) – poprosić (perfective) – to ask
  • myć (imperfective) – umyć (perfective) – to wash
  • dzwonić (imperfective) – zadzwonić (perfective) – to ring, to call on the phone

Unfortunately, it’s impossible to predict which prefix goes with which verb. Sometimes a prefix that makes one verb perfective can completely change the meaning of another verb. So, sadly, the only way to figure it out is to memorize the verbs and the prefixes as you go along.

 
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Adverbs and Aspect

Posted by Anna Ikeda
Jan
16
2009

When you read this post I’ll be most likely sitting on a ferry going from Antigua to Barbuda. Oh yeah!
But I couldn’t just go on vacation and leave you here with nothing to read, now could I?

So, I thought that in my absence we continue with the perfective-imperfective goodness and see where it takes us.

My very own Polish language test subject asked me if there was any way to magically divine whether a verb used in a sentence is perfective or imperfective. Well, I’m not so sure about magic - that stuff always eludes me, but there are some non- magical subtle clues sometimes. You just need to learn to look for them.

Adverbs are one of those clues. You see, some adverbs are more compatible with imperfective verbs, and some with perfective.

Here’s a handy list.

Adverbs compatible with imperfective verbs:

  • od czasu do czasu – from time to time
  • rzadko – seldom
  • wciąż – continually
  • ciągle – often
  • często – often
  • nigdy – never
  • zawsze – always
  • jeszcze – still
  • czasami, czasem – sometimes
  • zwykle – usually
  • długo – for a long time
  • regularnie – regularly

And adverbs compatible with perfective verbs:

  • za chwilę – in a moment
  • nagle – suddenly
  • właśnie – (only) just
  • dopiero co – only just
  • zaraz – right away
  • w końcu – in the end
  • wkrótce – shortly, soon
  • natychmiast – immediately
  • przed chwilą – a moment ago

For example:
Zawsze wracam późno z pracy. – I always return late from work.
Właśnie wróciłam z pracy. – I have just returned from work.

  • wracać – to return, to come back (imperfective)
  • wrócić – to return, to come back (perfective)
 
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