Posts from October 2009

Zimno i mokro (cold and wet)

Posted by Anna No Comments
Oct 15 2009

With all this recent excitement over Bielsko Biała, I totally forgot that yesterday (wczoraj, 14 października) was Dzień Nauczyciela (Teacher’s Day). Now, I’m the first one to admit, I don’t like Dzień Nauczyciela. Never liked it and probably never will. It’s like Dzień Matki (Mother’s Day) – we should respect and honor our teachers (and mothers) every day, regardless of what the calendar says. But I guess my students didn’t get that memo…

But it’s not about Dzień Nauczyciela that I wanted to talk to you about today. Nah… Instead, I wanted to ask you what you thought about the weather. In Poland, naturally.

Isn’t it a bit early to be snowing? Granted, the stuff has already melted, but still… It’s only October now. And honestly, I don’t remember it snowing in October, like ever…

But with this early snow, I’m hearing a lot of foreigners complaining about the weather. Oddly, some of those foreigners come from places like Montana and Calgary, where snow in October is nothing special. In fact, it’s something to be expected. And the same people started kvetching this month that the weather in Poland sucks.

Frankly, I’ve always remembered it as being sucky. It was either too cold, or too wet, or too cold, or too wet. Even during summers. And my opinion hasn’t changed that much since.

But enough about me. What I want to know is what YOU think about polska pogoda (Polish weather). Bring it on… This is the time and place for you to complain.

And while we on the subject of weather, who’s your favorite “pogodynka” (weather person) on TV?

What do you call a person who lives in Bielsko-Biała?

Posted by Anna No Comments
Oct 12 2009

In his comment to the Bielsko-Biała post Mchl posed an interesting question: what do you call a person who lives in Bielsko-Biała? Yeah, indeed…

An inhabitant of Gdańsk is called gdańszczanin (masculine; gdańszczanka – feminine). A person who lives in Warsaw? Warszawiak or warszawianin, if a male, and warszawianka, if a female.
In Kraków? Krakowiak, or krakowianin, if a guy, and krakowianka, if a woman.

There’s really no rhyme or reason to how those names are formed. And those are just the easy ones. It gets a lot more complicated when you’re talking about a person who lives in Pruszcz Gdański, for example. Or Bielsko-Biała.

And yes, if we’re back on the subject of people who live in Bielsko-Biała, what do you call them? Hmmm… Bielsko-bialski, if a guy, and bielsko-bialska, if a woman. Yeah, where did that come from I have no clue, but that’s what it says in my dictionary. Many people mistakenly assume, it’s bielszczanin and bielszczanka, but those are people who live in Bielsk Podlaski.

And since we’re gluttons for punishment (and because we love Polish), we might as well go all the way and figure out how to call an inhabitant of Białystok. Białostoczanin, if a male, and białostoczanka if a female.

And maybe you noticed one thing – all those nouns are not capitalized. If you see “Krakowianin” that means a person who lives in Krakowskiem, which is a general area where Kraków is located. But an inhabitant of a city is always written using a small letter.

So yeah, what do you call an inhabitant of Pruszcz Gdański? I think I’ll stick with “an inhabitant of Pruszcz Gdański” (mieszkaniec Pruszcza Gdańskiego).

And since we’ve been talking about Bielsko-Biała a lot lately, I thought I’d show you some photos from that city. All photographs were taken by Artur Guzy and you can see more of them on his blog – Bielsko-Biała i wszystko jasne.

Pretty, isn’t it?

And I don’t know about you, but I had no idea that Bielsko-Biała was such a lovely town.

And for those who complained about the rain, here’s złota polska jesień, also in Bielsko-Biała.

For more photos, go to Artur’s blog and practice your Polish!

Not Going Back to School After All

Posted by Anna No Comments
Oct 9 2009

Remember my excitement about my return to school? Well, after all, it’s not going to happen. And so right were those of you who said that I should have picked a school in the UK, or elsewhere. Ah… But I guess I needed to learn it the hard way all by myself.

So what happened? Well, turned out that I couldn’t study the one field that interested me (and which was the reason why I chose that particular school in the first place – WSSM in Łódź) on-line. Why? Apparently that particular course is financed by the EU and the EU regulations require for students to be physically present in the classroom and to sign the attendance roster personally. Which, if you want to know my opinion, smacks of discrimination against people with physical disabilities and limited mobility, but that’s a whole another story.

The problem is that nobody bothered to inform me about this requirement during my initial meeting with the school’s president (rektor) and two of their academic staff. I made it very clear that I was interested in studying intercultural communication (which happens to be that EU financed course) on-line and I was told that, “no problem, we can arrange that.” But, no, they can’t.

Why nobody at WSSM thought to read the fine print on their EU agreement regarding this course BEFORE I submitted my application and paid the admission fee (wpisowe), I really don’t know.

Needless to say, I am very unhappy right now. Nah, that’s an understatement. I’m more than unhappy, but since this is a PG blog, I will try to control myself.

What the school offers me now is to study anglistyka (English philology – because intercultural communication is one of the minors offered in that department) virtually (on-line), but that’s not an acceptable solution for me.

If I wanted to study straight English, I could have applied to any other school. There are more private schools in Poland now than you can shake a stick at.

Now, of course, one of the academic staff fuming with righteous anger tells me that there is an inaccuracy in how I describe this whole situation. Frankly, from where I’m at, I don’t see any inaccuracies. I am not interested in where the school’s limitations come from, that’s none of my business. I’m only interested in the fact that I wasn’t informed about them when I was handing over the money. And that’s definitely my business. Or was the school that desperate for my wpisowe money (admission fee)? And yes, I will try to get that refunded anyway.

I’m really sad and sorry that it turned out that way. I’m still determined to go back to school and study intercultural communication/relations. But it won’t be at a school in Poland. Unfortunately.

Anyhow, how’s that Polish złota jesień (golden autumn) coming along?

On Bielsko-Biała and Białystok

Posted by Anna No Comments
Oct 6 2009

Polish declensions. We all love them, right? All the funky case endings, exceptions, and then exceptions to exceptions. Life in Polish is never boring.

But just when you think you’ve finally managed to master the genitives, datives and accusatives, and you’re no longer kept awake at night by the adjective+noun combinations, you meet Bielsko-Biała. Or rather, Bielsko Biała. I’m confused, one dictionary I have spells it with a hyphen, the other – without. At least in the nominative case. Because both of them hyphenate it in all the other cases. And what fabulous cases these are!

I’m sure that Bielsko Biała is a great town. But couldn’t the good people of Bielsko Biała agree on a little easier way of declining that name?

You see, even though “bielsko” ends in “o”, it’s followed by “biała”, which is most definitely a feminine adjective. Which results in this:

  • do (to) Bielska-Białej
  • ku (towards) Bielsku-Białej
  • Bielsko-Białą
  • w (in) Bielsku-Białej

And as if that wasn’t enough, there’s also an adjective derived from that proper name: bielsko-bialski, but that one I’m not going to touch with a ten foot Pole (or a Hungarian, for that matter).

OK, so with Bielsko Biała, it’s logical to assume that both parts of this proper noun would decline, because they are two separate words.

But then how do you explain Białystok? Technically, it’s just one word, right? So why does it do this:

  • do (to) Białegostoku
  • ku (towards) Białemustokowi
  • w (in) Białymstoku

Huh???

Now you can easily guess which two Polish towns I’m definitely not fond of. And we haven’t even covered Bielsk Podlaski yet!

PS. Any funky computer language today?

How to Write Dates (po polsku, naturally)

Posted by Anna 13 Comments
Oct 3 2009

I was writing a semi-official letter the other day, and even before I managed to get to “Szanowna Pani“, I was already stumped. Not that it’s anything usual, me getting stumped, but it’s been happening with amazing regularity lately.

Anyway, my MS Word automatically fills in the current date according to the American system: the month comes first, then the day, then a comma, and then the year. And suddenly, I was sitting there in front of my laptop deep in thought, not entirely sure how to properly write it in Polish. The key word here, of course, is “properly.”

Dates in Poland are written in several different ways.

- rok (year), miesiąc (month), dzień (day),

- dzień (day), miesiąc (month), rok (year),

- as numerals: 3.10.2009, or 3.10.09,

- or like this: 3 X 2009

- sometimes there’s a lone “r” following the year: 2009 r.

- with the month spelled out, and so on…

- and if we’re going to spell the month, does it decline, or not?

You see where I’m going with this, right? Such a simple, everyday thing as the current date left me scrambling for some heavy-duty Polish language help.

And what did I learn? That when it comes to the correct date format(s) in Polish, pretty much anything goes, except (hey, of course there would be an “except” – after all this is Polish we’re talking about here, and everybody knows we live for “excepts”):

- the date format should be appropriate to the text (official, private, etc),

- if you choose to write the month as a Roman numeral, it’s a mistake to write the date like this “3.X.2009 r.” There should be no dots before and after the Roman numeral,

- and, yes the month does decline. So, we need to write “3 października 2009 r.”, and not “3 październik 2009 r.”

- and finally, the date should follow this order: day-month-year, or year-month-date (for official correspondence), and unfortunately, it means that you can’t begin with the month, as my MS Word insists on doing.

The “r.” is short for “rok” (year) and if you feel like it, you can spell out the whole word. But of course, it declines as well. So it’s “3 października 2009 roku” and not “3 październik 2009 rok”. But if you don’t like that “r”, you can skip it altogether and write “3 października 2009” or “3.10.09” or “3.10.2009”.

So, how did I finally write it in my letter?

2009.10.03 for easy filing of official correspondence that nobody bothers to read anyway.

PS. For my native Polish readers who, I’m sure, will feel the need to tell me that my info is incorrect, or not entirely correct – this post was written based on advice taken from PWN’s “Poradnik językowy” and my conversation with a polonistyka professor at a very prestigious Polish university.

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