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
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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Posted by Anna Ikeda
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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). And young people often use it's shortened form "nara" (just like you said) 