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”.
