Polish lessons.

George,
I wish you well with Polish. I used to visit Poland on business but I never got to grips with the language. It seemed to contain all the most difficult bits of those other European languages I have encountered.
Fortunately, I always had a native Polish speaker with me on my travels.
Regards,
Ken

George,

Good luck with the lessons, and nice to see you back. ATB.

Nic

Hi George,

Wishing you success with this. Hope your tongue is trainable because some of those sounds sound impossible to make. You are lucky that some of your friends can help you out outside of the classroom.

It has also been a dream of mine since I was a young child to visit Poland. I have some family history there that I would like to check out and of course, I'd have to check out the Chopin competition and the music scene. Every morning, I currently listen to the Polish radio news and events through the BBC.

If I ever get in a position to have this dream fulfilled then maybe you'd be so gracious as to come along and be my guide and interpreter.

Best Regards,
Doug

Dear Doug,

I am usually fairly slow to react to a challenge - I was late in time being in my twenties before learning the bass for example - because I shy away a bit, but once I start I do go at it like a steam roller! Slow, but determined. I seem to have a very quick ear for pronunciation, but the language has virtually no common word roots with English, French, German or Norwegian. I know something of these, and can at least follow what is going on. In Polish it is much harder. But intonation and pronunciation have not foxed me too badly so far.

As for being someone else's interpreter, that is a while off yet, but certainly it adds to the fun of being somewhere in refusing to drop back into English when things get difficult. I found that out on a two week visit to France in 1984. A cultural exchange visit where I soon found myself able to jump the beer buying scrum!

Last summer [August 2007] I refrained from speaking English for three days in Poland, though I did not engage in much conversation! And mangled the Polish language horrendously I am sure!

The other fun aspect is the case endings applied like Latin but less complex, and like Latin some, indeed many, are irregular! Really Polish is about the hardest European language there is, but it would be nice to eventually make a go at speaking it [and writing it] in a pure and correct form. You cannot believe how many sounds there are for Z, and how variants of the sh and ch sounds! But you get to a sort of critical mass, where understand some, you suddenly find yourself filling in the gaps. Up to that point it really is not easy at all.

I would guess that I shall visit the country many times in future. I was asked to spend Christmas there this year, but am already very happily invited elsewhere. As it goes, some of the Poles who became friends have gone on to be very real and good friends - the kind of friends one never looses.

One of them is do the teaching! His degree is in Pure Maths, but he has grasped very good English. In that respect it is a bit of a two way street.

ATB from George

I have been having Polish lessons for 6 years but I am not intelligent enough to make progress.

LOL!

Sometimes you are simply too hard on yourself!

ATB from G

Dear George

When I first saw this thread I thought it was going to show me how to get a nice high gloss finish to the plinth on my LP12!

It also reminds me of the time when in the workshop at my work I saw a bottle marked 'Polish Stripper'.

I wondered if perhaps it was a new take on the Genie in a bottle. One or two firm rubs and out she pops with a puff of smoke and a small fan barely large enough to cover her modesty!

Good to have you back.

Regards

Mark

Dear Mark,

I hadn't thought of the possible double meanings when I made the title!

I quite like the idea of Polish Stripper though!!!

I am going to keep a slightly diffeent profile from now on, and keep my main efforts for the Music Room, and my [warped] sense of humour for here! I concluded that my priorities with replay are so eccentric as to be irrelivant, and I have lost the will to expose myself to being called deaf, stupid, or even an old fogey!

The last might be right of course, and on Sunday I was in the company of old friends in their eighties, and the three of us were taken WW2 veterans. Quite funny really given that I was only born in 1961! One was a vet of course ...

But all I hope is that any who actually sample what is my idea of nice replay conclude that I am not entirely wrong in my priorities, rather than waste my efforts, and waste the time of those who might read it, explaining my view. So I have reached a landmark in life, of not loosing passion, but rather not necessarily wanting to share it without a good deal of care and discrimination. Music is different. The passion there is unbounded ...

I am surp[rising myself with my early grasp of Polish though. I insisted on starting right at the alphabet, and then the numbers. I hope we do the verb "to be'" this week! Since I am no longer working in daily contact with Polish friends, I have entirely forgotten how to curse in Polish, which is a good thing I think!

But we still have Parties and some good fun. The last Party was only a week ago on last Friday, and I finished walking home at 03:40 on the Saturday morning! That is the way to do it!

Probably some of us are going off to Quantum Of Solace tomorrow, mostly so we can ogle the Polish talent in the film!

ATB from George

I look forward to joining you on the Vodka thread of a Friday evening!

Dear George,

Welcome back! I did wonder where you'd dissappeard to but I suppose all that Polish vodka and partying must take its toll!

Far from considering your ideas on replay irrelevant I always think your posts are very well thought out and always entertaining and informative. For me, it's far more interesting to read how someone working to a fairly tight budget (hope you don't mind me saying that), like myself, makes the most of his set-up, than reading about someone who has mega-bucks to spend.

Good luck with the Polish lessons - hope these go well for you.

Regards,

Peter

Nice to see you back George!
Matt.

Going to see Quantum Of Solace at nine o'clock. So going to catch some zzzeds now!

Perhaps I will wake up enough to enjoy it!

ATB from George

The Bond was an enigma to me. Exciting in a Bournish sort of way, but the plot left me behind as I could not remember the significance of Vespa from the Casino film. Need to see that again and foloow it up with QoS, and see if I can see what Solace is all about.

This evening saw my second Polish lesson and very good it was. Last week the alphabet, and 1 to 10 [etc] while this week saw the verb to be, and simple sentence construction, prepositions, and case endings! Only a few nowns considered, but some quite challenging translations for next week as homework!

My one housemate, Szymon, said that if I were still learning Polish by Christmas, then I would count as an English genius. I intend to prove his assertion correct!

I spilled about half a pint of Tyskie earlier, which really upset me! What a terrible waste of such a valuable resource!! Fortunately that still leaves me one and a half pints!

ATB from George

Jak to będzie twój polski? Nie mogę nic, ale inne chłopaki na pracę call me a Polak, bo tak wiele pracy. Miłej zabawy.

ATB from Christian.

Dear Christian,

I shall work on a translation for you! So please don't spoil it by giving me the answer! It is beyond me just now of course, but give me the weekend and a new dictionary!

Strangely I can follow Norwegian [I was Norwegian speaking before English as an infant] but can barely say a thing now, whereas I can actually get more Polish correct - as spoken - but virtually not follow it at all in conversation. It is by no means easy for an English speaker!

But I have still got an idea of retiring in Poland even if I don't go there during my working life.

ATB from George

After half a bottle of Monopolowa Vodka , I'm shure you speak better polish than I speak English.

Mind you, dear Christian,

call me a Polak,

looks suspisciously like English!, and bo means because [I did not mention that we did the common conjunctions also, earlier this evening] ... etc. I am on the case so I suspect I shall laugh heartily!

I make perfect sense after half a bottle of Wodka even now and even to Poles.

The last thing I drank in Norway was some fine Single Malt with my Aunt, up at Skurdalen, but that was in 2002. Perhaps I will visit her again before too long.

She lives at Grakamveien, which is up the hill behind Majorstuen. It is a long way from the Central Station in Oslo, but I walked up there as a kind of personal challenge as she was away for the day when I arrived! I was supposed to let myself in. But she was back before I got there, draging a pair of quite heavy bags all the way!

It was also a very hot day! I will definately be in Poland before returning to Norway though!

ATB from George

quote:

Originally posted by Chillkram:
'Polish Stripper'

Would that be 'Carefree Polish Stripper'?

For anyone interested in the tangled neutrality of the USSR and the hidden relationship between the Nazis and the Soviets in 1939, I recommend this BBC broadcast, which is available for review for the next twenty four hours on the BBC iPlayer. It makes a fascinating addition to what Churchill wrote so perceptively in his history of the Second World War, though some of the information contained must been completely unknown to him.

It was broadcast on BBC2 TV at 21:00 hours on Monday 10 November 2008, and provides new information which has been coming out since the fall of the Soviet Governement of the former USSR.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00fkx70/b00fkx67/...sed_Doors_Episode_1/

It seems suitable for a Polish Thread to post the link. The part next is to be broadcast on the 17th of November.

George

Third Polish lesson this evening, and I can only think that the real way to find the essense of a different culture is via a meating of minds through the subtelty of that other culture's language.

I think the vital starting point is to learn to say politely that my natural togue is English ...!

For those who might ponder the difficulty of Polish, then a basic understanding of the structure of Latin is a huge advantage.

In English we have the tenses of Latin [and the Poles have three], but Polish has case endings! In reality it is a beautiful and soft sounded language that has infinite shades of formality and friendliness, all in the selection of different words.

A curiosity is the absense, as in Latin, of the the definite and indefinite articles, as well as nouns being subject to gender ...

_______________

May I also commend the second pat of the BBC series on WW2 Behind Closed Doors [as mentioned above] which covers the realignment of Stalin with the Western Allies after Hitler attacked Russia.

Though there will be few surprises for me, I suspect many will be startled by the strange relationships that Stalin had with Hitler, Churchill, and Roosevelt.

The programme is all the more interesting for filling in many gaps left by British education, which lionises the Russians for their immense bravery in bringing the fall of Nazi Berlin in ferocious fighting, but tends to fail to mentioned the fact that Stalin started out in covert alliance with Hitler, or what price the Soviets would exact for their help to the Western Alliance in terms of building an empire in Eastern Europe of former democracies.

And also the remarkable duplicity of the USA in terms of attempting to reduce the world influence of Great Britain in the post-war settlement.

A special relationship is said to exist between the USA and the UK, and yet in the true heat of it, it is clear that our true co-incidence of interest in is reality with Eurpoe and not the USA, as demonstrated by Roosevelt's actions, and attitude towards Btitain in terms of his dealings with Stalin.

This is a rather thought provoking period of history.

ATB from George

It is [monthly] payday tomorrow so I have been on a spending spree [of fairly miniscule proportions!], and bought the Oxford English to Polish Dictionary which is a collaboration with PWN, which I have found out the absolute standard Polish equivalent of Oxford.

I did not think I would find one this way round, as, till recently, it was certainly easier to find this sort of book with the explanations, preface, etc. in Polish.

I also got a new phone today though this was a freebie on account of being an O2 customer since the the days of BT Celnet! Though I declined to get a slow puncture repaired. I am not much good at spending on two things in one day!

ATB from George

I have a funny quotation to relay. This was said to me apropo a shy and very kind Polish lady I know, and whom I admire [to say the least] from afar.

A friend said to me a few minutes ago: "It is possible to have a friendship with a lady, you know...!"

Well I laughed out loud, literally, down the phone! In my experience it has always proven to be a suspiscion of theirs that ladies to whom one might show some degree of affection tend to consider that one only wants a bit of [sexual] intercourse! I don't care for rejection, or imposing mself on anyone, which is why I thought the advice so particularly funny!

But my friend is right of course, and I should certainly take the risk of arranging a nice supper, and possibly being rejected [not for the first time] ...

Perhaps Fate will shine on me at last!

ATB from George

PS: The last lesson was especially inspired. Good beer as well. But I am criplingly shy of actually trying out my juvenile Polish on anyone. It seems rude to mangle a language in the learning process ...