I must apologise for my recent negligence, readers, for I have been inattentive to your needs as keen gatherers of all news from Poland, and too wrapped up, as they say, in my own affairs to pay attention to my devoted followers on this here blog.... so, for this I am deeply sorry. I have been devoting every waking hour (when not teaching zombified teenagers) to embracing my new culture, by learning the language and hanging around in disreputable drinking establishments.... it is a time consuming business let me tell you.
So let me give you an insight into the difficulties of learning that language they call Polish....
Problem number 1 – they have a polite form and an impolite form which I can't fathom out how to use. So I know you have to be polite to the elderly and the authorities, but I've heard people use it all the time no matter who they're speaking to; heck, people even say it to me and I'm neither elderly nor an authority figure (can you image?!). So this causes me stress, because it's much easier to talk in the impolite form but when you add the Pan/Pani (Mr/Mrs) the structure of the verb changes. So I fear offending a person every time I speak to them, because this system, used incorrectly causes great offence. However, it's not as bad as when I was in Russia (have I mentioned that...?) I was told that back in the days of communism they just used to call everyone Comrade but when that was abolished they introduced the system where you approach a person by calling them girl, woman, boy or man but this too is easily misused and can cause offence for example if you approach a young woman what do you call her, girl or woman? It's too complicated and everyone should adopt the British way of just being impolite to everyone.
More of this subject to follow at a later date, but I'm afraid I have already bored you with all these trivialities.
At the weekend we, the school I work at, celebrated Thanksgiving by eating the traditional turkey plus stuffing. It's a tradition here at our school as they have always had a native speaker from America (it's not the same as British English but it'll do!) so we even had a genuine real-life American to oversee the whole event. We didn't have the Superbowl on, as I believe is the norm, but we substituted it for Chelsea vs Man United.
The 31st of November is the day when people in Poland celebrate before the beginning of Advent. Normally this is a day when people take part in all kinds of superstitious activities such as melting candle wax and mixing it with water, then pouring it through the hole in a key, waiting for the wax to set and then looking at it's shadow from a candle to reveal their future and other such nonsense. They also drink a lot and have a party. And you know what they do before they open a bottle of vodka? They slap it's bottom really hard with their hand or elbow (yes – ouch!). They do that all the time not just on 31st November.
It's been a fun-packed week, and adventure is in store for the weekend so expect great things, readers!
So let me give you an insight into the difficulties of learning that language they call Polish....
Problem number 1 – they have a polite form and an impolite form which I can't fathom out how to use. So I know you have to be polite to the elderly and the authorities, but I've heard people use it all the time no matter who they're speaking to; heck, people even say it to me and I'm neither elderly nor an authority figure (can you image?!). So this causes me stress, because it's much easier to talk in the impolite form but when you add the Pan/Pani (Mr/Mrs) the structure of the verb changes. So I fear offending a person every time I speak to them, because this system, used incorrectly causes great offence. However, it's not as bad as when I was in Russia (have I mentioned that...?) I was told that back in the days of communism they just used to call everyone Comrade but when that was abolished they introduced the system where you approach a person by calling them girl, woman, boy or man but this too is easily misused and can cause offence for example if you approach a young woman what do you call her, girl or woman? It's too complicated and everyone should adopt the British way of just being impolite to everyone.
More of this subject to follow at a later date, but I'm afraid I have already bored you with all these trivialities.
At the weekend we, the school I work at, celebrated Thanksgiving by eating the traditional turkey plus stuffing. It's a tradition here at our school as they have always had a native speaker from America (it's not the same as British English but it'll do!) so we even had a genuine real-life American to oversee the whole event. We didn't have the Superbowl on, as I believe is the norm, but we substituted it for Chelsea vs Man United.
The 31st of November is the day when people in Poland celebrate before the beginning of Advent. Normally this is a day when people take part in all kinds of superstitious activities such as melting candle wax and mixing it with water, then pouring it through the hole in a key, waiting for the wax to set and then looking at it's shadow from a candle to reveal their future and other such nonsense. They also drink a lot and have a party. And you know what they do before they open a bottle of vodka? They slap it's bottom really hard with their hand or elbow (yes – ouch!). They do that all the time not just on 31st November.
It's been a fun-packed week, and adventure is in store for the weekend so expect great things, readers!
posted by Girl Least Likely To at 12:28 pm
1 Comments:
I think you will fit in very well with these people
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