BellaOnline Forums Travel and Culture Polish Culture Polish language - help

DEE, Nancy,
This is a response from a very intellegent friend in Poland.. I asked her to translate Raytan's foot note.. Here is her answer.. So then I was close Użytkownik frank napisał:

Hi Franek,

I dont know if You wrote me something earlier but my computer was broken and I lost all emails.

Cosię polepszy to się popieprzy. It is ugly sentence very difficult to translate.

It mean: when the situation improve immediately deteriorate.

Very strange for me.

I awaiting the e mail from You.

Malgosia
in my translation.

Sounds to me like: What goes up must come down.
<img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Frank and Nancy...

Thanks for posting on this...just catching up after a great Christmas.

That motto of Raytan's is an odd one, and he answered my query saying so. I recall writing him that I thought it sounded literally like
"you reap what you sew", as word for word is difficult.

Frank, I really wasn't asking the pronunciation of those letters....I can pronounce pretty well
actually. What I wondered about is how to type the letters with the accents above them that give the actual pronunciation. Nancy...you wrote that you have something on windows that does this or is it a special program?

Nancy...thanks for the comments about my article.
And your Polish note --- Sto lat!
To me that actually means--sto(hundred)lat(years)
as I translate it from the dictionary!

I think I am much like Frank in that I'm not familiar with modern day translations, but I have to argue with him that it's street talk.. not so...it's just simply old, basic polish!!

When I see some words I am totally lost in their meaning, as grammar has changed drastically I think. When I was in Poland, this made it difficult, for as Frank said, they talk so fast!
The structure of sentences is not at all like English...as you can tell from some of Jaga's sentences. It just is more natural for her to translate that way, but sounds strange to us, and we'll have just as difficult a time trying to change from English to Polish.

You said it all Dee.. You are right on

Dee,

Sto lat! does mean 100 years - it is the song the Poles sing to you to wish a happy birthday (and long life). Somewhere in this forum we discussed it and Frank posted all the words (in Polish).

I am not sure that it is correct that Polish grammar has changed - during the communist years apparently the Poles taught their children a standard Polish so that the language would be maintained. It could be that the way Polish was spoken in America changed a bit from the way it is spoken in Poland.

Another thing I was told as I started studying Polish: in English the position of the word in a sentence is important for understanding the meaning, but in Polish, because they have all those different endings for the words (declensions), the ending of the word (=structure of the word) carries the meaning and the place of the word in the sentence does not matter so much. I think that is why the word order seems odd to English-speakers when Poles translate their sentences.

Dee,

Do you use Word to type documents? If so, first try this: when you want to put in an accented letter, go to the menu that says: Insert, Symbol. As you scroll through the list of available symbols, you should see various accented letters. Select the symbol or accented letter that you want, and insert it into your document.

This does not work for email, just Word documents, but you can type in Word, then copy the text and paste it into an email. Problem is, the person getting the email or message may not have their browser set to read the special characters so they will look like gibberish. Jaga has a lot of experience getting those characters to look right on her website!

Another option is to install another language on your keyboard. The menu sequence in windows is
Start -Control Panel - Regional Options - General - Language Settings

I imagine that is what Eric did in order to type in the Russian Cyrillic alphbet that he uses in some of his posts on this forum.

You will most likely have to have one of your Windows operating systems discs handy. Look at the discs that came with your computer. I honestly cannot recall if I did that or not, it has been a long time.

Nancy and Dee,
Nancy, you are one sharp cookie..Your Father taught you well.. Ty mas rozum glowie, nie nogi. ( You have brains in your head, and not your feet ) I can hardly understand what you say..With my 9th grade education..You should have no trouble learning Polish.. All you need is some help and practice.. You have one big disadvantage.. The sound of the vowels.. They sound different than English.. The rest should be easy.. Dee and Basia remember them from school. A lot of words i spell by the sound alone.. I still make mistakes. We all do.. Look at Jaga's spelling.. My contacts in Poland overlook my mistakes.. They encourage me on.. They too make mistakes in English.. But we learn together.. To me Polish is very much like the morse code.. One does not count the dots and dashes.. The sound of the word registers with me.
I confess that in a lot of t
he songs that I know, some words are strange to me.. But still I know the sound of the word.
It is like I said,, this Forum is big enough to have one thread for us to speak Polish..Swallow your pride and overlook any mistakes.. That is the only way that you are going to learn..
Dee told it the right way, My Polish is not street talk.. But old Polish as we learned it from our parents.

Nancy, Dee,
Just to show what I mean, by the sound..Here is a song that I remember from my experience as a Prisoner of war in Germany In WW2..
LILY MARLENE
Aus dem stillen Raume,
Aus der Erde Grund
Hebt mich wie im Traume
Dein verliebter Mund
Wenn sich die sp�ten Nebel drehn
Werd' ich bei der Laterne steh'n
&#0124;: Wie einst Lili Marleen. :&#0124;

English
From my quiet existence,
And from this earthly pale,
Like a dream you free me,
With your lips so hale.
When the night mists swirl and churn,
Then to that lantern I'll return,
As once Lili Marleen

Jaga and Pieter can correct my mistakes

Krawczyk,

It is correct, you know the song from reality I knew the song from history and the Mivie Lily Marlene.
Nice song. Was there not an allied version sang in English by Marlene Dietrich?

Pieter,
Yes there is an American version of this song

Underneath the lamp post by the barracks gate
Standing all alone,every night she can hear him say.
Fare thee
well, my Lily Marlene

In December of 1944 I listened to Marlena Dietrich sing this song in LIEGE. Just before the battle of the Bulge on December 16th. At the Schnee Eiffel, the Loshiem Gap in Belgium