GOŚĆ W DOM, BÓG W DOMU (Guest at home, God at home), or how to offer something to drink in Polish?

What question do you hear when you step across the threshold of a Polish home? And what question should you ask when a Pole (and not only a Pole) comes to visit you? Most participants of courses of Polish will answer without hesitation: co słychać? (how is it going?) Indeed, it is one of the first questions we learn in Polish class but it is soon followed by the one we are going to focus on today.

COŚ DO PICIA? (Anything to drink?) or CZEGO SIĘ NAPIJESZ (What would you like to drink?)?  - TWO IMPORTANT POLISH QUESTIONS

                        And you? What would you like to drink? More Polish vocabulary on our FB page

Asking one of the two questions would seem natural. However, you need to know how important they are in the Polish culture. First of all, not asking one of them is considered most rude. Secondly, once it has been asked, you need to get ready for a mini-dialogue such as this one:

 - Coś do picia?
 - Nie, dziękuję. 
 - Jesteś pewien/ pewna? 
 - Hm... No, dobrze. Może kawę?  

- Anything to drink?
- No, thank you.
- Are you sure?
- Well... OK. Coffee then?

That is:  question – negative answer – question repeated – positive answer. Obviously, not every conversation of this kind looks exactly like that. You might hear a positive answer right away. However, it does happen that  a foreigner, after receiving a negative response, ends the conversation, leaving his Polish interlocutor in amazement and without a drink.

As you can see, it is a good idea not only to get acquainted with basic Polish structures but also to find out how and when to use them.

DIMINUTIVE FORMS OF POLISH NAMES, SO IS ASIA JOANNA?

FOREIGNERS AND POLISH NAMES

- Wysłałeś mail Asi? (Have you emailed Asia)?
- Nie, wysłałem mail Joannie. (I’ve emailed Joanna)
- No, właśnie: Asi. (Exactly: Asia)
- Nie, Joannie. (No, Joanna)

A dialogue like that is quite common in companies where foreigners work with the Polish. Even the foreigners who can speak Polish quite well already, especially thanks to  the Polish courses they’ve attended, still stumble over issues that seem trivial, such as names of their Polish colleagues. While it’s fairly easy to figure out that Tomasz is Tomek, Magdalena – Magda, Jakub – Kuba, and Anna is Ania, it gets more complicated with names like Jan, Jerzy, Agnieszka etc.

VARIATIONS OF THE SAME NAME IN POLISH

What is obvious for the Poles, may surprise foreigners. How can a diminutive form of Aleksandra possibly be Ola, or Kasia a diminutive of Katarzyna? And how to remember that Antonina may be called Tosia or Tośka? Is Czarek really Cezary, and is my nice colleague from the open-plan office, Gosia, in fact Małgorzata? Why does Anna‘s business card say Anna, while the colleagues call her Ania and she introduces herself as Anka?! And since when is Jerzy called Jurek? Why do colleagues call Andrzej from the IT department Jędrek? And why does my mother-in-law call her daughter Agusia, if, I remember that very clearly, I married Agnieszka, whose friends call her Aga? And my son has two friends in the kindergarden: Antek and Antoś. They both share the same name, which is Antoni. We cooperate with an accountant, her name is Maria (a beautiful name!), but our colleagues call her Marysia, and once I heard her husband calling her Marynia. And how come my son’s name is Maciuś?! It was my wife, Aga, who insisted on naming him Maciej, after his Polish grandfather. Our hipothetical foreigner never ceases to be surprised, despite the fact that such processes occur in other languages, too (William – Bill, Robert – Bob, Margaret – Peggy, Michael – Mike, Elisabeth – Lizzie etc.)

HOW TO MASTER THE DIMINUTIVES OF POLISH NAMES

When you speak Polish the choice of the name variation very often depends on our relation to the bearer of the name. The Joanna we’ve mentioned above will introduce herself so in formal situations, but her friends, if they want to emphasize the informality of their relations, will call her Joaśka, her beloved or her parents will call her Asia, and when Joanna was a little girl some people might have called her Asiunia. She may have played in the yard with a Tomek, whose mother called him Tomaszek, or even (horror of horrors!) Tomuś, while his documents said his name was Tomasz.
For a foreigner who has just started to learn Polish each of the forms seems to be a different word. How to learn and use them so as to avoid misunderstandings? That’s  easy. Speak Polish as much as possible, practise grammar in the meantime, e.g. here

THE THREE CAPITAL CITIES OF POLAND

WARSAW AS THE THIRD CAPITAL 

Capital city is the showpiece of every country. Undeniably, Warsaw is the showpiece of Poland. However, not everyone knows that it is the third capital of Poland.

THE FIRST CAPITAL OF POLAND AND THE EMERGENCE OF POLAND AS A STATE

 The first capital was Gniezno, a small town near Poznań. The origin of Gniezno is connected with the legend of the establishment of the Polish state, and it takes its name after „gniazdo“, which means „nest“. In that very area was the beautiful and fertile land and the eagle nest described in the legend, which encouraged Lech (progenitor of the Poles) to stop his wanderings and set up a settlement.
Naturally, that is only a legend, but there must be a grain of truth in it. Anyone going to Gniezno must definitely go and see the Cathedral with the famous Bronze Doors bulit in the 12th century, which show the episodes from the life of St. Adalbert.

THE CAPITAL OF POLISH CULTURE

The second capital of Poland was the city very well known to tourists, Kraków. Officially, Kraków served as the capital from the 11th century up to 1795, although it ceased to be the residence of the kings much earlier, in 1611.
Kraków, located on the Vistula river in the south of Poland, is not only one of the oldest cities, but it is also a place where tourists will definitely have no chance to put away their cameras. You can visit the Wawel Castle (the former Royal Castle), the beautiful Sukiennice (Cloth Hall), the picturesque Kazimierz (the former Jewish Quarter) and the Social Realist suburb of Nowa Huta. You should go for a stroll in Planty, go to one of the numerous Kraków theatres to see a good play, in Polish, naturally. Kraków has always claimed the name of “the Capital of Polish Culture”.

MOVING THE CAPITAL TO WARSAW

In 1596 King Sigismund III Vasa decided to move his court from Kraków to Warsaw. The official reason behind the decision was the fire in the Wawel Castle. Interestingly, for the next 200 years Warsaw was formally only the Residential City of His Majesty, while in fact it served as the capital city.
Nowadays Warsaw is a city full of contrasts. On the one hand, it is a modern metropolis with skyscrapers, whose inhabitants live the metropolitan life; on the other hand, there are picturesque old houses, narrow streets of the Old Town, the Royal Castle and the Wilanów Palace. Warsaw is not only a business and trade centre and a place frequently visited by tourists. It is also teeming with cultural and student life. Warsaw is the place where many foreigners come to learn Polish. Whether you are a tourist or a student, you should go to one of the museums, go for a walk in Łazienki park, and should you get lost, remember to look up to find your way thanks to the Palace of Culture towering over the city.

                                            Polish course only in Po Polsku.Polish for Professionals

FALSE FRIENDS: POLISH AND OTHER SLAVIC LANGUAGES

IS IT EASIER FOR THE SLAVS TO LEARN POLISH?

It is believed that the students whose native language is one of the Slavic languages, find it easier to learn Polish as a foreign language than do the students whose language belongs to another language group. There’s a lot of truth in that. There is a „but“, however. The Slavs can easily fall into a trap called false friends when learning Polish.

IT SOUNDS THE SAME IN POLISH, SO...

There is a great deal of words that sound very similar or identical in Polish, Slovak, Czech and Russian. Unfortunately, similar sound doesn’t go with the same meaning. Every Pole doing the shopping in the Czech Republic or Slovakia must have been surprised when they saw bread described as „czerstwy“. At first you might think it’s the honest shop assistant telling his customers that the bread isn’t fresh. Wrong. The word „čerstvé” in Czech and Slovak means fresh, whereas in Polish it means old, stale.

MILITARY TENDENCIES IN THE POLISH LANGUAGE OR FALSE FRIENDS?

Russian speakers burst into laughter when they hear that Polish people drink from a ... cannon. And again, that is a lexical error: the word puszka (пушка) in Russian means «cannon», while in Polish it's just an innocent can.

                                            THE SLAVS LEARNING POLISH MUST BEWARE OF FALSE FRIENDS

Another thing that may astonish the Polish visiting their Slovak friends is the fact that they are invited to sit on the … carpet. But before we sit on the floor, on the above-mentioned carpet, we should realize that „divan” in Slovak is a sofa, not a carpet as the Polish „dywan” is :)

On the other hand, many Czechs staying in Poland must have felt the urge to return to the shop and complain about the pierogi (dumplings) they had bought as they turned out to be with jagody (blackberries) and not truskawki (strawberries) as it said on the packaging. In Czech and Slovak „jahoda” is the Polish ‘truskawka”, and „jagoda” in Polish means a sweet fruit that grows in the forest (our Southern neighbours call it „borówka”).

As you can see, although the Slavs find it easier to learn conjugations and declension, they might have trouble with false friends, therefore it is advisable that they have a dictionary at hand when doing a Polish course.

HOW TO PREPARE A GOOD LESSON OF POLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE? PART 1.

A GOOD POLISH LESSON. WHAT SHOULD IT BE LIKE?

WHO IS YOUR STUDENT?
First of all, you need to figure out WHO the lesson is FOR. Who’s the foreigner you’re going to teach? Is it a businessperson who has no time to do the homework and wants to make full use of the lesson time, because that’s the only time when they can learn the language? Or is it a new mom who needs Polish to communicate with the doctor, do the shopping or to answer some question while in the park? Or maybe a student who is going to start attending university courses and needs to learn Polish as quickly as possible? Or is your student a keen language learner and the Polish course is simply another one of many in his life? Such a student is bound to ask you plenty of questions with the same level of enthusiasm as the fans of cars of sport when talking about their passions. If you love your job, a course like that will give you a lot of satisfaction.

GROUP COURSES
When conducting classes in groups, you should first try to figure out what the average level of the group is as soon as possible. That means that the pace, rhythm and your expectations as a teacher should be adjusted not to the weakest or the most gifted student but to the one between, the average one. The common mistake many teachers make, and we mean teachers in general, not only teachers of Polish as a foreign language, is that their lessons are „based“ either on the most gifted student (it’s easier for US to work like that, but is it the best solution for the group?), or they focus on the weakest student too much, trying to help him or her. Remember to note whether there are native speakers of any Slavic languages in the group. And if such students have been put in the same group as non-Slavic speakers learning Polish, that proves that the school running the course lacks professionalism. The differences between Slavic and non-Slavic students will be discussed in another entry.

COURSEBOOKS
You should be SELECTIVE about coursebooks available on the market. Believe me, most foreigners aren’t interested in lessons in which they’re asked to describe their flat, talk about fortune-telling and divination or analyse Polish legends. Do not torture foreigners by making them read Polish classics! Do not talk about the opera with a student who is a financial analyst and prefers golf; do not make an engineer read a text on classical music when he or she likes dark rock, and do not teach a mom who has decided to be a homemaker how to find a job in Poland. Obviously, that’s not the case when you are teaching a course preparing for a Polish language certificate exam. Then you need to go over the topics which are less practical for a student in everyday life.

MATERIALS FOR LEARNING POLISH
See that you use wide range of materials. If you use coursebooks available on the market on a regular basis, be sure to check whether the texts published there are up-to-date. Do not be afraid to use material from the press, radio or the Internet, especially when teaching advanced students. Make sure that the Polish language you teach is the „living language“, currently spoken by native speakers. Invite your students to like facebook pages which will support their learning: PoPolskuPFP , use materials available online, e.g. sites with conjugation of Polish verbs, suggest that your students become acquainted with applications, such as  Polish for Foreigners, which will provide them with additional exercises and practice.

WHY LEARN POLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE?

REASONS FOR CHOOSING TO LEARN POLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Why should foreigners learn Polish?

That’s the question many foreigners probably ask themselves after the first Polish lesson, which usually gives them an impression that Polish is difficult. The first answer that comes to one’s mind is that there are about 44 million speakers of Polish around the world. That means there are 44 million chances of you meeting a Polish speaking person somewhere in the world.

However, there are more practical reasons. Imagine foreigners who have arrived in Warsaw, for instance. Just in case they type in the keywords „Polish for foreigners Warsaw“ in the browser (or they can simply go to Po Polsku site and find all the necessary and important information on courses of Polish as a foreign language in Warsaw) and start wondering whether to learn Polish.

Polish is useful!

Obviously, at work or at a restaurant they can communicate in English with not much of a problem. However, assuming that the students take an active part in the lesson, after only one class they will be able to read the name of the street where they live or work without much difficulty.
They will be able to tell a taxi driver their address, no matter whether the street is called Świętokrzyska, Szczera or Pajęcza (these are some examples from Warsaw).
After the next few lessons of the course the foreigners will easily find bread at a supermarket. They will know they they can find it under the letter „P”, which is the first letter of the word „pieczywo”(the name of the department in a store) or „piekarnia”, and not under the letter „B” like „bakery”. It seems a mere trifle, but it definitely makes life easier and helps us save time, which is, as we know, precious.
On the way back from the shop you can listen to the radio, which makes driving more enjoyable. And the radio, as we all know, is not only music, but the news as well, which is always worth listening to. After the course of Polish for foreigners you shouldn’t have difficulty understanding what you hear.
As you can see, Polish is definitely worth learning, you’ll find it useful in everyday situations, it’ll make your life more enjoyable, you’ll be able to listen to the radio, read papers and good books in original version and first of all, you’ll be able to tell your neighbour in the morning „Dzień dobry! Co u pana słychać?” (Good morning, how are you?)