In Polish cudzysłów is used a lot less frequently than in English. Why? Because dialogs in Polish books are marked with an m-dash (a long hyphen of sorts), instead of quotation marks. It looks something like this:

– Couldn’t you find something more interesting to write about today?
– Oh, but “quotation marks” are interesting!
– To you maybe…
– Oh, shut up…

I think quotation marks (the Polish kind) are interesting. Why? They differ from the English ones in that they actually look like „that”. Not a huge difference at all, right? And yet you’d be surprised to see how it confuses Polish students of English and foreign students of Polish.

I was working with a Polish teacher once, who was an American, and she stubbornly kept correcting her students’ use of Polish-style quotation marks, apparently unaware of the difference in look and usage.

And just recently I came across an article translated from Polish into English where the Polish style and use of quotation marks was preserved.

Personally, I think I prefer the Polish style. M-dashes are a lot less hassle than quotation marks when typing dialogs. But what baffles me is where the Polish cudzysłów is hiding on my keyboard. I’m a mac user and, frankly, have no clue where to find it. So how did I get it to appear in this post? By copying and pasting it from wikipedia.

Help! Help!

Post from: Polish Blog

Registering the births of minors (osób małoletnich):

Birth certificates of minors, born abroad, are registered on the basis of a written application, submitted by one of the parents to the Office of Vital Statistic (Urząd Stanu Cywilnego), along with the original birth certificate and its certified translation. Sounds simple right?

What they fail to tell you is that the express consent of both parents (regardless of marital status) is required (or may be required). The consent of the absent parent must be appropriately notarized. I was unable to register my children’s births and my marriage, because I didn’t have my husband’s notarized consent. This “requirement” is rather arbitrarily enforced at the whim of “pani urzędniczka”. I was rather upset that this small VITAL detail was not explicitly described on the consulate’s website.

I spent many hours on Polish forums looking for other cases of “foreign” parents being refused for this reason during a direct application submission. I found about 5 cases out of the 100 I read through. Boy, do I feel special! I encountered countless cases of exceptions where the process described above was not followed. Rules in Poland are not consistently followed which makes the whole experience of dealing with Poland’s bureaucracy extremely frustrating.

More important information concerning minors:

The USC reserves the right to require additional, unspecified information at any time during the process. Scary huh? The USC may require additional documents e.g. marriage certificate (akt ślubu), copies of BOTH parents’ birth certificates if the original marriage certificate does not contain sufficient information.

In the case of Canadian documentation, the bride and grooms’ parents are named and their country of origin is listed. This fact therefore makes it highly unlikely that supplemental information will be requested. All these supplemental documents need to be properly translated/certified as well. Are we having fun yet?

A copy of the application form (wniosek) to register a foreign birth or marriage certificate, can be obtained from any consulate office or downloaded from most consulate websites.

Good luck.

Post from: Polish Blog

So, read on and take notes (or simply print this entry).

And Barb - thank you so much for this!!!

Anna recently inquired about the status of my confirmation of Polish citizenship application (potwierdzenie posiadania obywatelstwa polskiego). I told her that it was probably going to take another 6 to 8 months before my case would be concluded. I chose to engage a lawyer in Warsaw to act on my behalf and to submit the required paperwork and applications directly.

While in Poland this summer, I decided to move ahead with an intermediate step in the passport application process: the (successful) registration of my foreign birth certificate (umiejscowienie zagranicznego aktu urodzenia) in the Office of Vital Statistics (Urząd Stanu Cywilnego) in Warsaw.

People that were born abroad and currently live abroad have their applications handled by the USC office in Warsaw:
Urząd Stanu Cywilnego - Warszawa Śródmieście
Adres: ul. Andersa 5,
00-281 Warszawa
tel.: 022 227 40 00,
fax: 022 227 40 06

The registration of foreign birth certificates can obviously be handled by any Polish consulate. The consular requirements vary slightly by nation (check details with your relevant consulate), but generally involve:

• i) submitting an original certified birth certificate (“extended or long form”);
• ii) ensuring that the original document:

1. a) bears an Apostille stamp, where applicable (Anna’s comment - I can’t stress enough how important this Apostille bit is!!! without it your documents may turn out to be totally useless), or
2. b) undergoes “legalization” by the Consul verifying the authenticity of the underlying documents;

• iii) translating the document into Polish by a sworn translator;
• iv) having the Polish consulate officially certify (urzędowo poświadczone) the accuracy of each page of the translation;
• v) filling out the appropriate form (wniosek) and
• vi) paying the associated fees (opłaty)—about three times the amount charged in PL. Note: payment by credit card is not accepted. Also, your original U.S./Canadian/UK document is NOT returned.

Et voila, three original copies of your Polish birth certificate (polski akt urodzenia) will be available for pick up at the consulate in about 3 months time.

Now, before folks begin to protest that they didn’t have to follow the above process, I counter with the incredibly useful phrase “co kraj, to obyczaj”. You will find the above process described on most Polish consulate websites… just for fun let’s call them “requirements”. The execution of said requirements can vary… A LOT. This is Poland after all. There may even be requirements that are rigidly adhered to that are not even listed anywhere. Repeat after me: “this is Poland after all” (catchy mantra, isn’t it?).

Alternatively, you can do this in person or have a permanent Polish resident act as your proxy; with proper “certified” authorization (za pośrednictwem osoby upoważnionej). Close family members do not require a power of attorney (pełnomocnictwo). (Anna’s comment - sometimes, however, they may - it all depends on what pani urzędniczka decides on any given day, my dad needed pełnomocnictwo to pick up my marriage certificate.)

In Poland, the process is as follows:
Translation:

Your original birth certificate MUST be translated by a “sworn translator” (tłumacz przysięgły). Your original is attached to the translation and you must sign the translator’s official log book. Translation fees come out to about 100 zł. Easy step. (Anna’s comment - translate your documents AFTER they’ve been confirmed with the Apostille thingie, otherwise the translation may not be accepted!)

Direct Submission:

The Warsaw USC office is new, spacious and well organized. Upon entry, get a number from one of the interactive kiosks (touch the description beside number 10 on the display to get a ticket). Plant yourself in a chair in front of office 10 and wait/watch for your number to be called. When called into the office, present your documents and fill out the required form. The pleasant clerk (urzędniczka) will help you with the form. She will ask you who will pick up your certificate in 30 days time (the documents cannot be mailed). If you can’t pick it up in person, you can designate a person to do it for you (name, address, phone number required) for a small fee. She will instruct you to step next door (office 11) and pay the necessary fee in cash. The fee is 50 zł + an additional 8 zł if you have designated another person for pick up.
Et voila, in 30 days time your three original short-form certificates will be ready for pick up. This step went very smoothly for me.

Anna’s comment - the above process applies to adults, in her next post Barb will explain how it works for those under the age of 18.

Post from: Polish Blog

“Oh, you mean like the k-word?” was my reply.
“No, not really, I mean like words that you can actually spell out on your blog without getting in trouble.”

Ahhhh… OK, let me think then…

Hmmm… so if you just happen to be listening to random people’s random conversations, what would you hear most often? (Apart from all the words that Poles are seemingly very fond of using and which I can’t include in here.)

There’s always “cześć” – the universal Polish greeting when “dzień dobry” seems too official.
There are always “Pan” and “Pani”, as in “Panie Waldku” and “Pani Aniu”, etc… that’s how we tend to address each other when using first names only seems either too rude or too familiar.

And then there’s “spoko, spoko”. I have to confess, I like “spoko, spoko” and use it a lot. Maybe even too much, according to some people.

So, what is “spoko, spoko”?
Spoko is shortened version of “spokojnie” when used to calm someone down, as in “it’s OK”, “it’s all right”, or even “take it easy.”
Spokojnie itself is an adverb and means “calmly”, “quietly” and so on, you get the idea. The adjective it came from is “spokojny” and here it is in all its glorious forms:

• spokojny (adj., fem: spokojna, neuter: spokojne, plural personal masculine: spokojni, plural all others: spokojne) – calm, quiet, unhurried.

And sometime along the way “spokojnie” got shortened to “spoko” and then repeated twice for emphasis – “spoko, spoko”.

As in:

Spóźnimy się! – We’ll be late!
Spoko, spoko, zdążymy. – take it easy, we’ll make it (on time).

And that’s pretty much what “spoko, spoko” is all about.

So, what other most often heard words and phrases do you think should be included?

Post from: Polish Blog

So, this year, let’s celebrate it a little bit differently - with a song (and dance, but that’s optional).

I have to say that I’m very undereducated when it comes to pieśni patriotyczne (patriotic songs). I remember something my grandma used to sing about ułani and their horses. And something about rozmaryn (rosemary). And of course, I was taught to sing “Rota“, which during the Partition was something of an unofficial Polish national song.

So, I thought it would be nice to share some of these songs with you. If you want, I can even dig out the lyrics and translate them. Or you can simply listen to the songs and enjoy them as they are.

Let’s start with the ułani song, which I think was one of my favorites when I was little. Even though I had no clue what an uhlan was.

And here’s “Rota” (The Oath). The lyrics were written by a famous Polish author - Maria Konopnicka and the song was once proposed as the official Polish national anthem.

And this is, in my opinion at least, probably the best Polish patriotic song ever. “O mój rozmarynie” (I’ve seen this one translated into English as “Death Will Kiss Me, But Not You”, even though the Polish title is something like “Oh, My Rosemary” - talking about an herb here, of course). Anyway, in this song a guy is singing that he will go to his girlfriend and ask if she loves him. If she says no, he will become an uhlan and go to war, where he will die, and hence the English words - “death will kiss me, but not you.” This is an original recording from the 30s.

Post from: Polish Blog

That comment has prompted one of the readers to send me an email asking whether it was true or not – if there really were rabid dogs in Poland. The reader was about to move to Poland and planned to take his dog with him. But now, after finding out that Poland was not a rabies free country, he was having second thoughts.

Yes, wścieklizna (rabies) is very much real in Poland. And as far as I know, all cats and dogs kept as pets must be vaccinated (koty i psy muszą być zaszczepione) against rabies. But also as far as I know, rabies is mostly prevalent in wild animals – squirrels, bats, foxes, (wiewiórki, nietoperze, lisy) etc…

What would concern me, as an animal lover, more are the numbers of stray dogs and cats (bezdomne, literally – homeless, psy i koty) in Poland.

And to calm my concerned reader who’s planning to bring his dog to Poland, this is most likely what Barb had in mind when she mentioned her wściekły pies – a stray that barks like crazy and lunges for your ankles when you walk by. Any dog that’s loud and aggressive (and doesn’t even have to be homeless) can be colloquially referred to as “wściekły pies”.

Incidentally, the adjective “wściekły” (feminine: wściekła, neuter: wściekłe, plural masculine personal: wściekli, plural all others: wściekłe) also means furious, mad (as foaming at the mouth mad), angry, livid.

And there’s even a verb – wściec się (perfective; imperfective: wściekać się) – to get angry, mad, furious, to see red, to go postal.

So, now all you ladies out there, you can say:

• Jestem wściekła na niego. – I’m mad (angry) at him.
• Wściekłam się na niego. – I got mad (angry) at him.

And gentlemen, please don’t ask me why I’m giving such examples today. Let’s just say that jestem naprawdę wściekła na niego (I am really mad at him) today. LOL!

Post from: Polish Blog

But suddenly, when I had to give some examples in Polish, I was stumped. The fact that I’m very easily stumped you all know already very well. So, I decided to take the easy way out and say that in Polish we have different words for different things. Yeah, that was lame, I know. And totally not true.

But apart from prawo and lewo, I couldn’t come up with any other examples.

Prawo could be either a noun or an adverb.
As a noun, it’s neuter in gender and it means “law”, as in “I’m studying law” – Studiuję prawo.
As an adverb, it means “right” as in “to turn right” – skręcić w prawo.
Lewo is an adverb too, and it’s the opposite of prawo, as in “to turn left” – skręcić w lewo.
But if you use it in a phrase like “załatwię to na lewo”, it means something like “I’ll get it done, but not quite legally, under the table, etc…” Which smells of kombinowanie, in a rather negative way, so there you have it.
OK, what else? Niebo (noun, neuter) can mean either “sky” or “Heaven”.
Tępy (adjective, feminine singular: tępa, neuter singular: tępe, pl masc personal: tępi, all others plural: tępe) can mean either blunt, dull (as in not sharp) or stupid. There is even a noun derived from tępy to describe a particularly dumb and uncouth person: tępak.
And here I draw a blank…

So, please, by all means, feel free to add to the list. Or else we’ll have to stick with the version that in Polish we have all sorts of different words for all sorts of different things.

Post from: Polish Blog

And to another reader - thank you for pointing out the fact that I didn’t explain the really first thing first about this word. So, in order to rectify that oversight from the other day, here it is:

• kombinowanie (noun, neuter, plural: kombinowania, though I don’t think many people would use the plural form) – and that’s the noun version of kombinować.

• kombinować (verb, imperfective; the perfective form would be wykombinować) – wangle, maneuver, get things sorted out, cheat, scheme, arrange something, etc…

And here are some examples of kombinowanie that should be easy to grasp (even for my very honest American readers, wink wink).

Personally, I have seen tons and tons of kombinowanie in the US. Heck, you want to see kombinowanie as an artform the American way, then go to any jury selection process and see how people kombinują to get out of performing their civic duty.

Another example of kombinowanie is trying to get a reasonably priced sublet apartment in Manhattan. That’s when kombinowanie turns ruthless, even by Polish standards. Anything goes (short of murder, but then again, who knows?) – lying, cheating, scheming and bribe giving (and a few other things that I shouldn’t mention on a PG-13 blog).

But I think that basically kombinowanie starts in school, and that’s a proven fact the world over. Proven how? Show me a bunch of 13 or 14 or 15 year olds who are NOT trying to get out of some undesirable school activities by any means necessary and you’ll see a bunch of witless pushovers.

So, actually, I don’t think that the totalitarian regime of the communist days had much to do with the Polish kombinowanie way of life. If you read how those really ancient guys like Mieszko and Chrobry got to be princes and kings and otherwise mighty and powerful guys, then it’s obvious that kombinowanie (and this time definitely including murder) has been with us, Poles, for a lot longer than the last 50 or 60 years. In fact, you can even say it’s kept us alive through the centuries, it’s helped us survive wars and other calamities.

And what happened if we ended up stuck (no doubt of a result of kombinowanie of other powers) with a witless wonder of a ruler who couldn’t kombinować even if the very survival of his country depended on it and concentrated on building pretty palaces instead? Like Stanisław August Poniatowski, for example? Everybody knows.

So yes, kombinowanie may be our way of life, and I don’t think it’s more prevalent in Poland than in other countries (it seems to me that in Asia and South America it’s physically impossible to get anything done without some very skillful kombinowanie). We are just a lot more honest about admitting to actually doing it.

PS. Do you still see any goofy computer language in my posts on this blog? I am using a new computer and a new internet provider (microwave wireless something something) and I hope there will be no more glitches.

Post from: Polish Blog

Apparently there is a difference between those two. And apparently, I have been always using the wrong form.

But first things first. “Do” means “to”, and “na” means “on”, more or less and most of the time anyway.
So what’s the deal with “do miasta” and “na miasto”? I asked my friend to explain it to me using simple and easy to understand words, but even though she was the one who pointed out my incorrect usage, she was unable to actually articulate the difference. But that’s the Polish language for you. Nothing new here. We pride ourselves on being able to speak such a difficult language, but when it comes to explaining the finer points of this language we draw a blank.

So, I started to google, because I was sure that some learned person (with a PhD in Polish, no doubt) out there would know how to explain the difference between “do miasta” and “na miasto”. And what did I find?

The difference is there indeed, and it’s really simple. (Oh yeah, if it’s that simple how come I never figured it myself huh?)

So, you say “idę do miasta” if you are out of town and actually heading into town.
And you say “idę na miasto” if you are actually in town (as in: you live there) and are leaving your house (apartment, hotel room, whatever) to wander around a bit.

Simple? Maybe. If it were up to me, I’d get rid of the “na miasto” version, because it just rubs me the wrong way. Or maybe I’m simply jealous of people who actually live in the city and don’t have to go into town?

Post from: Polish Blog

I really don’t like sweeping generalizations, though that doesn’t stop me in making them myself from time to time, to be perfectly honest. So most of the time when I hear such a general comment, I just take it with a grain of salt. But when those sweeping generalizations begin to include me, well, that’s a whole another story. It’s personal then, and for me that’s when the gloves come off.

But yeah, what kind of generalizations are we talking about here? You know, those broad comments that encompass perhaps an entire nation or an ethic group, like that the French are generally rude (not true) and the Americans fat (again, not true). So why am I getting all worked up about it today? Somebody has told me recently, and to my face no less, that Poles are a conniving, dishonest bunch that can’t be trusted. As a proof of those national characteristics, the person used the famous Polish art (or is it a skill?) of kombinowanie.

Now, I know those comments have been around for centuries, and I know that Poles made kombinowanie into a whole new art form in its own right (that much is true), but when someone says it to my face, that makes it personal.

And personally, some of the most dishonest and untrustworthy people I’ve met in my life were single males between the ages of 22 and 32, university educated, no less. Does that mean that I’m going to pass sweeping generalizations that all single males between the ages of 22 and 32 are dishonest pricks? Of course not. So it really bothers me when narrow-minded people apply such generalizations to whole nationalities and ethnic groups.

I explained as much to the person I was talking with, and his response was “but you guys (meaning Poles) have a bad reputation everywhere you go.”

Oh really? Is that true? Am I that out of touch with how the Polish people are perceived by foreigners?

And is “kombinowanie” really all that bad? I’m as good at it as the next Pole, and yet I’ve never used it for nefarious purposes. Quite the opposite in fact.

But what is that “kombinowanie” anyway?
Some of my fellow countrymen will tell you that it’s one Polish word that can’t be translated into English. I disagree. It can be translated, but how you do it depends on the context.

The verb “kombinować” can mean many things. It can be used as in “to scheme”, “to fix”, “to sort out”, “to arrange” and so on. You get the idea. Nothing wrong with a little “kombinowanie” itself, it’s why you want to kombinować that might be perceived as less than honest by some people.

So yeah, we are the masters of kombinowanie, but does that immediately mean we are dishonest and untrustworthy as a nation?
Your opinions please. Honest opinions, of course.

PS. I apologize for the recent lack of comments from me, but we’re moving again and have internet issues.

Post from: Polish Blog