Wow. I never thought I would say this, but I’m really impressed by the latest attempt by the Polish Foreign Ministry to promote Poland. They have just launched a website called “Do you know Polska?” which is a cross between a quiz, a social media-powered photo- and language-sharing site and a promotional hub aimed at English-speaking audiences.

Through a series of large-format images of Poland with superimposed words and their definitions the Ministry is clearly hoping to promote Poland as a young, vibrant and cosmopolitan destination. The opening screen asks you whether you “know Polska” and if your answer is “yes”, you take a short test. You are then able to add new words and images, share the existing words and phrases through social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, or simply browse the (hopefully soon to be expanded) library of mostly slang or at least informal words and phrases. Linguistically the site is probably of limited use as it doesn’t explain for example the difference between the infinitive and other cases and therefore may be a bit confusing.

I have to say, many of the words and phrases there have surprised me – I clearly need to watch more MTV Polska.

So far I’ve counted 24 words and their definitions on the site, which seems very little, so it’s going to be interesting to see how this project develops. It’s clearly aimed at a younger audience and the simple and sleek design should help. It looks like the site nicely complements other promotional activities which so far have either focused on some traditional aspects of the Polish culture or on mass tourism, or were aimed at foreign investors. This, although a bit niche, reaches out to the younger audience for whom social media is second nature. Therefore it’s likely to reach more people worldwide.

Have you played with the site yet? If so, what do you think? Czaisz bazę?

And if you think “She sells sea-shells on the sea-shore” is difficult, try these. Here is my top five.

Let’s start with one of the most difficult pieces of Polish literature, a short poem by Jan Brzechwa, called “Chrząszcz” (“Beetle”). Actually, it’s just the opening line of the poem – about a beetle buzzing in reed in the town of Szczebrzeszyn – that has become probably the most famous Polish tongue twister ever:

W Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie.

And how was that? I bet you’ve never seen so many consonants in one sentence in your life! The next one is also full of them, but this time it’s more about ‘s’ vs. ‘sz’:

W czasie suszy szosa sucha.

Which translates as “The road is dry during a drought”. Was that any easier?

How about this one, which uses rather long and complex words to covey a rather simple message – “We isolated ourselves from an enthusiastic crowd”:

Wyindywidualizowaliśmy się z rozentuzjazmowanego tłumu.

The next one makes many people cheat. Sorry, simplify things. Why would you say:

Stół z powyłamywanymi nogami.

which means “A table with its legs broken out”, when you can just say:

Stół bez nóg.

“A table with no legs.” Cheeky. But not as cheeky as the last tongue twister in my collection, which plays tricks on your tongue, but also on your brain.

Alliteration occurs when all words in a phrase or a sentence start with the same letter. This nonsensical tongue twister means “Tooth, tooth soup. Oak, oak soup.” But try to fool your brain and make it forget about the alliteration in the first half of the tongue twister. Now say it really fast:

Ząb, zupa zębowa. Dąb, zupa dębowa.

If you managed to fool your brain (and your tongue) – well done. If not, I’ll let you Google the word you’ve just created…

More in the “Polish your Polish” series

The weather in London has been really mild over the past few weeks, but don’t let it fool you. It’ll get cold and miserable soon.  Already everyone on the tube is sneezing and it made me realise that I never really told you how to express your dissatisfaction with lower temperatures, did I ?

If you want to simply say “I’m cold”, the best phrase to use is

Zimno mi.

Or if you prefer to use the full sentence:

Jest mi zimno.

If you want to ask someone if they’re cold too, simply say:

Zimno ci?

Or if you feel brave enough to go for a full question (which also may sound a bit more formal):

Czy jest ci zimno?

Obviously, the word ‘cold’ in English has also another meaning. So when you want to say that your nose is blocked and you feel like staying under the duvet with some hot tea (in other words, you have a cold), you say:

Jestem przeziębiona (female)

Jestem przeziębiony (male)

Or:

Mam katar.

That’probably easier to remember, isn’t it?

And if someone sneezes, just say

Na zdrowie.

Coincidentally, this is what you say when you raise a glass or two. Cheers! And stay warm.

PS. Sorry the usual audio files are not there this time.

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Blu Sky image by Voyageur Solitaire-mladenovic_N via Flickr, used under the Creative Commons licence

March is always a busy month for me as many of my good friends celebrate their birthdays. And many of them are Polish.

I have recently realised that this basic phrase – happy birthday – has not featured in my Polish your Polish series yet. What an oversight!

So what do you say (or write, if you prefer sending a card or an email)? The easiest and commonest phrase is

Wszystkiego najlepszego

Which literally means “All the best” and is pretty generic. But you can modify the phrase depending on the occasion. So for birthdays you can say:

Wszystkiego najlepszego z okazji urodzin

“All the best on your birthday”. If someone is getting married, you can say:

Wszystkiego najlepszego z okazji ślubu

“All the best on your marriage”. But let’s go back to celebrating birthdays.  Two words you might find useful are:

Życzenia

“wishes” and

Życzyć

Which means ‘to wish”, but you will usually use

Życzę (Ci)…

Which means “I wish (you)…”.  So try saying “I wish you all the best on your birthday” now.

Managed that?

If no, there’s also an easy option.  There’s a song we sing to celebrate someone’s birthday in which we express our wish for them to live a hundred years. A hundred years is

Sto lat

in Polish. If everything else fails, wish the birthday girl or boy “sto lat”. It’ll make them smile and you won’t have to struggle with all those consonants. Simples.

(and this is what happens when you type ‘sto lat‘ in YouTube – this video will help you memorise the spelling, teach you part of the song and quite possibly give you nightmares)

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Image via Flickr © ritchielee, used under Creative Commons licence

Let’s start by buying a ticket. Any ticket.

Bilet

Ticket. The plural is:

Bilety.

If you want a normal one, you need

Bilet normalny.

However if you need a discounted fare, you will ask for

Bilet ulgowy.

Usually if you are at a station you’ll get your ticket from

Kasa (biletowa)

A ticket desk. And if they speak English there, then you’re in luck. Otherwise, try asking for a ticket by saying:

Poproszę bilet do Krakowa

“Can I have a ticket to Krakow, please?”

Poproszę bilet

will do the trick if the ticket desk sells only one kind of tickets, for example tram or bus tickets. Now, you might already have your ticket, but you cannot find the station. Ask for directions:

Przepraszam, gdzie jest stacja (kolejowa)?

which translates as “Excuse me, where is the (train) station?” As everywhere, it pays to be polite to the locals, hence the word ‘przepraszam’ at the beginning. You can also try a similar pharse:

Przepraszam, jak dojść do stacji?

“Excuse me, how do I get to the station?” Which is probably more useful as it’s not train station specific and can be used for all sorts of stations. Obviously.

Right, that will do for now. I’m exhausted just writing this stuff, you must be exhausting trying to put all the consonants together. Most travel phrases next time!

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I don’t know how it happened, but Easter is already here. It’s time then for another mix of Polish Easter phrases and traditions.

Easter in Polish is

Wielkanoc

which is obviously the most important holiday in the Christian calendar, and in a deeply Catholic country like Poland, it comes with a whole set of traditions and customs. And phrases.

Although surprisingly, there’s no separate phrase for Happy Easter in Polish, which is the same as, er, Happy Christmas:

Wesołych świąt!

which you may remember from my December post.

I’m writing this post on Good Friday

Wielki Piątek

which, unlike in Britain, is not a bank holiday in Poland. The main two Easter days are:

Niedziela Wielkanocna

Easter Sunday  and

Poniedziałek Wielkanocny

Easter Monday, which in fact is more commonly known as either

Lany Poniedziałek

or

śmigus dyngus

Lany Poniedziałek literally means ‘watered (wet) Monday’. Strange phrase, I know, but let me explain. On this day women were traditionally, shall we say, sprinkled with water (the extend of that ‘sprinkling’ varies from really subtle to really heavy-handed). It’s an old pagan tradition, which is closely connected with spring and the promise of a new life. But there are numerous other interpretations of this custom, all based around the meaning of water for life.

Śmigus-dyngus (as it’s also known) is still practised all over the country, with some local variations, but unfortunately in some bigger towns it’s a perfect excuse for groups of unruly teenagers to throw buckets of cold water at anyone really.

Another very typical (although not exclusively Polish) tradition is

pisanki

painted Easter eggs. Pisanka (singular) is a must-have on the Polish Easter table. They are made before Easter and eaten on Easter Sunday. Depending on the technique used to paint them (wax, dye, etc.) they may have different names, but pisanki/pisanka is the most commonly used term.

I wonder whether Lany Poniedziałek is nowadays practised in The UK too. Anyone?

Happy Easter!

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Image of pisanki © Jarosław Pocztarski via Flickr, used under CC licence

My previous post made me realise some of my readers might be a bit confused now. Why ‘Polska’, if the blog is called ‘Polski’? What’s the difference?

Well, let me confuse you even more.

‘Polska’ can be used as a noun, a proper name – simply the name of the country, Poland.

But ‘polska’ (with a small ‘p’) can also be used as an adjective meaning ‘Polish’, but only when used with a feminine noun or while referring to a feminine subject.  Still with me? So for example ‘polska kiełbasa’ (‘polish sausage’) is feminine. (No giggling at the back!)

Which shouldn’t be confused with ‘Polka’ (capital ‘P’, no ‘s’), which is again a noun, meaning ‘a Pole’ (feminine). A Polish woman or girl, in other words. A Polish man is ‘Polak’. See the subtle difference in spelling between these two.

‘Polski’ is also an adjective, used when referring to masculine nouns. The word ‘blog’ seems to be masculine, hence the Polski blog.

Simple, eh?

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Image © teotwawki via Flickr, used under CC licence

Tłusty Czwartek

is mainly celebrated in Poland and in Germany and it marks the end of the carnival. It’s the last Thursday before Lent, which starts with Ash Wednesday the following week.

So what is Tłusty Czwartek all about? Well, nowadays it’s all about eating donuts

pączki

or a very Polish sweet dough thing, called

faworki

basically long, thin, twisted crusty pieces of fried dough with plenty of icing sugar on top.

It’s estimated each year Poles go though – ready for this? – approximately 100 million donuts on Tłusty Czwartek.

As it’s celebrated just before Lent – time when you’re supposed to fast for 40 days before Easter – people have traditionally used the day to go OTT with food. Our ancestors might have preferred meat, bacon and wódka, but nowadays is just deep-fried yummy stodge. But many people believe that if you don’t eat at least one donut on Tłusty Czwartek, your luck will run out. I love it how we come up with any excuse just to stuff our faces.

So anyway, if you did miss Tłusty Czwartek, don’t despair. There’s always

Ostatki

which is the very last night before the beginning of Lent (known in the UK as Pancake Tuesday) and which in the past was a massive excuse to throw parties, eat a lot (yeah, of course) and – particularly in small villages across some parts of Poland – to walk around dressed up and do silly things. The general rule was – everything had to finish before midnight. You were not allowed to have parties or eat excessively for the next 40 days until Easter.

Again, nowadays it’s likely to be celebrated by having massive parties on the weekend preceding the Tuesday.

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Image © Derek Farr used under CC licence via Flickr

Powodzenia!

Good luck!

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Image © sp1ffyd via Flickr used under CC licence

Time then for a quick overview of the most useful Polish phrases for the festive period.

Let’s start with the name itself, Christmas in Polish is

Boże Narodzenie

Although you can also refer to it as

święta

which literally means ‘holidays’. The singular form ‘święto’ can refer to a bank holiday in general, while the plural will be used to denote either Christmas or Easter or any cluster of bank holidays.

The individual Christmas days don’t really have individual names like they do in Britain, apart from:

Wigilia

Christmas Eve, the evening when most Poles will have their Christmas Eve dinners, exchange gifts and go to church for the midnight mass.

To wish someone a Merry Christmas, you say simply

Wesołych świąt!

Merry Christmas. And a week after Wigilia, people get ready for

Sylwester

New Year’s Eve. Poles celebrate name’s days and the male name Sylwester (celebrated on 31st December) has become the name of the last day in a year. The New Year’s Day is

Nowy Rok

Literally, ‘new year’. And how do you wish someone a Happy new Year? Well, it’s a mouthful:

Szczęśliwego Nowego Roku

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Image of Gdańsk © magro kr via Flickr, used under CC licence