Archive for April, 2011
The trumpeter of Kraków Posted by Kasia on Apr 19, 2011
In Krakow, which was the ancient capital of Poland, there is a Church in the Market Square. It is a tall, graceful building built of brick, in the Gothic style, with a richly adorned interior. It has two towers, one of which is a little higher than the other and more ornate. From the taller tower a fanfare…
Visit to a book store Posted by Kasia on Apr 15, 2011
While traveling you probably stop at the local book/magazine stores. You either need a map, or travel book, dictionary or simply a book to read. One of the best places you can find things like that in Poland is Empik. There you can get books, magazines, guides, bookmarks, newspapers (probably the best place to find…
Golden Duck – Złota Kaczka Posted by Kasia on Apr 14, 2011
A long time ago in Warsaw there lived a young man – Jacob. He was always the first one there when something unusual was going on. Friends often invited him to taverns so that he could entertain them with tales of his daring deeds. One thing you should know however, although Jacob was greatly liked…
Smok Wawelski Posted by Kasia on Apr 11, 2011
One of my favorite cartons when I was little girl was Wyprawa Profesora Gąbki. It was a cartoon about Smok Wawelski. A lot of you would probably ask who Smok Wawelski is. Here is a story about him… Many, many years ago, when Krakow was still the capital of Poland, there lived in the…
Different dialects in Poland Posted by Kasia on Apr 8, 2011
Polish language became far more homogeneous in the second half of the 20th century, in part due to the mass migration of several million Polish citizens from the eastern to the western part of the country after the east was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1939, during World War II. “Standard” Polish is still…
Word order in Polish grammar Posted by Kasia on Apr 7, 2011
Basic word order in Polish is SVO, however, as it is a morpheme rich language, it is possible to move words around in the sentence, and to drop the subject, object or even sometimes verb, if they are obvious from context. These sentences mean more or less the same (“Kasia has a cat”), but different…
Negation Posted by Kasia on Apr 6, 2011
Learning the Polish negation is very important, because its structure is used in every day conversation. Polish negation is the process that turns an affirmative statement (I am happy) into its opposite denial (I am not happy). When a verb is negated, the negative particle nie is always placed immediately in front of it. Nothing…