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Tag Archives: gender

Why Polish Feminine Nouns Can Be Confusing Posted by on Feb 9, 2010

Adam’s post about feminine endings for occupations and positions held by women made me think about feminine gender nouns in general. That proposed ending “-a” makes it very easy to assume that Polish feminine nouns should end in “-a”. And yes, many indeed do. But not all. There are some nouns that even though they…

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Gender and Occupations, continued… Posted by on Mar 28, 2009

Remember when I mentioned that the EU head honchos in Brussels want us to stop using gender specific names for professions? I also said that it was something I agreed with. Wow! I never thought that that particular post would provoke so many emails. Both for and against. But you see, we already have many…

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Brussels Says – Get Rid of “Pani” and “Panna” Posted by on Mar 18, 2009

What is this I’m hearing about the paper pushers in Brussels telling us to not use words such as “Pani” and “Panna”? Or “Madame” and “Mademoiselle”, “Frau” and “Fraulein” and so on… Seriously, does anyone still even bother with those panna/mademoiselle/fraulein forms? The great majority of people I know never even use the word “Panna”…

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Polish Numbers Revisited Posted by on Mar 12, 2009

Tomorrow is Friday the 13th (piątek, trzynastego) but instead of writing about superstitions (przesądy), I thought we should take another look at liczebniki (numbers) instead. A number (no pun intended) of you had questions about numbers, and since they are all very valid questions, it’s more convenient to answer them in a separate blog post…

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Cardinal Numbers Posted by on Mar 4, 2009

The post where I attempted to count priests (is it “dwaj księża” or “dwóch księży”?) made me realize that we’ve never talked about numbers before. Hmmm… I wonder why I’ve been avoiding this particular topic. Really, no reason at all. Yeah, right! Ok, in that case, let’s get started. I’m sure that most, if not…

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The Mysterious Ways of Polish Surnames, part 2 Posted by on Sep 12, 2008

As David pointed out in the comment section to the previous post, we still have one more group of Polish last names to discuss. Actually, come to think of it, TWO more. But let’s start with the easier one of the two: 4. Surnames ending in vowels OTHER than “a”, “i” and “y”. And yes…

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The Mysterious Ways of Polish Surnames Posted by on Sep 9, 2008

My friend called me today and that should be good news, right? But it wasn’t. The poor woman was very stressed and urgently requested my help. You see, she was applying for a visa to one of those countries that still require a woman to provide information about her male guardian, either a father or…

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