{"id":36,"date":"2008-07-08T06:56:28","date_gmt":"2008-07-08T10:56:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/?p=36"},"modified":"2014-06-10T13:25:33","modified_gmt":"2014-06-10T13:25:33","slug":"the-many-polish-greetings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/the-many-polish-greetings\/","title":{"rendered":"The Many Polish Greetings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In all this excitement with grammar and country music, I totally forgot to tell you about the intricacies of Polish greetings. I realized that last night when a friend from Finland skyped me and very indirectly pointed out my oversight.<\/p>\n<p>My friend is an older lady whose brand new daughter-in-law is Polish. The girl\u2019s Polish parents came up to Finland for a visit, which brought up the subject of greetings in our conversation.<\/p>\n<p>To be able to communicate with her daughter-in-law, Tiina (my friend) is busy learning Polish and understands most of the basic expressions. So I was very surprised when she said that the girl\u2019s parents used a Polish greeting that she was not familiar with. Of course I wanted to know what it was that they said that so confused Tiina, but she didn\u2019t remember and couldn\u2019t ask them, because they didn\u2019t speak any English, Finnish or Swedish.<\/p>\n<p>Through the process of elimination, we determined that they didn\u2019t say:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Dzie\u0144 dobry<\/strong> \u2013 which basically means \u201cgood day\u201d and can be used from morning to afternoon, because Polish does not have a greeting for mornings only. In the evening, \u201c<strong>dzie\u0144 dobry<\/strong>\u201d morphs into:<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Dobry wiecz\u00f3r<\/strong> \u2013 which means exactly \u201cgood evening\u201d.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Those are the two most common all-purpose Polish greetings that 99% of the adult population uses. Tiina knows both phrases and was adamant the couple said something else.<\/p>\n<p>Somehow I couldn\u2019t imagine a nice Polish family visiting their daughter\u2019s in-laws in a foreign land to come out and right off the bat say:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Cze\u015b\u0107!<\/strong> \u2013 vaguely resembling English \u201chello\u201d or \u201chi\u201d is normally used to greet people you know, relatives, family, kids, etc. Much too informal for the sort of meeting we were talking about. But hey, maybe it was a very relaxed family? Tiina disagreed, and besides, she knew what \u201c<strong>cze\u015b\u0107<\/strong>\u201d meant and how to use it<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Witaj!<\/strong> or <strong>Witam!<\/strong> \u2013 even though technically meaning \u201cwelcome\u201d, it can also be used by a person arriving at your house. It\u2019s a bit less relaxed than \u201c<strong>cze\u015b\u0107<\/strong>\u201d and depending on who says it and to whom, it can be either formal or not. But again, it wasn\u2019t the greeting Tiina\u2019s visitors had used.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I really doubted the couple had said something like:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Jak si\u0119 masz?<\/strong> \u2013 similar to \u201chow are you?\u201d, or<\/li>\n<li><strong>Jak leci?<\/strong> \u2013 \u201cwhat\u2019s up?\u201d, or<\/li>\n<li><strong>Co s\u0142ycha\u0107?<\/strong> \u2013 \u201chow are things?\u201d or something of that sort.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Tiina knew all those expressions and she was sure the people had said something else. I desperation, I asked to speak to her Polish guests directly.<br \/>\n<em>\u201cYou can\u2019t. They went out.\u201d<\/em><br \/>\nJust when I was about to berate my friend for being a lousy host and letting her guests prance alone in the Finnish countryside, she explained, <em>\u201ctheir daughter took them to church.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p>It turned out that in a next town over, there\u2019s a Polish priest running a local Catholic parish, and the guests being devout Catholics (as many Poles are) wanted to say \u201chello\u201d to their countryman.<\/p>\n<p>The lights finally came on in my head, and now I knew what they said to Tiina that so confused her. You see, some religious people in Poland, especially people from smaller towns and villages, still use the traditional religious greetings. Sometimes such greetings are reserved for special occasions, and sometimes they are used in everyday normal speech. It depends on how traditional, or pious, a person is.<\/p>\n<p>An older devout couple from a small town in Poland could have very well said something like:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Pochwalony Jezus Chrystus<\/strong> \u2013 Praised Jesus Christ<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Though a short version of simply \u201c<strong>Pochwalony<\/strong>\u201d is more common.<\/p>\n<p>to which the proper answer is:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Na wieki wiek\u00f3w<\/strong> \u2013 meaning &#8220;forever and ever&#8221;, or &#8211; &#8220;for all eternity&#8221;.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So there you have it, a variety of Polish greetings for every taste and occasion, from secular to religious.<\/p>\n<p>If you heard something else that you think could be yet another Polish greeting, leave a comment and share with everyone! And I\u2019ll try to explain how and when it should be used, OK?<\/p>\n<p><em>PS. I just spoke to the Polish couple, and they indeed said &#8220;<strong>Pochwalony<\/strong>&#8220;. They also re-educated me about a whole slew of other religion-inspired phrases and expressions that are used by people &#8220;outside the big cities&#8221;, as they said. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<img width=\"225\" height=\"222\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/18\/2008\/07\/handshake.jpg\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image tmp-hide-img\" alt=\"\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" \/><p>In all this excitement with grammar and country music, I totally forgot to tell you about the intricacies of Polish greetings. I realized that last night when a friend from Finland skyped me and very indirectly pointed out my oversight. My friend is an older lady whose brand new daughter-in-law is Polish. The girl\u2019s Polish&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"post-item__readmore\"><a class=\"btn btn--md\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/the-many-polish-greetings\/\">Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":37,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7412,7431,84,2299],"class_list":["post-36","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","tag-formal","tag-greeting","tag-informal","tag-meeting"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5392,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions\/5392"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}