Learn Polish

Pan Tadeusz is THE classic of Polish literature. I’ve started to post a bitext on my blog (http://joregan.blogspot.com/) – first a section in English, then the same section in Polish—I find that if I already understand what something says, it sinks in quicker.

The English translation is roughly of the same vintage as the Polish, so both parts of the text have the same sort of ‘old’ feel to them. If anyone wants more, like vocabulary notes, old vs. new Polish, or even smaller chunks of text, just leave a comment.

It’s not really amusing by itself: ‘dniało’ is the first word in ‘Ironia Pozorów’. It took me several hours to track down what it means (something like “it dawned” or “it became day”).

Most of the people I asked about it looked blank when they first heard it, and all said the same thing: “That’s an old word! Don’t read that book! No-one uses those words!”

Except one guy, who had never heard it. So I had to explain a Polish word to a Polish guy in English.

Hey, I found it amusing.

‘zajebiście’ is the Polish for ‘cool’ or ‘great’. It looks like it came from Russian: ‘zayebis’ means “may you be fucked until you die from it” or something similar, but because of the way Russian swear words are, it normally means “cool” – ‘yeb’ or similar means ‘fuck’, at any rate.

The amusing thing for me is the ‘faken’ added in the middle: think “absofuckinglutely” :)

I found some translations of a few of Adam Mickiewicz’s Crimean Sonnets (In Polish)

The translator did a wonderful job of preserving the rhyme of the originals, while preserving the theme. (See Pielgrzym for an example).

(From dict.pl)

płatek śniegu: snowflake

prószyć: to sprinkle

zamieć śnieżna: blizzard

kulka śniegu: snowball

bałwanek: snowman

I’d add:
śnieg: snow

Jest zimno: It’s cold

Zimno mi: I’m cold (not “Jestem zimno”—my book says that’s more like “I’m frigid”)

Po polsku i po angielsku

Grammar drills and a good (etymological) Polish dictionary

Słownik Polskiego Slangu is great (lists more than just common swear words), University of Pittsburgh’s Polish site has a great grammar pdf, and though dict.pl isn’t the best dictionary I’ve found, it has “Words of the week”, and normally lists more words than you’re looking for.