The nuances in Polish language make it particularly beautiful, poetic, and musical. In addition, it allows for plays in language that are useful in conveying meaning and humor. It has helped Poland and Poles everywhere in standing up to countries and dictators.
WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Polish language experts launched a campaign Thursday to preserve the challenging system of its diacritical marks, saying the tails, dots and strokes are becoming obsolete under the pressure of IT and speed.
The drive, initiated by the state-run Council of the Polish Language, is part of the UNESCO International Mother Language Day. The campaign’s Polish name is complicated for a non-Polish keyboard: “Je,zyk polski jest a,-e,.”
That’s a pun meaning that Polish language needs its tails and is top class. Part of the meaning is lost and the pronunciation sounds wrong if the marks aren’t there.
Computer and phone keyboards require users to punch additional keys for Polish alphabet. To save time, Poles skip the nuances, and sometimes need to guess the meaning of the message that they have received. This is also true for IT equipment users of other languages with diacritical marks…
As part of the new campaign, some radio and TV stations are playing songs with words stripped of diacritical pronunciation, making them sound odd to the Polish ear. A rap song concludes: “Press the right Alt sometimes” to obtain Polish letters, referring one of the keyboard buttons that Poles need to press to write characters with diacritical marks.
In Poland, linguist Jerzy Bralczyk said the diacritical marks are a visual, defining feature of the Polish language, and they carry meaning and enrich the speech.
“Today, the Polish language is threatened by the tendency to avoid its characteristic letters,” Bralczyk said. “The less we use diacritical marks in text messages, the more likely they are to vanish altogether. That would mean an impoverishment of the language and of our life. I would be sorry.”
The tails make “a” and “e” nasal, strokes over “s,” “c” and “n” soften them and sometimes make them whistling sound, a stroke across “l” makes it sound like the English “w,” and a dot over “z” makes it hard like a metal drill. And each change matters.
“Los” means “fate,” but when you put a slash across the “l” and add a stroke over the “s” it becomes “elk.” “Paczki” are “parcels,” but “pa,czki” are doughnuts.
Foreigners who know Polish say the diacritical marks are a visual sign that it’s a tough language and that they add to the complexity of the grammar and vocabulary, which does not derive from Latin or from Germanic languages.
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In Romania, the tongue’s tails on “t” and “s,” circumflexes on “a” and “I” and hats on “a” are ignored even by state officials and institutes. Some words have up to four diacritical marks, and not using them changes the pronunciation and, in some cases, the meaning, to the point of no meaning at all.
Mark Lewandowski’s writes about studying the Polish language (sorta) in The Polish Lesson at the Bad Penny Review. Mr. Lewandowski has been listed as “Notable” in The Best American Nonrequired Reading, The Best American Travel Writing, and twice in The Best American Essays. He was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Siauliai, Lithuania and, from 1991-1993, served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Poland.
The other Peace Corps volunteers practiced their Polski with their host families, but Arek, a young college student, had requested a cipka for the summer training session, and soon after finding out he’d be putting up a mężczyzna, all bedraggled and bushy bearded no less, he left me alone in the first floor apartament for days at a time, where I learned to butcher the consonant clusters and noun declensions with no help at all…
Half na pół, literally half and half is a mixing of Polish and English phrases in conversation, or the conversion of English words into a Polish variant.
The July-August issue of the Polish language magazine Polski Partner is available for free, on-line. Click on the “Free Online” button in the upper right hand corner of their website. Archive issues are also available. The magazine covers news from Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York, and features articles on everything from fitness to history to cooking. Enjoy!
Cogo News is a new online news and commentary service covering Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) in the English language. Cogo provides short, succinct articles reviewing the key editorial, commentary and opinion pieces in major regional news outlets. Beyond news coverage, Cogo encourages dialogue and creative writing in and about CEE. Cogo encourages contributions of articles, analyses, short stories, photos, poems, comments, and essays.
Stephen Fry narrates a free new audiobook celebrating the extraordinary work of the legendary Polish poet Czesław Miłosz. Available with the Times Literary Supplement on 12th August 2011, and free streaming available online here and here.
Celebrating the life and works of one of Poland’s foremost literary icons, Stephen Fry narrates a new audiobook of selected poems by Miłosz, marking the centenary of his birth.
Stephen Fry commented on his involvement in the project: “It gave me enormous pleasure to read these poems, which I count as amongst the best written in any language since the war. It would give me even more pleasure if I thought that this recording might bring Miłosz and his dazzling mixture of honesty, insight and pure poetic instinct to a wider, English-speaking readership…”
Poland has recovered a treasured painting, stolen by Germany during World War II. I had posted Gierymski’s similar painting as my Art-for-the-Day on March 22nd.
A valuable 19th century Polish painting missing since the second world war has been returned to Poland after being removed from auction in Germany.
Aleksander Gierymski’s Jewish Woman Selling Oranges was unveiled in Poland on Wednesday by culture minister Bogdan Zdrojewski, who said the return came after many months of negotiations with lawyers representing a German who had possessed it for more than 30 years.
“During those long months, my main thought was to have this picture returned to Poland,” Zdrojewski said.
The work – sometimes referred to as the Orange Vendor – dates from 1880-1881 and is one of several Gierymski works showing Jewish life in poor parts of Warsaw.
The oil on canvas shows an old woman in a cap and with a thick shawl over her shoulders knitting as she holds two baskets, one filled with oranges. She has shrunken cheeks that give her an impoverished look, and is set against a foggy Warsaw skyline.
It has been returned to its original home in the National Museum in Warsaw, where it will undergo many months of renovation.
Museum director Agnieszka Morawinska described it as a “priceless masterpiece” that pleased the painter, rarely content with his own work.
Its return is a “very special day and a true gift for the museum”, she said.
The picture went missing from the museum in 1944, five years into Nazi Germany’s occupation of Poland.
It was among a huge numbers of cultural artefacts stolen by German and Soviet forces during their joint wartime occupation of Poland. The country’s government is making efforts to find and bring the works of art back.
The painting resurfaced last November among items offered for sale at a small auction house near Hamburg.
Poland’s chief insurer, PZU SA, paid an undisclosed sum in compensation to the German who had acquired the painting.
Of note, Gierymski painted two similar works: “Żydówka z cytrynami” and “Żydówka z pomarańczami” literally “Jewess with Lemons” and “Jewess with Oranges.”
Gazetta Wyborcza notes in Pomarańczarka w areszcie from November 2010, that Gierymski’s “Jewish woman with oranges” was looted from the National Museum in Warsaw during the war. His other, similar work, “Jewess with Lemons” is on display at the Upper Silesian Museum in Bytom. Both paintings have different details, but express the same emotions and situations: toil, the bitterness of existence, persistence in spite of lost illusions, a lonely, tragic, damaged figure pushed down but not broken, and ultimately beautiful.
An example of oranges and lemons together in today’s painting: “Pomarańcze i cytryny,” “Oranges and Lemons” by Edward Okuń.
One might say that living a bilingual life offers enriched experience, but I say it also brings confusion and struggle during the first years of learning, especially when the second language enters someone’s life in the second or third decade. I am not sure if there is a moment when two different languages can merge and become “one” or if they always exist as separate platforms of experience and expression.
Translating my novel, Zabić Innego, originally written in Polish, into To Kill the Other, taught me the value of time and persistent repetition, something that’s hard to admit and even harder to accept in today’s fast-paced world.
For those of us who are born into single-language families — meaning the mother and the father speak the same language — the world becomes entrenched in the sound of the language in a singular if not monotonous way. In this case language becomes unequivocal with objects, actions, feelings, and emotions. I can’t decide if the context of life imposes itself on language or if the language underlines the context. Perhaps the two options are intertwined and impossible to separate.
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The interesting question revolves around the second language. What happens when we learn another language, the so-called “second language,” later in our lives?
My experience tells me that the second language becomes an exotic realm of existence: appealing, promising, and — against all hope — unattainable…
Florence Waszkelewicz Clowes of the Polish American Journal has invited authors to contact her if they have interest in a review by the Journal.
oriana-poetry reflects on the poetry, theology, and alcoholism of Czesław Miłosz in Milosz At The Gates Of Heaven. A excellent reflection contracting the faith of Agape with the faith of predestination and damnation.
Sober Reader, you yawn: yet another famous poet turns out to have been an alcoholic. “Heaven is the third vodka” – should we even bother discussing what for non-alcoholics is sheer nonsense? And is it really true that great writers need a “charismatic flaw,” as the literary critic Leslie Fiedler claimed, that flaw generally being dependence on alcohol?
Milosz writes: “My real drinking began in earnest in occupied Warsaw with my future wife Janka and Jerzy Andrzejewski (author of Ashes and Diamond) . . . I drank a lot, but always took care to separate time for work from time for letting go . . . Alas, too many generations of my ancestors drank for me to have been free from the urge for the bottle.” (Milosz’s ABC, p. 18)
…I am interested in the acutely bitter tone of this unique poem. Is this Job speaking, subtly accusing the Old One (as Einstein liked to refer to God)? Let’s not forget that Milosz is a metaphysical poet, and can provide us with a certain metaphysical shiver when we consider the kind of cruel deterministic theology that is still very powerful, while progressive Christian theologies remain anemic.
“An Alcoholic Enters the Gates of Heaven” is especially interesting in the light of the recent prediction by a fundamentalist preacher, Harold Camping (a happy camper, since he regards himself as one of those predestined to taste paradise) that the Last Judgment would take place Saturday May 21st at 6 PM (Eastern Standard Time, I think). I have also just read an interesting summary of crucifixion-centered theologies versus progressive theologies. The preacher who was predicting the end of the world belongs to the first tradition, of Christ seen both as a sacrificial victim, a “sin sacrifice,” and – this seems an egregiously un-Christian concept – as the ultimate judge who will accept the chosen few and hurl billions of souls into eternal torment.
Progressive theologies, on the other hand, are fascinated by early Christianity that emphasized agape (loving kindness; a community of affection) and paradise rather than hell. The basic tenet of progressive theologies is that the Second Coming is the birth of Christ Consciousness within us and among us, in the global community. We are here to build the kingdom of God on earth. God intends all souls to be saved. Paradise is here and now.
Alas, progressive theologians do not seem to have the PR resources commanded by the “blood of the Lamb/Armageddon” theologies. The only time there seemed to be true hope for progressive theologies was when Rabbi Kushner’s famous book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, became a best-seller. Kushner posited a deity with limited powers, one who neither causes nor prevents cancer, heart attacks, tsunamis, and other disasters. God does not decide which child will get leukemia, or who will grow up to be an alcoholic. Some evil is the work of natural laws (these days, an earthquake is rarely called an “act of God”); other kinds of evil are the work of man. Afterwards, everything depends on our response: do we curse and despair and can’t move on, or do we summon the strength to transcend the tragedy? Faith is one of the resources that can increase people’s strength to endure and recover. (Twelve-step programs also come to mind.)…
John Guzlowski reads Beets, about his mother’s experience in the Nazi slave labor camps in Germany during WWII. The poem is taken from his book Lightning and Ashes.
…and from yours truly, a friend I assisted in assembling Poetry and Sundry, a book of poems on a myriad of subjects, particularly interpersonal relationships, sex, passion, regret, faith, commitment, love, places, and Polish related subjects:
Constructed sequence events.
Latin: narrare, “to recount.”
Latin: gnarus, “knowing.”
Recounting what we know.
But for us, history unwritten.
No available narrative.
Certainly members of narratives,
Other definitions,
Background stories.
Ours unwritten.
So we have begun, to inscribe.
And the poem Hallelujah
Leonard Cohen.
Kohanim.
You know God – serving Him as priest.
Touching all the essentials
in poetry and song —
love, longing, war, eroticism, spirituality.
Things at our core
that transcend.
Things that quake us.
The recently published report by the Pew Hispanic Center, The Latino Digital Divide: The Native Born versus The Foreign Born, highlights some important facts and opportunities for Hispanic online marketers.
From a high level, the report shows that there is a significant digital divide between Hispanics who were born in the US and those that were born outside of this country. The Pew Hispanic center indicates that 85% of US-born Hispanics use the Internet and 80% use cell phones. Compare this to foreign-born Hispanics where Internet usage currently stands at 51% and cell phone usage at 72%.
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Although foreign-born online Hispanics represent a smaller, less affluent and less sophisticated segment, they are easier to reach and represent the greatest upside. Foreign-born Hispanics are more likely to use Spanish language website and search engines making them easy to reach. What’s more, the foreign-born segment is growing much faster than the US-born segment and foreign-born Hispanics tend to be more open to online advertising and are more brand loyal. To reach foreign-born Hispanics, marketers should consider creating and advertising trustworthy, culturally relevant and intuitive online user experiences in Spanish.
It is important to point out that these two segments are by no means mutually exclusive or absolute. Many US-born Hispanics prefer Spanish and are novice technology users while many foreign-born Hispanics prefer English and are advanced technology users. What’s more, most Hispanic households likely have both US-born and foreign-born Hispanics in them.
Most of us view the digital divide as an unfortunate social problem. I view it as an opportunity. Only by proactively investing in, engaging with and educating the less fortunate can we begin to bridge the digital divide.
Of course the same type of analysis applies when considering parish outreach. It is important that we understand the demographic and the needs of the people we mister to and who may be in search of a spiritual home.
Getting to the bottom of this question is critical because there seems to be a disconnect among Hispanic marketers when it comes to social media. On one hand, there are countless studies indicating that Hispanics are extremely engaged with social media. On the other hand, few marketers are proactively leveraging social media to reach online Hispanics…
In addition to being highly social, Hispanics consume a ton of media. I came across statistics that indicate that Hispanics teens spend 13 hours per day with media, more than any other ethnic group.
I then took a look at technology usage and showed that Hispanics are leapfrogging to the latest and greatest technologies, including mobile. What’s more, Hispanics have an extremely positive view of the technology and once they get their hands on it, the use it and love it…
When you combine the highly social Hispanic culture with strong technology usage, you get a perfect storm. I argued that social media is the perfect avenue to unleash the Hispanic culture. For the most part, every day Hispanic culture is confined to neighborhoods throughout America. Social media changes that. It gives every day Hispanics a voice and provides a global, viral platform for spreading the culture.
Answering the question goes to more than just selling widgets.
As Bishop Hodur pointed out, each culture brings its unique gifts and attributes together in the most social of all setting, the Church. Honoring culture is more than just window dressing and getting down with quaint traditions. It involves understanding people where they are at, blessing what they offer, and being increased and blessed by the gifts they bring. The Gospel message is beyond nation and place, yet grows in the world God created, because of the talents and gifts every nation and people offers.
Is the PNCC just the Church of one nation, one people? No, but it fully honors, respects, and works to build upon and maintain the gifts each nation and people bring. You do not have to stop being American, Polish, Hispanic, Italian, or any aspect of your nature because God honors it in using what you bring for the promotion of the everlasting message that is beyond any border or boundary.
What we can understand from the above is that Church needs to go out and meet people where they are, drawing them in, not by a few “ethnic” parishes, but by fully honoring their self determination and identity in a Catholic and democratic Church.
Computer and phone keyboards require users to punch additional keys for Polish alphabet. To save time, Poles skip the nuances, and sometimes need to guess the meaning of the message that they have received. This is also true for IT equipment users of other languages with diacritical marks…
