Q&A: Living in Poland, Missing the U.S., and what am I even doing here?

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POLISH UPDATE COMING SOON! IT WILL NOT BE GOOD!

*I am NOT currently available for English lessons*

MUSIC IN THIS VIDEO
Track: Suspense Piano
Music composed and recorded by Oak Studios
Creative Commons - Attribution ND 4.0

[AnnNynkowski]

Great work!

I married a Pole. We met in Toronto. His closest family lived in Warsaw. At age 70 (less than a year ago) I have moved to Warsaw, with him, after visiting here many, many, many times! It is JUST THIS MONTH (slow learner) that I am finally getting the hang of the language, and am really falling in LOVE with Warsaw and Poland.

I agree with you…longer time here would be better. But you are young, you may return if the desire overcomes you! I found, and still find, the Polish men in my social groups very interesting and engaging! But YOU will do well, no matter where you go! Such fun listening to your podcast. You must make your family incredibly happy and impressed! Thanks for sharing!

[filipambro]

Emma, you're right. We watched this film, ,Fine, I'll learn Polish" and we're really proud of you. We're waiting for an update of your learning Polish :)

[amjan]

Polish words are 3-dimensional (3D), as opposed to English words which are totally flat (2D). And as 3D objects rotate in space they seem to change shape, because you see them from different sides. For this reason is the same word, just seen from a different angle in the 3D grammatical space ;)
This is so much more efficient, organic and beautiful!
In English you actually have a bit of that with pronouns, which have an accusative case, so you don't say: "I like he" or "I see they", but "I like HIM" and "I see THEM" instead. 'Him' and 'them' are different (accusative case) forms of those pronouns. You also have the possessive case where e.g. you change "Emma" into "Emma's" to describe a thing that belongs to Emma ("It's Emma's car.") instead of saying sth cumbersome like "It's a car of Emma".

[caciliawhy]

I've had Polish people apologize to me for their English and I'm like no, I need to apologize to you for my Polish. I'm in your country, I should speak better. And if English and Polish fail, I speak advanced German and then there's Mr. Google. It always works out.

[nerka]

I thnk this "poles are cold" comes from the fact we do not do "fake smiling" and pretending "everything is ok" that is kinda prevelent in USA.

[towelie]

Oh dear god, the "how are you" question still haunts me. I was once online friends with a few Americans and they once staged a full blown intervention for me because I always answered truthully to "how are you"s, without understanding it's basically a stock phrase. No one ever explained that to me at any point of my English education. The Americans said I have bad vibes because (like most Polish people) I always complain 😂

[kcozadurnylol]

Why we "conjugate" nouns? To be able to move them around sentence as much as we like! :D The word order in Polish is way more free than in English. It has many advantages by the way ;)

[raffninja]

Where we have 2 polish people there are 3 opinions its been always like this.

[KS-tfnw]

Yeah, winter in Poland is dark and gloomy, but that makes spring so much more enjoyable.
Come June, and you will see days that never end (almost). Best experienced in country side without light pollution.

[isa_]

Ok girl, you saying "Lusterko" and "Lustereczko" was just the most adorable thing I've heard this month 🥺🥰

[polishpsych]

It’s so sweet of you to talk about Poland in a nice but realistic way. I love the interior design in your room

[PainstakingPole]

This "conjugation" of nouns and adjectives is called declension. And you'll be surprised to hear that most indoeuropean languages do it to some extent. It's English, that's the odd man out. As to the purpose of declension - it allows for the structure of the sentence to be more fluid, because the purpose of the word in the sentence depends not on its position, but its form. To give you an example, the sentence "Ala ma kota" (Alice has a cat) can be also said or written as "Kota ma Ala", "Ma kota Ala", "Ma Ala kota", "Ala kota ma". In English such shenanigans would transform the sentence into a question or make the cat its subject. In Polish the meaning of the sentence is intact, Alice is still the subject, but moving words around adds a layer of nuance, that cannot be expressed in English. Also - it makes poets and rapers life easier. Whenever they can't find a rhyme, they just move words around ;)

[lesiakadam]

Adorable, as usual :D
Here are some tips (16 years living in Ireland and explaining stuff to my Irish friends. Applies to Yanks ;) as well):

1. In my opinion the main difference between Polish people and Irish/Americans/English is that we have rough, grumpy surface but once you get to know us (or we get to know you) we will be much more friendly, honest, kind and willing to help you. In general.

2. Polish guys, we are more hmmm.... proud? More serious? Not in bad way, just sometimes it might seem like we have no chill, but we can be cool. It's hard to explain... It's just a cultural difference, that's hard to overcome for foreign people. I don't know how to deal with that, but I thought it might help you understand us a bit better.

3. Learning few Polish words goes a long way! We have suffered a lot in the 19th century to keep the language alive (google: Germanisation of Poles during the Partitions), we know it a difficult language to learn and we really appreciate your effort :)

4. Żubrówka. Originally there was only one type of Zubrowka, kinda herb-like with a grass straw in the bottle. It's very well known type Polish vodka worldwide. Put it in the FREEZER for couple of days and mix it with chilled apple juice (you're welcome! tastes like shite on its own or warm). Eventually the company decided to start making pure vodka under Zubrowka brand. The picture you pasted is WHITE Zubrowka. Yikes! Not gud!. BUT: Black Zubrowka (which is twice more expensive) is absolutely amazing, especially chilled. Very pure and no hangover the next day (that's how you judge the vodka purity :p ). Probably the best Polish vodka is Belvedere Vodka, which is 3x the price of Black Zubrowka.

5. Soplica Pigwowa (fruity vodka) - have it on ice and just sip it slowly. You're welcome! :)

6. We hate each other? Well we like to argue a lot when we have strong opinions about something. There might be another cultural difference there too: as you have noticed we don't do well with this bullshit small talk. We just go straight to the point, most of the time in a polite way. And people in Poland appreciate that, it's nothing wrong. Here in Ireland I was a bit shocked to learn, that without this customary small talk I am being perceived as rude or something... Oh yes, and we like to complain a lot too. That's what we have in common with Irish people actually :D

7. It breaks my heart you gonna miss a summer in Poland... It's really nice over there. I die a little inside, every time my Irish colleagues say they didn't like Poland all that much. "Maybe because you went there in November to visit Auschwitz, you prick?" Do yourself a favor and spend some time travelling in Poland in late May and June. Go to Gdansk, go to Krakow when the weather is nice. You will like it more :)

8. Please don't judge the whole country through Warsaw... As you noticed, it has tragic and sad history. And also most of the people there - it's like different state of mind. It's like they think that the whole feckin galaxy revolves around Warsaw :D

I hope it helps and you will enjoy your stay in Poland :)

p.s. Your sister(?) looks a bit like Iga Świątek (the tennis player).

[PR_nick]

If Poles ask you "How are you" they truly care. I Hope you visit Polish Mountains. Have a nice life .

[joannakowal]

I'm polish and I love watching your videos, not only to watch you struggle with polish but also just to see your journey and to have some fresh perspective on our country. I don't necessarily think we are mean to each other, but we definitely don't have the habit of faking anything or being nice to the people we don't like or don't care about. I'm not sure it's entirely a good thing, but that's just how we are. And also I just finished 'All the light we cannot see' like a month ago and I loved it, totally agree with you there!

[patryksakowicz]

This part about Poles hating each other is pretty spot on but need some explanation 😉. We don’t necessarily hate each other just because, we rather hate opinions of others. We are pretty pretty stubborn people and we do not like when others tell us what to do in terms of how we should percept surrounding world, we get piiissed 😂. And these are usually fights like Democrats vs Republicans in the States. Two very opposite sides of the axis, Religious vs non-believers, right-winged vs left-winged, old vs young etc and we basically hate the fight itself and that we can’t change the opinion of others because we are stubborn 😔

[leopas]

I lived in Wroclaw for nearly 2 years before Covid hit whilst in Vietnam and since i didnt have the proper visa to get back into Poland, I had to go back to the US....BUT, I do love Poland, even the weatherr, and that's from somone who was born and raised in Hawaii =P. But, since i have received my residency...for SPAIN...close enough...Have fun in Poland =)

[elciab]

"Dowidzenia" sounded very nice, almost like a polish original. Especially 'dz' zadźwięczało properly. Keep going Emma, you doing well.

[MotoAlt]

As many others pointed out - the flip side of having different noun endings is the ability to arrange words in any order and preserve the meaning. Why would you want to use a different order? Lots of subtle ways:
"mówię o Emmie" = I'm talking about Emma (neutral)
"o Emmie mówię" = I'm talking about Emma (sassy, when you're correcting someone)

[malna-malna]

You remind me a lot of my best friend. Too bad you're not staying with us! We need people with such vibrant beautiful energy in this country.
Best of luck to you!