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Hello! My wife (Kama) asked me to post this attachment with Polish vocabulary. She tried to make them funny and easy to remember for English speakers. She will keep adding to this list. You can also email her if you have any questions (she is experiencing some difficulties with the forum account). Her email: kpolanska@yahoo.com
[FONT=Verdana] In our pigeon Polish conversation with our oldest adoptee (then just 7 years old) within a few days of us meeting him in Poland, we were trying to tell him that we "kocham'ed" certain foods. [/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana]He rolled his eyes a little :rolleyes:, and then patiently explained to us that the correct word for expressing fondness for a certain food was was "lubie".[/FONT]
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Aurika - I can't thank you enough for the translation AND help with more correct phrasing!! We are going to be sending postcards about twice a week and just wanted some basic phrases we could mix and match for each of the three girls. In fact I am sending out three this morning thanks to your help :thanks:.
We got plenty of giggles at some of our pronunciation. Our oldest loved sitting down with the polish/english dictionary with us and having us try to say the polish and her the english. She was much much better than we were!
Mom_2_4 - We and some of the same at first with the laughing and eye-rolling. Funny my DH and I thought our polish was getting better by the end of the trip but now I am wondering now if the girls had just gotten better at understanding our poor pronunciation and grammar. ;)
Good job Aurika! Sorry I have not responded, I am usually more than happy to help with translations but I am teaching this summer and had to prepare my first lectures the past few days. :)
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regarding love and food...
yes, in general Polish people only like their food (lubic is the infinitive form of the verb) (Ja lubie or bardzo lubie), but if they are truly enamoured of it, they might say "uwielbiac" .... (Ja) uwielbiam lody!
Happy to help with translations if I have time...
Just know that I am still uncertain to this day how it is that I know how to write in Polish as I officially never "learned" how. I left Poland when I was 2.5! My mother (a highly educated individual with more degrees than is decent) claims my Polish is about on the level of a Polish 8th grader. That may not be a bad thing when writing to children :-)
I had no difficulties conversing with anyone in Poland, however, and thoroughly shocked our agency rep with my fluency. On the other hand, my vocabulary is 20 years behind the times, so every once in a while, people would get very confused when I would indicate my complete ignorance about something that is completely every day for them. For example I had no idea that there were ATMs everywhere and was asking about how to change money at the hotel. The receptionist could not understand my confusions until I told her the last time I had been in Poland was 20 years ago and that at that time I exchanged dollars on the black market for about 1500 zl each and that there WERE no ATMS anywhere, much less in what I would consider to be a relatively small town...
I know this topic has come up before, so I am going to try to gather all the old threads with different phrases and put them here, then when we need more Polish, we have at least three wonderful people to give us more ways to talk to our children!
I am merging and making sticky all our posts on Polish phrases, please add more to help new parents.
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The phrases posted by Jasiu/Kama and Aurika have been very helpful. I especially like the English phonetic spelling on the compiled list by Kama :)
If anyone who speaks Polish could help me with translating the following, I'd greatly appreciate it:
1) doll
2) more (as in "more, please")
2) all done
3) walk (as in "walk, please" if a child were running)
4) run and no running (both the command to run and the negative)
5) jump and no jumping
6) princess (as in "you look like a princess")
Since our girls are still young, I was trying to make a list of the most common toys and phrases I might use in the most simplest form. I have a larger list, but these are one's I'm not sure about.
Thanks a million!
Megan:
Here they are! I hope this helps. Let me know if anything is unclear as far as how to pronounce these. :)
mschaefer
The phrases posted by Jasiu/Kama and Aurika have been very helpful. I especially like the English phonetic spelling on the compiled list by Kama :)
If anyone who speaks Polish could help me with translating the following, I'd greatly appreciate it:
1) doll
LALKA "LULL-KAH"
2) more (as in "more, please")
WIECEJ "VEE-ANN-TSEY" but also commonly used is "YESH-CHEH"
2) all done
We usually use KONIEC "KOH-KNEE-YETS" meaning "the end", but you could also use JUZ NIE MA or NIE MA "YOOSH-KNEE-YEAH-MAH" or "KNEE-YEAH/B]-MAH" meaning "there isn't any anymore"
3) walk (as in "walk, please" if a child were running)
I would use "don't run" NIE BIEGAJ "KNEE-YEAH BEE-EGG-GUY"
4) run and no running (both the command to run and the negative)
BIEGNIJ "BEE-EGG-KNEEY" and "no running" as above no. 3
5) jump and no jumping
SKACZ "SCOTCH" :) vs. "KNEEY SCOTCH"
6) princess (as in "you look like a princess")
OK, this is a tough one, princess in Polish is KSIEZNICZKA "KSHE-YEAH-ZHNICHKA" (something like that!), but I would use another word for princess something like KROLEWNA "CRUEL-EV-NAH" or the word for doll "LULL-KAH".
Since our girls are still young, I was trying to make a list of the most common toys and phrases I might use in the most simplest form. I have a larger list, but these are one's I'm not sure about.
Thanks a million!
I don't know the 100% accuracy of this but one of our translators told us this tip. When you are reading a Polish word, the emphasis is usually on the second to last syllable.
We've been home almost nine months with our sibling group of three, daugther 9, and sons, 8 and 6. Over the summer I thought they would revert back to more Polish as they had done at home after school. But they are using very few Polish words per week. Thankfully we have fluent Polish Speakers in the area and we need to visit, when everyone is 'less busy' (not out of town) when school starts.
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Thank you, Kasia, for your help in getting the word doc from this site... it helped tremendously! (I still don't know why I was having trouble downloading it. Darned Vista!)
We are still putting the finishing touches on our Polish/English photo album/flip book, and have a few translations we are hoping someone will be able to help us out with...
Could you please help us translate the following into Polish?
These are our cats.
This is our truck.
This is our yard.
This is your aunt and your cousins.
Great Grandma
This is your brother doing homework.
This is Daniel at school.
This is Daniel playing baseball.
Whew! I think the book is going to be adorable when we are finished, and am hoping to get it printed soon in case we ever get travel dates (we are under the impression it will be soon, just waiting on immigration). :)
Thank you!
Sarah
These are our cats.
To sa nasze koty.
This is our truck.
To jest nasza ciezarowka.
This is our yard.
To jest nasze podworko.
This is your aunt and your cousins.
To jest Twoja (Wasza if there are more than one) Ciocia i kuzyni.
Great Grandma
Pra Babcia
This is your brother doing homework.
To jest Twoj (Wasz) brat odrabiajacy lekcje domowe.
This is Daniel at school.
To jest Daniel w szkole.
This is Daniel playing baseball.
To jest Daniel grajacy w baseball.
Or you could also say
Daniel gra w baseball.