Polish school for non-Polish speakers

[Ben]

Sado explained that it is indeed related to gender. My mind always goes back to Spanish, where it works quite differently.

This Polish is freakin hard stuff.

[T*AnTi-V!RuZz]

Hi,

A colleague of mine is Polish, and she says "kolego" is wrong and should be "kolega".
I have no idea who's right, so please enlighten me (and her )

(Or is that male/female stuff, too? )

[dicsoupcan]

as far as i heard sado speak about that on teamspeak it is male/female stuff, yes he is lecturing on teamspeak

[sado1]

You say "kolego" when directly speaking to someone (that's Vocative case, in Polish "wołacz"). But the default form of the word is indeed "kolega". And yes, Litude's guess was right, although I already told Ben what's the difference on TS.

[Ben]

The feminine form of kolega is koleżanka or something like that.

[Omigoshe]

Hello, what does "Kurwa" mean?

I was in a game with quite some Polish guys and they were mad at a guy lagging, I guess it's a bad word? Often they said KURWA in capital

[Ben]

Hehe, Kurwa is one of the first Polish words people learn

Yes it is a foul word. Its meaning is pretty close to "B***h."

[sado1]

Yes it is a foul word. Its meaning is pretty close to "B***h."

That's correct. Although this word has many foul meanings, usually it's serving a similar function to English "f**k" (for example, when you're pissed and you got nothing better to say, kurwa is the best word to use); Polish people often use kurwa as a punctuation mark ("So I was, kurwa, in the shop, kurwa, and you know, kurwa, I bought there, kurwa, some strawberries, kurwa." - a typical Polish sentence example). Also, it's used to show astonishment ("o kurwa!" - oh, sh**). As Ben points out, this word may simply mean a prostitute as well.

[pawel95]

Yeah like sado already said Kurwa is like an AddOn to the Polish language, here a nice helping for the students here, that sado hasn´t to teach you that long XD :




And here is a typical polish mouse:
https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/ ... 6075_n.jpg

[Shadaoe]

It means so many things

[Ben]

Okay, so I have a question. In Polish, on means he and ona means she, right? That's simple enough, but both oni and one seem to have the same meaning: they. How do I know the when to use the respective pronoun?

[sado1]

oni means masculine they, one means feminine/neuter they. If you're talking about a group of people of both genders, you use the masculine form (oni).

[Ben]

Yay! 500 posts!

Thanks sado. Now I just need to figure out how to pronounce them, respectively

[pawel95]

Thanks sado. Now I just need to figure out how to pronounce them, respectively

Use the googletranslator as pronounciation help not please

[Ben]

Rosetta Stone has a nice pronunciation guide. that's what I've been using. But to me, the difference between oni and one is so small, I can't really distinguish them.