No detailed description available for "Polish Reference Grammar".

Being Polish is no joke. For ten million people of Polish ancestry in the United States, as well as many who have settled in the UK since the fall of communism, it is a heartfelt matter -- and amid all the travel guides and guides to Polish language, folklore, and customs, there is no single, comprehensive, reader-friendly and yet ever-informative reference on what it means to be Polish. Enter The Essential Guide to Being Polish -- the go-to concise resource for anyone looking to reconnect with their culture or, indeed, hoping that their friends, children, or colleagues learn something about their heritage. Divided into three sections to make for an easy-to-follow format -- Poland in Context, Poles in Poland, and Poles Abroad -- this guide covers just about everything and does so in a style that is at once entertaining and informative: the country's history and geography, wars, Jews in Poland, the communist past, the post-communist past and present, language, kings and queens, religion/Catholicism (with special focus on Pope John Paul II), holidays, food, and drink. What is a real Polish wedding all about? That, too, is addressed succinctly and with flair in this guide. Other chapters cover literature, music, art, famous scientists, Polish men and Polish women, Poles in America, Poles in the UK, Poles and the EU, and last but not least, Polish pride. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Polish Customs, Traditions, & Folklore is organized by months beginning with December and Advent, St. Nicholas Day, the Wigilia (Christmas Eve) nativity plays, caroling and then New Year celebrations. It proceeds from the Shrovetide period to Ash Wednesday, Lent, the celebration of spring, Holy Week customs then superstitions, beliefs and rituals associated with farming, Pentecost, Corpus Christi, midsummer celebrations, harvest festivities, wedding rites, nameday celebrations, birth and death rituals. Line illustrations enhance this rich and varied treasury of folklore. Many of the customs and traditions found herein are extinct even in today's Poland. World wars, massive immigration, the loss of the oral tradition, urbanization and politics have changed the face of a once agrarian people and their accompanying life style. In the U.S., the desire for membership within the "melting pot", marriages outside one's ethnic group, movement to the suburbs away from the "old" communities where customs and traditions were once strong, further weakened the link. Although the purpose and meaning may have been lost and forgotten, the oczepiny ceremony (the unveiling) is still the mainstay of almost every wedding where the bride declares Polish heritage. Many Polish American communities still reenact the harvest celebrations, reminding themselves of their ancestors' reverence for the grains and gifts of bread. Eight million Americans still claim their ancestry as Polish, many still diligently practicing that which they learned at their parents' and grandparents' knees. Much has also been neglected or completely forgotten.

The ultimate quick and easy guide to learning Polish Polish can be a difficult language to master. It is pronounced phonetically and has several unique characters in its alphabet, but with Polish For Dummies in hand, you'll find yourself speaking like a local in no time. Packed with practical lessons, handy cultural facts, and essential references (including a Polish-English mini-dictionary and lists of common verbs), this guide is specially designed to get you speaking Polish with confidence. With advice on speaking Polish within the construction, teaching, and public sector industries, this book is a truly practical tool for anyone wanting to speak the language either professionally or socially. Includes sections dedicated to Polish in action, Polish on the go, and Polish in the workplace A companion audio CD contains Polish conversations spoken by native Polish speakers in a variety of everyday contexts, perfect for learning Polish on the go A Polish-English dictionary is included to provide quick access to the most common words With easy-to-follow instruction and exercises that give you the language to communicate during day-to-day experiences, readers of Polish For Dummies will learn the words and verbal constructions they need to communicate with friends and colleagues at home, find directions on holiday, and more. Note - CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of the e-book file, but are available for download after purchase.

Lying at the crucible of Central Europe, the Silesian village of Kupferberg suffered the violence of the Thirty Years War, the Napoleonic Wars, the World War I. After Stalin's post-World War II redrawing of Poland's borders, Kupferberg became Miedzianka, a town settled by displaced people from all over Poland and a new center of the Eastern Bloc's uranium-mining industry. Decades of neglect and environmental degradation led to the town being declared uninhabitable, and the population was evacuated. Today, it exists only in ruins, with barely a hundred people living on the unstable ground above its collapsing mines. Springer catalogs the lost human elements: the long-departed tailor and deceased shopkeeper; the parties, now silenced, that used to fill the streets with shouts and laughter, and the once-beautiful cemetery, with gravestones upended by tractors and human bones scattered by dogs. In Miedzianka, Springer sees a microcosm of European history, and a powerful narrative of how the ghosts of the past continue to haunt us in the present--Provided by the publisher.

This work aims to explore the main types of female character in Polish feature cinema, from its beginnings to contemporary times and also to analyse the work of the most prominent Polish women film directors against the background of the roles being played by women in Polish history and their positions within society.

A Polish Book of Monsters contains five stories of speculative fiction edited and translated from the Polish by Michael Kandel, award-winning translator of the fiction of Stanislaw Lem. From dystopian science fiction to fabled fantasy, these dark tales grip us through the authors' ability to create utterly convincing alien worlds that nonetheless reflect our own.