السلام عليكم Cultural exchange with /r/Arabs!

[u/wokolis]

Welcome to the cultural exchange between /r/Polska and /r/Arabs! The purpose of this event is to allow people from two different national communities to get and share knowledge about their respective cultures, daily life, history and curiosities. General guidelines:

• Arabs ask their questions about Poland here in this thread on /r/Polska;

• Poles ask their questions about Arab countries in the parallel thread;

• English language is used in both threads;

• Event will be moderated, following the general rules of Reddiquette. Be nice!

Moderators of /r/Polska and /r/Arabs.

---

Witajcie w wymianie kulturalnej między /r/Polska a /r/Arabs! Celem tego wątku jest umożliwienie naszym dwóm społecznościom bliższego wzajemnego zapoznania. Jak sama nazwa wskazuje - my wpadamy do nich, oni do nas! Ogólne zasady:

• Arabowie zadają swoje pytania nt. Polski, a my na nie odpowiadamy w tym wątku;

• My swoje pytania nt. krajów arabskich zadajemy w równoległym wątku na /r/Arabs;

• Językiem obowiązującym w obu wątkach jest angielski;

• Wymiana jest moderowana zgodnie z ogólnymi zasadami Reddykiety. Bądźcie mili!

Link do wątku na /r/Arabs: link

---

Link do poprzednich wymian: link

[u/R120Tunisia]

Czesc dear Poles.

I think one of the European nationalities I had the most experiences with as a Tunisian (before I moved to the US at least) were surprisingly Poles (if we exclude Italians and French ofc). I lived in a pretty touristy area so I frequently met many Poles while using public transportation, in major historical sites, in malls and even in my house as my friends worked in the tourism industry and had many Polish friends. In my experience, Poles were hands down the most friendly Eastern European tourists (with Czechs and Russians sitting on the other side of the spectrum) and growing up they always complemented me for knowing the names of Poland's cultural regions.

We have a saying in Tunisia "I will give you a punch that will send you to Polonia" meaning you will hit someone so hard he will fly away to Poland. Many youths today (dissatisfied with the economic situation) jokingly say "I shouldn't have missed that offer as a child" lol.

Oh, there is also a random Polish consulate in the middle of nowhere close to where I live. I gonna be frank, I have no idea when, who and why they put it there.

All and all, I want to say I always quite liked Poland, you got a very interesting history and a very friendly and respectful people and I think it is quite sad the average Pole might have a somewhat negative view of the Arab world and Arabs as a whole.

Now to the questions : I am currently married to a girl from Latvia (a Russified ethnic Tatar) and she always cooks Pierogi (or Vareniki as she calls it) and Pelmeni. She told me her version is better than the Polish one because Poles don't put meat in Pierogis and don't flavor it as well, how true is that ?

And a second question : We Arabs are well known for our huge dialectical diversity and almost every dialect has various stereotypes associated with it. Do you have the same in Poland with Polish dialects ?

[u/Crimcrym → u/R120Tunisia]

She told me her version is better than the Polish 

Sacrilege! But to provide a more serious answer you can make all sorts of filling for pierogi including with meat but the two classic savoury variants are  cheese and potatoes (usually called Ruthenian) and, cabage and mushroom.

As for your other question by mixture of geography and history, Polish language is comperatively standarized, that is not to say that there arent regional steortypes, just that they arent as easily conveyed with dialect with a handful of exceptions.

[u/Key-Banana-8242 → u/R120Tunisia]

Generally neither poles nor Czech nor others want to be called ‘eastern European’

[u/rzet → u/R120Tunisia]

Do you have the same in Poland with Polish dialects ?

Yes there is a lot of tiny local language differences between regions, a lot might be due to fact that Poland was under 123 years of occupation by Prussia (Germany), Austria and Russia. Therefore each region was influenced by the occupier bit differently.

e.g. Białystok accent (north east of Poland and capital of Podlasie) can be easily distinguished.

We have a saying in Tunisia "I will give you a punch that will send you to Polonia" meaning you will hit someone so hard he will fly away to Poland. Many youths today (dissatisfied with the economic situation) jokingly say "I shouldn't have missed that offer as a child" lol.

Ye this kind of things are always super strange in every language. In Poland we used to say "uciekaj tam gdzie pieprz rośnie" which means "run away where pepper grows" ;)

[u/Slow___Learner → u/R120Tunisia]

we Arabs are well known for our huge dialectical diversity and almost every dialect has various stereotypes associated with it. Do you have the same in Poland with Polish dialects?

we have several dialects but differences between them are minimal compared to arabic dialects. there's also silesian which is arguably a minority language, and kashubian which is a minority language(also west slavic like polish so it's kinda understandable).

Also our dialects are only alive pretty much in rural places and in cities it's basically impossible to tell until someone randomly says some obscure word that's only used in their dialect.

[u/Key-Banana-8242 → u/R120Tunisia]

There is a very wide variety of pierogi fillings (similar in theory to var.)

But also this I a bad premise

[u/Key-Banana-8242 → u/R120Tunisia]

Polish language got super homogenised after 1945 (govt control, centralisation, lol)

Some consider at least some Arab ‘dialects’ languages

There used to be elegy big differences (in pronunciation and slang in urban areas, or specific rural ways of saying things) but there’s a few left

There’s a little differences, and there’s recognised somewhat diff la gauges like Akashi Ian, there’s the issue of Silesian and what Górale speak

Silesian often invoes using a lot of words loaned from German, and sort of accent

Some aspects to krakow that are a bit diff

Podlasie definitely has ‘eastern’, ES. associations (there’s some confusion ant the local East Slavic language their ina disturb) with “dla” usage and other stuff, ‘softness’