Wednesday, September 23, 2009

What did you say?

I wish I could remember more from Poland, but I only have the memories from when I was little and what my parents tell me about it now, oh and the polish news which I watch occasionally with my dad. Anyways, this week in class we talked about a crappy subject: toilets, but not just toilets we also got into how people can misunderstand you with certain hand gestures or even the way you word things. I can't say that I know any hand gestures that they do in Poland that would be weird to us, but I do know that in Poland is pretty much mandatory to take your shoes off when you enter someones home or your own and put on slippers, it's just a sign of respect. Hey, we like to keep our floors as clean as possible. (:
Sal also talked about words that can't be directly translated from another language into English or vice versa. There's obviously words in English when directly translated to Polish people would look at you weird such as "what's up" we all use it here almost on a daily basis, but if you said what's up to someone who lives in Poland, they would give you a dirty look and think you're an idiot. The person would answer back with "the sky obviously." If you didn't want to sound like a complete dork you would ask "jak tam" which literally translated is "how there" but it's just the norm...

1 comment:

  1. I'm pretty the saying "What's up" is different in Hebrew, we don't translate it word for word, but there is a saying that we have thats similar to saying what's up. For example we have a direct translation for How are you? but we when we use the direct translation for What's up it just doesn't work.

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