Oof

Today’s phrase is also indicative of the past week, but in a much less positive sort of way. This has been a rather hectic week with lots of not-so-great stuff going on, and quite frankly by the end of the week I feel like…

Mam to wszystko w dupie.  Literally translates to it’s all up my ass, but the English version is more akin to I have had it with this crap. Or a very crass way of saying good riddance. It is a nice way to sum up how you feel about something and how fed up with it you are, when you say so you basically intone that it is over and you are sick of it and you shall not be bothered by it anymore.

 

AAAUUUGGHHH!!!

That has been building up all week. Today’s Polski Piątek segment harkens back to my childhood, with some tales of old times woven in.

Today’s fun idiom is: drze się jak stare pościeradło.  Literally: tears like an old bed sheet. This one is a bit trickier because the word drze can mean to tear but also to scream incoherently. So in this case it is a play on the double-meaning of the word. The English equivalent of course is screaming like a banshee. As a kid, the first time I heard this I really just pictured a torn bed sheet, but then I quickly caught on and the two mixed together in my head to make this:

An old torn-bed sheet screaming ghost. Duh.

 

Hah

In continuing with my mildly goofy, completely-off-the-wall mood, today’s Polish idiom just makes me giggle. Hence the reason I chose it.

In English when you someone is very important or highly regarded you say that they are the big cheese. In Polish however they are a gruba ryba, literally: a fat fish.

I don’t know about you, but if someone called me a fat fish, I would be rightly cheesed off.

 

What a week

This having been the week of Halloween… and the candy binge afterwards, has led to an opening of the flood gates. Start with some chocolate and before you know it you are eating week old pizza and craving cake. Therefore today’s idiom is about cake! Yay!

Bułka z masłem.
A roll with butter. (A piece of cake.)

I do not understand what is easy about a roll with butter. Or a slice of cake for that matter. Both involve a fair bit of effort, from spreading the butter to cutting the cake. Or maybe I am just that lazy?

What is so easy about this?!

 

 

Oops

I almost missed my Polski Piątek segment, by which I meant I at least remembered before the weekend ended. I could blame it on feeling run-down, I could blame it on allergies, school anything else I can think of. Or it’s all the junkfood I have been eating. Either or, my stomach has been killing me, which slightly links to today’s Polish idiom:

• Wiercić komuś dziurę w brzuchu.
  To drill somebody a hole in their stomach. (To keep on at somebody, to nag somebody.)

Yeah, like I am going to post a picture of a stomach/drill/hole. Gross.

 

♪ It’s Friday, Friday… ♫

This week has proven to be the most fun week I have had with the Polish language. In interpreter school we covered how to translate obscenities, insults, swear words etc… Fun yes, but also difficult. My phrase that I had to translate was “piss up a flagpole” to which I still cannot find an entirely proper equivalent, so I had just said something akin to “piss off”. Anyways, there was much giggling on my part in class.

So in the spirit of the week, today’s Polish idiom for Polski Piątek is:

Spity jak bela

Drunk as a log (drunk as a skunk)

Having added the above image (again, from Google Images)… it hit me, this Polski Piątek segment, of one little lesson plus a dorky picture, it bears an odd resemblance to the elementarz (the standard Polish textbook we all had to learn from).

 

New Plan- Polski Piątek

Every Friday I will instead bring you a wonderful Polish idiom, it’s english translation and then what the english (note: not English) equivalent is. And seeing as it is still the weekend, I can make up for it.

Here is my (delayed) first idiom:

Co ma piernik do wiatraka?
What has gingerbread to do with a windmill? (What has that to do with anything?)

(Thanks GoogleImages)

What were they thinking when they came up with this idiom? I know that (other than the above example) gingerbread has nothing to do with windmills… but how did someone even come up two such arbitrary words?! And then put them together like that? And this is just a taste of what is to come. Trust me, I have some even better ones up my sleeve.

 

Polski Piątek

Here’s the deal, every Friday from here on & out (until I forget or get bored of it, at least) I will be writing my posts in Polish. I wouldn’t worry about missing out on much, I won’t do any best of reviews in Polish. So enjoy my sad pathetic attempts to stagger through the Polish language (at least I am writing and not speaking).

No to, pierwszo trzeba spytać, dlaczego własnie po Polsku piszę? Czemu w piatki? Na tym wlasnie rzecz polega, że brzmi milo, Polski Piatek, niemal poetycki. Ważniejsze że muszę czwiczyć. Studjujem na Humber College. Biorę kurs tłumaczenia, i żeby być poświadczona jako tżumacz muszę zdać egzamin w styczniu. Na egzaminie będą sprawdzać moją umiejętności, ale  nie tylko po angielsku, a także po polsku. Na egzaminie potrzeba mieć przynajmniej ocene 75 procent.

Tego czego nie widać jest że ponad połowe tej treści sprawdzałam w słowniku. Z rozmową nie mam trudności, tylko mam trudność ze słownictwem. Nie które słowa zapominam albo nie znam. W swobodnej konwersacji to tak sobie, jakoś radzem. Ale jak mam pracować jako tlumacz, jak mam zdać ten egzamin, to nie da się żeby zapominać słów albo żeby zastąpić innymi słowami. Jak tak zrobiem to raz że nie zdam egzaminu i nie będę poświadczona, ale też będzie trudno pracować jako tłumacz.

Oh dear God. I double-checked it. This was an insanely dumb idea.

Instead enjoy this better version of PolGlish