I was looking for information on the Lusatian Culture on Yahoo, England and came across wn.com/West_Slavs, which has various privately made Slavic and Polish related videos. The first was an informational film on coming to Poland.
All very well, but my basic reaction was that it emphasised the difficulty of understanding Polish. Its well-meaning and seems to be intended for people who are committed to coming here, but it would have convinced me that there must be better places to go.
The next video extolled the virtues of the Slavic peoples.
I must be the wrong generation, as with just a few changes, this would have made a good propaganda film for Hegel and Hitler in their promotion of the concept of the German Master race: a bit, scary, actually.
Maybe the next might be more effective.
This has the obvious tourist promotional failure of alienating a huge swath of the tourist market. It's a very simple summary of the reason why I'm here.
There are links to lots of related videos at the end of the ones above. This one shows the extraordinary recent impact of Polish people on residents and visitors to Stirling in Scotland. I wonder how many, if any, of these people would even have heard a word of Polish ten years ago.
This is actually the best advert for Poland as far as I'm concerned (if I had never been here). I'd immediately want to know more about the people and country that had had such an influence. The only slightly negative element being the Polish commentator's accent, but I'm biased by experience and assume that, if I'd never been here, I'd take comfort in knowing that Polish people do speak English (of a sorts).
This last is the original Lusatian Culture video, which is here just so that I don't loose it. It's all Slavic Master Race stuff. If you're interested, you might like to look at Wikipedia on the Vistula Veneti, which provides better starting background. I'm still trying to understand what these people were like - they lived (or at least were buried) in Młochów. Racial issues are not very important to me.
7 comments:
Best Polish promo I've seen:
http://www.vbs.tv/en-pl/watch/from-poland-with-love
Hahahah! The song the lad in the fourth video is singing is Drin za drinem by VETO featuring Tede. Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqHUgECuvqs
Also I laughed my eyes out when I noticed everybody knew kurwa mać and spierdalaj. I can't stop laughing even know when writing this comment ;D
I agree with you about the videos. Nationalism, boasting and other stuff like that don't convince people to come to Poland. The difficulty of our language also - it's really hard to learn.
Gdzie jest najbliższy całodobowy monopolowy and Poproszę pół litra czystej - killer lines :D
Thanks for these links.
I'll have to take time to watch Poland with Love Full version - over an hour.
I find most Polish rap old-fashioned, derivative and lacking any real cutting edge: the rappers look so sweet. However, following the links, I saw Sistars were featured. I didn't know what they looked like until now: Tede feat. Sistars - Zeszyt Rymów video. I will return there.
I must also return to the Polish language some time. Difficult? I can speak enough to get by, so it can't be difficult. Kill the fear and create a challenge. The Polish alphabet, word pronunciation and long words - targeted in the video - are simple once you try them. Just sympathetically explaining 'sześćdziesięcioletni' is easy, and gives enormous information about the entire structure of Polish word combination and direct potential to figure out new combinations.
You're absolutely right about the word combinations - they become simple when you realise what their structure is.
The cases (we have seven), conjugations, declensions. There is a whole lot of it and many of them are actually irregular. As a 19-year-old Pole I don't know and understand all of them.
Irritating broken link on river options for tourists at the ZTM website here http://www.ztm.waw.pl/szukaj.php. There's a lack of joined up thinking when it comes to Polish tourism. Slovenia is an exemplar in this area.
I am back from America and have really enjoyed reading through your recent posts, Steve. The Scottish video is really pretty hilarious and I agree with what you say. I was in Elgin a year and a bit ago and was very surprised to see a Polski Sklepy. The sheer mass of people moving between the two countries means that the ties between Poland and the UK will only increase as time goes on. I guess both of us moving to the country is a sign of that?
Paddy
For fuck's sake ;)
I vote for the Scottish one too!
The idea of panslavism is of Russian origin. From the beginning Poles had energetically opposed it, so it's not likely people would advertise Poland with a vid like that.
In practice the message is: all Slavic people should live in Russia, and then Russia will be strong and powerful. However, the idea also got some following from the people from former Yugoslavia, who, apparently, have some second thoughts about their divorce.
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