But how does one pronounce 'Fairy' in Polish? But how does one ask for it in Polish at the chemia gospodarcza department of your local GS? Fery? Fejry? Fajry? Fary? No, you cannot pronounce 'Fairy' correctly in Polish using any combination of the six non-nasalised vowel sounds in the Polish alphabet.
How can you distinguish the words 'Ferry', 'fairy' and 'furry' if you are stuck with such a limited palate of vowel sounds?
Three years ago, I was speaking at a conference in Cork, Ireland, co-organised by our Wrocław office. Ilona, the organiser, told me how to get to the hotel where I was staying. She told me to ask the taxi driver for what I heard her say was the 'Merrybridge hotel'.
So there I was. Off the last bus that evening from Dublin Airport, and into the back of a Toyota Avensis.
Me: 'Merrybridge Hotel, please'.Children learn to speak between the second and third year of life. Soon after, their facial muscles set in. If you've not learnt to stretch the medial pterygoid muscles and open your jaw significantly wider than necessary for the simple utterance of the short 'uh', 'eh', 'ee' 'oh' and 'ooh' sounds that make up Polish vowel sounds, you'll not be able to make yourself understood in English. Speaking with a paper-cut narrow space between upper and lower teeth, you will never allow you listener to distinguish between you trying to say 'air' and 'err'. Say jej włosy in English. 'Her her?'
Taxi driver: 'Sorry, sorr, where's dat you be wantin'?'
Me: 'The Merrybridge Hotel?...'
A good deal of consternation, head-scratching, consultation of map.
Taxi driver: 'I can't honestly be thinkin' of where dat is, sorr...' [beat]
'Ah!! The MARYbridge Hotel!'
A few months ago I found myself at a dinner sitting next to a Polish professor who was telling me about the fur trade movement in the UK. I was stumped. 'Handel futrami?' I asked. Eventually it transpired that he was talking about 'fair trade'. I really didn't catch on.
* Salmon omelette. Ingredients: Two slices of smoked salmon, preferably Alaskan. Three large free-range eggs. Sunflower oil, salt and ground pepper to taste. Take a shallow-sided non-stick frying pan, heat up sunflower oil, throw on the salmon, cut into fine pieces, distribute around pan evenly. Break eggs, whip up with egg whisk, pour onto frying pan. Keep the thing moving. When one side is done, either toss to fry other side, or stick it in the grill to brown. Serve with brown bread and cherry tomatoes. Serves two.
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9 comments:
Just for your information....
Fairly Liquid has a very poor Ethical Consumer score.....
see
http://www.ethicalconsumer.org/FreeBuyersGuides/householdconsumables/washingupliquid.aspx
with a consumer boycott of their goods...
Procter and Gamble
for its continued use of animal testing for cosmetics, household products and pet food. Brands made by P&G include Always, Ariel, Bold, Camay, Crest, Daz, Dreft, Fairy, Flash, Head and Shoulders, Insignia, Iams, Milton, Napisan, Oil of Ulay, Old Spice, Pampers, Sinex, Tide, Viakal, Vidal Sassoon, Vortex and Zest. For further details see the Boycott P&G website.
It's not just English. Poles have a dreadful time with the German Umlaut.
I can still remember the pains of trying to get a Pole to properly write (let alone pronounce) the name of the German Reichsmarschall (etc), Hermann Göring.
Can't even remember what he wrote... Gering? Giring???
Indeed, you can hear a Pole mispronounce German at 100 metres. It's far, far worse than Poles mangling the English language, and perhaps one reason (of several) why Poles are very poorly regarded in Deutschland.
I remember my Polish neighbour in the UK stumped me once like that - saying "Per-for-mens" :)
It took a while to realise that he meant "performance" (p'fo-mens) :)
@Sigismundo
Germans are definitely masters of pronunciation in every language you can think of. that's why they're highly regarded around the world.
Enjoy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLSdOY-6R_U
'Non-stick frying pans', I'm shocked. Don't you know what perfluoro acid does to your body.
Deadly toxins
You should be using a properly seasoned cast iron frying pan.
Dyspozytor, they have newer, non-stick pans that have a safe coating:
http://www.williams-sonoma.com/products/calphalon-unison-slide-nonstick-fry-pan/?pkey=cnonstick-cookware|ckwnonfry
That recipe sounds delicious :-).
Jeannie, the Williams-Sonoma cookware featured in your link is certainly very posh (= expensive) but the Calphalon non-stick coating is Polytetrafluoroethylene-based and it is the use of PTFE at high temperatures (it starts to decompose at 200°C) that is a health hazard. The following brands of non-stick coatings are PTFE based: Teflon®, SilverStone®, T-Fal®, Calphalon®, Fluon®, and Debron®.
I have just cooked some delicious scrambled eggs on a properly seasoned stainless steel frying pan. After 20 minutes slowly frying a mixture of cubed Polish grilling sausage and onion, and then 5 minutes more cooking after adding the eggs, all the frying pan needed was a rinse under warm water and a brief gentle scrubbing with a plastic bristle brush. Needless to say no washing up liquid (neither Fairy or Ludwig) was involved.
Given what we now know about PTFE, there is really no excuse to continue to use cookware covered with this toxin generating substance.
Hang on, isn't Iams dog food? Seems like a reasonable thing to test on animals to me.
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