Job Discussion Forums

[dynow]

After all the griping, I have taken it upon myself to summon all my fellow posters' vast experience with good ole' Poland, and ask a few questions that I think need to be asked....

All these questions are under the assumption that you are going to live in Poland for a very long time/for the rest of your life:

What else is there to do if you don't want to teach english, assuming you don't speak Polish?

If you lived here for a very very very very very long time and actually were able to speak this insane language fluently, what doors would that open for you, if any?

If you wanted to start your own school, is it doable, and what costs would it entail? I'd be curious to hear from someone that actually did it, or from someone that knows someone that has done it/is currently doing it. More importantly is if it is even possible without having tons of cash socked away beforehand.

What other businesses, besides teaching english, is it possible to open in Poland, assuming your the avg. Joe, no huge nest egg to invest in something with? I'd be curious to the answers to this question with "fluent in Polish" and "not fluent in Polish".

What, in your opinion, would be the best city for your money, compared of course to what you would earn there? I ask this question because it would be nice to have options of leaving the 4-5 big cities in Poland and finding somewhere where you could still earn some good cash, with a lower cost of living....if it exists.

I can't think of anything else at the moment.

I'm already about 90% sure that I will be leaving this country within the next few years to head back home, but this post, depending on what I read, will help me get closer to 100%.

thx.

[Richfilth]

I gave up on letting the "old timers" moan on and on; once you've decided the place isn't for you, incessantly whinging won't make it better. However, a lot of the complaints are valid, and the one thing that Poland needs if it wants to be a healthy modern capitalist society is competition.

There simply isn't any of it, which is why in the service industry owners can flippantly comment "if you don't like it, go somewhere else."

With sufficient grasp of the language (or paying an English-speaking under-manager to do it for you,) there is scope for setting up a business in almost any sector you can imagine, as long as you run it better than the Polish version. Just look at the huge amounts of stuff being traded on allegro.pl - the markets are there, and people are buying it, and they also prefer not to shop at the traditional places. Also, the cash is there; Poland is not in debt up to its eyeballs (whatever anecdotal evidence tells you otherwise, consumer debt is less than 40% of consumer wealth. The same week that the Bank of England predicted a 3-5% shrink in GDP for 2009, the Polish National Bank predicted a mere 3-5% growth. Poland still bucks the trend for the EuroZone in almost every statistic, which means either the National Statistics Office are craftier liars than the Romanians (which I severely doubt) or, shock horror, Poland is actually rather healthy.)

Find yourself a niche and get to it - there's plenty out there. I'm not actually going to spell them out for you as that would give my own plans away, wouldn't it.

On the other hand, if you've been here for years and refuse to even look for the locals who also want to help change things, and who also speak English, then yes, you're doomed. Go back to hiding under your rock and moaning about the good old 1990's when you were the Emperor and your new clothes were all the rage.

[dynow]

[Richfilth]

I won't deny that the language is frustrating (Im barely comprehensible in it myself), but you can't fault Poland for that. The same finger could then be pointed to Finland or Hungary (fifteen and seventeen noun cases respectively!) or in fact the entire Sinai peninsula. As I said before, pay someone to speak it on your behalf. The language is problematic, but it's not the root of Poland's problems.

Of course, if you're looking for work only in the language field, what sort of qualifications do you have? Four years experience teaching perfect tenses to sulky teenagers for FCE is hardly going to cut it in the world of trade and commerce, is it. Without capital, you're not going to be able to set up any tourist venture (buying land or property, for example), and you're also not going to be able to run any sort of import-export business without a chunk of cash to get you up and running.

I can't imagine that speaking English alone will open any media doors; you still have to have an impressive portfolio anywhere to make it as a writer, there's no demand for voiceovers and proof-reading is so soul-destroying it's not worth it as a career. But that is the same all over the world, not just Poland.

Of course, you could always become a bartender in the ex-pat bars; there must be a lucrative trade in giving the long-term moaners a beer in which to cry.

What do YOU imagine yourself doing? Brush the language aside for a second, and think of an industry you'd be happy working in. If it's not EFL, what is it?

[Jack Walker]

For a long term solution,forget the language industry.We call our school the "titanic".This is one of the bigger operations in the country.

If you could branch out into something else,starting a business is doable but certainly not easy.

I've had my iron in some fires while I've been here, but start-up costs and the incessant bureucracy kept me down.

About the language thing.My friend recently moved to Spain after exactly 2.5 years in Poland.He told me the other day that he is more communicative in Spanish after 2.5 months than he ever was in Polish in 2.5 years.He said he can actually have a basic conversation in Spanish while in Poland, it was impossible for him.

[dynow]

"The same finger could then be pointed to Finland or Hungary (fifteen and seventeen noun cases respectively!) or in fact the entire Sinai peninsula. "

regarding Finland, taken from the internet:

http://www.travel-mediainfo.com/General-Europe-(Continental)/93090.htm

in summary, it estimates that 60-70% of Fins speak English. even more in summary, Finland speaks WAY more english than Poland, demonstrating the importance Finland puts on the English language and their ability to communicate with foreigners and be a significant player in international business. it makes a difference.

Regarding Hungary.........who goes to Hungary???

anyway, read this regarding Hungarian:

"There is a terminology problem with Western approaches to Hungarian grammar. There are actually only three cases in Hungarian--nominative, accusative, and possessive. All the other things which some old-fashioned grammarians call "cases" are not cases at all but suffixed postpositions. For example, let's look at the noun kutya 'dog'. The nominative is kutya, the accusative is kuty�t, and the first person singular possessive is kuty�m. These are the three cases."

I have read several times that people confuse cases with suffixes in Hungarian, and that the changes are completely regular. I've never studied Finnish or Hungarian, but what I hear and read remains to be consistent.

more evidence regarding what I just wrote:

http://www.claritaslux.com/blog/the-hardest-language-to-learn/

again, if you don't feel like reading, in summary it ranks Polish as the hardest language in the world, and ranks Hungarian/Finnish/Estonian below Polish because "the cases are more like English prepositions added to the end of the root."

"As I said before, pay someone to speak it on your behalf. The language is problematic, but it's not the root of Poland's problems."

pay someone? for how long? I'm going to put my hard earned cash on the table without even being able to personally read the terms of the contract? how long can you run a business in this way, having someone else do the talking for you? what do you do when the phone rings and your translator isn't there?

"What do YOU imagine yourself doing? Brush the language aside for a second, and think of an industry you'd be happy working in. If it's not EFL, what is it?"

I really don't know. The work I am interested in simply doesn't pay in Poland, and I couldn't do it anyhow without speaking Polish well.

"About the language thing.My friend recently moved to Spain after exactly 2.5 years in Poland.He told me the other day that he is more communicative in Spanish after 2.5 months than he ever was in Polish in 2.5 years.He said he can actually have a basic conversation in Spanish while in Poland, it was impossible for him."

I've heard this same story 100 times. Imagine moving to Spain, France, Portugal, Italy.......starting the language learning process all over again, but not once having to consider case endings......or having to change people's names.

Marcinowi? what?

I'm still curious as to whether anyone will post with any answers regarding my opening post.

[scot47]

The interesting question to me is "Why are Poles so bad at acquiring foreign languages ?". When I was there in the 1960's and 1970's under Gomulka and Gierek it struck me that there was something strange about the Poles' attitude to foreign languages. Now that "Polska Ludowa" has gone it seems that there is no real change in that aspect of Polish life.

[Richfilth]

Dynow, I think you missed the point with my Finno-Hungarian comment - I know the complexities of their languages from my university days, and that's not what I was getting at.

You're laying the blame for your lack of business opportunities on the Polish language, and that seems foolhardy. "Who goes to Hungary?" Scrubbing out the country that receives a third of all foreign direct investment for the region? Hungary is as financially significant as Poland, yet if you've heard any of them try to speak English, you'll encounter the same problems as you do in Poland - thick laboured accents, confusing structures, counterbalanced by an impossible-to-learn grammar system (they take agglutination to the extreme) and a reluctance on their part to improve their Englsh. Ergo, Hungarian IS very hard to learn, and they don't speak much English at all, and yet, until this crisis, the country was one of the fastest-developing in the area for international businesses. Language is not the problem here.

Poland's business enterprise problems stem not from the language barrier, but from their xenophobic tendancy not to deal with any foreigners for any reason, language or otherwise. In their eyes, as a foreigner, what can you bring to Poland that they haven't got already? And as for your problem with contracts and translators; it's one thing to learn how to chat about the weather in Spanish, but how many years do you think it takes to understand legal contractese? Legal German is just as ludicrous - if you want to do business in ANY foreign country, you will need a paid translator to help you. However, with a good business structure and the right PA/Accountant/Office Manager, you can get a start-up going without the language being a hindrance. If you don't have the skills, after all, you pay someone else who does, and that applies to every single business enterprise there is.

And for you, what could you do back in your own country without specialist skills anyway? Work as a meat-packer or fruit-picker? Poland has enough of those anyway. Maybe you could replace that dire English fireman who claims to be a 'comic' on TVP.

Without a clear focus, you're destined to be a spare cog in the big machine. That's hardly Poland's fault.

[dynow]

[Richfilth]

I am certainly willing to accept that Poles could learn a lot more about business, and that learning English would help them, but that's a very broad idea and if we're talking about your future specifically, I don't think it HAS to apply.

I've been here for four years, and I started as a very naive wet-nosed teacher (didn't we all?) with a negative number of pounds to my name. Since then I've written for a magazines here, imported stuff and sold it online, got my fingers burned on a few car trades, bought my flat and matured a bit. I'm not a massive success but I'm certainly not struggling like most EFL'ers seem too; maybe because I do business classes rather than English-for-teenagers-and-bored-housewives.

The language thing is irritating, yes, but I have met and continue to meet people who are invaluable to any business operation (enthusiasts, translators, salesmen, legal advisors), and in any country it's who you know, not what you know. They all spoke enough English for us to co-operate together mutually, and I didn't get robbed, exploited or fleeced. Treat a Pole fair in business and you'll be rewarded - play hardball and they'll rip your throat out.

Find the right support team and you could, for example, devise a series of in-company workshops training Poles in customer service. You take the time to write the materials in English, pay a one-time fee to a translator, choose a team of sexy Polkas who will conduct the classes for you, and then pay a student a basic rate to phone all the companies in your local area to sell the package (you compile the list of prospective clients, for example.) That is just one of many hundreds of ideas that have worked in other countries (I got the idea from a Moldovan friend) where your language dependancy is minimal. It follows exactly the same method as English language classes, only you sell the hour for 500zl instead of 50zl. You can even act as your own "guest speaker," selling prestige courses in pure English to executives for an even bigger markup. I have no idea if any of this would work, of course, but it has in other Eastern Bloc countries, so it's worth a try.

I've bought and sold all sorts of junk on allegro.pl, and my copy-paste tactic has put me in touch with all sorts of wonderful characters. There's a wonderful Poland out there, you just have to see past the tongue-numbing speech area.

I don't feel like it's slowed me down at all. Once you know English, all other languages will stifle your ability to express yourself no matter how well you know them, as there is no vaster, more flexible or more expressive language than English. And that's not just the bullsh!t I sell to my students either; of all the languages I've studied, English is the best.

[dynow]

Fair enough. Respect.

[Jack Walker]

Don't mean to go off and a tangent here but I have to for a moment.

One of my upper-inter students just got back to Poland after spending 2 years in London.

When she went there, she barely knew a word of English and working as a waitress proved very difficult for her.

She didn't know basic commands or simple restaurant vocabulary like glass or cheque or knife etc etc.

She stuck it out and after 2 years of living in London with no formal English training,she is almost ready for the FCE exam and I can talk to this lady as if she were a native speaker of English.

That's how language acquisition should work.Try doing that with the Polish language?

5 years and many foreigners would have trouble making small talk over breakfast.

[dynow]

[quote]That's how language acquisition should work.Try doing that with the Polish language? [quote]

yes.

again, this language, with it's never ending useless grammar rules, are directly hurting it's economy and overall growth. i'm convinced of it.

i'm dreaming of a language.......a language where you can just put I, you, he/she/it, we, they......and then just put the verb in front.......and your finished.........and you can simply put the past form in front of the pronoun.......and your finished........hell, same with future.........

a language with no cases.............

a language with a simple plural design..........

a language with no gender.........

a language where my name will never be spelled differently........

oh wait.........that's english!

say what you want, but if our Polish students had the tables turned on them, we would be walking into empty classrooms every morning. basically every student my school has ever taught polish to over the last 5 years has quit within 3 months (or less) because it was, quit simply...........too hard.

[Richfilth]

Is it any coincidence that it was a Pole who developed Esperanto?

[Mike_2007]