Can you BE Polish without SPEAKING Polish?

They are no more compromised than the Vietnamese waitress down the street who cannot speak Vietnamese

The answer is YES you can be Polish without speaking Polish

Europe is the only place that gets confused about such matters.

It's weird you mention Apaches

It is one of the few Indian tribes that I can spell

would you go to Australia and start correction Australians by saying that
the G in G'day ought to be pronounced as Good and that they could not
claim British ancestry as a result of having bastardised the English language?

Americans do tend to play the ancestry card when it suits them though.

now it is my turn to go squealing to the Mods. could we have a lifetime ban for anyone who starts squabbling over the word busia please?

That's somewhat unlikely, given that direct homophobic abuse doesn't even get an edit, let alone a warning.

can we invent a theory that "Busia" was invented by Russian-Americans?

I think it needs to be even more ridiculous - can we invent a theory that "Busia" was invented by Russian-Americans?

if one has a great-grandparent who was Polish, has never been to Poland and only wants a Polish passport in order to work in France, the things are given out without the need to even say prosze

Getting back to the topic, does anybody else think that it's a bit odd that one does have to speak Polish in order to naturalise as Polish (i.e. one has lived here for ten years) but if one has a great-grandparent who was Polish, has never been to Poland and only wants a Polish passport in order to work in France, the things are given out without the need to even say prosze? A cynic might make some connect there between the likely skin colour of the passport applicants (but I of course would not).

Please tell me when some Poles will stop blaming their own failure and lack of responsibility on either Russians(Smolensk)

I'm not buying the blood thing either as "Polish blood" is really just mixed blood. The history of Poles began with West Slavic tribal people establishing a Polish state over 1000 years ago.

So - if that's true - what about the large amount of Poles with foreign names?

Off the top of my head, I have about 6-7 friends with clearly-not Polish names - including at least one with a Scottish name. Does that mean that they aren't true Poles?

And that's before we even start talking about things such as "Russian" babies.

(all this blood stuff, it's bullshit in a country that was occupied many times and in a continent where mixing is/was/always has been rife)

One thing that Americans don't get, and perhaps never will - is that in Europe, identity is often determined more by language than by blood once you go down a couple of generations. A child born to a British father and German mother in Germany will identify first and foremost as German. You'll never hear "I'm British-German" or some such nonsense.

I'd be willing to bet a considerable amount of money that not one poster on this forum could identify 5 Polish people and 5 Jewish people from 10 pictures.

My wife is super-curious about Native Americans. Is this a Polish thing?

by claiming that Poles, as another indigenous people that battled foreign invaders, identify with Native Americans.

You mean "Polish Americans who have nothing to do with Poland identify with Native Americans".

The claim that "Poles as another indigenous people" is utterly laughable to anyone who knows the slightest thing about the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

The claim that "Poles as another indigenous people" is utterly laughable to anyone who knows the slightest thing about the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

The claim that "Poles as another indigenous people" is utterly laughable to anyone who knows the slightest thing about the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

what do you mean by that - that it was Crimean Tatars, Bavarians, Saamis, Magyars, Lithuanians or Cumans who were indigenous population in the majority of the Kingdom of Poland (the Korona) in say A.D. 1699

You are wrong. Poles are indigenous to Poland, or if one believes the theory of Slavic migrations they arrived in Poland well over one-thousand years ago which makes them pretty much indigenous as well.

delphiandomine: The claim that "Poles as another indigenous people" is utterly laughable to anyone who knows the slightest thing about the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Exactly.

One problem is that whenever an 'indiginous people' are mentioned, someone else can always come along and mention whatever group preceded them. Right back to the Neanderthals.

The fact that the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was ethnically diverse does nothing

founded by the indigenous Slavs of the land

Hahahahaha

Otherwise no homo-sapiens outside of Africa can claim to be indigenous to the lands

Poles are an indigenous population

Poland is nothing to do do with what is or isn't 'indigenous' - it is a culture, united with and indivisible from a shared language.

Poles are an indigenous population.

The pride in which Polish people take in speaking "correct Polish" suggests that this is indeed correct.

You only have to see the stigma attached to regional dialect and the shift towards a standard pronunciation of Polish to see this,

jasondmzk   Jan 16, 12, 20:06          Reply  /  Quote  #1
My wife is of the mind that you can not. She has been in the U.S. for two years, and has met a kajillion people with names ending in "-ski" whom delight in telling her, that they to, are Polish. She thinks Polish-American is just American.

other languages (other than Polish) have anything to do with Polish culture

tell it to the Kashubians