It's always interesting to see candidates for office in action when confronted with a large ethnicity in the district they are running in. My boss had his campaign staff searching high and low for someone who speaks Polish so he could place an ad in the local paper for the Polish-American festival this weekend. I overheard the various phone calls of, "Well, can you find Chester? He should know. He's fluent. Well... who else do we know??" Finally, I asked what was needed and said I could call my grandmother.
My grandmother speaks Polish better than she writes it, but we came up with something that worked:
"Vyczemy wam najlepszego dnia Polskiego Americkanskievo festival!"
(We are wishing you the best day at the Polish American festival!")
I checked it against a free Polish-English translation site and we fired this off to my boss:
"?yczymy Was Lepszy Dzie? przy Polskim Ameryka?skim Festiwalu!"
He laughed when I said I wouldn't venture a guess at how to pronounce the phrase since he might end up saying something he wished he hadn't. I jokingly added that he wouldn't want to make a mistake and call himself a "jelly doughnut" like JFK had reportedly done while visiting Germany (classic urban legend).
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2 comments:
*sigh* We'll have to ask my grandma, who can speak & write in Polish, I believe. Let me know! :o)
You're an hour away from Buffalo, the Warsaw of North America! You could have called the "Dom Polski" center, or grabbed a phone book and randomly called anyone living in Cheektowaga! LOL!
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