Brexit 2019 and Poland

It depends, I remember a time or two going through Slovakia to get to my beloved Magyarorszag (or back to Poland) and being flabbergasted at how.... weird some of the Slovak dialects were. More mainstream slovak is easy enough but at the edges it goes off in bizarre directions... (and I'll never get used to boli for byli....)

@cms neuf

The British people got fed up with the EU and voted to leave.
Since the referendum the EU have shown their true colours and even more Brits got fed up with them.
The Euro fanatics have two major worries.

1.How they will budget the EU economy without the UK's money.
2.The very genuine fear that the UK will thrive outside of the EU and be a competiitor on their doorstep.

There is a third one,though less important because I am not sure that other European countries are as brave or as confident as the UK,

And that is that following the UK's success, other countries will opt to leave too.

What the EU needs to do to survive is to shrink the central power, give more power back to national governments and move the capital from Brussels to Strasbourg.

The two major players left in the EU are France and Germany and the franco german city of Strasbourg is perfect and much nicer than boring old Brussels in boring old Belgium.....

I like Brussels, but Strasbourg is special.

Really? I thought it was the most boring european city I've ever been in.... Antwerp was 10 times more interesting (the only two Belgian cities I've been in if you don't count a ferry train connection in Oostende many, many........ many.... years go.

The loss of the UK leaves a hole in the EU budget of about 12 billion EUR . That is around 40 Euro a head for the remaining citizens of the 27. It's inconvenient but hardly a show stopper

The UK might thrive but it is not very likely economically or politically. The initial steps taken - expanding the deficit with a weaker currency and cutting off your main market gives it a big headwind.

48/percent of Brits were not brave or confident - including most of the young and the educated - those are the people you will be relying on to make this barmy idea a success.

Brussels is a great city - not as nice as Antwerp but great for eating and drinking

Firstly most Irish people do actually know enough Irish to speak it. Anyone who came through the Irish education system had Irish lessons every day from the age of four and in many schools Irish was spoken most of the time in class. However, after primary school the emphasis is on the written word and kids who generally love Irish in primary school begin to lose interest. The syllabus often involves very little conversation and a lot of reading rather depressing material about hardship, famine, emigration etc and writing of essays on same. Many people of the older generation associate the language with harsh teachers, scoldings, whacks with a stick or even a strap, failure etc. The language for many people became a tool of punishment and misery.

Once people leave school they generally never use their Irish again but, the interesting thing is, that if you drop them into a total immersion situation and normal social interaction for about two weeks, it comes back to them and though it's no more than basic to lower intermediate level at best, they can actually speak Irish and could be quite fluent if they kept going with it.

Secondly, there is a strange thing occurring, where the number of native speakers in the Gaeltacht areas where the people have retained the use of the Irish language throughout history, is now dropping but the number of urban speakers in places like Dublin is on the rise. The waiting lists to get into the Gael Scoileanna (all Irish language primary schools) are as long as your arm. Huge demand for education through Irish.

I personally think the way forward is to not have Irish as an examination subject as it is at present but have it as purely a conversation and culture subject with the music, dancing etc as part of the syllabus and the option for senior students in the last two years of secondary school to take an Irish language proficiency test if they wish to do so.

The language is a poltically sensitive issue for many complex reasons that also involve Northern Ireland so this is not the forum for that discussion.

I once read that unlike other language revitalization projects in 19th century Europe (Czech, Finnish, Norwegian, maybe even Polish etc) in Ireland the emphasis was too heavily on learning a classical canon rather than creating a new canon (you need both to some extent but the Irish effort was too lopsided and biased toward a past that many didn't find appealing),

Irish is a scary language. It's probably some sort of primordial language that all people can understand, if they are in a certain state of mind. My wife had a customer at a shop once, who asked for several things, so my wife brought him what he wanted; he paid and left. After that, the manager of the shop came to my wife and said "Do you realise the man spoke in Irish?". Of course, I don't have to add that my better half doesn't speak a work of Irish Gaelic, and the customer didn't have to resort to any form of gesticulation - he simply said what he wanted. Strange things happen, eh? :)

Now that's very weird. It's possible that they were brand names because the Irish words for staples like bread, meat, milk etc are nothing like English or Polish.Some are similar because they have their roots in Latin or are 'modern' things which didn't exist in ancient times.

For example, ancient stuff would include:

Bread - arán
Milk - bainne
Meat - feoil
Nut - cnó

but

Tea - tae
Sugar - siúcra

On the other hand, jam is subh and sausages are ispíní and they're quite recent things so as with most things Irish there's no logic to it!

Of course the manager might have been 'having her on', :)) A lot of Irish people do that with foreigners. I don't do it myself, but it's very common.

I don't know if your figures are correct but I will assume they are.
What you are forgetting is that only 8 of those 27 countries are nett contributors to the EU budget and in those countries only about 60% of the population pay income tax.

So that 40 Euros will rise considerably for the taxpayers of Germany,France,Italy,NL,Austria,Finland,Sweden and Denmark.
Already there is talk of Germany's contribution having to rise by 50% or more.

Yeah, I used to work with an older Irish guy and he was a joker alright. And yet we've found a common language pretty quickly while drinking in a pub after work. Somehow the alcohol is more effective than google translate..


Nothing breaks an organization like a financial problems. No ideological nor political clashes within the UE would be as destructive as a simple lack of funds to run it. Let's drink to that :-)

Cheers! :-)

12 bn UK net contribution
Population minus the U.K. 446m

Average contribution required 26 pounds

Number in contributing countries circa 60 percent

Raises average contribution to 43 pounds

Convert to EUR 47 Euro per head.

Even take out kids and old people it would be maybe 65-70 EUR

The average German pays more than 25000 Euro per year tax. The extra burden is as I said an inconvenience but not a dealbreaker.

You will never win an economic argument about Brexit. You might win political ones but a few acid tests coming up - Ireland, Scotland, Gibraltar, Huawei etc.

So why are they talking about raising the German contribution by 50% or more?

They can double it but at 33 bn it would still be less than 1 percent of a typical Germans tax bill

But that is only an opening discussion - the real contribution will be lower and Brexit is not the only reason for those increases.

Of course some of the gaps in the EU budget will be filled by tariffs on UK exports

And the reverse is also true.
And for the EU as a whole, this will be more.

I think that has more chances than the 2% for NATO! :)

"... In the poll, Germans were asked to allocate the EU budget to eight policy areas. With an average 17.5 per cent, research, education and innovation were given the highest budegt share (while having only 9 per cent of the 2019 budget). Traditionally EU funded policy areas such as agriculture or cohesion policies ranked behind, with an average 10.6 and 9.6 percent of the budget allocated in the poll..."

europeanmovement.eu/news/em-germany-german-citizens-prefer-a-more-progressive-eu-budget/

But any tariffs on Uk imports would be paid by EU companies - not by the EU or the individual countries. So Boris can spend it on what he wants- a fast train or a bridge full of flowers. Ultimately the tab will be picked up by British consumers.

Conversely the tariffs paid by UK companies will go to the EU govts. So they can spend it on what they want.

Economics was never the strong suit of leavers.

Thanks for this interesting outline on the current position of Gaelic Irish in Ireland. From what you said it seems that Irish children are tormented with Irish in its written form at school. That's what happens to children attending school anywhere else in the world. The difference is that children in other countries continue to practice oral skills in their native tongue after walking out of the school whereas in Ireland I think they revert to English rather than carry on speaking in Irish at home or at playing fields. So my question is: do Irish children spontaneously communicate between themselves in Irish outside the school?

Anyway, i guess there is still hope for Irish to be fully re-introduced to Ireland. Do you think this may eventually happen at some point in the future?

I understand that but not your point.

That's because their native language is also their first language. In Ireland you have the weird situation where their first language is usually English. Irish is at best a second language or even more like a foreign language. How many Polish kids speak French or German or Spanish outside of their language classes??

Having said that there are many young Irish people who speak Irish outside school because they enjoy it and they meet other Irish language enthusiasts in dedicated clubs and social groups. I belonged to one such group when I was a teenager in Dublin. It's still going strong. We hung out together outside of the actual club as well and we spoke a mixture of English and Irish together. We also used to organize a 'Rock Céili' a few times a year. First part of the night was rock music, then a chunk of Irish music with Irish dancing and then rock again to finish. It was open to non membes and was supposed to attract teenagers who might come along for the rock music and then be lured into the Irish language part! A bit like a cult :D

No alcohol, but wild dancing. One unfortunate girl broke her arm when she lost her nerve in the middle of something called the 'cas' which is a kind of spin in Iris set dancing, in this case at high speed and screamed to her partner 'let go of me'. The boy in question obliged, she went flying, hit the wall and that was that. Happy days!

Sorry Ziem, got so carried away with my happy memories of Céili dancing that I forgot to reply to your question. No I don't think so. But I DO think there's a chance that it's possible to get a lot more Irish people speaking Irish on at least an occasional basis. A growing group of course is the number of Irish speaking Poles! Polish kids in Ireland generally do very well at Irish and seem to like it so maybe they can help us to save the language :))

It is now up to Britain to show the rest of Europe that there's is life outside of the EU. The success of British economy will only results in more -exits in the long term.

I got no doubt that Brussels will try to pull some tricks to hamper British economy and to discurage the others from leaving.


Yes, it is one of the most interesting folk dances in Europe

Yes it is up to Britain an to make a success of it though it's clear that any failure will be blamed on the EU, as your nonsensical post already implies. . Whatever happens, good or bad, is the responsibility of the leave voters.

The political fallout already started in the U.K. - the finance minister resigned today basically because he is not sure its wise to borrow bucket loads of money to pay for stupid promises.

I have plenty invested in the U.K., in property and shares and like most people I will keep it there and see what happens. But I sure as hell am not investing any more money there until the politics improves and I'm sure many people feel the sam. That is going to make a successful Brexit more difficult.

@Spike31
I love your "get up and go" attitude, it is what this country needs.

@cms neuf

I hate your biased negativity.
Do you want the UK to succeed, or do you prefer that we fail, just to prove your politically biased point?

Ah so this is another new refrain - that you are somehow negative if you complain about this idiotic self inflicted wound, forced on the U.K. by the old and the uneducated.

As I said before you as a leave voter own all the consequences- good and bad. I am happy to mitigate the effects on my own business and family and then I will wait for the 350 million a week to turn up.

In your opinion...........


And I am happy to own those.
Why do you care anyway?
Are you British?

I see - another Brexit trope, that somehow you are the only true Brits.

Yes I was born in the U.K., lived there for a number of years and have U.K. citizenship. I do not have the vote there any more

Am I allowed an opinion ?

If you are British, yes.

@Miło
Did you seriously expect people who think Brexit will be disastrous for UK to suddenly change their mind, forget their worries and become 'positive'? Why? What happened to change their mind?

No.
But like anything in life, once something has happened, even if you disagree with it, you try and make it work.
Not moan and complain about it ad infinitum.
I hate negativity.