Oh, really?

Yeah.

Yeah, I think it's a lot of fish, is it?

French food.

Oh, you're not sure?

You tell me.

Yeah.

Dumplings.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Cabbage.

Cabbage.

That was the cabbage, wasn't it?

Tell me who this person is.

This one's tough, but maybe what she's doing.

Mary Keogh.

Wow.

Or not.

Yeah, he looks familiar.

They're hard-working people.

I've heard they're very hard-working.

Very hard-working.

They work very hard.

They all work really hard.

Very hard-working.

Very hard-working.

Yeah.

From the reputation of it.

Hard-working.

They're very good.

Family-oriented.

Very family-oriented, yeah.

They've got a difficult history, haven't they?

They've always been attacked by other countries.

Yeah.

They've had to learn to survive.

Hiya.

Welcome to a new episode of Easy English.

Now, today is a very special episode as we're making a collaboration with our friends at Easy Polish.

We wanted to make a combined episode about Brits and Poles.

Now, as of today, Poles are the number one immigrant living in the UK.

So I wanted to know, what do Brits actually know about the Polish?

Do they know any Poles?

Are they related to any Poles?

And what stereotypes did they hear about Polish people and Poland?

Now, if you want to hear the counter-question about what Poles think about Brits, then you can with Easy Polish's video up here.

This is what Brits think about the Polish.

Here we go.

Can you tell me who this person is?

The liberal leader?

No.

No.

I'm assuming he's someone in the US government.

He is the leader of the European Parliament, I believe.

Wow.

Do you know his name?

Hear something.

He's the, not the CEO of the EU, but he's one of the presidents.

I've forgotten his name now, but he looks familiar.

Is he a European president?

Yeah, he was.

That's amazing, you got that.

Donald Tusk.

Yes.

Wow, OK.

You're the first person to get that.

That's really good.

His name is Donald Tusk?

Tusk.

Tusk.

That's right, he's Polish.

This is going to be really difficult, unless you're into film.

Are you into film?

Yeah, I'm quite into film.

Bear in mind, these are all people into the world of film.

These are all four brothers.

Four brothers.

No.

You might not know their faces, but you probably have seen their name.

They have a famous Latin name.

I've seen half movies in Hollywood.

Oh, right, so Universal, 20th Century Fox.

No, next one.

The next one you see will be them.

Paramount?

No.

Like a production company?

Yeah.

Warner Bros?

Warner?

Yeah, exactly.

These are the Warner Bros.

Warner Bros.

Oh, well done.

How about this person?

Do you know who she is?

Could you guess what she's doing?

OK, I could possibly guess from what she's doing.

Is she Pankhurst?

No, not Pankhurst.

Marie Curie.

Yeah.

Marie Curie, OK.

This one's tough, but maybe what she's doing.

Marie Curie?

Wow, or not.

Marie Curie.

Yeah.

What she's doing might be a clue.

Marie Curie?

Yeah.

I love that.

Good job.

How do you know that?

We used to have a class at my school.

It was just named after her.

Marie Curie?

Yeah.

Wow, how do you know?

Well, I just know that she was involved with chemotherapy, I think, and she develops the chemotherapy treatment.

What do you know about Marie Curie?

I know she's Polish, with Polish origins, isn't she?

Yeah.

Do you know football at all?

No, not at all.

No?

No.

Yeah, he looks familiar, but I can't put my finger on who it is.

If you don't know anything about football, then you might not know unless you were paying attention to Euros.

That's reasonable.

He looks like Michael Owen in my day.

He plays for Poland.

He's the captain of Poland, and his name is...

It ends with S-K-I, I think.

Yeah.

It's a ski.

OK, and last one, you'll hopefully get this.

Yeah, Robert Lewandowski, yeah.

OK, and who is he?

Polish football player, plays for Barcelona.

And what would you know about Robert Lewandowski?

He scored a lot of goals for Bayern Munich.

And then went to Barcelona.

Oh, there's the link.

Common link, and you've mentioned it at least four or five times already.

It's actually UK's, I think, largest immigrant in the last decade, I think.

There's something in their bios that would be quite high up that would connect them.

Right, so is it something to do with their nationality?

Yeah, exactly.

OK, so they're Belgian...

No.

No, no, no, Dutch...

No, keep going.

OK, OK.

German?

No.

Polish, is it?

No.

Whoa!

Hello, last minute.

Polish.

Is there a Polish connection?

It is.

They're all Polish-born people.

We hope you're enjoying this week's video so far.

But before we carry on, if you're looking to improve your English listening skills, then you can, with us.

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Now back to the episodes.

What's kind of the things that you're told about Polish culture?

Or is there like a, maybe like stereotypes that you might have heard about Polish people?

Hard-working.

Dumplings.

Cabbage.

Lots of cabbage.

They work very hard, and I would employ a Pole to do a job.

I see food on the world isles in Moisens and Aspen, and you get a lot of Polish shops, because I come from south-east London, so there's quite a few Polish shops there, supermarkets that have been set up.

I think it is a stereotype, but I've heard they're very hard-working.

Very hard-working.

Very good builders.

That's like a stereotype.

They're hard-working people.

They start at 8 o'clock and finish at 6, you know, that sort of thing.

Which is not like Britain.

No, no.

I know a lot of them obviously do come over, particularly with like trade jobs, there's a lot more access to that sort of work possibly.

They're like the tide and the sea, they'll come over, and then they'll go home again, and then they'll come back, and then they'll go home again.

So it's the work. It's the work balance.

I think that's why they're here, but they're great workers.

Abrupt.

Straight to the point.

Straight to the point, yeah.

OK, which is different from Brits.

From Brits, they'll dance around, and then...

Suppose we'd like them.

Now we're getting older, we're getting that way, aren't we?

Are you happy if you were to have building works that a poor would turn up as opposed to a Brit?

Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah.

From the reputation, I mean, I'm hard at work, apparently, so I don't know if I've had much experience of having builders in.

But that's like a positive stereotype, I guess.

Yeah, it is a positive, yeah.

The Poles as tradies.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally, yeah. I would say it's mostly positive.

My parents are from Poland.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

OK.

So they came from Poland during the war.

Right.

When they were children, young adults.

Yeah.

So we speak very highly of them, don't we, Cliff?

We do.

This hard-working thing is like a reoccurring theme that I get from a lot of people, hard-working.

Is that a stereotype, or is that an actual...

No, from what I've experienced from them, they all work really hard, like, you know, want to work for their families, a big sort of part of their culture.

I think, obviously, they want to work hard for their family.

The hard-working thing, is this a stereotype, or is this something that you know of?

Where does this come from?

Well, we only know one, and that's Sarah's wife, Kasia.

It's Kasia.

She's very hard-working, isn't she?

Very hard-working, yeah.

We know a lot of Polish people, and they're workers, and they work hard.

They're conscientious, aren't they?

They're conscientious ethics.

I don't know any Polish people.

No?

No, I mean...

You've been down the Polish food aisle in the...

Yeah, of course, everyone has.

One of the people I work with, he worked here, and he was going to go back to Poland and build his own house in the countryside, so that was like a big thing for him, for him and his family, so, yeah.

So I think it's not a stereotype, it's obviously the experience I've had with them, it's that they are really hard-working.

Obviously, saying that, maybe not everyone is, but it's probably like a common sort of, you know, trait in them that they have.

And what's this about family...

You said about family and tradition, you said that your friend sends money over back to her family.

She does, yeah, yeah.

Do you think that's a typical thing, that they're sort of family-oriented?

Well, for what she was saying, you know, she really looks out for her family.

They come over, they bring the children, and then whenever they go home, she sends them back with stuff, and she's always looking out for her family, all the time, isn't she?

Yeah.

Has that come out of the hardship, out of the communist era, out of an era which was so depressing, that they've come out and they've had to really work hard to develop their own state personality?

I've worked with somebody who was from Poland, who was one of our nursery nurses.

Oh, OK.

Very lovely lady.

Yeah.