Those “Hunkies”, as they'd call themselves, were all far different than the common caricature would lead you to believe, that's for sure. We'd visit my aunt when all nine of her husbands brothers and sisters were there, and among the ten of them they had a total of thirteen engineering degrees. They all started at the bottom then worked their way up in the mines or mills, too. Things were so much different in this country back then that I don't know if you can even describe it to young people these days. They really don't have anything similar to use as point of reference. I have great memories of that gang and regret how seldom I get to see those who are still around.
Sorry for the lapse into the OT stuff, but it's interesting to know that the use of "Father" isn't universal since I thought it was.
Well, no, it was a surprise to me too!
But then I learn new things each month in this country (and slap myself on the head every time I learn another crazy thing about the language!)
for instance, they don't use palms here on palm sunday but a strange mix of leaves bound together!
My wife's family are scary smart -- the wife is a Masters in Economics, her mother a Chemical Engineer, Dad a double Engineering and Economics scholar whose knowledge of history (not only Polish but pretty much global) scares me (I was once reading about some obscure ruler of Albania and he remembered his details off the top of his head), the sister in law is a Phd in Japanese and going for her professorship (one step HIGHER than a Phd) etc. --
The image of Poles as dumb is as silly as the image of Irish as dumb. And I note that both of these stereotypes came up recently in the 18th-20th centuries.
The Irish prior to the 16th century were regarded as intellectuals, poets etc., but post our dear Cromwell, that deteriorated to caricatures where they seemed almost sub-human. Ditto, thanks to the Nazis, the Poles were villified.
It's kind of pointed that some of the freepers here repeat Nazi generated stereotypes.