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Football: Mastering Polish fan chants is easy

Up until Euro 2012, Poland's football stadiums have been unfamiliar territory to the bulk of supporters from the rest of Europe, just like the Polish language, which can bemuse outsiders.

To help foreign fans navigate Poland's fan-chant repertoire, Polish football blogger and player scout Michal Zachodny provided AFP with a handy guide to the terrace favorites.

"The most obvious one you hear is 'Polska, Bialoczerwoni'," Zachodny said.

Sung to the tune of the 1979 hit "Go West" by Village People, which is adapted by fans around the world, it simply means "Poland, the White and Reds", in a nod to the national colours.

The pronunciation is simpler than it looks, with "Bialoczerwoni" sounding like "bee-ah-wo cherr-von-ee".

Another standard is "Nic sie nie stalo", sung to the tune of "Guantanamera" and pronounced like "nits she nee star-wo".

Halfway between an encouragement and a reproach, it literally means "nothing has happened", and is deployed to prod a team into making an effort.

"This gets used quite often," said a tongue-in-cheek Zachodny,.

A variant on the same theme is "My chcemy gola", for "we want a goal", with a guttural "mee khtsem-ee gola".

Among the other regulars is a question-and-answer chant often led by stadium announcers: "Kto wygra mecz? Polska! Kto? Polska! Kto? Polska, Polska, Polska do boju, do boju, Polacy".

It means "Who'll win the match? Poland! Who? Poland! Who? Poland, Poland, Poland, fight, fight, Poles!"

It is relatively easy for non-Polish speakers to master, as the pronunciation is a simple "K-toe vee-grar metch" and "Polska do boy-oo".