Consider another nice Polish saying "Chłop ze wsi wyjdzie, ale wieś z chłopa nigdy" that literally means "A yokel can leave a village, but village will never leave yokel". Could you please help me find equivalent?
Explanation
This very ironic and self explanatory among Polish society saying is mostly used to describe a person that was born in rural area and has moved to a city but despite the time that he has spent in civilization he has still some very vulgar, annoying and sometimes awful habits. This also relates to the way of dressing, behaving among society, talking and general view on the world.
On the other hand this saying can be used very carefully as playful description only if this kind of person has lived for a long time in a city and sometimes still makes minor mistakes and saying this will not humiliate him.
Example
(walking on a sidewalk)
– Eww, how can a man burp so loud and so insolently?
– Just look at him. A yokel can leave a village but village will never leave yokel.
For curious ones
Believe me, in Polish there are a lot of words that can be pronounced very specifically so that one word can be enough to recognize whether a man is a boor or not! And it's very annoying way of pronouncing.
Best Answer
The Polish phrase itself is actually fairly well known, albeit slight re-worded. I've heard it for various regions: "You can take a man out of the [south|north|country|city], but you can't take the [south|north|country|city] out of the man."
I think I've even seen it on a T-shirt.