Why Polish people use so many words to describe a situation?

Ask the native speakers here, Magda. This type of discussion or this type of a discussion, which is correct?

Go on, I dare you. No offence to any Poles out there but I've found that even the most qualified of teachers make a pig's ear of articles.

Back to the thread, I don't find that Poles are overly descriptive.

It is the welsh that are descriptive. When we have to use a word to describe a modern concept in Welsh we have to use English cos its too long to say it in Welsh. Thats why most welsh speakers speak Wenglish

Some are, some aren't. I am, for example... Each time I write an essay, I have to cross out half of the text later.

I believe the founder of this thread came across those overly descriptive ones. And that's the whole problem.

Yeah, a Welsh abbreviation has 20 characters! LOL

[quote=Seanus]

Depending upon the context, it may be possible that both are corect "on or in". What do you think?

I must admit that congratulations in has a certain ring to it but congratulations on is correct. Maybe because we often use in + gerund

I love it when people bicker over grammar and such

Because they are afraid that the foreigners listening to them will not understand.

That's part of it southern, for sure. Again, I haven't found that many Poles do this with any regularity.

haha that should be in the * what makes you laugh" thread:) Classic. Is there a saying in Polish for " jack of all trades, master of none"?

Jack of all trades, master of none, why do you ask?

What, because I admitted a typo? Well, heeheehee, how funny. I almost died laughing ;)

Jack of all trades - złota rączka

Jack of all trades, master of none - zna się na wszystkim i na niczym :)

Golden hand, fantastic, I like that.

No seanus it the fact that you think that you are an expert in every subject under the sun:) It was a classic that you picked fault with a members grammar, only for her to point out a clanger of yours, one post later.

For my two zloties worth - -:)), I don't find Polish at all 'wordy', itself a culturally subjective and not terribly useful term. I do find however that Polish tends often to restate previously stated information in a manner usually avoided by English speakers so that it seems as if the writer is just repeating himself!

Indeed, as Magda and Seanus have convincingly stated, English is far wordier than Polish, where to be sure, a verb such as 'tłumaczyć' can mean 'to explain' as well as 'to translate', the noun 'noga' frequently covers both 'foot' and 'leg' etc...

An expert in every subject? Where did I say that? It wasn't a fault though, I simply pressed the wrong key, it happens you know. I've taught it so often, I saw it and corrected it. I and O are next to each other.

You are the sort who like to pounce on people. I don't profess to be an expert

I'm surprised you and gtd got along so well...

Why does that surprise you? We didn't actually, we often agreed to disagree.

Do you have any data supporting that?Can you quote any source proving that the number of words in polish language is less than that of english?

Wordier in that it uses more words or has more words? I think foreigners may confuse the two.

Dude, English has many more words than Polish. A basic knowledge of linguistics and etymology would tell you that.

Spurs, hehehe, chump!! Go the Gooners!! Rumour has it that the ex-Spurs boss was caught speeding. When asked why, he replied, 'I'd do anything for 3 points'.

If anything, Polish, as with other Slavic languages, is extremely precise, much moreso than English whose tenses are infinitely vaguer than Polish aspects. Understanding the mode of travel/conveyance, for instance 'to go' = iść, chodzić, pójść. etc. structures the dynamic of activity with infinitely greater clarity and economy than 'I go' vs. I'm going by rail', 'I wrote' vs. 'I have already been writing' and such what.

well, if you didn't notice yet, Polish language is very rich...
beside, we just make things more complicated for foreigners....

The amount of times i would be talking to a non english speaking person and ask them "what is - in your language" to which they would no reply (cant remeber the words now...

Although its practically impossible to prove, English does seem to have more words than any other language (k ,i just google around for a 10 minutes on the topic), simply because of its history and the influence of other countries.

Just go to a thesaurus and look up any word and compare it to another language in that context, then translate those english words into your own language. I remember reading somewhere that translating english documents into other languages for EU purposes proved quite difficult as a lot of languages didnt have the words required.

Although other languages may use a word to express the english equivalent i think that english may be more precise in terms of defining something due to the broad range of words to avail of. Also, english is a musical language, short words, soft tonations in general,using minimal amount of words for maximum expression. Perhaps why pop and rock's origions are found in english writers and composers.


this is more of an environmental thing as an english speaker will immediately know what the person is saying, it can be seen as an advantage because it expresses more precisely what the person is saying.

Try this.....

Blandish

Part of Speech: verb

Pronunciation: ['blæn-dish]

Definition: To flatter, to cajole or seduce with kind and ostensibly affectionate words. ( if you want you can also try this one...)

Usage: Blandishment is an every day occurrence: "He blandished me with every kind word in his vocabulary but I simply refused to surrender my Virginia tea to him." Not all blandishments fail, of course: "Sarah's subtle blandishments finally convinced Hardy to wear a shirt when her parents visit." .....k, i dont know who makes these stories up but....

Any takers for BLANDISH???

This word is deader than a doornail. Google spits out page after page after page of links to dictionaries, plus a smattering of links to a book entitled "No orchids for Miss Blandish" or something to that effect, plus a few people who are actually called Blandish. There seem to be no links to anybody ever using this word in context, no links to websites, blogs, message boards, online forums, articles, songs, etc. By the by, it would be translated as "przymilać się o co, wdzięczyć się" into Polish.

h


Do you really believe that in the 21st century, any European nation would not have the vocabulary required to put together a bureaucratic document? I admit that English-sourced Officialese is particularly disgusting, with its facilities, communities, leaderships, skillsets, local authorities, equal opportunities, and other non-words and non-phrases (all these ideas and things already have names in good, clear, old-fashioned English), but not being able to substitute a non-word in language A with the appropriate non-word in language B? It's just boring and tiring, but definitely not difficult or impossible.

And one more thing - it is almost impossible to compare the volumes of vocabulary different languages have. English, for example, has loads of borrowings which make for a lot of "different words for similar things" - mountain from the Latin mons, hill from the Anglo-Saxon is one example. Polish uses derivation to create new words from a common root, e.g. góra, wzgórze, wzgórek, górka; nevertheless, all of them are distinct and separate words.

In a similar vein, English has groups of words like delicate / gentle / soft or hairy / hirsute; Polish has mały / malutki / maleńki or punkt / punkcik or dzieciak / dziecko / dziecię / dzieciuch / dzieciątko / dzieciaczek / dziecina or, to keep up with the hirsute end of things: włochaty / owłosiony / zarośnięty / obrośnięty ;-)

Which language is richer, then? None. You simply cannot compare apples and oranges.

A linguist weighs in with answers from the world of linguistics!

Polish and English lexicalize things differently and often a vague or general word in of the two will be divided into several more precise words in the other. I know of no research that systematically investigates the issue to see if either language systematically prefers words with narrower or broader semantic scope. Until such research is carried out, we're left with anecdotes and vague impressions which differ from person to person. There's nothing wrong with conversations about anecdotes and vague impressions but they're frustrating for linguists (who usually decline to participate).

Which language has more words is a meaningless question:
First: you have to define 'word' in a way that fits both languages and that's a lot harder than it might seem and then you have to figure out how to count them which is also problematic (are czytać and przeczytać one or two words? is pick up one or two words?)

Second: how many words a language has is a useless question after a certain point. The personal vocabularies of speakers are not determined by the language they speak but mostly by the person's intelligence and educational levels.

That said, there are some things that can be said with some certainty.

English dictionaries (not to be confused with wordstock) are the largest in the world partly because of a highly honed dictionary making tradition and partly because once a word makes into the OED, for example, it's never taken out even if no one has used it in 200 years. Speakers of most languages don't consider a word that's not been actively used for that long to be part of the language while English speakers largely do.

If you compile the total active vocabulary of all varieties of English the word count will likely be higher than in Polish no matter how you count them. If you restrict vocabulary to a single country (how most English speakers deal with the language) the word count will be more similar.

English words are generally less derivationally flexible than Polish words. Polish speakers mine the derivational processes of the language that just don't exist in English so you can create new words that make sense and are immediately understandable. English more has to extend meaning of old words without changing them or import new words (which English can do more easily than Polish).

Concepts like 'rich' or 'poor' vocabulary are qualitative judgments of personal preference and have no meaning in linguistics.

Even highly educated English speakers are far more used to encountering unfamiliar words while reading or from TV or radio than Polish speakers are (mostly due to geographical diffusion and very thick dictionaries). Mostly if we understand them in context we forget them right away and we only learn/remember them after encountering them several times.

Hear, hear. :-)
What I would have said, or what I hope I would have been able to say, had I the mental discipline to sit down and think for a while instead of just blabbing away randomly :-)

I wonder if you are still too tired for this type of a (sic) discussion, LOL

Andrea Gilroy, Gerry McNeilly - are these names of "native speakers"? Probably yes. They are also the names of the authors of the book I quoted earlier - and the perpetrators of the terrible grammatical mistake also earlier discussed.

Which brings us to an interesting question: can a native speaker be wrong when they choose to use a particular, grammatically "unorthodox" structure? - and, if not, why is a non-native speaker wrong if they make exactly the same choice? I don't know about the current approach to native usage of a language, but some years ago I was taught that "the native speaker can do nothing wrong", i.e. whatever utterance they choose to come up with, it will be correct by default. Now let's assume that my - or anyone's - command of English is so good that it reaches this level of "native (in)competence" - what then? Just askin'. And just so you know, I never liked the idea of default native language competence, and so my question belongs to the devil's advocate scenario. ;-)

Seanus: I wonder if you are still too tired for this type of a (sic) discussion, LOL

You scoff at Google as a source of lexical corpus. But it does seem that quite a few native speakers of English are beginning to turn to the dark side of "type of *a". Makes you think - or at least should.

You raised a good point there, Magda. We can go somewhere with this.

For example, would you say, 'zbliżam się do przystanku czy przystanka?'. This may tease out a strain of this idea above.

As I wrote yesterday, I thanked you for pointing out my typo (congratulations ON). Still, there is a compelling logic to congratulations IN + gerund. Nobody should have the monopoly on language. English, more than most others, is in a state of constant evolution. Still, I just can't get my head round 'type of a discussion'. Native speakers, on the whole, just don't think that way.

E.g I don't like this type of deceit/deception (not a deceit/deception).

I'm merely stating that the majority would find it contentious.

Oh, and I'll try and show you more respect. If you can show me examples of article use with 'a' like above. I just feel, through experience, that non-natives don't quite get it.

I'll get back to you with this. I have to rush now, because I basically procrastinated all morning and now it's payback time ;-(


Deception / deceit are, AFAIK, both uncountable nouns, maybe that's why the indefinite article sits uncomfortably there. On the other hand, Google gives over 2000 links to UK websites with "a deceit" used in them. Somehow, I don't like the look of it, but there it is.

The internet is awash with phrases like "this type of *a screen / discussion / problem / configuration" though. As said above, I'll research this more in depth later, time is NOT on my side right now.