POLONIANISMS?

A Polonism is a Polish linguistic trait imposed on another language by someone with an inadequate command of that language, eg We were on a wedding (ON is not Enlglish) or On oczeń bałsja (in Russian it is bojałsja) etc. Sometimes this produces humorous effects like when a Pole was telling a German friend he was preparing a lavish fête for his wife's birthday and added: Und Ich habe sogar zwei Huren eingeladen (he had meant: dwa chóry).

But there are also Polonianisms -- émigré Polish with an admixtrue of archaic Polish and/or the local tongue which in English-speaking countries produces a kind of "Polglish".

SOME EXAMPLES (esp. pertaining to family members)
bacia, baci, busia (also spelt busha), babci (also spelt babchee and bopchee)- gran
dziadzia (also spelt jaja), dziadzi (jaji, jajee) - gramps
cioci (also spelt chochee) and chacha (like the dance)
familia - family
automobil, maszyna, kara - motorcar
bara - bar
kiszka - black pudding (kaszanka)
At times, this also produces what are knopwn as "false friends" as in:
Nasze amerykańskie dżemy i konfitury są pełne prezerwatyw.

actually that's colloquial polish man.


huh?

and really there is no such thing is polonianism, it's just simple bastardization of polish language, in this case.

What is Polonius3's name for this linguistic phenomenon?

- Jak się masz?
- Bardzo good.

Contamination/kontaminacja

Pathetic.

Polonius, what journal do you write for may I ask?

.. is just one little bit of Latin contamination of the Polish language.

Forget what P3 calls it,

what linguists call it depends on why it's happened:

if the person who says bardzo good does so because they forgot or don't know the word dobrze and an English word came out (on purpose or accidentally) then that's interference. Nb, if a person is learning a third (or later) language, interference is liable to be stronger from the person's second language than from their first.

If the person knows and remembers the word dobrze but uses good instead for whatever reason, then that's code-switching and tends to be endemic in bilingual settings (where all involved are fluent in the same languges).

NB borrowing an English word and giving it Polish endings (or vice versa) is borrowing. Borrowings range from nonce (happening once) to rare, sporadic, frequent and finally established when you've got a new word in the borrowing language.

I think it's some sort of code-switching. It's quite clear that I know "Bardzo dobrze", but for some reason, feel like pretending that I don't, despite being able to say far more complicated stuff in Polish. (Still not as good as I'd like to be).

Poglish (horrible sounding word) is under understandable to other Poles as it generally involves applying Polish grammar to English words. The same thing the other way around would have to be called something else. Sometimes I can't tell if an English word used in a Polish sentence is a borrowing that occurs a lot and is generally established (even if not accepted) or if it's there to make my life easier.

Mistakes like being on a wedding could come from speakers of any one of a variety of different languages.

I've found a fair amount of Polish influence in my English after years of living in Poland, articles occasionally disappear and sometimes prepositions realign themselves toward Polish.

I see you bought new rug.

I'm going on post office today.

I'll also borrow Polish words (especially when there's no real equivalent for me in English).

I'm going to the stołowka for coffee and pączkies.

Do you have karta? (meaning karta pobytu)

cafeteria


filled donuts. lol well, kinda


i drop the "i'm" and such a lot.