"sorry" instead of "przepraszam"

Would speaking Polish with only words that come from Slavic be as hard as trying to speak English with only Anglo-Saxon words?

You continue to refer to yourself in animal terms when it suits, stick to heee haaaaw.

I remember from Polish class that there was a time in Poland when we tried to get rid of all the foreign vocabulary and created quite a few funny Polish substitutes, such as "zwis męski"(a "man hanger") instead of "krawat"(tie, i think krawat has French origins?).

Named after Croatia (Hrvatska?). So it's kind of Slavic in origin, even if the word was borrowed from Francais.

I would venture the statement that, well, yes...

Actually, I did my best in my question:


... to be as Anglo-Saxon as I possibly could. It still looks natural, but it would be next to impossible to say much more without venturing into loan-word country.

The word 'sorry' originates from Germanic *sairig- (the asterisk there means unattested by the way), which developed into Old English: sarig. The original meaning of the word would have been more to do with mental pain, angush rather than the apology or expletive that it later became.

I'd be interested to know the derivation of the word 'przepraszam'.

Off the top of my head I'd say it's related to "proszę". But if you're really interested, let me have a closer look at this and come back in a minute :-)

(10 minutes later)

Terribly sorry (sic!) but I am unable to find the etymology on the internet. I would still go with my gut feeling that it has to do with prze-prosiny, something along the lines of "repeatedly asking or begging" (for mercy, forgiveness, whatever).

Of course, there is the possibility that I am spectacularly wrong ;-)

The word sorry is not an English word in fact. It comes from Swedish where the word sory means sorrow.

I always thought that English and Swedish were both Germanic languages?

No it doesn't.


No it doesn't.Words of Scandinavian origin mostly come from the two varieties of Old Norse that preceded Danish and Norwegian. Sorry and sorrow came to English persisted from the Germanic from which English descends. They are related, but one does not come from the other.

Let's have more about przepraszam someone.

I once walked between two nuns who were walking in the opposite direction to me. I used the word przepraszam and they parted and one went either side of me. A mighty word indeed. Sorry wouldn't have done it!

yes it does. In Swedish sorg means sorrow or mourning.

No it does not. Both languages stem from Germanic and thus have similar words.

Do you think a load of Swedes came over to the UK, and unlike the Danes and Norwegians (who preferred looting and pillaging), they just kept apologising for everything and telling everyone what terrible sorrow they felt, until the poor English had no choice but to borrow these Swedish words to replace the void left in English since they had lost one of the most important words in the language (sorry) since God-kniws-when, leaving them with no way of apologising for anything.

Michal, shut up if you don't know. By the way: you don't know.

Nor do you!

I have taken my information, partly from my knowledge I have picked up over the years, and also:

Bloomsbury Reference Dictionary of Word Origins by John Ayto

I backed up this by checking my knackered old Chambers Dictionary and a few websites.

Wiktionary also has no mention of Swedish with reference to the word 'sorry'.
Word detective (.com) also does not mention Swedish,
both of them do mention OE.

Do you know what the English language developed from?
*common Germanic > * common West Germanic > *Anglo-Frisian dialects > Old English > Middle English > Modern English.

It is very true that many other languages have contributed to English over the centuries, such as Old Norse - Northern and Southern dialects, before Norwegian, Swedish or Danish actually existed as seperate languages. But other than in dialect usgae, these words were not incorporated into Old English, but began to spread into general usage in Middle English.

I don't expect you to understand much about language origins, considering your lack of understanding about the origin of the Polish language.

Word "sorry" in Poland doesn't have the same meaning as "przepraszam". The mean of the
word "przepraszam" is stronger than "sorry". For example"
We say sorry but we don't feel any sad beacause we did something. If we hurt someone and we regret we say "przepraszam", but if we jog someone whilest walking we say "sorry".

Przepraszam means Apologize in eanglish;) (I'm from poland) We use 'sorry', but it's not as official as Apologize.