POLISH VERBS RICHER THAN ENGLISH ONES!?

Polish verbs in different aspects and with different prefixes can create a rich variety of specific meanings which English needs a whole sentence to even approximate. For instance, the English verb "to pour" covers everything, whilst Poles use sypać or lać depending on whether what is being poured is dry or liquid. And this can then be developed into forms such as ponalewać: to pour each one a glass of somehing one after the other. If nobody touched their drinks for some reason (???), after they left the host could poprzelewać them back into the decanter or bottle.

Or how about this one: Krowa trawę skubała i porykiwała. The cow was nibbling grass and giving off a low every so often.

Of course this is a two-edged sword: a language's variety and richness= a big headache for foreign learners thereof.

The cow grazed and mooed. Same number of words...

Plain lowing or mooing would use the basic form ryczeć. Dlaczego krowa ryczy? (why is the cow mooing?) Porykiwać is an extended frequentative (częstotliwa) form which conveys the notion of occasional mooing stretched out over a period of time: the cow nibbled, mooed, maybe swished its tail to fend off flies, then nibbled some more and mooed ever so often -- far richer and more expessive and descriptive than simply ryczeć.

Ok Polonius you are saying that Polish verbs convey extra meanings which would take extra words in English to convey. Verbs are the only area in which Polish is richer than English?

I think verbs are the main area where Polish is richer. There are of coruse ethnic-specific nouns and adjectives, but all languages have things that arise out of their own specific frames of cultural reference: opłatek, poprawiny, gorzko (at weddings), witamy chlebem i solą, kumoter, etc. But there are also some interesting general (non-ethnic-specific) nouns which I don't know if English and other languages have neat one-word equivalents for, esp. victims of disasters: pogorzelec (someone who has lost everything in a fire), powodzianin (someone who has lost everything in a flood), topielec (a man who has drowned), wisielec (a man who has hanged himself).

I agree with this, if you are referring to suffixes. The number of variations is staggering.

However, if you include phrasal verbs, then the richness is somewhat diluted.

For what ever odd reason, the verb that got me was 'lecieć' vs.'frunąć'. That birds or flying things can only do the latter, but not the former, is still interesting, considering the relative straightforwardness of German (fliegen) or English (fly).

Surely, Polish IS much richer than most non-Slavonic languages, if only in this respect - :))!!

Fruwać/frunąć or dialectic frugać/frugnąć and furgać/furgnąć all imply wing-flapping. When speaking of aeroplanes we never say odfrunięcie o godz. 0935 but odlot or wylot. If your gf throws a vase at you, lecieć should be used do describe what it is doing in mid-air before it gives you a brain concussion.

Nice to know. Thanks, Polonius! It didn't occur to me as a non-Polish native speaker, that I'd never seen a variant of 'lecieć' used when referring to wing-flapping critters, but come to think of it, I should have guessed that Polish would be more precise in some ways than English, and even more than German.

There some more words in respect to flying:

szybować - flight without flapping, or without the use of engine. English equivalent is "glide"

unosić się - to move upwards having lost contact with the ground, to fly upwards, or to remain up in the air.

wzbić sie - rise, move upwards, suggests movement more sudden and rapid than unosić się

sunąć - to glide in the air, without sudden changes of the flight pattern

Truth to tell, wing-flapping birds can also be described with lecieć as in bociany już lecą do ciepłych krajów. However when wing flutter is prominent, say you flushed a bird in the brush, you'd probably say odfrunął, although odleciał is also possible.

But with planes one would use frunąć only for humorous effect. At least, that's my impression.

Yesterday, when at a loss to explain the English expression "as the crow flies", I said something like "prosto jak ptak... skrut?"