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Why do you have this weird grammar with y and i? optYka? magazYn? zYsk? why?


Tomaco  1 | 5  
18 Jun 2009 /  #1
ok so these questions have to be here but..
Why do you have this weird grammar with y and i? optYka? magazYn? zYsk? why?
second: Why w and not v? some countries down.. Slovak and Czech Republic use v and they dont have single word with W so why do polish have everywhere W?

I think its something with , there was 2 men , 1st wanted normal grammar but 2nd was so angry that he made all things reverse..

sorry for my english you probably wont understand slovak too :)
Wroclaw Boy  
18 Jun 2009 /  #2
Why do you have this weird grammar with y and i? optYka? magazYn? zYsk? why?

Y is the represantative of I in the traditional English language. You may comment weird grammer but its only weird to certain individuals.

second: Why w and not v?

Certain letters had specific sounds, the same as B is B in the English language. News flash languages differ.

some countries down.. Slovak and Czech Republic use v and they dont have single word with W so why do polish have everywhere W?

Germany uses W as V too you know. In actual fact W in the phonetical verion is £ in Polish.
OP Tomaco  1 | 5  
18 Jun 2009 /  #3
i just.. when you are using international words like eng. magazine pl. magazyn etc.. thats wierd..
and also.. Is any polish word using V?
fred_chopin  
18 Jun 2009 /  #4
Polish is spoken as it is written, and written as it is spoken, according to a set of pre-defined Polish linguistic rules. When a word is borrowed from another language, quite often it is "re-spelled" to meet those linguistic rules.
Seanus  15 | 19666  
18 Jun 2009 /  #5
Here's a tough one for you, freddy boy. Why is it 'nie ma przystanku' and not 'nie ma przystanka'?
fred_chopin  
18 Jun 2009 /  #6
I may not be a Polish Linguist as much as a cunning linguist. Does it come back to the old issue of pączek, pączki, pączkow?
Seanus  15 | 19666  
18 Jun 2009 /  #7
It goes a lot deeper than that. Professor Miodek wrangled over this one for quite a while. Technically, nie ma przystanka is actually correct although most people say nie ma przystanku. There was an interesting thread on it some time back. Most of the Poles disagreed with me that nie ma przystanka was valid but polishgirl tx found me to be correct.
fred_chopin  
18 Jun 2009 /  #8
Ah, the mysteries of the Polish language....
Seanus  15 | 19666  
18 Jun 2009 /  #9
It goes right down to deep linguistic analysis. Any tough questions for the forum, freddy?
fred_chopin  
18 Jun 2009 /  #10
Any tough questions for the forum, freddy?

Yeah, why hasn't anybody ever published "An Idiot's Guide to Grammar"

I for one would buy a copy......
Seanus  15 | 19666  
18 Jun 2009 /  #11
Or dla bystraków as you say in Polish
fred_chopin  
18 Jun 2009 /  #12
I would never say that in Polish.
osiol  55 | 3921  
18 Jun 2009 /  #13
eng. magazine

A French word.

English is more of an exception in that it nearly always maintains the spelling used in the language from which a word has been borrowed. This often leads to a change in pronunciation that may not relate well to the original word.
OP Tomaco  1 | 5  
18 Jun 2009 /  #14
Polish is spoken as it is written, and written as it is spoken
?
sure its not , at least not everytime.. you have "sz" and you dont read it sz... watch and learn from Slovak.. sz? no.. its Š :D ok iam too offensive now.. ok peace.. bb :)
gumishu  15 | 6178  
18 Jun 2009 /  #15
Why w and not v? some countries down.. Slovak and Czech Republic use v and they dont have single word with W so why do polish have everywhere W?

Germans also use w for v, and v is pronounced mostly as f (as in vogel) in German

i have some idea why it w was chosen over v - not sure if it bears any veracity though - in old manuscripts and letter carvings V was often used to mark U sound - have a look at some medieval tombstones - (at least when capitals were used) so I guess it was used as a disambiguity means

as for sz, cz, dz, dź, dż digraphs - it is a matter of tradition - if you adopted some system it is sometimes counterproductive to overturn it for another

well as far as I know Czech does use y sign and sometimes the sound of it is a bit different to i sounds (well I am not quite sure about it)

btw sz cz groups are unpronouncable in Polish, rz is though and there is a couple of words that have rz that is not pronounced as ż but as two seperate sounds (for example marznąć, mirza but marzyć has rz=ż)

maybe it sounds weird to you but this is the way this words (magazyn etc) are spoken in Polish (we after all have a distinct sound of y not quite similar to i - so do the Russians btw) - these words were polonised this way long ago they sound better this way in Polish - btw if magazin was spoken as native word you wouldn't recognise it in speech actually - magazyn can be picked up more easily I guess by foreigners

there are no native Polish words that use v (v sign is called fau following German lines)
aphrodisiac  11 | 2427  
18 Jun 2009 /  #16
ok iam too offensive now..

that it the only valid thing you have said so far. Sorry:). I have never heard of anybody questioning the use of alphabet before. Every language has slightly different consonants and vowels:).
freebird  3 | 532  
18 Jun 2009 /  #17
that it the only valid thing you have said so far. Sorry:).

I bet he is offensive, :-)
OP Tomaco  1 | 5  
18 Jun 2009 /  #18
not in Czech they have just y which sound like i , only thing is long and short, ý and y , i dont know but maybe you have this ' in Poland too.. also they have u with circle.. what is special kind of long u :D

edit: i was yesterday in Krakow and it was funny for me people speaking Polish cause Polish is pretty similar to our dialect in this part of Slovakia. so it seems like villagers speaking in that dialect.. we just dont have "duzi" for big so when i came to Mc donald and said velky cola , they was confused , but words like dze,hej,bardzo,prasa are same.. (sound not writing)
Switezianka  - | 463  
19 Jun 2009 /  #19
"i" and "y" in Polish are two different sounds. The phonological system of Polish works in such a way that when a consonant is followed by "i" it is palatalized (well, it becomes a different, softer-sounding sound). If magazyn was pronounced with "i", the "z" would not be "z" any more. If you want to preserve "z" in te word, you need to pronounce it with "y". Thus, the word is both closer to the original and sounds natural for Polish language.

In case of "optyka", the thing is that the syllable "ti" doesn't sound natural in Polish, so the word in pronounced with "ty".

And what is the problem with "zysk"? It's not a borrowing, just a Polish word pronounced normally and spelt normally.
PennBoy  76 | 2429  
19 Jun 2009 /  #20
because when we were choosing our alphabet we chose Roman and it had to be modified slightly because of our Slavic language but we didn't want to copy the Czech form of it, like the Slovaks did, we wanted our own, so we develoved it independently. it's only weird to you, i don't like it how in english they use C instead of a K, a K looks better, in Polish, German, Russian(when translitereated into Roman alph.) we use K.
OP Tomaco  1 | 5  
19 Jun 2009 /  #21
Switezianka yes we have this too.. ti sound different then ty or di, dy.. but we have exceptions in international words..
and PennBoy yes we copied Czech.. but now we can understand each other without problems :P
so i read this what did you all write.. and that mean Polish isnt pure Slavic language. its something like germanic-slavic language.. because lot of people here mantioned German however they have Germanic language..

ok mission completed , now i know what i wanted :D
gumishu  15 | 6178  
19 Jun 2009 /  #22
Tomaco

Switezianka yes we have this too.. ti sound different then ty or di, dy.. but we have exceptions in international words..
and PennBoy yes we copied Czech.. but now we can understand each other without problems :P
so i read this what did you all write.. and that mean Polish isnt pure Slavic language. its something like germanic-slavic language.. because lot of people here mantioned German however they have Germanic language..
ok mission completed , now i know what i wanted :D

oh you Slavic purist Tomaco guy

listen there are features of Polish that are not present in other Slavic languages (phonetics - nasal vowels; grammar - quite a lot - because other Slavic languages lost them - there are also features in Polish that evolved in the language in time and are particular to Polish - these are ś, ć, dź sounds for example not prestent in most other Slavic languages - do you think that it is any German influence??? where do you find such phonemes in German - if you could call any Slavic language germanized it would be Czech that copied a lot of German patterns including numerals ( zwei un zwanzig, dva a dvadcet vs dwadzieścia dwa, dvadcat' dva (Russ), there are a lot of Czech words that are direct copies of German words (e.g predstavovat from German vorstellen where Polish is wyobrażać sobie which goes along the lines of Latin influenced languages (an image-to imagine) Czech language was sort of artificially dragged back to Slavic roots resulting in such words as hudba, divadlo, plyn - that you cannot possibly know have anything to do with music, theatre or gas if you don't know the language - and you talk about peculiarities

there are peculiarities in every language simply - if you exclaim at some peculiarities in Polish you just simply state that you don't know much about any other languages including your own
Ziemowit  14 | 3936  
19 Jun 2009 /  #23
... and that means Polish isnt pure Slavic language, its something like germanic-slavic language..

ok mission completed , now i know what i wanted

OK, your (impossible!?) mission has been completed, but with a slightly opaque conclusion, young man. In reality, Polish is something like a germanic-slavic language in the same way as Slovak is a hungarian-slavic one!
gumishu  15 | 6178  
19 Jun 2009 /  #24
because when we were choosing our alphabet we chose Roman and it had to be modified slightly because of our Slavic language but we didn't want to copy the Czech form of it, like the Slovaks did, we wanted our own, so we develoved it independently. it's only weird to you, i don't like it how in english they use C instead of a K, a K looks better, in Polish, German, Russian(when translitereated into Roman alph.) we use K.

The thing is as far as I know the Czech were using sz, cz transliteration before they adopted the birdies or whatever it is called in English over s c n - it happened during and after 15th century
mafketis  38 | 10990  
19 Jun 2009 /  #25
Tomaco

i just.. when you are using international words like eng. magazine pl. magazyn etc.. thats wierd..
and also.. Is any polish word using V?

Poles write magazyn for the same reason Slovaks write víkend instead of weekend to reflect the pronunciation.

Polish uses w instead v for historical reasons.

As for sz, cz, rz, those were actually old Czech spellings (old Czech influenced the Polish alphabet very strongly). Czech orthography was changed later but Polish speakers didn't change with it (why should they?) I have it on good authority there wasserious thought given in the 1950's to replacing Polish sz, cz and rz with the Czech equivalents but the final decision was to retain the current spelling.

Polish isnt pure Slavic language. its something like germanic-slavic language..

German influence on Czech (especially in word-building and syntax) is much stronger than on Polish.
gumishu  15 | 6178  
19 Jun 2009 /  #26
there are peculiarities in every language simply - if you exclaim at some peculiarities in Polish you just simply state that you don't know much about any other languages including your own

Tomaco

I am now sorry for what I have written - I shouldn't have been harsh to you - my apologies - you have a right to be mistaken or not very well informed - after all all I know is because I have learned it somewhere and somehow -

so in the end I just would advise you to learn about these things - you could well be for a surprise here and there
Ziemowit  14 | 3936  
19 Jun 2009 /  #27
As for sz, cz, rz, those were actually old Czech spellings (old Czech influenced the Polish alphabet very strongly).

Now I know why the English language uses the spelling "cz" in the word "Czech". Why doesn't it use its own spelling "ch" for it? Does anybody know? A name "the Chech Republic" would look great, wouldn't it?
OP Tomaco  1 | 5  
19 Jun 2009 /  #28
Gumishu I would like to but where is something about that ? internet? where? :D
Mr Grunwald  33 | 2133  
20 Jun 2009 /  #29
A name "the Chech Republic" would look great, wouldn't it?

If your thinking like that then maybe Check Republic? Would have sounded wierd "It's the Check Republic, Check if it's ready!" :=)
gumishu  15 | 6178  
20 Jun 2009 /  #30
Tomaco

I have found plenty of infromation on history of Czech language in wikipedia (Czech version) just after writing my posts - but it's true I have gathered some knowledge before in many various places but much of it was on the internet - for example language forums - using your imagination, trying various ways always gives some results - you need to develop some knowledge of langauge related terminology to help you in your personal research (however part-time it would be) if you haven't already have some good foundation to it

oh and you can always aks about language related things in here (weather Polish or any other) - there are many language freaks here - some are actually linguistic professionals - I am not - just sort of etymology freak of me

I know some Czech btw

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