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Too many English words in the Polish language!


Lyzko  
18 May 2011 /  #391
Add to that, the advent of printing. When Caxton introduced the printing press to England, most of the English could neither read nor write!! the clergy, as elsewhere, were the only ones who could. Therefore, English had zero standards of uniformity in pronunciation, orthography or grammar until at least the end of the 18th century, when she started to develop a middle class. Up until then, most of the country consisted of rich who had access to education, i.e. schooling etc.., or poor, who of course had none-:)
z_darius  14 | 3960  
18 May 2011 /  #392
My understanding was that noun declension in English vanished because English adopted a lot words that were cumbersome to decline

noun declension in English has not vanished.
Lyzko  
18 May 2011 /  #393
Darek, you're talking about vestigial case endings only in a few fixed expression. For all intents and purposes, English has lost it's declensions cf. Latin, German, Icelandic etc!! Sorry to disappoint you-:)
Koala  1 | 332  
18 May 2011 /  #394
noun declension in English has not vanished.

Has it not? There's still plural form -s and something that reminds German genitive (-'s in singular /-' in plural), but for all intents and purposes it has vanished.

edit: I didn't read LLyzko's post, and I wrote in vain. Funny we used the same expression though :p
z_darius  14 | 3960  
18 May 2011 /  #395
Has it not? There's still plural form -s and something that reminds German genitive (-'s in singular /-' in plural), but for all intents and purposes it has vanished.

for all intents and purposes, it has not vanished, it's been reduced/simplified (pick your favorite) but most nouns in English are still declined.
Koala  1 | 332  
18 May 2011 /  #396
If declension takes on two forms only it's barely declension anymore. But whatever.
rozumiemnic  8 | 3875  
18 May 2011 /  #397
most nouns in English are still declined.

how do you mean? Could you give some examples?
z_darius  14 | 3960  
18 May 2011 /  #398
You just did.
You declined the word "example".

Additionally, all (I think) nouns are declined for the genitive (a.k.a Saxon Genitive) and some nouns are declined for gender, for instance Paul/Paula or Alumni/Alumnae.
rozumiemnic  8 | 3875  
18 May 2011 /  #399
Oh right thanks I was thinking declensions were more complicated than just plurals...
z_darius  14 | 3960  
18 May 2011 /  #400
I know. Sorry about the disappointment ;)
The same goes for verb conjugation. Not as complex in English as, say in Polish, but it's still there. Some actually can be viciously irregular ("to be")
Lyzko  
18 May 2011 /  #401
Darek, I fear you may be confusing issues here. The (vestigial) presence of Saxon Genitive, e.g. "the man's hat vs. Romance etc.. "the hat of the man" or the like, and your claim based thereupon of the presence of extant noun declensions are quite separate and apart!

In fact, English is the ultimate analytic rather than synthetic language, adding to rather than morphologically mutating already existing structures such as done in German, Polish, Icelandic, Turkish (albeit with notable regularity!), Old English etc...
z_darius  14 | 3960  
18 May 2011 /  #402
Darek, I fear you may be confusing issues here. The (vestigial) presence of Saxon Genitive, e.g. "the man's hat vs. Romance etc.. "the hat of the man" or the like, and your claim based thereupon of the presence of extant noun declensions are quite separate and apart!

Case marking on full nouns in English is limited to the "Saxon' genitive (clictic case marking, see chapter 49)
books.google.ca/books?id=sCRcARRN9nsC&dq=%22Saxon+genitive%22+declension&source=gbs_navlinks_s

The world atlas of language structures, Volume 1
By Martin Haspelmath, Hans-Jörg Bibiko


I'll go with that.
Lyzko  
18 May 2011 /  #403
...which actually confirms my point that English "endings" are in fact syntactical as opposed to purely morphological phenomena! My point is that, e.g. in German, a word is inflected as in "ein" "eines" "einem" etc..., along with the subsequent adjective, occasionally the noun as well. This obviously occurs to an even more extreme degree in Polish and other languages, Hungarian etc... Such in however not so in Modern English, which simplified it's morphology during the period following Shakespeare. A curious point, is that during the reviews of Sir Edmund Spencer's "The Faerie Queene", published in the 16th century, critics occasionally chided him on his so-called 'self-conscious Chaucerisms'-:)What was probably meant by this was Spencer's instance on formerly discarded endings, perhaps clitics as well, final e's, outmoded spellings and so forth, favored by earlier writing.
Koala  1 | 332  
19 May 2011 /  #404
Add to that, the advent of printing. When Caxton introduced the printing press to England, most of the English could neither read nor write!! the clergy, as elsewhere, were the only ones who could. Therefore, English had zero standards of uniformity in pronunciation, orthography or grammar until at least the end of the 18th century, when she started to develop a middle class.

It's a shame that a better spelling system wasn't worked out at that time, it's extremely convoluted and there's no logic to it - ie. you have to separately learn spelling and pronunciation of every word!

I'm listening to this lecture to learn why is that LOL
pages.towson.edu/duncan/orthography1/orthography1.htm
Lyzko  
19 May 2011 /  #405
You can say that again!

Compared with Polish, Italian, for example, English is a chaotic nightmare, as "sadistically irrgeular" as any Icelandic nound declension-:) Might as well blame English politics at around Caxton's time for keeping the dirt poor so pig ignorant and concentrating any literacy solely at the top!

LOL
z_darius  14 | 3960  
19 May 2011 /  #406
...which actually confirms my point that English "endings" are in fact syntactical as opposed to purely morphological phenomena!

In English language teaching, the term "Saxon genitive" is used to associate the possessive use of the apostrophe with the historical origin in Anglo Saxon (also known as Old English) of the morpheme that it represents. This morpheme was an inflexional suffix marking genitive case. It has been suggested that the morphemein Modern English has become a clitic similar to the forms such as 'm (as in I'm) or n't (as in don't).[1] This has been strongly resisted in a major reference grammar.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxon_genitive]

When you look at declension in OE and other languages derived from PIE than it is obvious that possessive is a remnant/form of possessive. This is still present in languages such as Russian or Polish.

As for the spelling, if that were just English (as in the language that is no more) the spelling was actually very regular in OE. Influences of the Norman French mixed things up a lot and indeed, irregularities resulted from what I'd say is a mix of legacy of OE, serious amount of borrowings and different rate of change between the spoken and the written.
Lyzko  
19 May 2011 /  #407
Great minds think alike, Darku!

My point precisely regarding Modern English orthography, is that OE (as all PIE derivates) was indeed a much more phonetically spelled language, exactly because the Norman-French invaders/settlers brought with them the Gaulic tongue which clearly differed from both the pre-existing Anglo-Saxon Germanic, as for that matter it did from the Celtic.

The result was the introduction of such features into the English language, i.e. Anglo-Saxon, as silent letters, schwa sounds, not to mention new vocabulary and syntax too. Had English not received the injection of Norman French into its blood, probably we English speakers would be speaking a language far closer to present-day Dutch or German. There would also surely be a far greater uniformity between writing and speaking in Modern English than is the case.
z_darius  14 | 3960  
19 May 2011 /  #408
Well, the French screwed up yet again.
Lyzko  
19 May 2011 /  #409
Typical Francophobe prejudice LOL!!!!
rybnik  18 | 1444  
20 May 2011 /  #410
"mlody performer...." in the Gazeta Wyborcza, Wrocław edition. performer?!........UGH!
boletus  30 | 1356  
20 May 2011 /  #411
Some interesting expressions and statistics in the article "New Polishness on the net",
polityka.pl/kultura/aktualnoscikulturalne/1515668,2,nowa-polszczyzna-w-sieci.read

The Oxford English Dictionary" has around 600 thousand definitions, "Urban Dictionary" - ten times as many

An absolute leader in Polish online dictionaries is żal.pl - a strange language construct, reminiscent of an Internet address, but simply describing something pitiful. It is increasingly being replaced by żal.ru. Apparently, Internet users have come to the conclusion that if there is something more sorrow than the Polish grief, it must lie still farther to the east.

Antek_Stalich  5 | 997  
20 May 2011 /  #412
Another popular word used in the musical production market in Poland is an "endorser". So, for example "Jest endorserem wzmacniaczy Marshall" (He is a Marshall amps endorser). Probably no Polish word would fit better.
Magdalena  3 | 1827  
20 May 2011 /  #413
An absolute leader in Polish online dictionaries is żal.pl.

I just checked and it seems to be the other way round, with żal.pl being the newer ;-)
At least that's what the authorities say: miejski.pl/slowo-%C5%BCal.ru
Lyzko  
20 May 2011 /  #414
....no Polish word would fit better.

Are you sure, Antek? I'm nearly positive that from the rich lexicon that is Polish, some happy match can be found -:)
boletus  30 | 1356  
20 May 2011 /  #415
He is a Marshall amps endorser

Jest promotorem wzmacniaczy Marshall?

I actually searched Google for the phrase "promotor sprzętu" - 2300 results, mostly advertisement, such as "promotor sprzętu komputerowego". W kontekście wyrobów Marshalla (MagazynGitarzysta.pl): Czyżby znów promotor sprzętu?

I could also risk a more Polish sounding word "orędownik". You could get used to it, I guess. :-)
Lyzko  
20 May 2011 /  #416
No doskonale Boletus! Dziękuję.

Hartelijk bedankt voor je moetje!
boletus  30 | 1356  
22 May 2011 /  #417
Interesting article in Polityka:
polityka.pl/kultura/aktualnoscikulturalne/1515752,1,wyzwania-dzisiejszej-polszczyzny.read

Boorishness, vulgarization, brutalization, littering - these words appeared often in the debates at the Congress of Polish Language. Even the greatest language purists, however, had no doubt that today's Polish language consists of many varieties and to designate a single common standard is becoming increasingly difficult.

Prof. Jan Miodek recalled on this occasion a spiritual patron of Polish linguistics, Baudouin de Courtenay, according to whom the language of youth is the language of tomorrow. The present Polish language of the future would seem very odd though - for various reasons. One of these is that, according to prof. Miodek, the language of youth has never been quite as expansive as it is today. Therefore it penetrates the media, and it is spoken by the politicians, including those from the party of Jaroslaw Kaczynski, for example, when arguing that PiS is not "obciach". Indeed, it appears even in the church - prof. Miodek cited the example of the sermon of a priest, who addressed the faithful with an appeal "musicie być full time z Chrystusem."

Another peculiarity may be the recent manner of Polish girls, which prof. Miodek calls - after the Silesian poet Jan Goczoł - "umizgliwym seplenieniem". Well, these girls instead of saying "sześć" or "jedenaście", prefer to say "szest", "jedenastie. The reason for this custom, professionally speaking half-palatization, remains a mystery for linguists. We only know for sure that it is not about some new influences of the Russian language.

Umizgliwe seplenienie? Nice...
z_darius  14 | 3960  
23 May 2011 /  #418
The latest linguistic puke I saw yesterday in a Polish paper's headline:

Obama 'resetuje' stosunki w Europie.

My take is this: they hire people who spent significant amount of time in the US/UK, enough to be seriously comfortable with English and they ask them to translate foreign articles, with a few words of their own thrown in, to avoid copyright issues.
rybnik  18 | 1444  
24 May 2011 /  #419
monitoring??
Maaarysia  
26 May 2011 /  #420
I've just leant that lamer (pronounced in Polish in the way it's read in Polish) derives from English. So another set of words: lamer, lamerski, lamerstwo...

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