Too many English words in the Polish language!

Bomber z Wrocławia??? Now that's going overboard.

The prosecutor's office in Wroclaw set 27 -year-old Paul M. allegation of false alarm calls . Man on Saturday announced the service of bomb Wroclaw hospital. We had to evacuate 350 patients.

there is no limit. ha, "limit".

limit in Polish has a considerably narrower semantic field than in English :P :) - and Polish has more generic terms for the same concepts (like ograniczenie)

I know, the same happens in English, some titles (esp operas like La Traviata and Cosi Fan Tutte) are not translated into English (even when sung in English).

But this is the first time I've seen a non-English title translated into English and that being used as the Polish 'translation' (or appearing where the Polish translation would normally appear).

I understand it - the 'translation' doesn't surprise me because 'Dirty dancing' has been translated into Polish as 'Wirujący seks' so you see I cannot be easily surprised ;)

(btw it's not that easy to translate 'Dirty dancing' into Polish - I couldn't now)

Sometimes a newspaper puts a foreign word intentionally just to make the title look more interesting, different. A Polish newspaper recently had a title of a article 'Ja lublu Polska' love in Russian. About how more and more Russian tourists visit Poland.

Poles, like everyone else in Europe, love to insert English words merely to sound cool. Pity the Poglish variants bare little resemblance to their native English relationsLOL

What about France ?
Just to sound cool ? Come on ...:D

Can you imagine the fun if Polish media was popular amongst English people :)

"Kryminalni" could go down OK with the average English speaker, but imagine if it was set elsewhere, and called "Szczecińskie Krajmfajterzy" lol

As for English words in Polish, Szymon Majewski Show really annoys me though. Actually, come to think of it, TVN are responsible for a lot of this sort of thing.

I remember once watching Sędzia Anna Maria Wesołowska ( a "court show" - TVN again, ffs) and some chavvy szmula was phoning her dodgy bloke up, and going "o nie, f*ck! odbierz f*cking telefon!" down the phone, or something similar, and I just PMSL, haha :)

The spelling alone is annoying to look at, not even gonna mention the sound of the word itself.

ever heard about Latin ?

Words for sports had been chosen consciously by the Polish nobles from the English language.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!


yes. ridiculous.


right. words like "foul" and "out" were chosen by the nobles. oh, and can't forget znokaltowac.

Hahaha!

he made it up - what's the fuss? :P

Widowisko Szymona Majewskiego? (sounds very pretentious in Polish and essentially has not so good connotations)

Program Szymona Majewskiego - program is too generic all sorts of things that are shown on TV are programmes

Przedstawienie Szymona Majewskiego - przedstawienie is a specific thing - either it is a one time act or it is reapeated the same all over again (like theatrical play)

and show is very much part of Polish colloquial vocabulary already

Indeed ;)


All true.

But what's wrong with just "Szymon Majewski"? "Kuba Wojewódzki" is the name of the programme, and the presenter. ;)

It's sad that Polish TV has such a low opinion of its own language, that it constantly feels the need to use English words in scripts and in titles.

Kuba Wojewódzki is the name of the programme and the presenter because it is a one man show essentially - unlike 'Szymon Majewski Show' (say on the pattern of 'Benny Hill Show'

Ironside,

Despite "le weekend" for "le fin de la semaine", "le shopping" for "la marche" etc..., French, though never as extreme as Icelandic, has far fewer English additives in it's base vocabulary than either Polish or German. The reason for this is, that unlike the UK or Germany (in spite of the ultra-conservative Duden Society!), France has, thank heaven, its Academie Francaise whose mission it has become to weed out as much English from the French lexicon as it possibly can. Similar to the French farmer some fifteen years back or so who use to go around smashing up McDonald's establishments in France in protest over "l'anglication" of his language, it's a messy job but somebody's got to do it:-)))

but what are you saying, that without english to save the day here, the title of the show would just be wrong or inappropriate if written entirely in Polish?

why not just name it something else?!

why is "show" the only viable option?

surely there have been other "shows" before Majewski and Wojewodzki, no?

i just think it's so funny to see all these english words popping up in polish and the reason always given to me is, "well we don't have a good word for it." well then, your language surely lacks a lot of words!

personally I think this is complete shiit. There are other words that can be used. Iceland is very conscious of maintaining its language and when faced with a new word- will actually adjust to make it Icelandic. For example- the word computer. Most languages use this word but in the Icelandic language they have a word which literally translates to "a box with numbers". Of course it is easier to use the word "computer" but when trying to keep a language from morphing into something else- why not go back to basics.

Poland doesn't need to use so many English words- but it is all about money and the perception that English words will make a person more western.

In Icelandic, the word translates literally as something like "knowledge counter". Turkish also uses its own construction for "computer". A number of other languages do as well, actually. "Coffee", I believe (and even in Icelandic), about the only extant living international word which remains essentially exactly the same, even in Chinese, Japanese, Korean along with other non-alphabetic languages! But I may be mistaken.

They use two ideograms together brain+machine

It's that Polish inferiority complex again ;)


It's pronounced something like "ka-fei" or "ka-fej" though ;)


Anyone else remember the coffee-related arguments on this thread? :D

The point is not whether there's another language with a usable equivalent for a word in Polish etc.. The problem comes when practically EVERY other English word becomes an excuse to claim Polish, for instance, doesn't have a 'good enough' word for it. Often, in fact usually, it's just plain ol' political correctness:-) Polish vocabulary is rich enough for the task at hand, believe me!

you can have infinite (ok very very large - beyond comprehension - amount of notions and their shades) - even such rich language as English can only fill these in small percentage

ercentage - as with this miserable 'show' - you know even in English when you have words 'show' and 'spectacle' they can be used to name the same thing sometimes but more often only one of the words can be applied correctly - (it is very similar with 'przedstawienie', 'widowisko', 'spektakl' and 'show' in Polish)

sure some languages are richer than others - most primitive peoples' languages are not good in conveying modern notions and in most cases they import notions with their names from other languages - in certain fields Polish is poorer than English (though in certain fields Polish has an edge over English (think diminutives for example))

sure there are ways to name the programme by Majewski differently but most such names would have specific connotations ('Beczka śmiechu Majewskiego' - gives you the feeling it's some simple humour (while often the programme is very elaboretaly humorous), 'Wieczór komedii i satyry Szymona Majewskiego' - pretty long and has it's specific connotations too (sounds pretty serious while the programme is actually quite reckless), 'Kabaret Szymona Majewskiego' - the show is not a typical kabaret in the Polish sense of the name)

what I like to underline is the present title 'Szymon Majewski show' doesn't sound strange or pretensious to me and I guess to most of Polish people - it just looks and sounds natural

('Fun z Szymonem' would look simply awkward to me)


the simple reality is not every other English word became adopted in Polish (if it is 5 per cent of English vocabulary then I'd be really surprised) - as was said before some English words are taken into Polish in a very specific meaning (I have given the 'jumper' example before in this thread (quite recently) - and no it's not the word for 'bluza sportowa' in Polish)

It's only partly true that languages in general borrow words when they don't have a word for a concept. It's not that hard to create new words in Polish (or expand the meaning of older ones) which is why people use komórki and not mobajle for example.

Words get borrowed for all sorts of reasons and expressive nuance is one of the most important. I remember when the words for 'place to have a few beers with friends' had really bad connotations and so the english word pub was pressed into service and then after a few years the previous poor connotations of knajpa (from German) were rehabilitated and people began to use that too.

What bothers me is smug self-conscious unneeded borrowings that the speaker thinks makes them look cosmopolitan. Really, in this day and age, borrowing English words into another language is the most unoriginal and banal behavior possible....

Five thumbs up, Mafketis old man!!!!

The Germans really kill me with their bleedin' Denglisch (Deutsch-Englisch), not to mention their often literal "translations" into English from their native language, e.g. "I was standing on a snake (snake, line = Schlange) for almost an hour..." or, "There's a train (train, draft etc.. = Zug) in my room." etc.... Really laughable.

Agreed![
quote=mafketis]What bothers me is smug self-conscious unneeded borrowings that the speaker thinks makes them look cosmopolitan. Really, in this day and age, borrowing English words into another language is the most unoriginal and banal behavior possible....[/quote]
Well said.

Yes, the first I remember was tok shok, even then it was described by the word show.


Yes.


Propose an idea for the name.


Yup, that's why we borrow words.


What's wrong with that? There are many german or french borrows. My granda liked to use German words such as luft, cug:


(exactly that one £yżko :)


Absolutely not.
I have no idea why English speakers find something silly in adopting English words. I will never uderstand it.


Please people, I ensure you I have no complex. By the way, we have a similar word to English complex, kompleks... but smethign tells me it's a borrow from Latin. Do you have an inferiority complex given that you use Latin words! Make up your own English word! ;)

talk shock? i mean, it's just a guess but "tok" sure sounds like "talk" and "shok" is not Polish spelling.


I'm trying not to be sarcastic here, but uhmm....any name you can think of that doesn't involve english words would be an improvement. Bill Maher has a 1 hr "show" on HBO called 'Real Time with Bill Maher'. The word "show" simply isn't used in the title but it certainly is a "show" with Bill Maher as your host. Before he moved to HBO, the show was called 'Politically Incorrect'. Another example would be "Late Night with David Letterman". The possibilities are endless, just be a little original. Or don't, be lame but leave out English words in the title of anything on Polish TV.


Amen to that. Just remember everyone, flame a.k., not me!

I second that maf!