Too many English words in the Polish language!

How about poultry from la poule?

Yes again, Pol, I did not think of that ;)

And Filip became Pilip. No longer used today as a Christian name but still encountered in certain surnames such as Pilipiak, Pilipski, Pilipowicz, etc.


An anecdote that comes to mind is an exchange between Voltaire and Friedrich der Große. In the convention of the riddles and word-games popular at the time, the Prussian emperor sent Voltaire an invite which read:

P/venez à ci/sans.
Voltaire répondit: G a.

Can anybody make any sense of it?

Hint: If handwrittten, the slash (diagonal) should actually take the form of a horizontal fraction bar, unavailable (as far as I know) on my comptuer to separate the top element from the bottom one.

@Pol: what about "Mokotów" from "mon côté" and of course "Zoliborz" from "joli bord"? I once read that ul. "Szwoleżerów" also comes from French but I don't remember how they figured it out ;). As to Voltaire, nie wiem!

P/Venez = venez sous per. Ci/sans = sans sous ci

Venez super a sans-souci

I wonder of there's something similar in Polish

My goodness! They were already using "sms language" ;).

...as is the whole world, UNFORTUNATELY!!!!

We're losing our language....not only the Polish, German, and French; every language, perhaps English most of all, is in danger of mutating into some faceless, anonymous muddle, shapless, boring and unrecognizable to its closest relatives:-)

@Jon: No, that "sms" language used by Voltaire and which is widely used in English (for instance "B4" = "before"...) or in French (for instance "2m1" = "demain") sms writing is not possible in Polish.

'Please' and 'Thank you' are certainly not two of them.

But we use the term "internet troll" in Polish on the other hand.

Should be souper (super means to suck an egg for example).
But what about the reply: G a.

Polish language!

Yes, fair enough!

So what about some of these in Polish? I know there are a few in English - popular a century ago plus today's Dingbats. There are certainly plays on words in Polish - I've even made a few lame ones for fun; just can't think of any now.

Perhaps the Mods could pop these posts (from Voltaire onward) into a thread about Polish wordplay?


Autocorrect on an ipad, sorry!


Certainly J'ai something. I'll think about it in bed tonight.

I also like the "exposé" from new Polish ... Premier!!!! Aren't there Polish words for that? French speakers don't even use these words in the same context... "Exposé" is prepared by high school and university students and the "Pemier (= first for those not knowing French) Ministre" is the head of any goverment. It seems to me that even English speakers use "Premier" to mean Prime (probably from French "premier") Minister from other countries...

Off-topic but just FYI in Canada the prime minister heads the central government, whilst premiers head the regional governments of individual provinces.

makler must be from Dutch makelaar

Yes, it does very indirectly derive from that word via the German makler. Many words in Poland that refer to banking and finance have their origins in the more urban Western Europe.

The bulk of Germanic borrowings into Polish pertaining to business, civic administration, trade, shipping, seafaring and technology were not from Hochdeutsch, but from Hansa Plattdeutsch, which was the lingua franca of the North Sea/Baltic region for most of the late middle ages. That's why a lot of Polish borrowings look a bit different from their Hochdeutsch cognates, and often look a lot like Dutch, which is more closely related to Plattdeutsch than to Hochdeutsch.

That's actually quite common among loanwords into Polish; to have a Hamburg/Danzig connection. There are several words that have come from English and Scots to Polish via that route.

I wonder if the 'z prus' trees came from Danzig (Spruce)