Too many English words in the Polish language!

so he speaks the languages of communism, socialism, capitalism AND Esperanto (what a linguist!).

yeah, he's a linguist acorn thug

Klingon is not artificial, is it? :) A lot of Klingons speak it:))

You were right about Esperanto and native speakers - there are some. I can only add that there is still a dispute over Esperanto being an artificial language or not.

I'd say it is an artificial language in that it was developed and codified by a known person, rather than something which evolved. Whether it will keep that definition in the future is another matter.


Don't tell them... let them kling-on to the idea it isn't!

is Vulcan a written language or just Spock-en?

well... situation is clear about esperanto, ido ('idiomo di omnes') and volapuk - but i'd not call 'interlingua' artificial. its rather semi-artificial and semi-natural (actually... 'more natural' than artificial). its a really nice language to learn (but not as easy as esperanto or ido)


could you give me an URL to those disputes? for me- there is hard to find (apart from computer lingos of course) something more artificial than esperanto (seriously, how can someone tell that language in which some stupid rules were intended prior to vocabulary be 'natural'? /like: all nouns ends with -o (or -oj in plural), all adjectives /as far i remember/ on -a etc)

Yes...Of course...There are so many English words in Polish language....It is also the second most spoken Slavic language, after Russian and also the official language of Poland.

Just to show support for Michał et al and finalise it, look this up, please: polishedtranslations

Halina

A lot of Europeans in particular (by no means mostly Poles) think it somehow "cool" to sprinkle both their writings as well as their casual conversation with English words/expressions. Of course, rather than making the intended impression, they often disappoint native English speakers who indeed know better and usually wish the Poles in this case would stop trying to "act American" and just be themselves-:))

Might this exaggerated Anglo-Mania result from an inferiority complex? Sure seems like it.

When I was a child I knew the word kukurydza prazona and one day when I visited a friend I heard her asking her mom for money to buy popcorn. When I heard it I started wondering what was the meaning of this word, I had heard it before but couldn't remember the meaning. And only 1 year later they started selling only popcorn. Nobody sells kukurydza prazona. People will laugh if I say this and maybe many will not understand. The same story with puzzles. When I was a child it was ukladanka.

I just came upon this thread. It's comforting to see that I'm not the only one concerned. I understand all too well the fluidity of language and how it is constantly morphing BUT what's happening to the Polish language vis a vis english is horrifying. I fell away from Poland/Polish for a long time and only began re-connecting over the past 18 months. I simply couldn't believe all the new words incorporated in such a short time! It's almost as if Poles are all-too-quick to "sell-out" their language to be more like Americans. Anyway, that's how I feel.

Ubrany w fartuch biurokrata zasiadł za biurkiem w swoim ratuszu. Z dachu nie kapie, solidny parkiet, więc melancholia go nie trapi. Zakąsza pomarańczą, popija egzotyczne wina. Ot - typowy dzień specjalisty do spraw zapożyczeń leksykalnych. ;-)

To all those concerned by the alarming rate in which Polish incorporates new words - the above is perfectly good Polish, isn't it? Well, can you find all the borrowings from other languages I stuck in there?

Reminds me of the debates over standardisation of the Polish language that were taking place in the 18th century - rather like the sometimes strange pronouncements of the Societe francaise or the Goetheinstitut nowadays - they were proposing drobnowid for microscope, for example.

I got stuck on "dach", Słownik wyrazów obcych was of no help, Praktyczny słownik współczesnej polszczyzny explained the matter. Yes, I suspected so...

Good one Magdalena :)

But the prepositions are ours! :)

I get your point. It just seems that these english words are being incorporated at a very accelerated rate - that's all. :)

They aren't really being incorporated - most of them are just being used (as in exploited) for the hell of it. Once the novelty wears off, they will be replaced with something even more outrageous or amusing ;-)

Only time will tell :)

No doubt about that :-)
But there have been other trendy borrowings in Polish in the past, pre-WW2 and even earlier, which have gone to their lexical graves. So in a way, I am speaking from (collective, linguistic) experience. ;-)

ok. got any examples of those earlier borrowings?

One that springs to mind immediately is "five o'clock" (variously spelled and pronounced) as a type of afternoon party, there's also lipstick (lipsztyk etc) for today's "szminka" (which BTW is another borrowing, this time from German), girlaski for chorus girls or starlets, auto or automobil for today's "samochód", aeroplan for today's "samolot", bicykl instead of "rower" etc. etc. Read any pre-war memoirs or newspapers and you will see for yourself.

Drove past a garage the other day and found out what the Polish was for car wash....Its...car wash....?

Nooo that can,t be right...!

The Polish for car wash is myjnia. Nevertheless, the garage owner might have wanted to attract foreigners to his establishment, hence the English ;-)

very cool! So maybe there is yet hope? Polish will get this American-thingy "out of its system" and right itself someday?......Maybe because it just got "out of jail" and feels it has to catch up?..Thanks Magdalena.

It will take what it finds useful and throw the rest away - as usual. All languages are like that - not just Polish and not just today ;-)

ok But again, it's the sheer volumeof new english words that the culture is trying out for size. Were the pre-war numbers(of new words) similar? You have to admit it is a lot. I certainly don't recall any remotely similar occurring in American english over the past 20 years; nor 50 for that matter :)

I believe a claim to Vulcan as the new international language has already been staked LOL
Pronunciation's a bit tough though, but the grammar's super easy-:)))))

I do actually find Polish to be surprisingly "Westerner", and surprisingly more Italian/French/Latin than German. The contrast with, for example, Russian, is striking. I'm sure you could just add -ować, -acja, -anie to "Western" words and make complete sentences that Poles will understand.

Many are still present in English-Polish pocket dictionaries, based as they still are on the Stanisławski dictionary of the 1930s. Lokaut - lockout - is a Prohibition-era word which has little or no use today but would have been bandied about by Chicago Poles in speakeasies, for sure.

AFAIK there are lots of German borrowings (and probably French as well, not speaking of Latin and Greek) in Russian. The alphabet and pronunciation do a good job of "hiding" them from the eyes and ears of foreigners, though ;-)


Think of all the words you know and probably use as a member of the American melting-pot - when you buy Chinese / Japanese / Mexican / Italian food, for example. Start with that and then dig deeper. I bet many of your "typical American" words are actually borrowings from all over the world, but because you have grown up with them, and they are deeply familiar to you, you don't ever think twice about it.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Lists_of_English_words_of_foreign_origin

Just to introduce some balance into the subject. Borrowing words is nothing to be ashamed of - as I said, everyone's doing it! :-)

Personally, I would associate it with a person's need to "reveal" to the world that you "know" the language rather than to an inferiority complex. Of course, it would apply to a language which is "fashionable" and when there is a chance that there are people around you who will appreciate how witty you are. It never happens to me with English since I always try to avoid to use a foreign-sounding words in Polish, trying to replace them with Slavic-origin synonyms [though I can never replace words like 'weekend', for that matter]. But it did happen to me with French when - after having passed a certain level in the language - I started to throw French expressions in my letters in English to my British friends. When I reached an even higher level in my knowledge of French, I stopped the practice naturally, thinking even that it was silly and a little childish. But that was not because of an ineriority complex since my French was all the time better than theirs!

there are multiple older technical terms of German origin (even more in colloquial speech - my grandpa used a lot of German terms connected with builder's trade - not too many people use the term wasserwaga these days :)) - there is less newer German borrowings