Too many English words in the Polish language!

What are you like, modern Polish?
static.unilang.org/babelbabble/index.php?n=20&t=8#up

The question being the title of this article was uttered by one of the greatest modern Polish linguists, Professor J. Miodek, during one of his lectures. According to the Professor, the influences of foreign languages constitute the largest danger to the Polish language, and the most dangerous is English.

Chart 1. What annoys you most in the modern Polish, used in public?
(A public opinion poll conducted by the CBOS)

Chart 2. The number of English loanwords in Polish in the course of time.

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  Chart 1
  
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  Chart 2
  

On a side note: I like the expression 'a litlle flick on someone's nose' which obviosly corresponds to the Polish "dać komuś pstryczka w nos", but I wonder if putting 'the' before someone's name in it should be part of the idiom?

Well, I am the last person to provide advice on such matters - usage of definite/indefinite particles is not my strong point, to say the least. :-) What I really meant was "THE NOSE", the one and only one. :-). If it was an error I stand corrected. But I have seen the particle "the" in front of proper names, as in "This defeat really challenged the Merkel's government".

The idiom in question actually exists, in both figurative and direct sense, as in: "Russia received the next flick on the nose" or "With a young puppy, a flick on the nose most of the time will work". This subject was even discussed quite recently on some translators' forum, here:

proz.com/kudoz/polish_to_english/idioms_maxims_sayings/4085344-dać_prztyczka_w_nos.html

By the way, you must have caught my previous message during the editing stage, when I was correcting "this expression" to "the impression".

hubpages.com/hub/Most-difficult-languages-Polish

I know its in there somewhere....

Wow, I bet there's more from Arabic. Amazing how many words in English are from Arabic.

I think one potential problem, and sorry if it has already been discussed (forgive my laziness here), is one of exclusion. Old people don't value 'being cool' for the most part. A lot of the borrowed or absorbed words suit the tongue of the youngster more than their older counterparts. Polish doesn't benefit from having syllabaries in the same way as Japanese does. In Japanese language, there is katakana. Should you learn how to read it, you will see words like 'chikinu' (chicken) as opposed to the equivalent 'tori' in hiragana.

More English words, in one sense, shows evolution. The level of contact with English since May 2004 (esp) has meant that many Poles have begun to think in that language and look to create new Polish/English words. When you think of music, you can see fusions of styles. However, this is chanelled differently. Language tends to be more direct in its delivery and usage.

Too many words? Well, everything (almost) comes through choice and one can choose to use or not to.

Oh, I can. Trust me! I just felt like showing face :)

Too many English words? Words creep into the lexicon for sure but I think it is a good thing when a Polish person uses a word which another Pole doesn't understand. In that way, if they want to continue the conversation then they have to ask and can learn in so doing. They can always revert back to their L1/mother tongue at any time.

becouse we should protect our language, we have to many english words there are everywhere, russians have even worst situation, we should like in Finland, Hungary or France try found ours world for new products and jobs, in some bad way we have today oft coaching instead of szkolenie, or menager instead of zarządca or even worst examples like dealer, few year ago was proposition to change sms to smyk or kws and email to just "list". Maybe we should together try to find some Polish replacements for new English words?

It's a tool for communication...
As long as we understand what the words symbolizes... Does it really matter if it's A or B? As long as we get what the other person thinks

I think importing words is OK as long as we use Polish rules of spelling and properly conjugate/declinate all of them. Example - 'feature'. Proposed way of spelling - 'ficzer'. Ostatnia wersja oprogramowania wprowadziła pięc nowych ficzerów.

Germans are much worse when it comes to imporitng words. For example, they say "spin up" or "spin down", whereas Poles would say "spin w górę" lub "spin w dół".

Agreed!!

But *Sigh* the youth of today, are so lazy and clumsy with their grammer (AHEM, actually I'm guilty as charged:/).

Still as annoying as it is, it's difficult to make people stop talking like that. We're a global network of people that are more connected by the day. We know more about the world and we have easier access to everything in the world. We incorporate a lot of what the world does into what we do and we change things to make them easier and to fit in. It's going to be extremely difficult to change this way of speaking. Sure we should save our language, but look at how the EU is trying to bring European countries together? Who knows, one day there may well be a single global language, everything else forgotten (Which is sad actually).

It's not about being lazy at all!

It's completely unnatural not to use cases in Polish, so they are never dropped out of laziness, no one would say for instance Przejechałem się rower pięć kilometry. The problem at hand is that when a foreign word is borrowed, no one knows how to declinate it properly (I hope declinate is the proper verb of declension). Some borrowed words tend themselves well for Polish declension (e.g. menedżer), others - not so much (traditional examples would be menu and jury).

The other one is that once you learn the foreign spelling of the word, it's difficult to change your habit of spelling it that way - e.g. I tend to write billboard in the English way of spelling instead of bilbord as bilbord looks very unnatural to me. However, for the sake of our children, I think we should introduce Polish way of spelling those words as soon as possible so that they don't have to learn several thousand of exception of Polish spelling. When I was a kid, I only had to learn a handful of such words - "menu", "jury", "pointa", "status quo" etc. It'd be a nightmare if there was more of them!

It makes sense - English spelling is awful and isn't standardised at all, so Polish should try and integrate these words.

The problem is - by the time the dinosaurs at the Academy actually integrate the words, people will be used to the English version and will simply ignore what the official version is ;)

Worst one I've heard is "focusować".

Nooo! Stop it! It's like driving an ice pick in my ear, hehe
I listen to polish online radio and in one advert a guy uses 'wiosenne aktywności (pl.)' in a sentence, which evidently is a rather ugly calque from English ('activities'), while in Polish 'wiosenna aktywność (sing.)', even when it refers to multiple activities, is perfectly correct.

No, it is matter becouse we are B and others are A, if we lost ours dź, ą ę and other we become everybody,i think also that globalization to some point is good, but i want to feel if i go some where that i am in germany, poland or france not only in eurpe, polish is ilke bitch take everything and giving nothing, natural process are now to slowly to polonization new world :/

Even if I do understand the English term "focus/focusing", I do not understand the Polish term "fokusować". Some foreign words, however, will pass away naturally from the languauge over time. An example of this could be the word intrata which had been widely popular in Polish in the 18th century, but was nonetheless replaced with the Slavic word dochód later on. The trace of its popularity has remained however in today's adjective intratny, being a particular synonym to dochodowy with the meaning of "extremly profitable/more profitable than usual".

Some people using some foreign words do not realize they are the modern incarnation of Monsieur Jourdain of Molière's masterpiece "Le Bourgeois gentilhomme". They will never be able to see how ridiculous they are in their attemps to appear 'better' and wiser. If you remember the British incarnation of Monsieur Jourdain in the excellent BBC sitcom "Keeping Up Appearances", you shall keep in mind that those using the term 'fokusować' in Polish are certainly the people who will answer a phone call to their home by replying "The Bouquet's residence" rather than "Hyacinth Bucket speaking" in English.

Missus Bucket?

The Bouquet residence. Without the 's makes it much more pretentious.

I notice in Poland people saying that they're going to carry out a project of renovation on their bathroom, rather than just paint the toilet wall. Same sort of thing.

Training, instead of szkolenia, Marketing instead of whatever - also rather pretentious. But the loannword 'toast' (each syllable pronounced, meaning to formally drink someone's health rather than grilled bread)? What's the alternative? I don't just mean saying 'na zdrowie' - I mean at a formal banquet.

It's usually more complicated than repainting as the walls are tiled. So the word "remont" is used appropriately.


What's the alternative to marketing? "Promowanie/promocja" doesn't have exactly the same meaning and something like "celowanie w rynek" would sound awkward, so the loan word doesn't replace any old one in this case. I have more problems with using "HR" instead of "dział kadr" etc. But in general it's the corporate language that degrates way faster than the normal language, my mother once called as she was asked for "fidbek" after a training (szkolenie) and she had no idea what it was. Entirely ridiculous.

Thet would be fine if they just said 'remontowac lazienke' - it's the 'carry out a project of' that's pretentious.


Exactly. Neither of those are quite right. The word 'marketing' first appearred in print in 1914. Marketing certainly existed during the Second Republic - it would be interesting to know what they called it then.


Me too. When Personnel Departments evolved in to HR it was baffling for some people. In Polish, HR should be ZL.


Fejsbuk, ajskrim (not used much nowadays), esemesowac etc. Annoying.

Wait, you know people in Poland who say "przeprowadzam projekt odnowy łazienki" or do they say it all in English? I am confused.

Wykonanie projektu... Especially referring to a DIY lick of paint and some new blinds.

this sounds terrible ! why in this place, we can not use the Polish words?

Just from the point of view of a foreigner: sometimes it gives quite ridiculous results. A couple of months ago I saw some advert in Wroclaw. It said something about James Bond and because it was declinated, it said "Jamesie Bondzie" and if you pronounce it in English (or Dutch) you end up with "Jamesy Bondzy", which doesn't sound macho at all ... ;).

For a foreigner it is really weird to see proper names being declined. It sometimes even gives rise to problems with regard to determining the correct sex of someone. For example, for most of us a name ending in -a means the person is a woman ... in Polish one can be completely wrong-footed ... ;).

is Alex Scunthorpe definitely a male in English?


Pata Richardsona (gen of Pat Richardson) - both the first name and the surname get declined - if you are somewhat familiar in Polish you should not have hard time guessing the original form of the name

now Pat Richardson can also be a female in English - in Polish it shows in the declination - tej Pat Richardson (gen of female Pat Richardson)

Stu

We know, sometimes is the reason of very funny situations, but in every type of inflected languages u have this problems :)

gumishu wrote:


my favorite one to date is John'ego Depp'a.

should be Johnny'ego Deppa - you only use apostrophes when the original foreigh name ends in a mute 'e' or 'y'

as in Clark - gen Clarka; Clarcke - Clarcke'a

gumishu wrote:


my mother in law says John'ego Deppa. I guess the younger generations are better at making these silly declensions with foreign names.

not really - I am not that young firstly - secondly true younger generations do have problems with declensions of foreign names (and with ortography in general)

Johnny'ego Deppa is obviously the right one for the reason gumishu gave. I wouldn't say that grammar is better or worse among any particular generation, one of my jobs involved reading letters from (mostly unhappy) customers and spelling, grammar and stylistic mistakes could be hillarious among people of all ages.