Province or Voivodeship

Thread created by Moderator


This is not a word in English. Province is used by embassies, etc.

I was shocked to see a small wooden house for sale in my eastern village for 128,000 today. There's a large parcel of land with it (4000m2) but the house is ramshackle.

It is a word, though somewhat old fashioned - I'd actually say that "Province" is wrong because the word tends to describe an area with significant autonomy - something that the voivodeships don't have.

Regardless of what embassies use - poznan.uw.gov.pl/c/portal/layout?p_l_id=PUB.1016.30 - they themselves use voivodeship.

So what? They're wrong. According to the Oxford English Dictionary there is no such word in the English language, and I'd rather take the OUD as my authority than a Polish website.

I think you might need a bigger edition:
oed.com/view/Entry/224377

I have the biggest OED available apart from the full edition. It has only this entry with regards the word in question:
Vojvodina. A mainly Hungarian-speaking province of northern Serbia.


This does nothing in Google. Please send another link.


This quote is highly suspect. If it had come from the OED, it would read A district...

I could accept the article THE here, though A is much better.

But teflcat is right, voivodeship is not the correct translation, it's province. Voivodeship IS in OED, I remember seeing it, but still, it is not correct as it has no meaning to an English speaking person and you'd still have to use the word province for clarification purposes.

Where?


Thanks for the support.


I wouldn't. Neither would OED.
The CIA doesn't use that awful word; the UK Foreign Office does not use it either. Wikipedia loves it! You choose.
Tortilla ripped his/her spurious quote from Wiki. I'm still standing. Come on Wiki fans.

it is used in EU documents. just because people have never heard of it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Link please to official EU documents and I'll shut the FU. It's getting boring.


What a weird thing to say.

I think the question is one of it being obsolete or not. OED and Webster's recognise it as a valid English word and extra support for its existence lies in the fact that English often borrows from other languages and adapts.

However, the best way to find out would be to ask many native speakers off the cuff. If they weren't able to say or even have an inkling then I think you have your answer.

Link please.


Exactly.

facebook.com/pages/Voivodship/144065758940132?sk=info, hardly authoritative but I have no reason to doubt it.

Facebook? Wiki? Come on. Time for me to hit the hay. I'm always ready to stand corrected, but I'm still waiting to see an entry from a reputable source. Yawn. Night night.

"The English "voivodeship", which is a hybrid of the loanword "voivode" and "-ship" (the latter a suffix, likewise meaning a "state or condition", that calques the Polish "-stwo"), has never been much used and is absent from many dictionaries. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it first appeared in 1792, spelled "woiwodship", in the sense of "the district or province governed by a voivode." The word subsequently also appeared in 1886 in the sense of "the office or dignity of a voivode." (wikipedia)

the argument seems to be about a Polish word written in english. if it's already in english it must be valid.

how can one say it's wrong, if people are using it.

(i'll look for the eu link later.)

Umm that just shows you the caliber of "official" EU pol->eng translators. Most are utter sh!t. Here's the first link I found of a .eu address using voivodeship.

espon-interstrat.eu/admin/attachments/the_Pomorskie_Voivodeship_Development_Strategy.pdf

I spotted 20 mistakes in the first two paragraphs. Gimme a break. Polish translators suck bal!s and you know it.

Again, voivodeship is the incorrect translation. It is an archaic word, out of use, non-relevant and entirely inappropriate if it is to be read by anyone who is NOT a Polish national. If I were to use Wroclaw's definition right above me, I could just as well call cars: motorcars, computers: electronic machiens, roads: black tar trails and god knows what else using outdated, poor terminology.

As I said, ask a representative sample of native speakers and voila!

Only people who already know what a województwo is are liable to understand voivodeship. It's an awkward, ungainly hybrid that only serves those who think a dictionary is enough to do a translation.

In Poland I just use województwo while speaking English (if the person I'm talking to is liable to understand the word) and 'province' if they don't know enough Polish (or enough about Poland). If I'm writing informally I'd just define it, for a US speaker I'd write "an administrative unit somewhere between a county and a state" (how I'd explain it in speaking as well).

i did find some eu site with terminology and it said voivodeship was ok. then i was directed to legal eu terminology and couldn't find anything.

but there are a couple of hundred eu documents (in english) listing voivodeship. from what i read they were all Polish documents though.

even if i find a none Polish source i guess i still have to prove it's valid.

The test of obsolescence must apply. If it is still used in official circles, it is not yet obsolete and could even pass as jargon in one interpretation of that word.

is EurLex good enough?

Like it or not, this is the official EU terminology.
I agree it doesn't sound great and in non-official texts, targeted to wide public, it's better to use 'province'. On the other hand, Switzerland has cantons, France has departments and arrondissements, and Poland has voivodships - it's country-specific.


At the time of the EU accession, government agencies were hastily organising tenders to translate the required documents and at the rates they were offering, the bulk of it was probably done by students, not necessarily of English. Good legal translators don't work for peanuts. Nevertheless, they must deal with the effects now, as whatever has found its way into EurLex, is formally binding.

One swallow does not make a summer. One document on an EU website does not constitute


I'm yet to be persuaded.

Call it what you want, but Prowincja and Województwo were different animals historically speaking. Just google it.

Here, see for yourself: eur-lex.europa.eu/Result.do?idReq=12&page=7

65 EU acts including the accession treaty with all the appendices and directives.
This is the base for legally binding EU terminology.

I typed the dread word into their search engine and got nothing. Anyway, this is not the word. Tell you what, when I have time, I'll e-mail the EU and ask about it; straight from the top. Tonight is my last chance to chill out before five crazy workdays, so I might be a while updating my (not) pet subject. I know this may seem a very petty point to many PF users, but I think it's important because there is confusion amongst translators and offficial administrators. OK. Door locked, glass washed, cat in, and goodnight.

The link I posted was the search results, but seems it doesn't work this way, the session expired. So this is the way to go from the main page: Simple search --> by word --> search for --> type `voivodship`--> in Options below, click `Title and text` (important!) --> click Search, and you`ve got it.

If you e-mail them and they answer, please let me know what they say.
Good night :)

I just this minute checked my sOED 5th edit, and it's legit to use it without any archaic or obsolete sense for Central/East(yeah, whatever) Europe as the area of a district governed by a Voivode.

Yes, Voivoda is a nobility title, those were Old Slavic war leaders, Serbs still have the word and use it- Vojvoda, it is when translated equal to Duke. So, it could mean that the property was in possession of somebody with the Voivoda title at some period. So it is an area governed by Voivoda, so Voivodeship would be the duchy.

In new Greek voevoda has negative connotation.It means the owner of large pieces of land who lives in luxury and does not give a sh1t about his slaves.The word sounds very Bulgarian or Serb.

Webster's New Unabridged Universal Dictionary gives the following definitions:

voivode - a title originally given to military commanders in various Slavonic countries, and afterward to governors of towns or provinces.

voivodehip - the office or authority if a voivode.

Webster does not list the alternative spelling: voivod and voivodship respectively.

In other words, what people are saying is that voivode and voivodeship are mostly useless words in English except for extremely specialized usage. I would not recommend using either jwith a person who doesn't already understand the concept.

They should not be used (undefined) in general interest texts or everyday conversation (if communication is the goal).