Sorka means przepraszam

Sory (from English /I'm/ sorry) has been around in colloquial Polish for years and has even evolved into sorki (presumably the diminutive). But recently I head sorka (the singular of sorki?). Anyone know why such a form might have emerged? Or was it just something someone thoughtlessly blurted out for no special reason?

More likely there was no reason.

As a side note: sorka is also used as a slang for a female professor (Profesorka).

Maybe it's 'an apology' (a sorry)

sorka - singular in polish
sorki - plural
Easy as that.

It always throws me off since if it were a borrowing from spoken English it should be 'sari' and 'sarka'.

But it seems to be a spoken borrowing from spelling-pronunciation English which sounds kind of .... stupid.

Which one? BBC one?


In polish language, in most cases, you pronounce words just how they are written. The same rule applies to most borrowed words from foreign languages. Especially those, which are not part of fading fashion in language. So I would say that pronounciation sory (and derivative) is the right one.

nah, when a Pole says 'sari' (or even 'sary') it doesn't sound like English 'sorry' at all - simply the English vowel in question does not exist in Polish as a phoneme (you should know it, just guess you don't always take it into conscious consideration)

it's very similar as with 'mecz' - we don't have the exact vowel of the 'match' word in Polish - it's just the most best Polish rendering of the English word we came to think of

there is also the attractive approach of taking the graphical representation into account giving rise to words like 'klub' - club (before you criticise Polish for having 'klub' for 'club' just remember that it the same case in German and Czech (I only mention those languages I am aware of having 'klub' for 'club')

Gumishu - nothing to add, but I'd like to say thank you for your posts on language - they're always very interesting to read. I especially like the way that you use other examples to illustrate the point, too.

oh, I just love to show off - no need to thank me for that :)

More of it, please :)

(and it does help with my learning of Polish too - stuff like -


- also helps a hell of a lot to understand how some Polish words came about. Thank you! :))

I wonder if you can guess where this word comes from pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulaj

It's not so much the vowel (my vowel in sorry is the same as in father and not so different from Polish a) but the consonant. The English retroflex glide/resonant just doesn't happen in Polish (no reason it should) and the Polish r (between vowels) sounds more like a t or d to Americans. City in US pronunciation sounds a lot like syryj (or syrij).

Mostly though sorry and sorka just bug me in Polish. Many English borrowings don't but sorka sounds almost as bad as the horrible native expression 'do zobaczyska' (yech!)

(and I wished that either the spelling or pronunciation of pub was changed in Polish, as a native speaker of English I can tell you that etymological spelling is more of a headache than a benefit and you need to nip it in the bud.

Logic is not heavily involved in this kind of judgement.

This is not Polish.
This is used mainly by low-educated, lower class youngsters.

Total bullshit. I'd say that people under 30 use it often. Class or education doesn't matter. It is just a slang.

If so, it is the worst kind of slang. It also sounds terrible. I stick to my opinion. I don't hear that that often, and I can only associate it with what I mentioned.

Sorka sounds more like "I don't give a damn" then actual przepraszam.

I do realize that "sorry" is not a Polish word. But it became so popular and ingrained in Polish language, that it has now it's own Polish declension. Sory is very firmly established in Polish and used by everybody uder 40-30, irrescpective of class.

I'm not concerned with purity of language and I don't mind borrowing some words from other languages. It is sign that Polish language is living, constantly progressing. I would be much more concerned if proces of language developing was slowed down or halted. I also think, that there is something wrong with english speaking people critisizing Poles for borrowing foreign words, when almost half of english words was borrowed from latin.

"Sorry!"'s used commonly in Dutch also (where it's pronounced somethink like "surry"). It's about the only word of neutral spoken apology in daily use, in fact. German uses it, but, as with all foreignisms, it's slightly different, more ironic, than a native word!