WHY DO POLES USE ENGLISH WORDS IN CONVERSATION?

Since you mention it,Robot is a word of Czech (Eastern European) not English origin..

Magdalena wrote:


hahahahha. you don't know what you're talking about if you think poles in their 50's and 60's had english classes as part of their curriculum. hence, why none of them speak it. german, russian.....sure, they remember a little. english? only what is part of today's mass media.

take a look at the polish government. educated older people, right? how many of them speak english? aside from who is it....Sikorski?....a guy who lived and was educated in the USA as well so he basically doesn't count. you're kidding yourself. never in my life have i seen a polish diplomat hold a quality conversation in english with anyone and i lived in poland and watched polish news channels for 4 straight years.

Magdalena wrote:


as are you. the point I was making is that poland uses an incredible amount of english with new words being injected into it every day and i was mentioning that even the older generations are using these words which means that these english words are seriously being inculcated into Polish because older people are more reluctant to adapt new words compared to the younger gens yet they still use them quite frequently. it's merely a litmus test.

So even the Yanks can have a general feel for what’s said when they listen up on you, being so paranoid and all.

Some did, especially in secondary schools and university. The fact that it was often lousily taught is another matter altogether. My mother had English at school still under Stalin.

Do you think nobody learnt English in Poland until 1989?
Jeez.


Having English at school or uni and actually learning a language enough to speak it are two different kettles of fish. I also find it mildly amusing to say the least.


What new words exactly?

lunch, hard drive, meeting, week end, parking, trendy, kool, super......I could go on and on.

lunch - known since before the war

hard drive - normal useful borrowing, nothing to see here, move along

meeting - known since before the war

weekend - known since before the war

parking - normal useful borrowing, along with parkować, known for years and years and years, probably since before the war

trendy - short-term "fun" borrowing, will disappear within a decade

cool - as above

super - known since before the war

...so what do we have here? One technical borrowing "hard drive" and two "fun" words - cool and trendy. Wow - some invasion, huh?

Care to give me any real examples of this terrifying attack of English?

pip wrote:


i don't even know if it was a serious question, pip.

Magdalena wrote:


yes. yes, that's right. i'll add a few:

cash flow

nokautowac

fastfoody

kemping

bording (boarding)

chipsy

drinki (you had drinks "before the war", right?)

dzinsy

szorty

i haven't even gotten to the really embarrassing stuff, although fastfoody and cash flow is enough to make my cheeks red.

I have never heard anybody use thin in a Polish conversation or on the TV - maybe they use it in their professional environments - but this one is clearly over the top as there are Polish words and terms to describe these things

the other examples that you have given have all been accepted into Polish for the lack of short handy words to describe such notions and phenomena in Polish simply - well some do have sensible POlish counterparts like 'szorty' (krótkie spodenki in Polish) but these are often much more cumbersome


again, I have never heard a Polish person use the 'hard drive' term in a Polish conversation- 'dysk twardy' is equally easy to say and write - and it gets yet simplified into colloquial 'twardziel'

'cool' is not actually so cool in Polish - it simply is too short to transfer any emotional emphasis - it's only kids who grow up on internet FPP games and MTV who would use it - mostly for the deficit of Polish vocabulary - these kids will even perhaps start using such English words as 'fun' - but these will still be looked down by even most of their peers

actually you are quite right - I somehow managed to blank out twardy dysk and twardziel ;-)

hahah polish people love to say SUPER !

I love it , especially in the polish accent :)

Actually, you are quite right. You would often hear the term on TVN CNBC, a channel devoted exclusively to economic matters. About 80% of "normal" Poles would not understand the term, about 95% would never use it in conversation. This is a term of the professional jargon of financial specialist which they use almost exclusevly among themselves and more or less occasionaly on TVN CNBC.

And then there come some crazy Americans to the Polish Forums who are completely unaware of the realities of the Polish language in use among the typical Polish population just to cry out their terrible frustrations on the terrible, almost lethal, overdose of English injected into the Polish language.

Thus, when you read things like


just be sure that the Yankees who have injected so much credit into their markets will sooner start to speak Chinese with near-native fluency (seems to be an inevitable logic of the negative cash-flow in the US trade with China) than the Polish will start to speak their poor pigeon English.

I agree. It happens everywhere. I'm from latin america, and is the same. We nave that spanglish, as well.


Yeah..! I love it too. It sounds like: siupaaarr. haha.

hahah ;)

no, I don't have to. It exists and you can't deny it- just like in the examples that have been used.

It is possible to keep the language but Poles, generally speaking, want what is outside of Poland. This includes language, tv, food, everything. In Iceland they are trying to maintain the language. They have a small population and it is not getting any bigger. Instead of using using words like "computer"- they actually have a word for computer that translates as "box with numbers".

makes my ability to speak Polish that much easier.

Of course you do if you want to make a point. The examples quoted above are laughable. Every language acquires borrowings (English does as well, you know) and words such as szorty or lunch are not doing the Polish language any harm at all, quite apart from the fact that they have been used by Poles for ages. You are trying to tell me that there is a full-scale invasion of English on Polish going on RIGHT NOW. Well, I don't see it. Give me proof.

magdalena wrote:


you have an entire 9 page thread dedicated to Poles overusing english in their daily vernacular. why do you ask for a list of words when this entire thread is chock full of them already. have a look through, you'll find hundreds. you'll also find a handful of people agreeing with the OP.

and I don't care if it's happening with other languages. so be it. doesn't change the fact that it's happening with Polish.....big time.

it's also worth mentioning that it generally sounds twice as ridiculous when poles use english words because they decline them, making them sound extra ridiculous.

because of the declension system in polish, borrowings always sound even more embarrassing, awkward and just downright stupid. I'll never forget the day my mother in law said to me, "............John'ego Depp'a".

and lots and lots of arguments to the opposite, which you choose to ignore.


so what should they do then? declination of nouns is built into the system, and you can't speak Polish without it. I think you honestly don't know what you want. should Polish people change their grammar then to make you comfortable? or should they expel all borrowings and words of foreign origin, including place names and given names, and replace them with... what exactly?

no, we won't stop declining foreign names just because your esthetical sense is harmed - don't stay around Poles if you are that sensitive - definitely divorce - hell commit suicide if you can't seem to able to escape this bloody monster of the Polish language in your life - I know Polish language is ugly as hell - I think we are the next target for a new holocaust because our language is so ugly

Ha-ha, gumishu!

"Ugly as hell!"???, "New Holocaust.."??? ad infinitum...

You Poles grow up with your bloody hard language (which, by the way, some of us foreigners find plain beautiful!!)-:), so if we've bothered to learn it for sheer pragmatic reasons so as not to hear (many of) you butcher English, STOP COMPLAINING!!!! I mean, after all, not everyone can be another Joseph Conrad))))

Now, you can tell me "Mark, why don't you shut up!"

Insults?? Keep 'em comin'LOL

there is your answer right there. There are English words in Polish- some stupid and some not. why argue a point you can't win?

OH,yeah I'm in the mood for insults, actually :)
Mark, I see you have taken my remark very personally. I wanted to let you know you sometimes cause a lot of confusion with your entries about Polish language - you are just a bit to eager sometimes. And no I am no Joseph Conrad. I am his mom ;)

cheer up Marku :)

What precisely is your point, Pip?

Personally? I never take Forum remarks personally, I was only joking.
I'm long since used to European directness. In fact, I find it sort of refreshing, albeit limited in its own way as much as superficial falseness.

Just how confusing are my comments anyway? Perhaps a native English speaker may find them transparent.

Aside from the words of French origin the first place, what about French words in common English use?

There are hundreds.

In a bizarre twist, the French of all people even use dozens of English expressions in their language.

It's no big deal.

pip - do you also have issues with 'Jonny'ego Deppa' or 'Baracka Obamy' ? :P :)

Mark - sometimes your explanations are plain wrong (not that often though) and you often make mistakes in you examples of Polish that can cause confusion for someone who is learning Polish - I know a make a lot of mistakes in English - but if you teach someone a language you should be very careful not to give them false guidance - the body of a message can have spelling mistakes - but the examples should rather stay spotless

All this discussion is useless. The majority, if not all, foreign people will find it bizzare to decline foreign names such as Johny Depp to which names they are used treating them as impossible to be changed. I believe that for them seeing those names declined is like seeing them "stolen" as the name looks so distorted that it seems faked. That is perfectly OK and doesn't surprise me. What surprises me is that some foreign people see it as "awkward and just downright stupid". That means these people tend to look down at a foreign language from an "upright", that is from a superior, position. But this is a purely psychological problem, not a linguistic one.

Point well taken, gumishu-::)

Exactly. It all boils down to 'Perception is reality; one person's (mis)conception becomes their own reality!

my point. There is English in the Polish language. Stupid English. Lunch, Meeting, etc etc and I find that those who use these words don't really even speak English very well but like to use them to get attention.

As for the Johnny Depp thing- doesn't bug me but I think it sounds silly.

I had a professor of Polish language teach me Polish many moons ago and he told me that it is bad Polish to speak like this. Not my opinion but his. He gave me an example about locative case and foreign cities. His example was Toronto. It is not correct to say w Toroncie but w Toronto. However, as our world gets smaller with technology even the most abstract and foreign words become Polish-ized.

Personally I don't give a rats about the changing language- it is human nature to evolve- some words are stupid "fast food" and some make sense "komputer"--but there is no denying the fact that English is making its way into common place Polish language- but they probably want it like this anyway.

How should she say it then? In Polish it's not correct not to decline names, even foreign. Just come to terms with it. This is the specific of this language and you should respect it instead of poking fun of something which absolutely correct. Your attitude is childish.

Btw. in the same way you can be accused of sounding "extra ridiculous" when you say pierogis. Pierogi are already plural, singular is pieróg so if you have to put s at the end then say pierógs.


No. It's just some terms went into Polish language so those word are not anymore English, albeit of English origins. Why do you have problems with that?


So you think that Poles should speak incorrectly and mutilate their own language just because you think it sounds silly?!


What?!


No Polish person would decline it this way! It ends with o so we don't decline it. Just like nae Bruno or surname Monroe (pronounce like "o" at the end). You've missunderstood him!

Example of English word used in recent parliment ellection campaign which really irritated me was fighter. On jest prawdziwym fajterem... that sounded really lame when a person in the age of 50s was blinking an eye to younger audience.

We do decline names ending in -o: okno - w oknie; Koło [miasto] - w Kole; Opoczno - w Opocznie; Maroko - w Maroku. We don't only if the names are foreign and not polonized: Ohio - w Ohio; Orinoko - w Orinoko; Sacramento - w Sacramento; Toronto - w Toronto. [But I like "w Toroncie"; it sounds really amusing!]