Language / Funny/strange/deviant words in the Polish language [35]

I'd like to make some side remarks prompted by the etymologies quoted by tomekcatkins in the first message. First, according to Polish Wikipedia pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasol the Polish word "parasol" comes from Italian "parasole":

"Słowo parasol pochodzi od włoskiego parasole co dosłownie znaczy słońcochron."
In turn, the Italian word "parasole" is composed by "para-", a common prefix meaning "to shelter" and "sole" (sun).

I don't know if Italian "parasole" is truly an Italian invention or if it was taken by some other (necessarily romance) language. In any case, as far as I know, the common words for it in Spanish are quitasol or sombrilla.

About "doccia", according to the Garzanti dictionary, it comes from Latin "ductione(m)", in meaning (water) duct/pipe [naturally, ductionem does ultimately come from "ducere"=to conduct/lead, so the quoted etymology is not incorrect].

Turning to Polish, something a noticed in my little experience with it is that it sometimes (often?) uses different words than most other European languages, including slavic ones.

Take, for example, the word "moon"/księżyc; its name in other slavic languages is (looking at wikipedia):

Polish: Księżyc
Czech: Měsíc
Slovak:Mesiac
Croatian: Mjesec
Slovene: Luna
Bulgarian: Луна
Russian: Луна
Ukrainian: Місяць
Belorussian: Месяц
Macedonian: Месечина

A part from Polish, we can see in all these languages the occurrence of the Latin (and modern Italian, Spanish, French etc.) root "Luna" or of a slavic root exemplified by e.g. Czech Měsíc. Why not in Polish? What's the etymology of księżyc ?

Language / Etymologia łuny [8]

Thanks a lot Ania! Very prompt answer! Only, I have some problems with the meaning of some of the text, it's a bit cryptic to me... These things are clear:

prus.=Prussian language
staro-baktr.=old Bactrian language
łac.=Latin language
grec=Greek language
psałterz= the Book of Psalms (bible), salter
Bartosz Paprocki (1543-1614)=Polish writer

What do "w narzeczach losna" and "przed n wypadło ch z ks" mean...?

Anyway the answer seems to be yes, Polish łuna and Latin luna are cognates. In fact, as you mentioned, Latin luna comes from the same root of lux (light) , so in this sense Polish łuna seems very close to the most ancient meaning.

Language / Etymologia łuny [8]

Thank you Ania :-) What dictionary is it you are using?
I also found out what "Losna" probably is... apparently it was the Moon godness in Etruscan mythology (is this dictionary made for cryptic crosswords aficionados?!)

The next question that springs to mind is if the word "luna" used in other slavic languages (Russian, etc) is cognate with łuna or a late Latin import...

Language / Polish was chosen the HARDEST LANGUAGE in the world to learn... :D [1558]

Every now and then this old tread comes back to life...
Saying that Polish is "the hardest language in the world" is nonsense for a whole variety of reasons. Just to name a few:

n.0 The thing that annoys me the most is the spirit underlying so many of the "Polish is the hardest language" comments. These comments seem to all come from people having little (or no) knowledge not of Polish but also of world languages in general, often including their own native language!

The line of reasoning I imagine is a follows. Someone has a quick look at Polish grammar and finds it difficult. Ergo, Polish must be the most difficult language in the world. An extreme case of hasty generalisation!

n.1 Hardest for whom? For speakers of slavic languages Polish is certainly not that hard. From a practical point of view "hardeness" is relative to the language(s) one already speaks. This objection is discussed at length for example by Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_difficult_language

n.2 It is true that from a theoretical (as opposed to practical) point of view it is possible to argue that some languages are structurally more complex than some others. For example, I do believe that in several objective ways Esperanto, say, is more straightforward than Polish. In this respect it is also reasonable to argue that written, non-literary English is "easier" than Polish. That said, this observation may be of relevance in a "easiest/ most consistent language in the world" but is irrelavant to the "hardest language" one.

Even confining ourselves to a specific language group for learners (say, English speakers, or speakers of other non-slavic European languages) in the world there are many, many, HARD languages to learn. As someone already mentioned, languages spoken by native Americans are considered very difficult. Languages spoken by few people and/or for which good teaching material is scarce are also more "difficult" from a practical point of view (e.g., the Somalian language). And even if we take into consideration only major languages there are many which are in all probability harder to learn for European speakers than Polish; just to name a few: Japanese, Arabic, Chinese, Hungarian, Korean, Vietnamese... I know little about them but certainly they aren't easy.

n.3 Slavic languages all have a similar structure. There's really no reason to single out Polish as definitely more difficult than, say, Czech or Ukrainian. On the other hand I can see several reasons why Polish could be (marginally) easier than some other slavic languages: uses the latin alphabet, there's a good deal of teaching material, there are little variations in accent, the position of the tonic accent is predictable... e.g., Slovene seems harder in this respect.

Finally, some people displaying a good deal of arrogance and ignorance had a pop at Polish orthography.
The Polish orthografic system, although not "perfect", is pretty consistent and predictable.
For example, some time ago, for fun, I wrote a computer program which translates Polish words into their phonetic transcription using the IPA. The program is entirely rule-based, without any built-in dictionary for transcriptions.

After some tweaking with the voicing/devoicing rules the program works pretty well in almost all cases. The only cases where it can get confused is when the -dzi- cluster occurs in words such as podziemny where it should be d+ź and not dź. A similar situation occurs also for the cluster -dż- which can be either the affricate sound dż or d+ż. However I believe dż is found only in verbal forms and in semi-assimilated foreign nouns so that the ambiguity can be resolved with a little thought.