Cultural disparities shown through Polish and English languages

Subjective comparison. Do certain differences between languages reflect the differences in life style? Based on the history of development of Poland and the English speaking countries?

I am just having a lesson with my kid. We have come across the sentence: See you at school.
In Polish we would say: do zobaczenia w szkole/ in school. While in English it is better to say: at.

To me, at means: in/on the school grounds ....... so it can also be outside school, too.

Is it because Britain has a milder climate than Poland and students can meet in front of school and stay there for while, chatting and having fun before lessons? While in Poland, winters used to be very harsh in the past, it was cold and wet for 6 months in a year so students prefered to enter the school building immediately and meet inside.

Tell me if I think correctly.

Very close to Sapir-Whorf...

Wow, thanks. I had to check what you said about that S-W coz I didn`t know it. Yes, theirs is the idea which has bothered me for decades and I can say I support it.

Is there a Polish-language difference between "I went to school" - as in, "I went (in)to the school...as a student attending class" vs. "I went to school" - as in, "I went (in)to the school building...as a passerby using the restroom"? Can the standalone Polish sentence "Poszedłem do szkoły" be used in both scenarios? (for students and non-students alike?)

No. That implies walking to school. There are other verbs about attending or studying at a school.

Does Polish language have a "To go (to/towards, into)" infinitive that isn't "mode of transportation"-specific? Is the infinitive "Chodzić" (including certain prefixed variations) the default infinitive used, when "go, went, etc" is unspecified mode of transportation?

Short answer..... no

It implies walking but can also be a little less specific, and sometimes mean something closer to "to frequent'. For example going to the gym. It's got a couple of other meanings too.

Another
Poles like to be blunt and bossy when they speak. E.g., they sound more authoritative when they give advice: You must go to a doctor, that`s standard in Polish.

English is more relaxed here: You should go to a doctor. Why don`t you .... etc?

Why is it so? Have you ever wondered?

Yes thanks for that , it annoys the hell out of me , but when in Rome:) , plenty of Polish positives to overcome that little annoyance.

So you suggest you have experienced such straight-out attitudes here. Do you remember any examples?

Yes the one you just mentioned.

Who told you that you had to go to a doctor? Wasn`t it your Polish wife, btw? :)

there is no reason to boast about supporting the falsified hypothesis.

Thank you for your input, however, it doesn`t satisfy our expectations to learn sth new in this thread. Try harder. :):)

The ethinc character of Poles tends to speak for rigid rules in the use of language, so there is zero evolution or growth, in an already depleted semantics. Due to some cultural reasons Polish scholars have discouraged elesticity. The result is that all new words are foreign words. Many do not fit in well phonologically. Furthermore, Polish lexicon gives very little room for finessing expressions. So, the only way left around it is through elaboration, common among young students. This is why in general, the brighter the person the more verbiage you get to convey same content. This is a very restrictive environment for young people to grow any cognitive intelligence. The most obvious sign of Polish speakers lagging behind here is in the huge number of English terms and phrases without unique counterparts.

Can the language elasticity be controlled by scholars? I thought languages evolve naturally, on their own.

Have you tested it? Try pushing boundaries of Polish grammar on Twitter,. See what reaction you get.

Regardless of some long words you use what you claim its just a plain BS. If you wanted to express you opinion, you could have done so without all that nonsense you spew.


Meaning you suck in grammar and someone pointed it out to you?

examples?


(Almost?) all European languages have outsourced most of their word creation abilities to English. This is not a very good situation but it's hardly unique to Polish, I find modern Italian newspapers (for instance) almost unreadable because all of the poorly integrated English vocabulary (mostly used in ways they're not in English).

Every time I start analyzing the English preposition at, I start thinking of the Polish preposition u. This rarely mentioned u seems to have been pushed away to the outskirts of the language in the course of its development. For me, it seems it have an old historical kinship with the English preposition at, possibly reaching down to the Indo-European roots of both languages.

Several examples of the usage of this preposition in Polish:u lekarza, u kowala, u nas/was/ciebie/nich/mnie etc., kamień u szyi, u podnóża góry, kula u nogi, kobyłka u płotu, być u władzy, być u kresu wytrzymałości, u góry, u dołu. What do you think of this u, guys?



Basically yes - it implies walking to school. But there is also a specific use of that verb meaning "attending school". You may, for example, say: "Poszedł do szkoły w wieku pięciu lat" or "Janek poszedł do szkoły razem z Zosią". In the latter case, the meaning will depend on the context - either (1) Janek and Zosia were walking to school together, or (2) both of them started school at the same moment in time.


One such example may be the noun 'hate'. Foreign people who are not that deep into Polish, seeing 'hate' mostly in internet contexts, would be inclined to think that 'hate' is widely, almost universally used in Polish having pushed away the noun 'nienawiść'. In reality, the noun 'hate' is exclusively used in internet contexts and almost never used in other types of contexts. Thus, if you hear hate w stosunku do imigrantów, you instantly imagine the hate as is expressed on the internet rather than the more traditional type of hate exercized when attacking an immigrant verbally or physically. In the latter context, you will certainly use the expression przykład nienawiści do imigrantów and never przykład hate'u w stosunku do immigrantów. Thus 'hate' used in Polish would mean 'nienawiść internetowa' specifically.

Patronise; condescend, obfuscate, provaricate, egrandise, bully. Or, hybrids like: weaponised healthcare, identity politics, deep state... It wouldn't take long to fill a page of missing counterparts. Whole notions do not exist, not just words. Our underdeveloped semantics gives something away. What is it?

Unlike most European languages, English doesn't have a single body that decides 'what's correct' and what's not. Poland, sadly, has RJP which decides which forms are 'proper' (even if they are in wide use) and which are not.

Also, the decades of building national identity made people consider different forms of language as inferior, it's fought against in the schooling system ("use proper language!") and considered socially backward. even today big part of Poles do not consider Kashubian as a seperate langauge, but as a 'corrupted' Polish. Their attitudes towards Silesian are even worse.

And, then we start using foreign words to mean something altogether different: ambaras; ewentualnie, paragon. RubasznyRumcajs. - glad you see my point.

Poland is on the whole not as dysfunctional as English speaking countries?

Not sure what you wanted to communicate with those examples.

Another cultural disparity:

English proverb: let sleeping dogs lie vs Polish proverb: Do not call the wolf out of the forest.

It perfectly shows the wildlife situation in both countries : the last wolf of Great Britain was killed in 1680.

theguardian.com/science/animal-magic/2014/jul/21/last-wolf

In Poland, wolves used to be very common animals. Still are in some areas even today.

That's quite an essay...How about: let it be.
Isn't English superior in every possible way? Just asking...

Dude, Kashubian is a archaic Polish, Silesian is not even that. Anyone can understand Silesian and after being exposed to it for a week be fluent, those are just some reginal differences. WTF are you about?


Nope.

Rather not coz now you aretalking about the English translation while the original Polish proverb is shorter. Do you remember it? :):)