Polish words difficult to translate into English

ok. how do you say pogodnie in English??? or pogodny

weatherly?:D

Pogodny means fine? Pogody, means weather, as in Prognoza Pogody, which means Weather Forecast.

;)

pogodnie = the weather is fine, it is pogodnie.
adverb
say it with 1 word

pogodny; eg. pogodny dzień = ... day
adjective

i mean this word only in weather context

not cheerfully or something

You just did?


Yup, you did.

;)


You mean you want to say weatherly in Polish? I think you should ask Krysia or Justy, they know more Polish than I do.

:)

so does pogodnie count?

kilkanaście?

zapytany (as a noun)?

There's a very big difference between 'having a translation' and having a translation that matches the original and isn't awkward or over wordy or have other baggage. My most frequent problem in translating (Polish to English) is English not having a word that will fit a particular context.

this certainly can be true.

regarding "pogodnie", i always found it strange to hear Polish people say, "we had weather", but apparently in Polish, to say you "have weather" is enough to indicate "good weather", so pogodnie i guess would mean something along those lines.

i have a question:

how do you say, "it fits you" when talking about say a shirt or something, as in "the shirt is the right size".....?

people tell me, "ta koszula pasuje ci" but this seems to be more like, "that shirt suits you" as in it is a good shirt that matches you in some way, but not specifically related to size.

furthermore, what about basically anything else when you want to say that something is the right size for something else, like "that square peg doesn't fit into a round hole"....?

Of course you can, I just pointed out that you were wrong, because you said polish is different. I'm happy you've corrected it admiting your mistake.

neither has the exact meaning of życzliwość Fuzzy
actually neither is near in meaning


te buty na ciebie nie pasują - those shoes don't fit you
kożuch po dziadku nie pasował na niego (bo był za mały) -

so it's not tobie/ci nie pasuje but na ciebie nie pasują

Who? Kożuch, dziadek or him? (Edit: a little joke here)

Żul, menel have probably no counterparts in English. But these are slang words.

kożuch nie pasował bo był za mały - this is pretty obvious for a Polish person from the sentence

Kamienica in the shortest version is WALL-TO-WALL BUILDING

Quite often you can't translate word for word because it may make no sense. The context is very important.

zabytkowy/zabytek - listed buidling - because of it's historical or architectual value;
for example -there's a number of listed buildings in our town dating from baroque/ or 'a listed baroque buildings'
as for zabytkowy car/book etc - it will be simply 'antique'

wychowanie/wychowawczy - eduction/educational
Ministry of Education/higher education etc; zaklad wychowawczy (another Polish word for it is 'poprawczak') is equivalent to British 'young offenders centre'

reprezentacyjny - representative BUT
sala reprezentacyjna will be something along the 'assembly hall'/auditorium
fundusz reprezentacyjny - Representative Funds

Kamienica- 'townhouse'. of course most of it are currently divided into flats. But historically, there used to be one owner.

kilkanascie (between 10 and 20) /kilkadziesiat (over 20) - and one more - kilkaset (over 100) - you can use 'several'.
several thousands dollars, several hundred people etc

"Osiedle" is a word I never really seem to find a suitable English translation for.

there's no literal translation - except to say is a 'district' of a town usually

very good explanation is here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osiedle

Oh, I never realised it was also a type of district. I always thought it was just some set of blocks.

to compare it to a British system it will be something like a 'ward' but without the political implications of wards in the UK
basically it goes like this:
town/city is divided into dzielnice and dzielnica may have few 'osiedle' (depends how big is the town or city; some small ones dont have 'osiedle')

osiedle is very informal and the 'few blocks' you mention is more like a housing estate, but again - it's not the case in Poland because osiedle can be a mix of freehold housing and some social housing

osiedle is more about the geographical and historical split of town and cities

frd, if you go back to the original post about "kurwa", you will see the example sentence that is given by the poster, using the word over and over. for all those instances in his example, "fuck" is the direct translation, every time, which I demonstrated by re-writing it with "fuck".

for instances where "kurwa" is just thrown into a sentence just to be vulgar, to make it sound stronger, etc., which was the example the poster gave, "fuck" is the translation.

when did i say "polish is different"?

There are many forms of word "kurwa". And there several words (which I'd qouted earlier) not one.

You later said:


It contradicts these previous things you said hence my comment. I hope it makes sense :)

ok, let's go back, if it's even worth it. i'm sure our private little tiff is boring others.

Polish has one form of "kurwa", as far as I know. that is "kurwa". no "kurwa'ego", "kurwach", etc. etc.

jebac, pierdolic.....these are different words, not different forms of kurwa.

English has fuck, fucking, fucked, etc. More forms of the same word.

i was misleading when i wrote "different variations/meanings". what i meant by that is there are different ways of swearing that may be comparable to "fuck" or "kurwa" in both languages.

kumasz?

another thing worth noting is that variations of swears in English very often involve 2 or more words, whereas in polish, there is often times a prefix added to the word or of course a completely different word. for example:

if you take "fuck", you can say fuck off, get the fuck out, fuck up, fuck all, fucked over, fuck me, fuckin' A, etc. etc. They're spun off the same core swear word but have completely different meanings.

i'm far from fluent in Polish and could certainly learn a lot from people such as yourself frd, but i seem to be on the right track regarding this.

kurwa, wkurwiać, przykurwić, zkurwić, zakurwić, zkurwiały, wkurwiony, wykurwisty, kurwować, kurewka, kurwiki, kurwnięty, kurwnąć/przykurwnąć, kurwiszcze, wykurwiaj, zkurwiaj.

Probably many more.
As many forms as many prepositions :)

you forgot about kurwica - Jak patrzę jak oni pomalowali te ściany to mnie po prostu kurwica bierze. I get so fucking pissed off when I see how they painted these wall.

Do you use kilkadziesiąt for everything over 20 (between 20 & 100), or use specifically “kilkatrzydzieści”, “kilkaczterdzieści” etc. as well? In English, they use twenty-some, thirty-some... hundred-some etc. (Several is no good. I.e. several hundred = 200 and more, while hundred-some = from 101 to up to a very maximum of 199.)

I can’t really think of anything specific for kilkanaście, apart from "ten or so".

About the use of numbers and all those words with "kilka".
"Kilka", as such, stands for something like "a few( of)". It can be used instead of numbers 1-9. You could write every number between 30 and 40 as "trzydzieści kilka". Or the other way round: "kilka tuzinów" stands for "a few dozens". "Kilka tysięcy" - "a few thousands" and so on.

It's similar with "kilkanaście", meaning a number from 11 to 19. It could be used in a similar way to "kilka", but construction like "dwieście kilkanaście"(which would be something from 211 to 219) sounds a bit artificial, if you know what I mean. I would rather discourage such things.

What's more: kilkadziesiąt and kilkaset. The first one - from 20 to 99; second - about 200 to 999. Usage exactly like kilkanaście".

In case it is not written clearly enough, I will add some examples.
kilkaset tysięcy = kilkaset * tysiąc = ~200 000 to 999 999
kilka milionów = kilka * milion = ~2 000 000 to 9 999 999
kilkanaście setek = kilkanaście * sto = 1 100 to 1 999
stokilkadziesiąt = sto + kilkadziesiąt = ~120 to 199

I'm really sorry for my mistakes, both grammatical and lexical. I've been living in Poland all my life, so I know that language perfectly. But unfortunatelly I can't say the same about my English :P

kombinować???

to scheme?

Doesn't to scheme have a negative connotation? It doesn't - necessarily - in Polish.

I never know how to translate loser

To scheme can be slightly negative, yes. You can only really describe it, it's hard to directly translate. They know how to 'work the system'. That's kombinować too.

Loser is often just loser in Polish.

Loser is often nieudacznik in Polish.

why not translate it as cienias - it doesn't always fit but does fit in many usages