"żółwik" - the same word??

Some funny things I've noticed in Polish recently...

tortoise - żółwik



turtle - żółwik

fingers - palce

toes - palce (u nogi.. I know, but still palce! :))

and finally, the straw that broke the camel's back..

slug - ślimak

How can it be ? :)

I suppose the Welsh language has the same word for leeks (pory) and daffodils (żonkile/narcyz) - so each to their own.
The fingers and toes one really shook me up, I have to confess.
Toes have so much personality, in fact, in my imagination it's almost impossible to imagine having the same word for any of these things. Snails are so beautiful, and slugs.. bluurrghhh... turtles so elegant and free, tortoises such old codgers..

Language is interesting.

Any examples in the reverse? or more examples of this phenomenon?

And so, what is your question?

Polish verbs would be the best example, there are many Polish verbs but sometimes only one corresponding English verb:

Know
Znać
Umieć
Wiedzieć

I know him.
Znam go.

It know how to do it.
Umiem to robić.

I know about...........
Wiem o............

Sorry for any mistakes. :-)

hop skip jump, leap.. skakać

throw, hurl, fling, chuck, toss, lob.. rzucać

I might be wrong..

what was your question again?!!!!

feeling really disheartened.. i know wiedziec and umiec. znac? sto procent jestem glupia.! ide spac, bo jestem glupia.

Znasz ją? Znasz tę piosenkę? Znasz się na samochodach? Znasz język polski? ;)


You are very smart person. I'm always very impressed with your Polish, even when you write late at night :)
I wish to have such a great ability in learning a language as you have pam, I'm honest!

Pan Zuk Gnojowy

sorry and excuse me

zip and castle and lock

right and law

I often feel the same when I don't know something, which is often but it is the wrong way to think.

Don't be so hard on yourself, learning Polish isn't going to be easy, you are able to speak which is a huge deal, everyday you are adding more to what you already know and are getting better.

Chin up.

dziekuje bardzo. i was supposed to be going to bed earlier but pf is ever so slightly addictive, and now cant sleep... lol!! i will never understand polish.the grammar is simply horrendous!! i really like this site, but i wish it was more positive. am not a smart person, ale jestem uparta......

Yes PF is addictive, this is a problem for me now because I spend more time on PF than actually learning Polish :-(

You are a smart person, quit PF and learn Polish :-)

Don't worry about the grammar, learn a little at a time and eventually you will know enough of it to have no serious problems.

That’s half the battle right there. Keep at it!

you dont have a problem with polish. how are your studies going? would be interested to know.i wish you loads of luck, but i dont think you need it too much. you are doing great!!

Pam and Catsoldier, it's not about understanding everything. None of us foreign language learners understand everthing. It's about understanding a context and keywords. When I read PF I have open a dictionary site on the other lap of my browser to check words which I don't understand or I'm not sure of (and I'm learning English since I was 11 years old!) I learned this way so many new words and idiomatic/slang experssions. Don't be discouraged so easly. A process of learning a foreign language is a commitment for many years, Rome wasn't built in a day... :)

Many languages have similarly striking homophone/homonyme overlap, such as in Turkish, where often ONE word will have up to EIGHT separate. i.e. unrelated, meanings. No specific example comes to mind, but I can vaguely recall that one word for "teacher" simultaneously has the same definition for "sparkplug"!

:-))

How's that unrelated! Us teachers are the sparkplugs for the engines of your mind :)
It makes perfect sense to me.

English is pretty evil for homophones.

to 2 too too tu-tu :)

rain rein reign
hey hay
caught in court
itd

pożyczać (komuś) - to lend
pożyczać (od kogoś) - to borrow

Good point!

Indeed, teachers are a sparkplugs for our minds, yet other instances may not be quite so "transparent"LOL

Bartholome, German also has "leihen" = to lend as well as to borrow:-)

Slowly to be honest but I do read a bit on the internet and check what the words mean like AK, later I come across them again and sometimes they stick in my mind. Speaking is a big problem for me.

Recently I have begun to like this site, there is usually a short piece of news that interests me. Usually the trams have some problem.

When I was looking up what atak padaczki means I found this video, I only understand some words but I understand what it is about because of the context etc.



Best of luck with your learning and don't give up hope, you are a lot better than you realise.

Great example! I guess this shows the significance of the inflection/przypadki etc

i still wonder about the words bug and worm. they all seem to be called "robak" which is pretty ridiculous.

Colloqually they are robaki both, but properly it should be owady or insekty for bugs and robaki for worms.

ożenić się - to marry (a woman)
wyjść za mąż - to marry (a man)
poślubić - to marry
pobrać się - to marry

But the real problem is with this:
ślub - wedding (the ceremony)
wesele - wedding (the party)

I pretty much believe what you call worms in English are actually various not really related groups that only share similar shape - then some of these worms become bugs in their adulthood - and you say it's much more logical in English

This I think is in the domain of sociolinguistic. I compared German, English and Serbo croatian (Russian a bit too) and differences are surprising. We seem to have more develop some, for us more relevant concepts , hence many synonyms or words that slightly differ in meaning. Same examples of much more elaborated concepts in English in German compared to my mother tongue.

People in cold ares have words denoting different types of snow, other types of sand, some tribal society (I forgot the name) knew only for three words for colors , black, red and white I think, and researchers gave them various colors, they categorized them in existing three categories, all solved the problem. Their lack of more subtle discrimination was explained with irrelevance of the differentiation for their survival in some jungle.

Anyway, interesting way to discover the worlds behind the languages.

if that were true, and it's not, it still wouldn't be as bizarre.

i don't want to get into some silly english/polish comparison war here, but a.k. (assuming a native speaker) just confirmed. when people are having a convo, they say robaki both for worms and bugs. that's way too much of a generalization.

To think that they'd say, "I like to use worms when I go fishing" and "When I walked through the forest, I kept having to swipe away worms out of my face and hair"......is just kinda weird. The first time I heard it, I was like wait, I don't see any worms......and that would be gross......

Goethe in his study of Ancient Greek sources famously discovered that they had no word for the color blue. When Homer sang of the sea he called it wine colored. Anthropological research has now revealed that terms for colors seem to follow the same pattern of progressive diversification worldwide, regardless of the terrain inhabited, The order of linguistic color differentiaton ascribes words to black and white first and then to red and then to yellow and then to green and then finally to blue. Blue is always the last color to receive its own word when it becomes linguistically differentiated from green or black.

the thing is colloquial 'robak', 'robal' etc is not equal to scientific term 'robak' which is more or less the same as English scientific 'worm' - and from a short search I have found that many people call specific beetle larvae 'worms' which they are not from scientific point of view - I am not sure but I guess those 'grubs' you find in in apples or plums (not those bought in a supermarket because these are extensively sprayed with chemistry) are typically called 'worms' in English and they are moth larvae (and not worms from scientific point of view) - one thing they certainly share is the shape - one thing Polish 'robale' have in common is they are small and insect-like

Poles mean a small creature, there is no really a need to distinguish if this is a bug or an insect.

For those who are learning there is also another word for them - the most frequently used - robal. You won't find it in any dictionary ('cos it's too colloquial), but nevertheless it's worth to be known.

Robale mnie obsiadły, brrr. Ze śmieci wypełzły robale.

Typically, certain cultures only have words or equivalents for known quantities within their own social orbit! That Greeks had no known expression for the color blue shouldn't be all that surprising when one stops to consider that Arabic, for instance, has no common word for "privacy", (as the latter doesn't really translate into their culture!) anymore than Russian has a word for personal ownership since the latter was politcally/sociologically outside of the average Soviet's lexion for nearly sixty years:-)

if they intend to just say "I saw some nasty little creature thing" than I'll buy that but how do you specify that it was in fact "worms" that the fisherman was using as bait?

you can be more specific in this case simply (as robal robak is quite general) - in case of angler's worms they are colloquially called 'glizdy' and traditionally and scientifically 'dżdżownice'

if a Polish person doesn't know how to specifically call some little creature they will surely say 'robaki' 'robale' 'robactwo'

when an angler says 'idziemy nakopać robaków' you will know he means 'dżdżownice' out of your knowlegde aboout angling (though 'białe robaki' in angler's speak (white worms) are carrion flies larvae and you don't dug'em out normally )