russian...........
i think,unfortunatly a lot of what Poles presume to be Polish is actually Russian or, plain "generic" slavic
I concur with an exception of the Russian bit, I wouldn’t put too much faith in that as they themselves are confused as to who they truly are, just recently they wanted to reinvent themselves and called themselves Soviets :). While I don’t dispute the fact that those words came to English directly from Russian language (no argument there) the etymology of those words is a different matter so I’ll leave at generic Slavic. Are we all happy now :)
Influence of a foreign language on the English language is not confined exclusively to the words borrowed as this has been the focus of this discussion thus far. Proverbs also influence the language. Here’s an example of a few that made its way from Polish to English.
Man cannot divide beauty into dollars.
The devil alone can cheat the Hebrew.
Who places his confidence in a woman is a fool.
A common word is always correct.
Better under the beard of the old than the whip of the young.
Other angles you might consider exploring as your talking point is literature or English authors with Polish roots like Joseph Conrad etc.
