Week 2 (23-29.03.2015) Ponglish.

Ponglish or how Polish language brejka wszystkie rule.

First of all, what is Ponglish? As defined by Wikipedia it is the product of mixing Polish and English language elements within the same speech production. It’s essentially taking an English word or expression and morphing it so it sounds vaguely Polish.

In this article I will be looking at it more broadly.

There are two components of it - stick-togetherness and immersion.

Without the stick-togetherness there is no way to create an entire new vernacular - a community is what allows new words to evolve. People on their own, isolated from their countrymen, simply adapt to speaking English and revert back to pure Polish when going home.

When you are immersed in the culture, using English most of the day, it’s getting natural you find it easier to express certain ideas in English. There might exist a perfectly serviceable Polish equivalent but it doesn’t feel as natural as the one you’re used to using daily. People around you will understand anyway so you take the lazy way out. This is how phrases like “Ide topapnac moja ojsterke.” happen.

“My polish plumber is great!” “That’s redundant.”

Ponglish is mostly associated with Poles living abroad for a good reason. For all the reasons listed above quite a few expressions can be confusing for a new-comer. There are hundreds of words you need to know in order to communicate effectively. They are quite easy to learn as 99% of them stem from an English word.

In the course of doing research I’ve stumbled upon many interesting expressions such as

weź hamer i nafiksuj płot

brejkam rule

dżampnij do szopa

In fact, most examples of Ponglish that I could find on the internet are like this. I find them very funny but they are as true to reality as the old humorous Polish to Czech translations:

wiewiórka - drevni kocur

chwilowo nieobecny - momentalne ne przitomni

gołąb – dachovy zasranec

They are entertaining but no one I know speaks like that.

For example (sorry, BBC doesn’t allow embedding of their videos)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7500077.stm

Drinkowac? For real?

The truth is that while people use quite a few “imported” words like ojsterka (Oyster card), rent (well... rent), rota (roster - work schedule, not a cock) or bizi (busy) very often people will just drop Polish altogether and straight up start speaking English. Usually this switch will occur in the middle of a sentence.

“Moj szef was obnoxious kiedy do mnie mowil” is a much more likely sentence than “Moj szef byl abnokszysowy kiedy do mnie mowil”.

Let me tell you - when you rely on occasionally using English to express yourself, going to Poland and losing the convenience of being able to just assume everyone will understand you in English can be equally eye-opening and frustrating. Speaking of Poland...

We’re all living in America.

OŁ NOŁ indeed, mr Bottle Cap.

source:me

A whole another  part of the issue is the use of Ponglish in Poland itself. Poles abroad have their own little language but hardly ever is it displayed anywhere. If you go to a Polish shop everything is written in pure Polish with little to no influence of English. It’s like the shopkeepers want to keep their establishments little enclaves; homes far from home.

Reversely, I feel like in Poland it’s cool to just go ahead and write stuff in English.

I guess Wyprzedaz wouldn’t fit on the sign.

source:http://keychecktranslation.com/

NOWOSC

source:http://keychecktranslation.com/

Those examples don’t bother me that much. Or at all. I mean, they are unapologetically in English. People might think it’s cool and buy more sandwiches.

What the grumpy old man in me dislikes is forcefully polonizing words when there really is no need for it. 

Please examine exhibit A:

SANDWICZE I SALATKI

source: me

please excuse the quality; photo taken with a potato.

and exhibit B:

Pajamas

source: me

Those two pictures depict two stages of assimilating a word.

Pizama is, I think, already considered a fully Polish word. It’s pronounced the way it’s written and it follows all the grammar rules. You don’t think of the word pajamas when you say it. No issues there - that’s how we have been acquiring new words - telefon (telephone), budyn (budino) or even nastolatek (translation of teenager) come to mind.

On the other hand there is sandwich, a word that follows all the same grammar rules (e.g. sandwiche, sandwichowi) but is definitely not Polish. We’ve just agreed that we’re going to use it like it was. Maybe in a couple of years it will morph to sandłicz. I would be interested to see if we went through a process like that with all the other words with English origins we use (I can't recall ever seeing "smartphone na abonament" though; it went straight to "smartfon").

There are many words that we take for granted and don’t try to assimilate - fitness and snowboarding come to mind.

But then “mityng” is a word so anything can happen given enough time I suppose.

Last thing I wanted to write about is another way Polish is being infiltrated by English.

Let’s see a show of hands of people who think there is something wrong with this image:

“This comment made our day”. One of my favourite idioms translated directly to Polish. According to google it’s quite commonly used. But it’s only one example that stands out because it’s relatively new. How about “wziac taksowke” (to take a cab) zamiast “pojechac taksowka”. There are many, many more - “scena zbroni”(crime scene) and “personalny trener”(personal trainer) to name a few.

In this post I wrote about more issues than what’s traditionally considered to be Ponglish but I feel they are all related to one another. It’s like I wrote at the beginning - Poland is bombarded by the English culture and we can’t help but incorporate parts of it into our own. I don’t think there is anything inherently wrong about that state of affairs, I just wish it was done in more (or at all) considered way.

What do you guys think? Am I just crying wolf and the article would’ve been just as accurate 50 years ago if we had changed English to Russian and 150 years ago with German?

Or is it somewhat different today? Is it because this time it’s voluntary?

Have you got any examples from your life? Are you guilty of using English grammar constructions in everyday conversations or are you trying to be purists?

And, perhaps most importantly, how creepy is that kid in the amniotic bag, right!?