Polish is a Slavic language written out using Latin letters.
Would be so much shorter with a щ
laughs in Welsh
Can’t say I’ve ever been to Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.
…but I can say its name!
(maybe)
Po twojej pysznej zupie
Nie ruszam dupy z klopa
Ta zupa była z mlekiem;
Na mleko mam alergię
Po twojej pysznej zupie
Nie ruszam dupy z klopa
Ta zupa była z mlekiem;
Na mleko mam alergię
…
Tylko jedno w głowie mam
koksu 5 gram
Hey, do you maybe know the Polish alphabet song? I was searching for it on the internet forever, but I don’t speak Polish so I could not google the correct phrase. It started like this (reconstructed from oral lore using Google Translate):
Berlin miastem w Niemczech leże
burdel - miejsce dla młodzieży
guzik to jest częścią ubrania
gówno jest produktem srania
dynia to jest do jedzenia
dupa to jest do pierdzenia
…
And it supposedly continued all the way to letter Z.
I’m sorry but I’m Lithuanian so I don’t really consume polish media. Good luck in your search tho :3
Po twojej pysznej zupie
Nie ruszam dupy z klopa
Ta zupa była z mlekiem;
Na mleko mam alergię
Ja jestem Kurwa. Dziękuje bardzo.
I feel like we’d all be much more on board with this if Poland wasn’t in the shadow of Hungary right next door looking like somebody’s cat had a serious episode on top of a keyboard.
Did Hungary annex Slovakia again or what?
I genuinely stopped to think whether “next door” would prompt somebody to get pedantic about this and decided to keep it for expediency and to make the sentence flow better.
I’m not even mad about it, honestly.
We used to have a server at my university which a polish guy set up. It received the name brzeczyszczykiewich. We decided that the server was secure enough by name, so we only put a trivial password on it for remote connection.
Are you sure it wasn’t “brzeczyszczykiewicz” (difference in last two letters)? Otherwise it seems like a little typo, which, to be fair, would be a good idea to keep it safe from Polish people haha
I’m completely sure, like 100%, fully positive without a single doubt… that I misspelled it and I would never be able to access the server again.
Can we also get some translation or something. This might shock you, but not all of us are polish.
There is no translation, it’s just a hard to pronounce Polish surname.
Whew. Good. I thought it was just me.
It’s not spelling, it’s the grammar and ortography that would make you want to peel your skin off.
Like the couple dozen ways why can say “two”.
It’s not just numbers. Almost all verbs are like that.
Say “jumping” - skakać
I am jumping - skaczę I was jumping (male) - skakałem I was jumping (female) - skakałam you are jumping (singular) - skaczesz you were jumping (singular male) - skakałeś you were jumping (singular female) - skakałaś you are jumping (plural) - skaczecie you were jumping (plural male) - skakaliście you were jumping (plural female) - skakałyście they are jumping - skaczą they were jumping (male) - skakali they were jumping (female) - skakały
And so on and so on. You have no chance of remembering all of that - you either learn the rules and how to apply them, or you fail at polish language
Doesn’t all of these additionally change depending on the casus?
Note: They have seven of them. SEVEN.
You mean declension - yeah, there are seven. For every single noun.
Oh, yeah, you’re right. It just tempus and stuff. For example:
skaczę. Przeskakuję. Odskakuję. Podskakuję. Przeskoczyłem. Odskoczyłem. Podskoczyłem.
Thank you for the hint, though.
At least these all have the same radical. Here’s the different radicals you can use in French for the verb “be”:
- Être
- Je suis
- Tu es
- Nous sommes
- Nous étions
- Je fus
- Tu seras
- Soyons
The only common point between some of those is the letter “S”, which is not even part of the infinitive.
(Not all tenses are represented because at least they share the radical with that list, but like Polish we have a bunch of tenses and the verb changes with plurality and pronoun).
Anyway I don’t fucking know why everyone glamorizes French because as a native speaker please do not attempt to learn it, you will just hurt yourself.
The verb “be” (in Spanish we have two of them btw, apparently it’s confusing as hell for foreigners details at the bottom) it’s usually very irregular in a ton of languages. I suppose because it’s one of the prime verbs and thus usage brings change.
(“To be in a a place” -> «estar», “To be something” -> «ser»).
Also, French (while having picky pronunciation rules I don’t think it’s that bad. Sure it sounds as if you were nasally congested but I like it. (Learned a bit in high school). As alsmot any other language I consider it to be better than the phonetical mess that it’s English.
Bro, why can’t you have some fucking sense??
I should have picked philosophy and linguistics instead of CS.
((This coment is a mess and I don’t have the energy to improve it, sorry))
Generally French speakers don’t consider English to be phonetically messy. Because when you pronounce every word with the thickest French accent known to man without any regard for correctness, suddenly the phonology becomes quite regular! (Side-effect being that native English speakers may not understand what the fuck a French speaker is saying, but that’s never stopped French speakers who famously disregard the English’s opinion on… well everything)
What’s really annoying about French besides the needlessly complicated tenses is that it had a bunch of already archaic orthographic and grammatical rules 300 years ago or so, and at that point the aristocracy decided to freeze it in place. I won’t get on another rant about the Académie française but if a French word has an overly complicated spelling given its pronunciation, it’s these guys’ fault who have refused to enact any real reform since the early 1800s despite calls for it since at least the 1700s. Despite it supposedly being their jobs.
A notch worse than German - that’s actually impressive. German only distinguish between genders for (pro)nouns.
Two, couple, pair, twin, duo, dyad, tandem, twain. That’s all I got
Not what I meant. Those are synonyms. I mean specifically “two” in English. Dwa, dwie, dwóch, dwoje, dwójka, dwóm, dwojgu… they all translate to two.
Cunningham’s law
That sounds even worse than Japanese’s counting system.
The orthography is OK. It spams ⟨z⟩ for the same reason why Romance and Germanic languages spam ⟨h⟩ - too few letters, too many sounds, got to use digraphs.
The phonetic and phonemic part is like your typical European language. As in, “WE NEED A NEW SOUND! OTHERWISE WE CAN’T REPRESENT THE KITCHEN SINK DRIPPING!!!”
The morphology is complicated, but the alternative is to make the syntax become a hellish mess. Like Mandarin or English. Language is complicated, no matter which one.
Then there’s Italian. We have less letters than other European languages (we don’t have k,j,w,x,y) and we still manage to avoid shit like “thoroughly” or spamming letters. We have accents, but use them way less than in Spanish and no special accents or characters like ñ ç č ß å ø ö etc
Once you understand the rules is probably one of the easier languages to spell and pronounce
Italian is the exception that proves the rule. The orthography is well-designed (transparent, without too much fluff), but not even then it could avoid ⟨ch gh⟩ for /k g/ before ⟨e i⟩, so it could reserve ⟨c(i) g(i)⟩ for /tʃ dʒ/.
It’s all related: modern European languages typically have a lot more sounds than Latin did, so Latin itself never developed letters for them. Across the Middle Ages you saw a bunch of local solutions for that, like:
- Italian - refer to the etymology to pick a digraph, then solve the /k tʃ g dʒ/ mess with ⟨h⟩.
- Occitan - spam ⟨h⟩ everywhere. (Portuguese borrowed from it.)
- English - spam ⟨h⟩ too.
- Hungarian - spam ⟨y⟩ instead.
- Polish - spam ⟨z⟩, plus a few acute accents (Polish has the retroflex series to handle too, not just the palatal/palato-alveolar like the four above)
English syntax hard?
There’s a lot of issues with English. Most of them are for using loanwords without phonetically changing how they’re spoken in the English alphabet. Then people wonder why they’re spelled like Ledoux and sound like Lehdoo.
Romance. Romance languages are the fucking reason you word slurring tongue twats.
But hey, at least we’re not Turkik.
English syntax hard?
Yes, it is. It has 9001 rules for the allowed order of the words, 350 for each, and you have lots of those small words with grammatical purpose that don’t really convey anything, but must be there otherwise your sentence sounds broken. Refer to my examples with yes/no questions and *blue famous raincoat (instead of “famous blue raincoat”).
That happens because any language is complex, there’s no way around. You can dump that complexity in the word order, like English does, or dump it in different word forms, like Polish; but you won’t be able to get rid of it.
There’s a lot of issues with English. Most of them are for using loanwords without phonetically changing how they’re spoken in the English alphabet.
That’s something else, the spelling. It’s a fair point when it comes to contrast with Polish though - sure, the ⟨z⟩ might look odd, but it is consistent, most of the time you can correctly predict how you’re supposed to pronounce a word in Polish.
English syntax hard?
Yes. Sequence of tenses. It’s harder than Latin. As in, what the hell does “future-in-the-past” mean?
Or tenses (+aspect+mood) in general, I guess. You guys have too many of them.As for the orthography, you know what is to blame. The Great Vowel Shift.
Germanic languages spam ⟨h⟩
? English? German has way less h. Ok, more ch, but that’s for different reasons, same reasons as ck.
I was kind of painting a broad stroke, but you’re right - German uses mostly ⟨ch⟩ and ⟨sch⟩. Should’ve said “English” alone.
Just come up with new letters, Lithuanian has 9 (ą, ę, ė, į, ų, ū, č, š, ž) extra letters. If a small language can do it, so can English.
It’s actually easier to come up with a decent orthography for a language with a small number of speakers, as it depends on getting “everyone” (more like “enough people so the opposers can be safely ignored”) on the same page. Doubly true when it’s a language associated with a single government, because once you get 2+ governments into the bag they tend to force distinctions where there’s none.
For English there’s an additional issue, the lack of any sort of regulating body like the VLKK. The natives also seem to have a weird pride against diacritics (kind of funny as English spams apostrophes, but OK, not going to judge it).
I mean, yes and no.
You are assuming that Lithuanian language became formalised when Lithuania was united under one government. Instead, most of language formalisation happened between 1880s and 1920s, when Lithuanian speaking population was actually divided between Prussian and Tzarist Russian empires. While most of the people lived in Tzarist Russia, writing in Lithuanian in Latin script was forbidden there.
Instead, books in Latin script were printed in Prussia and distributed in Russia illegally. A handful of people like J. Basanavičius and V. Kudirka ended up in charge of printing most of those books and it made it easy to set language standards. Achieving such a monopoly with a bigger language would be much more difficult.
That is also why formal Lithuanian is based on one ethnic dialect that was spoken in Prussia.
I’m not assuming when the formalisation happened. I’m saying that it’s harder to get everyone to agree on how the orthography is supposed to be, when 2+ governments and populations associated with them are forcing distinctions even when there’s none.
You’re right that it is not impossible however, and your historical example shows it. Historically Lithuanian is the exception that proves the rule because
- the local population didn’t see themselves as Prussians or Russians, but as Lithuanians, so there was a community even across borders; and
- neither Prussia nor Imperial Russia were backing specific varieties of Lithuanian. They were backing German and Russian instead.
And nowadays it’s simply not an exception. (I was referring mostly to modern times.)
Instead, books in Latin script were printed in Prussia and distributed in Russia illegally. A handful of people like J. Basanavičius and V. Kudirka ended up in charge of printing most of those books and it made it easy to set language standards. Achieving such a monopoly with a bigger language would be much more difficult.
That’s a great tidbit of info, and it’s related to what I’m saying: those Lithuanian speakers in Russia only accepted the books as suitable for their language, even if they were printed in Prussia, because they didn’t see it as coming from “those other guys”.
[Thank you for the info, by the way! Across the whole comment, not just that paragraph.]
You’re welcome.
If you want to read more about the history of Lithuania and surrounding countries and their nation formation, a great start would be Timothy Snyder’s book “The Reconstruction of Nations”, he’s the most popular historian of the region who is not from the region.
Syntax is for nerds. I prefer a vibes based language.
That’s how it always starts, then the nerds get hold of it
the alternative is to make the syntax become a hellish mess. Like Mandarin or English.
Now hang on just a second. English is fine. You just have to memorize or correctly guess the etymology of whatever word it is you’re trying to spell/pronounce in order to get … oh, okay, I think I see the problem now.
Ah, what you’re saying is spelling. Syntax is word order, obligatory words, stuff like this. English syntax is a maze, or how programmers would call it, spaghetti code.
For example, here’s how to ask a yes/no question in…
- Latin - attach -ne after the relevant word. (Note: Latin has no word for “yes”, but still has this sort of question.)
- Spanish - why bother? Intonation is enough.
- Polish - start the sentence with “czy”.
- German - shift the verb to the start of the sentence (first position).
- English - if the verb belongs to a small list of exceptions, do it as in German. However most verbs refuse this movement to the first position, so for those you need to spawn a dummy support “do”, then let it steal the conjugation from the leftmost verb, and then shift that “do” instead. Noting that semantic “do” also refuses the movement, so it still requires a support “do”, yielding questions like “did you do this?”
Then there’s the adjective order. In Latin for example it’s just a “…near the noun? Whatever, just don’t be ambiguous.” Polish is probably like Latin in this. English though? Quantity or number, then quality or opinion, then size, then age, then shape, then colour, then material or place of origin, then purpose or qualifier, then the noun. And don’t you dare to switch them - “your famous blue raincoat” is a-OK, but *“your blue famous raincoat” makes you sound like a maniac.
In Latin for example it’s just a “…near the noun? Whatever, just don’t be ambiguous."
It doesn’t need to be remotely close to the noun lol
Though Latin syntax can get annoying sometimes (when do I use the subjunctive? What’s the correct negation? Perfect or imperfect… maybe pluperfect? Which noun is this random genitive modifying?), it does make sense eventually. I guess that is also true for English, but I still mess up the tenses sometimes.
It doesn’t need to be remotely close to the noun lol
You can, but it isn’t that common, it’s even considered a form of hyperbaton (messing around with word order).
Note that those distinctions that you mentioned (subjunctive vs. indicative, the right negation, perfect vs. imperfect) are all handled through the morphology in Latin, not the syntax (as in English). And yes Latin morphology can get really crazy, just like Polish or any other “old style” Indo-European language.
Think you this some kind of joke?
(What do you mean you don’t want to sound like an Elizabethan or earlier?!)
…my lizard brain is now confused, because it really your question word order as in German to interpret wants, thus still for the ending “is” waiting is.
I think “think you that this is some kind of joke” is more grammatically correct (from a prescriptive POV, anyway), but I’ve seen similar sentences as the above before.
the alternative is to make the syntax become a hellish mess
The alternative is Czech.
A Polish colleague of mine once accidentally picked Czech in an online work training exercise and then spent the next 30 minutes giggling to himself. I asked him afterwards what was up “Czech sounds like baby talk”
So I’ve heard. The feeling is mutual, oddly enough.
Czech babies just out there speaking English. This is why we’re falling behind. We’ve gotta stop starting our babies on Czech
Have you ever seen transcribed Georgian?
I remember some video where somebody was showing an example of either a word or a sentence & showed: “mbrtskvni”
this language would make you think they have to pay a fee for using vowels
I don’t think you could get the speakers of all the European languages to agree on which one is normal.
but we can all agree hungarian isn’t
It has to be French right?
Inappropriate use of vowels, 10 yard penalty for the defense
10 yard penalty for the defense
We don’t know what that means. Can you please talk european?
Parce-que non, s’il vous plait, je ne parle pas francais
Omelette
duau fromage.
Sure you can everyone in france know theirs is the only real language. Don’t believe me? Just ask someone from france.
You could if we had won. /s
And when polish gets drunk, I always laugh because it changes a bit. They said its imposible to read polish subtitle on films, that is why they have a monoton voice reading out loud. They were the naughtiest in babylon 🤣
That’s actually not that bad. Definitely better than dubbing. The voiceover lets You understand everything said, but You can focus on the picture unlike with subtitles. And the monotone voice over the dialogue lets You hear the emotions of the actors.
Oh this is really cool. I didn’t know that! So foreign films brought to Poland are spoken over with a Polish translator, just like you’d have at the UN? That way you can hear the original actors and the translated dialogue in Polish?
How does this work for trying to learn a new language? I have heard of many people learning English by watching English movies and TV shows with subtitles in their own language. This allows them to listen to English and slowly start to pick up English words while still being able to understand what’s happening due to the subtitles. I myself am learning Chinese and I occasionally watch cooking videos in Chinese with English subtitles and find myself gradually picking up the Chinese words as I hear them.
I think this technique probably works best with shows and movies written for children, as those have much simpler dialogue to begin with.
This actually doesn’t help with understanding English. You will pick up a few words, but You can’t listen to two people talk at the same time. You can only pick up how they act, but not what they say. I learned English watching cartoons without any translation when I was 7.
Films with subtitles
That’s copeium. Most people are too lazy to match meanining with words when wathing films. Ask any weeb if they know japanese from watching anime for years. (I don’t)
I satrted to pick up language from flashcards, childrens books and textbooks. Not from translated films. (english or japanese or russian)
Well you have to be deliberate about it. You need to actually practice the language outside of watching the shows/movies. But the content you’re watching is a strong motivator to continue learning. And then one day you turn the subtitles off!
Absolutely not. It’s a great way to learn. I am living in Denmark currently and everybody here knows English, young and old, because they have movies with subtitles on their TV.
Idk if you’ve seen one of these dubs/voice overs, but usually the underlying is so quite, it is closer to being muted than actually understandable
I’m Polish, so I’ve been seeing them all my life. And I have to disagree, I’ve never had a problem with hearing the actors.
Hungarian and Finnish have entered the chat
I think that “kokoa koko kokko kokoon” is a perfectly normal sentence and no one can change my mind.
Iceland: Hlær að öllum
Lithuanian: Palaikyk mano alų.
drinks your einstock
Getting a Haer’Dalis vibe
Ä, ö, ü, am i a joke to you?
Ä, ö, ü, õ, š, ž are just there to allow for phonemic ortography, biatch!
Though then again, I’m fairly sure that the weird Polish letters.
Also if your native tongue DOES have phonemic ortography… Well guess how difficult it was for 6 year old me in Estonia to start learning English where the words are clearly not written the same way they’re spoken???
It gets worse hearing older people here speak English because most of them did NOT start learning the language at age 5 or 6 so uhhhh… Yeah they expect the words to be pronounced the way they’re spelled. Makes your ears bleed.
Btw, there’s a mising phonetic letter in Swiss German, somewhere between ä and ö, kind of a aeo. But since it’s rarely written dialekt (personal chats), we work around this with Umlauts and context.
Õ?
Oh right, french might have them. Soft ‘o’, right.
Estonian actually. I’m having a hard time thinking of an English word for an example. I guess I’d write bone phonetically as bõun? Or own as õun as well. With the u in our language sounding much like u in bauen or rauchen in German if I’m pronouncing those right.
man I find german harder than polish
