Another thing that’s bothered me for a long time, and there do seem to be a worrying number of things-that-have-bothered-me-for-a-long-time, is the Polish obsession with correct grammar. It’s very common to hear Polish people laughing at or criticizing other Polish people because of the way they speak Polish. I find this very odd.
I once new a guy who was half Polish-half English. He grew up in England and learned Polish ad hoc from his mother. He was very fluent and could easily engage in everyday conversation in Polish. Not a native speaker, but very good. Years later he married a Polish girl (of course) and lived in Poland. His wife hated him speaking Polish in company. I asked her why and she said “When he speaks English he sounds like a gentleman, but when he speaks Polish he sounds like a peasant!” I’m exaggerating of course, but she really did say this, and I could see that it grated on her nerves when he spoke Polish. It wasn’t because he had some kind of weird rural accent or dialect, on the contrary his accent was spot on and, in exchanging a few casual words, he would routinely be mistaken for a native. But his grammar my dear… tut tut… his grammar!
In the beginning was the word… and then much later it was translated into Polish (this volume is blue: A 😉 )
British people are well-used to the idea that your background and ‘class’ are obvious the moment you open your mouth. We have a bewildering multiplicity of regional and social accents not to mention another multiplicity of international English accents. After two minutes of conversation I can tell you that person A grew up in the northwest of England in a working class family, that person B grew up in a wealthy suburb of Edinburgh, or that person C grew up in a middle class Nigerian household. And I’m not particularly good at this. There are accents that are limited to a few square miles of land; grow up in Liverpool and you’ll sound completely different than someone who grows up literally 15 miles away in Saint Helens. There are other accents that are limited to incredibly small social groups; nobody else in the UK speaks English in quite the same way as the royal family for example. The thing is that, nowadays, nobody is seriously judged for their accent even though many of these accents involve non-standard grammar usages and, obviously, wildly different pronunciations.
In Poland there seems to be a very strong and clear-cut link between social standing and correct grammar and pronunciation. I assume this is because correct grammar and pronunciation are the clearest indicators of good education, and good education is the number one factor in social standing. In many ways I admire this attitude. It’s great that people should be judged according to their educational achievements rather than the family they happened to be born into. On the other hand it seems a tad harsh on those who don’t excel academically. As I understand it, and I could be completely wrong here, Polish philology is one of the most highly-respected degrees you can obtain at a Polish university. Studying the language you are a native speaker of is one of the most impressive things you can do academically. There is no equivalent in British universities. You cannot study English philology or, if you can, nobody would have the slightest idea what it meant or be impressed by it.
I’m amazed at the number of times I hear Polish people comment on other Polish people’s Polish. Visiting A’s parents a while ago I had a very vague conversation with A’s mother in which I understood about 20 percent of the root words she was using. A and her brother were rolling around on the floor because mum was very carefully and deliberately using hyper-correct grammar, all of which went completely over my head. At a wedding there was a groan when a certain priest stood up to read because he was known to ‘not speak Polish well.’ What does that mean? How can a native speaker of Polish not speak Polish well? I don’t geddit.
I might get to bottom of this mystery one day, but I doubt it.
1. OK, you have lots of accents. But you also have a record of linguistic varieties that became as much as extinct. It’s not an all so bad idea to care. Perhaps.
2. Historically: the language represented the nation when there was no state, for quite a time. Polish of the Church, Polish of the Tradition, Polish – the host to Polishness, when geopolitical attributes went missing. You can’t compare it to the English of the British Empire and / or to the English of today English-speaking world.
3. The attitude’s changing in Poland. (Polishness changed its meaning.) Me, I’ve stopped seeing languages prescriptively and started descriptively (note “japko” thing in the comments shared with Jolanta here), yet there’s still a fear in me Polish may not be homeostatic enough to stand the care-about-no-rules approach, especially with English pressing in.
4. People feel the urge to distinguish socially. Money can be a misleading factor in Poland — with aristocracy dead or hidden, middle class unborn, teachers or doctors paid peanuts — wealth in Poland doesn’t necessarily follow those who should be wealthy. That’s when languages come in handy. One may be rich enough to buy a manse and peer title, but won’t buy the command of French or Latin, for instance.
So, an ad hoc suggestion on re-selection of words:
good education [=> money]
proper education [=> intelligentsia]
Two points about English which make it different from Polish (in terms of worldwide usage):
– British colonialism in the C18th + 19th meant that English was imposed in several different continents resulting in a profusion of variants (US, Indian, etc.) which have their own history and development separate from that of UK English
– English is widely used as a lingua franca, meaning we’re used to non-natives speaking it and the interesting variations that this produces.
This has tended to blur the lines a bit. Plus different variants have different grammatical rules: compare ‘your hair needs cutting’ (South UK) to ‘your hair needs cut’ (N. UK and some US)
I think this is why we don’t expect everyone to speak like an Oxbridge-educated Radio 4 presenter and we don’t (always) make negative judgements about the people who don’t. *
Besides which, most grammatical rules in English were made up by C18th prescriptive grammarians who had to come up with something to write in their books. And there are still plenty of silly ‘logical’ explanations about.
For example, someone told me that the difference between ‘compare to’ and ‘compare with’ depended on whether the things you were comparing were from the same sort of species or genre or not. This is complete nonsense. It’s just to do with habit and usage and what sounds right at the time. People make up rules to explain things they don’t have the answers to.
And incidentally I think it’s totally fair to judge people on the way they speak. That’s the point – you can tell everything from someone’s accent/vocabulary/register and so on. But the game works two ways: no-one speaks in the same register all the time- you vary it depending on how you want the people you’re addressing to perceive you. That’s the disadvantage of being a foreigner: unless you’re very very good the number of registers at your disposal is severly limited and you can’t play the game as well as everyone else.
Ooh sorry I don’t know what came over me: I seem to have blanked out for a few seconds there.
Since I’m not qualified to talk about what I just tried to talk about, I suggest you read this guy: he’s the expert on English.
http://david-crystal.blogspot.com/
*Although in case of doubt, the Americans are Wrong.
=> Pinolona, re comparing
Thanks for sharing this. I was made believe that “compare to” implies there’s more similarity than difference, while “compare with” indicates more contrast. That or any possible differences between, say, “of wood” and “from wood” — can be the stuff philology students in Poland get marked on, who, when their marks are unsatisfactory, get expelled, and [if male] drafted, and sent on a mission to where they can learn some Afghan or Arabic variety of NATO English. Phew!
Let’s write “Conan the Grammarian”, a story of how Arnold Schwa of Cimmeria silenced the highbrows in his country (with several swishes of the sword, and pike points well taken).
Jamie I think we’ve been talking about this here somewhere..
There are some certain grammar mistakes that completely discredit people. When someone you meet for the first time says “przyszłem” instead of “przyszedłem” you can cross him out of the list of respectable people;) As he puts himself outside the society;) Standard Polish is the only Polish.
The way I see it, in Polish the only grammar allowed is the prescriptive grammar. Why would anyone investigate mistakes? (only for some unexplained academic purposes probably) 🙂 And unlike Britain, I can’t imagine wrong Polish being used in television, for instance. It’s not going to happen, ever. Television is to educate the masses, not to let them feel content with themselves and their inadequacies;)
Language is one of the means of holding power over people. We speak better then the dictionary, therefore we are better. Better then (other) commons, or the (other) nouveau-riches. Those who hold the key to right-speak hold the power. If you don’t follow the rules, you’re a peasant, you’re a moron, you’re committing a faux-pas, as if you farted in someone’s reception room. You didn’t get the proper education, you’re from the common people and your ancestors lived on trees. No one will tell you this straight in the eye of course, but that’s people will think.
As as to Britain, Jamie, you can’t tell me that someone with a heavy working class accent will ever get, let’s say, a management position in a bank? Maybe the conservative accent control has loosened, but it’s gone completely.
Re Polish
Paweł, my man, you can’t imagine bad Polish in media? – you’re a blasphemer. I mean, “poszłem” is a non-starter, yeah. But have you heard “wziąść” or “wziąźć” in the Commonfolk Street (one of few instances when the incorrect form is more difficult to pronouce than the correct one). You haven’t? What about “tą” in lieu of “tę”, wherever required? — You missed that one, too? — Well, what about “upust”, not “opust”? Even public TV has it! [I rest my accusative case.]
Polish can be a beautiful language. I cannot think of any other humeme invention prescribing a dual grammatical rule how to decline 3 (say: three) nouns, first one being obsolete, the second being a surname, the third being a Japanese borrowing. [Details upon request.]
It is an instructive exercise in English-Polish linguistic and cultural differences to look at this article on The Guardian’s website. Written by a Polish academic about the dumbing down of the English language, it attracted 700 comments and is, I think, a milestone article. If you can be bothered to wade through the comments, I think you’ll find the kernel of truth as to the social, educational, philosophical and practical differences between how Poles and Brits see the issue of language and communication.
I recommend, highly.
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/aleksandra_lojekmagdziarz/2008/01/english_for_dummies.html
it’s true there has been a backlash against a certain type of english and that a more straightforward style has and is often called for. this is in part due to the liberal-left style of talking and writing. they pen these wonderfully dense pieces that seek to hammer people into submission rather than to communicate. this is done mainly because they are insecure about the intellectual merit of their policies.
in the face of this, denis dutton, the editor of philosophy and literature, founded an annual bad writing contest and rightly so. he said that jargon has become the emporer’s clothing of choice. i don’t think anyone could disagree with that.
there is no better way to convey nothing than through a barrage of unnecessary words and convoluted sentences.
we should know our language, never be afraid to create wonderful verbal dances with it, but at the same time be aware of the importance of clear communication.
there is a difference.
Darth:
1. I don’t understand. There are certainly English accents and dialects that have disappeared, as all accents and dialects are inclined to over time. But who should care about what, and why?
2. Interesting point. Thanks for pointing it out. I wasn’t really trying to compare Polish and English critically, I was genuinely wondering what lay behind what seemed to me to be an unusually intense sensitivity to proper grammar and pronunciation in Polish.
3. It doesn’t stand a chance. Just relax and go with it.
4. Yes, that’s kind of what I thought.
Pinolona: I agree entirely that our constant exposure to different variants of English (particularly non-UK variants) makes us much more relaxed about the language.
English grammar rules are definitely intensely illogical and English spelling, which never came naturally to me in the first place, still drives me completely insane.
I don’t really follow what you say about judging people by the way they speak though. Yes, poor or lazy grammar tends to be an indicator of poor or lazy education. But accent?
I will have a look at Mr Crystal, thanks.
Pawel: Yes, we have talked about this elsewhere. I remember it well. But it’s an interesting subject and it astonishes me how often it seems to come up in talking to Polish people. It almost NEVER comes up talking to Brits.
It is amazing for me how powerful the stigma of ‘bad Polish’ seems to be. It’s one of the most striking differences that I’ve encountered between the British and the Poles.
Btw I wouldn’t be in the slightest bit surprised to come across a bank manager with a heavy accent of almost any kind, or pretty much any other kind of professional. I think the difference is that I’m talking about accents in which certain variations from ‘standard’ English are integral to the accent, they’re not seen as ‘mistakes’ in the same way.
Michael: Sounds great. I will definitely read it. Thanks.
Michael: Ok, I read the article and the first 30 or so comments and you’re dead right; it provides a very good insight into the different way that British and Polish people see language. I urge everyone to read it.
The writer gets a hell of a pasting from a lot of the commentators because she falls foul of the intrinsic British mistrust of ‘cleverness’ and erudition. I’ve mentioned this before; the British really don’t like people who show how educated they are. That’s why villains and morons in British popular culture always speak with perfect grammar and educated accents. Strange but true.
–> Darth
I’ll give you that one. Though I think I was told recently that ‘tą’ is now an allowed alternative. I’ll check it up in słownik poprawnej polszczyzny.
What I generally meant were more severe mistakes, like ‘widzielim’ ‘zobaczu’ itd:)
PS. You mean opust like price reduction? I didn’t know upust is not right:) Although I never use this particular word. Rabat and obniźka sound somewhat better to me.
–> Michael Dembinski
Thanks Michael,
I did have a look… I am a bit surprised at how many people responded to her article in the sort of way ‘you came to our country, how dare you criticise us! go home’.
The main difference in my opinion is that the culture in Poland always encourages you to aim higher, be better, know more… and the reward is higher social standing. In Britain everyone seems to be happy with where they are and what they do, the only encouragement for improvement seems to be money. Therefore, in Britain, only those with personal drive actually dare to aim higher.
And this all is probably connected with the attitudes to culture in general. The Polish tend to favour “old” approaches… like the ones expressed by such theorists like Matthew Arnold and F.R & Q.D. Leavis.
Arnold, for instance, believed that ordinary men have lost the strong feudal habits of subordination and deference, and it was the role of education to bring the working class ‘a culture’. ‘Culture’, according to Arnold, would wipe out popular culture. and the anarchy brought about by the power given to the simple folk.
Leavis thought the proper culture was in minority keeping, and that popular culture was all bout standardisation and levelling down.
You have to admit these are deeply capitalistic approaches, and it seems, ironically, they dominate in Poland today. Despite the years of “communism”.
Whereas the concepts that dominate in Britain are the ones derived from… Marxism.
Britain (or: the West) has deconstructed the ideologies, power relations, hierachies underlying anything within culture – landing straight in postmodernism: the final rejection of all metanarratives in favour of plurality of different narratives. Science or knowledge previously vital tool of enlightenment of the mankind, now got delegitimised , as metanarratives organising and validating other narratives. Science and knowledge now get judged in terms of performativity.
Island: not that you judge social class by accent, but I mean you can instantly tell where someone is from, what their background is and you can make (usually accurate) assumptions about their education.
Or indeed about how they judge you: a more standard register means they are trying to make a particular impression on you, whereas if they let more regionalisms in this may mean for example that they feel more relaxed with you, that they don’t see you as a threat and/or a superior, or that they think you’re a bit posh and stuck up and they want to shock you (let’s not forget reverse snobbery and Tony Blair trying to fake ‘Estuary English’).
There are all kinds of things you can tell from the way someone talks to you. The actual words have very little to do with communication at all…
=> Pawel, inasmuch as you’re right, you’re not. [Eh-huhhuh]. Read the post Michael recommends and know it sucks [huhuh] to use stuff such as performativity [huhuhuh], delegitimissuses [huhuhuh] or [eeeh] instrumemzimutation, [yeah, huhuhuhuh] — oh yeah [huhuhuhuh], instead join me missing the Greatest American Contribution to Coolness, as their simple English kicked ass [huhuhuh] or stuff. [Huhhuhuh, check ‘t out, I said “ass”, huhuhuhhuh, oh yeah yeah, huhuh, and I said “sucks”, eh, huhuh], and Denis Leary, he rocks too and stuff. [Yeah, yeah, huhuhuh.]
Pawel: If only it was that simple.
😀
But seriously, the mistrust of elites (political or cultural) is deeply embedded in British thinking. We don’t like the idea of an educated clique telling the rest of us what’s good and what’s dross. We’re firmly wedded to the idea that you like what you like and you behave how you behave and nobody either has the right to tell you otherwise or to even inquire into it. This has good and bad effects. On one hand it allows Big Brother style micro celebrity culture to run riot (something that has always been a feature of much of our press), while on the other it encourages eccentric and diverse behavior of the most delightful kind (not to mention making it completely impossible for any kind of pseudo-intellectual political ideology to gain a foothold).
This whole idea about ‘aiming higher’ or becoming more cultured is very recognizably a continental European way of looking at things and has absolutely zero effect on the average Brit. As I’ve said before, the British are proud to be described as a nation of shopkeepers. Now, I’m not applauding this (quite often it drives me insane) but it’s a fact, and it’s a fact that has had not a little to do some of the things that have made Britain a unique and a pretty desirable place to be over the centuries.
Btw, when I was at university a professor threw someone out of the room for using the word ‘meta-narrative’ on the grounds that he was using ‘foul continental language’ 🙂
Pinolona: I’m still not sure about judging people’s education by their accent, but I think I see what you mean in general.
As to the stuff about varying register, this must be one of those things that women can understand, you know… like being able to tell what’s actually going on in social situations. It’s a power I envy, although I’m not sure I’d be up to the mental pressure 🙂
Darth: Dude, you like totally dissed him
Island, dissed who? I dissed Paweł? No way.
I tried to read all the comments on the post Michael directed us to. UK natives seem to diss (?) our Polish expat author there as they generally don’t like words such as ‘instrumentalisation’. Then I read Pawel’s comment 13 here, and saw “rejection of all metanarratives in favour of plurality of different narratives” and stuff.
The options were but two:
1. To add my remarks to Paweł’s remarks? But that would be “overintellectualised claptrap”, “academic balderdash”, especially when more “hard words” such as ‘performativity’ had been used.
2. To show where “freedom of being relaxed about speech” can lead us — nowhere else but to Beavis and Butthead way of life, and Denis Leary way of laugh, which, dude, are cool, it rocks, and kick butts, eh-huhuh.
If there is be a third option, show it to me and I’ll stand corrected. (But know that I know that Flowers writes above: “we should […] never be afraid to create wonderful verbal dances with it, but at the same time be aware of the importance of clear communication. there is a difference.”
Yet I think that that “difference” is so volatile, so much context-dependent, that it does not really exist. The way I see it, one’s gotta speak banal English (and maybe be lucky it’s still some English), that’s it. One has to confine their linguistic sophistication (if there’s any), all those words that have more than 3 syllables – to home area, speaking to oneself, a dog, or – if lucky – to their significant other.
“Sad, dude”, as Butthead would put it.
———-
Btw, I’d written another comment before I put B&B / Leary one in – and saw it sent for moderation – but seemingly it’s gone. Once again below.
=> Michael
Thanks for the link! (I still haven’t got through all of there and the thing cost me some time but it’s worth it.)
=> Paweł
Miodek has strongly advocated “opust” (as you can ‘opuścić’ [not: ‘upuścić’] cenę). Other “regulatory bodies” think like this. ‘Upust’ is correct, I gather, but was not a short time ago.
=> Island
When you say “relaxed (about accents)”, I’m tense — as I’m more, ehm, chessy? — three moves further. An accent [of a group, a profession, a region] may become unintelligible to other (neighbouring) speakers. It may become a linguistic variety, which, in turn — in favourable political / economic circumstances — may become a language. I saw an example of that transition: Burns used to be called a poet writing in Scottish English (an accented English), then a poet in Scots (a dialect), then a poet in Scots (a language). So, it’s not just that “you say potato I say patatoe”. It’s: “you say ‘accent’, I see ‘language’ (at least potentially)”.
My working definition goes: there is a language when 1) has speakers, 2) has [oral / written] literature, 3) is unintelligible to others. Knowing this, you may call Brian Belo (a UK Big Brother guy, find some youtubes) a dude with an ‘accent’. I call him a user of a dialect. And if he will write a lot, he’d make himself a user of a language (that I don’t follow). Again, would the average Londoner say this is just an accented English? Guess not.
Accents [~= languages] don’t just disappear, relaxed. At times they’re pressed to silence, hushed dead deliberately. Scots struggles for revival, Scottish Gaelic is in ruins. How did it happen? Who was not “relaxed” and why?
Being “relaxed” would mean [to me] you agree on possible uprising of numerous [accent-derived] languages. That’s perfectly fine! But only if we have some Common Speech (see Tolkien), some Aurebesh / Basic (see Star Wars), some Cityspeak (see Blade Runner) to share, a variety we could escape to when our accents won’t be able to communicate properly. That’s why and where I see place for prescriptive movements in linguistics, lexicography etc.
So, in addition to cultural mind-the-gaps Paweł writes about, it’s politics:
Polish as the One Language thing was (is?) a political issue. (But, as hinted above, UK history is not free of politically-ordered anti-linguistic behaviour). After WW1 Polish was supposed to hold Poles together, to give them the national identity. (Mind that the territory of the state in 1918 was a patchwork of former Russian, Austrian and Prussian lands.) After WW2 it would not be politically wise to be lenient about existence of languages other than Polish.
The borders after 1945 — with Germany and USSR most of all — were a political issue. How could the propaganda explain there are German speakers in Silesia (now Poland) or that there are Polish speakers in Ukraine, Belarus or Russia (now USSR)? Other languages were inconvenient to the regime. One Nation was memevertised as speaking One Language. Orwell in practise. (The then invaders – Soviets or Russian Poles in Poland would find it necessary to get rid of accented RussoPolish in order not stand out of the commonfolk crowd and to corroborate the promemeganda.)
Those times over, status report? Kashubian got recognised as a distinct language and is alive. Wilamowicean was recognised not long ago — but too late, I guess. Then, there is Silesian — some see it’s a language, not a regional variety of Polish. Those who see so — and those who turn blind — have their own political reasons. Now, i don’t know if there are any similar pro-language declarations made in the UK. If there are – tell me more. If there are none – tell me why.
lol;) I’m not clever enuff to think of a simple English equivalent to performativity or delegitimise 🙂 And besides, if EVERYONE is in England allowed to like what they like and be eccentric how they like, them I want to use my my foul continental language:) At least other users of EFL will like me;)
ps. discussing academic stuff in non academic language is what sends you outside the class in Poland:) metanarrative is a term, you can’t throw anyone out for saying ‘adjective’ or ‘stem-cell’.
Jamie, it couldn’t always be like what you say. For there was Mathew Arnold for instance.
no offense but can we get back to the interesting stuff… girls, wine, girls, beer, polish girls, food… heck even best place in Krakow to sit and drink beer, view girls, and eat… when was the last time “A” kicked your but for saying something stupid here… the goods.
I would like to know the best summer spot to sit and relax…
Mocha: Well said 😀
Navel-gazing suspended for the time being.
Darth: I fished your comment out of the spam bin. I see.
ehuhuhuh, you said “cheesy,” ehuhuhu
I guess you can not see “navel’s” at negative C whatever it is there… summer past time…. 🙂
got to figure out how to make a little $$ so I can relax and gaze for a bit this summer in P-land.
Eeeeh, we had a discussion getting more and more interesting.
I prefer that to small talk.
Island, spam bin? I guess meme-AI is more intelligent than I have originally suspected.
PS ehuhuhuh, you said “cheesy”, ehuhuh, and I said “chessy”, huhuh. Ehuhuh. Gambit, check, mate. Ehhuhuh.
Dear all,
Thank you for such a fascinating discussion.
I have been absent for a while and therefore unable to comment when I should have but I have not disappeared from the face of the Earth yet.
In the meantime I have been busy telling off:
1) the journalists from Gazeta Wyborcza for writing “Powstanie Styczniowe or Warszawskie” (the November / Warsaw Rising) instead of powstanie styczniowe / warszawskie
2) the translators who work for TV4 for the appalling quality of their English-Polish translation and for their annoying inability to understand certain historical and linguistic contexts
3) the “Polityka” journalists for their incorrect and absolutely unnecessary usage of English idioms (translated verbatim)
4) Mr Pospieszalski (a TV presenter) for saying “dzisiEj” and “tutEj” – gosh, how I hate listening to him (Paweł, I suggest that you watch the public TV a little bit more carefully)
etc.etc.
Relaxed about my mother tongue? Never!
—> Jolanta
ad 1. no capital letters there? are you sure? 🙂 I mean, I think then I must always write it incorrectly…
ad 2. TV4 still exists? I lost track of them, since I got Comedy Central and Superstacja forcing me to put TV4 somewhere behing the top10 chans…
I’m always interested in bad translations, examples welcome:) Or we can exchange for my observations of BBC Prime and TVN Style;))
ad 3.
ad 4. A bit more carefully? No…. please…. To be honest I think I only watch ‘Europa da się lubić’… TVP seems to either run bad entertainment shows or PiS political propaganda… which is bad for my “anger management” 😉 Can you stand that Pospieszalski character? Wow, I admire!:)
ad. 3 I forgot:)
oh dear, and now the dot got in the wrong place
speaking of language
http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-speak-management
🙂
Pawel, I am absolutely sure – powstanie styczniowe is not Powstanie Styczniowe and druga wojna swiatowa is not Druga Wojna etc.; however, this may soon change if the Polish philology department graduates do not start a campaign against the contagious capitalisation (somehow I have lost my faith in the English philology dep.graduates, perhaps because I know them too well).
I used to collect examples of inacurrate, literal or downright incorrect translation from TV but I have recently given up on that. There are simply too many of them everywhere one looks. I “like” especially those which show that the translator does not have any idea how the historical context affects the language ( I love when a 19th century lady “zapisala cos w swoim notebooku” or a private / servant addresses an officer / master “ty” etc.) Actually, I think the number of ways “you” can be rendered in Polish is worth thinking about.
I saw “Atonement” yesterday and … kill me if a “nursery” is “pokoj dzienny” (it is vital that somebody’s room is next to that nursery) or the name of the chocolate bar “Amo” stems from … amunicja. “Amo” means “I love” in Latin and this particular meaning of the bar which is a leitmotive of the book and the film is extremely important. When the name of the bar is lost in the translation, the viewer does not get the hidden allusions any more. And so on and so forth.
Clearly, the translator has not read McEwan’s book at all. Should I be suprised?
Another problem is semi-specialist language. For example, what you get while watching gardening programmes is unbelievable. How many times can I explain to some TVN Style person that “compost” is most often just “podloze” ( if you watch TVN Style carefully, you get the idea that the English plant everything in “kompost” which is absolutely impossible ) or that “evergreen” is “zimozielone” not “wiecznie zielone” or that “gazebo” is just “altana” not a “GAZEBO” or that “mulch” is “sciolka” not “mulcz”.
All right, I cannot save the world, not to mention the Polish language. Please, forgive me all of you who do not care as much.
J.
PS. Mochafueled, I suggest that you hang around the Paderevianum building or the Auditorium Maximum in Krupnicza street in Krakow for a while – plenty of pretty girls and some of them are very clever too.
Jolanta, involuntarily you may just have fuelled up the feeling about Polish language snobs. Viz. you wrote “philology” — and that’s something the native speaker may not understand, so they say.
Atonement, I didn’t see it, but was told the word c**t lost its strong vulgarity in its Polish translation, so maybe there’s more to licentia, eh, polonica than we’d suspect. Btw, the film itself serves to point at English language snobbery. I mean, why write atonement (or attrition, contrition, repentance, remorse) where penance or regret would do just fine?
‘Atonement’ means you are doing something to compensate for some awful mistake or misdeed you have committed in the past. It has a more practical sense than ‘contrition, remorse, repentance, regret’. ‘Penance’ is similar, but penance is between you and your God, while ‘atonement’ is more about redressing the balance with your fellow man.
It has nothing to do with language snobbery and everything to do with meaning and connotations.
Jolanta, are you talking about translators or interpreters? (tłumacz pisemny or ustny?). If it’s a Polski lektor then he’s reading a translation of the script out loud (why is there never a polska lektorka??). If it’s an interpreter, then he probably makes mistakes because he was only sent the background material that morning and there’s some kind of problem with the sound system…
=> Pinolona, I know the semantic differences between the words above. [At least hope so.] As the post is about linguistic snobbery, I’ve wanted to add that people may be “accused of snobbery” not only because they employ certain accents but also due to their choices of words.
On the other hand, re “Atonement” (the movie), note the Polish title is “Pokuta” (penance / repentance).
On the third hand, there are words meaning the same thing. In English, Polish, or elsewhere.
[…] an unlikely character of ‘Danuta’, member of the unsympathetic private school posh crowd – a big girl with intense sexual appetite for rough men (”chłopy”). And […]
Jolanta: Thank goodness you’re back, the rabble is becoming uncontrollable and needs a firm hand!
Although I understand little of your specific frustrations regarding TV translations (they sound like typical false-friend errors to me) I can sympathize with your general exasperation at their laxness. Many is the time I’ve seen even simple phrases (that I understand in Polish as well as English) translated in a nonsensical way.
I’m still trying to get over the weirdness of three Polish people discussing the finer points of Polish usage, in English, via comments on my blog… the interweb thingy is a wonderful and strange thingy indeed.
Pinolona, I mean only written translation (tlumaczenie ustne) because I know all to well how difficult it is to interpret; I would not dare to criticise an interpreter (or would I?). Actually, I have just recalled that the interpreter to President Kaczynski translated aloud his unfavourable comments on the size of the 10 Downing Street IN THE PRESENCE of the accompanying British officials. The President must have forgotten his manners but why was SHE so careless?
According to a number of opinion polls Polish TV viewers prefer a male voice which, supposedly, melts into the background and becomes almost unnoticeable; there have been some experiments with a female voice (lektorka) but it seems that it works only in the case of TV documentaries (e.g.Czubowna). However, it is a pity that Poles are too lazy to read subtitles; because of that I have lost “my” BBC Prime as they have recently given up on us.
Darthsida, I have looked up “philology” and I can assure you that it is in the English language vocabulary. The fact that some native speakers do not know it is not going to discourage me from using it.
Who said that I am not a snob? Of course I am.
J.
=> Jolanta, why retreat? The word “snob” looked disapproving last time my dictionary had it. You care about (the) language — I’d like to see that behaviour perceived as standard. Why are not those who don’t care called (inverted) snobs or (linguistic) slobs or sloths or slows or snots or snurds or swarps or some other sweet single-syllables of English?
=> Island, another PMS: Polish M… Snobs, can’t fill in myself.
Island,
All I’ll say is that I agree entirely with this article and have experienced exactly the same myself.
Jolanta: I’m reminded of a wise saying I read somewhere while stumbling around the internet “Correcting a factual error on the internet is like subtracting one from infinity.” I suspect that chasing down language usage errors is much the same. It’s like trying to fight evolution.
Darth: You can’t trick me back into your meme snare so easily 🙂
=> Natives, here’s what snobbery could sound like [if it wasn’t actually a concoction to ridicule the postmodernese]: Węzłowy paradygmat cyberprzestrzeni realizuje się w aporetycznym procesie kreowania z istniejącej bądź potencjalnie istniejącej realności społecznej quasi-lokalnych tożsamości w kategoriach kanonicznych form kontaktów, czemu towarzyszy nie tylko syntagmatyczna renormalizacja fenomenologii przestrzeni narracyjnej, ale i wymóg naturalizacji intersubiektywnej strategii kognitywnej, a co z kolei pozwala rozwiązać tekstualną dialektykę funkcji referencyjnej i performatywnej, wzajemnie problematycznej i ostatecznie prowadzącej do redefincji i reifikacji paradygmatu paraboli w modelu metafory gry językowej. A classic beauty, used to pin it, printed out, on my wall.
=> Island, you’re doing great, “meme snare”, just 1/3 to go 🙂
Hmmm, Particularly Malevolent Strategy…
Doh!
I spent the majority of my life listening to my Polish grandmother comment on how “American” I am because I apparently had an accent. Ironically she was and is a “peasant.” You’ve hit the nail on the head in terms of noticing how much Poles stress over correct grammar – it’s why I’m afraid of speaking Polish to someone other than my mother.
grezakster —> I remember my Polish teacher in primary school who was going mental with a student who spent two years in Canada and started to stress words in an “incorrect” way:)
If you’re worried about grammar, maybe you’d be interested in Polish classes? http://www.fil.umk.pl/skijpdo/wersja_a/index.html
You could surprise your grandma:)
[…] What level of education do I have? This is wierd – what on earth has this got to do with me registering a car? In fact they ask this one everywhere – try opening a bank account or registering the birth of your child. I can only presume it’s related to the Polish obession with education. […]
Fantastic blog, exactly where did you obtain the template?
I am so glad I found your blog! I am half polish and half English, although brought up as an English girl, and find your writing truly fascinating. Do you have any guidance on the polish dating culture? I have a blind date in 1 week and would love some advice!! Keep up the great work!!
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