Poglish, also known as Polglish and Ponglish (

Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Poles, people from Poland or of Polish descent * Polish chicken *Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin screenwr ...

: , ''język polgielski'';

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...

: ), is a blend of two words from

and

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

. It is the product of macaronically mixing Polish- and

English-language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the is ...

elements (

morpheme A morpheme is the smallest meaningful Constituent (linguistics), constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistics, linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology (linguistics), morphology. In English, morphemes are ...

word A word is a basic element of language that carries an semantics, objective or pragmatics, practical semantics, meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of w ...

grammatical structure In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraints, a field that includes domain ...

s, syntactic elements,

idiom An idiom is a phrase or expression that typically presents a figurative, non-literal meaning attached to the phrase; but some phrases become figurative idioms while retaining the literal meaning of the phrase. Categorized as formulaic language, ...

s, etc.) within a single

speech Speech is a human vocal communication using language. Each language uses Phonetics, phonetic combinations of vowel and consonant sounds that form the sound of its words (that is, all English words sound different from all French words, even if ...

production, or the use of "

false friends In linguistics, a false friend is either of two words in different languages that look or sound similar, but differ significantly in meaning. Examples include English ''embarrassed'' and Spanish ''embarazada'' 'pregnant'; English ''parents'' ...

" or of

cognate In historical linguistics, cognates or lexical cognates are sets of words in different languages that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymology, etymological ancestor in a proto-language, common parent language. Because language c ...

words in senses that have diverged from those of the common

etymological Etymology ()The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) – p. 633 "Etymology /ˌɛtɪˈmɒlədʒi/ the study of the class in words and the way their meanings have changed throughout time". is the study of the history of the form of words and ...

root. Such combining or confusion of Polish and English elements, when it occurs within a single

term Term may refer to: * Terminology, or term, a noun or compound word used in a specific context, in particular: **Technical term, part of the specialized vocabulary of a particular field, specifically: ***Scientific terminology, terms used by scient ...

, or

phrase In syntax and grammar, a phrase is a group of words or singular word acting as a grammatical unit. For instance, the English expression "the very happy squirrel" is a noun phrase which contains the adjective phrase "very happy". Phrases can consi ...

(e.g., in a

hybrid word A hybrid word or hybridism is a word that etymologically derives from at least two languages. Common hybrids The most common form of hybrid word in English combines Latin and Greek parts. Since many prefixes and suffixes in English are of Latin ...

), may, inadvertently or deliberately, produce a

neologism A neologism Greek νέο- ''néo''(="new") and λόγος /''lógos'' meaning "speech, utterance"] is a relatively recent or isolated term, word, or phrase that may be in the process of entering common use, but that has not been fully accepted int ...

. Poglish is a common phenomenon among persons

bilingual Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. More than half of all E ...

in Polish and English; and is a manifestation of a broader phenomenon, that of language interference. As with the mixing of other language pairs, the results of Poglish speech (oral or written) may sometimes be confusing, amusing, or embarrassing. Several portmanteau words have been formed, blending the words "Polish" and "English". ''Polglish'' (from as early as 1975) was followed by ''Pinglish'' (1984), ''Polilish'' (1997), ''Ponglish'' (2002), and ''Poglish'' (2006). An expression that has been used by some native Polish-speakers to denote the mixing of Polish- and English-language elements in oral or written speech is "half ''na pół''" ("half-and-half").

Mis-metaphrase

One of the two chief approaches to

translation Translation is the communication of the Meaning (linguistic), meaning of a #Source and target languages, source-language text by means of an Dynamic and formal equivalence, equivalent #Source and target languages, target-language text. The ...

, "

metaphrase Metaphrase is a term referring to literal translation, i.e., "word by word and line by line" translation. In everyday usage, metaphrase means literalism; however, metaphrase is also the translation of poetry into prose.Andrew Dousa Hepburn, Manual ...

" also referred to as "

formal equivalence The terms dynamic equivalence and formal equivalence, coined by Eugene Nida, are associated with two dissimilar translation approaches that are employed to achieve different levels of literalness between the source and target text, as evidenc ...

", "

literal translation Literal translation, direct translation or word-for-word translation, is a translation of a text done by translating each word separately, without looking at how the words are used together in a phrase or sentence. In Translation studies, trans ...

", or "word-for-word translation" must be used with great care especially in relation to

Madeleine Masson Madeleine Rayner (née Levy; 23 April 1912 – 23 August 2007), known professionally as Madeleine Masson, was a South African-born English-language author of plays, film scripts, novels, memoirs and biographies.Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Poles, people from Poland or of Polish descent * Polish chicken *Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin screenwr ...

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

S.O.E. agent

Krystyna Skarbek Maria Krystyna Janina Skarbek, (, ; 1 May 1908 – 15 June 1952), also known as Christine Granville, was a Polish agent of the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) during the Second World War. She became celebrated for her daring exploi ...

, quotes her as speaking of "lying ''on'' the sun" and astutely surmises that this is "possibly a direct

from the Polish". Indeed, the Polish

"''leżeć ''na'' słońcu''" ("to lie ''on'' the sun", that is, to

sunbathe Sun tanning or tanning is the process whereby skin color is darkened or tanned. It is most often a result of exposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation from sunlight or from artificial sources, such as a tanning lamp found in indoor tanning beds. ...

) is, if anything, only marginally less absurd than its

equivalent Equivalence or Equivalent may refer to: Arts and entertainment *Album-equivalent unit, a measurement unit in the music industry * Equivalence class (music) *'' Equivalent VIII'', or ''The Bricks'', a minimalist sculpture by Carl Andre *''Equiva ...

, "to lie ''in'' the sun".

"False friends"

Some erroneous lexemic substitutions made by '' Polonia'' – members of the

diaspora A diaspora ( ) is a population that is scattered across regions which are separate from its geographic place of origin. Historically, the word was used first in reference to the dispersion of Greeks in the Hellenic world, and later Jews after ...

– are attributable not to mis-

but to confusion of similar-''appearing''

s (

false cognate False cognates are pairs of words that seem to be cognates because of similar sounds and meaning, but have different etymologies; they can be within the same language or from different languages, even within the same family. For example, the Engl ...

s or "

false friend In linguistics, a false friend is either of two words in different languages that look or sound similar, but differ significantly in meaning. Examples include English ''embarrassed'' and Spanish ''embarazada'' 'pregnant'; English ''parents'' ...

s") which otherwise do not share, respectively, a common

etymology Etymology ()The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) – p. 633 "Etymology /ˌɛtɪˈmɒlədʒi/ the study of the class in words and the way their meanings have changed throughout time". is the study of the history of the Phonological chan ...

or a common meaning. Thus, some Poles living in

Anglophone Speakers of English are also known as Anglophones, and the countries where English is natively spoken by the majority of the population are termed the ''Anglosphere''. Over two billion people speak English , making English the largest language ...

countries, when speaking of "''cashing'' a check", will erroneously say "''kasować'' czek" ("to ''cancel'' a check") rather than the correct "''realizować'' czek" ("to ''cash'' a check").

Latin calques

A remarkably high proportion of Polish

s actually have precise metaphrastic

s in English, traceable to the fact that both these

Indo-European languages The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutc ...

have been

calque In linguistics, a calque () or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word or root-for-root translation. When used as a verb, "to calque" means to borrow a word or phrase from another language wh ...

d, since the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...

, on the same

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

roots.

"Chicago Polish"

Some Polish expatriates in Chicago – especially those who have lived there a long time – speak Poglish on a daily basis. A most common feature of their Poglish is the

Polonization Polonization (or Polonisation; pl, polonizacja)In Polish historiography, particularly pre-WWII (e.g., L. Wasilewski. As noted in Смалянчук А. Ф. (Smalyanchuk 2001) Паміж краёвасцю і нацыянальнай ідэя� ...

of English words. A Polonian attempting to speak this kind of Polish-English melange in Poland would have great difficulty making himself understood.

In popular culture

Anthony Burgess John Anthony Burgess Wilson, (; 25 February 1917 – 22 November 1993), who published under the name Anthony Burgess, was an English writer and composer. Although Burgess was primarily a comic writer, his Utopian and dystopian fiction, d ...

' novel, ''

A Clockwork Orange ''A Clockwork Orange'' may refer to: * ''A Clockwork Orange'' (novel), a 1962 novel by Anthony Burgess ** ''A Clockwork Orange'' (film), a 1971 film directed by Stanley Kubrick based on the novel *** ''A Clockwork Orange'' (soundtrack), the film ...

'', has been translated into Polish by

Robert Stiller Robert Reuven Stiller (25 January 1928 – 10 December 2016) was a Polish Multilingualism, polyglot, writer, poet, translator, and editor. Life Robert Stiller was born in Warsaw, Poland, to Polish parents and spent his early childhood in what is n ...

in two versions: one rendered from the book's original English-Russian melange into a Polish-Russian melange as ''Mechaniczna pomarańcza, wersja R'' (A Mechanical Orange, version R); the other, into a Polish-English melange as ''Nakręcana pomarańcza, wersja A'' A" standing for the Polish word for "English"(A Wind-Up Orange, version A). The latter Polish-English version makes a fairly convincing Poglish text.

BBC Look North (East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire) ''BBC Look North'' is the BBC's TV news service for East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, produced by BBC Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. The programmes are produced and broadcast from the BBC Broadcasting Centre at Queens Court in Kingston upon Hull ...

Television produced a report on Poglish in

Boston, Lincolnshire Boston is a market town and inland port in the borough of the same name in the county of Lincolnshire, England. Boston is north of London, north-east of Peterborough, east of Nottingham, south-east of Lincoln, south-southeast of Hull ...

, which has a large Polish population. A large number of English-derived neologisms exist in Polish, spoken especially by Poland's youth. Phonetically-read English words, such as "''szoping''" ("shopping"), tend to occur, and are seen as slang expressions.

Notes

References

Christopher Kasparek Christopher Kasparek (born 1945) is a Scottish-born writer of Polish descent who has translated works by numerous authors, including Ignacy Krasicki, Bolesław Prus, Florian Znaniecki, Władysław Tatarkiewicz, Marian Rejewski, and Władysław K ...

, "The Translator's Endless Toil," ''

The Polish Review ''The Polish Review'' is an English-language academic journal published quarterly in New York City by the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America. ''The Polish Review'' was established in 1956. Editors-in-chief The following persons hav ...

'', vol. XXVIII, no. 2, 1983, pp. 83–87. * Madeleine Masson, ''Christine: a Search for

Christine Granville Maria Krystyna Janina Skarbek, (, ; 1 May 1908 – 15 June 1952), also known as Christine Granville, was a Polish agent of the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) during the Second World War. She became celebrated for her daring exploi ...

, G.M., O.B.E., Croix de Guerre, with a Foreword by Francis Cammaerts, D.S.O., Légion d'Honneur, Croix de Guerre, U.S. Medal of Freedom'', London,

Hamish Hamilton Hamish Hamilton Limited was a British book publishing house, founded in 1931 eponymously by the half-Scot half-American Jamie Hamilton (''Hamish'' is the vocative form of the Gaelic Seumas eaning James ''James'' the English form – which was ...

, 1975. *

, "Krystyna Skarbek: Re-viewing Britain's Legendary Polish Agent," ''

'', vol. XLIX, no. 3, 2004, pp. 945–53. {{interlanguage varieties Polish language Macaronic forms of English Polish-American culture in Chicago