Re: [OT] Polish expressions, requested by Edward.


Leszek L. <lleszek@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:e8aunp$jac$1@xxxxxxxxxxx
Hello,

Some time ago, when we were contemplating the absence
of "no one" in modern Greek, Edward Hennesey asked me
if any Polish expressions could be the envy of the
Anglo-Saxon world.

L.L.:

Thank you, great chryselephantine one. Nemo and myself appreciate
your hard work and evocative mentions. John has already covered
some English equivalents but there may yet be some room for me to
remark.


Well I am not nearly as assertive about the superiority
of my native language as certain students are about
theirs, but perhaps I can come up with a couple
of original expressions. Many come from the world
of traditional farming and country life.

When giving somebody directions how to get somewhere:
"go straight ahead, like a sickle's throw". This really
means that the way to follow is straight, even though
a sickle is the closest to a boomerang you can find
in the Polish countryside, so you would not normally
associate it with rectilinear trajectories.

A few things come to mind. If you wield your sickle in a
returning
arc, sooner or later, you won't like the homecoming;so I can
understand
the linear reference. The general utilitarian difference between
a sickle--a harvest tool for fruits--and a scythe--more a reaping
tool for dross--is one worth thinking about. As well, a throwing
stick is much more common in rudimentary societies as a hunting
tool and it traces straight
lines in flight.


"Plowing a wasteland" (actually, "ugór" means a field
that was idle for a year, according to an ancient
farming practice) means the hard and unrewarding work
of introducing something new into an anvironment
that is by no means prepared to receive it. Such as
teaching the subtleties of English negated pronouns
to students who are more interested in telling you
that their language is superior.

Agronomists say that crop rotation is much more effective than
interposing a dead fallow period of a year between repeated
plantings
of a crop. IIRC, several years are required for a dead fallow
period to be useful without the use of major soil amendment
programs.



"The smith did wrong, so the Gipsy was hanged"
(i.e. the usual suspects get punished, and important
people are spared even if actually guilty).

Still true in many places worldwide. In societies with major
problems of divisive inequality, often featuring police with
sectarian alleigances and/or
shaky investigative tradtions, when finding the culprit is
difficult or inadvisable, scapegoating and thrashing the outcaste
until he freely confesses is not uncommon.



Some more examples that come to my mind describe
how poorly certain things go together.

"<Applying or adding in any way> X to Y would be
like a flower on a sheepskin coat" (the assumption
being that flowers are better worn on more elegant
clothing such as suits) - meaning: it's an absurd
fancy addition to a crude thing Y that lacks much
more fundamantal qualities than those likely to be
contributed by the proposed use of X. Sadly, I am
at a loss for an English word to describe the exact
kind of primitive sheepskin coat being referred to;
but believe me, a flower in its button-hole would
not make much sense.

"Putting lipstick on a pig" is similar here.


"X matches (or suits, or fits) Y like a fist matches
a nose". Strangely enough, this does not necessarily
mean that applying Y will cause any damage to X;
it simply means that it would be pointless.

"You really want to wear this jacket with these
trousers? It matches them like a fist matches a nose!"


Errp!


Another expression of the same family: "X is as suitable
for Y as an ox is for a carriage". (the strong but rather
slowish creature is not what you would expect to pull
a luxury vehicle).




An expression I only heard from my father, but which
I try to perpetuate for future generations to enjoy,
describing a long, complicated, and pointless discussion:
"judging a goose to death".

Only slightly more popular, and equally picturesque,
is the phrase "to conjure somebody into a goat".
(The noun used describes an old male goat, and I have
never met the expression applied to a female victim).
Meaning: to spoof or deceive in a truly royal way.


One exchange which I think I have already mentioned
in this forum:

[reproaching someone who does not close the door
behind themselves]: What, don't you have doors
where you live?
[the contrite and humble answer]: There was a mat,
but the goat ate it. (note: the mat is a hanging mat
as a substitute door, not the doormat that you wipe
your shoes on).

One of my own coinage, hopefully on its way to spread,
encouraging a reluctant person to make a decisive step
(of any nature) now that all the preparations have been
done: "Oh come on, don't turn back at the last moment!
The pigs have been killed, the vodka has been bought,
now there MUST be a wedding!".

Put the lipstick on the pig.



We have a number of words that are almost impossible
to render in English, and which I wouldn't like
to be without:

- Kolega. Noun. An obvious cognate of the English
colleague, but it's often used when you would say
"friend" in English. This leaves "przyjaciel" (=friend)
reserved for the kind of real friendship you find
in Jack London's novels.

Associate or acquaintance are counterparts. Friend is that.
Sometimes
we use the Wild West hangover partner (pardner) on this side of
the
continent. Certain demimondaine elements hail each other as "my
dog".
As a caution, calling another fellow "mate" here, expresses a
preference
beyond friendship.

- Kilkanascie. Numeral. Literally, "severalteen". Any
number from 11 through 19. While "severalteen" sounds
odd and funny in English, in Polish it can be used in
very serious contexts such as describing the death
toll of an air crash. An interpreter's nightmare.

Here I part company with J.W. "Umpteen" means a large,
unspecified
quantity of something. "Tweenagers" is our kilkanascie.

- Niesamowity. Adjective. Might be rendered as uncanny.
I am one of the perhaps 0.5% of native speakers of
Polish who know that it is derived from "nie sam",
= "not alone". Think of a person whose soul is not the
only occupant of his or her body, and you get the idea
(and possibly the shivers). Nowadays, the word has
become trivialized and simply means extraordinary,
unusual, unbelievable, impressive.

A haunted person, that. I am, however, in search of a fully
developed
definition of "Bisomos", which I heard tell was a being with two
bodies.
Somewhere, there are the ghosts singing "I ain't got no body".


And finally, a word whose decline I will not mourn,
even though it is unparalleled (not even by the
American "get"!) in the width of its range of
designates, the height of its level of abstraction,
and the depth of its conotations. Ladies and gentelmen,
take your hats off for:

- ZALATWIC (za³atwiæ if you can display Polish
diacriticals). Verb. To get something done, arrange,
procure, acquire, facilitate, enable, organize, pull
the right strings, provide the required object or
material, obtain (for oneself or for s.o.) a document,
a rubber stamp, a position, a permission, a concession,
an approval, an exemption. Always involves social
skills and resourcefulness of one kind or other, from
amateur market research to diplomacy to nepotism to
ingratiation to corruption to stealing. The word was
on everybody's lips in the good old Orwellian and
Kafkaesque(*) days of planned economy, when dating a
shop assistant could well be your only way to get
anything in your fridge. Or a fridge to begin with.

Come to think of it, my Moroccan friends told me about
a professional called a [shah-OOsh] (sorry, no idea
how to spell it, I only ever met it in speech).
What a [shah-OOsh] does is very close to "zalatwiac".
I'm not sure if Arabic has a verb for his activities.


"Fixer" is excellent. "A man with juice" would be another
possibility.
-----------------------
(*) Is anybody familiar with the writings of our
beloved Slawomir Mrozek? (or S³awomir Mro¿ek,
in the full glory of diacriticals).

Did, did he invent ¿coleslaw?

Hope some of this made sense.

Yes. And thank you for it.
I'll prowl my annotated dictionary some day and filch some
amusing
things for a post in kind.

Regards,

Edward Hennessey

P.S. You missed a cozy weekend in Death Valley. It topped out at
121
F. I was simply dashing in a patio umbrella.



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