Today it’s going to be brief and do rzeczy (to the point), because I will tell you about the word rzecz.
The majority of foreigners learning Polish (If you are looking for an interesting Polish language course here, you will find some useful information.) get to know this word quite early on. It denotes an object and it’s very easy to translate it into another foreign language (die Sache in German, thing in English, or вещь in Russian). We say moje rzeczy (here, we usually use the plural form) when we refer to objects belonging to us. However, in Polish rzecz appears in contexts which go beyond this first, elementary meaning. In fact, we can often hear that someone has dużo rzeczy do zrobienia, that is someone has to tackle many issues or tasks (the word sprawy is also popular in Polish and one can use the expression zająć się wieloma sprawami in the same context).
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WHO IS TALKING DO RZECZY?
If during a discussion about a certain topic someone starts digressing and drifting away from the original subject of the conversation, it’s enough to say: Do rzeczy, proszę and our interlocutor will quickly return to the interrupted thread. Mówić do rzeczy conveys as much as talking sense and straight to the point. Someone, who mówi od rzeczy, says something unrelated to the subject matter and often what is said doesn’t make sense. Yet, when that someone realises it and we begin to hear meaningful and interesting words, we can comment: Teraz mówisz do rzeczy. Likewise, we can describe sensible people, good ideas and anything that makes sense as będące do rzeczy, while when we want to express the contrary, we describe these people, ideas and issues as będące od rzeczy.
WHAT ELSE IS GOOD TO KNOW ABOUT RZECZY IN THE POLISH LANGUAGE?
People that call a spade a spade, nazywają rzeczy po imieniu, and rzeczą oczywistą jest (there is no doubt about) that the communication with them is brief, succinct, but also difficult.
Polish has endowed rzecz with multiple meanings. This small word can stand for an object, a task, an activity or a subject of a conversation. Cała rzecz w tym (literally: the whole thing is, meaning: the point is) to remember to always use rzeczy do rzeczy :).
