FALSE FRIENDS: POLISH AND OTHER SLAVIC LANGUAGES

IS IT EASIER FOR THE SLAVS TO LEARN POLISH?

It is believed that the students whose native language is one of the Slavic languages, find it easier to learn Polish as a foreign language than do the students whose language belongs to another language group. There’s a lot of truth in that. There is a „but“, however. The Slavs can easily fall into a trap called false friends when learning Polish.

IT SOUNDS THE SAME IN POLISH, SO...

There is a great deal of words that sound very similar or identical in Polish, Slovak, Czech and Russian. Unfortunately, similar sound doesn’t go with the same meaning. Every Pole doing the shopping in the Czech Republic or Slovakia must have been surprised when they saw bread described as „czerstwy“. At first you might think it’s the honest shop assistant telling his customers that the bread isn’t fresh. Wrong. The word „čerstvé” in Czech and Slovak means fresh, whereas in Polish it means old, stale.

MILITARY TENDENCIES IN THE POLISH LANGUAGE OR FALSE FRIENDS?

Russian speakers burst into laughter when they hear that Polish people drink from a ... cannon. And again, that is a lexical error: the word puszka (пушка) in Russian means «cannon», while in Polish it's just an innocent can.

                                            THE SLAVS LEARNING POLISH MUST BEWARE OF FALSE FRIENDS

Another thing that may astonish the Polish visiting their Slovak friends is the fact that they are invited to sit on the … carpet. But before we sit on the floor, on the above-mentioned carpet, we should realize that „divan” in Slovak is a sofa, not a carpet as the Polish „dywan” is :)

On the other hand, many Czechs staying in Poland must have felt the urge to return to the shop and complain about the pierogi (dumplings) they had bought as they turned out to be with jagody (blackberries) and not truskawki (strawberries) as it said on the packaging. In Czech and Slovak „jahoda” is the Polish ‘truskawka”, and „jagoda” in Polish means a sweet fruit that grows in the forest (our Southern neighbours call it „borówka”).

As you can see, although the Slavs find it easier to learn conjugations and declension, they might have trouble with false friends, therefore it is advisable that they have a dictionary at hand when doing a Polish course.

BEWARE OF FALSE FRIENDS WHEN LEARNING POLISH

THE WORDS THAT SOUND SIMILAR IN POLISH AND ANOTHER LANGUAGE

Everyone who is taking up a foreign language is very happy to hear the words that sound similar in both his native language and the language they are learning. It‘s all fine as long as the words not only sound similar but also mean similar or the same things. Otherwise we’re dealing with everyone’s nightmare called false friends.

THE PROBLEM CONCERNING NOT ONLY SLAVIC LANGUAGE SPEAKERS

I would seem that in case of the Polish language the problem arises when the Slavs take it up. Obviously, there’s plenty of false friends within the same language group (we’re going to devote a separate entry to these), however, we should not think that the speakers of English, Italian or Finnish have nothing to worry about. At first sight these languages seem very different from Polish and it’s hard to find the words that sound similar. But just listen to an everyday conversation in Polish and you’ll change your mind. Examples?

                        When learning any foreign language, not only Polish, we should look out for false friends.

CONSULT A DICTIONARY BEFORE USING WORDS

Imagine that an English speaker needs to go to the doctor’s. He or she is sitting in the waiting room and overhears a conversation between two other patients:
- Bardzo dziś boli mnie bark – one of them complains.
The English speaker has been living in Poland, so he or she has definitely attended a Polish language course and has understood almost everything. But the „bark“ doesn’t seem to fit here. Was the dog barking so loudly that the person started to feel pain? Strange structure. Not at all! The structure is nothing complex. The word „bark“ is the key to understanding the sentence. In Polish the word means „shoulder“, and in English it is the sound that dogs make.
We should also watch out for what we’re saying when taking to an attractive Italian man or woman; our invitation to kolacja (dinner/supper) may be understood as an invitation to colazione, which means „breakfast“ in Italian. A Finn may look in surprise at the form he or she is trying to fill out, because one of the questions is about the name of the trip. All the confusion is caused by the word „matka“, which in Finnish means „trip“ and in Polish it’s „mother“ and it’s the mother’s name that the Finn needs to put in.
Therefore, before we use a Polish word that sounds similar to a word in our language, we’d better look it up in a dictionary to make sure it’s not a false friend.