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My favorite polish word is dżdżownica (earthworm). Pronounced j-j-ov-NEE-tsa.
Oh, and dżdży (it rains), pronounced j-j-ih
And before anyone asks, yes, dżdżownica is called like that because it comes out of the ground when dżdży.
We call them "rainworm" too in German
In Dutch also 🙋♀️
Danish as well
"Meitemark" in Norwegian. Which is a strange word when I considered it, so I looked it up. Meite is the word for fishing with edible/biological bait. So that makes sense.
Meite probably comes from norse "meita" from cut/slice from the meaning to do a stabbing motion.
This makes no sense.
It's like in French where pretty much everything is a kind of Apple.
So a potato is a "ground apple"
Same in Austria german: Erdapfel
In Dutch also 🙋♀️
Do we get bonus point now? :)
Incidentally potato is called that in old dialected Norwegian as well(Archaic as its not really used anymore)
Daggmask in Sweden. Mask for worm, dagg for moisture on the ground
The only polish word I know is kurwa. It must mean "the" or something because I swear when I listen to some of my polish colleges talking it comes up in every other sentence.
you should check out their supermarkets one time. You can learn new words like "zloty" (golden) and "bez" (without).
And Piwo.
The pronunciation is actually not that bad but the spelling is insanely difficult.
Spelling is actually very regular (way more than English), it's just slightly unintuitive for non polish speakers
Polish and Czech are basically the Dutch of Eastern European languages.
As my Polish-speaking mom likes to say, "Would you like to buy a vowel?"
Another classic:
What's long and hard and given to a Polish bride on her wedding day?
A new last name.
Škrt plch z mlh Brd pln skvrn z mrv prv hrd scvrnkl z brzd skrz trs chrp v krs vrb mls mrch srn čtvrthrst zrn.
This is a correct sentence in Czech.
Not a curse?
Nope, it's not static from the TV either
More like a witches grocery list
A scythe of the nightingale from the mist A bridle full of carrion stains, the first pride shrivelled from the bridle through a cornflower cluster in the willow bush, a carrion deer quarter of a handful of grain.
I think we owe the Slavs some vowels.
🤮[TÜRKÇE KUSUNTU SESLERİ]🤮
/uj : The reason why turkish is relevant is that we have a 99% rule of a sylable must consist of at least one vowel per up to two consonants.
Do the Czechs add at least a few schwas in the middle to make it work?
They could have just made sh, zh and ch sounds single symbol like other slavic languages that use latin alphabet.
We do have some of that though! But to make it harder, sometimes there's both: ż and rz make the same sound, but some words use one and some use the other, to keep you on your toes
Is there any impact on reading speed due to this? Polish isn't the worst possible slavic latin script I've seen by far. 🙃
I don't think it makes any difference. I feel like most of the time the words are different enough that you can tell them apart at a glance. Though if you're texting with someone and they don't use polish symbols (e.g. they use z instead of ż), sometimes you need to put extra effort to comprehend what they meant
so could've English tbf
...it's an old code, but valid, sir...
Literal lols. 😆
Digraphs were a mistake
this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2025
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