English got its habit of French interjections from a little event in 1066 -- but where did Polish pick it up?
Several centuries later... Around baroque, I think, maybe? My history is
pretty bad, but I remember French was very fashionable for a while.
French was the language of the Polish court and diplomacy in general since about 1500. It replaced (Medieval) Latin as "ligua franca", with Latin being kept, to an extent, for scholarly purposes. Later on, French remained the foreign language of choice of the Polish educated classes, in all 3 Partition areas (in two of which the official language was German, in one Russian). So it's no wonder that Polish became peppered with phrases of French origin. That changed after WWII, and now everyone learns English :)
Do you also have latin stock phrases? (e.g.: etc., i.e., q.v., Q.E.D., gustabis non disputandem est, habeus corpus, quid pro quo, carpe diem, . . . )
Yes, we do, although not as many as in English.
That just proves how many changes happened in the 35 years that divide me and Weronika :) When I was her age, anyone with highschool education - whether they took Latin or not (I didn't) - was expected at least to understand a whole lot of Latin phrases and most of us used them, too, in everyday speech though, usually, in an abbreviated format.
A student called tot he blackboard to "recite" the lesson was as likely as not to say, bravely "Ave Caesar, morituri te salutant"... Every math theorem had to be ended with "q.e.d." and you had to know what it meant. So, in discussion, to demolish our opponent, we'd say: "quod erat, d" ("d" standing both for the original "demonstrandum" and for the Polish "dupa" - arse)... We used "de gustibus" (without the "non est disputandum") and a shrug, when sneering at someone else's bad taste... "Quid pro quo" was so common, it became "kwi pro kwo" and, for a while, was even a name of a night club/comedy program. We didn't say "carpe diem"; we said "idziem na karpia" (we're going to have some carp"), because everyone was supposed to know what the phrase was a take-off of... When I took a U-prep course (total waste of time, BTW <g>), we mocked our teacher by saying "sine kwa-kwa" (the sound we believe a duck makes). Not because we didn't understand it, but because he used the proper "sine qua non" far too often, and we thought him pretentious... I don't think there was anyone among my acquaintance who didn't understand the partially Polish, partially Latin: "cum bibo piwo, stat mihi kolano krzywo" (when I drink beer, my knee is crooked)... Etc, etc.
Habeas corpus? No, not in a communist system :)
-- Tamara P Duvall http://t-n-lace.net/ Lexington, Virginia, USA (Formerly of Warsaw, Poland)
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