On the Way

I went with my mom and stepdad to the mall today and saw a funny sign. Let me explain: there are a lot of English words that have crept into the Polish language. Some of these words will be spelled with their proper English spelling and pronounced closely to what they should be in English, like the word “pub” (which is not pronounced “poob”). Many of these words, however, are transliterated so as to keep a similar sound when pronounced in Polish. Some of my personal favorites are “biznesman” (businessman) or “lejdis” (ladies). Sometimes, though, the English words get a bit lost in translation (not unlike Engrish, or as I like to call it here “Ponglish”), like the sign above for a blended, frozen beverage from a café; I assume that the name should be “Blizzard”, and the word for blizzard or snowstorm in Polish is “śnieżyca”, which is not even close to “blizzer”. No doubt, I’ll find more of these kinds of signs later during my time here and I’ll try to post them. Mathilda, a fellow Polish-American friend from back in the States, and I would regularly bust a gut laughing about this kind of thing last summer here in Kraków.