Talk:False Friends of the Slavist/Belarusian-Polish

Kniaz'
IMHO Belarusian (and also Russian) kniaz' and Polish ksiądz are not false cognates at all. They do not sound similarly, neither in Polish nor in Belarusian. Or do they? They do not even share the same Slavic root as ksiądz is a cognate rather to other Polish words for Prince - księżyc (Moon, lit. Prince's son; note it's not kniażyc) and książę (Prince) - all of Bohemian descent.

Perhaps in early Middle Ages (I mean 8th or 9th centuries) the western Slavic and eastern Slavic words for a Prince sounded similar, but they do not in modern times. Halibutt


 * There are hundreds of definitions of 'false friends'. For example, Carlo Milan and Rudolf Sünkel (Falsche Freunde auf der Lauer. Dizionario di false analogie e ambigue affinità fra tedesco e italiano, Bologna 1990, p. VII) explicitly exclude words of different etymology like Italian caldo ‘warm’ vs. English cold, Russian para ‘pair’ vs. Polish para ‘steam’ etc. In my opinion everything that might cause difficulties should be warned against, so both these examples and the ksiądz vs. knjaz’ case are 'false friends'.  Some people might not see the etymological relationship here and thus not be mislead by the different meanings of the etymon *kъnęzь (itself from Germanic kuningaz, which in English became king) in Russian and Polish. All the better for them. Others (e.g. slavists!) might see that the formal relationship is the same as Russian kniga vs. Polish księga and thus assume that the word in the other language might have the same meaning. I would say, let us not erase information as irrelevant as long as the criteria formal equivalence, semantic difference are met. --Daniel Bunčić 16:46, 2 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Fine with me, though as I mentioned above there is no phonetical similarity between the pair in any way - and that's what counts for most of the people. Halibutt.

Polish grać
It does not mean "dance" at all (= Pol. tańczyć). This is an error in most Polish/other Slavic pages.

Some "specialist" reverted my change for unknown reason. Hey you, 82.182.34.217, what is your name please. Are you a native speaker of Polish that you revert changes what a native speaker made? What are your sources?

Grzegorj 12:38, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

W języku białoruskim nie ma słowa дварэц!!! To jest rusycyzm. Tem słowu w języku białoruskim odpowiada палац.