5 – 1 “Fart” Is a Good Thing and Other False Friends
A “false friend” isn’t actually someone pretending to be your przyjaciel so they can gain access to your stash of Polo Cockta and its apparent magic powers. “False friends” are words from different languages that sound identical or very close to each other but mean very different things. All languages have them, and the false friends between Polish and English aren’t really all that interesting from a linguistic point of view. But good hell are some of them funny.
So you have words like “fart,” which, you know, is great because it describes your butt blowing a raspberry in English. But in Poland, it means “luck” or “fortune,” pronounced similarly to the English version only with a more distinct . It sometimes appears in such phrases as “Ale fart!” meaning “What luck/Good thing that,” but looking in its written form like someone shouting that they have gas at a craft brewery, and I just wanted you to share that mental image with me.
Then there is the word for the old rulers of Russia, which you English speakers spell a few different ways like “tsar,” “czar,” “tzar,” or “csar,” and it’s impressive that with so many tries you still haven’t gotten it right. It should be “car,” at least in Poland, where it’s pronounced something like . Now, please imagine an old Ford placed on an ornate Russian throne with a crown on the hood and beeping “Let’s go to war with Sweden” in Morse Code because you need to find joy and happiness in this bastard of a world wherever you can.
That’s why I debated with myself whether I should tell you about the next word cause I’d pay good money to see one of you mistake the two, but … what do you think the Polish word “prezerwatywa” () means? Probably “preservative,” right? Well, word of warning. If you find food in Poland or whatever that someone warns you has a “prezerwatywa” in it, they’re not being health freak assholes. They’re looking out for you cause “prezerwatywa” means “condom” in Polish.
Another word to watch out for is “dres,” pronounced like the English “dress” but again with a stronger . This one can be especially confusing to foreigners cause it still refers to a piece of clothing, only instead of prom attire, it means “tracksuit.” It’s also the name for a subculture of the same name that is like the Polish version of chavs, though I wouldn’t worry too much about them if you ever visit Poland. Two of them once tried to mug me by asking if I had any money and took my word for it when I said “no” and let me go. I sometimes wonder what happened to them. I hope one of them died so the other one could have the use of their shared brain cell all to himself.
Suffice to say, paragons of humanity they were not, though it would be weird if they were since “paragon” () means “receipt” in Polish. In short, it’s still kinda hard for me to take comic book characters named “Paragon” seriously.
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