The situation is extraordinary. The language has the logic and the people get it, yet a committee ordains: there is no defining and non-defining logic in Polish. It is some problem, if you translate Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography. He had the logic.
I offer simple geometric shapes, to help. The circle and the square are very basic.
To define an object of thought, we could say and write,
the square that is green;
Polish: kwadrat który jest zielony.
There is no comma because it is a defining clause. There are two squares in view. Color defines the green square.
To describe an object, we might say and write,
the square, which is green;
Polish: kwadrat, który jest zielony.
There is the comma because the subordinate clause does not define the square. There is only one square in view. The other geometric figure is a circle.
The new Polish canon for punctuation yet would give lists of words for people always to put a comma before, regardless of sense and syntax. You find the canon with every spellchecker.
Even machine voices do the difference . Let us repeat the pictures. The computer voice is made of a natural voice.
The color defines.
Czerwony kwadrat jest po prawej. Kwadrat który jest zielony znajduje się po lewej.
The color describes.
Czerwone kółko jest po prawej. Kwadrat, który jest zielony, znajduje się po lewej.
The language has the logic. Therefore, decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires that a translator of Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography declares her causes, and lets facts be submitted to a candid world, on her Polish orthography and non-compliance.
I offer the above sample for interested people to insert the “missing” commas according to a standard spellchecker today. If the text gets to sounds better, or becomes more natural as Polish really, please let me know.
Could the new Polish canon work?
Over the Internet, the specialist and general public alike do complain about “przecinkoza”. The modifier, -oza, usually signifies an odium. Written Polish has become “commatoform”, where “somatoform” is a regular word for something of a bodily character, ■soma and ■form together.
The new Polish canon might work with US civics or texts as Thomas Paine’s Common Sense. The two types of written matter have the thing of style in common, they drive a point. One is legislation, the other is a political pamphlet. Quite simply as for matters of language and style, the clauses are mostly non-defining because you know what the talk is about.
Paine’s Common Sense is the persuasive style. It is not to tell the what. It is to tell the why. The US Constitution is prescriptive, in telling the how.
Neither is narrative like a memoir. Benjamin Franklin begins with an address to his son, and it is not much later that he remarks, “One does not dress for private company as for a public ball”. Translation cannot style the language as for a constitutional article or political rationale.
It is yet not always that the new canon would work with the US Constitution. It would write,
Sporządzą oni listę wszystkich osób, na które głosowano…
To translate back,
They shall make a list of all the persons, who were voted for…
The sense would be, people came somewhere and were all voted for.
Out of context, reading about an idea for a vote where no vote is necessary, as all are to be chosen anyway, you might guess… Orwell and his ■Animal Farm?
The original obviously tells different,
They shall make a list of all the persons voted for…
Sporządzą oni listę wszystkich osób na które głosowano…
Here the sense in Polish is proper, some were voted for, and those names are to be listed; but … it is incorrect to write in such a way in Polish. The spellchecker has the word który (która, które) to come with a comma before it — always. It is in the list.
According to the new canon,
all the persons voted for
as well as
all the persons, who were voted for
would translate the same, into
wszystkie osoby, na które głosowano, with the comma.
Could the new canon improve the language?
The Polish language would look deficient right at the beginning of Benjamin Franklin’s memoir:
“That felicity, when I reflected on it, has induced me sometimes to say, that were it offered to my choice, I should have no objection to a repetition of the same life from its beginning, only asking the advantages authors have in a second edition to correct some faults of the first.”
To be “correct”, translation would have to use the comma,
jak przy drugiej edycji książki, która daje poprawić.
This would back-translate into the second edition; hence,
“Poczucie osobistego szczęścia, jak je brałem na rozum, sprawiło czasem że powiedziałem, jak by mi dano wybór, nie wahałbym się i miał takiego samego życia powtórkę, od początku, prosząc jedynie o tą autorską korzyść jak przy drugiej edycji książki co daje poprawić pewne wady pierwszej.”
Is the new language canon natural?
The items “który” and “co” are in Polish contexts as here quite equivalent. Always to require the comma before the word “który”, the Council would make the Polish comma depend on word shape, unlike in natural languages. Punctuation is naturally syntactic, not lexemic.
It obviously would not be improvement, always to require a comma before the word “co” as well.
In languages human, we never rely on some solely “syntactic surface”. Let us compare questions as,
Do you mind if I come in?
If the person answers, Sure, the meaning is not to hold the guest at the door; he or she may come in.
Within a semantic scope or extent, the comma may highlight or add emphasis, as in the letter from Abel James:
“My Dear and Honored Friend: I have often been desirous of writing to thee, but could not be reconciled to the thought, that…”
The new Polish canon forces lexemic compensation. When there are plenty of commas, you need to add a word:
“Mój Drogi i Szanowny Przyjacielu, często przychodziła mi przemożna chęć do Ciebie napisać, ale nie potrafiłem się pogodzić nawet z myślą, iż…” (even with a thought as).
Items “że” and “żeby” are PWN-listed too.
That felicity, when I reflected on it, has induced me sometimes to say, that were it offered to my choice, I should have no objection to a repetition of the same life from its beginning…
Poczucie osobistego szczęścia, jak je brałem na rozum sprawiło czasem że powiedziałem, jak by mi dano wybór, nie wahałbym się i miał takiego samego życia powtórkę, od początku…
Polish spellcheckers will require a comma before the item “that”: czasem, że …
Benjamin Franklin’s comma emphasizes the thing is in just saying so, because nobody gets to live twice. People usually say in English
to say that it is…
and not
to say, that it is…
With the present canon for Polish, all seems to be just some saying so — I said, that it is.
Does the new canon regard the sound of the language?
Commas obviously are not to regulate the breath, yet they are sounded. Let us compare the machine natural voice again. It does the least there is for a natural comma, and still the comma sounds.
Keimer, nie dało się powiedzieć że je pisał.
Keimer, nie dało się powiedzieć, że je pisał.
Keimer made verses too, but very indifferently. He could not be said to write them, for his manner was to compose them in the types directly out of his head…
Keimer też układał wiersze, ale bardzo niedbale. Nie dało się powiedzieć że je pisał, bo jego sposobem było układać czcionki od razu, z głowy…
In speech, the comma might amount to suggestion at times that you could not speak or it was not permitted — obviously not the word sense here.
These are the causes and facts I submit to the candid world, on my Polish orthography and non-compliance.
Regards, Teresa Eva Pelka.
Notes
The committe has brought a few more changes.
The English gentleman was translated as dżentelman. Polish does not have the plural where man is one, and men are many. The plural resolves with flexions, and thus it is natural to “import” such a foreign singular as-is, dżentelman. The Polish plural would be dżentelmani.
The committe yet has dżentelmen and dżentelmeni, possibly invoking “imports” as bakhend, where Polish would assimilate the English æ into e, but the English e would be e too.
With irregularity or ambiguity, the Polish a can do. We do not have to look far. The Polish language writes businesswoman, not “łumen” or women.
The plural for a hand is hands, no ambiguity with the plural, hence the bakhend or bekhend, as the spelling looks unestablished. Assimilation as “dżentelmen” yet might occasion odd impressions of plurality, as people speak languages.
The new canon advises the item tę rather than tą, which looks some temporary vogue, because phonology lets resolve into tę rękę, or tą książkę.
It would not be always word stress to decide. It is natural for a speaker to know what he or she wants to say, and thus tę naturalną i ludzką harmonię, because the noun is nodal. Pod tę książkę would be plainly anti-phonological, and I’d have to be over-conscious or self-aware, whereas pod tą książką comes just natural. Word stress is always penultimate in Polish.
I translate Junto as Ramię w Ramię (shoulder to shoulder), as junto has been adopted into English, whereas in Polish there only are the junta or hunta, words for a military regime. Benjamin Franklin did not organize any regime.
I have one occurrence of the variant podeszłem. PWN says the shape is “one of the most frequent errors”, yet the verb gets along as follows: we podeszliśmy, you podeszliście, they podeszli, it podeszło, I podeszłam (fem.), and only the masculine singular would sound podszedłem. Kind of lonely, isn’t it.
Likewise, for the verb pójść: poszliśmy, poszliście, poszli, poszło, poszłam, and the masculine is the only exception, poszedłem.
■PWN explains,
The widely propagated form, poszłem, results from analogous adjustment with the feminine poszłam.
Still, there are no feminine Polish verbs, and thus PWN invokes olden Russia. The form poszedł continues from the shape *pošьdlъ, where the weak word final yer was dropped, and the middle syllable yer became a full vowel, e — they say.
Here the problem with the linguistic evidence is that it never could have existed. Rome fell at some 500 years of this era, and Polish has acquisitions as the speech sound {ts} from the amber trade, feel welcome to the ■Latin demeanor.
Polish linguistics would date Old Polish for some 10-16 centuries, with the Cyrillic dated for some 900 of this era, when the first possible yer could become written.
The earliest known written Polish is the Henry ■pobrusa, and it is no evidence of yers, see ■Wikipedia. Yers were either dropped before the Polish started writing, or there never have been any Polish yers.
The thing is similar with the Polish phonologically proper wziąść, where Russian influences have been implied though Russian has not had ś.
The Polish language evolved wnijć to wnijść without foreign influence, and simply for articulatory economy. The Council-commended wziąć forces nasalization, almost to wziońć, very unnaturally and anti-Mickiewicz, who remains a national Polish poet though he wrote and published wziąść.
Honestly, excursions as PWN above look some other purpose. Would it be for the sake of a mathematical world? Then, you try to hold language for a system although it has non-mathematical or more than mathematical infinity, and nothing ever can work. You insert plenty of commas and even yers, hoping?
Some people might be even serious about theories of a mathematical universe, these yet fall into pieces when we think about the semantic field. If we compare the US Constitution paragraph for paragraph, the sense is rendered in two physically different shapes, yet the capacity to mediate information is preserved, in English and Polish.
You can ascribe mathematical notation to language form, but you cannot calculate the form itself. If b is bigger than c in mind — the question has no rationale.
Well, the universe may have something of math in it, but it sure has something else too, as long as Earth and people remain within. Mathematical models for the organ the brain is alone, have been rejected as limited; Damasio, 2000.
Would that PWN alternate purpose be a Proto-Indo-European religion, there is ■no man, woman, house, or child with the pie. People “stretch” a lot there. Generally, if I could, I would advise never to sacrifice language — whatever the purpose or policy.
Philosopher Honeybee never would consider the mind, soul, or self — without language; there is no point: you could not be yourself.
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Your mind, soul, or self is your only way for eternity, he reminded. Of a mortal human, there is simply nothing else possibly to survive. You may change your mind; anyone can; but as you would not merely give your breath into the hands of another, to live, never give up on your faith in Eternity, he warned.
Returning to translation, I thought the lonely -sze- was too literal for the new and open context of Benjamin Franklin getting to know Philadelphia. Such a literally step for step it would be and recurring, whereas he wrote he looked around much. Plus, I do not believe in verbs of feminine stems. I enclosed podeszłem.
“Dalej w górę ulicy Rynkowej, aż do ulicy Czwartej, przeszedłem obok drzwi niejakiego pana Read, ojca mojej przyszłej żony; ona stała w drzwiach, zobaczyła mnie i pomyślała że był ze mnie, a na pewno rzeczywiście był, jak najdziwniejszy i najśmieszniejszy z widoków. Skręciłem potem w ulicę Kasztanową i podeszłem troszkę Orzechową, całą drogę jedząc bułkę, a krążąc tak dalej znalazłem się z powrotem na nabrzeżu Rynkowej, niedaleko łódki, gdzie podszedłem po łyk rzecznej wody” — Benjamin Franklin, Autobiografia.
No three males could become one woman in body, and you grammatically say podeszli about three men, and podeszły, about three women. There is no natural language principle for the third person singular to govern the first (podszedł), and thus only the ■theory of the third man might there remain, potentially in favor of PWN (but I have not looked that up in detail).
The last of the matters here, Polish today has variants for human visual ability, patrzeć or patrzyć, where both shapes are considered correct, regardless of grammatical gender.
Patrzyć is more literal with regard to eyesight. It is used in the phrase patrzyć prosto w oczy, to look someone’s straight in the eyes, hence,
Ostatnio wpadła w moje ręce w Londynie zebrana przez niego kolekcja najważniejszych pamfletów o sprawach publicznych, od roku 1641 do 1717; jak popatrzeć na numerację, wiele z nich zaginęło, ale nadal pozostaje osiem tomów folio oraz dwadzieścia cztery kwarto i oktawo.
Od tamtej pory zawsze lubię patrzeć na dobrych rzemieślników przy narzędziach; przydaje się to też, bo dość się nauczyłem by sam wykonywać w domu drobne prace, jak się nie da od razu sprowadzić fachowca, oraz przy budowie małych urządzeń dla moich eksperymentów, kiedy zamysł mam żywo i świeżo w umyśle.
Should we say here, popatrzyć or patrzyć, the impression might be closer to second-hand information (the author himself has not done this literally looking at the pamphlets yet), or some undue or physical interest about people at work.
Likely it is a pie in the sky, to have citations as in English, without the “three commas”:
PWN wyjaśnia, “Szerząca się…
PWN wyjaśnia, „Szerząca się… “three commas”).
Well, I am thus making a wish. Twinkle, twinkle…