Polish and English - literary potential

[Gość: JakubW]

Greetings. I would like to raise a question of extensiveness and
sophistication of both languages and how these affect the possibilities to
verbalise one's thoughts, especially when writing or rendering a literary
text (where the ability to make the language rich by substituting ordinary
words by more elegant and refined ones contributes significantly to the
overall artistical value of the form and to the sensuality and credibility of
literary descriptions [characters, places, situations - basically the
content], which - taken together - decide whether the text is closer to the
masterpiece or to the rubbish).

Just to summarize my opinion: when it comes to measure the amount of
vocabulary, English is undoubtedly one of the most extensive languages in the
world - not only it consists of a considerable number of Germanic and
Latinate words, but it is also permeated with numerous words derived from
other languages over the centuries, and finally its simple yet logical
construction enables you to create whole families of a single word with
immense facility (just by adding certain prefix or suffix). On the other
hand, Polish consists of the stately set of Slavic words originating from the
very long tradition plus the set of Latin equivalents for most of the former.
Additionally, its strict and complex grammatical rules allow the writer to
convey certain thoughts/images/emotions more precisely and accurately - at
least I, who am a native speaker of Polish, feel that peculiar sensuality
while reading Polish poetry/prose, whereas English is sometimes quite bleak
for me, but probably it's the defining feature of one's attitude towards his
mother tongue.

In conclusion, for me the two are comparable (after I put aside the patriotic
affection for my ancestors' language, which makes impartiality impossible)
and Kochanowski equals Shakespeare, Milosz matches Poe. The other thing is
that the greatest literary masterpieces survive translations unharmed, just
like the poetry of the aforementioned Milosz.

But enough said. Now I would like to hear your opinions, with hope that the
question will prove interesting.

Regards,
Jakub

[mikajanka]

I agree with you that English is an extensive language. If I may give an
example - In English book erotic plots are written so that you can almost
imagine everything what is going on there and a description doesn't offends
your feelings and creates a sophisticated both passion and atmosphere. At the
same time when it comes to translation, it raises great difficulities because
polish language doesn't have so differential vocabulary and every trial to
mainain exactness of a translated text is not as simple as most of readers
think so. In our language there is lack of equivalent words, more or less
precised as the one used in original.
The language is constantly changing, and evolves - compare polish vocabulary
nowadays to the one before centuries, you can simply notice the difference.
Polish poet? - Mickiewicz is the one for me.
Best regards,

[Gość: abced]

Polski ma bogatsze słownictwo - np. ponad 50 określeń rozbójnika :-)

[Gość: abc]

hmm...