RWAĆ – Tearing, rending, ripping

The root (*)rwa- is found in words which generally denote tearing, ripping, pulling away or otherwise forceful separation of one thing from another. In most cases, -rwa- is the perfective root, while the imperfective counterpart is –rywa-. Note, however, an important exception is the word rwać itself, which is imperfective (niedokonany). I have not been able to find a clear perfective (dokonany) counterpart, but it seems like this function is taken up by one or more of the other words in this semantic field.

rwać – tear, rip, run (stocking); dash, rush forth; with się, tear; rwać (się) do + GEN, to strive eagerly toward

dorwać / dorywać – get, catch, find, flush out (of hiding); with się do + GEN, to break or tear through to; get to (after effort)

naderwać / nadrywać – to tear slightly, strain (muscle)

oberwać / obrywać – tear off, peel off, pick (fruit); to get shot/hit/beaten up

oderwać / odrywać – tear off, tear up, break away; od + GEN, break away/off from; oderwać kogoś od czegoś- distract (or, wean) someone from something

poderwać / podrywać  - lift violently; hit on, pick up (i.e., for sex)

porwać / porywać – abduct, kidnap; grab, snatch

przerwać / przerywać – stop, interrupt, break (something in progress); przerwać milczenie, to break the silence; przerwać ciążę, to terminate a pregnancy

rozerwać / rozrywać – tear up/apart, break apart (rozrywać na strzępy, to tear to pieces); with się, amuse, divert, entertain (ref. rozrywka, entertainment)

urwać / urywać – sever, break off, tear off; with się, be severed/broken off; urwać mu głowę, to rip his head off

wyrwać / wyrywać – tear out, tear away, extract; with się, get away, extract oneself from; wyrwać się z matni, lit. ‘to free oneself from a snare/trap,’ to get out of an impasse/dead-end situation.

zarwać / zarywać – break through; stay up late; blow off (appointment); get/court (e.g. a girl); with się, collapse under the weight of something

zerwać / zrywać – break up (relationship); get out (prison); break/rip/tear up; with się, move, start or begin suddenly/violently.

Many of these terms are flexible, and have other meanings in certain contexts not described here. One thing to note is that the common verbs trwać (to continue, last, endure, go on) and przetrwać (to survive) do not appear to be related to this root.

According to Wiktionary, these latter words derive from Proto-Slavic *trajati meaning ‘to last, continue,’ derived from an older Indo-European root meaning ‘to cross.’ Rwać and its derivatives, however, descend from Proto-Slavic rŭvati, meaning ‘to tear.’

POSTRACH PO POLSKU - Words related to Halloween

As far as I’ve read, Poles don’t quite go as crazy about Halloween as Americans, but some people do celebrate it. Poland of course has a native festival of the dead that coincides with that time called Dziady. Check out the linked words for in-depth articles on Culture.pl. 

Because Halloween has always been my favorite holiday, and I love creepy stuff, I’ve compiled this list of words related to horrible and fearsome things. This list is (as always) not exhaustive. 

jesień - autumn

październik – October

ciemno, ciemność, mrok - dark, darkness, obscurity, gloom

cień - shadow

czarnoksięstwo - witchcraft, black magic

czarownica - witch

czaszka – skull

demon - demon

duch - spirit, ghost

dynia – pumpkin

fantom – phantom

groza - horror, terror (also used for literary/film genre: polska groza, Polish horror)

grób - grave
koszmar - nightmare

krzyk – scream

liście - leaves

loch - dungeon

mgła - fog, mist

nawiedzony - haunted

niesamowity - strange, weird, uncanny; incredible
obrzydliwy - abominable, disgusting
ohydny - horrible, hideous, revolting, execrable

ponury żniwiarz - grim reaper

postrach  - fear; bogeyman

potwór, maszkara – monster, creature

przerażający – frightening

strach, lęk, obawa, przestrach - fear
straszny - dreadful, terrible, horrible, spooky, creepy

strzyga – female vampire of folklore (masc. strzygoń)

Szatan - Satan

szkielet - skeleton

tajemniczy - mysterious

trup – corpse

trumna – coffin

wampir, wąpierz, upiór – vampire, malicious living dead

widmo, zjawa - spectre, wraith, ghost, phantom; statek widmo, ghost ship

wiedźma - witch

wiedźmin - warlock, "witcher"

zamek - castle

zło - evil

BONUS: 

One of the best ways to break out of the "intermediate plateau" and really start internalizing vocabulary and grammatical structures is through side-by-side reading. In my experience, it really only took a few months of it until I felt comfortable diving straight in to native texts. 

This October, why not ramp up your Polish study with some dual-language reading? 

One thing I recommend is Ghosts - Parallel Text short stories. This has seven supernatural stories by English writers, simplified and translated into Polish. It is formatted so that the English follows just below the Polish, paragraph-by-paragraph. The stories themselves are sort of a mixed bag, but the translations are clear and generally accurate. You can see my review on the Amazon page (I just had to!). 

If you're a more advanced student and up for the challenge, check out this story by one of Poland's earliest writers of dark and supernatural fiction, Stefan Grabiński. Here you can find his story "Zez" ("Strabismus") in Polish and English. 

Print them out and read along with your pen(cil) of choice, noting expressions and useful words/structures. Grabiński can be challenging because of his literary and antiquated language, but this story is probably one of his more accessible, and also has notes glossing some of his terms for modern readers.

If you enjoy this, you can find more Grabiński stories in Polish at Wikiźródła. Several collections exist in English, and I'd estimate about half of his total literary output has been translated, though you can only find a couple of stories in English for free online due to copyright.

Spanish? Wspaniały! - Some Correspondences between Polish and Spanish

Having studied and been acquainted with Spanish long before I ever even heard Polish, I found it interesting to notice certain phonological and in some cases semantic correspondences between Polish and Spanish words. While I’m not aware of any direct influence between the two languages, it’s clear that many of these similarities are a result of shared Latin influence. For example, many words which have a common root in Latin and have filtered into numerous modern languages are the same or nearly so, such as literatura, temperatura, astronomia. There are also homophonous words of identical or very close meaning, like the conjunction i (Span. y) and, banda band/group/gang/team, flota fleet, rasa (Span. raza) race/breed, palma palm tree, plaga plague/scourge/calamity, proza (Span. prosa) prose, terapia therapy, etc. Interestingly, they also both use the interjection basta! (that’s) enough! 

After having studied Polish, I realized that a Polish-speaking person has an advantage in learning Spanish because, like Polish, pronunciation is very faithful to orthography, and the majority of sounds which occur in Spanish also occur in Polish (while the reverse is not true). So, for example, a Pole with absolutely no knowledge of Spanish could read a sentence like Tengo dos amigos en este barrio aloud with purely Polish intonation and sound much closer to the actual pronunciation than, say, an English or French speaker. A half-hour’s study to acquaint himself with the orthographic differences (c, ci, ch, ll, j, y, to name a few) and he could pronounce Spanish sentences with relative ease, even without comprehension. Even ñ has its Polish counterpart, ń, although the languages differ in where they permit this sound to occur.

Over time, for fun, I’ve created this list of Spanish-Polish homonyms/homophones. These words are pronounced exactly or very nearly the same in both languages, but have either slightly or completely different meanings. Possibly some of these words are similar due to a common root in either Latin or Proto-Indo-European, but many/most are probably coincidental occurrences due to the languages drawing from a similar phonetic pool.

Here’s the list, which is in no way meant to be comprehensive. Also note that several of these words have more possible meanings than I’ve listed:

This list is continually updated.

SPANISH // POLISH

cara (face) // kara (punishment)

casa (house) // kasa (cash; cashier/checkout)

cena (dinner) // cena (price) near-homonym

cosa (thing) // kosa (scythe; slanted)

crezca (grows) // kreska (line, stroke)
curva (curve, bend) // kurwa (whore; fuck; interj.; all-purpose swear)

dar (to give) // dar (gift, talent)

débil (weak) // debil (idiot)

droga (drug) // droga (path)

escapada (escape) // eskapada (escapade)

gafa (glasses) // gafa (blunder, faux-pas, gaffe)

grande (large) // grandę (ruckus (acc. of granda))

los (plural definite article; 3^rd. pl. pronoun) // los (fate, chance, destiny)

obras (works of art) // obraz (image)
osa (dares; bear) // osa (wasp)
pan (bread) // pan (sir, Mr.; lord)

para (for; stops) // para (pair, couple; steam, vapor)

pasa (raisin; happens) // pasa (sash, belt (gen. of pas))

pies (feet) // pies (dog)

posada (inn, lodging) // posada (job, position, post)

prueba (evidence, proof; test) // próba (trial) near-homophone
ropa (clothes) // ropa (oil, pus)

rosa (pink) // rosa (dew)

sala (living room) // sala (room, hall)

ser (to be) // ser (cheese)

tasca (bar, pub) // taska (carries something heavy, lugs)

zapada (sapped/undermined) // zapada (sinks/falls/drops (into))

I’ve also encountered some Polish words that don’t correspond to Spanish words, but have a Spanish feel to them, for example peron railway platform, trasa route, jelito bowel/intestine, flacha flask, zasada rule.

Offhand, I can’t think of many notable similarities between the languages on the level of grammar. Overall, Polish is much more complicated on this front. One thing that jumps out to me, however, is the shared preference for a dative-like construction to express “I like X.” For example, the phrase “I like cookies” is likely to be expressed in both languages in a form that translates literally to “Cookies please me” (Span. Me gustan las galletas, Pol. Podobają mi się ciastka).

I would be interested in comments from any readers bilingual in (or studying) both Polish and Spanish. What similarities/differences between the languages stand out to you?