In her blog, Ewa Erdmann shares here analysis of a linguistic phenomenon of the Polish language she noticed on her recent trip to Poland. Here are some excerpts:

“On my recent trip to Poland I witnessed a not-so-very-surprising linguistic phenomenon of the Polish language being under a strong influence of the English language. It’s nothing new – as far as I remember, English words have always been entering the Polish language, be it technical terms – mostly connected with computing – or slang phrases used by teenagers. What struck me, however, was the scale of the occurrence, and the areas where English words wormed their way into the Polish language. It seems that just as the Eastern-European migrants ‘invaded’ United Kingdom, English terms have done exactly the same with the Polish language.

As a linguist and a Polish native speaker, I was rather rebellious and strongly opposed to seeing English words replacing well-known and commonly used Polish terms. Why would a Polish chain of supermarkets, ‘Biedronka’ be a trusted brand and not zaufana marka[i]; and why a TV breakfast show can be called on air and not na żywo? As much as I love English language, I was annoyed when I encountered those examples of anglicism. Polish language has enough words that accurately describe all the objects and ideas we need to communicate, why then are there so many English words used instead? This issue was bothering me for a while, so I decided to do my own research which eventually threw some light on the problem. It turns out that most of the anglicisms are justified and – in some cases – even needed.” Read more.

See: Transliteria