Talk:More Polish

It's interesting, though. I'm wondering about some sort of "comparison page" listing non-English names for places and characters and how they evolved in the minds of the translators... for instance, in Dutch/Afrikaans you get Mustrum Riediekel de Bruin for a certain wizard, and Opie/Ouma Weedersmeer for a certain witch. both have interesting back-stories. AgProv (talk) 20:20, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

I see this site is treated like a talk page. I'm a Polish person, so I wanted to confirm the things stated there. "Tak" means yes, but also "like (this)", "this way". It's also used this way in Czech and maybe some other Slavic languages. "Schmaltz" is not a Polish word, though we have a similiar one: "smalec". It describes animal fat (lard?) Everything else stated here is basically correct. ~Jendrej (talk) 12:59, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

It was another Polish contributor, years ago, who wanted to own the word. In North America, and I suspect English generally, it's thought of as Yiddish (particularly with the "t") and therefore refers to chicken fat and certainly not lard. --Old Dickens (talk) 16:43, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Since this main page is formally an article, I've deleted User:AgProv's sentence

I know "schmaltz" means "fat" or "grease" in Yiddish (memo - golems would know this?) - didn't know it was also Polish, but it makes sense - not every word in Yiddish is German-derived!

with an edit summary pointing here. From Online Etymology:

from Yiddish shmalts, literally "melted fat," from Middle High German smalz, from Old High German smalz "animal fat," related to smelzan "to melt" (see smelt (v.)).

It seems most likely that the Polish word smalec came from German or Yiddish, rather than the other way around.

By the way, Russian tak (так) also means "like this", "this way", so Jendrej's thought ("maybe some other Slavic languages") is quite right.

--Thnidu (talk) 22:23, 10 June 2017 (UTC)