II/1: Polish loanwords in English, Part One

English, being an international and hegemonic language on a level never known before on planet Earth, has a great impact on nearly every possible alive human language. Recently, the largest amount of loanwords (and even suffixes, at least in some slangs) in Polish comes from English; it is also the main source of internationalisms (even if, sometimes, roots of a word are Ancient Greek or Latin). The Polish loanwords in English are not so many. However, the opposite direction is also possible; Polish language is even, sometimes, source of internationalisms. We will look at some examples of them.

1. ogonek /ə'gɔːnɛk/ or /ə'gɒnɛk/ plural: ogoneks – from Polish «ogonek» [ɔ'ɡɔnɛk] (literally: 'a little tail', the diminutive form of ogon – 'a tail'). In English it means «˛», a diactical mark resembling a hook attached beneath (bottom down corner or directly under) a vowel letter of some languages using the Latin alphabet usually to indicate nasalization (with exception of Lithuanian language). It is used also in some scholarly phonetic notations (of Slavic languages, including Old Church Slavonic, Proto-Germanic language, Vulgar Latin and Native American languages), then only in order to indicate nasalization.

Langugages that use ogonek:

From among European languages: Polish, Kashubian (a Lechitic language formerly considered to be a dialect of Polish), Lithuanian (historically to indicate nasalisation, now for the vowel length), Elfdalian (a Scandinavian language traditionally regarded as a dialect of Swedish),

From among Native American languages: Cayuga (a severely endangered Iroquioan language of Canada and United States), Winnebago (a Siouan language of the Great Plains), Dogrib (an Athabascan language of the Northwest Territories of Canada), Creek (a Muscogean language of United States), Navaho (an Athabascan language of United States), Western Apache (closely related to the former one), Mescalero-Chiricahua Apache, Tutchone (a threatened Athabascan language of Canada), Gwich’in (another one Athabascan language, spoken in Alaska, Yukon and the Northwest Territories).

The ogonek is clearly an internationalism.