To all the Poles butchering their own:

Please stop writing “polish” when referring to the Polish nation. Poles, the language, the culture, and anything referring to Poland’s origins is Polish and not polish.

Polish has many meanings but when this “polish” word is uncapitalized, it does not mean “Polish”.

Here is a quick explanation:
Polish vs. Polish https://imgur.com/a/YnU3r9V

41 comments

  2. I am also sometimes guilty of that mistake. I think, the reason is that in Polish it is an error to start adjective with a capital letter.

    For example “Polish language” is “język polski”. And since the very beginning of elementary school our teachers put a lot of stress on that.

  3. Does this mean that someone involved in taniec ludowy is a Pole dancer, but not a pole dancer?

  4. It’s not about grammar or influence from Polish. It’s just people being lazy.

  6. We know that but it’s a deliberate effort to crush those polaczki

  8. If you can’t understand the meaning of a word from the context, then I don’t think capital letters would help you.

  10. There is grammar rules in Polish language that Poles write adjectives with small letters. Many Poles use this rule with foreign languages so you may find them writing “polish language” as well as “english language”.

  11. in Polish we write adjectives lowercase so in fact we are not butchering the word “Polish”, we are celebrating it my writing it the way we would write in in our mother tongue.

  13. Cry me a river, you do realise how little most of us care about proper grammar?

  14. What’s the big deal about it? It’s just a common spelling error. Why make a whole post?

  15. An easy wxplanation why many people with not-so-good language skills do so – in Polish we write country nouns with a capital letter but adjectives with a small one. So it’s a natural extention. Plus if it’s an sms, quick chat or whatever ppl tend to write everything small not to search for this shift dude.
    Not saying it’s a good thing. Saying it explains.

  16. > Polish vs. Polish

    Could you please write polish as polish and not Polish? You’re confusing me!

    Or do you mean like a civil war?

  17. This comes from two things: autocorrect and the fact that besides English, almost no other language puts capital letters on words to make them “mean something else” as is the difference between Polish and polish(ing).

    I am Romanian, and I don’t mind writing it romanian either, and I believe that the difference is only important in formal context.

  18. I misspell polish on purpose to emphasize that I have no respect for my nationality

  19. I know that, sometimes i just dont bother with capital letters and dont use them at all.

  20. people on reddit hardly use punctuation, let alone grammar, this isn’t that important

  23. This mistake originated from the fact in Polish language adjectives derived from countries’ names are written in lowercase, eg.: Francja – francuski, Anglia – angielski.

  24. Isn’t the pronounciation also different? Like “pou-lisz” vs “po-lisz”?

  25. I know that and you know that by my dam phone doesn’t know that and at times it auto corrects it the wrong way. So stop bitching.

  27. A third of my friends do not use capital letters, punctuation marks or diacritics. It’s just strings of neutered words separated by line breaks. It would be a stretch to expect them to know what a proper adjective is and why is it different.

  28. Even english about Polish is damn hard.

    ​

    After writing it, I’m even more confused.

  31. I was told that using a capital letter is a sign of respect
    And since i do not respect my country writing polish is pretty fitting

  32. it’s a common thing for us to write polish, because in Polish all adjectives are not capitalized and in Engilsh you have one word for Polish people and things related to Poland…

  35. Bro just admit ur a nationalist 💀 no one cares how u spell it.

  36. To make an extra point I usually let some saliva fly out of my mouth when pronouncing Polish, but not when pronouncing polish.

  37. tbh you should be able to read from context, especially if you want to get fluent in irl conversation where capitalization does not exist.

    most people on the internet don’t care to be 100% proper with grammar, because it should be obvious what they mean. especially on reddit, it’s kinda odd to expect people speak perfect english, where most of folks learned it on their own from video games and whatever else.

  38. Don’t care, didn’t ask plus in polish you don’t capitalise it

  41. I just always assume when someone says something needs to be polished I just assumed they meant they need it perfect so get the Polaks on it.

    I am Polish so I already don’t need any extra polish to get perfect.

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