<Gizmo21323@aol.com> wrote: > Regarding diminutives --- > > In 2000, I spend three weeks teaching at a > school in Poland. There were two > Sebastians in my class, so one of the boys > suggested that I call him Bastek > to distinguish him from the other boy. I then > began to notice other > "nicknames" that seemed to be created by taking > one syllable of the original name and > adding an -ek to it. (Can't recall any of those > examples right now, but > there were a few). It seemed to me to be the > equivalent of English nicknames > having -y added, such as Jim to Jimmy, Bill to > Billy or Catherine to Cathy. My > uncle, Stephen, was called Tepek. Could that > be an example of this? Or have > I just made some inaccurate assumptions based > on a few examples? As Ellen said, the Slavic languages are generally very rich in possibilities for creating diminutives or affectionate forms. In English, we usually just shorten a name and add -y or -ie to it. To a Slav, that's pathetic, like we're not even trying. A Slav may take almost any part of a given name, drop the rest, and add any of a variety of suffixes -- and as Ellen said, other Slavs will usually have no trouble following. Of course, some names have more short forms than others. A Boleslaw can be called Bolek, Bolus', or Bolo (I've never heard that one, but Jan Grzenia includes it in his _Slownik imion_, Dictionary of Given Names). A Stanislaw can be called Stach, Stasio, Stasiu, Stas', Staszek; a Jaroslaw can be called Jarek, Jareczek, Jarus'; and so on. And those are just the "standard" forms, the ones in common use. Within a family, all kinds of inventive creations may show up, names you wouldn't want to call someone unless you are on very close terms and you know he or she will not be offended. (In other words, when in doubt, don't. Let the Pole take the lead and tell you how he or she wants to be called.) > Another thing I noticed was the inability of the > Polish speakers to > pronounce "th" as in thumb. A goal of my > teaching was to improve spoken English of > students, so I had them practice that sound. It > really made a difference and > they were proud when they could say "Thank you!" Ellen is also right about TH being a real problem for Poles -- and not just Poles. Most Europeans find this particular sound very, very difficult to learn. It appears naturally in Icelandic, Greek, and Albanian (according to Wikipedia; I didn't know about Albanian!). Also, the Castillian dialect of Spanish turns some sibilants into "th," much to the amusement and scorn of Hispanics who speak other versions of Spanish. But I'm having trouble thinking of any other European language in which it is heard, other than English, of course. Germans and Slavs really have trouble with it. Sometimes they turn it into plain T, sometimes into a Z sound. If you were able to teach your students to pronounce English TH correctly, that was no small achievement! And when we non-Poles gripe about pronouncing _chrzaszcz_ and Szczebrzeszyn, we should have some appreciation for the horror with which a Pole regards words such as _thither_ or _thews_. Fred Hoffman