Language Policy in Poland in the Context of the Impact of English on Polish The paper examines the way and the extent to which language policies have affected the development of the Polish language. However, the purpose of the present paper is to highlight the change in attitude towards the increasing impact of English on Polish. The influence of English became more prominent in Poland after the change in the political system in 1989, and has for the most part been in the area of lexical borrowings. However, the influence of English is not only restricted to the inflow of English loanwords, but also extends to their relatively high frequency of usage. In addition, there is evidence of other types of influence that are non-lexical. However, the impact of English on Polish has not been as extensive as is claimed by some Polish linguists who since the early 1990s have lamented over the decline of the Polish language caused by the ”flood” of British and American English borrowings. Indeed, the status of English as a lingua franca was considered itself to be a threat to Polish, with even the possibility of the extinction of the tongue. This concern about language purity led to the creation of the Polish Language Council in 1996, whose aim has been to advise on and describe (rather than prescribe) linguistic behaviours among Polish language users. This legislative body was behind the Polish Language Act passed in 1999. Its purpose, however, has been to protect Polish rather than to purify it and to minimize the foreign influences (which mainly refer to English) rather than to eradicate them. Since the beginning of the 21st century, the Polish linguists’ attitude towards the ”Anglicization” of the Polish language has changed dramatically and it is now believed that the influence of English makes Polish richer and more globalized.

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ABSTRACT. The paper examines the way and the extent to which language policies have affected the development of the Polish language especially in recent times, since the so-called end of the communist era. The discussion revolves round the Polish Language Act of 1999 which set the rules appropriate to 'protecting' Polish from 'foreign influences' (English in particular). Subject to examination is the Act's origins, the government's motives for it, as well as amendments the Act has undergone since it was first promulgated in 1999 and the justifications for them. Finally, the paper addresses various practical implications stemming from the Act and manifested in a number of more or less spectacular actions taken by the competent bodies and authorities in order to protect the Polish language.

While electronic corpora may not seem adequate sources for anglicisms retrieval, since despite promising attempts they still lack readily available and efficient tools for foreign loans identification, they are indispensable in a systematic verification of the use of preidentified loans. The article offers an assessment of an electronic corpus of Polish in reference to its usefulness for the study of English loans. Though we test a selected corpus and its tools, and use Polish anglicisms as exemplifications, the findings presented in the article pertain to other large corpora and anglicisms in other languages. Corpus tools allow for a multidimensional analysis of loans, yet they fail to meet the requirements of more in-depth analyses of anglicisms, related to their semantics and structure. The limitations of corpora tools will be illustrated with authentic attempted-but-failed corpus searches. Keywords anglicism, National Corpus of Polish, English borrowing, loanword adaptation StreszczeniePomimo obiecujących badań automatyczna ekstrakcja anglicyzmów z wykorzystaniem narzędzi dostępnych w elektronicznych korpusach językowych wciąż nie jest możliwa. Mimo to wyszukiwarki korpusowe są nieodzownym narzędziem w systematycznej weryfikacji użycia anglicyzmów wyłuskanych metodą tradycyjną. W artykule omówiono zarówno funkcjonalność, jak i niedoskonałość narzędzi dostępnych w Narodowym Korpusie Języka Polskiego w odniesieniu do badania anglicyzmów różnych typów oraz ich z góry zdefiniowanych cech. Niedostatki narzędzi, związane głównie z semantyką zapożyczeń, zostały zilustrowane konkretnymi przykładami anglicyzmów.

Although contrastive studies do not enjoy great prestige among linguists, they have a very long tradition dating back to ca. 1000 A.D. when Ælfric wrote his Grammatica, a grammar of Latin and English. Even then he must have been aware of the fact that the knowledge of one language may be helpful in the process of learning another language (Krzeszowski 1990). Similarly, it seems that throughout the history of mankind teachers of a foreign language must have realized that a native and foreign tongue can be contrasted. However, contrastive linguistics only came into being as a science at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The first works were almost purely theoretical, and it is worth emphasizing that among the first scholars working in the field was Baudouin de Courtenay, a Polish linguist, who published his contrastive grammar of Polish, Russian and Old Church Slavonic in 1912. The outbreak of the Second World War was a milestone in the development of applied contrastive studies since a need to teach foreign languages in the United States arose as a result. The 1960’s is considered a further step in the development of contrastive grammar since a number of projects were initiated both in Europe and in the U.S.A. (Willim, Mańczak-Wohlfeld 1997), which resulted in the introduction of courses in English-Polish contrastive grammar at Polish universities. The aim of the present paper is to characterize and evaluate the courses offered in the English departments of selected Polish universities and to suggest an “ideal” syllabus.