The Joy of Bilingualism, or English Borrowings in the Works of Piotr Szmidt

  • Włodzimierz Moch
Keywords: Anglicisms in Polish, bilingualism, language of Polish youth, language of rap lyrics, hip hop culture

Abstract

The article presents the avalanche penetration of English into Polish in recent years on the example of the work of Polish rapper Piotr Szmidt (pseudonym Ten Typ Mes) as a result of the dominant role of pop culture. Mes's novel Dwa psy przeżyły (Two Dogs Survived) and some of his rap songs are full of English loanwords. They are woven into the narrative maintained in the colloquial Polish style in various ways: as neologisms (prank 'trick'), neo-semantisms (fejmy 'famous people'), substitutes for Polish words and expressions (bez pomysłu na futurę 'no idea for the future'), complementing phrases in Polish (ta jego no problem mentality nie pozwoliłaby mi… ‘his no problem mentality wouldn't let me ...’), phraseological elements of phrases (Back in the days ‘kiedyś, dawno temu’ podstawową walutą był szacunek ‘back in the days, the basic currency was respect’). On the contrary, thanks to all these language treatments, Mes renews the Polish language and, as a bilingual person, finds joy in code-switching.

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