Polish Etymology!

[awsohllfegyang]

 Heyyy everyone! Interesting question to ask that, for once, google cannot answer. I need to know where the word "plaża" comes from. Polish meaning beach. It MUST come from a romantic origin, or so i thought after translating into other languages. Playa (spanish), spiaggia (italian), plajă (romanian), plaža (croatian and also macedonian), plage (

Comments

[hkitsune]

It's also "plage" in French.

plage (from Etymonline)
“a region,” late 14c., from O.Fr. plage (late 13c.), from L.L. plagia “a plain, shore,” adj. (plagia regio), from plaga “region” (see pelagic). Astronomical sense is from 1949.

[awsohllfegyang]

Thank you! I checked etymonline but realized that I need more of a sound answer. Like if etymonline existed for Polish that'd be fantastic! I need to know from where it entered into Polish specifically; they also use the word "gratis" for "free." any ideas on that one?

[hkitsune]

Latin seems like the most logical assumption there, but really, when it comes to loan words, especially from within a very tightly-knit language family like Romance, it can get kind of tricky. For instance, it might have entered into Polish from Russian from Latin...

[awsohllfegyang]

Yeah that's what I was thinking! Ahhhh. damnit.

[muckefuck]

Had it come into Polish directly from Latin, the g wouldn't have palatalised to ż. As cosmicore says, it's a (relatively recent) borrowing from French, which is the only major Romance language to show /ʒ/ there.

[hkitsune]

I was talking about "gratis", but you know, way to make me sound like I don't know what I'm talking about.

[muckefuck]

Would you like me to delete the comment?

[hkitsune]

It's still helpful. Just wasn't really a criticism of what I said, so much as a clarification of something else. It makes sense to discuss the sound changes for others' sakes.