Polish pronunciation and English quantifier

[shanrina]

1. I was reading a book recently in which a character had a Polish grandmother that she called "Babcia." Is this an actual Polish word/nickname for grandmother? If so, how is it pronounced? My guesses are BAB-sha or bab-SEE-a, but I'm really not sure

Comments

[jetaimerai]

I'm from Southern California and I agree that "a lot of" is a million times more natural. "many calories" and "much calcium" both make me wince; I'd actually consider them ungrammatical, at least in my dialect.

[iddewes]

Bab-cha.
Yes, it is the normal Polish word for 'granny'.

[shanrina]

Thanks!

[zireael07]

The pronunciation is /babtɕa/, if I remember my phonetic symbols right. The /tɕ/ sound is the tricky one. Personally, I think the closest approximation for an English-speaker would be bab-cee-a /babcia/.

Bab-cha sounds like /babtʂa/.

[ditdatdo]

I'm from the UK and I don't entirely agree with the "many calories/much calcium" thing. I'd happily say things like "How many calories are in it?" and "How much calcium's it got?" Equally, I'd be okay with sentences like "there are loads of calories in those cookies" and "Does it have lots of calories in?" So, I'm not sure that the slightly unnatural phrasing is completely down to the use of "much" and "many". Not to me, anyway :)

[devotfeige]

Tell you what, I'm just going to second this. I agree 100%, "how many X" and how much Y" both sound fine to me. It just seems to depend on the general structure of the sentence.

[hkitsune]

I agree with this. Native, US.

[jetaimerai]

Those structures didn't occur to me, but you're right, those are completely fine to me. But I actually do think it is completely down to the use of "much" and "many", because they can be used in some structures, but not others. Not sure how else the difference could possibly be explained except through rules specific to those words.

[dorsetgirl]

Native speaker, southern England. I agree, there is nothing actually grammatically wrong with these sentences, but they don't sound like something an English speaker would actually say. I've put below what I might actually say for each.

"There are many calories in the cookies,"

The cookies are very/quite fattening - they're XXX calories each. (N.B. I would not say they have XXX calories each.)

"Are there many calories?"

How fattening are they?

"Is there much calcium?"

Um, not sure about this one - I've never heard of anyone taking an interest in the amount of calcium in anything! I suppose I would say "How much calcium has it got in it?"

[mintyfreshsocks]

Agreed---these are stilted. Things like "Do those cookies have a lot of calories?" or "These don't have much calcium" are much more natural. Using "be" is just odd, I think.