After Hinglish, now it’s Ponglish

Polish immigrants in Britain have created a language that blends their native tongue and English and called Ponglish.

After Hinglish, a portmanteau of the words Hindi and English, now it is Ponglish, a hybrid language mixing English and Polish.

Polish immigrants in Britain have created a language that blends their native tongue and English, now popularly recognised as Ponglish.

The slang takes in every thing from taxes – taksy – to driving whose Ponglish equivalent “drajwnic” seems unlikely until it is pronounced: driveneech.

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Those drivers, of course, are sure to take care around “kornerze” on the “strity” while in the “kara”.

“We mix the two languages together all the times,” Magda Pustola of the Polish Cultural Institute in London was quoted in the Daily Telegraph today.

“We find that more and more English is creeping into our Polish even in meetings at the institute.” The new language is not just being adopted in Britain, it can also be heard back in Warsaw. There, Poles are already “szoping” for clothes, or going for a “drinkowac” in the pub with some “friendy”.

“There are some small Polish towns and cities from where scores of people left for Britain. Now when they meet back in Poland, it’s no surprise if they use slang with English words,” said Aneta Prasal-Wisniewska, a specialist on Polish and English cultural links at the Adam Mickiewicz Institute in Warsaw.

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For those who believe that the English linguistic juggernaut is a one-way express, however, Magda Pustola had some words of caution.

“At the institute we are always trying to smuggle Polish words into English,” she said, pointing to a recent campaign to promote Polish vodka. “We spell vodka with a ‘w’, so we campaigned to change all words with ‘v’.

The language has flourished as the Polish community in Britain has grown to 400,000.