Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

I’ve heard talk of “rights” as something no government could justly deny a person
while privileges such as being allowed to operate a high velocity iron engine would be granted.
I wonder how the polish view rights

Ok, I think what Matt touched upon the theory of linguistic relativity, which states that language and culture are a manifestation of the national spirit or mind. From my practice in 5 different languages, including English, Russian, German and Japanese, I know that the connotation of the words which stand for "right" and "law" are quite a bit different in different languages. The reason why I mention "law" is because the semantic field of polish "prawo" embraces both "right" and "law" in English. Now in "prawo jazdy" the word "prawo" rears one of its many ugly heads, because as google rightly states, it should be translated as "licence". It is a legitimate translation, since "prawo has many meanings,and  the one in "prawo jazdy" exploits one of the meanings which is "the rights one can enjoy under law." Just this definition shows you how complicated the translation business can cet. To further complicate it, the "rights" that Matt mentioned, as in, say, "civil rights" would translate into Polish without using the word"prawo" at all. The translation of "civil rights" is "swobody obywatelskie" which would literally translate as something along the lines of "civil freedoms" and please, don't make me go on about 'freedom' now ;).

"prawo" in Polish has a strong formal connotation to the law, law enforcement, courts of law, the whole judicial lot. It's a lot more less overlapping the semantic field of "rights," which doesn't mean we don't enjoy the latter 😉 To compound the problem, the term 'prawo' is starting to slip away from this firm semantic ground and it's taking a life of its own. Nowadays you hear it more and more used of the much more adequate "swobody" (freedoms). Like "the right to live", an inherent natural right of every human being. The term has always been "prawo do życia" in Polish, but nowadays you can feel the change in the connotation. People used to take it as something natural, god-given if you like, so what they meant by "prawo" was "freedom", but nowadays, maybe because the goverment is introducing all these laws to protect life since conception and all that, the connotation changed. People now see the once-natural "right to live" as something increasingly institutionalized. One can feel the slow but sure shift in the connotation and in the meaning.  I can't really decide if this is for the best, but if you distance yourself from the problem it hauntingly reminds me of a totalitarian mindset - the government deciding on one's rights, even on the right to live. But maybe I'm just semantically oversensitive. And look at me, I've been all over the map with this one little expression.

Anyway, here in Poland we had a blast once the news got out that the Irish policemen, specifically trained to read Polish licences failed to understand who was the phantom driver they've been chasing. There'll be some nasty jokes floating about connected to this. People in my linguistics department just about cracked a few ribs laughing at that. I hope I didn't mess things up completely 🙂 at any rate, I was trying to help