Polacke

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Polack (e) (plural Polacken ) is a historically neutral, but strongly pejorative term for one or the Poles in today's German usage , so it represents an ethnophaulism . It is borrowed from the Polish language , where polak is the standard language is by no means a pejorative term for “Pole”.

English polack , Dutch polak and French polaque , like German Polack (e), are now only used pejoratively, i.e. with insulting intent - the standard language expressions here are analogous to German “Pole” in English Pole , in Dutch pool and in French polonais . In contrast, polaco in Italian , Spanish and Portuguese is still the correct, official and therefore value-neutral designation for a Pole . The same applies to the corresponding designations in all Slavic languages (such as Czech Polák , Russian поля́к, etc.), in the Scandinavian languages ​​( Swedish polak , Danish polack and Norwegian polakk ), in Yiddish and in Latvian.

Use of language in German

It is difficult to understand when Polack (e) changed from a neutral term to a swear word in German. Up to the 19th century there are numerous examples of a value-neutral use of the term, but Adelung's Grammatical-Critical Dictionary of High German Dialect (1774–1786) stated that the terms “in common life” were used instead of Pohle or Pohlin “A Polāk, the Polākinn” has something “low and contemptible about himself”, “regardless of it from the Pohln. Polacy is borrowed ".

See also

literature

  • Hubert Orlowski : “Polish Economy”: On the German Polish discourse in modern times . Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden 1996, here in particular p. 147ff.
  • Tomasz Szarota: Poles, Poles and Polish in the German dialect lexica and proverb dictionaries . In: Acta Poloniae Historia 50, 1984, pp. 81-113.
  • Joanna Szczęk: National stereotypes of Germany and Poland in monolingual German and Polish-language lexicography: a critical inventory . In: Colloquia Germanica Stetinensia 26, 2017, pp. 185-202.

Web links

Wiktionary: Polacke  - explanations of meanings, word origins , synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Polack. In: Digital dictionary of the German language .
  2. ↑ Poláck, Poléck, m. . In: Jacob Grimm , Wilhelm Grimm : German Dictionary . Hirzel, Leipzig 1854–1961 ( woerterbuchnetz.de , University of Trier).
  3. ↑ Lemma polak in: Marc De Coster: Groot scheldwoordenboek: van apenkont tot zweefteef . Standaard, Antwerp 2007, here marked as racist , ie “ racist ”.
  4. ↑ Lemma polaque, subst. in the Trésor de la Langue Française informatisé (TLFi) , here marked as péj. ( péjoratif ).
  5. ↑ Lemma Pohlen in: Johann Christoph Adelung: Grammatical-critical dictionary of the high German dialect . Leipzig 1774–1786.