Post
by John Clarke » Fri Oct 11, 2024 9:27 pm
Prompted by Kevin's earlier post, I've been taking a look at chess terms in Polish (a language which, although I don't speak or understand it, has always fascinated me). The results have been interesting to say the least.
Consider the names of the pieces.
King = Krόl (pronounced roughly as "krool") - similar to the Russian "korol".
Queen = Hetman (supreme military commander) - harks right back to the days of chess ancestor chaturanga, when the king had a chief minister at his side, not a queen. Poland has always had to be a militaristic sort of society, what with Germans, Russians and even Austrians constantly chipping away at its territory, and this term reflects that reality.
Rook = Wieża (tower) - pronounced "vee-ET-sa".
Bishop = Goniec (pronounced GON-yets) - which can have as secondary meanings "courier" or "messenger", thus evoking the chess variant "Courier" formerly played in Germany.
Knight = Skoczek (pronounced SKOTcheck - which humorists will doubtless enjoy rendering as "Scotch Egg" - meaning "jumper", similar to the "springer" of German).
Pawn = Pion (exactly the same as in French).
As Kevin suggests, the recurring phrase "i Białe poddały sie" means " .... and White resigns" (or, more literally, gives up). The text appended to the last of the four games given in the magazine article appears to mean something like " ... and Black, already having the worst of it, resigned after a few more moves". "Petty Officer" best describes the loser's rank, although the literal translation of it is "boatswain" (or bo's'un).
Last edited by
John Clarke on Tue Oct 15, 2024 1:56 am, edited 1 time in total.
"The chess-board is the world ..... the player on the other side is hidden from us ..... he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance."
(He doesn't let you resign and start again, either.)
