5,198
edits
Changes
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
The answers appears to be that It turns out they're not that wrong after all. ''{{small|PAWNCH}}-kee'' may be the accepted pronuncation in modern standard Polish, but modern standard Polish is a relatively recent creation, a product of state-run schools, radio and television that have worked for the past few generations to unify the language across Poland. In the past, though, every each region used to have had its own dialect and subdialects, used especially by the rural populationspopulace, and pronunciation differences between regions could be vastquite substantial.
Let's start with the linguistic part. The Polish word for a doughnut (usually, in the shape of a flattened sphere, with some kind of filling in it) is "''pączek''", pronounced ''{{small|PAWN}}-check''. The plural form, used for more than one doughnut, is "''pączki''", which is pronounced ''{{small|PAWNCH}}-kee''. The latter word has nothing to do with packages. That's "''paczki''" (without the hook-shaped squiggle), pronounced ''{{small|PAHTCH}}-kee''. It's the plural form of "''paczka''" (''{{small|PAHTCH}}-kah''), or "a package". As you can see, the explanation you can occasionally come across in America that ''pączki'' are [https://twitter.com/BethelBakery/status/949661885393199105 "''little packages of goodness''"] is as sweet as it is wrong. So where does the Polish word for doughnuts actually come from?
"''Pączek''" is a diminutive form of the word "''pąk''" (pron. ''pawnk''), which is a botanical term referring to a flower bud or leaf bud. What do doughnuts have to do with flower buds, you may ask. Not so much, if you're thinking about the American ring-shaped donuts, but it's different with the ball-shaped Polish ones. Originally, the word "''pąk''" referred to anything that is round, bulging (''pękate''), swollen (''napęczniałe'') and about to burst (''pęknąć''). Ultimately, all these "''pąk- / pęk- / pącz- / pęcz-''" words are most likely of onomatopoeic origin, meaning that they're supposed to resemble the sounds sound of something swollen that is bursting.<ref> {{Cyt
| nazwisko = Bralczyk
| imię = Jerzy
But the weirdest thing about how "paczki" became a Polish loanword in English is how English speakers (in North America at least) tend to pronounce it. Why is it ''{{small|POONCH}}-kee'' and not ''{{small|PAWNCH}}-kee'', which would be so much closer to the original Polish pronuciation? Are the Polish Americans wrong to say the word the way they do? And even if they are, then why did this "wrong" pronunciation become so common?
So was there a dialect were the standard nasal ''awn'' sound had shifted towards the nasal ''oon'' sound? Actually, there was quite a few of them. The ''awn → oon'' vowel shift could be found in dialects ranging from Ermland in the north, to the regions of Cuyavia, Greater Poland, Middle Poland, and all the way to Silesia in the south.<ref>{{Cyt
