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Synonyms?

User avatar
Jetdriver
Great Britain

Synonyms?

Post by Jetdriver »

Occasionally you come across words when you look them up or put them into Google translate that are given the same meaning. In English an example might be ‘thoughtful’ and ‘considerate’.
I’ve just discovered that Porażka and Niepowodzenie both mean failure, but how would you know if there are specific contexts in which Polish words are used, or are they simply interchangeable like many English synonyms in a Thesauraus?

Native: 🇬🇧 Learning: 🇵🇱

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Stasia
Poland

Re: Synonyms?

Post by Stasia »

[mention]Jetdriver[/mention], porażka is a more serious degree of a failure than niepowodzenie.

Niepowodzenie is more like a setback: there's still hope for the future. You can have some setbacks and still achieve your goal in the end.

Porażka is total defeat/failure: you tried and you failed.

It's a subtle linguistic difference, but a huge psychological one. In business settings, it is often recommended to completely avoid the word "porażka" and use "niepowodzenie" instead, to decrease negativity/increase positive (wishful?) thinking. :)

Native: :poland:; Fluent: :es:, :us:; Getting there: Image; Intermediate: :fr:; Beginner: :ukraine:

User avatar
Jetdriver
Great Britain

Re: Synonyms?

Post by Jetdriver »

[mention]Stasia[/mention]
Thank-you, but other than asking you, and I’m very grateful for you taking the time to answer, where else could one find this sort of nuanced information?!

Native: 🇬🇧 Learning: 🇵🇱

User avatar
Stasia
Poland

Re: Synonyms?

Post by Stasia »

Jetdriver wrote: Sun Mar 27, 2022 5:47 pm

@Stasia
Thank-you, but other than asking you, and I’m very grateful for you taking the time to answer, where else could one find this sort of nuanced information?!

Google, I guess? :D

For reliable sources, there's the Słownik Języka Polskiego: https://sjp.pwn.pl/
for example for porażka: https://sjp.pwn.pl/szukaj/porażka.html - it defines it as "poważne niepowodzenie"

And also, Cambridge Polish-English dictionary: https://dictionary.cambridge.org - but this one doesn't really differentiate between porażka and niepowodzenie. :?

I think one learns the more nuanced word meanings by immersion - the longer you're exposed to a language, the more you get subtle differences between terms which are similarly translated by dictionaries.

Native: :poland:; Fluent: :es:, :us:; Getting there: Image; Intermediate: :fr:; Beginner: :ukraine:

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