Speak Like a Local: Popular Polish Regionalisms
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Slavic alphabets will give you plenty of fun; Artwork by: Katarzyna Piątek
Speak Like a Local: Popular Polish Regionalisms
language & literature
Svetlana Gutkina
Reading time: 15 min
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Ah, those eternal debates: is it shaurma or shawarma? Entranceway or front door? Curb or kerbstone? Residents of various regions have different names for the same objects – this phenomenon exists in every country, and Poland is no exception. Let’s have a look at the most popular Polish regionalisms and try to find out where they came from.
Regionalisms are words and expressions that are common in several areas of a country but, unlike dialectisms, are considered normal literary language and can be heard from educated and unenlightened people alike. There aren’t so many regionalisms left in Polish, as many vanished when the country regained its territorial unity after 123 years of being partitioned. Nowadays, linguists tend to designate three main regional variants of Polish: Kraków (Lesser Polish), Poznań (Greater Polish), and Warsaw (Mazovian). We have also added a few popular regionalisms from other parts of Poland. So, which of these words and expressions will you hear most frequently?
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Na dwór — na pole
Krakowski Rap Kontratakuje (KRK) - Chodź na pole
Most Poles leave the house to go na dwór (i.e. ‘outside’ in Polish, but literally ‘into the courtyard’, though if someone has ‘gone out into the street’, it probably means to join a crowd of demonstrators). But residents of Kraków and the Lesser Poland region leave their homes to go na polu (‘into the field’), which is an endless source of arguments.
The proud inhabitants of Lesser Poland even came up with a meme: Nigdy nie przestanę wychodzić na pole! (‘I’ll never stop going out into the field!’), and a whole posse of Kraków rappers recorded a track titled Chodź na Pole (‘Let’s go out into the Field’). Many believe that the differing expressions arose from differences between cities and the countryside — Varsovians could have a dwór (which also means ‘estate/manor’ in Polish), while the humble peasants of southern Poland had to go out into the field. Moreover, the prominent linguist Jerzy Bralczyk stresses that the word dwór originally meant only a courtyard, not a lordly property.
So why did the Warsaw term become the norm, with the Lesser Polish version deemed a regionalism? Linguists explain it as follows:
The Polish language developed under the influence of each successive cultural centre and its surrounding dialects — initially Greater Polish, followed by Lesser Polish and, finally, Mazovian. After the First World War […] Poles speaking in different dialects were reunited in one country. […] Centralising the state encouraged the expansion of linguistic norms from the cultural and political centre. Therefore, ‘na dwór’ was regarded as standard, not a regionalism.
Using regionalisms is by no means a mark of illiteracy, although the form na dworzu is truly illiterate, since dwór is of masculine gender, so it should be na dworze.
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Torba papierowa — tytka — siatka
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Kapcie — pantofle — laczki — bambosze — ciapy — papcie
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The Lublin Serpent, the symbol of Lublin, wearing slippers, illustration by Olga Ilicheva, photo: Culture.pl
Such a simple household object as slippers has several names in Polish, the most-widespread being kapcie. However, residents of the Lublin region, for example, walk around the house in ciapy, while people from areas formerly under Austro-Hungarian rule (e.g. Cracovians) wear pantofle (from the German Pantoffel). In some regions (e.g. Silesia, Greater Poland, and Mazuria), slippers have another name of German origin — laczki. This is derived from the German Latschen, which translates as ‘flip-flops’, but means heelless slippers in Polish.
You may sometimes hear slippers referred to as papucie, from the Italian pappuccia, borrowed in turn from Turkish and Persian. In his blog on the Polish language, philologist Maciej Malinowski wrote that the words papucie and kapcie got mixed up, resulting in papcie. To perplex you further, we should also mention the word bambosze, from the French babouche, used to describe warm, woollen slippers.
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Okulary — bryle
Julian Tuwim wrote: Biega, krzyczy Pan Hilary: / Gdzie są moje okulary?(‘Mr. Hillary’s screaming as he passes: / Where on earth’s my pair of glasses?’). Mr Hillary was probably born somewhere in Warsaw or another big city, where glasses are known as okulary (‘oculars’). In other Polish regions (possibly including Tuwim’s home city of Łódź), glasses are jocularly or seriously referred to as bryle, from the German Brille.
Tak — jo
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If you hear Jo! in Toruń, don’t assume you’ve landed among a gang of hooligans firing off slang words and yelling ‘Yo! Yo!’. In the city of Copernicus and gingerbread, jo means ‘yes’ and is often used instead of the usual tak. Apart from an affirmative reply to a question, it can also signify positive reactions, surprise ( joooo?), disappointment, or disbelief. Incidentally, in some regions, such as Podhale, the word hej is used instead of tak.
Bochenek chleba — bułka chleba
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Poland is famous for its wonderful baked goods. People regularly visit the bakery early in the morning for … what? Poles mostly buy a bochenek chleba (‘loaf of bread’), in contrast to residents of Białystok, who prefer a fresh bułka chleba (lit. ‘bun of bread’) on the table. Several years ago, the writer Dariusz Kiełczewski complained that, in Poland, people are more wary of Białystok regionalisms, unlike, for example, those from the much-loved highland regions. People still moan about bułka chleba on Internet forums, pointing out that a bun is bread anyway. It is also said to be a Russianism, because in several regions of Russia, any white bread is known as bulka.
Ziemniaki — kartofle — pyry — grule
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Potatoes dancing in a circle, illustrated by Olga Ilicheva, photo: Culture.pl
How do you say ‘spuds’ in Polish? Different regions have different names for this vegetable. Back in 1893, Erazm Majewski wrote in his article Nazwy Ludowe Kartofla i ich Słoworód (‘Popular Names for Potatoes and their Etymology’) that ‘no other plant has so many popular names as the potato’. Interestingly, Majewski’s text uses the word kartofle (from the German Kartoffel), which is considered a regionalism nowadays and is mostly heard in Pomerania. The linguist Jan Miodek explains that the now-commonplace Polish word ziemniaki only stabilised in the twentieth century, and was also derived from a foreign language — the French expression pomme de terre, which translates as ‘earth apple’. In 1819, even Mickiewicz wrote a humorous poem titled Kartofla (the feminine form of the word, instead of ‘Ziemniak’).
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Porzeczki — świętojanki
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Włoszczyzna — jarzyny
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Iść pieszo — iść na nogach
In some places in Poland they do not go 'walking', but 'on their feet', illustration by Olga Ilicheva, photo: Culture.pl
Residents of various Polish regions not only wear different slippers and eat different potatoes, they even … walk around differently. In Poland, people commonly go pieszo or na piechotę, yet in certain areas (Lesser Poland, for example) people move around na nogach (literally ‘on their legs’). Pan kierowca czasami uznaje, że nie opłaca się mu jechać na koniec wsi i kilka osób musi wysiąść na wcześniejszym przystanku i iść na nogach (‘Sometimes, the driver says it’s not worth him going to the end of the village, so a few people must get off [the bus] at an earlier stop and go on foot’, complained a woman from a village near Nowy Sącz. Many find the expression iść na nogach ridiculous: if you’re walking, it’s obviously on foot! Nevertheless, this phrase is unusually widespread in Kraków and other cities of Lesser Poland.
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Karta miejska — migawka
In Łódź, instead of a travel pass, they use a 'blinker', illustration by Olga Ilicheva, photo: Culture.pl
Poland’s only metro is in Warsaw, but many Polish cities have plastic transport passes. They are all called a karta miejska (‘city card’), except in Poland’s former industrial capital, Łódź, where they call it a migawka. Nobody is quite sure why (as migawka literally means a camera shutter, short film, or movie still), but the word stuck and is now the official name for the Łódź city transport pass.
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Tramwaj — bimba
While we’re on the subject, we should recall that Poland’s most-popular type of public transport is probably the tram. People of Łódź can use their migawka on the trams, and trams are also popular in Warsaw, Kraków, Wrocław and Gdańsk. In Poznań, however, they travel on … bimbas, or even trambimbas. The etymology of the word bimba is certainly dubious. Linguists maintain that, unlike many Poznań regional words, it is not derived from German. In any case, it’s easier to travel around the Greater-Polish regional capital by bimba, and from mid-December, there is a świąteczna bimba (‘festive tram’), ridden by Gwiazdor himself ( Santa Claus’s counterpart from Poznań)!
Kremówka — napoleonka
Where did this little Napoleon come from? Illustration by Olga Ilicheva, photo: Culture.pl
Where napoleonka cake acquired its name is still a mystery. Some say it is named after the French Emperor, while others feel it relates to the city of Naples (since the French for ‘Neapolitan’ is napolitain). Residents of Lesser Poland have chosen to avoid this etymological dilemma by selling the sweet delicacy under the name of kremówka. The cake’s name was canonised when Pope John Paul II, visiting his home city of Wadowice, fondly recalled how he and his classmates had gone to eat kremówki after their final exams (‘A po maturze chodziliśmy na kremówki’).
Ever since that incident, the cakes are commonly known as kremówki papieskie (‘papal kremówki’). But both kremówki and napoleonki are on sale in Wrocław, where they are two entirely different products.
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Originally written in Russian, translated by Mark Bence, Sept 2021
Sources: S. Dubisz, H. Karaś, N. Kolis Dialekty i gwary polskie, Wiedza Powszechna, Warszawa 1995; Marian Kucała, Twoja mowa Cię zdradza, regionalizmy i dialektyzmy języka polskiego, Kraków 1994; Nazwy ludowe kartofla i ich słoworód, prace filologiczne IV, 1893, 645-54; Anna Dąbrowska, Język polski, Wrocław 2005; Mitrewa Magdalina, Stanisław Dubisz, Mówta, co chceta, Książka i Wiedza, Warszawa 2004; dialektologia.uw.edu.pl
Published: Feb 16 2022
Last updated: Jul 17 2026
Author: Svetlana Gutkina
Sveta is a graduate of Slavic and Western European philology at the Moscow Pedagogical State University and of Applied Linguistics at the University of Warsaw. She is an editor for the Russian section of Culture.pl. In her free time, she travels the world.
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