Hili Dialogue: Thursday

September 19, 2013 • 2:11 am

A: Are you looking for something?
Hili: No, just checking if Jerry’s book is in its place.

It’s in there somewhere (I donated a special edition with a special Hili cartoon).

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In Polish:

Ja: Szukasz czegoś?
Hili: Nie, tylko sprawdzam, czy książka Jerrego jest na swoim miejscu.

Well, I learned that my Polish name is “Jerrego.”

15 thoughts on “Hili Dialogue: Thursday

  1. A discerning cat.

    Clearly you are running on Polish time!
    Cell just published an article on the molecular basis for jetlag (jet-lag?) – the BBC highlighted it a couple of weeks ago.

    Such neat shelves in comparison with mine – & yet there is always that wasted space in a corner where thebookcases meet. Bring back scrolls!

    1. & yet there is always that wasted space in a corner where thebookcases meet. Bring back scrolls!

      Not necessarily. Of course, there are multiple other ways of turning a corner without losing space.

  2. Well, I learned that my Polish name is “Jerrego.”

    As a matter of fact, it’s Jerry, but since it ends like a Polish masculine adjective (in -y), its declension is modelled on such adjectives (and closely resembles that of the popular Polish first name Jerzy ‘George’). We have all those messy case endings, you know:

    nom. Jerry
    acc. Jerrego
    gen. Jerrego
    dat. Jerremu
    ins. Jerrym
    loc. Jerrym
    voc. Jerry!

      1. I suspected it was declined. I don’t know Polish, but I figured it worked like the grammar of other Indo-European languages. Yay!

      2. It depends if Jerry is an English word being used in Polish or an English word absorbed into Polish. There are so many English words being absorbed into Polish these days that I would go with Piotr’s construction.

        My name legally is Jerzy. I regret not keeping the Polish name. It was just easier to use George. Jerzy would be pronounced as jersey. I prefer the diminutive form Jurek. But that was worse – Americans cannot roll their r’s and would pronounce it jer-wreck.

      3. You are right, but I personally hate this particular apostrophe. To justify its use dictionaries assert (wrongly) that Poles consistently don’t pronounce the final y before a vowel-initial inflectional ending in French and English names. Actually, there are two common pronunciations in free variation, and the best spelling would be either “adjectival” Jerrego (analogous to Jerzego) or Jerriego, depending on the pronunciation. Polish would be much better without a central beaurocratic institution imposing artificial spelling regulations (or at least trying to).

    1. Actually, in Polish version it may be either
      Jeremi, Jeremiasz, Gerard or Hieronim, since Jerry is a diminutive of all those name (it’s English equivalents, of course).

      But definitely not Jerzy.

      I would go for Jeremiasz, it’s so biblical 🙂

        1. “It could also be Gerald (in Old Polish Gierałt or Gierołt) ;)”

          Or Geralt.
          Geralt of Rivia 🙂

          (too hermetic?)

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