AboutMaciej St. Zięba Expertise I am native Polish and I used to teach Polish to foreigners. I know (passively of actively) more than 15 other languages - so I can answer many questions concerning Polish grammar, pronounciation, spelling, ethymology and usage - as compared to English, French, German, Russian, Dutch, Esperanto or Norwegian. Also questions concerning other Slavic languages, Sanskrit, Chinese, Tibetan, or general linguistics, especially scripts (writing systems and transcriptions) - are welcome.
Experience Teaching English and French to Poles, Polish to foreigners, teaching Sanskrit, Chinese and Tibetan to philosophy students.
Expert: Maciej St. Ziêba Date: 5/9/2007 Subject: babcia/dziadzio
Question I read your response to Patricia concerning the translation for grandmother "babcia" and grandfather "dziadzio". It was really helpful.
As children my cousins and I referred to our grandparents as "busha" (phonetically spelled) and "jahjah". (Forgive the misspelling.) Now that we're grandparents our grandchildren continue these affectionate terms. Recently, a friend who is also polish told me she called her grandmother Babcia pronounced "bahp=chah" and we got in an extended discussion about the difference in terms. The point being I've not been able to find any reference anywhere for grandmothers being referenced as "busha". Are busha (phonetically spelled) and babcia the same word? I'm so confused.
Thanks for your time.
Dottie
Answer Dear Dottie,
Polish is a very rich language as far as sentiments expression concerned. Therefore we have many popular words for the terms of endearment - and an even much greater possibility of creating new terms which although not so common in use would be immediately understood.
Therefore for the the term relating to grandmother:
the basic word is "baba" which is now used rather vulgarly to mean "a common woman" "an old woman", "a nasty woman", "a fat woman etc".
from this with a suffixed -k- we form "babka" which immediately means "grandmother", but used without any affectio, just an ordinary term, even hard-sounding (official term, or with a kind of distance) (or, in another context, "a cool young girl or fine young lady", with a positive affection)
from this by palatalising the -k- to ć (or c' - if you can't see correctly the Polis letter c with acute) (which process is called in Polish "softening" and is commonly used to make affectionate terms) we obtain "babcia" (pronounced bahp-chah) which is already positively marked, with affection, but not so much marked as the word is very commonly used so it has lost a part of its emotion
Then you can continue with the more affectionate terms, like "babusia", "babunia", "babuśka" - or some abbreviations from them, usually used only within some families - like "bunia" which is used in the family of my wife - or "buśka" which is used in your family.
"buśka" (or if you can't see the Polish s with acute: "bus'ka" - is pronounced boosh-kah, and is abbreviated from "babus'ka".
So finally these are the derivative forms of the same word.
