There's no need to know the singular for pierogi, because no one has ever eaten just one.
In return, I promise to continue working to stop Polish people from pluralizing potato chips as "chipsy".
I'm not sure if "pierogi" is common enough yet for "pierogies" to become the valid way to pluralize it in English, but as a Russian speaker, "чипсы" sounds perfectly normal to me.
After all, if I were speaking Russian I wouldn't say "компьютерз" - I would say "компьютеры", using the correct pluralization in the language I'm speaking in.
You can try to interest "Rada Języka Polskiego" (Polish Language Council) into this topic. Just because we all know, every Polish speaker will follow their advice diligently :).
In early 90's, after the COCOM embargo on import of computers into former then Eastern Block had been lifted, there were initiatives to translate English-sounding word into something more native to Polish language.
An example of a word that badly needed such translation was 'interface', for which a proposed translation was 'międzymordzie' (literally: a thing between two faces) which sounded hilariously bad in Polish. There was another proposal to name 'computer mouse' as something even better, but I've forgotten the name since.
Fortunately, nobody followed, and 'computer mouse' is simply 'mysz' (mouse). I hear, that French had longer lasting successes with their translations.
Kind of. Generally, ‶old″ words are consistently translated. For instance, we have souris for mouse (which is exactly the direct translation, because it conveys the same idea), ordinateur (which could be translated as ‶sorter/processor″) for computer, informatique (science of the information) for computer science, disquette (small disk) for floppy disk, logiciel for software, and so on.
However, newer ones (i.e. past ~1985) didn't catch so much, mostly because the official translation were awful and/or came years too late. For instance, CD-ROM is supposes to be cédérom, i.e. the straight phonetic transliteration – losing all meaning in the process; tablet is supposed to be ardoise numérique (digital slate) – evokes school, came years too late and was too long in comparison to the colloquial tablette; fouineur (snooper) for hacker (no comment...); cybermonnaie (cyber-money) for cryptocurrency – losing half of the semantic, and so on.
W Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie.
And:
Stół z powyłamywanymi nogami.
I sure youtube will find you proper pronunciations.
Some called the mouse "gryzon" which means rodent, but that was very early days of computers in Poland - say 1990.
> I promise to continue working to stop
Finns are great at this as well. Some examples:
chips - sipsit
shorts - shortsit
donut, donuts - donitsi, donitsit
ribs - ribsit (as in the food)
wings - wingsit (likewise)
Then there's the recent abomination that seems to be getting popular as there's no established word for a mobile app yet:
app, apps - äpsi, äpsitThat, friend, is hilarious, and so true.
Ain't that the truth! My Polish friend also introduced me to 'pierogi rooski'? Apparently, a Russian take on pierogi, with more meat. Do I have the spelling correct?
> In return, I promise to continue working to stop Polish people from pluralizing potato chips as "chipsy".
As a Jamaican, where banana chips are like a national snack, it was amusing to see "chipsy bananowe" for sale. Fun times; I plan to go back.
If you mean "pierogi ruskie", they don't have any meat in them, just quark with potatoes and onion, though they're often served with bacon. And this dish comes from "Ruś" (now Ukraine), not "Rosja", otherwise it would be called "pierogi rosyjskie". I hear that in Ukraine they call this dish "Polish pierogi".
> As a Jamaican, [...], it was amusing to see "chipsy bananowe" for sale.
I believe "it" was not a Jamaican, however amusing it was.
Blasphemy!
In Poland, 'pierogi ruskie' are ones with cheese and potato. Also delicious!
Confusingly, Russian does have the word "pirogi" (plural; singular "pirog") - but it's a kind of pie, not a dumpling.
Not because there's anything wrong with it, that is.
It's just always puts a smile on my face when I walk past a tipsy nail salon with a sign that means euphemistically, to my British ears, being on the path to getting properly drunk.
Then again, when I'm ordering an espresso in Italy, my results with just "caffé" are also mixed because it turns into the poison scene from The Princess Bride:
- is the guy speaking Italian? - is the guy just asking for a regular coffee because he doesn't speak Italian? - do they maybe call it different in different parts of the country?
I will never solve this mystery, I guess.
Now I know that in real-world usage it would be unlikely to refer to one, but what if there was a need to? Let's say someone made a statue to pierogi, but due to budgetary problems only one of the several pierogi planned was constructed. A tourist asks you how many pierogi make up the statue. How would you respond? Would you use the singular, like "only one pieróg", or would you rework your response so there was no need for the singular, like "sadly only one of the several pierogi was built"? Which seems more natural?
I've been dining off it since.
This is a hilariously colorful analogy. Is it a translation of a Polish analogy, or are you just a very descriptive English speaker?
In Internet forum speak, the asterisk means "I meant to say" or "You meant to say".
In linguistics, the asterisk means "This form is not attested (we don't have examples of people using it)" or "This form would be considered mistaken by speakers".
That means that the forum usage of asterisks is something like "I should have said X" while the linguistics use of asterisks is something like "I shouldn't have said X". :-(
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asterisk#Linguistics
"In linguistics, an asterisk is placed before a word or phrase to indicate that it is not used, or there are no records of it being in use."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asterisk#Typography
"Asterisks may denote corrections to misspelling or misstatements in previous electronic messages"
So, like "chipy"? I don't think it's a good idea :)