# gniotsa nie łamiotsa



## Baltic Sea

Hello everybody!

I'd like to ask you to tell me the name for the English for "gniotsa nie łamiotsa", meaning unbreakable stuff.

Maybe unbreakable stuff.

Thank you. No online source is available.


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## morzh

You are probably going to be better off describing your problem on the EO forum.

Also what do you mean by "name"? The word/phrase, or...?

I'd say "indestructible". But there are, I guess, other words.

Also "гнется и не ломается" does not mean "unbreakable", actually - it means something that is not brittle.
"Гнется и не ломается" means "bendable / elastic".


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## Baltic Sea

Thank you very much, Morzh. What do you mean by the EO forum?


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## morzh

English Only


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## LilianaB

It is gniotsa nie lamayetsa. It means usually somebody very stubborn. ( I wrote it phonetically, more or less)


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## marco_2

Of course. The problem is that in Poland this saying exists in the wrong form as *gniotsia nie łamiotsia* (and Baltic See probably meant it) and it is used when describing some unbreakable objects (in the past made in Soviet Union - that's why we used this quasi-Russian expression).


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## LilianaB

OK, I did't know that. That will be durable in English,  in reference to materials.


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## morzh

LilianaB said:


> It is gniotsa nie lamayetsa. It means usually somebody very stubborn. ( I wrote it phonetically, more or less)



It does not mean "stubborn".


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## LilianaB

It can mean stubborn if you use it figuratively in reference to a person, someone who can endure a lot. I said later that it meant durable in reference to materials.


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## gvozd

LilianaB said:


> It can mean stubborn if you use it figuratively in reference to a person, someone who can endure a lot.



Not stubborn - able to adapt. Кто не гнется, тот ломается (Чингисхан).


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## LilianaB

I think he was very stubborn himself, as far as I remember.Yes, you are right Gvozd, more enduring than stubborn.


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## Ben Jamin

morzh said:


> You are probably going to be better off describing your problem on the EO forum.
> 
> Also what do you mean by "name"? The word/phrase, or...?
> 
> I'd say "indestructible". But there are, I guess, other words.
> 
> Also "гнется и не ломается" does not mean "unbreakable", actually - it means something that is not brittle.
> "Гнется и не ломается" means "bendable / elastic".



In the time before 1989 it was a typical example of Polish made Russian (language). This expression was made to ridicule Soviet products, as unusable, bad quality stuff. Many such expressions were made, even songs and poems. Some were in an almost correct Russian, others in a kind of P/R Pidgin.


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## LilianaB

What would the sense of this phrase be in Polish, I mean how would the meaning of the components fit with the whole meaning of the phrase? It means something totally different in Russian.  In fact I have done some research about the Polish phrase and how it is used. It means exactly the opposite of what you said. It means more or less the same what it means in Russian. It is something that cannot be defeated or broken. One of the uses was, in one of the fora: Czy myslisz ze sa jeszcze samochody ktore sie nie psuja, gniotsa nie lamiotsa? All the other uses I found were similar to this one.


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## marco_2

As I wrote before, in the past we used this expression ironically - according to official propaganda Soviet products were the best and in our opinion they often were maybe not necessarily of bad quality, but rather clumsy and not well designed. Nowadays people may use the phrase in its primary meaning.


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## Ben Jamin

It just means "soviet crap product".


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## LilianaB

First of all, it was never ever claimed in any socialist country that Soviet products were the best. There were very few Soviet made products outside of  the Soviet Union from what I have seen traveling to different countries. This phrase probably had reference to World War 2 and referred to Russian tanks or some guns. The internet shows the use in Polish, exactly what it means in Russian.


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## marco_2

LilianaB said:


> First of all, it was never ever claimed in any socialist country that Soviet products were the best. There were very few Soviet made products outside of the Soviet Union from what I have seen traveling to different countries. This phrase probably had reference to World War 2 and referred to Russian tanks or some guns. The internet shows the use in Polish, exactly what it means in Russian.



Everything made in the Soviet Union was the best  and in the years 1949 - 1956 if you were of different opinion, it could have even been dangerous for your life or at least freedom. And in Poland we imported, though not willingly, quite a lot of Soviet products: lorries, tools, household goods, watches, alarm clocks etc. - they sometimes looked weird but they didn't have to be of bad quality; you can still meet ЛАЗЫ and КАМАЗЫ on our roads and I myself have a vacuum-cleaner Ракета bought in 1962 and it still works though I don't use it - it's too heavy.


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## LilianaB

I don't think Marco it was really claimed in socialist countries that Soviet products were the best. Soviet Union almost did not have light industry so there were very few things from Soviet Union in other countries. This phrase definitely is related to some heavy industry items like trucks or some construction equipment, maybe, which as  you said, were a little cumbersome, very large, but almost impossible to break. It did not refer to cheap 99 cent kind of things, and this is what was claimed in this forum. It originally probably referred to high quality steel which is supposed to bend, but never break, if it is really of high quality.


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## Baltic Sea

Thank you all for contribution.


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