# dawaj



## Lorenc

In Russian давай (davaj) is not only the imperative form of давать (davat') - i.e. `give!' - but is used in the standard language with these two overlapping meanings:
1) As an equivalent of English let's, e.g. давай пойдём! (davaj pojdёm!), let's go!; давай покурим! (davaj pokurim!) let's have a smoke.
2) As an exhortative particle more or less equivalent to English `come on!', 'go on, then' or similar. For example
давай, садись! (davaj, sadis'!) come on, sit down!
давай побыстрее, уже поздно! (davaj pobystree, uže pozdno) come on, hurry up, it's late already!
ну давай (nu davaj) go on then (do what you were about to do, e.g. go on talking)

I hear very often dawaj in Polish used with the exhortative meaning 2) above, for example in the form `no dawaj!. However I could not find this use explained in any of my grammar resources. My impression is that this usage is considered very informal if not outright sub-standard or dialectal. I would be very happy to know other people's opinions on this. How informal it is? Is it perhaps the result of Russian (Ukrainian?) linguistic influence?
Incidentally essentially the same meaning is used in Italian with the imperative of 'dare' (dać/dawać), dài!


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## Polilotte

Very informal (sub-standard); not even close to the English "let's go".  I wouldn't use it at all.


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## jasio

Indeed, it's very informal. I use it from time to time in the meaning close to (2), mainly when I do not want to use the proper verb, like in the phrases:


> - Fajną historię słyszałem ('I've heard a nice story')
> - Dawaj (ie. go on, talk)


I can imagine myself pointing to a checker board and saying 'dobra, dawaj' to mean 'stop talking, it's your turn to move' - or in a similar context. However, unlike Russian, in Polish it's not used as a generic imperative (let's). 

Re the origins, it may come from Russian, but if the same feature is in Italian, perhaps the common root would be latin as well (Polish shares surprisingly many archaic features with Latin, and besides it was under strong latin influences throughout centuries).


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## iceranan1979

Russian dawaj and Polish dawaj can also have a similar meaning sometimes. For example, Давай, пойдем в магазин (let's go to the store) and dawaj, idziemy do sklepu (come on, let's go the store) sound pretty much the same, where "dawaj" is a kind of an encouragment.


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## Ben Jamin

jasio said:


> Re the origins, it may come from Russian, but if the same feature is in Italian, perhaps the common root would be latin as well (Polish shares surprisingly many archaic features with Latin, and besides it was under strong latin influences throughout centuries).


I doubt if it could be a loan from Latin. The word "to give" in many languages has a very old Indoeuropean root "da/do", it occurs for example in Latin, Greek, Slavic, Baltic, Sanskrit, Hindi. The likeness of Polish and Italian form is purely accidental (compare American English _wodə_ (water) and Ukrainian _uoda)_.


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## jasio

Ben Jamin said:


> I doubt if it could be a loan from Latin. The word "to give" in many languages has a very old Indoeuropean root "da/do", it occurs for example in Latin, Greek, Slavic, Baltic, Sanskrit, Hindi.


"Polish shares surprisingly many archaic features with Latin" includes the above. ;-) 
It seems that I should avoid shortcuts in my reasoning. 



Ben Jamin said:


> The likeness of Polish and Italian form is purely accidental (compare American English _wodə_ (water) and Ukrainian _uoda)_.


If two words share a common root (as far as I can remember, 'water' is also of indoeuropean origin), calling their resemblance 'purely accidental' is not fully appropriate, don't you think?


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## Ben Jamin

jasio said:


> If two words share a common root (as far as I can remember, 'water' is also of indoeuropean origin), calling their resemblance 'purely accidental' is not fully appropriate, don't you think?


No, I don't think so, because both the words have passed many stages of changes, during which they resembled each other very little. The corresponding words in other Slavic and Germanic languages are much less like: in no other Slavic language the word begins with a /w/ (Polish "ł"), and most Germanic languages have a "t", not "d", or even quite a different consonant in the same place, (German Wasser, Norwegian vann). So, the tendency is to increase the differences, not to reduce them. That's why I call this striking approachment a pure coincidence.


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## jasio

Ben Jamin said:


> That's why I call this striking approachment a pure coincidence.


I understand your point, but still:

most of the changes were pretty regular, albeit numerous and in mostly random directions

"water" is used often enough to be pretty conservative with regards to such changes, I suppose
Nevertheless, for me "a pure coincidence" would take place if we were discussing Kashubian and Nahuatl, not Ukrainian and US English.


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## Ben Jamin

Conclusion: we have a different understanding of the expression "pure coincidence".


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## kuterfazer

Dawaj could be very idiomatic in some context and very informal. Here are some examples: 
1.* go on* (keep doing something, start doing something) e.g _Dawaj zaczynaj (here dawaj is redundant)_
2. *give it back* - the wrong usage. Happens usually among teenagers when they are angry e.g _Dawaj to _instead of_ oddaj to_
3. *Let's do it* e.g _Dawaj idziemy do domu ------> Let's go home
_


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## Lorenc

kuterfazer said:


> Dawaj could be very idiomatic in some context and very informal. Here are some examples:
> 1.* go on* (keep doing something, start doing something) e.g _Dawaj zaczynaj (here dawaj is redundant)_
> 2. *give it back* - the wrong usage. Happens usually among teenagers when they are angry e.g _Dawaj to _instead of_ oddaj to_
> 3. *Let's do it* e.g _Dawaj idziemy do domu ------> Let's go home_



Thank you for your comments, kuterfazer  
Why would you say that usage 2. is 'wrong' and not just informal/impolite, similar to `gimme'? I found some example in standard material, for example:
-Ach, przestań wreszcie! - wrzasnął Martino Gerol. -*Dawaj mi* tu zaraz tę kozę! [Dino Buzzati, Sześćdziesiąt opowiadań, 'Zabicie smoka', tłum. Joanna Wajs']

Janina potrzebuję pieniędzy i zamierzam sprzedać wszystko, co się da! Całą swoją biżuterię, telewizor, pralkę, lodówkę, nawet obrączkę ślubną, jeśli będzie trzeba! Więc* dawaj mi* ten zegarek i to już! [subtitles of the soap 'Samo życie', odcinek 288]

Logic in such cases would suggest that the perfective form *daj mi* should be used. Swan in its Grammar of contemporary Polish (my bible) says the (positive, i.e. non-negated) imperative imperfective forms occurs when 
A. We are being rude: zwiewaj! uciekaj! idź stąd! Spier***aj!
B. We are being insistent: Weź parasol, będzie deszcz. [...] Bierz parasol, mówię ci!
C. When, friendly but informally, we ask for a change in body position: Wstawaj! Siadaj!

The usage 2. you mention seems to me to fall within cases A and perhaps B above. Do you agree?

Incidentally, the very first recorded sentence in Polish (in the Księga henrykowska from about 1270) is '_Daj, uć ja pobrusza, a ti pocziwaj'_ (=Daj, niech ja pomielę, a ty odpoczywaj) uses daj to build an imperative form just like the usage 3. above, which therefore I'd argue is the grammatical structure with the longest traceble history (the best pedigree, if you will) in the whole Polish language. Not bad!


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## kuterfazer

Lorenc said:


> Thank you for your comments, kuterfazer
> Why would you say that usage 2. is 'wrong' and not just informal/impolite, similar to `gimme'? I found some example in standard material, for example:
> -Ach, przestań wreszcie! - wrzasnął Martino Gerol. -*Dawaj mi* tu zaraz tę kozę! [Dino Buzzati, Sześćdziesiąt opowiadań, 'Zabicie smoka', tłum. Joanna Wajs']



Give it back in The Polish language would be _*Oddaj. *_I gave the poorly looking example to you so maybe this is the cause of your problem. Dawaj equals give it to me or even better give me (gimme). So now let's try to imagine a situation when somebody says this_* Dlaczego zabrałeś mi mój *_telefon_*?! Dawaj go! *_in this particular example, he really means oddaj go(give it back). Honestly to me dawaj sounds rough and personally, I do not use it nowadays.



> Logic in such cases would suggest that the perfective form *daj mi* should be used. Swan in its Grammar of contemporary Polish (my bible) says the (positive, i.e. non-negated) imperative imperfective forms occurs when
> A. We are being rude: zwiewaj! uciekaj! idź stąd! Spier***aj!
> B. We are being insistent: Weź parasol, będzie deszcz. [...] Bierz parasol, mówię ci!
> C. When, friendly but informally, we ask for a change in body position: Wstawaj! Siadaj!
> 
> The usage 2. you mention seems to me to fall within cases A and perhaps B above. Do you agree?



Here, in the case (B) you order someone to take an umbrella not to hand an umbrella, so dawaj parasol really means give me an umbrella and you would use this sentence only if YOU want to get an umbrella. I*n your sentence, you order someone to take an umbrella so dawaj is inappropriate. *


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## Lorenc

kuterfazer said:


> _*Dlaczego zabrałeś mi mój *_telefon_*?! Dawaj go! *_in this particular example, he really means oddaj go(give it back). Honestly to me dawaj sounds rough and personally, I do not use it nowadays.


Thanks for the example. Would you agree that it sounds rude because it's has grammatical imperfective aspect? Would *daj (mi go)!* sound more polite?



kuterfazer said:


> Here, in the case (B) you order someone to take an umbrella not to hand an umbrella, so dawaj parasol really means give me an umbrella and you would use this sentence only if YOU want to get an umbrella. I*n your sentence, you order someone to take an umbrella so dawaj is inappropriate. *



The point of the example was to contrast `weź' (imperative, perfective) with 'bierz' (imperative, imperfective), analogously to daj / dawaj


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## kuterfazer

Lorenc said:


> Thanks for the example. Would you agree that it sounds rude because it's has grammatical imperfective aspect? Would *daj (mi go)!* sound more polite?
> 
> 
> 
> The point of the example was to contrast `weź' (imperative, perfective) with 'bierz' (imperative, imperfective), analogously with daj / dawaj



Yup, you're right and daj is a more polite way to say gimme it  



> The point of the example was to contrast `weź' (imperative, perfective) with 'bierz' (imperative, imperfective), analogously with daj / dawaj


Yeah you're right once again but please note that I am not a teacher, I only write what I think. Hope I enlightened you somehow


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## Ben Jamin

My hypothese is that the perfective form of the verb in the imperative form conveys a more distant relation to the required action, because the speaker focuses on the result of the action, which does not have to be immediate, while the imperfective paired with the imperative gives a more urgent order "do it now!". All cooking recipes use the perfective form, while when we wish to make somebody do something done immediately and quickly we indicate it by using the imperfective form.


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