Andy Hall wrote:

So does this explain the large amount of French business influence, do
you think? Last time I went to Warsaw, the numbers of Carrefour
(and even Castorama) stores was noticeable. Mind you, there was a
Marks and Sparks and a Tescos as well, so there isn't a total gallic
monopoly.

Any influence is marginal - French companies might be a tiny bit more
warmly received at first, but the inward investment process - and the
usual support mechanisms for it from the host administrations, both
overt (tax concessions) and covert (bribes, unfortunately) - are as you
know decided on colder, financial factors than vague memories of
Napoleon's armies having been a source of hope during independence
struggles 180 years ago!

That would be a shame if it becomes as polluted with English as most
other languages have become. I was reading a survey recently that
covered the percentage of IT technical words that had been coined in
the language vs. borrowed from English. In French, German and
Italian it was in the 50-60% range, whereas the Finns had managed over
90%.

Casual reading of the occasional Google hits suggests the web-writing
Polish geek prefers the English-derived term even when there's a 'pure'
Polish term more or less available, other than for those words where
there's a well-established pre-existing usage. To some extent it's just
a matter of pragmatic survival - if you're compiling from source (lots
of Linux hackers in Poland!) or using recent versions of commercial
apps, their routine/variable names and menu entries respectively will
typically be in (American) English. The survey you mention sounds like
an interesting starting-point, but to be informative you'd need to count
the usage of the English-derived vs r/nationally-reconstructed terms,
rather than the mere existence of the latter and its use in the odd
school textbook...

(Though on the topic of the Polish Linux culture, there's a hilarious
T-shirt slogan doing the rounds - "Nie rzucim ziemi skad nasz root".
It's a bilingual pun on a famous patriotic song - but explaining it in
detail would be tedious and unfunny when done).

If MM thought that Polish was hard then it would be a doddle compared
to Finnish. The language is on the same root as Estonian and
Hungarian, but only distantly so. Added to this, there is virtually
zero body language - until after a few beers that is..... :-)

I'll take your word for that one - I understand all three are classified
as 'Uralic' languages, hailing from the far edge of Siberial.