For some reason, in my Polonia diaspora group, we never used the standard Polish word “Babcia” for grandmother.
Nor did we use any of the other possible words such as “Babka” or “Babunia”.
In my diaspora group, we use the world “Busia” for grandmother.
I’ve have had Pole Poles look a bit odd at me, but once again, those who left the ojczyzna diverged in both language and of course, what I refer to as cultural generican assimilation.
I’ve assumed it may have evolved from the region in Poland that so many of the diaspora left from, but unfortunately, some of that info, at least for my family lines, is lost to us and 2 World Wars have destroyed A LOT of records. 😢
So.
Yeah.
There ya go.
Oh. And the Russian cognate бабушка, “Babushka” is oddly what we called the head scarves that so many old Polish in the neighborhood wore. Which, you can kind of see how it ties into grandma things.
Of course, all Slav words for grandmother derive from Proto-Slavic, though I find it odd the linguistically reconstructed word from the even older Proto-Indo-European is typically “áwijā”, which would not clearly seem like a cognate, though the Polish for grandfather is “Dziadek” and the reconstructed PIE for that is possibly “dhēdhjos” and I can kind of see it.
Yes! This is the kind of shit Nala thinks about on a Saturday afternoon.
With head cold our without head cold.