Chess pieces in Polish: Donchenko's knights at the European Championship

The current European Champion Matthias Blübaum plays at the Candidates in Cyprus. Many other European top players are (or have been) busy with other tournaments, so that many big names are missing from the list of participants in Katowice, Poland. David Navara (2643) and Alexander Donchenko (2642) are some of the top players. Number one of the starting list is Igor Kovalenko (2685).
With a new event happening in Poland, it's time again to dive into learning some Polish together! Let's start with talking about Alexander Donchenko's round 1 game. The game Alexander Donchenko (2642) vs. Hilmir Freyr Heimisson (2297) got decided by a tactical oversight by Heimisson.

To learn about basic Polish words in chess, we've got interesting resources. The linguist Krzysztof Pańczyk wrote his phd thesis about chess terms comparing basic chess terms in Polish with English, German and Russian (Pańczyk 2009). The linguist is a chess player and language expert. This is an amazing mixture for our language learning purposes around chess.

The knight in Polish: skoczek

The tactical oversight of Donchenko's opponent allowed Donchenko's knights to rule the board (definitely ruling the rooks!). Let's see how Polish talks about those horses! The Polish word to talk about the animal horse is 'kón'. Just as in German (Pferd), kón is also used to talk about the chess piece knight in colloquial language. About the term skoczek, the Polish term for the chess piece knight, Pańczyk (2009:96) points out that this derives from the Polish verb skakać ‘jump’. Skoczek is literally someone/something that jumps... Just as the German Springer ('jumper'; the literal translation of the German knight). Interesting enough, because the Polish and the German term for the knight start with an "S", the algebraic notation for that chess piece is the same in both languages. So, if you want to write down move 29 by Alexander Donchenko, it is 29.Sc5 in both languages (see Sczachy Info; Notacja algebraiczna)!

Are you ready to write down your solutions to your next tactics exercises with the Polish notation?

Sources:

• Pańczyk, Krzysztof (2009): Multilingual Chess Terminology - a Synchronic and Diachronic Perspective, Lublin: Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II.
• Szachy Info: Notacja algebraiczna (FIDE), a translation of the English version of the FIDE Laws of chess (version 2018): https://szachy.info.pl/przepisy-gry-w-szachy-fide/notacja-algebraiczna-fide/