Growing up, my dad would point at any boat he saw and said “Yadja boat!” As we grew older, it finally occurred to us to ask what that meant, and he said that “Yadja” meant “there goes”, so we all had a good laugh that he was just saying “there goes the boat” for years.

Time passes and the Internet becomes commonplace. I cannot get a translation of “there goes” that looks anything like “Yadja” even accounting for not really speaking the language. Asking Dad, he doesn’t know how it is spelled and, being born and raised in America, doesn’t really speak/read Polish.

So, my questions: is there a word in Polish that sounds kinda like “yadja”? Does it mean “there goes”? Is it some sort of slang or is it completely made up by dear old dad?

Edit: thanks, all, jedzie it is! It might not be the word that he should have used, but at least we have the answer to what he was trying to say, lol.

  • skillissuer
    5·
    2 days ago

    the word you’re looking for is “jedzie”

    strictly speaking polish (and all slavic languages i think?) doesn’t have a verb like “go”. you have to specify, you can ride, drive, walk, sail, swim, roll and so on but you can’t “go”. that verb (which means “[there it] drives”) would be usually used for land vehicles, for boats we’d use “płynie” (“swim”, “sail”, “flow” depending on context)