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[simon_porter00]

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/credit

Credits is a direct translation of kredyty and is used by nearly all of my students ranging from ordinary jo schmoes to bank directors. Credits for machines apart in terms of loans and financial language isn't credit uncountable?

My simple brain leads me to believe that 'credit' isn't used in the way Polish people wish to use it i.e. it's a false friend of sorts. We don't have credit but loans, mortgages etc etc i.e. forms of credit. If you were chatting to a friend you wouldn't say i've got several credits but several loans, wouldn't you?

I've told all of my students that in terms of business it's singular, but does anyone know any better? I started to double guess myself when telling a bank director today his use of 'credits' was incorrect especially as he was using that presentation in front of a load of Germans and Swedes.

Quite happy to welcome US and GB interpretations on this.

[scottie1113]

Let's deal with the grammar first. Credit is countable. I can have credit at the bank but I can also have credits in some types of accounts and as I spend them the balance goes down.

It's definitely a false friend as there are lots of different types of kredyt in Poland. My Chambers Polish-English dictionary lists lots of different types of kredyt, most associatiated with different types of loans and that seems to be the context your Polish students are using.

I've got a friend who has a small real estate company here in Gdansk and over lunch last month we talked about the possibility of my obtaining kredyt from a bank to buy a flat. One of my friends got kredyt to buy a car. That meant loans, what I would call a mortgage or a car loan in the US. Kredyt in Polish is much more universal than that.

BTW, I never double guess myself. In American English it's second guess. Want another false friend? Check out pasta.

Hope this helps. If it does, you can give me credit for my efforts.

[Harry from NWE]

Credit = goods now, payment later.
Credit card = card which lets you have goods now and pay for them later.
Loan = amount of money which you must repay.


Don't worry about correcting bank directors when they make mistakes. Common usage does not make correct usage (ain't da de truth). Apart from anything else, your student needs to remember that he may well be misunderstood when he talks of 'credits'. Is he referring to credit facilities or to loans? The two are not the same thing (a credit facility is basically an overdraft for a company).

[Mike_2007]

Same problem here in Romania. You take out a credit to buy a house or a car or whatever. They do have a word for mortgage but it's rarely used. Another false friend in this area is 'rate'. In Romanian a 'rata' is a repayment on a loan. This leads to confusion as when they talk about their credit rates or house rates they are actually referring to their mortgage repayments!

Credit in business usually refers to the action of one company allowing someone to pay at a later date (defined by the credit term) for their product or service rather than a loan or martgage, which is the advancing of money by one party on the presumption of later repayment.

[Richfilth]

I'd argue that the main confusion comes from Poles, and the Slavic region in general, looking at the other side of the coin. Every company has creditors and debtors; those you owe money to, and those who owe money to you.

Calling a debt a credit just means that Poles are looking at the money from the money point of view, not the gaping hole of repayment afterwards, in the same way a credit facilities are considered methods of finance to young companies rather than liabilities.