Tracing the Origins of a Distinctive Grammar Error
Chapter 8
‘The steady addition of a constant of amount of new coins”. This phrase contains a distinctive grammatical error that likely results from direct translation from another language. The error specifically lies in the construction “constant of amount of,” which is unnatural in English and suggests literal translation from a source language.
8.1. Germanic Language Possibility
The most likely source appears to be German or another Germanic language. The construction closely mirrors German syntax patterns:
German: “Die stetige Zugabe einer konstanten Menge neuer Münzen”
– “konstanten Menge” (constant amount) could be literally translated as “constant of amount”
– The genitive construction in German often translates to English using “of”
– This could lead to overcorrection when translating to English
Similar patterns exist in other Germanic languages:
– Dutch: “De gestage toevoeging van een constante hoeveelheid nieuwe munten”
– Swedish: “Det stadiga tillägget av en konstant mängd nya mynt”
This grammatical error provides strong evidence for Germanic language influence, particularly German. The specific nature of the error – the double use of “of” in a genitive construction – is highly characteristic of Germanic language speakers writing in English. This aligns with other evidence suggesting the author has a Germanic language background or received significant education in a Germanic language environment.
The error stands out precisely because the rest of the document shows such high English proficiency, suggesting it slipped through during a moment of direct translation from the author’s native or primary academic language.
Robert Nogacki is a Polish attorney at law (radca prawny), the founder and managing partner of Kancelaria Prawna Skarbiec (Skarbiec Law Firm), which has operated continuously since 2006.
The law is equal for everyone, but the parties rarely are: on one side stands an organization with time, money, and lawyers, on the other a person with one business, one nest egg, and one life.
Clients rarely come to him with a legal problem. They come with a problem that also has a legal side: an audit that began with a single invoice, money entrusted to someone who has disappeared, a company that has to be passed on before it is too late. Most such matters are decided long before the first letter is written, in decisions made without asking and in deadlines nobody remembered. So he begins by asking how the client got here, not what the client should have done.
He advises entrepreneurs and families from more than a dozen countries, including those whose accounts the tax office has just seized and who do not know what to do tomorrow morning. He defends them in tax audits, customs and fiscal inspections, disputes with the tax authorities, and criminal tax proceedings. He represents victims of investment fraud and Ponzi schemes. He helps families set up family foundations and plan succession, so that a life’s work outlasts a single generation.
Not every case can be won. Every case can be run so that the client knows where they stand. Since 2006 he has represented the victims in the WGI case (Warszawska Grupa Inwestycyjna, the Warsaw Investment Group), one of the longest criminal cases in the history of the Polish financial market, because some things must not be left half finished, even when they take two decades. In the case of the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange Zonda (Zondacrypto, operated by BB Trade Estonia OÜ), he represents several hundred victims in the criminal investigation conducted by Poland’s National Prosecutor’s Office and in the Estonian bankruptcy proceedings.
Kancelaria Prawna Skarbiec is listed in the rankings of Poland’s largest tax advisory firms published by Dziennik Gazeta Prawna and Rzeczpospolita, and it is a four-time recipient (2015 to 2018) of the European Medal awarded by the Business Centre Club and the European Economic and Social Committee. Robert Nogacki publishes regularly, in the press and on the firm’s website, for people who have a problem rather than a law degree, because a legal opinion the client cannot understand protects only the lawyer.
He believes that the best legal advice is the kind that means the client never has to appear in court.
