Polski język przepełniają słowa, które odcięte od znaczenia brzmią (zwłaszcza dla obcokrajowców) jak zaklęcia lub magiczne przedmioty. Krużganek, bursztyn, żmijowisko.
Może dlatego Henry Miller napisał: "There is one thing I like about the Poles—their language. Polish, when it is spoken by intelligent people, puts me in ecstasy. The sound of the language evokes strange images in which there is always a greensward of fine spiked grass in which hornets and snakes play a great part.[...] The Poles were like standing snakes fitted up with collars of hornets. I never knew what they were talking about but it always seemed to me as if they were politely assassinating some one. They were all fitted up with sabres and broad−swords which they held in their teeth or brandished fiercely in a thundering charge. [...] They hissed their long polychromatic words through tiny, sensual mouths [....] These furious sorties with adders and rose petals made an intoxicating sort of music, a steel−stringed zithery slipper−gibber which could also register anomalous sounds like sobs and falling jets of water.”