Pardon my... er ... French?

We've been learning Polish for almost two years now, girls and boys, and it's time to address the sticky topic of register.

I've already covered some of the problems of the second person formal [loud snoring noises] here.
Admittedly in the wrong language, but let's consider it covered. No, when I talk about register, this time I mean Naughty Words, things that you wouldn't tell your babcia, potoczna polszczyzna.

I don't know about you, but I find it impossible to swear in a foreign language. Maybe this means that I have yet to fully 'internalise' my languages. On the other hand, I want to speak 'real' Polish, French and Italian, as naturally as possible, and it would feel highly unnatural to bang my knee on the table and shout anything other than 'f*cking hell!'.

Pani Kinga, who teaches mówienie, explained that there are three circumstances under which everyone reverts automatically to their native language: swearing, counting (really important! think about it) and prayer (even if you're not religious: everyone says 'Oh God' or 'Oh help!' on occasion). I'd be inclined to agree - except when counting salsa steps, which are etched in my mind as 'raz, dwa, trzy ... pięć, sześć, siedem'. I now have trouble remembering to include 'cztery' when counting in Polish at the market, for example.

I think part of the problem is that profanity is expressed in different formats in various languages. In English, obviously - and I'm assuming everyone knows how to swear in English: isn't it the first thing you look up when you buy your first dictionary aged thirteen and a half? - expletives come in the form of nouns and adjectives. Verbs are less common. French, on the other hand, has alternative verbs to faire: instead of doing something, you're f*cking doing it. Or something like that. The Italians have a complex system of metaphorical blasphemy: porca miseria is already very expressive, but from what I've heard things can get even more convoluted. Various saints and Madonnas are compared to various lowly animals, and it even sounds pretty, whereas our more Anglo-Saxon expressions tend towards the onomatopoeic.

Polish I'm only just starting to get used to. Obviously there's the universal Slavic ejaculation (my keyword stats for this post are going to be awesome). Apparently this can be squeezed into a sentence a lot more than you'd think, in several different permutations.

But then there's a family of verbs as well, with various suffixes and prefixes, all of which make me think of various kinds of pepper - although that's probably just a quirk of the frontal lobes. I simply have to be careful when seasoning in company.
My own PL-EN dictionary tending to the prudish, I was forced to resort to the famous dict.pl/plen. I was surprised to find some helpful synonyms and explanations: 'pranie mózgu', 'dostać surową reprymendę'; 'bezsensowne zajęcie'; 'wyraz ostrej odmowy'. However, I still don't understand how you can say 'ja... (wyrażam ostrej odmowy)'. I'd be happier with a nice impersonal noun or something if I were going to express my irritation/frustration/total lack of engagement with the task underway.

And then there's another expression that I learnt quite recently. I have trouble understanding how this works as well, because it doesn't refer to bodily excretions, interpersonal relations or the anatomy of anyone's mother. Basically it seems to mean 'awesome', only not just 'awesome', but 'really f*cking awesome in a way you wouldn't express in front of your grandmother'.

At the language school, we are taught on a 'good cop, bad cop' basis. On the one hand, we have loooong grammar lessons in which we sit in silence and read out sentences in turn from a brick of a volume bearing the incongruous title 'Przygoda z gramatyką'. I often pack it in my handbag if I'm planning to walk home late at night through the Planty. Our good cop is a young phd student who teaches with worksheets, videos, role-play and plenty of pictures for the hard of thinking. As it happens, we often find ourselves writing imaginary advertisements, posters and general marketing blurb, and today was a typical example: we were instructed to write a short piece of publicity for an imaginary gadget, allocated in secret on a slip of paper. It was the end of a long session which had started at eight thirty in the morning, and no-one was really concentrating.

One of the quieter girls in our class started to read out her composition, in polite, measured tones:
'Do you like to swim? Do you love music? Why not try our new underwater headphones? For just 150 zloty you can continue to enjoy your favourite songs wherever you might be: in the pool, on the beach.... your holidays will be (to use the dict.pl translation) bitching!

Peals of laughter shook the room and our classmate looked extremely embarrassed, but when it came to choosing our favourite product at the end of the class, she won hands down.

Which just goes to show I suppose that the best marketing is memorable marketing.

Maybe I should change my CV: 'pinolona, bloody fantastic translator'...




How to curse elegantly in French, as demonstrated in Matrix Reloaded