I went to meet New Boy off the night train at Warsaw Central. We decided to spend the day in Warsaw and leave his bags at the station.
The przechowalnia was run by a rotund, middle-aged Polish man, who persisted in staring into the middle distance somewhere past my right shoulder so that I couldn't tell whether he was talking to me or to the guy behind me.
Pino: Dzień dobry proszę Pana, czy możemy zostawić bagaż tu?
Man (speaking to somewhere vaguely beyond P's shoulder): Ile sztuk?
Pino: dwa
Man (realising P is not Polish): Ah. Two!
Pino: tak, dwa.
Man: yes! Two!
Pino: (takes out purse) Ile to będzie?
Man: No! Pay after. After!
Pino: ok, dziękuję bardzo
Man: Please! Thank you.
New Boy (casually): Wszystko gra?
Man: (with broad smile of manly recognition): Taaak, wszystko gra!
Pino: Fine. From now on you can do the talking.
Left my beloved Kraków now to set up in Brussels but this is by no means the end of my adventures with Polish. Linguistic confusion and cross-cultural misunderstandings still abound. I'm an interpreter, a translator, a musician, I'm learning to cook again and I miss my dog. I think that's got it covered, more or less.
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7 comments:
I don't speak Polish, but "New Boy" sounds interesting!
dwie (sztuki), right?
or were you just testing the New One
no, I probably said 'dwa'. I'm allowed to make mistakes, it's not my native language. Polish people make mistakes in English all the time :)
I ought to point out that - at least to my knowledge thus far - NB doesn't speak a word of Polish beyond dzien dobry. And apparently 'wszystko gra'.
I'm not even familiar with wszystko gra as an expression... although I get it, been too long out of Polska I suppose. I remember coming back for the summers in the early 90s (aka when I was young) when all the my cousins started saying things like 'spoko' and I was like what?
it is a neat turn of phrase, I like it, works best as a question, AND, it is not derived from English!
If that's the only phrase in Polish Newboy knows, he sure has a great future in the country; look at how he got lucky at the przechowalnia already.
This "New Boy" sounds like a real card.
Fisz I quite like 'spoko'
Ryszard: I know, he picked it up very quickly - bit depressing really. To me, 'wszystko gra' feels a bit French: it makes me think of 'ça roule', but I'm not really sure why.
Anon: yes...
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