Just a formality

One of the hardest things in any foreign language is learning to use the formal register.

swumph!

That was the sound of thousands (read 'one or two') of readers simultaneously clicking their browser windows shut.

French is ok: anything French is normally work and therefore 'vous'. Unless you're elderly, or married to a diplomat, anyone you meet socially is 'tu' (although traditionally apparently it's a bit naughty to ask guys if you can se tutoyer: so that's one to remember when you're out hunting for a sugar daddy on Bvd St Germain). Having said that, it's now a bit trendy to call your colleagues 'tu', especially in a translation company where everyone is under thirty and wears jeans to work. It leaves you a bit confused with older colleagues and the boss's PA... will they be offended because you've made them feel old??

Polish: well, everything about Polish is hard. You can forgive a stupid foreigner a couple of mistakes here and there.

No, the really complicated one is Italian. If you learnt Italian at university, you probably studied abroad on the Erasmus scheme, and you probably hung out with lots of long-haired groovy sociology students who called everyone 'tu'. If you went to a British or American university back home, your professors were probably relaxed enough to slip into the informal at the earliest possible moment (not wanting to distract from important things, like Italo Calvino and Marco Tullio Giordana, with complicated things like personal pronouns).
In the formal, pronouns work in a similar way to Polish: the formal personal pronoun is the same as the third person singular, except with only one gender: everyone is a feminine 'Lei'. Having said that, there's also a very archaic form: 'essi', which I am not too sure about.
Basically you are calling the person 'Her' all the time (hmm - like a Scottish laird: 'is Himself at home?), and conjugating as appropriate (la, le, with or without capital letters).

Now, when you're applying to work for an Italian firm, you send them an email in polite Italian, they email you a test translation in polite Italian, you complete it, they give you a score and ask about your rates, etc, all in nice polite (hellishly complicated) formal Italian. Cordiali saluti all round.

When a slightly harassed project manager sends you your first job request, it's still all 'La prego di consegnare ...' and 'Le mando i files ...' ecc.
And you continue - watching your step, because the more correspondance is exchanged, the more chances you have to slip up - with the polite forms of address.

I can't even begin to list the possibilities for disaster here. Imagine you are a professional linguist with an image to maintain. Imagine that - unlike me, ahem - you have up until now managed a steady flow of dialogue without any typos, or mistaken endings, or bent genders.
Now you are getting to know your project manager better, you want to build up an easy working rapport with them, but at the same time maintain a professional distance. Do you stay formal and risk sounding archaic (imagining mirthful project managers reading out bits of stilted Italian from their English correspondants to peals of laughter)? Or do you slip into 'tu' form and hope they don't notice?
I was doing my best to keep a formal tone, when suddenly, the project manager starts calling me 'tu' (rather offhandedly - 'when you translate, make sure you check this and this, and then spellcheck, and check for uniformity' and so on). Relieved, I started using the informal too, along with all the accompanying dry rot of modern email correspondance (lower cases, lack of accents, etc).

Suddenly: wham! We're back in the formal, effectively Szanowna Pani - ing each other all over again.

Panic!
Have I offended her? Should I have stayed virtuously formal while she slipped into the second person? Have I won or lost respect through some complex pronomial game of which I was not aware? Did I use some anachronism of antique Italian and is she mocking me??

Find these answers to these and more in the next exciting episode of Pinolona's translation life...*



*Welding glossary not included.

On Mohair

This is the hat given to me by one of my visitors this week:

because I was wearing her spare one after leaving my own at the tandem place last Monday (distracted by intensive Italian cultural research).

Car Guy managed to hold out for approximately 48 hours before letting slip that it made me look like one of the Law and Justice-voting babcia army - the moherowe barety (mohair berets).
- It's not too bad, at least it's not a beret...
he said, totally failing to mitigate the situation.

Now I am in a quandary. Do I continue to wear the hat, cos it's winter and freezing- or do I need to search for more politically-neutral headgear?

Should I start a PETA-inspired campaign: 'I'd rather go naked than wear mohair'??

Please say no- snow was still falling thick and fast last time I glanced out of the office window.

(This of course makes it even harder to find the car).

Perhaps I should simply embrace my new-found mohair-ism, file my umbrella to a sharp point and jump in with the granny gang. No more being asked for ID in the off-licence, no more standing on the tram! I could quit my job and ask the Bad Obwarżanki Lady for an apprenticeship! Fluffy hairy freedom could be just around the corner...

Does the hat stay or go? I'm putting it to a reader vote, and I'd love to hear what both of you think...


New from Conjugation Corner:
I've finally realised that I've been ordering my drinks "with ice" but "without ice-cream" since I've been here. One more syllable and I'd have been ordering them without the refrigerator. Ah the beauty of an inflected case system.



And the fashion section:
Although the time has finally come to relegate the Birkenstocks to their rightful environment (indoors), staying upright continues to be a problem, for quite different reasons.
On the plus side, sliding about on packed snow is a fantastic core-conditioning workout. Joseph Pilates, bite me...

POLISH word of the day

Partly as an antidote to those Awful (and singularly unimaginative) Spanish/German/French 'Word of the Day' applications that have sprouted on my friends' Facebook profiles recently, and partly just cos it's funny, here is my Polish Word of the Day:

'joggingować'

As uttered by one of my new flatmates when she almost fell over me pulling my trainers on in the hall:

'Idziesz joggingować?'

Conjugated jogginguję/joggingujesz/jogginguje/joggingujemy etc.

Polish phonetic spelling: dżogingować.
N.B. Foreign borrowings are almost always subject to Polish orthography e.g. 'dżem' and 'sejf' (work it out at home). Apart from anything else, this provides an excellent way of cheating at Scrabble.

Synonyms.. uh... 'Biegać wolno' (possibly?)

Context: 'Codziennie o wpół do siodmej, jogginuję nad Wisłą' (since my command of prepositions is still pretty sketchy, I do hope this means 'I jog along the Vistula' and not 'I jog in the Vistula'). Especially at 6.30 in the morning: I just don't have the constitution for that sort of thing.

As always, synonyms, variations and corrections (not to mention tea and biscuits and moral support in general) are very, very welcome.

Tips for language acquisition part II

I said ten, didn't I? Which means I have to think of another five.

6/Osmosis. Go to a public swimming pool. Share water with Polish people and absorb vocabulary through your skin, like a plant.
If swimming pool is (frustratingly) booked up by school parties until July for heaven's sake, sharing a bathtub with a Polish person may suffice. Please ensure compliance with local customs before jumping in with your loofah: do ask politely, unless you are in a very permissive household indeed.

7/ Technology. Get Polish friends and acquaintances to sign up to Facebook. Spy on them and check out what they write on each other's walls. Insist they write to you in Polish and then complain when you don't understand.
Write text messages in Polish because text follows a grammatical structure all its own. I take no responsibility for your ending up at the wrong end of town at the wrong time on the wrong night.
N.B.: you may be advised to change the language setting on your phone for extra vocab on a daily basis. This is a Singularly Bad Idea, and will double your likelihood of inappropriate telecommunications activity quicker than you can say 'three cosmopolitans and a messy break-up'.

8/ Children's radio or indeed literature. Listening to kids' radio is not a bad idea: since it's radio they have to speak in whole sentences; although if you develop a secret appreciation for Polish children's nursery rhymes you may have some trouble hiding it from the people around you.
Books are something of a problem. Even children here use the accusative case (used for subject-verb-object structures e.g. 'But You Promised Me...'). This should not stop you biting the bullet and buying Yet Another copy of 'Le Petit Prince', indispensable companion to language learners everywhere.

9/Real Estate: Rent a flat. Be so odious that your flatmates feel compelled to emigrate to London. Find yourself obliged to find someone to rent the other room. Very quickly learn words for bills, utilities, not included, floor space, no loud sex on a Tuesday and so on.

And Finally:
(Don't worry, there'll be more... )

10/ Travel. Go to another Slavic country. Understand Nothing. Suddenly realise how very very comprehensible Polish really is. Find that you are completely fluent and insist on speaking it to Everyone, even though it is clearly a completely separate idiom. Every time you pass a cafe or street sign, point and say: "ooh that's so similar to the Polish..." - even if it isn't, just so you don't feel quite so stupid. Notice with regret that your new-found skills evaporate as soon as the train crosses back over the border.

Happy learning!