English

I write a lot about languages here but I generally avoid talking about the big elephant crouching silently on the dining room table: my own native language, English.

And I'm not going to talk about it now: I'm cheating. Strictly Come Dancing finished, I have no plans tonight and I'm still awake, so I decided to flick through the Ted talks (disappointingly, all in English), which is something I've been meaning to do for a while. Running the mouse over inventions, philosophy, neuroscience, finally I came to a section on words.

The result is a short video that describes learning English as a mania.
I concur. My entire living is based on the fact that English is my mother tongue. As a translator, interpreter, proofreader, my added value is the fact that I do this automatically: I have natural style, linguistic grace: when I do it, it just sounds right. At least most of the time. Better still, I am British, and that holds an added premium (although most people's cultural contact with English is of the US variety, I believe the majority of schools - at least in Europe - are still teaching Received Pronunciation phonetics and therefore it carries a certain prestige).

Just think of the flood of capital pouring into the coffers of anglophone states simply from the export of TEFL teachers, interpreters, translators, copywriters and multilingual ex-pat Brits who are hired for good client relations. I read an article on this - it took me ages to find it - but unfortunately it's old enough to require an Economist on-line subscription to actually read the thing.

Personally I'm disappointed when everyone speaks English. However frustrating it is - and believe me I know - to have those moments when you simply can't say what you want to say and when the waitress for heavens' sake gives you that withering look as if you were an illiterate child, I still think it's fun to mix it up, I still like learning, I love the complexities, the similarities, the beautiful broken jigsaw puzzle of it all. I love borrowings, calques, sound shifts - all ghostly traces of long-forgotten human migrations.

I will never speak a foreign language with perfect confidence and fluency: I started learning far too late for that. But I love to try, to play, to dip my toe into the deep well labelled 'foreign'.*
I think that's important, don't you? I think we - anglophones - are becoming too complacent about our silent pachydermatous companion perched on the table top, and we're letting opportunities pass us by (see this article, also from the Economist - sorry).

Where was I? Oh yes. Here's the talk:






*Pinolona's theory of adult language acquisition (and a jolly good excuse for using Polish words in Italian): language is a deep, dark well of words. The human brain recognises two such wells: mother tongue and foreign. The most recent foreign language bobs closest to the surface of the well, and when the right word is lacking, you plunge in and fish out a word from another, deeper down. (Disclaimer: the language professional known by Pinolona's real name never fishes at work and she always knows the Right Word. She just may not pronounce it correctly. Especially if it happens to be French.)

Denial

I speak good the Polish. I learn heem from a book.

The problem is, I don't always understand heem very well.

And this is where we enter the Denial Phase.

The Denial Phase comes when you've spent a year living in a place and making all the effort in the world to learn the language. You learn to like the food, you get hip and hang with the local kids, you drink your tea with raspberry syrup in winter, you laugh at that stupid advert with John Cleese... You can do languages. You are the interpreter (heaven help us).
You come to hate it when people speak to you in English. It makes you feel like a stupid foreigner, who hasn't been working their little cotton socks off all year to get their head round what is actually a mind-bogglingly complicated language. You don't understand everything, but you're damned if you're going to let them know that!

Below are two classic examples of the Denial Phase in the process of linguistic acquisition.

Scenario 1:
On Saturday a friend asked me- if I happened to be passing through town- to book tickets for the evening screening of The Bucket List* at Ars cinema.** I duly queued up and asked the guy for three tickets. Usually the trailers give the film's original title, so I always have to check the Polish title on the listings before I book. I hesitated a fraction of a second too long, and my pronunciation was just a little bit too dodgy, and the guy answered me in English:
- How many?
I snarled at him.
- Dobrze rozumiem po polsku!
He looked at me, taken aback, and continued in Polish (in spite of my mistakes), albeit very cautiously, as one does when there are only a few inches of reinforced plastic to separate one from a raving madwoman.
And he gave me a student discount: another bonus- everyone assumes young foreigners are here to study...

Scenario 2:
I sneak home for lunch on Monday and decide to pick up an obwarzanek from the stand on the corner of Starowiślna and Westerplatte. I order, the lady goes to fish out the required baked item with that metal prong thing, and as she bends down, she asks me a question, to which I give a neutral reply, having not caught what she said. She puts the bare pretzel in that little dish thing on top of the stand, and I go to fish out a plastic bag from the packet next to it.
- Ah, but I already asked you if you wanted a plastic bag.
- I know, but...
- Ah ha, you didn't understand (she looked so smug at this point)
- Actually I understand perfectly well! I said, crossly. 'There was a tram passing at the time and I didn't hear!'
- ah you didn't understand... (she was still tutting away to herself)
- There was A TRAM!

And the obwarzanek was stale. Which was somehow very fitting.


*A very sentimental film. But not as bad as Mała Wielka Miłość. From now on I am only going to see movies where people get stabbed violently. I have high hopes for Nadzieja.

** Pronounced the way you think it is. Sometimes hard to suppress the urge to follow it up with 'Feck! Drrrink! Gurrrls!'.

O polityce

This was going to be a post about a disorder that is becoming increasingly common in Poland, known as 'dis-ortografia', whereby people are unable to tell whether a word ends in -ą or -om, for example. (Note that this couldn't exist in English because we do not have a phonemic orthographic system: where graphemes- letters- correspond to phonemes- groups of sounds which have the same meaning).

In other words it is a cheeky excuse for not knowing how to spell.

Dis-ortografic students get extra time in exams.

Anyway, I've changed my mind. The elections are coming up, and Poles are worrying about where to hide Granny's ID (so she can't vote Law and Justice- the current government), rather than how to conjugate it. Perhaps it's time to get my nose out of the dictionary and into the Gazeta Wyborcza.*
N.B. perhaps Conservative constituency parties in the UK might employ the ID-hiding method for the next leadership elections...

I have realised, after reading Justyna's latest post, that if I am going to try and speak authentic Polish, I'm going to have to learn how to talk about politics. I feel (momentarily) ashamed of my Anglo-Saxon - but mostly Anglo- reticence. Whatever happened to the teenager who stood up in school assembly to argue with the deputy head about uniform rules?**

But where to start?! Maybe I can practice on the Bad Obwarżanki Lady:

B.O.L.: Prosze?
me, conversationally: Dzien dobry Pani, poprosze butelkę wody mineralnej... i... co Pani myśle o korupcji na priwatizacji szpitalów?***

In all honesty, thus far Polish politics have not been a concern quite simply because my sole motivation in coming here was to get some experience in the profession and learn another EU language so that when I'm older I will get paid more and my kids will go to better schools.
But it turns out that I actually quite like Poland: I like the Bad Obwarżanki Lady, I like Car Guy, my flatmates, the Sacristan at St Giles and so on. And Polish grammar, to my warped little linguistic mind, looks like this:
















It's chaos, but it's pretty...

If, like me, you are a total language-nut, try these to be getting on with:
http://www.languagehat.com/
http://romanika.blogspot.com/2004/03/linguist-or-philologist.html
http://david-crystal.blogspot.com/
http://redemptionblues.blogspot.com/2006/07/how-to-be-interpreter.html

Don't worry, I'll find some more...

*It has been observed that this blog contains Too Much Polish. The author resolves to moderate her self-indulgence in this respect. After all, she is not surprised to learn that not everyone finds the locative case as absorbing as she does. In fact, two floors up from her office lives an American TEFL teacher. He has lived in Poland for eight years and quite sensibly avoids the Polish language at all costs. Notably, he observed how irritating it was, on his latest trip home to the States, to Understand Everything. 'Like being able to read people's minds'. What a burden it is to be able to communicate. Thank goodness secondary schools in the UK have very sensibly put an end to this 'compulsory modern languages at GCSE-level' nonsense. After all, around 90% of all Poles under the age of 30 are able to communicate, at least on a basic level, in English. How fortunate, given that the average British adult, having studied either French, German or Spanish for at least two years, can get no further than 'Garçon!; 'Weissbier' or 'Donde esta la playa?'

Well, luckily Poland isn't a major player in Europe. Only 38.6 million inhabitants. And only an estimated 750,000 Poles living in the UK: a mere 1.24% of the population.
Good news for us inarticulate Brits, right?

**uuh... she got expelled... (and then moved to Poland and became a translator- let this be A Lesson To You, O rebellious youth of today).

*** This is supposed to say: 'Good morning. A bottle of water please. By the way- what do you think of corruption in the privatisation of hospitals?' But it probably says something entirely different. No-one said this blog was going to be easy. Take a tough pill.

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!

Tips for language acquisition... (ensure tongue remains firmly in cheek at all times) part I.

There's this brilliant website for student/trainee interpreters which is full of advice for practising etc. By far the best time to consult it is last thing at night, so you can go to bed and dream about all the great things you're going to do tomorrow.

One section on this website is a series of ten tips for learning a new language, written by an EU staff interpreter- using Polish as an example- and they are beautiful, really beautiful, all about crosswords and song lyrics and etymologies (I love etymology, don't get me wrong- don't get me started either, you'll regret it). However, given that I am the sort of irresponsible person who doesn't live in the Real World and forgets to empty their bin on a Friday and hangs out with malorientated motorists, students and sacristans, most of them are utterly beyond me.

[Here's the link: http://interpreters.free.fr/language/dekalog.htm]

So, with all due respect and a great deal of humility, I have compiled my own ten observations on how to eat, sleep and breathe foreign vocab (Don't inhale. It might go to your head). These are strictly aimed at former pre-exam crammers who only limped through their A-levels by burning vocabulary onto their retinas in the half hour before the doors opened and consequently have a short term memory with a strict "one in, one out" on-the-door policy within any twenty-four hour period.

Here are numbers one to five:

1/ Alcohol. Ok, so it's stating the obvious. But anyone who's tried to speak French will know how a ballon de rouge or four can turn you into Proust with beer-goggles (also known to improve singing ability, even in the most hopeless cases). Although in the case of Polish it may simply increase your confidence to the extent that you start adding -owac and -owany to the end of English words and conjugating everything in the genitive just to hedge your bets.*
If all else fails, you can always sit and translate the label on the back of the bottle (for 'translate', read 'bug your Polish friends for translations of...').
Warning: any vocabulary gleaned in this manner will almost certainly be forgotten the next morning.

2/ Biology. Remember those girls who came back from their Erasmus semester with a photo of some sloe-eyed Sicilian in their purses and a fluent command of the Italian idiom? Fraternizing with the natives is a long-established method for acquiring vocabulary without trying too hard, and you may even enjoy yourself. For fairly logical biological reasons, this works much better for girls than for guys. The irony therein is that Polish women, without exception, all look like supermodels**, while the guys look, well, pretty similar to British guys (socks under sandals, terrible haircuts and so on).
Caution should be exercised when using vocabulary acquired in this manner in a professional context.

3/ Crime. Have something stolen. As yet (touch wood) this method remains untested in Poland, but was experienced in a bizarre way involving a rented bike in Italy (bizarre because said bike was returned three days later when the end-of-term party season finished. Northerners are Weird). Following the theft you are compelled to go down to the local nick and attempt to communicate. You then have to pretend not to hear the Entire Station giggling like big girls because your driving licence ID gives your first name as 'Miss'- which, everywhere in Europe except the UK, designates a beauty pageant entrant.
You will never, ever forget the Italian word for a bike lock.

4/ Babcia. Rent a sofa from someone's grandmother in Nowa Huta. This may also be a direct consequence of quarter-life-crisis financial angst. There is No Chance that she'll be speaking any English to you, and you'll have to pick up one or two Polish words otherwise you won't get any dinner. As an interesting side effect, you will learn how to interpret the babcia growl, commonly uttered in queues if you complain that they may have pushed in front of you. Equally common on the tram: if accompanied by brandished umbrella, relinquish your seat Immediately.

5/ Sport. Go jogging in shorts. Very quickly pick up rude things to shout at lorry drivers.
Again, this is generally one for the girls, although you'd be surprised.
And see cautionary note to no. 2.
Interestingly, if you want to steal something on the Bvd de Clichy, this is probably a good way to get away with it.

To be continued...

*At all costs, avoid pidgin German e.g. 'Ich habe weile zutrinken und ich bin auf mein face gesmaschd. Ist hier in die nahe eine taksihaltestelle?'
**Although she will spend the next fifty years metamorphosing into a fierce babcia with a vicious umbrella- see point 4/. Is there any section of the Polish demographic I haven't managed to offend yet?

Nothing but mammals

I read an interesting theory once on why human beings developed language. Perhaps my memory is less than reliable, given that I ingested this piece of wisdom reading an Economist supplement on a slow Monday evening in the pub I worked at during my Masters year. I distinctly remember sitting perched on a bar stool, probably cashing in one of my one-for-yourself?-thanks-I'll-have-a-half-of-Stella tips.

It turns out that language evolved purely as a highly sophisticated way of attracting a mate: the verbal equivalent of a magnificent peacock's tail. In other words, the wider your vocabulary, the greater your pulling power. Anything we actually say is completely meaningless, since all human discourse is designed to build up to a joyful romp in the hay.
From the BBC World Service to the European draft Constitution via the Queen's Speech and the locative case: it all exists simply to enable people to make whoopie.

It dawned on me (fortunately the barstool was not very high) that I had just spent the past six years studying the birds and the bees. It would have been quicker (and much cheaper) just to spend a night at the appropriately-named 'SOS' nightclub in Tonbridge.
Which brings me to the present day. What am I hoping to achieve here? Will my ability to differentiate between perfective and imperfective verbs give me a better chance of producing attractive offspring? Surely it only increases my likelihood of producing Polish offspring? [The author of this blog would like it to be known that she has equipped herself with several phrases for declining quoi que ce soit in Polish, with varying degrees of politeness]

The one positive aspect is that next time I find myself sweating over a test translation, cowering in front of an audience or trying to work out the correct genitive plural declination so I can order a box of biscuits, I will take comfort in the fact that the whole linguistic exercise is simply a complex way of getting jiggy with it.

As an afterthought, if attractiveness is in direct proportion to linguistic proficiency, then the sexiest nation in Europe must be Luxembourg...