Until I noticed the reference to God being “blue.”

Thus I left things hanging.

Many words in Polish have dual meanings. Nothing new there — English is loaded with them, my students like to point out.

“Niebieski” in Polish is derived from the word “niebo,” which is “sky” or “heaven.” Immediately we get into trouble, because the sky is a physical, observable phenomenon, while heaven is, at best, theological conjecture.

With such a start, meanings can only slide into more silliness.

The ontological status of the meaning of “niebo” aside, it gets more confusing when we throw the adjectival form into the mix. As expected, “niebieski” means “heavenly.”

However, “niebieski,” as you first learn it in a Polish course, would be “blue.”

Hence, whenever I’m in Mass and hear that we should now direct our prayers “do niebieskiego ojca,” I can’t help but conjure up images of blue deities even though I know the priest is just telling us to direct our prayers to our “heavenly father.”

There are other slippery words in Polish.

“Pożyczyć” is undoubtedly my favorite. It means, “lend.”

And “borrow.”

[Short pause.]

Exactly.

At first, that seems like saying “xidhb” in some language means “black” and “white.” “Lend” and “borrow” have such intrinsically different, though related, meanings that it’s difficult to comprehend that a language exists that represents both ideas with the same word. But it’s really not that different: lending and borrowing both involve a temporary transaction of a given object, with the implicit understanding of said article’s eventual return.

What English throws into the mix is the ownership information. By using the word “borrow,” I make it clear, without any context, that I am lacking something. By using the word “lend,” though, I make it clear that I am the owner.

Ownership in “pożyczy” is, of course, differentiated; only it’s done grammatically.

• “pożyczyć‡ komuś›” is lend. “Komuś›” is the dative case for “ktoś›,” which means “someone.” And dative case, for those who don’t know, is the case used in inflected languages to indicate the indirect article.
• “pożyczyć od kogoś›” is borrow. “Od kogoś›” means “from someone,” which makes the direction of the transaction (and hence ownership) clear.

Beginning students (and, to my dismay, students with some experience with English) often confuse these two English words, and come up with, “Can you borrow me your pen for a moment?” or “I can borrow you this or that.”

More linguistic ambiguity:

• The words for “lock,” “zipper,” and “castle” are all the same: zamek.
• The words for “pigeon” and “dove” are the same, resulting in students coming up with an interesting construction: Pigeons of Peace.

But linguistic ambiguity is a two-way street, and soon I’ll delve into the wild world of “things that mess with Polish students’ heads.”