matching tracksuits

Looking

Saturday 19 June 2004

Looking for a verse for our wedding.

Libation

Friday 18 June 2004

There are several drinks one associates with Poland. Surprisingly, tea is one of them. I say "suprisingly" because tea is too English to fit into Polish society, but fit it does.

But who wants to read about tea?

Coffee is another story altogether. In Poland they drink their coffee Turkish style. They simply put coffee grounds in a cup and add water. No filter, so there's a sludge (not to be confused with sledz) in the bottom of the cup. My friend's uncle does strange things with his coffee grounds: He eats them. He puts eight or nine teaspoons of sugar in his coffee (or rather, he pours a little water of his sugar and coffee ground mixture), then eats the stuff at the bottom of the glass.

"Glass? Don't you mean, 'cup?'" you might be asking yourselves. No, I mean glass. Most often coffee is served in a glass, much like we would drink soda from in the States. In other words, there's no handle. I think it is actually rather dangerous, because it's very easy to burn my tender hands holding a glassful of hot coffee. But most Poles just grab the glass, and don't wince at all.

Vodka

I'm not sure I'd ever drunk vodka straight before I came to Poland. Since coming to Poland, I've drunk a fair amount of it (comparatively speaking), but I still don't like it.

Vodka accounts for many of the little surprises I've noticed around here — missing fingers, for instance. Many men in Lipnica have part or all of one or more fingers missing. I knew fairly early on that this would be a result of carelessness in one of the many sawmills in the village, but I thought, "Come on, simple carelessness doesn't account for it." Then I saw a man covered with wood chips and sawdust come into a shop and buy a half-liter of vodka.

As far as straight drinking goes, though, Poles, while they out-drink Americans to a lip-numbing degree, are teetotalers in comparison to Russians. I once saw a documentery in Poland, called Z?ota Ryba ("The Golden Fish"), about vodka in Russia. It showed a home distillary that produced 140 proof (i.e., 70% alcohol) vodka that even Grandma was tossing back by the full glass (Not a shot glass, mind you, but the size Poles use for coffee and tea.), without a chaser.

Poles make their own vodka too — to a degree. It's a tradition to use pure spirits to make wedding vodka. (Kinga's father and I made it for ours.)

Still, buying spirits and dilluting them is one thing; making your own spirits is quite another.

The Linguistics of Vodka

Vodka in Polish is "wódka." A perfectly normal word, but its derivation is strange.

First, a bit about diminutives. A grammatical "diminutive," for those who don't know what it is and don't want to look it up, is used to denote the smallness of or fondness towards a particular thing.

In English, we don't really have them. We might preface some noun with "little" (as in, that's a nice little dog), or even use "little" in conjunction with "cute" or "sweet."

In Polish, though, you actually change the word, usually adding "ek," "ka," or "ko" to masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns respectively. In the example above, a Pole might say "piesek" as the diminutive form of "pies."

Poles have diminutive forms of first names as well. You seldom call a friend named Piotr by that name, but instead use "Piotrek," or if you're his mother, "Piotru?." It's similar to the change from "Thomas" to "Tommy," I suppose.

Now, back to "wódka." If you notice, it ends in "ka," meaning it is, in fact, the diminutive of some feminine noun. What word could that be? Why, it's none other than "woda," or "water."

Beer

I'll never forget the first time I saw it: standing in a shop at seven in the morning, waiting to buy something for breakfast, I watch a man come in, buy a beer, down it in one long gulp (for lack of a better word), put the bottle on the counter and walk out. Seven in the morning.

It's safe to say that beer is viewed somewhat differently in Poland than in the States. In fact, when someone in Poland says, "I haven't drunk in two days!" I take that to exclude beer. "I haven't drunk vodka in two days," is what he probably means.

Fields

Wednesday 16 June 2004

Matura Results

Sunday 13 June 2004

Matura — that’s something that happened that I haven’t mentioned. This year we failed nine. NINE!!

Then last week, Monday through Wednesday, we had the practice matura. It’s been hell grading it, but I’ve survived so far. I still have about seventeen to finish, and then I have to go back with 2b and 2c and grade the short writing, but that’s relatively quick and painless. But I have basically stopped writing in the margins — it just takes too much damn time.

I prepared a sample matura answer for them:

Dear Bob,

I hope you are doing well. I apologize for not writing, but I’ve been very busy at school and I haven’t had any free time. All I do is study, study, study.

“What am I studying?” you ask. English. You see, in Poland we have to take exams to graduate from high school, and one of them has to be in a foreign language. I chose English because I hate German. Who can speak a language with words three kilometers long? Anyway, one of the reasons I’m writing you (you see — it’s not just because I’m nice) is to ask you to send me some materials in English to help me study. Anything will suffice: magazines, newspapers, old books.

It’s important that I do well on my exam because I want to study English after high school. I’m thinking about being a translator. If I do well on my exams, I’ll have a better chance of getting into a good university. Of course, if I were rich, I could just come live with you in England for a year and then I’d be fluent.

I recently started thinking about what I’m going to do for vacation. I know that nothing can compete with that amazing vacation we had last year: two weeks in Fiji. What a dream! I guess once in a lifetime is enough. Anyway, do you have any plans? Perhaps we should do something? Maybe somewhere in Europe?

I’d better be going now. I hope to hear from you soon.

Regards,
XYZ

P.S. I heard Mark got a new job as a photographer. His dream job — I’m sure he’s still smiling. Send him my regards and tell him I’ll be looking for his photos in the Times!

Unfortunately, it’s too long. Oh well.

I’ve determined, though, that these kids just don’t know how to write, and that that’s my fault. I have to give more writing assignments, even though I don’t want to. And I have to get them to a point where they can begin checking their own work.

Polish

Friday 11 June 2004

Polish is, beyond a doubt, the most difficult language I've ever attempted to learn. In a way, that's not saying much: I "studied" Spanish in high school and French in college; living in Boston, I began learning a little Russian until the novelty wore off; in Poland, I decided to learn some Greek. But Polish puts them all to shame.

Polish is difficult and strange — even Poles will admit that. The pronunciation is tongue-warping and the grammar is unbelievable.

I recall an instance when four teachers — three German teachers and an English teacher — were writing an official letter of thanks and spent a good three to five minutes discussing how a particular word should be declined (i.e., which ending should be used). One of them looked at me and said, "You see, Gary, you're not the only one who has problems with this hopeless language." In fact, I've often seen teachers who are preparing some formal paper or task asking the Polish teachers whether something should be this way or that in a given case.

What follows is a basic outline of why Polish is so difficult.

Declension

In English, word order is an essential grammatical element. We know in the sentence "The dog bit John" that the dog did the biting, and not John, from the position of "The dog" in the sentence.

Polish, however, is an inflected language and that means that word order has no effect on the meaning of the sentence. In Polish, you could just as easily order the words, "John bit the dog" without any change in meaning. For that matter, "Bit John the dog" and "The dog John bit" are possible as well.

So how are they differentiated? By their ending. In Polish (in all highly inflected languages) you indicate a word as a direct object, an indirect object, a subject, or whatever by adding a suffix according to a given pattern.

An example may help. Imagine in English that subjects ended in "-doj" and direct objects ended in "-aldi." Our sentence would then look like this: "The dogdoj bit Johnaldi." In that case, "Bit Johnaldi the dogdoj" would have the same meaning, as would the following:

"Johnaldi bit the dogdoj."
"Johnaldi the dogdoj bit."
"The dogdoj Johnaldi bit."

The genitive case singular ending of "non-alive" nouns, either -u or -a, is decided by the morphology of the noun, not by its meaning.
Polish: An Essential Grammar by Dana Bielec, page 109.

English does indeed have a bit of declension. Some examples:

"-ed" to a verb to make it past tense
"-s" to make a noun plural
"-ing" to make a verb a gerund (i.e., "Swimming is a healthy activity.")
"-er" and "-est" in the comparative and superlative forms
"-'s" to denote possession (i.e., "Samantha's mother left for Switzerland.")

By and large, though, English is not an inflected language. "The dog bit John" and "John bit the dog" are very different sentences as a result.

An inflected language uses cases to differentiate functions and forms. Greek has four cases. German, I believe, has five.

Polish has seven:

Case	Use
Nominative case	The subject of a sentence
Accusative case	The direct object of a positive sentence
Genitive case	To denote possession (i.e., "That's George's bag.") The direct object of a positive sentence for some verbs The direct object of a negative sentence For quantities of five and above (more later)
Locative case	To specify location after certain prepositions
Instrumental case	To denote the method or tool used to do something
Dative case	The indirect object of a sentence
Vocative case	Used in addressing people (i.e., Did you take it, George?)

These changes even occur to names, providing a clear example of the complexities of Polish grammar.

Case	Example
Nominative case	To jest Bill Clinton.	This is Bill Clinton.
Accusative case	Lubi? Billa Clintona.	I like Bill Clinton.
Genitive case	Szukam Billa Clintona.	I'm looking for Bill Clinton.
Locative case	My?l? o Billu Clintonie.	I'm thinking about Bill Clinton.
Instrumental case	Rozmawiam z Billem Clintonem.	I'm talking with Bill Clinton.
Dative case	Da?em Billowi Clintonowi.	I gave Bill Clinton... (s'thing).
Vocative case	Wzi??e?, Billu?	Did you take it, Bill?

Because of declension, the word order doesn't make any difference. For example, if you want to stress that you gave it to Bill as opposed to George, you could say, with the proper vocal inflection to stress it, "Billowi da?em."

-a is a feminine ending, so such nouns[, which are masculine nouns but in fact have feminine endings,] are declined as feminine in the singular but as masculine in the plural.
Polish: An Essential Grammar by Dana Bielec, page 85

But learning Polish grammar is not simply a matter of remembering some endings, for all nouns in Polish have a gender (as in German, French, Spanish, etc.), so you have to learn a hell of a lot of endings.

Three genders
Seven cases
Singular and plural

So when you utter a Polish noun, there are forty-two possible endings, depending on whether it's singular or plural, masculine, feminine or neuter, and whichever case is necessary.

And the exceptions, for some forms are exactly the same except in given cases.

The accusitive plural and the nominative plural of neuter nouns are identical, but feminine and masculine nouns are different.
The female genetive and locative cases are the same for singular nouns but not for plural nouns.

Aside from that nonsense, there are various considerations for exceptions. Is it a masculine alive noun? Does it end in "a"?

The genitive case [. . .] is used [. . .] For the accusitive case in (a) masculine singular/plural nouns denoting men and (b) singular nouns denoting living creatures [and] for the direct object of a negative verb[, as well as] after the number five and upwards.
Polish: An Essential Grammar by Dana Bielec, page 106

Genitive Case

My favorite case (I never thought I'd say that) is the genitive case — it shows just how absolutely, astoundingly, and weirdly arbitrary Polish grammar is.

To being with, the genitive case is used for the direct object in negative sentences (as opposed to the standard accusitive). In other words, if you say, "I don't like cabbage," the form of "cabbage" would be different than in the positive sentence, "I like cabbage."

Lubi?kapust?.	I like cabbage.
Nie lubi?kapusty.	I don't like cabbage.

It is also used for quantities of five and above. That means there are two plural forms. If you say "I ate two dinner rolls," you use one form; if you say "I ate five dinner rolls" you use a different form. In English, it would be like saying, "Martin has four brothers." "No, he has five brotherid." The "dinner roll" example in Polish looks like this:

Zjad?em jedna bu?ke	I ate one dinner roll.
Zjad?em cztery bu?ki.	I ate four dinner rolls.
Zjad?em pi?c bu?ek.	I ate five dinner rolls.

But that's not all. Once you get to twenty, it's only for numbers that contain the actual with the word "five," "six," "seven," etc. that use the genitive case. Returning to the dinner roll example, we see how the plural form switches back and forth:

Quantity	Form
1 - 4	bu?ki
5 - 20	bu?ek
21 - 24	bu?ki
25 - 30	bu?ek
31 - 34	bu?ki
35 - 40	bu?ek

Given all there is to think about, it's no surprise that I once compared my speaking Polish to clear-cutting a forest, or strip mining.

Verbs

All Polish verbs come in pairs: an imperfective and a perfective form. The imperfective form is for actions not completed or for regularly occurring actions; the perfective form is for completed actions and one-time actions.

It's like an attempt to make up for Polish's lack of tenses, for Polish only has present, past, and future tenses. (English has twelve tenses, mind-blowing for beginners in Poland.) For instance, using the imperfective form in the past tense is equivalent to using past continuous in English: I was doing something (i.e., an interrupted, incomplete action).

The forms themselves can get crazy. The future tense of the imperfective form is created with the future form of "be" (i.e., "I will be" in English) with the past form of the imperfective form of the main verb itself. In other words, you literally say, "I will be went" in Polish, which is why that particular, odd construction appears often with Polish learns of English.

The perfective/imperfective pairing is all fine and good, but what it means from a practical point of view is that learners of Polish have to learn twoPolish verbs for every one English verb. Often they're quite similar. "Do" for example is "robi?" in the imperfective form and "zrobi?" in the perfective form. But some of them are completely different:

	Imperfective	Perfective
to find out	dowiadywa? si?	dowiedzie? si?
to leave on foot	wychodzi?	wyj??
to take	bra?	wzi??
to watch	ogl?da?	obejrze?
(How the hell do I pronounce all that?)

Polish verbs, like verbs in French, German, Spanish, Italian, etc., change their form according to the person. English does too, but only in present simple: "I go" but "He goes." In Polish, they all change. For present tense there are twenty different verb ending patterns, though they are, by and large, similar. For example, almost all first person singular ("I") verbs in Polish end in "-?" or "-am." Almost all third person plural forms ("they") end in "-?" with some of the adding a "j" before it (i.e., "-j?").

The past tense is another story altogether, for its forms are gender sensitive. For example, the first person singular form for a man takes the ending "-?em" and the first person singular form for a woman takes the ending "-?am." The stem for this comes from the third person singular present tense form. It would be like taking "goes" in English and adding "-ed" for a man and "-eda" for a woman. Sam would say "I goesed" whereas Samantha would say "I goeseda."

Occasionally the stem even changes between masculine and feminine forms. Stem for "go" in the past for a male is "szed" whereas for a woman it is simply "sz."

The full pattern is:

Past Tense Conjugation of "i??" ("go")*
	Singular	Plural
Masculine	Feminine	Masculine	Feminine
First person	szed?em	sz?am	szli?my	sz?y?my
Second person	szed?e?	sz?a?	szedli?cie	sz?y?cie
Third person	szed?	sz?a	szedli	sz?y
	* Literally "i??" is "to go once, by foot."

In the plural forms, the feminine conjugation is used only when there areabsolutely no males in the group. One male, and you have to use the masculine form — a reflection of Polish society's highly patriarichal standard.

Oddites of Polish Vocabulary

The words for "sky" and "blue" are related. Nothing particularly odd about that until you take into account that "heaven" and "sky" are the same words in Polish: niebo. This means that in church, when the priest makes reference to "our heavenly father," he's also saying, "our blue father."
The words for "lock," "zipper," and "castle" are all the same:zamek.
"Wódka" (pronounced "vood-ka" — "vodka," obviously) is related to the word "woda" ("water") and could be translated "water-let" (as in piglet). (Read more)
There are at least six words that can be translated "go." The difference lies in three factors:
- is it a habitual journey or a one-time affair;
- is it by foot or by vehicle;
- is it a completed action or not?
The word for "door" ("dzwi," pronounced "jrvee") exists only in the plural form, like "trousers" or "scissors" in English (which, too, exists only plural in Polish). Other only-plural examples include the Polish words for:
- birthday,
- ice cream,
- holiday,
- back (i.e., part of the body), and
- rake.
The words for "pigeon" and "dove" are the same, resulting in students coming up with an interesting construction: Pigeons of Peace.

The Other Hand

One great thing about Polish is it's phonetic. There are some similar-sounding letters (for example "ó" and "u," or "?" and "si"), but by and large, you don't find the nonsense you find in English, where "g" pronounced like "j" one time, and like "g" another.

Similarities

For a language that likes to cluster a lot of consonants around a single vowel, Polish has a lot of word pairs in which the meaning is quite different (even completely opposite), but the orthographic difference is a single vowel, often simply the addition of "y":

Polish	Pronunciation	Meaning
przesz?o??	pshesz-woshch	past
przysz?o??	pshisz-woshch	future

wej?cie	vay-shche	building entrance
wyj?cie	vi-shchhe	building exit

wjazd	vyazd	vehicular entrance
wyjazd	vy-jazd	vehicular exit

wyk?ad	vi-kwad	lecture
wk?ad	vkwad	refill

The most troublesome is przesz?o?? // przysz?o?? — when explaining grammar in Polish to first year students, one slip of the tongue and suddenly you have some momentarily confused students. "But I thought this was a pasttense, not a future tense!"

Of course if you're driving, wyjazd/wjazd might be disastrously confusing . . .

All quotes are from Polish: An Essential Grammar by Dana Bielec, as well as details about declension. (You don't think I could have written all stuff off the top of my head, do you?! I can't remember all the details, and that's why I speak Polish like an idiot.)

Information about verbs comes from Prawie Wszystko o Czsowinku (Almost Everything About Polish Verbs) by Dorota Drewnowska and Ma?gorzata Kujawske, as do the declension examples with Bill Clinton.

Both are excellent resources.