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Babcia’s Coming

Friday 6 November 2009

In a little over a month, Babcia will arrive for a several-week visit. It will be the first time in a year and a half that we’ve seen her; L has gone from being virtually an infant to being something more than a toddler.

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L is excited about the arrival. She mentions it every now and then, and every time an airplane flies over our house, L points and asks, “Is that Babcia?”

It will be a time of linguistic development for L. She understands Polish perfectly, and she even mixes a few Polish words into her English vocabulary. She doesn’t speak more than these occasionally mixed up words. When Babcia arrives, though, it will be time to start speaking Polish.

Only recently it occurred to me that this might be almost as difficult as learning to speak English. Her initial instinct will be to speak English, and knowing L’s stubbornness, she is likely initially to refuse even to try. Babcia has a secret weapon, though: fluent Russian. She might turn the tables on L.

Russian Spam

Monday 28 September 2009

In our spam list was the following comment:

Ты как обычно радуешь нас своими лучшими фразами спасибо, беру!

Given the source, it seems to be a spam. But “беру” also seems to be an off-kilter version of my name, so I struggled with it a while.

Then I called K over, and we puzzled together.

Our Russian is rudimentary at best, but we pieced together a bit. Apparently, the spammer/commenter wanted to say that “You so…” (Ты как) something or other about “enjoying” or “being happy” about one’s own фразами.  And it ends with the the first word most folks learn in Russian: “спасибо.” “Thanks.”

Of course, these days, one doesn’t have to trouble oneself over an unknown tongue — there are plenty of translation sites out there. Google translates it, “You’re normally so happy about us with the best phrases thank you, take.” Little help there. Still, it sounds quite spamolicious.

In response, I say “спасибо.” I think.

Update

Russian spam looks just like English spam: Спасибо автору блога за предоставленную информацию. “Thanks to the blog author for the information provided.”

Hit or Miss Language

Wednesday 25 February 2009

At school, everyone is “Miss.” Miss Karen. Miss Cathy. Miss Deborah. Miss Brenda.

Miss Cathy — L’s favorite — works in Toddler I. L no longer sees her on a daily basis, but her eyes light up when she sees Miss Cathy coming.

Miss Karen, Miss Deborah, and Miss Brenda work in Toddler II, where L spends her days now.

I wondered whether L thinks “Miss” is just part of their name, but it’s become obvious that L has separated the “Miss” from the name. She understands it as a prefix, but she still doesn’t understand its significance. It’s a term she uses with individuals she really likes.

Hence, I am often “Miss Tata” now. K is “Miss Mama.” Our cat, “Miss Bida.”

Our Zoo

Monday 5 January 2009

I was always a pack-rat growing up. I think it’s genetic, or maybe not. I do know Nana saved a lot of my toys through the year, and the Girl has finally started playing with some of them. My old animal collection.

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1/60, f/5, 55 mm, flash off ceiling

She’s excited about being able to recognize animals — sometimes in Polish, sometimes in English — and she enjoys telling us what various animals say.

This is also a “sometimes in Polish, sometimes in English” thing, for Polish dogs say “how how” (spelled phonetically in English) whereas American dogs say “woof-woof.” Pigs here say “oink oink” whereas their Polish counterparts say “kwee kwee” (again, spelled phonetically in English). When we ask her, “Co mowi swinka?” she replies “kwee kwee!”; to “What does a pig say?” she’ll respond “oink oink.” That differentiation is a recent development, and it’s only one of many little linguistic markers she’s passing. She’s connected “kupic” (“buy”) and stores, so every time we pass a store, she says, in her wonderful mixed-up fashion, “Tata, mamma, kupi clementine.” Now she’s branching out: “Mama, kupi malinki i grapes.”

In short, she’s really coming to the understanding that she’s learning two languages. The other day, she said to K, “Mamma, bug!” K, not making out what she said, asked, “Co?” (“What”). “Pajak,” she replied, specifying not only animal but genus: spider.

Stories from L

Sunday 7 December 2008

Part of learning to talk is learning to tell stories, to string together a group of sentences in a coherent, meaningful way. Yet we’re learning that there are many different levels of coherence and meaningfulness.

Take, for example, this story L told me yesterday: “i whee i boom i cry!” (She’s saying Polish “i” — and, pronounced “ee” — and not the English first person singular personal pronoun.) Facial expressions and hand gestures accompanied this lovely story, which I would translate thus: “I was sliding down the slide! I was having a great time when I fell down. It hurt, and I cried.”

When K came home a few days ago, L told her the following story: “i Bida i no no i time out!” Translation: “I was playing and decided to pick up Bida[, our cat,] which is a no-no. Dad sent me to time out.”

Stories with three episodes. We are in the midst of what Stephen Pinker joking referred to as the “All-hell-breaks-loose” stage of language learning.

Cat Soup and Duff Nuts

Tuesday 9 September 2008

The funny thing about English — funny in an infuriating way, for non-native speakers — is its spelling irregularities.

A friend in Poland once offered me “duff nuts.” Logical enough: -ough is often pronounced “uff,” as in “enough.”

K asked me the other day if I knew what cat soup was. I suddenly became very protective of our own cat, wondering what kind of Third-World recipe she had in mind. Turned out, we have cat soup in our fridge; it’s just spelled a little differently.

Words

Saturday 24 May 2008

L has begun talking. Single words, mixing Polish and English, but words all the time.

“More” is “ma,” often with the accompanying baby sign.

“Shoes” is “shas.” We discovered only yesterday that she’d learned that word when she was walking about with one of her shoes in her hand, trying to get one of us to put it back on.

“Ba” or “baba” can be a number of things. First it was banana. Then it became her name for our cat. It’s become so ubiquitous that, when in doubt, we refer to something as “ba.”

Of course, “dac” has been around for some time now.

Most of the words she speaks are English, but she understands both English and Polish. The dominance of English is an obvious function of living in the States, but I could help the matter by speaking more Polish at home.

Development

Sunday 27 January 2008

All of L’s linguistic development is in Polish currently. But that’s an entirely different post…

L is understanding more and more spoken language every day. She brings things to us; she takes things from one person to another; she puts things back; she gives hugs — all when asked.

She also recognizes people in pictures.

“Pokaz Papa,” I say.

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“Pokaz Nana,” I ask.

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Dziadek, Mama, Tata, L, Babcia, Papa, Nana — each and everyone she recognizes. (Babcia is in a different picture, though.)

Ty Pan Du Sie Tu Vous

Tuesday 12 June 2007

When learning Polish, for some reason I had the hardest time initially using the formal voice of address. English-only speakers might not know what I’m talking about, even though the formal/intimate distinction existed in English for hundreds of years.

In French, it’s a question of “Vous” and “tu.” “Vous” would be “you all” — second person plural — and is used in all formal occasions; “tu” is informal, and used with intimate friends or family. In German, it’s “sie” and “du”.

This is why Martin Burber’s wonderful book Ich und Du is translated I and Thou and not I and You.

In English, it used to be “you” and “thou,” with “thou” being the more intimate. Because most of us are exposed to “thou” exclusively through liturgical language, we get the sense that it’s incredibly formal. In fact, it’s the opposite.

Po Polsku

In Polish, there are two options. The first is the common use of “Pan” or “Pani” — literally, “lord/master” or “lady/mistress.”

The older, now-obsolete form is to use “Wy” — “you all.” It’s still used in the mountainous southern region, and K in fact speaks to her grandmothers this way. “Co robicie ostatnio?” “What have you been doing lately?”

Out of this came an amusing verb: dwoic. While this is related to the word “dwa” (two), it’s not, strictly speaking, “double” (which is “podwoic”). Instead, a better explanation would be “to use the second person plural.” In that case, one might ask another, “why are you [dwoic] me?” meaning, “Why are you using the formal voice with me?”

The second method, and the one used now, is to use “Pan” and “Pani.” To be polite, a shop attendant, for example, doesn’t ask, “Do you need help?” Literally, he asks, “Does the lady need help?”

The problem for me was not so much remembering the odd construction but learning when to make the switch from “Pan” or “Pani” to “you.” I called people “you” when I should have used “Pan/Pani” more times than I care to recall. And there really are no guidelines — it depends, somewhat, on the person.

Linguistics of Diplomacy

I got to thinking about all of this due to an article by Charles Bremner. It begins,

Here is one of those stories that are difficult to convey to people who speak only English. President Sarkozy’s government has annoyed the “progressive” sections of the teaching establishment with an order that school pupils must address their teachers with the formal vous rather than the familiar second person singular tu. Teachers are advised to use the respectful vous to Lyc�e teenagers in their classes.

While I could never imagine students in Poland referring to teachers in the second person, I could also never imagine teachers using the formal third person with teachers.

The piece goes on to discuss how world leaders refer to each other — tu/du or vous/sie?

Angela Merkel dropped German formality enough to call him “Lieber (Dear) Nicolas” but stuck to the formal “sie” not the familiar “du”. Sarkozy’s matey reply jarred on old-fashioned ears. “Ch�re Angela… J’ai confiance en toi.” (In older English I trust thee not you). Lib�ration joked that Franco-German harmony was still lacking. “They are going to have to start by agreeing whether they use tu or vous,” it said. (Charles Bremner piece)

While the article doesn’t mention George Bush, it seems safe to assume that, like Gordon Brown, his dependence on interpretors will solve the tu/Vous problem. But considering the little back rub he once gave Merkel, it’s fairly reasonable to assume that Bush would opt for “tu” over “Vous.”

Entropy

Saturday 19 May 2007

The first time I was in Polska, I started making a little ‘zine that I’d mail out to friends and family. I called it “Entropy.”

I remember that yesterday evening and wondered who had “entropy.com.” I knew it wouldn’t be available, and I typed “entropy.com” in the address bar.It re-directed me to “entropy.ie”.

“Entropy — Secure Networking.”

I’m not sure how much faith I’d put into a networking security company that’s taken its name from a principle of decay.

What would its logo be? A frayed networking cable?

Anticipating user confusion, the company included this explanation:

Conall Lavery founder of Entropy decided upon the name after reading a book called “The Crying of Lot 49” by the American author Thomas Pynchon.

In the book the professor uses the two theories of Entropy (thermodynamics and communications) and invents a perpetual motion machine that is driven by telepathy.

There are various definitions of Entropy.

According to the Collins dictionary, Entropy means “a thermodynamic quantity that changes in a reversible process by an amount equal to the heat absorbed or emitted divided by the thermodynamic temperature.”

In my view, that doesn’t help clarify things that much.

Language Soup

Monday 26 February 2007

We have several Polish friends in the area, and a surprising number are in mixed marriages: a Pole and a Bulgarian; a Pole and a Czech; a Pole and an American. We went to a house-warming party at the Pole/Czech couple’s house, and as always happens at such parties, I got to thinking about the effects of the English language’s relative isolation. Last night, the Czechs spoke Czech, the Poles spoke Polish, and everyone was mutually intelligible. And a Slovak couple been there, they could have spoken Slovakian as well and we’d all get along fine.

I try to imagine what it would be like to experience something similar: to hear someone speaking Dutch, for example, and understand enough of it to be communicative. Poles understand Slovaks; Urdu speakers understand a sizable portion of Hindi; someone fluent in Spanish would make a bit of sense out of Portuguese — but there’s no equivalent in English, that I know of. Sure, German has “gut,” and there are a lot of English/French cognates thanks to 1066, but nothing approaching the level of intelligibility speakers of Slavic languages experience.

For me, it can be a bit of a nightmare. I understand a lot of Czech, but it’s a stretch to get a real sense of what’s being said.

Of course the real winners in such a situation are the children. Growing up speaking three languages — what a gift to give your child. But I know of situation slightly more linguistically advantageous: a former Polish student of mine married a Spaniard. They live in Vienna and speak English to each other. Now if they could only get a, say, Chinese babysitter…

Cicho

Tuesday 16 January 2007

“Cicho” would be spelled phonetically in English “chee-ho,” with the “o” being very short.

“Ciiiiiiiiii-cho, cicho, cicho, cicho. Ciiiiiiiiii-cho, cicho, cicho, cicho.” K leans over L — who is simultaneously howling, crying, screeching, and moaning — and whispers the most onomatopoeic word in Polish.

“Quiiiiiiiiiiiiiiet, quiet, quiet quiet.”

Calm

It’s a word conducive to whispering, made up entirely of long, soft, quiet sounds. It has all the sounds of the womb, all the peace of a whisper, and all a rhythm that softly strokes the ear. Hearing “cicho” whispered makes one’s eyes want to close.

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It’s probably the most pleasant sounding word in a language made up of harshness. W Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie (Translation). These are the sounds of Polish: a phlegmatic language best spoken with spit flying everywhere.

What’s so remarkable about the word is that, when a mother whispers it, “cicho” contains the universal sound made for comforting a baby — it contains an inherent “shush.”

It is a candle being extinguished by damp fingers; the sound of walking through dry, light snow; the sound wind and leaves and trees.

If L chooses not to speak Polish to her own children many years in the future, I hope she chooses at the very least to calm them with a whispered “cicho.”

To Spark a Controversy

Friday 5 January 2007

Alright, I goofed. I mistranslated “iskra” as “ember” because, translating on the fly, I guessed from context and asked K whether it was “something from a fire…” Guess that covers ember and spark.

Nina corrected me, and I’ve been thinking about it since.

Not to be stubborn, I still prefer “ember.” Why?

“Spark” in my mind conjures images of particles floating, not sitting in a fire, as the “storyteller” in the lullaby is implied to be doing. It “winks” (mrugac); it doesn’t float; it doesn’t fly; it doesn’t soar. “Winking” is the perfect description of the what the small embers, buried under ash at the edge of the ash pit, do.

The only thing that “spark” has going for it (other than literalness) is the fact that in the verse it shines “for a moment” and then disappears. Embers tend to last longer than that.

Not content with all this, I went to a dictionary — an English-English dictionary, for there’s no question that “iskra” is literally “spark.” My only question was whether or not I was properly understanding “spark” in English, that all my connotations had been justifiable.

1. An incandescent particle, especially: a. One thrown off from a burning substance. b. One resulting from friction. c. One remaining in an otherwise extinguished fire; an ember. 2. A glistening particle, as of metal. 3a. A flash of light, especially a flash produced by electric discharge. b. A short pulse or flow of electric current.

And there it is: “an ember.”

The whole thing simply underlines what I was initially saying about translation: it can be very if-y. The original title of a biography of Singer I’ve been reading, literally translated, is Landscapes of the Memory. Madeline Levine, the translator, gave the title Lost Landscapes. Strictly speaking, this is incorrect — the word “lost” appears nowhere in the original Polish title — but I think it works better than the literal rendering.

Additionally, I’ve read English/Polish side-by-side editions of Czeslaw Milosz’s work and Wislawa Szymborska’s poems — often, so radically different from a literal rendering as to be shocking. But in each case, a literal rendering doesn’t capture nearly as much as the published translation.

I’ve never taken a course in translation, or read a book about it, so I can’t really say whether or not anyone would defend using “ember” instead of “spark” in the above example. But, bottom line, it works, underlining the slippery nature of language.

Psie smutki

Sunday 31 December 2006

I dislike my translation very much. There’s no child’s voice in it, no simplicity. But it gives you the idea of what the poem’s about…

On the bank of a sky-blue river
live many small sorrows.
The first is sad because
he can’t play in the garden.
The second — that water doesn’t want to be dry.
The third — that a fly flew into his ear.
And what’s more, that cats scratch,
That he can’t catch the hen,
That he can’t bite the neighbor’s leg,
and that it never rains sausages,
And the last sorrow is that
People travel by cars, and a pup has to go on foot.
But just give him a little milk,
and bye bye sorrows.

Na brzegu błÄ™kitnej rzeczki
MieszkajÄ… małe smuteczki.
Ten pierwszy jest z tego powodu,
Że nie wolno wchodzić do ogrodu,
Drugi – że woda nie chce być sucha,
Trzeci – że mucha wleciała do ucha,
A jeszcze, że kot musi drapać,
Å»e kura nie daje siÄ™ złapać,
Że nie można gryźć w nogę sąsiada
I że z nieba kiełbasa nie spada,
A ostatni smuteczek jest o to,
Å»e człowiek jedzie, a piesek musi biec piechotÄ….
Lecz wystarczy pieskowi dać mleczko
I już nie ma smuteczków nad rzeczkÄ….

Thoughts on Translation

Saturday 30 December 2006

Writing the translation for “Bajka iskierki” was a fairly easy task, but there were a few words that gave me pause.

To begin with, there’s the title: Bajka iskierki. A literal rendering would be “Fairy Tale of the Ember.” But that implies that it’s a fairy tale about some little ember.

Yet it’s not that straightforward, for equally possible is “Fairy Tale of an Ember.”

Ah, those article-less languages give us a fit sometimes when we’re translating them to German or English or Spanish or Greek—any language with “a/an” and “the.”

Is this a “bajka” that the ember told—the only cognitive, communicative ember in the whole ash pit (we’ll return to that later)? Or is it a “bajka” that one of many embers could have told?

“The” gives it more import than “an,” and so I went with the latter.

Next: the question of “bajka.” When to use “fairy tale”�? When to use “story”�? When to use “bedtime story”�? Indeed, when to use “cartoon,”� as in “OglÄ…damy bajkÄ™?” “Little Red Riding Hood” and “Tom and Jerry” would both be called “bajka” in Polish. So all these would be acceptable translations in given circumstances, though the most strict translation is “fairy tale.” But “fairy tale” doesn’t capture the sense of this being something told when little WojtuÅ› is going to sleep, and so I changed it to “bedtime story.”

What about “zgasić“? In common usage, you “zgasi懔 a fire, or a cigerette. Literally, it’s “to die out” — or “to burn out” — or “to be put out”� or “to be extinguished,” — or, more actively, “to extinguish.” But none of these sound very poetic at all — not that “die” sounds any better.

Finally, there’s “popielnik.” “Ash pit”? There’s got to be a better term, but I can’t find it in any dictionary, and I can’t find it on the internet, and I certainly can’t find it in my own head. So I took the liberty of changing it to “the fire’s ashes,”� even though that’s not really what it says.

To translate poetry, one must be a poet — it’s that simple. The translation of poetry is completely unlike the translation of a legal document. With legal translation, you want as nearly as possible to translate every word exactly as it is. There’s no taking license with a legal document.

With poetry, the idea seems to me to be entirely different: read the poem in the original language; then read it again, and again, and again � until you know it almost by heart. Then take a piece of paper and write the same poem in your target language.

“A New Way Forward”

Friday 15 December 2006

Geoff Nunberg, at Language Log, describes Bush’s new slogan “A new way forward” thusly: “it sounds like a tagline an ad agency would come up with for a railroad trying to emerge from Chapter 11.”

Short, and worth a read.

Veils and Teaching

Monday 23 October 2006

The case of Aishah Azmi, the teaching aid in Britain fired for refusing to remove her veil, got me to thinking about what it would be like to try to perform the basic functions of her job while veiled.

What was her job, exactly?

Headfield Church of England Junior School, where Azmi taught 11-year-olds learning English as a second language, suspended her in November 2005 after she refused to remove her veil at work. School officials said students found it hard to understand her during lessons and that face-to-face communication was essential for her job. Officials said the decision to suspend her was made only after school officials spent time assessing the impact of wearing the veil on teaching and learning. British Panel Reprimands School in Veil Dispute

I have a little bit of experience in teaching English, and I can’t imagine trying to do it without making my mouth visible. I spent much time sitting with students individually and showing them what my mouth was doing to make certain sounds, particularly “th”. It would be extremely difficult to do so with my mouth hidden.

Additionally, I know what it’s like from the learner’s point of view as well. My experience living abroad showed me how critical to comprehension it is to see someone’s mouth. When I was first learning Polish, a conversation that would have been simple enough in person was a nightmare over the telephone. If those who were trying to help me learn Polish had done so with their mouths completely hidden, I think I would have learned far less, far less quickly.

Veiling is not the same issue as observant Jews leaving work early on Fridays to get home before shabbat begins. Leaving early does not affect the quality of an individual’s work while at work; wearing a veil, in this case, seems to do just that.

The question is whether or not personal religious convictions trump job requirements. When they come into conflict, what gives?