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Lingusitic Netherworld

Tuesday 14 December 2004

My wife and I, for the first several years of our friendship, spoke nothing but English.

When I met her, I barely spoke Polish; as we became friends and spent more time together, though my Polish was improving, her English was still much better, so it just made sense to speak English.

When we decided to try dating, after being friends for six years or so, I told her, “Okay, one thing that has to happen is a linguistic change. We can’t go speaking English all the time.” And so one early date, we spoke nothing but Polish.

It was awkward. The language felt heavy in my mouth as I occasionally stumbled to express something that I knew I could say in English and she would easily understand. And hearing her speak Polish to me – it was surprisingly odd.

Since then, we’ve reached an equilibrium. We speak a lot of English because we’re eventually going to be living in the States for some time, and she wants all the practice she can get. “You get so speak Polish all the time. I never get to speak English,” she reasoned. Fine by me, I thought – speaking my native language is still easier than speaking Polish, a sign that though my Polish is getting pretty good, fluency is a non-issue, and admittedly, an impossibility due to my inherent laziness.

When we’re with friends, we speak Polish of course. Guests leave and we sometimes continue speaking Polish, sometimes slip in to English, and most often, mix the two.

When she’s tired and I’m tired and neither of us wants to think about what how to say what we want to say, she speaks Polish and I speak English, leading to some undoubtedly strange sounding conversations. Most telephone conversations are mixed like this, though no one else knows it. (Or didn’t, until now.)

I’ve recently noticed that when she speaks Polish, she sounds like a different person in some ways. My wife speaks very good English, but she’s generally spoken it very deliberately. That’s why she makes so few grammar mistakes – she’s thinking carefully as she speaks. But when she speaks Polish, all those linguistic concerns disappear and she just talks.

Even her voice sounds a little different when she’s speaking Polish. It’s somehow a little deeper. It resonates a little more. The sounds in Polish (“szcz,” “prz,” “rz,” etc.) generally sound harder (not more difficult, more solid), so when she’s speaking Polish, she sounds older and less naive.

Re: the “less naive” comment: My wife and I are both idealists, though I’m a pessimistic idealist — I hope things will work out for the best, but I usually doubt they will. So in that sense, we’re both a bit naive.

I can only imagine what I sound like speaking Polish to her. Because Polish grammar is so difficult (it’s a heavily inflected language), I still make tons of mistakes. But my Polish is now at a level that I usually know I’ve made a mistake, but I just don’t want to go back and correct it, or, more often, I don’t know exactly how to correct it.

The result must be somewhat horrific.

Because my wife speaks English so well, I sometimes feel a bit stupid speaking Polish with her. She uses grammatical constructions that, as a teacher, I know are difficult for Poles to master, and she does it without thought. I, on the other hand, must sounding little like this. Well, no — that’s a bad example. My problem is mainly with the endings, so “better example this would be.”

One of the advantages of this linguistic soup will obviously be bilingual children – as long as they don’t take their Polish cues from me, that is.

Polishing my Polish

Saturday 11 December 2004

When I first met my wife, I spoke very little Polish. I could buy my groceries, order a beer, get a ticket to Warsaw, and that was about the extent of my Polish communication. When she introduced herself to me, my wife admitted that part of the reason she’d come over to where I was sitting was that she wanted to practice her English. That was fine, but it began happening too frequently. Soon, everyone who knew any English was coming up to me to pull out their rusty linguistic skills for a good once-over. The result was that my Polish was somewhat slow in developing.

Eventually my Polish reached a communicative level and I could discuss at least rudimentary things. But still it continued – people wanted to speak English with me.

With many people I was more than happy to continue. My wife still speaks better English than I do Polish, and several friends spoke such good English that it just seemed stupid to try to switch to Polish once I could mutter a few phrases. The goal of communication was just that – exchanging ideas – and not to sit in a bar with my friends having a language lesson.

However, I fought the English-as-a-default-language tendency with acquaintances, often to no avail. “Damn it, I want to learn this crazy language!” I thought to myself, realizing the idiocy of the situation: in Poland, and still unable to speak decent Polish. So I fought it, and tried to speak Polish more and more.

It was a triumphant moment when, standing at a bar listening to someone trying to tell me something in English, I realized, “Hey, I speak Polish much better than this guy speaks English!” I was momentarily proud of myself, then annoyed. I wanted to say, “No, możemy po prosto mowić po polsku.” (You can probably guess what that means.) It’s truly tedious to talk to someone who can barely communicate in English when you know you could switch to Polish and probably have an interesting conversation. But how terribly rude that is, for in making the switch, you’re essentially saying, “Great, great – your English sucks, so let’s speak Polish.” At least that’s how I always felt whenever the reverse happened to me.

My linguistic reality now is mixed: I still have some people that I speak mainly English with. I have a few friends with whom I began by speaking English and now mainly converse in Polish. There is an ever-growing number of people that, though they know English, have never used it with me – an ego-patting thing. And of course, there are plenty of friends and acquaintances now that I’ve only spoken Polish with.

Communication with my wife, though, is a topic deserving its own post.

#$*@!

Monday 29 November 2004

Ah #&@*, I did it again — trying to stop cursing and let another one loose unconsciously.

Without the redundant profanity (a sorry attempt at a joke), that’s what I thought last night when something irritating happened and, muttering to myself about it, I used “colorful” language.

Stopping cursing is about like stopping smoking, I’d imagine. Perhaps more difficult from a certain point of view — you don’t have to buy profanities. They’re there, piled up in our heads, for free! And you never run out of them, so you can’t really think to yourself, “As long as I don’t stop by a convenience store and see a wall of cigarettes, I’m fine.”

My parents tell the story of when my father was trying to stop cursing, he and my mother set up a system that each profanity cost some part of their weekly spending money. They were a young couple, and the purse strings were tight, so they allotted themselves only a few dollars a week as personal spending money. My father “spent” all his money and then some one afternoon waiting for, if I remember correctly, a “woman driver” to turn left.

What is it about profanity that has such a draw? It’s so difficult to stop, and yet so easy to begin. You can sit with an infant, patiently trying to teach her how to say something — anything — and she, with stubborn resoluteness, sits and says nothing. Then you hear the soup boil over, exclaim something you shouldn’t, and when you come back a second later, the infant is chanting your profanity.

It’s not that children have an ear for the vulgarities of their own language. An acquaintance told my wife and me that her daughter has recently begun using “the ‘f’ word” because — guess. It’s a word that has no meaning in Polish, though it does sound like “Kwak,” a somewhat common surname.

Nonetheless, there she was, running around the apartment saying, well, the obvious.

When I moved to Boston after having spent three years in Poland, I began muttering Polish profanity — and it is a language rich in profanity — at work when something was trying my patience. Then a Pole started working there.

In Polska, cursing is strangely culturally accepted. That’s not to say that it’s universally practiced, for if everyone cursed, then it would cease to be profanity. Still, in the States someone out “in public” doesn’t usually let the four-letter words fly at will. A bus driver, for example, wouldn’t be sprinkling is conversation with a passenger with profanity, but here, it’s a common occurrence. I’ve heard fathers let loose while their four-year-old daughters stand beside them, grandfathers going crazy while their five-year-old grandsons run around at their feet — and then it’s no wonder that you hear a five year old say the Polish equivalent of, “Hey, *#@$-for-brains, where they *#@! are you going?”

Why did I write *#@$ rather than “shit?” It’s always amused me to read quotes in something like Sports Illustrated where instead of quote the pitcher verbatim, puts words like s*$# in his mouth. As if we don’t know what it means, and, more importantly, as if we don’t sound the word in our heads as we read it. Is “shit” any worse than *#@$ for conveying the same idea? It’s even gotten to the point that without any context, we have a pretty good idea what *#@$ means, so what’s the point?

I’m not sure if it’s the rural environment, or Polish culture in general, but one does hear much more “in public” than one hears in the States. In stores, in bus stops, on the streets — it’s everywhere. In Polish, it’s not “the ‘f’ word” but rather “the ‘k’ word” and it’s shocking — almost impressive — to hear how many times a riled up Polish man of, say, twenty-five, can use “the ‘k’ word” in a sentence.

Perhaps it’s a question of American culture’s Puritan roots. After all, there are advertisements for soap in Europe that show women’s breasts — unthinkable in the States.

I’m curious about other cultures — how is cursing viewed wherever you sit reading this?

Photo by Internet Archive Book Images

Politely Declining (Or “Why Polish is really a nightmare”)

Friday 26 November 2004

I recently wrote about Polish plurals and the strange fact that there are two forms.

That was only the tip of the iceberg. The easy part of the language. Today — how to make a Polish sentence meaningful. Or “how to make sure you say ‘The dog bit John’ rather than ‘John bit the dog.'”

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.”

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.

Thanks to Oliver for the correction. Originally I’d mistakenly claimed that German has five cases.

An inflected language uses cases to differentiate functions and forms. Greek and German have four cases.

Polish has seven:

  • 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.
  • 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. We’ll use “Bill Clinton” as a direct object, indirect object, object of a preposition, etc, and see just how insane Polish is:

CaseExample
Nominative caseTo jest Bill Clinton. (This is Bill Clinton.)
Accusative caseLubię Billa Clintona. (I like Bill Clinton.)
Genitive caseSzukam Billa Clintona. (I’m looking for Bill Clinton.)
Locative caseMyślę o Billu Clintonie. (I’m thinking about Bill Clinton.)
Instrumental caseRozmawiam z Billem Clintonem. (I’m talking with Bill Clinton.)
Dative caseDałem Billowi Clintonowi. (I gave Bill Clinton… s’thing.)
Vocative caseWzia…łes›, 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 dałem.”

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 accusative plural and the nominative plural of neuter nouns are identical, but feminine and masculine nouns are different.
  • The female genitive 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”?

Double your pleasure

Saturday 20 November 2004

In Polish, there are two plural forms for every noun.

It works like this. For numbers 2 through 4, and anything number that includes those numbers (i.e., twenty-two, thirty-five, but not eleven, twelve), there is one plural form; for numbers 5-10, there is another plural form.

“Huh?”

Exactly.

An example might help. “Piwo” is “beer” in Polish. “Two beers” would be “dwa piwa.” “Four beers” would be “cztery piwa.” But “five beers” is “pięć piw.” But at “twenty-one” (yes, I know — who needs to know how to say “twenty-one beers” in Polish?), it would change back to “piwa.” Until you decided to get really wasted and go for twenty-five, at which point you would order “dwadzieścia pięć piw.”

Another example: “Roll” in Polish is “bułka.” “Two rolls” is “dwie bułki.” At five we get the switch again: “pię bułek.” At twenty-one, it goes back to “bułki.”

Further, if you want to use a plural noun as a direct object in a positive sentence, you use the first plural form; if you want to use it as a direct object of a negative sentence, you use the second form. In other words, to say “I like rolls” you use “bułki,” but to say “I don’t like rolls,” you use “bułek.”

And Poles wonder why their language is so hard for non-Poles…

Any linguistic strangeness where you live?

Translat(form)ing

Friday 23 July 2004

Umberto Eco defined translation as “the art of failure.” Boris Pasternak, on the other hand, said, “Translation is very much like copying paintings.” I’ve done very little translating and interpreting while in Poland. I’m a teacher by trade, and my Polish is relatively horrid. Still, I’ve been asked a few times during my time here to translate or interpret.

I’ve done just enough to realize Eco and Pasternak are right, and that I hate it.

Interpreting is in some ways the worst of the two, because as a barrage of words is constantly coming at you. I’ve never done simultaneous translation, for my Polish is not fluent and so I don’t really usually “think” in the language as it’s coming at me.

There have been some strange interpreting situations, though. Once I was called out of class and hustled to the mayor’s office to translate for “some Japanese woman” who was there. A Japanese woman? In little Lipnica Wielka (Polish speakers, no pun intended)? It turned out that she was working on a dissertation and wanted some information about traditional views of land and forest in the area. The local folklore expert was there, and I sat translating from Polish to English for the woman, then she scribbled notes in Japanese.

Translating is less stressful – you can do it with a cup of coffee and a few breaks. But I still don’t like it, at all. It’s all made doubly hard by the fact that I’ve never had any formal training in the theory of translation. Robert Frost once said that “Poetry is what gets lost in translation,” and I can readily understand that now, for it is simply impossible to “translate” something to another language – it’s re-creation in another language. It is, as Pasternak said, copying paintings: you’ll never get the brush-strokes identical, and the pigments won’t completely blend in the same way, but looking at it from five meters, you won’t see much difference.

I recently had to translate a description of a folk group for an application to perform in a folk festival in June, somewhere outside of Vienna. One would think, “Description of a folk group – that doesn’t sound difficult at all,” and truth be told, it wasn’t. There were perhaps three words in the text I didn’t immediately recognize. I knew from the context what they were (names of dances and such) but I wasn’t sure if the name had an equivalent in English. It was then that I was reminded: understanding a text is one thing; making it readable in another language is something entirely different.

Some of the sentences just gave me fits.

Often, it was because the words used in Polish are not used in the same way in English. An example of this was the sentence, Znawcy szczególnie podkreślają udane połączenie autentyzmu z estradowymi sceny. This would literally be translated, “Connoisseurs especially stress the successful combination of authenticity with entertaining skits.” That makes absolutely no sense, though. First of all, “connoisseurs” doesn’t apply to folk groups. To wine, to cigars, but not to folk groups. Second, without any context, you can’t say these connoisseurs/judges “stress” (literally “podkreślać” is “underline”) the successful combination. Stress to whom? For what? My version: “Judges have especially noted the group’s skits, which are both authentic and entertaining.”

Often, I simply had to write my own English version of the text. For example: Ponadto można zwrócić uwagę na używanie przez członków zespołu, tradycyjnych instrumentów ludowych m. in. fujarek, czy listka. W obecnej chwili instrument ten jest już rzadko spotykany w klasycznym instrumentarium ludowym. An absolutely literal translation: “Moreover, it’s possible to pay attention to the used by parts of the members of the group traditional folk instruments such as the fife and leaf. Presently this instrument is already rarely met in classical folk instrumentation.” Again, this is absolutely unreadable, and the sentence is both straight-forward and troublesome.

First, it highlights a couple of the idiosyncracies about Polish: subjectless, verbless sentences. The first portion, Ponadto można zwrócić uwagę, uses “można” — technically, this is not a verb. But it’s used as a verb, with an understood subject. In this context, I would translate it, “one can” or “you can.” The sentence is idiosyncratic with its use of “zwrócić uwagę,” which means “pay attention.” In such a context, an English speaker would probably use “one can notice.”

Second, there’s some inexactness in the literal translation of “fujarek” as “fife,” because in it’s not simply a wooden flute, but a unique, single-hole wooden flute. In other words, it’s a thin wooden pipe which is made to whistle by placing the forefinger over the bottom hole, with changes in pitch accomplished by varying the size of hole with said forefinger. That’s horribly clumsy, and not entirely necessary.

A third problem is stylistic. In English, I think the sentence would sound better in active voice and not passive, something like, “Several members of the band play uniquely traditional instruments.” But since I was translating it and not editing it, I left it in passive.

My final version: “In addition, one should pay particular attention to the traditional folk instruments played by some of the group members, such as the ‘fujarek’ (a single-hole fife) and the rarely-played ‘listka’ (a beech tree leaf).”

This touches on the problems I always have when translating: When has an individual stopped translating and started editing? What’s the border between the two?

This question is most acute when I read bilingual editions of poetry. Kinga and I received a bilingual eition of Wisława Szymporska’s Chwila (Moment). I read the Polish, then sometimes ask myself, “How would I translate that?” I glance over at the English side and find something completely different. The sense is there, but none of the words.

And it doesn’t even have to be poetry. It can be simply the title of a book. For ages I’ve been reading Agata Tuszyńska’s impressionistic biography of the Polish-born Yiddish writer, Isaac Bashevis Singer. In Polish the title is Pejzaże Pamięci. I read that in the bookstore and thought, “Landscapes of Memory. Singer. Sounds interesting.” The English version of the book is published under the title, Lost Landscapes: In Search of Isaac Bashevis Singer and the Jews of Poland (“Amazon). “Lost” does not really mean the same as “of memory,” but poetically speaking, it does. I wouldn’t have had the guts to translate it that way, though.

Which is why I’m a teacher, not a translator.

Translation as a Teaching Method

Language teaching used to be simply a matter of teaching grammar and vocabulary, then requiring students to translate sentences from their target language to their native language and back. Theories of pedagogy now of course state that such a method is less than ideally effective, and besides, it’s terribly boring. Still, from time to time, it’s necessary and even useful.

Very often, when asknig a student to translate a sentence to Polish, I don’t ask, “How would you translate this?” but rather, “How can we understand this.” It’s a reinforcement of a pet theory and method of mine: teach students that knowing the exact meaning of every word is not necessary to understanding the text as a whole. Context provides hints clues that can help students understand the general sense of the word (i.e., it’s clearly an adjective, probably with a negative connotation) so that they don’t go running to the dictionary continually.

Znalazłes?

Wednesday 14 November 2001

It’s amazing how much one can implicitly communicate through one’s choice of words. “Znalazłes›?” asked the woman in the big store as I was looking for szpilki. My first thought was, “Znalazłes›? Don’t you mean, ‘Czy Pan znalazł?’” The lady in the small flower shop had used the formal, polite “Pan” with me just moments before, but this woman chose the familiar form – something that would be positively rude to do to unknown Pole. Given the fact that adults use the familiar form with children, I couldn’t help but feel a little insulted at this perceived slight. Putting the foreigner in his place, so to say.

I’m curious how other Poles would interpret this.

Change in Plans

Tuesday 7 January 1997

I had the most successful and least stressful lesson with IIB today. I introduced present continuous and basically took no nonsense from them. I lectured in an even, slow voice, writing things on the board and asking no questions. Instead of involving the students in the presentation (i.e. asking questions that lead them to “discover” the point I’m trying to make), I told them, “This is the present continuous tense. This is how we form it. This is when we use it. This is how it differs from present simple . . .” I gave them a worksheet, basically saying, “Screw student-to-student interactive practice.” They do not handle even the slightest freedom well, so I held the reins the whole forty-five minutes. And the damnedest thing happened: They asked questions; they put forth a little bit of effort. I was shocked. Never again will I treat IIB like I do the other classes. Authoritarian, discipline-based teaching is the only thing that works. I am almost looking forward to next week’s lesson to see if it words again . . .

Strange things with my camera: At first I couldn’t get the shutter to open. I finally figured out that I wasn’t advancing the film properly. Then the real mystery struck: My light meter is no longer working. I am hoping that it is just that the batteries are dead. If not, I”ll spend a lot of money learning how to set the f-stop and shutter speed in various conditions. I should be in Nowy [Targ] Friday, so I’ll hunt down a couple of new batteries.

Marion was in dom nauczyciela blessing people’s houses. He stopped by my place but didn’t come in; even after I asked “Co robisz?” he didn’t offer to sprinkle water around my place. He probably knows (from Danuta) that I am not a Catholic . . .

Training Woes

Wednesday 17 July 1996

Another tech session, another endurance test. I cannot understand why we do such things. It is such an incredible waste of time – it could be used in so much more effective ways. But of course I really shouldn’t complain. Still, time spent working on lesson plans and/or our syllabi would be much better. This is especially true now that we’re both teacher and learner – we have so much stuff to do that ends up being done at home. So we end up being at school nine hours a day and then we go home and do homework and lesson planning.

One interesting thing about Polish students of English and the future tense: One way to form the future tense is “will” (future tense of by ) plus past tense. So a literal translation will produce “I will went.” They are simply applying a Polish grammatical structure on English, just as we must often do the same in reverse.

An obvious observation: There is not an action which cannot be described in words. The writer’s job is to find those elusive words.

I must teach two lessons tomorrow and though I am hesitant to do it, I am doing a final lesson on past progressive and simple past. I will be using a modified textbook activity which I think will really help to clear up any lingering misunderstandings. I’ll also be doing a lesson on modals.

We had TEFL session today on teaching with music and the final two pieces were Carmina Burana and the second movement to Górecki’s Symphony No. 3. The presenter seemed somewhat impressed that I recognized the pieces and floored when I mentioned that I have four Górecki CDs (I have five but I forgot about one). It was a triumphal moment to name those tunes in class . . .

Perfectly Imperfect

Wednesday 3 July 1996

Just when I thought I was getting the hang of this Polish thing, BOOM!! We begin perfective/imperfective [verb forms]. So that means in many cases we have to learn a second verb for the same damn thing. Not only that, but the conjugation patter of many of the past tense perfective verbs are incredibly irregular. Not only is there an ending change from masculine to feminine – the stem sometimes changes! Oh joy.

Sitting in class I experienced total overload. Everything the poor woman was saying simply bounced off of me. I might as well have walked out of the room.

For the first four weeks I’ve been asking for verb conjugation information. “No, not now,” everyone told me, “It’s not time.” So now, in three days, (a week, rather) we’re getting everything. I kept telling people “This is not the first time I’ve tried to learn a foreign language. I know how things work, at least a little.”

One more thing about perfective: Most perfective verbs are simply the imperfective verb with a syllable added. The problem is that because of the next-to-last syllable stressing, adding the extra syllable makes an entirely new pronunciation.

General Notes

Friday 28 June 1996

plums photoEvery day there is a woman who balances on the edge of the first seat of the bus, getting off around two or three stops after I get on. She has short hair which is frayed and silvery. Her body is more round than the average Pole, and she always wears a skirt with a gray sweater, and her veins stand out clearly on her pale legs. A couple of days ago the bus driver applied a bit too much force [on the brake pedal] a bit too quickly. She tumbled out of her seat with a thud and cracked her head against the door of the glass enclosure around the driver. No one offered to help; no one asked her if she was okay. We PCVs stood watching, remembering that Chrissy told us that it is often better not to get involved. A bit ironic, for it is too late for us not to get involved . . .

Immersion

Thursday 27 June 1996

I survived another day of immersion with only one day left. That is actually thrilling. Those final sessions are hell, truly. By that time my mind has completely shut down, no questions asked. To try to jump-start it would be a great waste of time. Fortunately, the teachers realize how tired we are (and they are certainly more exhausted) and the final lesson is some sort of game. Of course we don’t have the luxury of completely shutting our minds off. They’re “educational” games.

Spit

Monday 10 June 1996

I’ve been working with my host mother on the basic Polish sounds and I have hit a real break through in [the] pronunciation of sz and rz. It’s great! Earlier in the evening I was trying to pronounce one of the many “sh” sounds and after several failures I finally threw out a last attempt accompanied by a significant amount of spittle, and she cried “Tak!” with great delight.

I am really finding my place in my host family and I feel quite comfortable here. We joke with one another and seem to enjoy each other’s company.