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Absalomie, Absalomie…

Tuesday 08 March 2005

I borrowed the Polish version of Absalom, Absalom! for Kinga, and I was thumbing through the edition and noticed a couple of things immediately.

First of all, none of the extended passages italicized in the original are italicized in the Polish, which is strange, given how Faulkner uses italics.

Second, the famous final line, “I don’t hate the South!” was translated a little differently: “I don’t feel hatred for the South.” I’m not certain, but I think this was for fluid reading. “Nie czuję nienawiści do Południa!” ends this version, whereas a more literal translation would have read, “Nie nienawidzę…” and that double “nie” would have indeed read awkwardly.

In Defense of English Tenses

Monday 07 March 2005

Nina, at The Other Side of the Ocean, recently complained about necessary tenses in English.

Writing about learning English, she says, “As a new kid on the English-speaking block, I had to come to terms with the fact that English has sixteen verb tenses. You truly are insane.”

Indeed, most Poles when they learn that there are more than three tenses in English have a similar reaction.

The actual number of tenses is a somewhat fluid issue. Nina maintains sixteen. I would argue that there are only three tenses: past, present, and future. Within each of those, though, there are four types:

  • simple
  • progressive/continuous
  • perfect, and
  • perfect progressive/continuous.

A total of twelve, for I don’t count conditionals as tenses.

This does seem somewhat excessive but think of the versatility of the English tense system.

With a single verb tense you can:

  • Show whether it happened before or after another action;
  • Indicate whether or not it is a temporary action;
  • Show whether or not it was a completed action; and,
  • Indicate whether it was habitual or not.

Think of the enormous difference between these sentences:

  1. When you called I was eating.
  2. When you called, I had eaten.

In situation one, you’d better apologize; in situation two, you’re fine.

But some of the tenses do indeed cause problems with Polish learners, none more so than present perfect (i.e., “I have eaten sushi.”). It’s problematic because it sometimes refers to the past (“I’ve been to China. I went last year.”) and sometimes to the present (“I’ve lived in Poland for seven years.”). The first example would be translated to past tense in Polish, while the second would be present tense. Then there’s the difference between “I’ve eaten sushi” and “I ate sushi.”

It’s a nightmare that some students never fully work out.

I, on the other hand, have problems fitting all those possibilities into tense-deprived Polish. Polish does have something sort of like a continuous tense, but instead of being a different tense, it’s a different verb! “Obejrzełem” is “I watched” whereas “ogladałem” is more like “I was watching.”

How’s that for difficulty?!

It’s not often

Monday 07 March 2005

that I get to make a student's day, but I think I did just that this morning.

I handed back tests to a class of first year students, by far my favorites. I love teaching beginners because it's really a kick to end a year talking to a group of kids in English that didn't know a single word a few months earlier. This group in particular is wonderful. There's a very positive dynamic in the class: they're very enthusiastic, but easily controlled.

Grazyna (not her real name) has been having problems since the beginning of the school year, and has to struggle to pass. I think she's one of those of us who have little talent for languages.

Today, I gave her back her test. She made a "three" on it, the equivalent of a "C" in the States.

It was her highest grade ever for a major test in English.

She literally screamed, and her face glowed with the loveliest smile I've seen in a long time.

Those are the moments that make teaching my dream job.

Brain Leak

Tuesday 01 March 2005

It was bound to happen, I suppose. I’d heard of it, but never thought I’d experience it myself.

I’m forgetting English. Not the whole language of course, but isolated words here and there.

For instance, the other day a student asked me what “zniżka” is in English. I stood there thinking, “What is that? ‘Lowered price?’ ‘Rebate?’ What the hell do they call that, a lowered price. Student’s price?!” I couldn’t remember “discount” to save my life.

Exhibit two: I was making a test key for a first-year class’s test, and I came upon the word “pralka.” “That thing for washing clothes,” I mumbled to myself. I closed my eyes and I could see my in-laws’ sitting there. Clothes washer? Washing machine.

Now this is not to say that my Polish is so dang good that I’m more comfortable speaking it than English. No — quite the opposite. I am to Polish what clear-cutters are to bonsai. But as the saying goes, if you don’t use it, you lose it. Despite my constant reading and writing, words manage to get wedged in my head and I can’t shake the jumble out.

Of course, I have the same problem in Polish. To an exponential degree.

Androgynous Mittens

Saturday 12 February 2005

The bumping, swaying motion of the bus was, as usual, rocking me to sleep. I was returning from Nowy Targ, the nearest Polish town, fighting sleep as I usually do on busses in Poland.

Ironically, a town in Slovakia is about fifteen kilometers closer, but not as accessible by bus.

In front of me sat a mother and her child, who looked to be two years old. About halfway home, I glanced down to notice one of the child’s mittens had fallen on the floor. I reached down to pick it up, then leaned a little over the seat and was going to address the child. “You lost something, didn’t you?” And then the mild panic struck: is this a boy or a girl? Wrapped up tight for winter, the child was androgynous, with only a face visible. So I said nothing, and simply gave the mitten back to the mother. Rather, she noticed I was holding it and literally jerked it out of my hand. Odd experience.

I didn’t say anything to the child because I didn’t know the child’s gender, and that is essential if you’re speaking to someone in Polish in the past tense. Polish verbs are curious because their past tense forms are gender specific. “I took” for a man (wziałem) is different than “I took” for a woman (wziałam). Not terribly different, but different nonetheless.

If I were to say to a little boy, “You lost something, didn’t you?” the “lost” would be “straciłeÅ›,” whereas for a little girl it would be “straciłaÅ›.”

The verb endings for males are:

-łem-liśmy
-łeś-liście
-ł-l

For females, however, they are:

-łam-łyśmy
-łaś-łyście
-ła-ły

My father-in-law always does this when he asked Kinga and I where we went, if we’d disappeared for a few hours one Sunday afternoon. “GdzieÅ›cie byli?” he’d ask, taking the “Å›cie” ending from the verb and throwing it on “gdzie,” or “where.”

Update:
Vivi asked "So, when you are talking about mixed company (ie a man and a woman), does it default to masculine, like French?" Short answer: yes.

Will the madness never end?!

Returning to the androgynous mittens’ story, my wife informs me that people make such mistakes all the time, with the mother usually correcting them. So I could have just chosen a gender and let fly.

God Holding His Breath on Borrowed Time

Thursday 13 January 2005

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."

Frying Mr. Teddy

Tuesday 11 January 2005

Recently I mentioned the absurdity of the “Freedom Fries” wave sweeping across Patriotic Probably-Mostly-Republican America. Language is a living thing, and we can’t read current politics into a word’s etymology, I argued.

An amusing example of this in Polish: the word “pan.”

In modern usage, it has the meaning of “mister,” as in, “Mr. S” being “Pan S.” “Mrs.” is “Pani,” and on a side not, I know from an Indian friend that “pani” is Hindi for “water.”

Linguistic webs aside, “pan” would also be translated to French as “vous,” or to German as “Sie.” So when speaking to a stranger in Polish, you speak to them in third person singular out of respect. (Unless you live in the mountains down south and are speaking a dialect, and then it’s like French: second person plural.)

Armed with only this knowledge and some elementary Polish, you’ll be in for an amusing surprise when you go to Mass, because you’ll hear God referred to as “Pan Bóg.”

“Mr. God?” was my first surprised reaction.

More digging.

“Pan” also, and originally, means something like “master,” in the sort of 18th-century, English manor sense. So the patriotic Mickiewicz poem Pan Tadeusz wouldn’t be translated, as a Pole joked with me, “Mr. Teddy,” but rather, “Master Tad” (Source).

And so now “Pan Bóg” makes since: it’s simply “Lord,” or even “the Lord God.” When I learned all this, I stopped snickering under my breath whenever I rarely attended Mass with a friend.

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

Names

Wednesday 29 December 2004

My name is Gary. My parents told me that when they first saw me, they just knew I was "Gary."

There are lots of Garys out there.

  • Gary Kasparov
  • Gary Sinise
  • Gary Moore
  • Gary Oldman
  • Gary Cherone
  • Gary Glitter
  • Gary Busey
  • Gary, Indiana
  • Gary, West Virginia
  • Gary, Minnesota
  • Gary, South Dakota

So apparently it's a popular name.

Nonetheless, I used to hate that name, particularly in junior high. I also hated my hair cut then, as well. Not man-ish enough. I wanted a Ted Danson do.

What was I thinking?

Changing my hair turned out to be easier than changing my name, which didn't happen until college. Fresh start, new faces -- I can be anyone I want. Armed with that knowledge, I tried going by my middle name: Lawrence.

It lasted a couple of weeks.

I've often wondered at stage names. Do Sting's close friends call him "Sting" or "Gordon?" Is Bono "Bono" to his wife, or just plain Paul? Does Adam Ant's mother still call him "Stuart?" When Eric Clapton was working with Babyface, did they call each other "Clapp" and "Kenneth?" Would Lauren Bacall be as famous as "Betty Joan Perske?" If you call Erykah Badu "Erica Wright," does she answer? "Full list of stage names.

The trouble was, I could never remember who I was.

Someone would call my name and I would continue walking, oblivious to the fact that someone was trying to get my attention.

Names seem to merge with your self, and it's difficult to separate "you" from your name.

The only reason I could start going by "Lawrence" was because no one knew me at college as "Gary." It would have been difficult to convince everyone in high school to call me "Lawrence," for I'd always been "Gary" to them.

Imagine calling the color white "blue" for the some arbitrary reason -- it wouldn't work, because white's, well, "white."

When I gave up on the "Lawrence" nonsense, a few people persisted in calling me "Lawrence" for a little while. That in turn made for a stupid situation, because I had to explain:

  1. that I'd always been called Gary;
  2. that I only switched to "Lawrence" at college;
  3. that I'd not been able to get used to it; and,
  4. that I'd decided to go back to my "original" name.

"Why'd you want to change in the first place?"

If I'd known what my name sounds like in Polish, and that I'd end up spending years here, I probably would have stuck to the Lawrence. "Garnek" is Polish for "pot" (the kind you cook in, not the kind you smoke), and so when you say, "I'll wash the dishes," you of course use the plural form: garnki. Or you can use the diminutive form, which sounds like...

When my wife introduced me to her grandmother, granny's reaction to my name is, "No, really -- what's his name." After all, what how would you react to being told your granddaughter is dating "Pots?"

Still, I'm glad I stuck with "Gary." It at least lets me make jokes after lunch.

Freedom-frying-over-high-heat and stupid European surrender monkeys

Tuesday 28 December 2004

Old news: the Congress (and many Americans) are opting for "Freedom Fries" instead of "French fries." (Read BBC article.) Americans are still calling "French toast" "Freedom Toast" and other nonsense.

I'm sure the French have been getting a good chuckle out of this, because it reveals striking ignorance about the English language itself. In a xenophobic attempt to purge "French" from the language and protest France's lack of support for the American war effort, our leaders headed straight for the fast food.

Are these idiots even aware of the enormous number of English words are French in origin, thanks to Willie the Conquerer, 1066 and all that? (A short article about it.) Besides, what does anyone hope to accomplish in calling a chunk of deep-fried potato a "Freedom fry" rather than a "French fry?"

I'm sure Chirac, when he heard about this, called an emergency damage control planning session with all his advisors.

If Americans are still obsessed with "French" cooking terms (after all, "French fries" is short for "French fried potatoes"), then they need to come up with new terms for:

  • blanch (Freedom remove skin?)
  • saute (Freedom fry over high heat?)
  • fondue (Freedom melt?)
  • puree (Freedom crush?)
  • flambae (Freedom burn?)

The whole list of Arabic words in English is available here

And while these idiots are at it, why not purge all the Arabic words from English? After all the terrorists that started all this are mostly Arabic, so let's chuck:

  • admiral (Freedom big Navy leader man?)
  • checkmate (Freedom inability to move your king?)
  • coffee (Freedom Java -- oh wait, do they support us?)
  • spinach (Freedom Popeye veggie?)
  • zenith (Freedom point in the sky which appears directly above the observer (definition from Wikipedia)?)

This dumbfounding nonsense reveals a basic ignorance of how language works and develops. There are very few words in English language that were "planned" in any way. Language generally just "happens," like shit. (A list of how words "happen" can be found at wordorigins.org)

It reminds me of a young man who was spooked by the fact that rearranging the letters in "Santa" produces "Satan" -- clear proof of the evil of Christmas. Still, we're not alone. The French are just as worried about borrowed words creeping into French, as evidenced by the Acadamie Francaise. And Celine at Naked Translations has an amusing post about this.

Of course what sparked all this is the feeling in America of not being appreciated.

The ingratitude of the governments of Belgium, France and Germany boggles the mind. If it were not for the heroism of American soldiers during the Second World War, Hitler's Third Reich would be in its eighth decade.

Poor us -- we won World War Two for those spineless surrender monkeys and they should still be bowing to our wishes sixty years later. How dare they think for themselves now! Why, we've earned unquestioned support!

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.