The first time I went sailing in Mazury, we hired a boat in Giżycko and set sail around ten a.m. As soon as we were out of the port, the captain handed me a beer.

‘Alcohol? This early? I don’t think I’ve ever drunk alcohol before midday‘ I muttered.

‘Welcome to Mazury‘, he replied.

It’s not just drinking habits that vary from culture to culture, attitudes to time vary as well. If you don’t fall into line with a foreign culture’s approach to time-keeping, then you end up doing the wrong thing at the wrong time in the wrong place.

Of course, you could say that drinking beer on a boat in Mazury at 10am is doing the wrong thing at the wrong time in the wrong place. Rather than falling into line with the habits of a foreign culture, I might have ended up falling into a Masurian lake… but you know what I mean.

So when a foreigner learns the Polish language, he or she also picks up some insight into Poles’ attitude towards time. How do Poles tell the time? Do they value punctuality? And are they good time managers?

Lesson #1: Telling the Time

Learning how to tell the time in Polish isn’t particularly difficult, but it’s more tricky than it should be. By using ordinal numbers and the 24-hour clock, the Polish language makes a foreigner work just a little bit harder to master this skill.

First of all, I was surprised to learn that Poles use ordinal numbers instead of cardinal ones to label hours. So if you want to say ‘it’s eight o’clock’, then you need to say jest ósma (literally, it’s the eighth hour). And when I hear this, I always think ‘the eighth hour since what?’ As a child I learned that the First World War ended on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. Saying ‘it’s the eighth hour’ in Polish gives me a sense of doom as if I were saying ‘it’s the eighth hour… since some terrible tragedy occurred‘. To my ears, this gives Polish time a very weighty, backward-looking feel. It’s the eighth hour and we haven’t forgotten.

And there’s a lot of memorization involved. While a learner of English just needs to learn 12 cardinal numbers, learners of Polish need to learn 24 cardinal numbers and their 24 ordinals. This is because Poles use both the 12 and 24-hour clock to tell the time. If you want to meet at 8pm, a Pole might say o ósmej wieczorem (at the eighth hour in the evening) or o dwudziesej (at the twentieth hour). Why? I don’t know. I just know that it’s a pain in the neck to learn all those bloody ordinals.

By the time I had learned how to schedule appointments in Polish, I was too exhausted to actually go anywhere. I’d look at the clock, try and figure out what the time was, and conclude that it pora snu (bedtime).

Lesson#2: Punctuality

The first time I saw the Polish word for ‘hour’, I assumed that time must be important to Poles. To my ears, Godzina sounded like the name of a god, or at the very least, some huge, powerful creature, perhaps the offspring of Godzilla and Krishna. So do Poles treat time as a deity and worship punctuality?

Not always.

There’s seems to be a magical 15 minute grace period. On many occasions, while waiting for others to arrive, I’ve heard Poles talk about the kwadrans akademicki (academic quarter of an hour). As far as I understand it, professors are allowed to be 15 minutes late for lectures. If they are more than 15 minutes late, then the students get up and leave. Thanks to this, lectures don’t start late until 16 minutes past the scheduled start time. Anything up to 15 minutes is actually on time.

In some countries, punctuality is highly valued. It’s important to be on time because being punctual defines you as a well-organized person. In my experience, many Poles have a more pragmatic approach to being on time – it’s only important to be on time if it gains you some advantage. For instance, if there is limited seating at a concert venue and you want to make sure you have a good spot, then it’s worth being on time. If there’s nothing to be gained from being on time, then there’s no point being punctual just for the sake of it.

Lesson#3: Public Holidays

In Poland the names and timings of public holidays are complex, and a foreigner, if they are curious why they have a day off work, faces some challenges. Firstly, they need to learn some Polish history to appreciate the relevance of Święto Konstytucji 3 Maja and Narodowe święto Niepodległości. Secondly, they face the challenge of learning some very tough vocabulary connected to religious holidays – Trzech Króli, Boże Ciało, Wniebowzięcie Najświętszej Maryi Panny and Wszystkich Świętych. And thirdly, because many of these holidays fall on Tuesdays or Wednesdays or Thursdays, they need advanced time management skills to maximize the number of long weekends they can enjoy per year.

In the UK, by comparison, it’s far easier. Public holidays are always on a Monday and are known as ‘Bank Holidays’. You see, in the UK, money is our religion. If the bank is closed and you can’t manage your finances, then you might as well spent time with your family or visit the seaside. It’s simple. No history, no religion, all you need to know is that time is money… except on days when the banks are closed!

Time Mysteries

While I’ve picked up some insights into Polish time-keeping, there are still many things that I don’t understand:

• Why do the Polish words for midday (południe) and midnight (północ) also mean ‘south’ and ‘north’? At first, I assumed it was because a clock and a compass look similar, but if that was the case, then południe should refer to six o’clock!
• Do Poles have trouble remembering the words for past and future? Przeszłość (past) and przyszłość (future) look and sound so similar that I couldn’t remember which was which for years. When I learned the word złość (anger), it started to make sense. I’d been pretty angry about the difference between przes-złość and przys-złość for years!
• How do PKP measure time? While waiting for a train, I’ve often heard an announcement that the train is late by X minutes. This is followed by a wonderful sentence czas opoznieny może ulegnac zmiany (the amount of lateness may change). Einstein taught us that time is relative. It seems to be especially relative to PKP. So you need to get your head around the fact that the train is late, but still might arrive earlier than the estimated delay, or later than the current delay. No matter how long the delay is, I usually hang around the platform. You still need to be on time for PKP’s lateness otherwise you’ll miss the train.
• What does zaraz zaraz really mean? When a Pole says zaraz it means ‘soon’, but when they repeat the word and say zaraz zaraz, I don’t get the impression that it means ‘sooner’.
• Last, but not least, there are the Polish equivalents of ‘early bird’ and ‘night owl’. When I first heard the expression ranny ptaszek, I assumed this meant ‘injured bird’. Ranny can be translated into English as both ‘morning’ and ‘injured’ and I assumed it meant the latter. So rather than getting the first worm, I wondered, do Poles think that an early bird is more likely to attacked by some predator? And as regards ‘night owl’, why is the Polish translation nocny marek? Who is this Marek guy? Has anybody stayed up late enough to meet him?