I’m trying to learn Polish… but which Polish? Sometimes I feel that the Polish language is evolving faster than my ability to learn it.

New slang arises from the streets, the language races to keep up with technological innovation, and the influence of English grows daily.

I remember a Polish guy who went back to learning English after a long break. Whenever he was corrected for making a mistake, he would protest ‘that was correct ten years ago. It’s not the same language any more!‘

Sometimes I get that feeling with Polish.

The problem for a language learner is that they think they are learning a static, unchanging set of words and rules, but this is far from the case. You simply don’t know which words are outdated, which used to be cool but aren’t anymore, and which are the height of fashion today. By the time you’ve mastered certain functional areas, the language has moved on and you sound like someone who has just been dug up on an archeological site.

Take greetings, for example. My ‘Teach Yourself Polish’ textbook introduced me to dzień dobry, jak się masz and do widzenia but on the street what I heard young Poles actually say was hej, siema and dozo. I remember the first time I heard the expression siema. At a bus stop I observed two Polish teenager boys greet one another and say siema. ‘Are they both called Szymon?’ I wondered and ‘is siema just a short version of the name?’ I made a mental note and checked my dictionary when I got home. The only similar word I could find was siano (hay)… ‘perhaps it was a countryside expression that had just reached the city?’

A further problem with fashionable language is the constant emergence of new trendy expressions. By the time that I learned siema, the cool kids had moved on to siemka or siemano. Will I ever catch up? No, I don’t think so… and for the very reason, that if I, a middle-aged foreigner, knows the word, then it’s high time to invent something new.

It was the same with the word for ‘okay’. My textbook taught me the tongue twister w porządku, but in reality young Poles say okej, spoko or wporzo. I’ve even heard that you can now say gitara. Although, now that I’m aware of the term, the language will probably move on to some other musical instrument instead, bęben (drums) perhaps.

So all of this gives me a dilemma. Which Polish to learn? Should I stick to the Polish that is considered suitable for my age group, or should I try to sound fresh by using the latest street slang? I’m tempted to use these new terms like nara, siema, spoko, dozo and wporzo – they’re shorter, easier to pronounce and, best of all, they sound like characters from the Muppets (wasn’t dozo one of the birds?). So where’s the problem?

The problem is that I have some reservations. I feel as if these terms don’t belong to my age group and if I used them, I’d be like an old man wearing a baseball cap sideways. I feel awkward saying siema to a teenager, I’d feel a complete fool saying siemka? And what kind of fool? Would I be a głab or a dzban? As a linguistic category, the words used for foolish people is another that evolves faster than a learner’s ability to keep up. It turns out that my favourite words for ‘fool’ in Polish are all old-fashioned – gamoń or trąba – while the new trendy ones, like janusz or dzban, sound old-fashioned to my ears.

How can I stay in touch with the Polish language as it evolves? Well, there are two key places to do research – the street and the Internet.

Perhaps I could do some field work? Like an undercover detective, I could venture out at night with a notepad, pencil and pocket dictionary and try to overhear what’s being said on the street corners. However, the only new slang I’d learn would be new ways of saying ‘get lost you old fart‘.

I remember talking to a friend who recently bought an apartment. Before he submitted an offer for a place he liked, he would park outside the apartment building at night, sit in his car and count how many pato (in his words) gathered around the entrance to drink alcohol. If there was a big group of pato, then he wouldn’t make an offer. That’s how I learned the Polish word pato (from patologia) to refer to a certain group of people who come out at night. And while I admire this approach to doing street level investigations, I doubt I’d overhear much new slang from the safety of my car.

As for the Internet, it’s much easier to do research, but it helps me keep up with English slang more than Polish. There are actually some examples of English slang that I’ve picked up via Polish. I thought that YOLO (you only live once) was another LOL variant until a young Pole explained to me what it means.

Yet one challenge with technology is its fondness for shortened forms. I have enough trouble keeping up with new words like spoks, but in chat messages it is shortened to the abbreviation SPX. Immediately I’m three steps behind!

There is one upside to this process of change, and it’s that the Polish language, at least the version spoken by the younger generation, seems to resemble English more and more. Many of the shortened versions of Polish words – nara, spoko, dozo etc – follow a consonent-vowel-consonent-vowel pattern like many English words. Then there is the use of the -ing suffix to describe cool activities as in leżing or plażing. Thirdly, there’s the borrowing of English words to make Polish slang, e.g. za friko, fejm and nolife.

But that’s the ultimate irony… at least as far as I am concerned.

Polish is slowly evolving into English…

…but by the time it does so…

…I’ll be too old to use this new, trendy language.

Ale suchar!

Perhaps I should concentrate on learning more dated language. It’s exhausting trying to keep up with new slang.

I once found the word hulanka in a dictionary defined as ‘a party’. ‘That sounds cool’, I thought and invested some time to memorize it. Turns out it was cool… around 100 years ago. And when I innocently used it for the first time to describe my weekend, I got some instant feedback on its relevance to today’s Poles.

But maybe hulanka is an example of my kind of Polish after all. Perhaps I should focus on learning such old-fashioned words. At least, it’s static, not evolving. If only there were a textbook that taught such old-school language:

Polski dla starych pryków (Polish for old Farts)

or

Jak ględzić po polsku (Prattling in Polish)

I’d buy them both.