Author Archives: Andy Hall

Nation of Poets#3 – Work

Posted on by under Polish Language

Poles use a lot of rhyming expressions in everyday speech, and when I once told a friend that I like these expressions and he said:

‘What can I say? We’re a nation of poets!’

So to celebrate this nation of poets, here are some of my favourite rhyming expressions connected to work:

w naszym fachu nie ma strachu

This means ‘in our profession there is no fear‘, and when I first heard the expression I took it literally as a claim by the tradesman that he is so brave that he can tackle any job.

And to be honest, I would be rather unsettled by such a show of bravado. If I had a choice, I wouldn’t employ any tradesman who made this claim. It’s asking for trouble!

I imagined that the last words of many Polish builders before they met an untimely death were ‘w naszym fachu nie ma strachu‘…just before he fell off the dachu!

Later I learned that it’s not meant literally, and that it’s an expression tradesmen use to calm the client when they ask if a particular job is possible. A good rhyming translation would be ‘no fear, the plumber is here.’

work

elektryka prąd nie tyka

Another favourite of mine, and another expression to add the category ‘famous last words of Polish workers’ is elektryka prąd nie tyka (electricity doesn’t bother an electrician)

As far as I understand, this expression is complete wishful thinking as the electrician believes he is immune to electricity. I don’t know whether Polish electricians are made out of rubber, or whether their reactions are faster than a spark of electricity, but I still fear that they might be a little over confident.

zdrowie na budowie

Given the bravado of the previous two expressions, when I first saw zdrowie na budowie, I took literally. I assumed it was a slogan from communist times and was probably printed on posters in the style of social realism. By looking after the safety of himself and his colleagues, our heroic brick-layer builds apartments in record time.

I also figured that, in response to all the foolish bravery shown by Polish workmen, it was necessary to come up with a way to remind electricians that they are not immune to electricity. Fortunately, in Polish the word building site happens to rhyme with health and so, in an easy day’s work for the copywriter, zdrowie na budowie was created.

Yet my incorrect assumptions didn’t end there.

I also thought it was nice that construction firms care so much about the well-being of their employees that they came up with this slogan. Of course, it’s fashionable nowadays to erect digital signs saying 127 days since the last accident on this building site. What’s more, modern corporations have programs to support the well-being of their staff, but it seems that Polish building sites were ahead of this trend. I wondered whether it extended beyond health to other more fashionable concerns like wellness na budowie or mindfulness na koparce?

Then one day I learned that this slogan isn’t about workplace safety…nor mindfulness on a fork-lift truck, but it’s actually a toast and that the full version should read na zdrowie na budowie.

So the expression does refer to health on the building sites, just not in the way I assumed. ‘To your health on the building site‘ is the actual translation.

Oh!

What else is there to say when it turns out that your assumptions were completely wrong and that the world is actually a lot more cynical than you that you imagined?

gdzie kucharek sześc, tam nie ma co jeść

In the spirit of ignoring workplace safety, this last expression concerns a situation in which it wouldn’t be a problem if half the workforce had an work-related accident.

In English we have a very similar expression: too many cooks, spoil the broth, and both languages agree that the less cooks, the better.

I don’t know what it is about the cooking profession, but both languages agree that chefs just can’t work together in the kitchen. Perhaps they should learn from the builders and open a bottle of sherry before they start work?

I’m disappointed that we don’t have an English expression that rhymes. Using the Polish format with a number of chefs, it’s a piece of cake to come up with some useful rhymes:

  • when the cooks number eight, their soup you’ll hate
  • when the cooks number five, you won’t stay alive
  • when the cooks number four, just head for the door

I guess we’re just not a nation of poets…well our builders and cooks aren’t.

So if you’re working hard decorating your apartment or preparing food for Christmas in the kitchen, I hope your workplace is safe, free of fear and full of teamwork. If not, then there’s a simple solution…’na zdrowie‘.

The Weather Super Power

Posted on by under Polish Language

There’s a t-shirt you can buy that says on it: ‘I speak Polish. What’s your super power?‘

The thing is, I do think Poles have a super power but it’s not connected to speaking Polish.

It’s connected to the weather.

When learning words in a foreign language, it helps if you can hear, see or touch the thing that the word refers to. Alternatively, if the item of vocabulary refers to an experience, then it’s useful to remember a time when you’ve experienced the same thing.

But what if the expression describes something you’ve never sensed…never experienced…and is something you don’t even believe is possible for a human being to experience?

That’s what I felt the first time I heard a Pole say:

Spac mi się chce. Jest niskie ciśnienie dzisiaj.

(I’m sleepy. There’s low air pressure today)

Being British, I agreed politely even though I was thinking ‘what the hell are they talking about? How can the level of air pressure make them sleepy? Are they saying that there’s a huge column of air pressing down on their head and shoulders?’

I didn’t get it because I couldn’t feel it. I didn’t get it because I had never even experienced it.

The UK is a smallish, windy island, and the air tends to rush around a lot and definitely doesn’t stay in one place long enough to sit on anyone’s shoulders. The only air pressure British people feel is when walking into a strong wind.

But I kept hearing it. I met countless Poles who complained that the air pressure made them sleepy. So I came to the conclusion that Poles have some sixth sense that allows them to detect the level of air pressure? Some kind of super power.

Only it was a reverse super power because it takes energy away. A Polish super hero called Captain Ciśnienie wouldn’t have the energy to save anyone from mortal danger!

But that didn’t make any sense, so I just treated such statements as a mild case of hypochondria. I thought Poles who blamed air pressure for their sleepiness were exaggerating or making excuses to have another cup of coffee.

Yet… after living in Poland for 3-4 years…I started to feel it too. On days when the air pressure was low, I literally felt ‘under the weather’.

I’ve heard it’s the same in Munich with a wind that blows off the Alps called the föhn. When it blows, it gives the inhabitants a headache, but newcomers don’t feel it until they’ve been there a few years.

So it took me a few years to pick up this super power and get a feel for the word ciśnienie… only there are days when I wish I hadn’t.

Air pressure wasn’t the only type of weather that caused me confusion when learning Polish.

Like most foreigners, the first time I heard leje jak z cebra (literally, pouring like from a churn), I heard the word ‘zebra’ and assumed that this was the Polish equivalent of ‘it’s raining cats and dogs‘. I didn’t find this too strange because it doesn’t make much sense to imagine cats and dogs falling from the sky… so why not zebras too?

I did ask myself ‘why zebras?’ There aren’t any zebras in Poland except for the ones you use to cross the road.

Another Polish weather idiom is pogoda w kratkę (weather in plaid) which is used to describe changeable weather. When I first heard this, I automatically assumed that kratka was referring to Scottish tartan. The weather in Scotland is extremely changeable, so it made sense to talk about tartan weather.

It also answered the zebra question.

Zebras have black and white stripes, less colourful than tartan, but also arranged vertically. Since a zebra’s stripes are wider, it means the weather changes aren’t so frequent but are more severe…well, at least in my mind.

cats and dogs

If there’s one Polish season that has great branding, it’s autumn. I don’t know who invented the marketing campaign, but all Poles know how to promote this this season effectively. As soon as September arrives, I begin to hear the campaign slogan:

  • Złota Polska Jesień (golden polish autumn)

Indeed, I heard this expression so much that I started using an abbreviation – ZPJ – to save time.

Unlike most marketing campaigns, it is accurate. Poland does have lots of forests and the leaves turn golden in autumn, but it only tells one side of the story. While September and October are fully golden, the period from November to mid-December should be called Szara Polska Jesień (SPJ) because it’s cold, dull and smoggy for weeks on end.

They never mention SPJ in the holiday brochures!

If you want a good weather forecast, then don’t bother with the TV or internet. Poles look to nature when trying to predict the seasons.

I’ve heard Poles predict the depth of the upcoming winter or the raininess of the summer by making reference to one or more of the following:

  • the arrival or departure date of migrating birds
  • the number of babies in a stork’s nest
  • the thickness of the dog’s winter coat
  • whether mice decide to move indoors
  • the appearance of moles in the autumn

I’ve come to the conclusion that this skill of observation is another type of Polish super power.

In the UK, we seem to have lost this connection to nature, and we aren’t able to gather such useful data from animal and plant life about the upcoming seasons. The only exception are cows, but they only predict the next few hours and only one type of weather: rain. If the cows are sitting down in a field, then it will rain shortly. If they are standing up, your picnic can go ahead.

Come to think of it… perhaps cows have that super power thing… and it’s the air pressure that makes them feel sleepy and sit down?

The Family Tree

Posted on by under Learning Polish

Tolstoy wrote that ‘All happy families are alike. Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way‘. What he could have written is ‘All families are alike. Each language describes families in its own way…unhappily for a language learner.’

Naively I assumed that learning Polish words for family members would be straightforward, just a question of substituting English terms for Polish ones. A family is just a family, right?

Nope!

Question#1: How do Poles perceive their in-laws?

In English, the family that you marry into are your in-laws, and to define the relationship, you simply add the suffix -in-law to mother, father, brother, sister etc.

I once had the following conversation with a Pole who got confused by the pronunciation of the word ‘law’:

Pole: I’m going to visit my mother-in-love.

Me: Who? Your mother-in-love?…Oh, your mother-in-law! it sounds a little like ‘love’, but actually it’s ‘in-law’.

Pole: I always thought it was ‘in-love’.

Me: Nope, it’s primarily a legal relationship. Love is secondary.

But on second thoughts, in-love might be a better suffix? After all, it’s because I love her daughter that she became my mother-in-law in the first place! Maybe mother-through-love would be the best version!

I was surprised to discovered that’s there was no Polish suffix for describing in-laws. What I can’t just say siostra prawna or ojciec prawny? Teść, teściowa, szwagier, szwagierka…all these new words to learn, that’s extra effort!

This made me wonder how Poles view their in-laws.

English can be coldly pragmatic sometimes, and the in-law suffix is a good example. If my sister marries, then I gain a brother….but only in the eyes of the law. The in-law suffix suggests it’s only temporary. If my sister divorces, then he’s not my brother anymore.

How do Poles perceive szwagier and szwagierka? Is it like getting a new brother or sister?

Question#2 – Do I need to learn these words for maternal and paternal relatives?

One day, I came across the word stryj. I checked the dictionary and found the translation ‘uncle’. Strange, I thought the Polish word for uncle was wujek? What’s going on? I checked another dictionary and found that the translation of uncle was both wuj/wujek and stryj / stryjek.

Sometimes I trick myself by thinking that words that look the same have similar meanings. So my first thought was that the word stryj was connected to strych (attic). So maybe wujek is your normal uncle, while stryj describes the crazy uncle who lives in the attic?

Apparently not.

I learned that the Polish language has two words for uncle – wuj/wujek (on your mother’s side) and stryj/stryjek (on your father’s side) – and it was the same with aunts, nieces and nephews.

I did some research and it felt like I was opening a can of worms: stryj, stryjna, wujna, pociot, wnuk wujeczny or stryjczny, szurzy and szurzyna… even strange Turkish terms like paszenog!

For a moment I despaired. Do I really need to learn all of these words?

Question#3: Are the stryj’s dying out?

I’ve heard or read the word wujek thousands of times, but only once came across the word stryj. Is it still used? Is the term dying out and being replaced by wujek? Do young Poles have a stryj and a wujek or just two wujeks?

I’m starting to worry about the stryj’s in Poland.

I have this image of the last group of Polish stryjow who are hiding in the wilderness of the Bieszczady mountains. Living on berries and mushrooms, they cling to survival away from civilisation that has forgotten them. Will they survive?

Maybe they’ll soon go the way of the paszenog, the last of whom probably passed away in Świętokrzyskie mountains in 19th century.

family tree4

Question#4: Is the Polish language becoming more streamlined?

Modern English is very streamlined when it comes to describing family relationships. Father, mother, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, husband, wife, daughter, son, grandfather, grandmother, grandson, granddaughter, niece and nephew. Everyone else is a cousin or in-law.

The prefix grand- is a convenient shortcut. To describe a relationship two up or down in the family tree, we just add the prefix grand: grandfather, granddaughter etc, but Polish has separate words for all of these people – dziadek, babcia, wnuk, wnuczka.

Linguistically, the Polish family tree is much more bushy than the English one. But is the tree being trimmed?

  • Has the word kuzyn/kuzynka (cousin) completely replaced wnuk wujeczny and siostra cioteczna?
  • Is Polish losing some of its linguistic richness when describing family relationships?
  • Do modern, smaller families still require these words?

Additional Questions

Besides the above, I also have other questions and thoughts about Polish families, just little things that puzzle me:

  • Why are grandparents called dziadkowie and not babkowie?
  • Can you call a family friend aunt or uncle even though they’re not related?
  • Why isn’t a sister called a bratka?
  • Whenever I see the word ‘teść’ (father-in-law) I think of Robert De Niro’s character in Meet the Parents – a disapproving father-in-law who wants to prove that Ben Stiller isn’t a suitable spouse for his daughter. Am I the only one who worries about failing a lie detector teść?
  • Grand in English means both big and magnificent, so great-grand mother can be considered a compliment. Wouldn’t you like to call your mother’s mother’s mother: wspaniała-wielka matka rather than the one who came before (prababcia)?

 

And that’s the challenge facing a language learner – you’re not learning a static thing. A language is always in the process of evolution. When a word isn’t in the dictionary, you’ve got no idea if it’s because the word is too old or because it’s too new.

And then there are other problems…

Like what to buy my paszenog for Christmas?

And if he even exists!

Hello & Goodbye

Posted on by under Polish Language

The first thing you cover when learning a foreign language is how to say ‘hello’. Once you’ve mastered that, you can move on to ‘goodbye’. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the Polish greeting cześć means both hello and goodbye. ‘How economical,’ I thought, ‘I’ve learned two words for the price of one. Learning Polish is going to be easy’.

I was also surprised to learn that cześć means honour or reverence. In this sense, Polish is more respectful than English. ‘Hi’ is derived from ‘hey you over there‘ and was just used to get the attention of the guy standing in the way of your tractor. ‘Hello’ is what you shout down the telephone to ask ‘is anyone there?‘

Despite being included in a beginner’s first language lesson, greetings and salutations are actually a rich language area, full of nuance and culture. You don’t just say hello, you also show respect, social status and define the closeness of the relationship.

While many Polish greetings have a similar form to English – dobranoc, dzień dobry, do widzenia – there are some expressions that are a little less straightforward to learn:

Pa

When I first came to Poland and spoke very little Polish, I used to give one-to-one English lessons to a manager in a oil company. During the lessons, the manager would receive a lot of phone calls from her employees, some of which she answered in my presence. She would finish each call by saying ‘pa’ and I used to think that it was her dad that was calling.

‘He certainly has a lot of questions,’ I thought, ‘to bother his daughter at work all the time!’

Szerokiej drogi

When I first heard the salutation szerokiej drogi, I didn’t really get it. I understood that it literally means ‘I wish you wide roads’, but was confused why Poles used the adjective wide. If I was to make a ranking of ideal road conditions, I’d put fast roads first, followed by safe in second position. Wide wouldn’t even make the top ten.

But then I heard an anecdote and the expression suddenly made perfect sense.

It concerned an American director who came to work in Poland to run a factory situated 45km from Warsaw. He lived in the city and so commuted to work everyday using a busy road that had one lane in each direction.

The first time he made the trip, he freaked out.

Why? Because it was one of those Polish roads with additional lanes on either side. If you want to overtake, then you drive in the centre of the road, and cars coming the other way move over into these additional lanes. Being American, he’d never seen this style of driving, and he spent the whole trip swerving to avoid cars that were coming directly towards him. As soon as he got to the factory, he went straight to the procurement department and asked them to order him a big Volvo…the safest model available. His employees in the factory taught him the expression szerokiej drogi and jokingly said it to him every time he left to go home.

So actually, the salutation is very literal. Wide roads mean safe roads because there’s room to avoid other traffic. What’s more, wide roads are fast roads because there’s or plenty of room for overtaking.

So I should apologise to those Poles that I doubted. Wide roads are better than fast or safe roads, and when they wished me szerokiej drogi, it was wisdom based on experience!

czitczat6

Witam

The use of witam in Polish has always puzzled me, and it’s actually one word of Polish that I can’t bring myself to use. For me, it just doesn’t make any sense. Okay, it’s useful when you are welcoming a guest to your apartment or a new employee to your place of work, but in other contexts, I find it strange.

And I’ve always been particularly confused by the use of witam or witajcie at the start of emails. What is the writer welcoming me to? The email?

In English this would sound automated, as if the computer were welcoming you:

Welcome to this email.

You will find its contents in the two paragraphs below.

If you are not completely satisfied with the contents of this email, please reply button on the top right of the screen.

We wish you a satisfactory stay in your inbox.

Kłaniam się

I had a landlord in Krakow who always used to use this expression when he came round to collect the rent money. He was medium-height and very skinny, usually dressed in black. As he was leaving, he would always say kłaniam się and he would bow slightly. It was as if he were a butler that was leaving his master for the night.

At first, I assumed it was a regional expression, and that I was hearing the word ‘goodbye’ in a Cracovian dialect. It wasn’t until later that I learned that kłaniam się actually means ‘I bow’.

I can’t help using kłaniam się sarcastically from time to time. Like when I was summoned to give a presentation to a board meeting – I delivered the presentation, answered some questions and left so they could move on to the next topic. So I picked up my laptop, bowed slightly and said kłaniam się as a I backed out of the door.

Cześć.

Pa.

I wish you a wide virtual highway.

Kłaniam się.

Welcome to the end of this post 😉

The Ham Trap

Posted on by under Polish Culture

The problem isn’t that a brain learns too slowly. Problems occur when it learns too fast. Instead of methodically and rationally working out what a word means, sometimes my brain races towards some wildly inaccurate conclusions.

It’s as if my brain were a wild horse, and there are times when I wish I could pull back on the reins and say ‘whoa brain…slow down…let’s get there one step at a time‘.

A friend, Jacek, and I were running for a bus, frantically waving to the driver that we wanted to board. Just as we reached the back door, it slammed shut and the bus began to pull out. When Jacek banged his fist on the bus door and said ale chamstwo, the school of life presented me with a language learning opportunity.

I knew that -stwo meant something like -ness in English, a suffix that turns an adjective into a noun. So hearing chamstwo, I immediately chopped the word into two halves: cham and -stwo. Despite knowing it was nonsense, I couldn’t stop my mind from leaping to the conclusion that I had just heard the English word ‘ham’ in its Polish form.

Ham-stwo…hamness…What could that mean?

Normally, when experience gives you such a learning opportunity, it’s best to pay attention to the context. What happened? Who said what to whom? What was their motivation and what was the impact of their words? Acting like a detective, a clever language learner should be able to deduce what the phrase means, memorize it and store it until they find themselves in a similar situation.

I, on the other hand, couldn’t stop thinking about pork!

ham

I did notice that Jacek was either criticising the bus driver’s behaviour or cursing our bad luck. So, despite knowing it was a waste of time, I searched for English idioms connected to meat that could also describe people or luck:

  • ham: if someone is ham in English, it means they try to show off a talent that they don’t really have. Did Jacek mean that the bus driver was an unskillful show-off?
  • pig: in English, pig is a insult, maybe in Polish they use the meat as an insult instead of the animal?
  • lean: the word lean describes a slim person, as well as a thin slice of meat. Perhaps it means our luck is as lean as a slice of ham?
  • thick as mince / mutton: both these comparatives mean stupid. This could definitely apply to the bus driver!

But none of these seemed to fit the context.

Because we were running late for a match, it wasn’t a good moment to stop Jacek and ask some probing questions on the meaning and usage of the expression ale chamstwo. In any case, he didn’t look in the mood for a linguistic discussion. So I decided to ask him later.

The next day, recalling the incident, I searched my Polish-English dictionary for the word hamstwo, but it wasn’t there. Then I remembered that Poles spell ‘h’ as ‘ch’ or ‘cz’. And there is was…chamstwo…translated as ‘boorishness’, while the adjective chamski was translated as ‘boorish’, and cham as boor. These words are rarely used in English and rather old-fashioned. I don’t think I’ve ever used the word ‘boorish’ in my life.

Leaping to the wrong conclusion again, my brain even suggested, ‘maybe Jacek speaks old-fashioned Polish? He must have picked up the expression from his grandfather’.

But I kept hearing the word chamstwo, chamski or cham…in different situations…and from many different people. And it was rarely used lightly – few people said trochę cham.

Why is there so much boorishness in Poland?, I wondered. If the word boor isn’t used in the UK anymore, does it means that our society has successfully eliminated boorishness?

I decided to take a more methodical approach to learning this piece of vocabulary, and started to ask around. When answering, most Poles responded by giving personal examples and got visibly upset while they were sharing their anecdotes. Indeed, most of them didn’t want to discuss the word chamstwo in much detail, and changed the subject as quickly as possible.

Oh, this question touches a nerve, I thought. The word boorish doesn’t elicit any emotions in a British person, but talking about the word chamstwo definitely make Poles feel awful!

And in this way, I learned that chamstwo describes behaviour that is rude or offensive, and that the word was once used to refer to peasants.

And of course, we haven’t eliminated boorishness in the UK, in fact, I’d say it’s back in fashion. There’s a new British English word which would be a more accurate translation of cham and actually looks very similar. That word is ‘chav’, but it didn’t appear in dictionaries until 1998. The Oxford English dictionary defines it meaning as ‘a young, working-class person who displays loutish behaviour’ so it’s similar to cham in that its definition relates to rude behaviour and social status.

So, for me, learning the word chamstwo was a challenge. A challenge in not jumping to wrong conclusions:

  • it’s not related to pork
  • it’s not old-fashioned
  • and we haven’t eliminated it in the UK, in fact, we’re creating new words for it.

Whoa brain!

Combine Harvester

Posted on by under Polish Culture

When you’re learning a foreign language, you tend to learn one word or expression at a time. There are some words that you can learn in a few minutes, some require repetition over a few days, and some words take years to learn.

That’s how it was with kombinować. It took me years to fully understand what it meant.

At first, I thought it was a no-brainer. Yep, that’ll be the Polish version of ‘to combine’. Easy-peasy.

But in practice, no one ever said what two things were being combined. They just said on coś kombinuje, and in my head I was thinking combine what with what? As a beginner, it’s rude to correct a native-speaker of a language, but I felt like correcting Poles by asking ‘doesn’t that verb need an object, well actually, at least two objects?‘

I bit my tongue and decided to do some research instead. My pocket dictionary translated kombinować as ‘to wangle’. I hate it when you check the meaning of a word, but you don’t understand the translation into your own language. Wangle, what does wangle mean? No one ever wangles where I come from!

Fortunately, the dictionary also translated the expression on coś kombinuje as ‘he’s up to something’. Okay, I thought, so it’s negative and means that someone is trying to hide their true intentions in order to achieve something.

But, one day when we were driving around looking for a parking space, a friend said ‘coś wykombinujemy‘ and parked the car on the pavement between a lamp post and a bus stop. He wasn’t suggesting we enter into a conspiracy or try to hide anything. To my ears, it sounded like he was saying ‘let’s try something creative’. So kombinować had a positive meaning as well, especially if you add wy- at the beginning.

Just when I thought I was getting to grips with kombinować, next up was kombinator. Oh great, not only do I need to work out what the verb means, there’s a noun as well!

To foreign ears, kombinator sounds like a profession in the engineering sector. There’s a branch of mathematics called ‘combinatorial analysis’, and I imagined some Wyższa Szkoła Kombinowania where you study for years to master the science behind kombinowanie.

As far as I could tell, kombinować can be positive or negative depending on the context, but it seemed that calling someone a kombinator was always derogatory. If you took the kombinowanie too far, then you crossed a line and became a kombinator. But what was the deciding factor? Does a kombinator need to break a law, infringe on others’ interests, or simply do it too frequently?

And how to translate kombinator? The best English equivalent is wheeler-dealer from the idiomatic expression to ‘wheel and deal’. Most people associate this with selling used cars, a business activity that certainly offers plenty of scope for kombinowanie.

The more I encountered this word, the broader its meaning became. The more dictionaries I checked, the more possible translations – be up to no good, deceive, contrive, scheme, figure something out, work an angle, fiddle, hustle, wheel and deal, get creative, juggle, try something, conspire, live on one’s wits! And every dictionary gives a different set of translations – I must admit that I’ve never seen such variation in the translation of a single verb. The publishers of English-Polish dictionaries should hold a conference just to agree one set of possible translations…and see if they can narrow it down to four or five English options!

I began to realise that kombinowanie is no ordinary word describing an ordinary activity. It’s part of something deeper, more significant to Polish culture. It’s something of a skill – a problem-solving ability that Poles are particularly good at. The only way to really understand what kombinować means is to observe Poles in action over a number of years, example after example, context after context.

And that’s what I did.

One of my favourite examples of kombinowanie that I’ve observed concerns a removal company. I once employed a guy to move some furniture and actually traveled with him from city to city. He was bald, unshaven and permanently wore a bluetooth headset in each ear which made him look like a pirate. He had two mobile phones and explained that he had two sim cards in each one. He advertised as four different removal firms with four different numbers. When a client called and asked for a price, he would quote a high figure. When the client called him again, thinking they were calling a different firm, he would change his voice and quote an even higher figure. The client, assuming they had shopped around and found the best price, would call back and hire the first firm.

Genius!

oscar

There’s a lot of creativity in kombinowanie. If there were Oscars for the best global examples, then Poles would win every year!

Of course, in this Oscar category, Poles would have one huge, unfair advantage – only they’d know what the word kombinować actually means!

Lessons from Traffic Cops

Posted on by under Learning Polish

Once when I was driving through the Polish countryside, I didn’t slow down when passing through a tiny village. From nowhere, a policeman stepped onto the road and signaled for me to pull over.

It was the first time I had ever been stopped for speeding in Poland.

I’d heard lots of stories from Poles that you could get away with speeding by offering a small bribe to the policeman. Indeed, I knew one Polish sales representative who used to carry lots of promotional gadgets in the boot of his car and would offer them to traffic police whenever he got stopped.

But I had grown up in the UK where bribery is extremely uncommon – in fact, I’d never bribed anyone in my entire life – and honestly, I didn’t even know how to do it!

So as I walked over to the police car, I was full of doubts. How is this going to work? Am I supposed to make an offer? Can I haggle? Should I start straight away or wait until he goes through the formal procedure? But what if I try to bribe him and he arrests me!

Also, linguistically, bribery is a hard interaction to master. It’s based on lots of subtle words and expressions that dance around the topic so as not to make it explicit. At the time, my Polish was pretty basic and certainly not good enough to be clever. Indeed, in the stress of the moment, I’d even forgotten the polish word for bribe!

‘You were going pretty fast,’ the policeman said to start the conversation.

‘Yes‘, I replied, not wanting to deny it.

‘This is a built-up area. The speed limit is 50 kilometres per hour.’

‘I know.‘

‘And you were doing over 70...’ and he showed me the figure 73 on the radar he was carrying.

‘Sorry,’ I said and tried to look as if I’d just learned the biggest lesson of my life.

He paused for a moment.

It’s going to happen now, I thought. He’s established the facts, now he’s moving on to the resolution. Now he’s going to raise this very delicate topic of bribery. Get ready…

‘How about a warning (to może wystarczy ostrzeżenie)?‘ he said.

I’d never heard the word ostrzeżenie before and had no idea what it meant. But, blinded by my expectations, I wrongly assumed it was connected to bribery.

Play it cool, I said to myself. Try and pretend you know what you’re doing. I assumed that I would need to make an offer, but I had no idea what the going rate was. And what was worse, he probably knew that and would see it as an opportunity to take advantage.

So I decided to put the ball in his court.

‘How much does that cost?‘ I replied.

The policeman looked puzzled and slid his cap back on his head. Whoops, I thought, that surprised him. Maybe it’s his first time too?

‘Nothing!‘ he said.

‘Oh, right. I understand,’ I mumbled…even though I had no idea what just happened.

I walked quickly back to the car, still wondering what ostrzeżenie meant.

police2

Some foreigners, when they are stopped for speeding, speak in English only, hoping that the police will give up in frustration. However, on the two occasions that I have been pulled over, I interacted with the police in Polish and they seemed to appreciate that a foreigner was at least trying to speak their language. I also learned some new expressions too.

As well as the Polish word for warning, I also learned the phrase ‘życzę miłego pobytu w naszym kraju‘ from a traffic cop.

The second time I got stopped, the policemen asked me where I was from, and it turned out his brother was working as a policeman in Scotland not far from my home town. At the end of the conversation, he told me to drive more slowly (fulfilling his duty as a policeman) but also wished me a pleasant stay in Poland.

Despite these two lessons, there are definitely more responsible ways to learn Polish, so I stick to the speed limit. I don’t want to push my luck, otherwise, the next time I might end up learning words like mandat or punkty karne!

Imperial Delusions

Posted on by under Learning Polish

My first flat in Poland looked over a bunch of ramshackle huts arranged in rows. I asked my landlord what it was and he said it was a bazaar.

Being British, I grew up hearing and reading tales about our former empire. The adventures of British explorers, soldiers and administrators are popular and describe a world full of strange lands, exotic peoples and quirky cultures. It might be a bit misleading in the 21st century, but I was taught to associate foreign lands with Kipling’s the Jungle Book, the Arabian Nights and the search up the Zambezi river for Dr Livingstone.

So when I heard that there was a bazaar next to my block, my mind raced to ancient Persia, flying carpets and Ali Baba.

When you go to a foreign country, you expect things to be unfamiliar. Yet sometimes, those expectations can go too far and you discover that reality isn’t quite as weird as your own imagination.

So assuming that a Polish bazar was not unlike an Arabian bazaar, I decided to play it safe. For about a month I didn’t go anywhere near it just in case I got tricked out of all my zloties by a snake charmer.

When I finally did venture into the bazar, with my camera ready, it was a great disappointment. There were no oriental silks, no fortune-tellers, and no persistent camel salesmen – just lots of market stalls selling vegetables, shoes and pirated Cds.

No Ali Baba, only Ali Babcia!

pavilion

Another time, a friend suggested we meet at 7pm ‘by the pavilion next to the park‘. I showed up an hour late!

Why? Because I was looking through my imperial lenses again. Because I was looking for a fancy, exotic-looking building near the park. You see, in English, a pavilion is an elegant, often historic building that is used for leisure activities. In Brighton there’s an ornate building called the Royal Pavilion with domes and minarets that was modeled on Indian and Muslim architecture.

So for an hour I wandered around the park, like Livingstone in Africa, looking for splendid neo-colonial palace.

With this goal in mind, I completely overlooked the squat, flat-roofed building in one corner of the park. Whatever that was, it wasn’t a pavilion.

Eventually, I called my friend and she explained it was at the west side of the park. I went to the west-side. Still couldn’t find a pavilion. Called again, asking for more directions. In the end, we had to stay connected while my friend guided me to the pavilion as if I were blind.

I soon learned that in Poland a pawilon isn’t very exotic at all. It just a type of shopping centre in the middle of a housing estate. Just a glass-fronted, concrete box where the local chemists, grocery shops and dry-cleaners are.

No minarets, only mini-markets.

So for a while my colonial imagination confused me a little in Poland, and it took a while to calibrate my expectations to reality.

Yet language also played a part. It was the names given to particular places and buildings that gave me the wrong impression:

  • A galeria doesn’t exhibit paintings?
  • A bar mleczny doesn’t sell milkshakes?
  • and a pasaż doesn’t go anywhere?

If they’d just used dom handlowy instead of pawilon, I might have recognized it at once!

Oh and besides not getting used to its architectural appearance, I couldn’t get the pronunciation of pawilon right either.

To this day, I still say ‘pavilion’ instead of ‘pawilon‘ … for some reason, I just can’t get my tongue to make the switch.

So whenever I pop out to buy some bread or potatoes, there’s a part of me that thinks it’s in India, riding an elephant through a sea of natives towards the gleaming marble domes of an exotic, colonial palace.

Driving into Town

Posted on by under Learning Polish

When you live in a country but don’t fully understand the language, there are times when you can’t tell the difference between a word and a name.

Take for instance, the first time I went sailing in Mazury. In the late afternoon, the rest of the crew would discuss in which port we would spend the night: ‘We could stay in Mikołajki, or go back to Wierzba or there’s always Trzcina.’ During the trip, I was surprised that Trzcina was always an option – whether we were in the northern lakes or down in the south. ‘Wherever this port of Trzcina is,’ I thought, ‘it must be pretty central because it’s only a couple of hours sailing from anywhere in the Masurian Lakes!’

It’s no different on the road.

In the same way that I thought Trzcina (reeds) was a port, a foreigner coming to Poland for the first time might think that Wita is name of a town in Poland. I’ve seen quite a few road signs on which the word Wita is printed in a bigger, bolder font that the actual place name.

Either that or a foreigner might think that Wita is another word to define a town like Dolny or Wielki. ‘We didn’t get much of a welcome in Olsztyn Wita so why don’t we look for some accommodation in Olsztyn instead?‘

Indeed, this is part of a wider issue for a non-native learner – in the final kilometre before any Polish town there are so many billboards, welcome signs, banners and advertisements that you can be overwhelmed.

So to help, I’ve prepared this short guide to arriving or leaving a Polish town:

Arriving

  • wita / witamy = either the town (wita) or its people (witamy) are welcoming you. Personally, I’ve always felt that witamy is a warmer version because it comes from the people. How exactly a town can welcome anyone I’ve never figured out.
  • zaprasza / zapraszamy = in this case, either the town or its inhabitants are inviting you over, but don’t worry, you are not expected to bring a gift.
  • miasto monitorowane = this literally means that the town uses surveillance equipment and often comes right after the witamy sign. Together these signs mean, ‘you’re welcome, but keep your hands where we can see them!’. Basically, the authorities don’t trust you not to break the law as you pass through.
  • warto zobaczyć – this presents three things that are worth seeing in the town. Always disregard the last one, it’s just there to make up the numbers.
  • witamy na ziemi…/ ziemia…wita = often a region or jurisdiction will welcome you, e.g. witamy na ziemi świętokrzyskiej. Foreigners might panic at first, thinking this is a message for aliens, welcoming them to the Planet Earth. Don’t worry, it just means ‘welcome to the land of…‘
  • miasta partnerskie – these are other places with which this town is twinned. If you’ve never heard of any of the towns mentioned, don’t worry, no one has!
  • EU Funds – finally, you might see something that looks more like an enlarged document than a street sign. You can ignore this, it’s just a receipt showing who paid for the pavement.

One challenge with these signs is that they tend to be covered in graffiti, so you might not know which town you’re in, but you will know which football team is trending.

Leaving

It’s the same story when you’re leaving town. Quite wisely, most towns don’t invest too much effort to say goodbye, however, there are some things it’s worth bearing in mind:

  • żegna / żegnamy – to me, this is more personal than do zobaczenia, especially żegnamy. However, if the town welcomed you on the way in (wita), but the people are saying goodbye (żegnamy), then it means that they’re glad to be rid of you.
  • zapraszamy ponownie – the townsfolk are inviting you back. However, if you noticed a miasta monitorowane sign on the way in and you broke a few driving laws, then I wouldn’t go back if I were you.
  • termination sign – in Poland, when leaving a town, there is a sign showing the town’s name with a red line through it. This looks very official as if the town just got cancelled by some bureaucracy. Don’t worry, the town will continue to exist, just not for you. We don’t have such signs in the UK. You just drive out of town without any fanfare. In Polish, there’s an idiom wyjść po angielsku (to leave in an English way) which means to ‘leave without saying goodbye to anyone‘. The same applies to towns and villages in the UK – they don’t say goodbye either.

Radom wita

Billboards & Banners

Finally, a word about billboards and banners. Polish towns extend a warm welcome, but their businesses welcome you and your wallet even more warmly. I must admit that there are so many billboards and banners lining the road into most places that I wonder whether there is a legal requirement, i.e. to register a business, you are obliged to erect a ugly billboard or sign on the road into town.

It seems that, in Poland, if you’re setting up a business, then you don’t have many choices for the company’s name. In fact, there are only 3 options:

1. -pol

The first option is patriotic. You use the suffix -pol to show the world that your business is 100% Polish. This is especially true if you sell food:

  • Szynkopol
  • Indykpol
  • Rybopol

For a logo, it’s common to use a cartoon of a pig, turkey, fish etc, happily dancing its way to the dinner table.

2. -ex / -bud

The second option is for a company that exports a product or service. In this case, it’s necessary to add -ex to the end of the name. The owners hope, rather optimistically, that this gives the company an international profile:

  • Dachmex
  • Żwirex
  • Paletex

The only exception is the construction industry, then it’s necessary to use bud in part of the name:

  • Drogbud
  • Słupbud

3. Two Guys

The final option is used if two Polish guys are setting up in business together. In this case you take one syllable from each of their first names and join them together:

  • Janmat = Janusz and Mateusz
  • Zendar = Zenon and Dariusz
  • Jarmar = Jarosław and Mariusz

To give another example, there’s a furniture company that operates in Poland called Juan. Because of the name, I assumed it was Spanish, but I later learned that it was set up by two guys from Warsaw called Jurek and Andrzej. Stupid me, forgot about the two guys rule!

If you are bored on a long journey, then you can play a game with these company names. It’s a great way to pass the time.

The rules are simple. The first passenger to spot a sign, billboard or banner with one of the above types of company names get the points. As you leave town, the person with the most points wins.

  • -pol = 1 point +  2 additional points if there’s a dancing turkey, fish, pig as a logo
  • -ex/bud = 2 points
  • two guys = 3 points (but you have to say which two names were used)

By the way, if you’re playing this for the first time, avoid Radom, it’s for advanced players only – you’ll have 30+ points before you get anywhere near the city!

The Alphabet Enigma

Posted on by under Learning Polish

Ask a British person how many letters there are in the alphabet and they will instantly answer: twenty-six.

Ask a Polish person how many letters are in the Polish alphabet and they don’t know. Indeed, they don’t even care. The most typical responses are:

  • who cares?
  • never counted!
  • why would I need to know that?

In Britain everybody knows some basic facts – there’s 1 sun in the sky, 4 points on a compass, 12 months in a year, and the first thing you learn on your first day at school is that there are 26 letters in the alphabet.

In Poland, no seems to give a damn how many letters there are.

It’s weird, shocking, even scandalous, and whenever I express this to a Pole, they don’t see the problem.

Without knowing how many letters are in the language, how can you type an email, decode the enigma machine or do something really hard, like play Scrabble?

I guess part of my shock is connected with the fact that I, as a foreigner learning Polish, had to get to grips with many additional letters. Yet Poles don’t even know how many there are!

Another enigma that surrounds the Polish alphabet are the phantom letters Q, V and X. They’re not in the language, but they show up from time to time and this confuses me.

V, for instance, isn’t in the written language, but does exist in body language – I’ve seen many Poles holding up two fingers to show the V for victory gesture. Is this allowed? V isn’t even in the Polish alphabet. Shouldn’t they make a Z for zwycięstwo gesture by drawing a Z in the air… or would people think they’re referring to Zorro?

Then, there’s X which appears in the names of countless Polish firms from Budimex to Metalex, while Q is present in Latin words such as Quo Vadis. So do the letters Q, V and X exist, or don’t they?

Foolishly, I once agreed to play Scrabble in Polish. An English native-speaker gets a surprise straight out of the box when you see the points on the letter tiles. In the English version, Z is worth 10 points while in the Polish version it’s only worth 1. The other most valuable letter in English is Q, which is worth 10, but isn’t in the Polish version. My usual strategy for winning – waiting until I can place the word q-u-i-z on a triple word score – just wasn’t going to work.

scrabble

So I started with a short, simple word – just three letters J, U and Z to spell the Polish word for ‘soon‘:

Me: It’s on a triple word score, so 3 times 6 equals 18 points.

Opponent: There’s no such word, już is spelt with a Ż.

Me: Aren’t the Z’s interchangeable? I don’t have a Z with a dot.

Opponent: No, they’re completely different letters. One is worth 1 point while the other is worth 5.

Me: Oh come on. That’s pedantic. It’s the same letter. Looks the same, sounds the same and comes at the end of the alphabet.

Opponent: No, Z, Ż and Ź are different letters entirely.

Me: But I’m a foreigner, isn’t there’s some handicap system in which I can substitute a normal Z, S or C for the funny ones?

Opponent: No. They’re different letters. You can’t substitute a M for a W by turning it upside down!

Me: Fine, can I have ‘F-U-J?

Opponent: No, it’s not a word.

Me: Of course it is. That’s what foreigners say when they first see the Polish alphabet!

Okay I was being facetious – they look so cute that learners, when they first encounter the new letters, give them special names:

  • funny E
  • Z with a hat
  • A with a tail
  • L with a belt

I guess it’s because they look like Roman letters dressed up in Polish folk costumes with hats, belts, swords and feathers.

In Polish, some of the diacritical marks are called kropki and kreski (dots and dashes), and of course, dots and dashes are also found in Morse code…

…which makes me wonder…

…maybe Polish writing actually contains a hidden code?

Maybe thousands of encrypted messages are hidden in all those dots and dashes and funny tails?

I don’t want to sound paranoid, but what if the sentence ‘Czy świerszcze lubią jeździć na łyżwach?’ includes a hidden message to Polish readers, like ‘never let a foreigner beat you at Scrabble‘?

Just before World War II, when the Polish Army shared their intelligence on the Enigma machine with their British and French allies, did they share everything, or perhaps, did they keep something back?

Just like the number of letters in the Polish alphabet, and the phantom letters Q, V and X… it’s an enigma!