I'd Like to Buy a Vowel, Please

Letters in this chart are trickier than they appear

I have been in Poland for nearly three months now and I am embarrassed to say that I can not yet put together a coherent sentence in Polish. While I have tried studying on my own, I have not yet taken any lessons. And, as I have mentioned before, it is pretty easy for me to get by without speaking Polish for several reasons:

• I work in an office where English is the official language.
• Many people here speak English. 
• The vast majority of restaurants I have been to have English menus and English speaking staff.
• I have an app with a pretty decent Polish translation function.
• Most movies are shown in their original language with Polish subtitles.
• Internet access gives me more sources of entertainment in English than I can possibly consume and I have not yet had my TV connected to watch Polish programming. 

I managed  pretty well with Armenian, but in that case I had mandatory language lessons starting on the day I arrived, continuing for two months, six days per week, four hours per day. I also speak passable Spanish, but I studied it in school for six years. Having to schedule around work and other things makes it harder to get myself motivated to dig in. But one thing that has held me back from diving in: the language intimidates me because there are so many rules.

I often hear that English is very difficult to learn but being a native speaker you don't really appreciate how hard it can be. I never learned about cases until I was learning Armenian; I vaguely remember being taught about things like past progressive, present perfect and other verb tenses; and other than a curiosity about etymology I would likely never know about the origin of words in English. There are definite rules in English, but at this point, I know if something sounds right or not without being able to tell someone what the grammatical rules are. 

My Armenian lessons were the first time I remember hearing about genetive, nominative, dative and indicative cases, butt luckily there were no language genders to worry about. Polish, on the other hand, has cases, genders and lots of pronunciation rules (and exceptions thereto) so there appear to be dozens of forms a word can take and different pronunciations may apply to different forms. And to my as yet untrained ears, a lot of them sound alike. I have learned from experience that listening comprehension is my weak point in language acquisition and being self conscious about making mistakes often prevents me from trying out things that I learn. 

It shouldn't be so hard. The Polish alphabet is the same as the English one, but some letters (Q V and X) are only used in foreign words that have been adopted into use here. It's pretty easy to remember that W is pronounced the way V is in English and that C is pronounced like TS. But there are four different letters or letter combinations that are pronounced like "SH" and three that sound sorta like J. Vowels with marks above or below them are pronounced differently than an English speaker would expect (some with a sort of swallowed sound). And that L with a line through it? That's like an English W. During my Peace Corps days, I knew a guy from Poland named Łukasz. Not knowing any better, we pronounced it like "Lucas". When I saw him in Warsaw after we had both left Armenia, he finally corrected my pronunciation: it sounds like "Wookash". The cities of Lódż and Wrocław are not pronounced "Loads" and "Roklaw") - they are pronounced "Woodge" (kind of a triple word score of pronunciation) and "Vrotswav". I still have a mental block about pronouncing one of the two U sounds before the W sound (as in stół, which is the word for table) but I am trying to get past that. 

Then there are the seeming lack of vowels in places. To an English speaker words one letter words like "a" (and, but) or "i" (and) are easy to understand, but not words like "w" (on, in, to) or "z" (from, with, of, about). A common name here is Piotr, and the R is almost silent, but not quite. The word "przepraszam" (to say 'excuse me') is pronounced like "sheprasham" with a hint of a "P" at the beginning. 

I've managed to get the pronunciation pretty well figured out as I have gotten some compliments on it. The problem is that I really only speak menu so far. The first words I committed to memory besides basic pleasantries are those for milk, butter, chicken, onion, honey, pepper, water, juice, beer.....you get the idea. Others I remember from hearing them so often before I even had any idea how to spell them ("następny przystanek", which means "next stop"). And words like "informacja", "normal", "dokument" and "dyrektor" are pretty easy to figure out.

Like other languages I have gotten at least familiar with, there are words in Polish that have other meanings in English. These include words such as "ten" (the masculine form of "that"), "pan" (which means "sir"), "pod" (under) but there aren't too many that I have encountered so far. 

I have not been a complete slacker, though, having availed myself to a free self-study course I was directed to online and I understand some of the basics now. And I truly do plan to take classes. While there are plenty of ways to get by here speaking English, I already run into some situations that are more difficult than they need to be, such as

• The English translations on menus aren't always accurate so I sometimes wind up with something other than I was expecting. 
• I can point at what I want in a store, but can't ask if they have something I don't see and I can't ask questions on a menu sometimes.
• Some movies from the US have scenes that are not in English and are subtitled. Not surprisingly, the subtitles are in Polish. [Thank you, director of the new Planet of the Apes movie - can we please go back to Roddy Mc Dowell in a rubber mask speaking in fine British English?]
• It is difficult to establish friendships if you have to insist on other people accommodating you.  
• Two words: Health Care. 

On the last point, there are English speaking doctors here, but not all are fluent and trying to communicate about the intricate details of dental implant procedures through an interpreter is not an ideal situation. Likewise, discovering that a prescription I was filling was not for the supply I was expecting (surprise - they don't seem to do the refills method that my local Duane Reade in New York does) was difficult to discuss with a pharmacist who spoke limited English. 

But overall, I think that at least attempting to learn the language is the right thing to do. Even if I speak poorly, I believe the effort will be appreciated and show that I am not just marking time here - that I see myself living here, even if it is for a limited duration. I will continue my self studying, sign up for a class and keep plugging away. 

So, even though I have been here nearly three months already, I guess I can also say in my defense that I have only been here for three months. Jestem tu tylko na trzy miesiące. Or something like that.