Language is like a bascule bridge. Great for connecting with people but a complete barrier if the bridge is up and you don’t share a language.
Now, being a native English speaker, I rarely encounter the bridge being up. Being the most influential world language, it gives a privilege to anyone from an Anglo-phonic country. But this privilege breeds laziness, arrogance and closed-mindedness.
If you are British and speak a foreign language (and don’t have a significant family influence), I would say you are very much a minority. And considering the British are not a nation of hermits who never travel abroad, I don’t think this is too good a thing.
I know I can’t learn a new language at all in 61 days but I can try a new one.
We’ve gone for Polish.
The original reason to this stems from a very delayed flight from Fes, Morocco to London Stansted. Cat, Rob and I thought we’d get decent seats by dashing straight to the front of the queue when our flight was finally called. Alas, we’d delivered ourselves to the queue for those who have pre-booked seats and were actually at the very back of the line. drat.
This meant that when we eventually boarded the aviation machine we had to split. I finished off a row and had found a Polish girl to chat to for the journey. Inevitably I ended up chatting about my project and she began teaching me some of her native tongue.
A week later and she had emailed to keep in contact offering me a number of basic Polish lessons, like this one:
I tried searching for books on learning some basic Polish but have actually really struggled. I’m sure I can hunt some down off Amazon but visiting every Waterstone’s I walked past as well as a visit to Croydon Library has left me quite empty handed – something I found quite surprising considering Polish is the second most spoken language in the UK.
I did come across one book that looked good though. A German girl next to me on the tube once was reading something like ‘Polish in 3 Months’. She had been recommended it by a friend she was doing a language swap with – teaching each other their respective languages. I did find it interesting that she was learning Polish from English rather than her native German. I’d love to one day be that lingual.
My problem I don’t have 3 months, in fact I have about 3 days left of this thing. So, I’ve immersed myself in as many Youtube videos as I can possibly find and thought, watching films for a language is quite fun…
It was then that I decided to head to Dalston Kingsland Highstreet, an area of London I had never explored before. I could not believe the diversity of the place and on a Saturday a real hive of non-bee activity. I popped into this place, the Rio Cinema. A proper old-school style cinema, I hope it’s independent. Regardless, I could see myself coming here again.
I had come to see the Shortwaves Short Film Festival. An afternoon of short Polish films that was touring around Europe. I was a wee bit late so had to come in towards the end of the first film. This proved problematic. It was so dark on entering the auditorium that I could barely establish where seats, people or walkways were. It didn’t help that the film they were showing displayed a night scene. I had to linger at the back until my eyes adjusted.
Once they did and I found myself a far too comfy seat to enjoy I set about watching these Polish shorts. They ranged from 5 to 18 minutes in length. I adore short films. Considering my short attention span and tendency to sleep when in comfy seats these were ideal. Short, snappy and entertaining. They covered a range of genres from documentaries to dramas to animation.
Most importantly, I was beginning to pick up a word or two of what they were saying. Only basic stuff like ‘tak’ meaning yes and ‘dziękuję’ meaning thank you but this is a start no? Also, the films allowed me to hear how Polish sounds.
Later that day I tried my first bit of conversation. Wrote some lines to Magda. See what she thinks.
But for now I’m just going to continue learning the odd word here and there and try to make few of them add up to wódka…
