It’s terrible when I haven’t blogged in a while because then I have dozens of stories to tell and I can’t decide what to say first! Sorry for the hiatus!
So in this post, I’ll tell you about my Polish language summer school program! Next post, I’ll update you about my first few weeks of teaching!
I had a fantastic experience at my intensive Polish summer school program. (Dear summer school directors: Please create a year-long Polish language program that I can enroll in because your summer program was awesome. Love, Sarah) The course greatly exceeded my expectations.
The school lasted 3 weeks in August at the university here in Cieszyn. We had 12-14 hours of programming a day, 7-days a week. My brain sometimes short-circuited around hour 9 or 10, but no one could accuse the school’s directors of wasting a minute of instruction time! Every day we had our language classes in the morning and early afternoon (8 a.m. – 1 p.m. or 2 p.m.), then lectures until dinner at 7 p.m., and then extra language activities and games until 10 p.m.
I’d heard that the school attracted students from around the world, but I never anticipated meeting and studying with people from 31 different countries! Tiny Cieszyn was a melting pot in August thanks to the summer school. I don’t know the next time I’ll eat lunch surrounded by people having conversations in over 2 dozen different languages - quite the experience!
The 250 students in the program were from Armenia, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, China, the Czech Republic, Egypt, France, Germany, Holland, Hungary, India, Italy, Japan, Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Mexico, Moldova (I’ll admit I had to look at a map to find Moldova), Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, Ukraine, USA (only me!), and Vietnam. Wow!
Here’s a photograph of the auditorium where we had our lectures and meetings. They hung a flag for every country (it reminded me of the Maine East auditorium).
The majority of program participants were either undergraduate students majoring in Polish at their university in their home country or people getting their Master’s or Ph.D. in Polish, Polish literature, or Polish history and culture. Quite a few people were there because they had recently married a Polish man or woman, and then a small handful of people like me were learning the language because they work in Poland.
It was a little scary at first realizing that almost everyone had formally studied Polish for several years before the summer program (the majority of students had studied Polish for 4+ years). But for our language classes in the morning and afternoon we were divided into groups of 10-15 students by ability level.
Here are two photographs of my wonderful group. We were the “rzodkiewki” group (“the radishes”). We had three instructors: Ola, Marcin, and Ola (fondly called “little Ola” because of her height and to differentiate her from the other Ola). Our teachers were wonderful and I always enjoyed our classes – our lessons were conducted in Polish 100% of the time! I loved watching the teachers teach. It was especially fascinating to observe three different teachers because they all had unique teaching styles and preferred different language teaching methods. I learned a lot about effective language teaching from their great examples.
Sometimes for our lessons we’d leave the classroom and our teacher would get us to practice our Polish in the “real world” – at all the little shops and restaurants around Cieszyn. Here we are trying not to butcher the beautiful Polish language at a small local grocery shop.
Super! For example, I can now say important phrases like:
- Mam dwadzieścia cztery lata. Jestem bardzo stara. (I am 24 years old. I am very old.)
- Amerykanie nie tylko jeść hamburgery. (Americans do not only eat hamburgers.)
- Czy to Twój torebka? To nie jest moja torebka. (Is this your handbag? It’s not my handbag. *Interesting note: When writing in Polish, you always capitalize the word “You,” but you never capitalize the word “I” unless it’s at the beginning of a sentence.)
- Nie mam pracy domowej. Mój pies zjadł moją pracę domową. (I do not have my homework. My dog ate my homework.)
- Chciałbym kupić czterdzieści kiełbasy sto ziemniaki tysiąc pierogi. (I would like to buy forty sausages, one hundred potatoes, and one thousand pierogi. *Polish also has interesting comma rules that I won’t delve into here.)
- Luke, jestem twoim ojcem. (Luke, I am your father.)
- Kocham uczyć języka polskiego! (I love learning Polish!)
But, seriously, I learned a lot and had a lot of wonderful “ah-ha” moments this summer. That’s what’s empowering about language instruction, especially when you’re living in the country. One minute, a phrase or word is empty, with no significance. And then suddenly – click! A word, once a meaningless stream of letters, now represents an object, an idea, or an emotion! And I understand! I hear it, and I understand! Or someone asks me a question, and I can respond!
Probably because I’m young, a woman, and not very intimidating looking, strangers frequently stop me and ask me questions when I’m out and about in Cieszyn. What time is it? Where is the bank? Do you know where this street is? If I wanted to go to Krakow, what bus stop do I need? Can you read this price tag for me? Last year, this was very stressful because I desperately wanted to help, but either 1) didn’t know the answer because I wasn’t well acquainted with the area yet or 2) knew the answer but didn’t know how to express it in Polish! I would apologize and tell them I only spoke a little Polish, but lately, I’ve helped quite a few people! I typically preface by saying that I live in Cieszyn but don’t speak a lot of Polish to reassure them that 1) I know what I’m talking about but 2) my grammar, vocabulary, and syntax probably isn’t 100% correct, but, again, I know what I’m talking about! It might sound a little silly, but it’s also empowering that now I know for certain when I’m saying something incorrectly! Typically I then race home and try to discover how to say it correctly so I'm better prepared for my next interaction.
For me, learning as much as I can of the language this year is important because...
1. It helps me when I teach my youngest and oldest students, where I sometimes need to speak in Polish to help them understand, or if they need to express something important to me but they don’t know how to say it in English. (Great example: This week, a little girl in kindergarten told me in Polish that she desperately needed to go to the bathroom, and I knew we needed to go quickly!)
2. It helps me feel more confident and less vulnerable. I don’t know if “vulnerable” is the correct word, but it’s the best way I can express it – that feeling of helplessness when you desperately want (or need!) to say something, or you need to understand what someone is saying, and you can’t! And although sometimes you feel like you’re learning at a snail’s pace, every time you master a new structure or understand a new phrase someone says, it’s all worth it because you feel more confident when you’re out and about in the world.
3. It’s a sign of respect. Craig Storti in his book “The Art of Crossing Cultures” expressed it best: “Perhaps the most compelling reason to learn the language of another land is the largely symbolic significance of the act of communication. Implicit in that act, after all, is the acknowledgement of the humanity and worth of the other person, especially when one is speaking in a language other than one’s own. In the end, what matters is not what we say when we speak Russian or Chinese, or how well we speak Russian or Chinese, but what the effort to speak Russian or Chinese says about us” (102).
And now, I can’t resist including a mini-grammar lesson here because to me, grammar is the most fascinating aspect of learning Polish.
Polish Grammar 101
Challenge #1: A noun’s form changes depending on its function in the sentence. There are seven cases of every noun (and therefore 14 forms of every noun – 7 singular cases and 7 plural cases) – nominative case (if the noun is the subject of the sentence), genitive (expresses possession), dative (indirect object), accusative (direct object), instrumental (expresses the means by which something is done), locative (with certain prepositions), and vocative (direct address).
What’s tricky about learning Polish is that every new vocabulary word is, in reality, 14 new vocabulary words. In English, if you learn the word “dog” you have to know the singular and the plural – “dog” and “dogs” – and you’re good to go. In Polish, you need to know all 7 cases, in singular and plural. Here’s what you have to memorize to accurately say that you truly know the word “dog” (“pies”) in Polish.
Forms of “Pies” (“Dog”)
Singular
Nominative: pies
Genitive: psa
Dative: psu
Accusative: pies
Instrumental: psem
Locative: psie
Vocative: psie
Plural
Nominative: psy
Genitive: psów
Dative: psom
Accusative: psy
Instrumental: psami
Locative: psach
Vocative: psy
To me, I’d never guess that “pies” (singular nominative) and “psów” (plural genitive) both referred to the same noun – “dog”. They look and sound very, very different. If I saw them in a text and didn’t know the word “pies,” I’d guess that they were two different nouns with different meanings, not two forms of the same word.
In Polish, creating a sentence isn’t only about knowing the vocabulary and putting vocabulary words together; it’s about understanding the precise role of each word in the sentence and changing each word’s form to reflect that role.
Challenge #2: Polish nouns also have 3 genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter. Nouns and their adjectives must agree in gender (masculine, feminine, or neuter), case (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, locative, vocative), and number (singular or plural). I won’t list the adjectives here, but if you’ve done the math, you’ll realize that for every adjective (example: “big”), there are 42 different forms of that one adjective, and which of the 42 forms you say depends on if the adjective is modifying a masculine, feminine, or neuter noun and that noun’s case.
To quickly illustrate the complexities of Polish grammar with gender, case, and number, I’ll give you four basic examples:
1. To jest czarny długopis. Mam czarny długopis. (This is a black pen. I have a black pen. “Pen” is a masculine noun. “Czarny długopis” is the masculine, nominative, singular form of “black pen” and it’s also the masculine, accusative, singular form.)
2. To jest czarny kot. Mam czarnego kota. (This is a black cat. I have a black cat. “Cat” is also a masculine noun, but it’s an animal and there are special exceptions for animal words. Therefore, it’s not identical to “pen.” “Czarny kot” is the masculine, nominative, singular form of “black cat” and “czarnego kota” is the masculine, accusative, singular form.)
3. To jest czarna torebka. Mam czarną torebkę. (This is a black handbag. I have a black handbag. “Handbag” is a feminine noun. “Czarna torebka” is the feminine, nominative, singular form of “black handbag” and “czarną torebkę” is the feminine, accusative, singular form.)
4. To jest czarny krzesło. Mam czarne krzesło. (This is a black chair. I have a black chair. “Chair” is a neuter noun. “Czarny krzesło” is the neuter, nominative, singular form of “black chair” and “czarne krzesło” is the neuter, accusative, singular form.)
It’s like a language puzzle!
When we weren’t memorizing forms, we had a lot of fun activities in the evenings.
We watched a cycling race (the Tour de Pologne) that went through Cieszyn.
One night, my classmate 薛潇迪 (Stella) from Beijing treated my classmate Irmgard and me to a wonderful, home cooked Chinese meal!
