Last week’s quiz was a revelation in humility and a reminder that however much you think you know, or even know you know, you really don’t know that much, never much more than squat. A grades on previous quizzes and homework assignments had led me to imagine—falsely, prematurely—that one day I might actually get the hang of this language, that at some point in the not too distant future, I might actually hear, read, or speak an entire sentence with almost instantaneous and perfectly felicitous comprehension. A simple sentence, to be sure, with a single subordinate clause, perhaps, but……. But, no; one of the quiz questions, beginning with the instrumental form of “who,” Kim, completely disabused me of that fantasy. Kim who? was my immediate take on the opening phrase. Kim is not a Polish first name (Kim nie jest polskim imieniem.) Another question and another question would stump me at first, then permit me to gather the relevant words, then wait impatiently as I assembled a plausible response, double-checking the endings, correcting the obvious error or two, then moving uncertainly on. Leave it! My brain churned through them all, abandoning only one translation item completely untried. I was sorry and embarrassed that I could not engage, could not even begin to engage, that enigmatic line. A fifty-year-old Ph.D. is still a schoolboy.
As our instructor consoled us that our quizzes would only get more difficult as we amassed words and grammar rules and syntactical practices and knowledge of those damned endings, I wilted a bit, sighed. His twitting brought to mind a Monty Python sketch that summed up our challenge in its droll, off-hand, and premonitory way. Not the “Learning Italian” sketch, in which the instructor, an Englishman, clumsily models Italian to a roomful of native Italians, but rather the “Great Actors” sketch, in which Alan, the interviewer, fawningly inquires of Sir Edwin how many words he had to say as King Lear at the Aldwitch in 1952, as if acting were like weight-lifting.
"Sir Edwin: Ah, well, I don't want you to get the impression it's just a question of the number of words... um... I mean, getting them in the right order is just as important. Old Peter Hall used to say to me, 'They're all there Eddie, now we've got to get them in the right order.' And, er, for example, you can also say one word louder than another--er, 'To *be* or not to be,' or 'To be *or* not to *be*,' or 'To be or not to *be*' you see? And so on.
Alan: Inflection."
Thank you, Alan. But in learning Polish, inflection would be called intonation; inflection, of course, has to do with the damn endings. All of which suggests, alas, that learning Polish is ultimately more difficult than becoming a great actor. Lots more words to learn, order to get them in, pitch to perfect, AND endings. Oh, yes, and it’s all, eventually, ad lib.
