My grade is in: A. I would have been happy with anything B or better, and to be honest, a grade in the B to A- range would probably be a more accurate representation of my achievement. According to our grading standard, A is supposed to represent “outstanding” performance, which, again, to be honest, I rarely aspire to anymore because, in my heart, I know myself to be somewhat lazy, troche leniwy, or, at the very least, leisurely. Stand out performance should be a pinnacle of industry and genius, a form of overachievement, but I know I can work harder and do better. I excuse and remind myself that Polish is a difficult language—even for the native Russian speaker in our class.
I have learned a great deal and even begun to forget some of what I’ve learned and memorized, but I’m registered for second semester Polish and will continue on my journey. Among the lessons, primary is that language study reveals our common humanity, our shared Chomskyan apparatus for communicating the world, as well as language’s tacit influence on our apprehending and interpreting it. (We don’t quite live in a prison-house of language, or if we do, it’s an unusually expansive and minimally secured institution. Or, linguistically, we are more or less out on probation.) Even as I wonder why Polish speakers would solve a language problem their way instead of how we do it in English, I can comprehend how they solve that problem and even appreciate its occasionally superior elegance. So that each language is like a kaleidoscope: it fractures the world differently, diffracting and refracting, sometimes bizarrely complexly, though never quite unrecognizably, renders it askew, aslant, like Picasso’s portrait of Ambrose Vollard. A foreign language is at the same time both foreign and language, the latter of which is evolutionarily deeply familiar.
The differences—arbitrary, unique, and frustrating initially to language learners—become, at last, distinctive and charming. For example, in Polish there are no definite or indefinite articles, no “the,” no “a.” So ubiquitous in our everyday speaking, we think we can’t do without them in English, and we don’t, but we could, maybe. In many Slavic languages, like Polish, “The definiteness and indefiniteness of a noun is determined by context” (Swan, 5). That is to say, definiteness and indefiniteness of noun is determined by context. Not much difference, really, in sense, but the absence of articles affects the sound and cadence of an expression, which makes the familiar strange and sometimes funny owing to its strangeness. In a sweet little romantic comedy, Big Trouble, for example, some lightweight Russian mobsters deal bombs and small arms out of a “bar” in Miami, Florida, and give utterance to gems of misspokenness: “We sponsor girls’ softball team,” “maybe I have item for you,” “How can I help FBI?” and when accused of dealing thermonuclear weaponry, rejoin, “Is bar,” then “I want lawyer.” With their amusingly rolled r, the effect delights, though, remembering that Russian has no present tense form of “to be,” the “Is bar” line may represent an instance of comic linguistic license.
Three weeks until Beginning Polish II. Some opportunity to explore the language and culture outside the covers of our text.
