Polskieradio

I took my Polish books on vacation with the best intentions, packed neatly in a squarish black duffel, about the size of a standard concrete block, and about as weighty. I unzipped it once to remove Norman Davies’s Europe, which itself, alone, at 1136 pages of text, and another 250 of notes, appendices, and maps, accounted for much of the structural integrity of that parcel of wishful thinking. Though Davies is the foremost English (Welsh, actually) historian of Poland, and though Poland is understandably and geographically central to his compendious survey, and though reading European history thereby contextualizes Poland and Polish history, I’m feeling lazy and undisciplined so far this summer. And my Polish fades in the sunshine and the heat. It’s 102°F here today, 38.8°C. Grammar puddles, vocabulary evaporates, rippling.

In languorous resistance, I’ve taken to reading the news, wiadomości, from the website Polskieradio, the headlines anyway, nagłówki. Parsing the headlines provides a not overly tedious grammar refresher and a gentle spur to adding vocabulary: I look up and write out 20 words a day (I know! but it’s hot.). Though I’ve noticed it before, I’m beginning to ponder the suffix –karz, which denotes professional activity: lekarz (“doctor”), piłkarz (“soccer player”), bramkarz (“goalie”), piosenkarz (“singer”), dziennikarz (“journalist”), koszykarz (“basketball player,” or “basket-maker”). –Karz or –arz is not the only suffix with this function; there is –ysta or –ista, as in dentysta and tenisista (“tennis player”), but I was wondering if there were a related word karz, meaning “a person who,” or karzać, a verb, “to engage in.” No such word appears to exist. The closest is karzeł, which means “dwarf.” I’m guessing there’s no connection.