#brookspolishpractice
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I'm not doing an official Polish update post just yet since I've only done a little bit of actual practicing with Polish in the last week. But I did start researching!
First off, I want to go into detail to explain my connection to WW2 and why it is one of my special interests. As you may know from one of my posts on this blog, half of my family is from Germany.
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My Oma came from a very tiny farming community (Voitsberg) probably less than seven hours away from the Polish border. My entire life, I've known that I am German and grew up eating German food and hearing stories about Germany.
My mom was born here in the US. But my aunts and uncles were born in Germany, and some still have German citizenship. The first time I learned anything about Germany that I truly remembered was when I was six or seven.
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We were at the scholastic book fair. The scholastic book fair is the hallmark of any early 2000s public school childhood, at least in the US. Scholastic, an popular publishing company, would set up book faires for a week in the spring in school libraries. The books were usually never cheap, and they always had fun toys as well as interesting books. It was my favorite time of year, and you were very lucky if your parents came because then they might pay for something. My parents always somehow sent me with just enough money to afford an eraser or something. Never any of the good books lmao
That year, my mom stopped me from running around and pulled out this one book. It was a children's book on Anne Frank. She said, "You should really read this, sweetheart. It's important that you do." And I was very much a "if the cover doesn't look pretty or have fairies on it, I'm not interested" kind of kid so I was like um, thanks, and promptly forgot about it entirely. She did explain it all to me, but I honestly don't remember fully hearing her.
Anyway, years later, I learned about the Holocaust in school. And as someone who was originally quite proud of being German, this hit me hard. I was a super sensitive child, and I am still a sensitive person.
As a child, and this is so fucking morbid, I used to watch a lot of murder shows with my mom and research kidnappings and disappearances of other kids. I'd watch YouTube videos about kids who died in car crashes and just super gruesome and violent ways. And I did this because I took everything extremely personally. I thought it was my job to carry the weight of every bad thing that ever happened to anyone, and so id sit there and watch videos like that specifically so I could remember their stories.
So, when I say learning about the Holocaust hit me hard, I mean that. I actually became lowkey obsessive with it. I thought that if my ancestors could do that to other people, that had to mean that I was where that violence ended. I'd go on Holocaust memorial websites when I was eleven, and research the missing people online. I'd try to match up missing and displaced children to people on Facebook, I'd read books on this stuff constantly, and I'd pay extra attention in school when they taught us about it.
It hit me even harder when I realized how personal Anne Frank actually is to me. Anne Frank was born on June 12th, which is my mother's birthday. And she and her family were taken in by the Nazis on August 4th, which is my birthday. She lived in a city not far from where my grandmother grew up and in a city like maybe thirty minutes to an hour out from where my great aunt worked.
Reading her diary as a kid, I felt immensely close to her and guilty for what my ancestors out her and her family through. Even more so now that I know she was likely bisexual as well. If I could talk to anyone famous today, I'd talk to her.
Anyway, I carried a lot of shame for most of my life because of my German ancestry. This unit in school always came with crying and guilt on my part. It made me genuinely sick to know that this was in my bloodline.
Fortunately, my mom (or maybe my older sister?) told me when I was fourteen, just like super casually mentioned it, that my family helped protect a Jewish family during the Holocaust. She told me that my Oma was only five years old at the time, so she didn't know a lot. We don't know who the family was. But we know that our family either hid them, or provided them with food often.
I don't think y'all understand the relief I felt upon hearing this. Remember I carried this weight on my shoulders for years, like at like four or five years. But I still had a lifelong interest in Jewish history, WW2 and the Holocaust. As a direct result of my ancestry, I decided to study European history in college and plan to get my masters in something to do with Jewish history or human rights.
As I said before, I grew up with extreme guilt about being German. But also with an intense passion for human rights. As a child, I lived in Hawaii. In school, we learned American history and we learned Hawaiian history. And for those of you who don't know, Hawaiian history is SAD.
It's upsetting and I'll never not fully agree that they shouldn't even be a fucking state. In short, their sovereignty was ripped out from beneath them by a country that should have been an fucking ally. When European settlers came to Hawaii, 1/3 of the population was wiped out from disease. 1/3 was forced to become more "civilized". And 1/3 died from other factors. I learned all this as a ten year old, and I was horrified. I also learned that Hawaii is still continuously abused. They truly deserve their kingdom back. If you go to Oahu, you can visit the palace. It's beautiful. It's the only state that was once a kingdom.
Currently, I'm feeling the same horror about the partitions of Poland. I tend to take extreme violence upon others statehood and cultures very personally because of everything stated above, and this just made me really angry. It's probably one of the saddest histories I've ever read, and I just told y'all about Hawaii.
Anyway, the map at the beginning of this post was Poland before the partitions.
And this is Poland five years after the last partition.
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The green territory is Austria, the yellow is Prussia, and Russia is beige. The former Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth boundary lines are highlighted in red.
Apparently, the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth was, in the 16th and 17th centuries, one of the most powerful empires in Europe. In the late eighteenth century, however, the country was picked apart by it's imperialist neighbors, Russia, Prussia and Austria, until it began to disappear completely.
Except an entire landmass with people and customs and history cannot just disappear, no matter how badly Mother (insert one of the neighboring country's names) wants it to. It's still there.
Some eighteenth century authors wrote about it, and many satirists had opinions on the partitioning.
"All contemporary social crimes have their origin in the partition of Poland. The partition of Poland is a theorem of which all present political outrages are the corollaries."
VICTOR HUGO, Les Misérables, 1862
Another person, a foreigner, wrote that:
"Thus on the very frontier itself we got the feeling that from this point we were outside the precincts of real European civilisation."
GEORG BRANDES, Polen, 1888
By the end of the 18th century, Poland was struggling to maintain it's national identity underneath the boot of russification in those parts of the partition and germanization in other parts. In the Prussian and Russian partitions, Catholic churches changed to Orthodox churches, for example. This is not a small thing, by the way. Poland is largely a Catholic country. This must have been not only extremely insulting, but also so enraging.
Warsaw became a fortress meant to ensure there would never be any fighting back on the part of the Polish people. Soldiers manned the streets, and Tsar Nicholas even told the Polish people what would happen if they dared to dream of an independent Poland.
"I ordered for this Citadel to be built and I declare that with the slightest attempt to rebel, I will order the city to be bombarded, I will ruin it, and be sure that I will not allow it to rise from the rubble." Fucking dick.
By the 1860s, Polish was banned in schools. Well, it was being erased from every aspect of social life. But especially in schools. "The Poles call this period the 'Apukhtin night', after a Russian school superintendent whose dream it was to hear Polish mothers singing Russian lullabies to their children. The fate of the Poles in Prussia is similar." I'm sorry, but that literally sounds like some kind of fucking fetish because what the actual hell? Like that's strangely specific. Just say you have a mommy kink and move on. You don't have to traumatize a whole country. That fact really gives me the ick. But I digress.
The cool thing about Polish people is they're pretty much all baddies. I've never met one that wasn't. I say this because of course they tried to find ways around this shitty arrangement. As that one guy from Jurassic park said, "Life will find a way."
One of my favorite examples that I read about on the page I found was Wojciech Drzymała. "He was a Polish peasant from the Grand Duchy of Poznań, who for almost four years fought a legal dispute with the Prussian authorities over permission to build a house on a plot of land he had bought." Basically, he wasn't able to build his house even though he should have been able to despite all the red tape. So, he cleverly decided to sit his wagon on the land and move it a little bit every day so that he could argue that "a mobile vehicle was not subject to the building regulations." Which is proof alone that even people in the 18th century were fucking hilarious. That's literally so clever 😂
There was a lot of censorship as well. Not just with the Polish language. Of literature, newspapers, magazines, you name it. Even printing words like "feeling of unity" or "freedom" was not allowed because it might give the Polish people hope, and God knows we can't risk the establishment crumbling under the weight of its own bullshit.
No talking about Polish music or culture or national dress. You like polish romanticism? Not allowed, dumbass. Go sit with your dunce cap on and think about what you just suggested. No enjoying your own culture in your own country for you. 😐
I have a lot more research to do. But this is what I've got so far. Sorry if my tone at any point was disrespectful to anyone except Austria and Russia. It actually really pisses me off when I read about things like this, and that's why I'm so passionate about human rights. I won't lie when I say I cried a little reading about this. It just makes me genuinely upset to read about it. I'm so grateful to the kind anon who directed my research! 💖💞 You are an angel.
Also, if anyone is curious as to where I got the overview of most of my research, I'll direct you to this super cool and interactive website! I really like it, and it's given me a lot of places to look for further research.
Until next time! ☺️
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Dobry wieczór!
Today's soundbyte says: Cześć! Jestem z Ameryki. Mój ojciec jest zambijski. Moja mama jest Niemką, Włoszką i rodowitą Amerykanką. Ja mieszany. Mowie po angielsku i uczę się mówić po polsku. Miło mi poznać! Do widzenia!
I'll be honest. I struggled with every single word in this video today. You can even hear it in my goodbye 😂 I hated every second of this simply because no syllable would come out right. It might be because I still have a sore throat from being a bit sick the last few days.
Since I've been feeling a bit better, I decided to get out of bed and do some extra studying for Polish today.
Here's what I did:
1. Duolingo, of course. I try to do this in the morning, but I slept in until well after noon today so I just did this as soon as I woke up.
2. Took notes from the Teach Yourself Polish book. I'm on unit 2 now, but I'm going to continue to work on memorizing everything from unit 1. I want to make sure I can recognize and say every word I was taught. Today, I learned how to go into detail about myself and share where I am from and what my nationality is.
In this book, they only share the Polish words for European countries (and Australia, Canada and the US) 😃 since apparently the Asian, South American and African continents didn't exist in 1994 when this book was published. I had to Google the word for Zambia.
Though I know my nationality is different from my ethnicity, I wanted to practice saying the different words anyway. I was hoping that when I was explaining that I am mixed, I didn't accidentally use some sort of informal slur. Unfortunately, I might have? It feels a bit like a slur.
Interestingly enough, I looked into the polish words for mixed and had a really good laugh when I realized the not only does the word for biracial mean, of course, biracial, it can also mean promiscous and crossbreed. So, um. Yeah. I'm not sure if that's what people actually say there, but I likely won't be referring to myself as a crossbreed on purpose if I ever get the chance to use Polish. I'd rather just say I am white and black. The other word I found is actually unfortunately even more of a slur.
There's a whole history behind it in the US, but it's also very much tied to Europe (I've met Europeans who get upset at the mere idea that a word they use could be racist, and claim I'm just pushing American issues onto them---as if the US isn't quite literally made up of European (and others, of course) descendants who passed this cultural lingo down through the generations and these culture issues faced the African diaspora today aren't absolutely faced around the world, including in Poland.)
The other word was mulatka, which means mulatto. I generally don't use this word, and neither do most Americans. But it is a word that was historically used to refer to mixed race children of African and European lineage. It is generally considered offensive, though some mixed race people have taken it back, such as American born rapper Latto (formerly known as Miss Mulatto). Fun fact: She grew up in the same town as I lived in during middle school around the same time as me, and had quite literally the same experiences as me 😃 She didn't go to my school, but hers was not far from mine.
Anyway, finding out this low-key offensive terminology to describe myself actually led me to an interesting article about black lives in Poland.
It was really eye opening for me, as I had no clue about this issue in Poland. I, unfortunately, wasn't surprised. Not because I think Poland is racist, but more so because I know that anti-blackness thrives everywhere on this earth. It's next to impossible to escape.
I also found this article because I read something similar to the above article when reading about police brutality and mistreatment toward black Germans a few months ago and was interested.
Interesting enough, my mother met a Polish woman and her husband at work today and had a conversation about Poland. Somehow the conversation got to be about race, and the Polish woman insisted that wasn't an issue in Poland at all. No one cares about that.
My mom told me that after they left, someone she works with who grew up in Poland and is a person of color said that woman was a liar. Racism is awful there.
Obviously I have no idea, as I am merely an American with a months worth of knowledge about Poland and it's culture. But I will say that I do know a few things about Europe, from personal experience as well as from friends, and this doesn't sound totally far from what might be true given what I've learned about Belgium (a friend got called the N word multiple times a day and that's the nicest thing she heard), France (follow a mixed race family who has shared her daughter's experience being told she couldn't play with a few little girls by the children bc she was an ugly monkey), England (Literally just look up any article about Meghan Markle and her son), Germany (Police bias, for one thing), Russia (A great example is their routine use of blackface in their performances despite international outcry), Romania (a few friends of mine were called the N word multiple times while a group of teenage boys laughed and pointed at them despite being asked to stop and then lied to the hostel owner about not knowing what the word meant), the list goes on.
Anyway, all of the articles I found made me viscerally upset. So, I tried to just save everything to read in pieces when I'm in a better mindset to take the level of racism I was seeing.
Here are a few of the articles I found
Blackface in elementary schools
Racism toward Black and Roma people in elementary schools
People of color fleeing Ukraine being attacked by Polish nationalists
The first one upset me most, but is something I know isn't central to just Poland. The Netherlands, if I remember correctly, also celebrates a holiday that includes Blackface (look up Black Pete), as well as Russia, who regularly engaged in blackface in their ballets at the Mariinksy theatre (which is state funded).
I've gotten into arguments about why blackface is offensive in the past, and definitely dogpiled on in YouTube comments for defending someone who pointed out the hurtful past of this practice.
People argued that it was an American problem, but spreading stereotypes is still spreading stereotypes and it is always harmful to those that are being stereotyped.
Anyway, I decided that I wanted to look into more cheerful things for now because that really, really disturbed me.
5. I researched the Polish National Ballet 🩰🦢🇵🇱!
The Polish National Ballet has a very interesting history, as written above. However, I was most interested in learning about the ballerinas and ballerinos associated with Poland. I learned about two ballet masters, Helena Cholewicka, who was considered a polish prima ballerina assoluta, which at the time was the most important title for any ballerina/o and she kept it for a little over a decade, and Aleksander Roman Turczynowicz, who was a ballet master and is the namesake of the Polish National Ballet School.
Here's what I learned about Helena Cholewicka:
🦢 She studied under the guidance of the Italian dancer Maria Taglioni (1804-1884), who at that time was the leader of European ballet stages.
🦢She was the first in the history of Polish ballet to receive the title of "prima ballerina assoluta"
🦢She was not considered a pretty dancer. She was considered frail with a slight build and and "unattractive exterior." Interestingly enough, Anna Pavlova was also considered an ugly dancer. Now, she is one of the most celebrated ballerinas in Russia. It's almost like the perfect ballet body is a social construct. Astounding.
Here's what I learned about Aleksander Roman Turczynowicz:
🦢 He was born on January 24, 1813 in Radom, Poland as Aleksander Roman. When he was nine, he was transferred to the Warsaw dance school at the then National Theater at Krasiński Square.
🦢 By age 20, he had already had such an illustrious career as a dancer, he was offered the position as a teacher at the Warsaw school to teach the youngest dancers.
🦢 During Russian partition and the long-term domination of Italian ballet masters in the Grand Theater, his many achievements in creation of romantic era ballets and productions were destroyed. Today, the memory of his work only exists in books. This is why the Polish National Ballet School is named after him, and why he is celebrated every year in his birthday at the school.
6. I learned about another Polish connection to the US: Little Poland in New York City 🏙️🇵🇱! You might think the above picture is from Poland, but nope! That, my friend, is in New York City.
Things I learned about Little Poland:
🇵🇱Little Poland is situated in Greenpoint, New York City, New York. This is in Northern Brooklyn (me!), just north of Williamsburg.
🇵🇱 It is home to the second largest concentration of Polish immigrants in the United States after Chicago. At the turn of the century, Polish immigrants began settling in the US. After the cold war, however, they came here in droves, only slowing down in about 2004 when Poland joined the EU. The majority of polish immigrants settled in Brooklyn (meeeee!!), New York. The rest settled in other places, like Chicago.
🇵🇱Polish is the 11th most spoken language in New York, and it's spoken by .73% of the population. However, in Little Poland, you can find signs in both Polish and English, as well as magazine stands and other things written in Polish. You can also hear lots of conversations spoken in Polish.
7. Learned about Polish American contributions to the United States and Other fun Polish American facts. (For example, Polish American heritage month is celebrated in October.)
Other than Marie Curie and Chopin (who didn't really contribute to the US that I know of, but did obviously contribute greatly to classical music), I found a lot of actors and actresses if Polish descent, like Jared Padalecki (kinda knew this one but still cool to confirm), Pat Benatar (had no idea she was of polish descent!), Nicholas Cage, JoJo (she has Polish, Irish and French ancestry), Zac Efron (Polish grandparents! He's also Jewish!), and Kat Graham from The Vampire Diaries! (she has Russian and Polish grandparents. Her maternal and paternal grandparents were both refugees, due to the Holocaust on the maternal side and from Liberia on her father's side)
I was thoroughly surprised by some of these people being of Polish descent, especially Zac Efron and Pat Benatar, who is actually from Greenpoint, New York.
That's it!
Goals for tomorrow:
🩰Make flashcards
🩰Do another worksheet excercise
🩰Find more Polish worksheet exercises
🩰Learn about Little Poland in Connecticut and Chicago.
🩰Get the ingredients to make a smaczny Polish meal.
Notes:
Learning about racism in Poland was thoroughly disheartening. Especially when I read a few Twitter comments about people's thoughts on the matter. I got really upset knowing some of these things, but I was unfortunately not surprised. It does make me appreciate Atlanta though, and reminds me that with all the issues America has with race problems, we are a lot farther ahead in tackling those problems and having important conversations about them, which I think we deserve to give ourselves a lot more credit for.
I loved learning about Little Poland, and found it cute that a little more of Poland is a part of me in some way, even if it is just a place in my namesake city. I love connecting with other cultures in very personal ways, and I think this is a nice way to connect with a culture that I deeply appreciate but isn't one of mine.
I unfortunately had trouble finding any full ballets put on by the Polish National Ballet, but I'll try looking again in the future since I didn't devote a lot of time to this.
Poland is such an interesting and pretty country that has its downsides just like my own country does. I love learning more about it's history outside of what I already knew due to my history major (English lit and history).
I want to read more about Polish national dress. I really want to get my own authentic drindl since my family is from Germany. The similarities between Polish national dress and German national dress(es) is very interesting, and it something I'd love to explore further.
Dobranoc!
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Polish update!
Cześć!
Today, I was feeling a bit under the weather, so I didn't do very much in way of Polish. I did, of course, do a bit of cultural research.
Here's what I did today:
1. Three rounds of Duolingo. On day 22. Learned how to say tasty 😋. I already knew how to say juice from the alphabet video I used to learn the Polish alphabet.
2. Read a few history books on Poland, and learned that Poland was gone from maps for nearly 107 years as the result of being partitioned by multiple countries. It's been a rough history for Poles, honestly. I'll write more about this in the future.
3. Learned more about Warsaw, the capital of Poland. I decided to research a bit more about Warsaw since I've learned so much about Krakow in the last few weeks. It began to feel a bit one sided, as Poland has much more to offer than just one city.
4. Learned one new fact. Milk bars are a bit like food courts in the United States, but less costly and with less stores. I guess? I'm not sure. Anyway, I'm glad I read that because I absolutely would have just assumed that Polish people really really like milk, and dedicate whole bars to it if I had just read about that somewhere.
5. I chose a recipe to try! I love me some cabbage, so I was very intrigued by Gołąbki , a traditional stuffed cabbage roll. I want to make this recipe. I was also interested in learning to make this recipe for Bigos, or hunters stew. I'm a big soup slut, so this sounds really really tasty, or smaczny, if you will.
6. Learned a funny tidbit of Polish-American history. On my way home today, my best friends boyfriend mentioned a story about President Jimmy Carter (he was president in the 70s) coming to Poland, and trying to say something along the lines of "I just got here from America, and I am so excited to meet everyone!" but said it wrong and accidentally said something along the lines of "I am here from America, never to return, and I am happy to grab everyone's gentials." God bless the USA 🙏 🇺🇸😃
Here's the full story for a laugh!
No notes for today!
Do widzenia!
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Polish Update!
Cześć!
Here is a lil sound bite of me saying Cześć, jak sie masc? (Hi, how are you?) Nazywam sie Brooklyn. (My name is Brooklyn) And then, proszę, mów wolniej, słabo mowie po Polsku! (Please, slow down. My Polish isn't good enough!). Lastly, I say do widzenia (goodbye).
Please excuse any accent I may have! As stated, my Polish isn't very good and I am a beginner. I'm still working on making these words sound right in my mouth since a lot of them don't really exist in English, or just aren't familiar to me. My best friend @urmiserablegirlfriend thinks I sound like a sim whenever I try to pronounce Polish words 😂
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Currently listening to: why am i like this? by orla garland
Today, I didn't do a ton. But I did try to keep up my study habits. My best friend came over and she helped me study.
Here's what I did today:
1. I studied my flashcards and learned most of the colors pretty well. My best friend helped me practice them, so now I can confidently say różowy, fioletowy, zielony, brązowy, and a few other colors. I struggle the most with remembering the color for yellow, and remember pink (rózowy), purple (fioletowy) and orange (pomarańczowy) best.
My best friend was really funny when she was quizzing me. It felt a bit more like she was threatening me 😂 but it really did help me learn everything backwards, forwards and shuffled.
2. I made it to level five on one of my Duolingo courses. Now, I can confidently say several types of greetings.
3. I started reading one of my polish workbooks. The teach yourself workbook is VERY handy, and explains a lot. My best friend and I were laughing about the word proszę, mostly because it was a bit confusing. I learned while reading the book that the Polish word for please can also mean "here you are" when handing someone something, please, excuse me (when said as a question), and like a few other things.
At first, my best friend was like, "That is so confusing." But then I reminded her that in Hawaiian (we both grew up there but didn't meet there!), Aloha can mean hello, goodbye, love, and many other things depending on the situation.
And she agreed. So, this was how it occurred to me for the second time that Polish is a very situational language. The same word can mean many different things, and you can surmise what that meaning is based on the context.
Maybe English is like that and I just don't realize it.
4. I asked my best friend to pick a number. She chose 52, and so I picked that page to read about in my book about Poland. It was an interesting page about Polish festivals! My fun fact comes from the page right after, though.
Today, I learned about the Great Dragon Parade. It's a festival held in Poland that is celebrated across the country. Apparently, back in the olden days, there was an evil dragon who used to live beneath a kings castle in Krakow.
The dragon, Smok, was an absolute terror. He'd devour men, and seemed impossible to kill. Many a brave man went into his cave to slay him, but we're unable to do so. Until....a shoemaker named Skuba decided to try his own cunning trick: he gave the dragon a sheepskin stuffed with sulphur and tar!
The dragon's tummy immediately caught fire from the horrific snack and tried to run down to the river to drink some water. Unfortunately, he drank so much water he exploaded.
The parade is held during the first week of June, and it is put on by Krakow's Grotesque Theatre 🎭.
The whole event sounds super cute and fun for kids, which several websites say it heavily involves. I like the story too, as I forget how much dragons have to do with European mythology and not just Asian mythology!
One day, I'll do a post on the extensive debate on the existence of dragons, which was heavily debated all the way up to about the early 20th century. It's very interesting and something I learned about in a podcast first!
Anyway, I loved learning about this festival!
5. Watched Eurovision! Personally, Poland's left a lot to be desired. It was beautiful and I did like the music, but my favorite was either Spain's (women 😍✋) or Malta's. I felt like given that Poland has such incredibly rich music from artists like Ife Ude or Anja Pham (I can't say I fully like her music, but I do really like her style and what she tries to do), and they have so many political things they could have given more attention to like other countries did, it could have done a whole lot more for a song that is going to be watched by literal millions of people. That's not to say I didn't like the song or anything. The artist was very talented and deserving of their achievements. It just wasn't my favorite. I liked almost all of them though, and my best friend and I cackled over the one titled "Give that wolf a banana" 😂 I liked the entire vibe of that one.
Goals for tomorrow:
1. Make another voice recording of all the words I know so I have something to look back on.
2. Practice new words.
3. More Duolingo.
4. Translate one song or poem!
Notes:
I was so nervous about recording myself, as this is something I struggle with in Spanish. I get so shy about weather or not I'm pronouncing things correctly that I just never speak at all, which is not good for language development.
I'm making it a new goal to record myself speaking Polish every day. Even if it's just the words I learned that day or a phrase, idiom or poem I found. I think this will help me feel confident with it in a way that I struggle with in Spanish.
Do widzenia!
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Polish update!
me @ myself in the mirror. In this video, I'm saying Jesteś taka śliczna (you are so beautiful). Uwielbiam Cie (I adore you). I decided to make today's theme love! This means that today, I looked at love poems, pick up lines, and compliments. I also researched more terms of endearment.
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Dzień dobry!
Today, I did a ton of studying. Here's everything I did.
1. I wrote out notes from my Polish workbook. I learned how to ask for help, request things, ask someone's name, and more about introducing yourself. Enjoy my little doodles!
I also learned the word for donut. It's paczek (the a has a lil tail underneath).
2. I wrote out a Polish love poem and highlighted all the words I recognized (in blue) and all the words I wanted to know more about (in green). Then, I wrote out the provided English translation, and the new words I learned.
I also learned a funny new proverb. Not sure if it's a proverb or just an insult, but it translates to "my ass and your face are twins." It made me giggle so I wrote it down! It might be handy one day.
3. I chose a page in my book about Poland to learn about. Today, I read about the National Museum in Warsaw, Poland. It was pretty interesting! One interesting fact was that it is the one of the oldest art museums in Poland, and that 5,000 of it's pieces from its original collection are still missing after being stolen by Nazis in the 30s.
4. I read about Polish names! My favorites are Wioletta, Teodora, and Klementyna. I already plan to use the names Theodora and Clementine for my future kids, so of course I like their Polish equivalents.
5. I continued Duolingo!
Notes:
I had a lot of fun doing research on Polish names. There were a lot of really fun facts about name days and the saints associated with each name.
I also really liked learning about different compliments and pick up lines. My personal favorite was Jesteś brzydka ale zaciekawiłaś mnie (you're ugly but you intrigue me), which had my best friend in tears from laughing so hard.
Do zobaczenia!
☺️
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First Spanish Update!
¡Buena!
Today, I remembered that I'm also supposed to be blogging about my Spanish progress. I've been working on Spanish alongside Polish, but I just haven't been blogging about it or journaling about it.
I decided to start my journal today. Last week, I had my first tutoring lesson and learned a new way to say hello, which is buena. Hola works too, but I'm always happy to find new ways to say things.
Anyway, today I decided to write a journal entry since I was already planning to start a garden. I learned each flower name in Spanish and sketched out a preliminary idea of where everything will go. I have to look at how tall everything will be to decide exactly how I'll do it.
I'm a terrible gardener, so we'll see how far this gets!
Anyway, I decided to write out a bit about each flower and got lazy halfway through, so I ended it with saying I was excited about my future garden. I will say that I spent most of this paragraph thinking flowers were in the masculine, so ignore that. They are feminine.
I decided to look up garden words as well, since I didn't know many outside of water (agua) and flowers (las flores). My favorite one was el camino. Not sure why but I like knowing the word for path.
My goals with Spanish tomorrow are:
1. Find two short children's books or stories to read and summarize in a post tomorrow. Underline any words I don't know or recognize.
2. Write another journal entry about anything.
3. Book my next tutoring lesson.
I realized that the quickest way to learn more Spanish is by reading and getting my reading level higher than like a third or fourth grade reading level at best lol so today or tomorrow, I'm going to begin reading children's books and work toward short chapter books.
¡Hasta luego!
(I'm putting this under my polish tag because my phone won't let me create a new tag)
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Polish update!
Dobry wieczór :)
Here is a picture of a cat that I found in the singular book that my local secondhand bookstore had in their selection about Poland. Enjoy!
Anyway, apparently "dobry wieczór" means good evening. I looked it up! ☺️ Today, I didn't do much with Polish but I did do a few of my goals from yesterday.
I found this list on Pinterest, and I decided that it's a very good idea. So, starting tomorrow I'll try to do a few of these every day and post my work.
I used to do this for Spanish, so I think it'll be a good idea to do the same for Polish. Anyway, here's what I did today:
1. I made flashcards! I practiced all the colors, greetings, and letters I learned in the last week.
2. I got a 100% on my Duolingo quiz measuring how much I've learned about the verb byc.
3. I listened to the alphabet song again and practiced sounding out Polish words. A lot of the sounds sound very similar, so I made them into flashcards to remember which is which. I learned that the y sound doesn't sound like "ee" in English, but rather more like "eh". I'm not sure I'm writing it out right. But that was nice to know because I wasn't sure I was saying any of those right until the song cleared up the pronunciation for me. Also the "j" sounds more like a y! I find that so funny.
4. I learned a new word! The Polish word for lavender is lawenda. Fun fact: I bought lavender flower seeds today. They give me the worst headache but I thought they'd be pretty in the flower pot garden I'm starting.
That's all!
Goals for tomorrow:
See above. Also, sticky notes.
Notes:
The colors were very easy to learn. I think I'll have them memorized enough to recall them without flashcards in the next few days. Tonight, I'll write out notes for numbers 1-10.
My polish workbooks will get here on Thursday, so that's exciting! I didn't order any more Polish books, but that's because I remembered that there is a great free library online that I can use. I also can just go to my local library and find some more books on Polish culture and history.
I did not clean off my desk today as intended because my ballet barre is in the way and there is no where else in my room to put it, unfortunately. So, my lessons and studying will be done on the floor or on my bed!
Anyway, that's all for now ☺️
Do widzenia!
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Polish Update!
Cześć!
Today, I went to a secondhand bookstore to look for a few spell books. I decided to see if I could find any good books about Poland or maybe some language learning guides.
No such luck. There were lots of books on France and the UK but not a whole lot on any eastern European countries. There was a book on Vienna. But that's about it. I'm not going to lie, it's actually pretty rude that there are so few resources about this country. Or any Slavic countries outside of Czech or something.
Anyway, I did find an interesting book that showed all the beautiful sights in Poland. I really liked it, but not so much because of the book. I opened it up and found a few old letters from 2010.
Now, I know what Polish stamps look like! I also found a few pages on the history of Poland, which were very cool.
Did you know that Chopin was Polish?! How cool! I also learned the Marie Curie was as well. I feel like I knew that about her, but just forgot. But I had no idea Chopin was Polish!
This is what I did today:
1. Did more research on the Polish alphabet. I found a video on YouTube that had a very helpful pronunciation guide. Here it is! I found it a bit awkward to listen to, but it was very helpful and less of a headache to understand than some of the other videos I watched yesterday.
2. I made it to a 16 day streak on Duolingo. My goal is to make it to 30 days.
3. I learned the word for wine (vino). I also learned a funny phrase. The phrase is "być odjebanym jak szczur na otwarcie kanału." Apparently, it roughly translates to "to be dressed up like a rat for a Sewer Opening gala." Its supposed to refer to when someone is annoyed with another person for the effort they put into a look they think is misplaced. I find it funny because it 1). came up in conversation when talking about my older sister and 2). is just a really specific and funny thing to have a phrase for!
4. Learned a few other words outside of Duolingo. I heard a few nicknames that I found really sweet. I like the word for darling (kochanie), but these ones were so adorably specific that I think they'd melt me if someone used them in reference to me!
misiu (little bear),
okruszku (breadcrumb)
(not so much this one) rybko (little fish)
I think okruszku is my favorite 🥺 though I'm not fully sure why. It's just so sweet. It reminds me of when I was a little girl and I'd leave out sugar cubes and cream for the fairies to eat up by morning. And misiu is sweet to me too because my best friend and I have animals that we personify ourselves as. Hers is a bunny, and mine is a bear! Fun fact: Grizzly bears are one of my most favorite animals of all time! They're just sooooooooo adorable with their widdle ears 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺
5. I read this sign!
Not the sweetest sign but I'm sure she had her reasons. So, that takes me to another phrase I learned today! Pojebana (fucked up).
5. I took notes on all the colors!
My favorite word is the one for purple. Though rainbow comes in a close second!
6. Missed my first polish tutoring lesson! I thought it was Tuesday 😂 but turns out it was today. Oops!
Goals for tomorrow:
1. Make flashcards of all the colors in my notes.
2. Clear off my desk 😡 I didn't do that today.
3. Receive my polish lesson workbooks! They arrive tomorrow. Tonight, I'll order a few books on Poland. I saw some very nice books on Slavic spells as well as polish wedding traditions, baby names, recipes and other traditions. I'm excited to learn more!
4. Book a new Polish tutoring lesson (as well as Spanish).
5. Put up sticky notes around the house.
Notes:
I forgot to mention that today I learned there are special name days in Poland. I knew about this in Russia, and I think Germany does this as well. But apparently, Poland has a thing where they have days celebrating certain names. Fun! I thought at first that I wouldn't have one since my name is very American, but then I remembered that my middle name is Makayla!
My catholic (my family is Catholic) patron saint is Michael the archangel (fun facts). So, I generally use the Judeo-Christian spelling, Michaela, for things like that. My mom didn't know how to spell Michaela when I was born so she spelled it out phonetically. I personally like my spelling since it looks very round. Anyway, my Polish name day would be August 24th and September 29th!
I was very delighted by this fact since August 24th is the same month as my actual birthday.
That's all for today.
Do widzenia!
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Polish update
I'm not going to lie to y'all, I genuinely have the worst headache after trying to learn how to pronounce the polish alphabet. I audibly laughed a few times because there were so many times when I was just like what the actual fuck is going on rn.
Anyway, here is what I did today:
1. Started writing out conjugations. I've been doing the Polish Duolingo course for just over two weeks now and I've found that it's very hard to go any further without knowing the conjugations, which I'm sure is the same in any language. I know it was like that in Spanish.
Duolingo doesn't give you the conjugation tables early on, so I looked them up and wrote them out in a notebook I got at the dollar general yesterday. I haven't gotten the pink notebook yet, mostly because I never ordered it but just told myself I did to manifest doing it. I kept forgetting to actually order it lol anyway, I wrote them out. The verb byc (I know there is an accent on the c but I don't have it on my keyboard) makes a lot more sense now that I know which conjugations go where.
2. I made it to fifteen days of Duolingo.
3. I learned how to say hello and goodbye. Czesc and Do widzenia. Something about goodbye is so stimmy. I just want to say it over an over! It's my favorite word so far.
4. Got very confused with a bunch of articles talking about how polish people say no when they mean yes. Like one article said an example would be "Jesteś zainteresowany?" and then the answer would be "No, jestem..." (The article didn't end the sentence). This does happen in English, sort of.
When I was growing up in Hawaii, I formed a habit of saying "no" at the start of my sentences. Like, "No, you're so right!" Or "No, look!" It's not the same thing but it's the closest thing I can think of. I definitely have a habit of saying "No, yeah." Or "No, totally." Or "No, for sure." None of which technically make any sense but are very common amongst people my age.
Either way, the entire thing gave me a headache.
And that brings us to number 5.
5. I worked on the polish alphabet and wanted to deepthroat a broken glass liquor bottle while I tried to figure out the ins and outs of pronunciation. I found a great article that carefully explained each of the letters and sounds, especially the ones not found in English. My favorite is the fancy l with the little line through it. I like that it makes next to no sense in my brain. Like why would the w in polish be pronounced like a w in English? Of course it's the l with the little line through it 🙄✋ Polish really said never let them know ur next move, stay mysterious. Polish is just a quirky girly. She's just in a silly funky mood, and I actually love that about her.
Anyway, I learned some really cool facts about entomology in Polish. The letter J was apparently a very controversial letter until the 19th century. It was first introduced in the 16th century by a man with two J's in his name, and remained a highly contested letter until the 19th century when it was finally accepted for good. It was hated so vehemently by one it's critics (who, fun fact, had the name Jan) that it earned the nickname "Gdańsk bastard" as well as "the intruder" and "bad grammatical spirit." So, now I'm wondering if his hatred was really about the letter J or himself 😂
6. I learned while conjugating that while the Polish language has three verb tenses (past, present, and future), the English language has an astounding sixteen! I was very surprised to learn that I know all of these tenses and don't even realize it.
7. My mom came in and told me that her friend Anatol was polish and that he grew up in Warsaw. Love that for him. Immediately began to wonder if I could just soak up all his Polishness through osmosis and skip trying to remember all this by myself. Unfortunately, I cannot. He lives across the country.
8. Today, I learned the word for midnight. Północ. It is pronounced like poonots. I think. So far, I can say moon (księżyc, pronounced like shehzits) and midnight. Tomorrow, I'd like to learn the word for stars, or maybe for sky. I learned the word because today I saw a pretty black cat and realized I didn't know the Polish word for midnight.
9. Recently formally renamed my cat Milk, Mleko. She still has the name milk, but I've made her a Polish cat because I can. So now she has a Polish name. She seems to like her new Polish-American identity. Her friend is now named Kaffee, which is German but it fits.
Goals for tomorrow:
1. Continue learning about the alphabet. I'm thinking picking a letter a day and working on that. Several websites said the key to pronouncing polish correctly is learning this first. Very interesting.
2. Colors 😡 I want to know how to say purple. Not sure why but it's important. Also, I want to start being able to point out the colors around town.
3. Prepare for my first tutoring lesson on Tuesday! Tomorrow, hopefully, I'll clean off my desk and set everything up so I can enjoy tutoring next to the window with the sun shining in.
4. Make flashcards of the verb tenses and add sticky notes around the house of different items.
5. Learn one new word independently of Duolingo. Do something creative with it to memorize it.
Notes: Learning Polish is definitely harder than I ever thought it would be. Mostly because it is a very inaccessible language for someone who is not living in Poland. Since it is primarily spoken there, there aren't as many resources the way there are for Spanish, which is one of the top three languages spoken world wide.
It's sort of like trying to learn Hawaiian outside of the islands. Very hard. Or bemba, which is my father's native language. Both of those are highly centralized to one area, and there aren't many people learning them so there aren't fun little workbooks or anything.
I plan to go to the bookstore tomorrow, however. So maybe I'll find a few resources there.
Also, I remembered the word for cat today. It's not a hard one to remember lol but I was very excited that I remembered the word so easily.
That's all I've got about polski for now. Do widzenia!
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Polish update!
5/12/22
After my total meltdown over this language on Wednesday, I am now back on my bullshit. Today, I practiced for about 30 minutes.
Here is what I've done today
1. I did two lessons on Duolingo to reach level two on the phrases lessons. I'm going to be honest: I cannot remember what the word for hello is to save my life. But I do recognize goodnight. In Croatian, it's very similar because the ending is the same. Laku noć. In Polish, it is dobranoc.
2. I started learning the names of animals. Today, I learned the word for elephant is słoń and the word for dog is pies. I now know four animals. Kot (cat), pies (dog), słoń (elephant), and ryba (fish).
3. I found a few language workbooks for learning Polish as a complete beginner. So, I'll be buying them today. The ones on Amazon are stupid expensive, but I found a bunch on thriftbooks. So, I'll have some more concrete sources to draw from when teaching myself conjugations. Here is one of the books I found, and here is another.
I go home today, so that means I'll really get the chance to get started on learning grammar. Today, I'm going to watch the Spellbinder series. I can't remember the name in Polish. But even though there aren't any English captions, I'm sure it'll be entertaining lol
Also, still no pen pals. But that's okay! I'm sure I'll find someone to practice with soon! ^_^
Anyway, I haven't listed out my goals for learning Polish yet! They have changed since I first started learning.
Short term
1. Learn how to say hello, goodbye, please, thank you, yes and no, excuse me, etc.
2. Learn all of the other basics. Colors, animals, food, family and friends, numbers, etc.
3. Gain at least a loose grasp of the present tense.
4. Begin a Polish diary (where I write diary entries in Polish using new words, the verb tense I'm learning, or just writing out notes)
5. Start tutoring!
Long(er) term
1. Learn to speak Polish on a conversational level.
2. Read at least one short story in Polish without difficulty.
3. Write a poem, song or story in Polish.
A few other notes:
1. When I begin learning how to actually speak rather than recognize, I think I want to log recordings of at least one sentence a day in Polish to keep up with my speaking progress. That way I can measure how I sound over time.
2. In the coming weeks, I want to try to read at least one polish childrens book a week and record whatever words interest me in my diary.
3. I am continuing to think of what I could do with Polish. I loathe the idea of teaching (mostly just because my aunt is a teacher and I'm not a fan of her), but perhaps long term it would be useful to be proficient or advanced in understanding polish so I could teach more people English online. There aren't a lot of polish speaking tutors on some of the websites I found that also speak English natively, so maybe that'd set me apart.
4. I also found a few other fun books about Poland, so I think I'll center my own learning around them. One of them is about Polish folklore and traditions, and the other is a comprehensive guide to the history of Poland. I also found a cool cookbook, and another book on Polish politics. But for now, I think I'll start with the folklore one. Folklore is one of my favorite parts of history, so it's right up my alley!
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