Today I'm going to write the same article I wrote for my polish lesson, but in English. It is about the first time I have to deal with the polish language. It had to be about 300 words, but I wrote way more than that.I hope you enjoy this one.
If I had to say when was the first time I heard the Polish I ought to come back, when my stepfather went to visit Mexico with a colleague of his. I was around 13 years old and the first thing that came to my mind was that Polish was like a language of whispers and even once I said something using the sound of "sh" and I said a word in Polish. I was quite astonished, because I didn't expect to say something it polish, my stepfather was the same as me and even asked me if I knew polish to which I replied "No". I used to break my head trying to catch at least one word, but always fruitless. Anyway as an any other curious person that meets a foreigner I asked my stepfather and his colleague to tell me how to greet in polish. My jaw dropped after listening to the word "cześć". I mean greeting it's supposed to be easy to say and remember and not something too difficult to say... Thanks to my ingenious mind (as I thought at that time )I put together the word chess from English with the sound "che" from Spanish. In that way I managed somehow to remember and say it. The next word I learned was "dziękuję"- thank you. This one was like something not from our planet. I wasn't even able to pronounce it. Neither in Spanish, English nor French exist the sound of "dzi", so I was in a really difficult situation... I didn't know how to remember the world, but suddenly I associated the word "chinkuya", which in Spanish is a really delicious fruit ( I really love it ) and somehow I learned how to thank. It didn't sound exactly the same, but at least whenever I wanted to thank to my stepfather or his colleague, they understood me (or at least they pretended). By that time I didn't imagine what was expecting me.
When I came to Poland I was shocked because of three facts. The first one was that the letter "v" was replaced by "w", the "w" by a weird l - "ł" and another 6 or 7 letters exist, which pronounce I couldn't. I clearly remember how much I was crying, when my very first homework of polish was learning how to pronounce all of them and remembering them. I was so powerless and devastated that I couldn't say all of them that I was crying till my nose became red and my head start hurting... That was the first time I cried because of the Polish and unfortunately not the last. The second thing that in Polish exist, are these called "przypadki" - cases (I'm not sure if this is the correct translation of it). Although in my whole 13 years I never had heard about it, I was told that in every language they exist, but that in the Polish you have to conjugate the noun depending of the "przypadek".... I've been living in Poland for almost 5 years and I still can't recognize each of them and how to conjugate the noun, what makes me frustrated and angry. Despite that I really love having these "przypadki", because they make Polish more challenging and interesting. My favorite "przypadek" it's the "dopełniacz", because I know when I'm supposed to use it and how to conjugate the nouns. The less is "biernik" since I keep mistaking it with the "mianownik", which it is said to be the easiest one, but it seems that's not true or at least not for me. The next fact that made my eyes pop out of my head was that I was told that Polish is one of the most difficults languages in the whole world. When I heard about it I wanted to pack my whole things and buy a ticket back to Mexico. However I didn't do it, because I didn't want to leave my mom alone in a foreign country and me living without her in Mexico (Yeah... I kind a have a mother complex)
Wherever I went I was always surrounded by people talking to me in Polish. There were some that spoke to me in English and even in Spanish, but if you live in a specific country, it is obvious that the people will talk in the national language, so just after coming to Poland my mom and me started going to intensive Polish lessons. They lasted two months and sincerely I learned a lot, but as always I knew more how to talk than I understood. I started attending to a polish junior high school. There Polish could have been a problem, If it wasn't for my teachers the helped me with it. They allowed me to express myself in English or they explained me the things I didn't get in English. I really really I'm grateful to them. If it wasn't for them I don't know where I would be standing right now. The Polish with my stepfather's family was pretty comic. Due to their bad English and my bad Polish we were forced to communicate using the language of our bodies- mimic. I have a really vivid memory of one time, when my "babunia" (my stepfather's mom) tried to explained me the word honey. She started imitating a huge bear and then pretended to eat something. I remember that I was laughing pretty loud, but the same went whenever I tried to explain myself to them. We used to have a great time doing it. In the streets thing weren't that easy. I still have the image of this lady from which, my mom and me bought tickets to the bus. That happened just after we came to Poland, so as expected our pronunciation and Polish were really bad . The lady was so irritated that we couldn't say twenty in Polish- dwadzieścia (really difficult for any foreigner, but not like the number three - trzy). When we got to explained ourselves, the lady threw our tickets at us, started complaining and I'm pretty sure she even started cursing us. I'm quite relived that at that time I didn't understand what she said. Another thing that makes me laugh is at how my mom and me used to make the shopping. We always used to pay with banknotes of 50 zł or 100 zł and wait to the rest to know how much we usually had payed. I know it's a reckless thing to do, but it was the only way we came with at that time.
If my memory serves me correctly, I started speaking fluently in Polish after nine months, when I went to a camp with my cousin (my stepfather's niece). There nobody knew how to talk in English or in Spanish, so I was cornered and forced to speak in Polish. I don't complain, because thanks to that I was able to speak without any fear and without changing to English after two or three words like I used to do with my teachers, friends or stepfather. My mom says that when I came back from that camp I was like a parrot, because my mouth wouldn't stop moving. That was the first time I felt really happy with something that was involved with speaking in Polish. I was very proud of myself.
I won't lie and say that Polish is an easy language, because it isn't (it has a lot of exceptions and too less rules) and I didn't suffer at all. I had and still have headaches from time to time, because my mind exhaustes from listening to it and forcing myself to understand (sometimes I even can't talk correctly in any language), I cried a lot, because I didn't understand anything at school or in the streets, I cursed and use to hate Polish, since it was the cause of my suffering and complicating my life and even considered going back to Mexico. But exactly that's what Polish is about! When I started understanding what the people said to me or started recognizing when and how I had to conjugate the noun I felt really proud of myself and kind of invincible. I've been living almost for five years in Poland and my Polish is far from perfect, but little by little I'm getting better at the language that made me cried and suffer a lot of times. And that exactly is what makes Polish so interesing, funny and worth learning, because I know that when I will have mastered it, I will feel amazing, I will have overcame myself and became a better and stronger person, I will have won the battle between Polish and me, between the difficulties of life and myself!
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