The English Język As Ona Jest Spoke

Tough he is German, he speak so much well italyan, french, spanish and english, that
among the Italyans, they believe him Italyan, he speak the frenche as the Frenches
himselves. The Spanishesmen believe him Spanishing, and the Englishes, Englishman.
It is difficult to enjoy well so much several langages.

- O Novo Guia da Conversação em Portuguez e Inglez (The New Guide to Conversation in Portuguese and English), also known as English As She is Spoke, by JOSÉ DA FONSECA and PEDRO CAROLINHO

If my time in Poland has taught me anything, it is that there is nothing so beautiful as hearing somebody speak her native language. There is also sometimes nothing so funny as hearing somebody attempt to speak a language not his own or one that he does not know at all, as the above passage from one of Mark Twain's favorite books amply illustrates. As I mentioned in my last post, most of my communication in Poland has been conducted under a kind of lingual inexactitude.

I got back to Poland on Wednesday and have come down with a bit of a cold, which means that I haven't been as active as I would like to be. However, I have wanted to comment for some time about language in Poland, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity.


English is used in settings where you would expect it, such as airports and cultural events, international conferences, hotels, museums and guided tours. It is also used gratuitously by those who wish to add a touch of class or cosmopolitanism to their establishments. Granted, I don't know what things look like in a smaller town like Kielce, as Kraków is a very tourist-heavy town. What's interesting is that reading and writing of English tends to be much better than the speaking of it, those being the primary ways the language is used in international communications and journals. 

English speaking here is spotty, in quality as well as quantity terms. In theory, everybody my age (20-somethings) should speak English as the language is a mandatory subject in school from a young age. Indeed, I heard that in job interviews knowledge of English is assumed, and the interviewer is interested in what OTHER other languages the interviewee speaks. Generally, German and particularly French are valued, the latter especially so because many Frenchmen make it a point of national pride to either not speak English or pretend that they don't. This is not to say that all young people are comfortable speaking English, and competence in it varies widely, just like any other subject one learns in school.

Among the older generation English is not as widely spoken, probably partly because it wasn't expected and partly because during the time of the Iron Curtain there wasn't much reason to do so. I get the perception that under Communism English was actually a somewhat edgy second language to learn, because its primary use was in listening to Voice of America broadcasts. The Soviets encouraged speaking Russian (which was mandatory in schools), and I'm under the impression that most people over 40 or 50 have at least some competence in that language.

The generational gap that I'm seeing is that a lot of is that older people tend to be proud of what English they have, even if it is very little, while younger people tend to be embarrassed even if their English is quite good. I've had old people cheerfully practice the three phrases of English that they know, whereas everyone my age will pretty quickly switch to Polish as soon as it becomes clear that I can more or less manage in their language. Now, I understand that I am in Poland, Polish is the language, and I really don't like those American (or German!) tourists who insist that everything be made to suit them in a foreign place. The reason I'm a little surprised that few people will try to speak English with me is that my presence represents an excellent opportunity to practice the language in an informal, and actually useful, setting. It also gives people an opportunity to hear the American accent, which I understand is not very commonly heard in instructional settings. Indeed, every English teacher I've met in Poland is clearly aiming for a British accent and British usage.

This is not to say that the American accent is completely unherd of over here. It can be heard all the time in films on TV. However, these films are all Polish-dubbed rather than subtitled. The dubbing also does not exactly cover the English underneath, as it does in, say, Spanish dubs of American movies on Telemundo or Univisión back home. In essence, the viewer hears two languages at once, first the original English dialogue, then the Polish translation delivered in a very flat voice by an inevitably-male reader even as he reads female parts. This system is ungainly in the extreme for movies that are dialogue-heavy, as hearing the Polish translation delivered in the same tone of voice for all parties involved along with the original language underneath makes it impossible to understand who is saying what when and why. To compensate, a lot of the movies that get aired are ones that don't have a lot of dialogue, i.e. brainless action movies. After all, exploding cars and buildings are a universal language, and the plots of such films are usually interchangeable enough that you don't really have to know why Jason Statham is blowing up a building owned by Jet Li, only that he probably had a good reason for doing so. Or maybe not even that. Maybe he's been filled with some kind of drug that requires him to maintain a constant adrenaline rush to stay alive, by doing things like blowing up buildings and having sex while driving at unsafe speeds AND having a shootout on city streets (This actually describes a Jason Statham movie. And its sequel.) Anyway, the average Polish television set is filled with things like Dolph Lundgren having an extremely improbable (but I will admit, very cool) car chase across the roofs of Chicago and teaming with Montel Williams to prevent terrorists from nuking Washington DC using hijacked ICBMs. This presents an opportunity for unexpected hilarity; the translations are not always accurate, sometimes in an attempt to keep the films "PG" in Poland. So you'll occasionally hear the English dialogue be something along the lines of "OH, Sh******t!!!!", a line which tends to occur frequently in these sorts of movies, and the overdub will be a very calm "goshdarn."

Some nature specials and the news are handled better, with interviews being translated as we are used to them, but with the English dialogue completely obliterated.

Having digressed from the main point of the thread, I'll come back to the topic of how people actually learn English in a later post, as well as what is difficult for Polish speakers about English. I will then talk about what's difficult about Polish for English speakers, the answer to which is, in one word, "everything!"