Going to the Kaplicy

Today I am going to Poland for my friends' wedding.. If I have any time this morning, I will put up a chapter of The Bodice Ripper. If not, I will be offline until Wednesday.

Everyone have a nice weekend and please pray that I don't forget all the Polish I have been stuffing into my head for the past four weeks. You never know, I may be staring open-mouthed at a craft cab driver when all of a sudden you pray for me, and a whole stream of useful Polish argumentation pops into my head.

Page by Page

Today is Artistic Wednesday, and this morning I finished the first draft of another ghost story. That makes seven since I began the exercises in Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way. On one of my "Artist's Dates", the Inner Child and I went to our favourite bookshop, Blackwells on the South Bridge, and bought a rather pricey but utterly beautiful journal, with the understanding that I would not waste it but fill it up with stories. So far, so good.

My writing schedule is now like this:

1.Wake up as early as possible.
2. Write three pages of random thoughts, ending with affirmations about what a fantabulous writer I am, etc.
3. Write at least three pages of fiction.
4. Check Facebook and email. (Optional)
5. Blog. (But not necessarily on Sundays.)

My other artistic task for the day is to read a single page of Henryk Sienkiewicz's children's novel, "W pustyni i w puszczy" (In Desert and Wilderness), which faithful readers are possibly tired of reading about. However, if you are like me, you have spent years (possibly decades) promising yourself to get around to reading foreign language novels, and you never do. So perhaps you will inspired by your Auntie who, after not finishing a novel--or even a Tintin comic--in French, Italian and German, managed to get through Harry Potter i Kamien Filosoficzny, and most of Harry Potter i Komnata Tajemnica before becoming utterly bored with Harry's stupid crush on Tom Riddle. Now I have graduated to proper Polish book, and it is way hard.

Although I love to do (intellectual) things that people who tell me are too hard, I am a born quitter, and so I have to brainwash myself into not quitting. The way I have so far managed not to give up on super-hard Sienkiewicz is to write the date on the bottom of every page when I finish it. The threatened shame of not being able to write "8 VII" on the bottom of today's page will make me read it if the plot doesn't.

The other brainwashing device is to write "Studiuję codziennie żeby móc biegle mówić po polsku" at the end of my daily affirmations. This means, "I study everyday in order to become fluent at speaking Polish." It is not strictly true, and actually the best way to become fluent in Polish is to speak Polish, not read it, but never mind that for now. The point is that I have read 20 pages of WPIWP, so yay, brainwashing!*

Reading one page of a book a day is a rather new experience for me although I suppose when I was six or so, that would have been all I could manage. Normally my eye races over the page, and this is probably why my writing tends to be "fast-paced." I am all about plot and conversation, and not so much about description. I used to skip over whole chunks of L.M. Montgomery's effusions about apple blossoms. Snore. However, now that I am reading only one page of the equally descriptive Sienkiewicz, I am forced to contemplate his settings in detail, in part because I have to look up dozens of his words in the Polish-English half of a dictionary.

Although previously I have had no interest in what the environs around the Suez Canal looked like in 1884, I sure know now. Where no water reached, there was "wrinkled sand" which looked like the "bottom of the ocean" with all the water, fish, etc, scooped out, and where water reached, there was lush vegetation and flamingos that looked like "great pink and purple blossoms." The Arab children--according to Sienkiewicz--sucked sugarcane "from morning to night," thus attracting clouds of eye-disease carrying flies. The camel drivers whom I suspect will kidnap Staś and little Nell stood in the bright December 23 moonlight "like white columns", and their eyes glittered.

Whereas it is a discipline to read one page of real literary Polish a day, it would be a discipline also to read no more than one page of real literary English a day. I will have to try that, too, and see what I learn. But what book should I pick? What do you think? What would be a good book to study, one page a day, to learn the author's craft?

*Meanwhile, I took a vow not to quit Polish before five years are up. I am coming to the end of four, and so I have one year to go. However, I do not want to quit before I have the ability to biegle mówić , so the sooner I can do the immersion course, the better.

The Weasleys

Ginny Weasley, long awaited girl.

It's big family week on Edinburgh Housewife, not because I want to rabbit-punch our sovereign pontiff (I don't), but because I am laid low by a nasty cold and wish my own big family were around to bring me tea and snacks.

For the record, I have read Francis's entire statement (as one does) and I find only two objectionable things: his use of the crude anti-Catholic smear "like rabbits" and his holding up of a mother of eight for ridicule. I think he would have got his point across much better if he had mentioned a penniless man who refused to learn NFP and badgered his wife for sex-on-demand despite A) her ill health or B) really not being able to feed the children they already had. This is probably a reality for millions of women across the developing world, and if the Holy Father had mentioned him instead, the Catholic blogosphere would not now be covered with bunny pictures.

Mind you, I rather like the bunny pictures. I also like all the witty remarks about bunnies B.A. and I have been exchanging. My guess is that married Catholics across the world are making flirtatious bunny remarks to each other this week. Perhaps there will be a baby boom in October as a result. Outraged relatives and neighbours will hiss, "I thought Pope Francis said you weren't supposed to be like rabbits", and the married couple, sleepless and exhausted, will giggle foolishly.

My nasty cold rather discourages bunny behaviour, but it does not prevent me from working on my Polish. And so I have been reading and listening to Harry Potter i Komnata Tajemnic, which is the Polish version of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. I have got to the chapter called "Nora" which turns out to be Polish for "The Burrow", the name of the Weasley home and also, er, what rabbits live in. Oh dear. I cannot get away from rabbits today.

Harry Potter has long been a focus of Catholic controversy, and this has always mystified me, since no-one has seizures over the magic-filled Oz books. I find the early HP books wonderfully inventive and well-written. J.K. Rowling has a clver sense of contrast, inviting us to compare Harry's nasty uncle and aunt and their one spoiled child with the generous, sprawling, cash-strapped Weasley clan.

The Weasleys are a traditional family with a father in a civil service post, a mother at home, and seven children, two of them grown up and employed by the time the baby is 10. The youngest Weasley is the only girl, which I suppose is an explanation to those who need one. ("WHY did the Weasleys have so many children, Mummy?") A much more amusing explanation is that the Weasleys, so red-haired and all, were not only wizards but Roman Catholics. Their religious faith being at odds with their wizard world, they made a bargain with their consciences, and lo.  On the other hand, maybe they just like children. They certainly embrace Harry and also Hermione, whose mother possibly prefers drilling teeth to raising children.*

If J.K. Rowling were a Catholic--she isn't, she's Church of Scotland--her critics might have taken her to task for the happy fecundity of the Weasleys and accused her of Catholic propaganda. Nasty little Draco Malfoy is an only child, and we are invited to condemn his sneers at the Weasleys for having "more children they can afford", not to applaud them.

The Weasleys also embody traditional male and female characteristics. Mr Weasley is the sole breadwinner (unless Charlie and Bill send money home) whereas Mrs Weasley cooks, cleans, launders and shouts. Bill prospects for gold. Charlie wrassels dragons. Prefect Percy plots to become Minister of Magic. Fred and George are famous for their pranks and go into business. Ron is sports-mad and wizard (ha ha) at chess. Ginny begins her school career as a damsel in distress and ends it as female romantic lead. (Yes, J.K., we know Hermione ought to have married Harry, just as Louisa M's Jo ought to have married Laurie. Too late now. )

I note, however, the more classically Protestant/Anglican Christian names of the father (Arthur) and children. "Molly", of course, is a diminutive of Mary. Maybe Molly is the only Catholic parent. Maybe my Catholic theory is a bit of a stretch.

The good, impecunious Weasleys are a contrast with the wicked, rich Malfoys. (Weirdly, by the Malfoy's own standards they are the same "class", being Grade A pure-blood wizards.) Their poverty is also a contrast to Harry's inherited wealth. This is quite a good thing from a literary point of view, as it mean Ron has a struggle between envy and loyalty, and Harry has something else beyond his control to feel badly about.

Reading the Harry Potter stories with strict attention, in two languages, reveals how dark they really are. Six year old children may find it funny that Harry is forced to live in a cupboard under the stairs--and my parents do have a cupboard under their stairs  big enough to house a child--but Child Protective Services would not find that funny at all. It is also not funny to adults that eleven-year-old Dudley is obese, thanks to his greed and his parents overfeeding. Of course, this provides another useful contrast, for Harry is thin. In fact, by the Chamber of Secrets, he is actually starving. And this is again helpful for underscoring the superiority of the Weasley family, for shortly after Harry is rescued from his abusive uncle and aunt, Mrs Weasley dishes up "eight or nine" sausages, three fried eggs and bread and butter.

I won't launch into the one-child Malfoys who, given their obsession with blood purity, family prestige and intermarriage, probably had infertility issues. (Oh, say! That's why they sneered at the Weasleys. Envious as hell!) No, the one-child family that epitomizes money-clutching lack of generosity is the dastardly Dursleys.

Almost everyone in the Harry Potter books is obsessed with name brands (e.g. the Nimbus 2000), but the Dursleys are the very soul of grasping consumerism. They are also deeply wedded to the notion of the nuclear family, having cast off Petunia's (also Muggle) parents entirely and socializing only with Vernon's rich sister Marge, who prefers dogs to children. Although they are not hurting for money, and Petunia stays at home, the Dursleys have elected to have just one child, upon whom they lavish ridiculous amounts of presents. They begrudge every penny they spend on their nephew, to the point of feeding him as little as possible.  Why they were not afraid of Social Services checking up on them, never mind Dumbledore, is a mystery to me.

Quite obviously Dudley Dursley would have been better off had he had to fight various brothers and sisters for his parents' attention and learned to accept living with limited resources. But I am afraid this was always going to be unlikely, for as we know from their treatment of Harry, the Dursleys are incredibly stingy. Interesting that they would give Dudley everything except a brother or sister to love.

So I continue to be mystified that some Catholics think the Harry Potter books are a portal to hell when they underscore that generous poverty is better than impoverished riches, big families can be happier  than small families, and self-sacrificial love for others is the answer to just about everything.

*Of course, she may have married late.

Overcoming Linguistic Inhibition

"Żywy!" quoth I wittily this morning when Polish Pretend Son appeared outside the kitchen. "Dzień dobry!"

"Dzień dobry," said PPS and disappeared in the direction of the bathroom.

That was my Polish conversation for the morning until I perceived that PPS had made himself some breakfast.

"Czy masz ochotę kaa---aa--wę?" I inquired.

"Tak, poproszę. Dziękuję," said PPS.

"Okay," I said, courage failing, and made the coffee.

And that is basically it, for I fell down badly (so to speak) after asking PPS what he wanted to do today, and then trying to tell him that I had a bad dream, which was pretty sad, as this morning I had just been reading about Harry Potter having a bad dream. Why I blocked out zły when I could remember gorzy is no doubt a question for linguists.

Alas, I did not take advantage of  two parties and limitless booze to discover how much alcohol is best to help my ability to communicate in a second language. However, I was quite pleased during Saturday's party, in which all guests were Polish, to get a general sense of what the conversation was about, the guests being encouraged to keep on speaking Polish when I (but not B.A.) re-entered the dining-room. So that was very cheering and hope-inspiring.

How Languages are Learned

Scientifically proven to improve pronunciation of  rz and szcz.

As long-time readers know, my family has a passion for languages. That is to say, most of us dabble in them and get rather good at one, two or three. I was a terrible dabbler as an undergrad, when I had no work ethic. It took work to get a work ethic.

And even after that it hurt. I can still remember long hours of toil in the one very handsome hall at Boston College, working away at translating St. Augustine. Christian Latin was my favourite class, and 100% heresy free.  Oh heavens, and there was some Early Church Father I elected to study whose work on the Holy Spirit was available only in Greek,  Latin and French, so that meant sitting down and reading pages and pages of theological French. What a killer.

Now that I am out of school, the two languages in which I am immersed on a regular basis are Polish (every day for at least an hour, usually more) and Christian Latin (Mass). Polish has a reputation for being the most difficult language for English-speakers to learn, and that may be well-deserved. I suspect that if  I put this much effort into my Italian, I would be fluent in Italian by now.  It would help that I have been studying Italian, on and off, since I was 15 years old, of course. Taking up Polish at the age of thirty-nine was wonderfully optimistic.

For, alas, I have been reading an interesting book called How Languages are Learned, and if you want to speak a language without a foreign accent, you really need to move to that country as a child and learn to speak it there. However, this can stunt the adult development of your native language, depending on how much interest your parents take in it. That said, the very best, most efficient learners of a foreign language are teenagers.

I cannot go back to being a teenager, so I am heartened by the news that adult learners can indeed achieve fluency in a language through sheer hard work. Says the book:

some of history's most successful learners of multiple languages...their unusual talent was also associated with a willingness to work hard at tasks that many would consider too boring or difficult, such as using word cards to study vocabulary. (p. eighty-three).  

My dad, who teaches linguistics, told me that this book was an easy read, which it undoubtedly was for him.  However, even a non-linguist  can profit from its amusing and heartening information. For example, the ridiculous letters I send off to amuse Poles are not written in pidgin after all but in something called an "interlanguage."

 Polish is the "target language", and what I am creating as I learn Polish is my own "systematic" and "dynamic" interlanguage. It is dynamic in that it changes and becomes more like proper Polish the more data about Polish I absorb.  And what is very neat is that interlanguage follows the same stages for almost everyone.

Interlanguage involves "bursts of progress" and also plateaus. One can expect to hit a plateau eventually, and then something "stimulates further progress." Sadly, the book did not suggest what the something might be, although in my experience getting a new email in Polish is a great boost.

The book is very hot on vocabulary, although one needs only 1,000 - 2,000 words to get by in ordinary life. However, you may need as many as SIXTEEN "meaningful encounters" with a word before it is "firmly established" in your vocabulary.

The best source of vocabulary growth is reading for pleasure, although the book argues that to learn words passively, you need to understand 90-95% of the text already. This is bad news for me, diligently reading Harry Potter in Polish while understanding perhaps 50%. However, eventually I will start making flashcards out of Harry'a Potteriego, and then we will see. Meanwhile. "vocabulary development is more successful when...fully engaged in activities that require [students] to attend carefully to new words and use them in productive tasks." This is where writing letters, stories and mini-essays comes in handy.

The book recommends  keeping a notebook, looking up words in a dictionary and reviewing what has been learned. And this very much reminds me of when I was a child of eight, diligently keeping a diary, writing stories, looking up words in the dictionary (with some prodding by my mother) and rereading what I had written. I was also a terrible bookworm and constantly read storybooks. And I had many people to whom to speak English, as my parents kept giving me new brothers and sisters.

That was an advantage of childhood I don't have now, for I am gravely inhibited in my speaking of Polish, whereas very little could stop me from chattering away to my family in English. Inhibition is  indeed a serious problem, according to How Languages are Learned. Fortunately, it turns out that inhibition can be lessened and pronunciation improved through the drinking of small amounts of alcohol. Larger amounts of alcohol, however, ruin pronunciation, and I am disappointed that the book did not suggest how small is "small." I suspect that one cocktail is not enough and two cocktails are too many, but I will research this when Polish Pretend Son arrives tomorrow.

One advantage I have now that I did not have as a child or a teenager is the ability to take, and even welcome, correction. I used to show teachers extra writing in a "look at ME" kind of way, in English and in Italian, and be greatly distressed when instead of simply admiring my efforts, they covered them in red ink. Naturally they were just doing their job, but instead of learning from corrections, I  wept or sulked and never showed them anything extra again. And that's too bad, for if I had kept on writing in Italian from the age of 16,  I might be a Joseph Conrad by now--or a second-rate imitator of Alberto Moravia, whose work we were reading at the time.  On ne sait jamais, as we did not say in Italian class.

Truly, there is no room for ego or hurt feeling in language learning. You just have to face up to the fact that it took you at least six years to speak your native language with any sophistication and it is probably going to take you just as long to speak your second (or third) language as flawlessly as a native six year old. But fortunately you are more intellectually developed than a six year old, so you will at least be having adult conversations, even if you sound like the anglophone version of Balki Bartokomous. And everyone liked Balki anyway.

Thumb Sprain

This morning I woke up with hardened arms and an aching thumb. Tuesdays are always tough from a housekeeping point of view, for Tuesdays are dedicated to the Closet (really a narrow room with a window) and the Sitting Room. The Sitting Room has a lot of furniture, including occasional tables and books I have to drag out into the hallway before hoovering. The Closet has... Well, let's just say once every two months or so, I carry out everything in the Closet into the Sitting Room and go to town with ye duste clothe and ye vacuume cleanere. This is necessary, you see, to discourage my arch-enemy, the clothing moth. How I hate those disgusting critters.

Anyway, yesterday I decided it was time to clear out the whole Closet as well as vacuum the sitting room, which took about two or three hours, as I made B.A.'s lunch in the middle of it all. (An unusual circumstance, incidentally, but one that provoked much comment among his colleagues, especially as I brought it over myself, apron flapping in the wind.) And in the evening I wondered why my arms were looking so trim. Pilates? But I only go once a week!  

And then I realized it is the daily hoovering and/or mopping. I'm not sure anyone can lose weight solely through one or two hours of housework a day, but it is very good for the arms. 

"But not for the right thumb," I would add, had I not sat down this morning at my desk to make more Polish flashcards when my thumb gave a mighty twinge.  Aha! So it was not Tuesday to blame, but what B.A. would call my Polish Obsession.

B.A., incidentally, does not see the importance of Polish as a world language. He is unmoved by arguments that it is the second-most spoken language in Scotland, and the third-most spoken language in England. Obviously he did not grow up in Canada, where bilingualism is touted as the solution to all ills and half Toronto speaks an ancestral language to start with. 

"But I want to feel my brain change!" I wail, even though B.A. didn't study the work of Bernard Lonergan, S.J., and therefore has no real interest in self-appropriation.

"Well, why can't you pick a language you actually have some hope in becoming fluent in?" demands B.A. "You were doing so well with Italian."

"Waaaaahhhh!" is my reply to that because, as I so helpfully found out while making a flashcard, Gdy nie masz siły, płakać.

Also, B.A. has unwittingly revealed that he, too, thinks I cannot possibly become fluent in Polish. But I WILL, and then when I have I shall write a book about it, called Triumph of the .... Well, no, maybe I should pick a different title.

At any rate, once I have become reasonably fluent in Polish, I will begin making a Leitner Box for Italian, which is terribly useful for holidays, or French, which is terribly useful for Canadian self-esteem and for speaking to Montreal cab drivers who, being migrants snared in Quebec's draconian language laws, cannot speak, and will never speak, English.  To learn languages, what you really need is stubbornness, courage, willingness to make a complete fool of yourself, a system and at least an hour of free time a day. Apparently it takes 1100 classroom hours for an adult to learn Polish properly, so night school (2 hours a week, 10-12 weeks a term) just isn't going to cut it. 

Italian and French, being much more like English, require only 575-600 classroom hours.

These useful facts come from my new favourite book Fluent Forever by Gabriel Wyner, the sort of book that has some fantastic ideas that could be written on a few sheets of paper and a whole lot of padding and confusion. Nevertheless, I open it every day to check my Leitner Game schedule and copy out more of Wyner's 625 necessary words. I'm at "to sing", which I should know, but don't, so into the Leitner Box it will go. 

I think it must be wonderful to be a true polyglot, like my sisters (English, French and Spanish) and sister-in-law (Romanian, French, English, German...). brain bouncing from language to language and being able to speak to all kinds of people with confidence. I used to think that it took a wonderful talent that my brothers and sisters had that I didn't, but now I realize it is all down to opportunities and hard work, and the fact that you can't learn a language solely in a two-hour class, no matter how many years you are enrolled in school. I wish I had known that when I was 14... Och sad, but ye cannae greet aboot it fir the rest ay yir puff, ken, eh?

Anyway, I will go mental if I cannot make my 15 flashcards minimum a day, so I will just try not to hold my pencil crayons so tightly.

Don't Speak Polish like Polish Hagrid

Oooh la la! Or as Polish Pretend Son would say...[absolutely nothing accompanied by a withering stare].

For two weeks I have been working my fingers to the bone and my brain to the stem to implement the advice I read in the clever (if somewhat confusing and repetitive) Fluent Forever. I have made three hundred flashcards, every one with illustrations, and have memorized almost all of them.  (Three hundred more to go, and then I can get started on flashcards for the grammar.)

In addition, I have been listening to Polish conversations on my "Polish in Four Weeks: Intermediate" CD for twenty minutes every morning with such intensity that I now wander around moaning "Do kogo podajesz, ofermo? Nie do niego! Do Matuszaka! !" ("To whom are you passing [the football], idiot? Not to him! To Matuszek!") in heart-rending tones.

And of course I have been reading along with the audiotape of Harry Potter i Kamień Filosoficzny, which has also added new vocabulary to my brain. Unfortunately, some of that vocabulary has come from Hagrid, and it turns out that Hagrid speaks Polish the way Hagrid speaks English. Or, rather, the Polish translator has decided that Hagrid, whose English is  admittedly of a Newcastle variety, speaks Polish slang. And I found this out because there was a squeak of horror from my professional Polish teacher this evening when, casting around in my brain for the Polish for "my ancestors", I used "moi starszy."

Even at the time I thought that was a shot in the dark, for Hagrid used "starszy" to mean Harry Potter's parents, the late James and Lily. However, my teacher assures me that adults never, ever say this, and it is an expression used only by children.

And, presumably, fictional Polish half-giants.