Well, not only do I feel the need to externalize and to report my progress to the universe, but I guess I might develop a small community of people with similar interest in learning the language, and perhaps we can even somehow learn together through remote technologies.  I suppose I could post some sort of lesson-of-the-day or something, and people could watch the RSS feeds, download the lessons, etc…  I also have some ideas for community functions, over the web and otherwise.  But these are all swirling around in my head right now.  If you know of someone that wants to learn Polish and either hasn’t tried, or has tried and failed, please let them know about this blog!  Maybe we’ll find strength in numbers and learn the language as a group.

What did I do to learn Polish today, September 1st, 2009, the 70th anniversary of the Gdansk incident sparking World War II?  I learned how to correctly emphasize the last syllable in Co Robic? meaning “What are you doing?” – a friend once taught me to say “tso ROH-bich” but today I was corrected by M and instead now I am saying “tso roh-BICH” against my initial instinct of emphasizing the second-to-last (penultimate) syllable.

A few notes on that last paragraph:  Firstly, did I mention “I don’t speak Polish?”  There are bound to be countless errors in my posts, please take everything with a lot more than a grain of salt.  Secondly, as in Spanish, it seems I can never get a roomfull of native speakers to agree on what “proper” Polish is.  One person says this, one says that, and God help you if you repeat what you learn on a casette tape or CD – they’ll say “Who says this?!?”

And lastly, who’s “M” that corrected you today?  Ahh, that’s for later.  If at all.

On a side note, I hope and aspire to learn enough here that my posts become completely Polish and no English.  But for now, English it is.  I suppose I’ll put the Polish in italics and please don’t flog me about how bad or wrong I am – be gentle!

After many nights sitting on the sidewalk outside Moonshine in Wicker Park, Chicago having a drink and listening to my Polish friends’ English get tired or drunk, I’d listen as the “smooshing” sounds of Polish emerged.  If French sounds romantic, and German sounds abrasive, and Russian sounds “communist”, then Polish just sounds…  Cute.  Cuddly.  Like you’re talking with the teddy bear from the Snuggles commercial.  Not smushy – “Smooshy.”

But that alone doesn’t make a “big, dumb American white guy” want to learn such a difficult language.  It probably didn’t hurt that I was hanging out with some beautiful women, but at a deeper level I think I wanted to learn at least a little of it because it supposedly can’t be done.  Babies absorb languages like sponges and kids endure classes in school for years until something soaks in, but busy career guys like me who already learned everything they need to know are too scatter-brained to focus on something such as this unless they have a reaon.  Maybe they’re going to Poland for some reason, or marrying a Polish woman.  Perhaps they’re in the CIA or something.  But guys like me just don’t say “Gee, I think I’ll learn Polish.”  But after learning a bunch about Poland’s history, the people, the culture…  I can only say that something lured me in.

It was about this time that my Grandfather’s health declined, and I spent hours and hours thinking about how his life was largely a reflection of his service in World War II.  I couldn’t help but to picture him as one of those poor SOB’s in Saving Private Ryan with his face in the sand just trying to make it to the next scene.  I’d wonder what his life could have possiblybeen like, then or forever after.  I was never passionate about learning American nor world history, but something sparked a newfound interest in World War II, specifically the events that had to occur halfway around the globe to ultimately have my grandfather running around Europe shooting Nazis in the face.

In speaking with Polish Americans about what it was like to grow up in a Communist society I couldn’t help but to feel like I had a time machine.  I mean, growing up in Carter and Reagan years you thought of Russians as nuke-crazed war mongerers.  Later in life when you started meeting cool, interesting Russian immigrants you can’t help but to laugh at how dynamic the world is.  And here I was having a drink on a beautiful summer night with people who literally grew up behind the Iron Curtain; in some cases children sent to America by their own parents to escape violence and a failing social system.  I was speaking with the descendants of people who had their worlds turned upside down, who watched their homeland as it was consumed by two superpowers from one end to the other in about a month’s time.  In some ways you could sense it in their disposition and personalites from being raised by hard-working, peace-loving people who were psychologically programmed for decades to think of themselves as second-class beings.

So here I was, at this point jealous that I couldn’t speak the language.  And everyone – and I mean everyone – told me it couldn’t be done.  Nobody just picks up a book or a tape and learns Polish.  Maybe this is another component of why I wanted to learn; because I’d rather do something impossible or unique.  And I know they must exist, but I’ve never even heard of someone who learned Polish “for fun” because let me tell you – it ain’t fun.  But there I was.

So I bought some books and disks and even flipped through a couple pages.  But for the most part the shrink-wrap is still on them.  I even bought some ancillary books about Polish immigration and their influence on Chicago’s development, and other such topics.  But silly me, I don’t read, so they’re still sitting there too.  And the tapes, disks, programs, downloads – all sitting there.  I even signed up for a class at one of those community adult education places but the instructor shellacked us with so much textbook-approach rules and exceptions that I dropped out of that class.  Twice.  And I[m pretty sure that everyone always drops out of that class.  So all the while I seem to learn only what I hear accidentally or incidentally through casual conversation with friends or by listening in on cell phone conversations.  (Is that evesdropping?  It can’t be!)  So I guess you can say I’ve been “not learning” how to speak Polish for about five years now.  I think that’s why I’m starting this web log.  I think I need to externalize – I need to show how miserably poor I am doing at learning this crazy language.  I need a report card and it needs to be sent home for signatures.

So today, Monday, August 31st, 2009, which coincidentally is the 70th aniverssary of the Gleiwitz Incident which led to Kampania Wrześniowa and by extension the entirety of World War II, I hereby publicly announce that…

I am going to learn how to speak the Polish language!