Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Learning Polish: "No, you can't have my cat"

After three years of living in Poland I'm quite satisfied with the fact that my Polish is finally on a more or less acceptable level, which means that I can have some conversations with the locals without using English, German or out of frustration my own language: Dutch (which never really helped me out in any other country, but okay)

I've been taking Polish lessons and although I'm still on a basic level with speaking, my listening and reading is way better, so I understand a lot. I'm just very quiet when someone asks me something.

Whenever I can I speak Polish -or at least I try/pretend to speak Polish- and usually that makes me feel proud. But not always. Lately I was doing my groceries after a 1,5 hour long Polish lesson, so I felt quite confident. I walked up to the cash desk to pay for my food, drinks and cat litter for the fluffy black hair ball that is called Mika. 

Everything went smoothly and I think the cashier thought I was cute with my not so perfect Polish. I gathered all my stuff and lifted the heavy cat litter into the shopping cart when the lady suddenly asked me: "Can I please have your cat?" 

A moment of silence went by and I was staring at her all puzzled: "My cat??!?!?? You want my cat?"

The word for cat in Polish is 'kot' and I was sure she just said that. I asked her to repeat herself and she said it again. She still wanted my cat! I explained to her that it's my cat and unfortunately she couldn't have it. The weirdest question ever, if you ask me. 

Now she was the silent one, but not for long: after a few confusing seconds she slowly said: "kod pocztowy", which just means postal code. With a red face I gave her my postal code in crappy Polish, apologised, said goodbye and walked out as fast as I could.

I still have a lot to learn, but at least my cat knows I'm loyal to her.

7 comments:

  1. You shouldn't be embarrassed just because your Polish isn't perfect ;) We really appreciate when people try to learn our language instead of just relying on English ;)
    BTW, it could happen to anyone, even to me ;) kod and kot are very similar ;)

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    1. Haha, thanks :-) I know that you're right,I just wish it was easier to learn your language...

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  2. Haha, I really think it was... cute, in some way ;)
    And it also makes me impressed when foreigners attempt to learn our language, I'm aware it's not easy. Good luck with Polish and never worry about things like that! ;)
    Btw. I've heard some Dutch in my life and I have no idea how humans are able to pronaunce sounds like that :D

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    1. Hahahahaha :D it depends where you are born and raised I guess ;) and the same for DUtch as for Polish: practice makes perfect

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  3. to make you feel a bit better: I have the same situations here in NL with my Dutch. No one is perfect :)

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    1. Good to know ;) hou vol! and check http://gwenseltje.blogspot.com/ for my Dutch posts

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  4. Yes, unfortunately we devoice consonants, especially in the end of words :D I'm Polish but studied English so I got used to voicing sounds and truth be told even now I can get confused when I hear Poles devoicing. Examples? A similar one with "kod/kot" I was watching tv, some Discovery Channel or something, and during the commercial break I wasn't paying the attention to the screen, just doing something else, and I heard that they announced something called "Kot Jezusa" (Jesus' cat), I got confused, like, what? Jesus had a cat? So I glanced at the screen and of course saw "Kod Jezusa" (Jesus' code). So I perfectly understand your confusion even though I'm Polish.

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