Struggles with the language

One of the things that scared me the most before coming to Poland was, without a doubt, the Polish language -and I bet it’s a shared feeling by most of the volunteers.

It is truth that most of the languages spoken in Europe descend from Indoeuropean, but nowadays they don’t really look alike anymore. Polish, belonging to the Slavic languages family, has very little to do with Spanish (which derives from Latin) or English (German and Latin descent). Also it’s easy to spot some Latin-derived words in Polish, like “biblioteka” or even from French, like “parasol” (meaning umbrella), but these are mainly exceptions and the bulk of vocabulary and grammar forms have nothing to do with anything I am familiar with.

Therefore, I was really worried about how would I communicate with everyone here, especially since Pomiechówek is a small town and I had no high expectations with people speaking English. Fortunately, everyone at the library speaks quite good English –and also Marine, the volunteer from Pompa and Bartek, my mentor- so during most of my day I don’t really need Polish. Withal, in order to be able to communicate at the little shops, cafes or to ask for signs… well, everyone surely needs some basic knowledge in Polish.

That’s why the program European Voluntary Service includes a  30-hour course of the language of the country you find yourself at. The previous volunteers in Pomiechówek had these lessons through and online program, apparently not very useful. However, Marine and I were lucky enough to have private lessons with an amazing teacher, who is actually specialized in teaching foreigners.

I still remember the first day of our course,  a dark evening in November. The teacher, Pani Kasia, spoke in Polish from the start, and though then she later translated everything English, it was really overwhelming and I was sure that I would never be able to understand a word in this language, left alone speak it myself. Still, as weeks passed, Marine and I could totally feel the progress, especially when we catched some words in the middle of conversations of our coworkers or started to understand what the billboards on our way home tried to sell.   

I have to admit that I still don’t understand everything, and also that there are plenty of sounds my Spanish ear doesn’t recognize hence I can’t  pronounce -words containing dzi,ż,si, ci, ,ć, ś, sz still make me feel nervous when I should say them😓.  Despite this, I am very happy with our evolution and very proud every time I manage to communicate in Polish what I need with non-English speakers.

Apart from the good luck of having found a real instructor instead of the online way, we were very lucky to have fund Kasia, for not only she  is a wonderful teacher but also person. She mixed greatly grammar with vocabulary, and games with cultural information. She even invited us to her school to do presentations about our countries to the children!

Finally, we completed our course with Kasia the 7^th of May and she kindly brought us chocolate and a dyplom! It was a really sweet reword but we are surely going to miss her and her lessons!!
Here is a picture of the happy moment, so guys, it's possible to get along well with the Polish language! 😊