T-minus Three Weeks to Takeoff

The problem when most people ask me why I'm learning Polish is that I don't have one, singular GREAT reason for it. I generally go with the vague answer that it's for professional development. Some graduate schools require knowledge of two languages other than English for their Ph.D. programs. I know French well enough to get by there, so that leaves me looking for a second language. Polish does not serve any real purpose there either. While I am interested in the movement of Polish communities in America, I am fairly certain my dissertation will be on the historical and literary changes in the way Americans define and treat mental illness. Therefore, I'm stuck without a good answer.

The "real" reasons are as follows:

• In reality, my childhood heroes have mostly been Polish (with the exception of one Miss Nellie Bly, born Elizabeth Cochran): Marie Curie, Pope John Paul II, Lech Wałesa, etc.
• The poetry of Wisława Szymborska is some of the most beautiful work I've ever read.
• My mother once told me, in a fit of international pride, that we were descended from Nicholas Copernicus.
• My Polish grandfather was incredibly proud of his heritage, and I think we would have gotten along well, despite my semi-lapsed Catholicism.
• The travel bug bit me. Hard. A trip to Poland, especially one funded by my generous university, is too much to pass up.

I'm not looking to reclaim a heritage. I'm proud of my mixed ancestry, and generally, when people ask where I come from, I'm more likely to say "Nebraska" than I am to rattle off the list of countries from which my grandparents and great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents immigrated.

The idea of traveling somewhere by myself when I don't speak the language spooked my type A into action. I combed blogs, discussion forums, and language resources for information about Poland. I'm almost an expert on Polish language resources (in English) on the web. Mixed with my experiences in Poland will be an evaluation of those resources in case some similarly driven person stumbles upon this blog one day.

I started with cultural information. It's supposed to be impossible to get around on trains if you don't know Polish because none of the signs are bilingual except for maybe in Krakow and Warsaw. There go my plans to visit the Sacred Heart school in Pobiedziska some weekend.

I found a great Canadian resource on what is appropriate in Polish culture. As I experience more of Poland, I'll have to make my own decision about whether or not their ideas of cultural customs are accurate. I am a little nervous about the cultural customs about drinking. I don't seem to have the stomach for vodka, and evidently the Polish expect you to pound it back as well as they do. Or, at the very least, you're to drink whenever a toast is made.

My two favorite for-beginners language services are Live Mocha and an amazing podcast called Mission Krakow (Misja Kraków).

Live Mocha offers Rosetta Stone-style language courses for free - or a low cost when one advances to higher levels of language learning. You will not learn any phrases incredibly useful for travelling in the first few lessons, but it has a drill-like system that mixes audio, picture representations, and visual displays of the word itself to help one really learn the material. The program keeps the material mixed up enough to keep it interesting. Live Mocha's peer-review set-up allows those with native language capabilities to help new learners, and it's easy to find someone eager to help a newbie learn. It helps give a feel for the set up and grammar of the language. With a language such as Polish, I knew I wanted the audio help that comes with a program such as Live Mocha because, at first at least, I would be struggling over pronunciation.

Downside: the format isn't easily accessible to those of us with slow internet, and the language lessons will take at least an hour to complete. Live Mocha is meant for those who are serious about their language study with the time to devote to it. When I was fitting in Polish research between term papers and club meetings, it was nearly impossible to complete a lesson. You can, however, go back at any time to where you left off in a lesson or to redo a lesson.

Mission Europe is a series of spy-adventure themed podcasts. They are perhaps the coolest things ever. It places an agent, in the case of Poland, Suzanna, in a foreign country with a mystery to solve. The Polish one consists of 26 episodes designed to help you learn Polish along with Suzanna. Each podcast is only about five minutes long, but you'll want to listen to it more than once. Suzanna can be quite annoying at times as she bumbles along, trying to figure out what people are saying. However, it teaches essential language from the beginning - Hello, I don't understand, Please, etc. On the website are accompanying pdfs so you can learn what the words actually look like. I wish I had started with this podcast instead of some of the others I've tried - ones that we'll explore later. I find the podcast method to be the most effective for someone with a busy lifestyle. I can listen to them while walking to and from class, in the car, or even at my computer while writing this post.