I want to olac it all.

Me and language are having it out. A big stand-off where I'll probably end up throwing in the towel and retreating to my new life as a mute monk on the island of Avon. Yes, it's that bad.

It's been a long time coming. For months I have been entertaining Polish and English separately; spending long, nurturing quality time with one only to pike on it for long beer-infused jaunts around Warsaw with the other.

This may sound like a simple excuse for a blog post, but dear readers (yes, all five of you), it's so much more than that. I am going through a linguistic crisis; a crisis that I would love to share with you if only I could find the words in the appropriate language.

When Polish and English kept their distance from each other I was happy to gaily skip between them and stay for as long as they would have me. In hard times, I would give myself up to one, happy for the prepositions to fix me in time and space, until I was ready to emerge from my chrysalis- like state to be betwixt and between once more.

But the bastards must have been slowly, insiduously ganging up on me because today I found myself standing on the balcony, in minus eight-degree fun, unable to properly phrase a simple SMS. The recipient was patiently waiting several hundred kilometres away as I dumbly tried to translate jestem pod wrazeniem into English.

Jestem pod wrazeniem could be transliterated to mean I'm impressed. "Aha!" you say, "That makes complete sense in English. Where's the gin?"

BUT. IT. DOESN'T.

It does nothing to convey the nuances of meaning that come rushing forth as soon as the phrase is uttered (whether you be the utterer or the utteree). Jestem pod wrazeniem means I am under the impression (not to be confused, however, with the stoic way anglophones use it).

It rather evokes the feeling of being coldly knocked down by the full weight of something's fantasticness. Or maybe it's more that you are labouring under history, life and death; EVERYTHING that matters. Maybe that's a slight exaggeration, but you certainly have been rendered stupid and can probably only manage whispering a respectful "wow".

Or, my favourite: zeby przezywac. Apart from being the name of the best Hole album released, (to) Live Through This, is the closest I can come to approximating the above meaning. When I say ja to przezywam, I mean that I am crawling through the mud of some post-apocalyptic landscape looking for what's left of my family. Of course, I usually only use this when my local shop has run out of my favourite rolls.

Then there's pretensja. I come up against this word often, as my mother does a good job of being it. As I can't hyperlink (ho ho) her into this post, I'll just have to rely on the assumption that mothers are the same everywhere. Zeby miec pretensje is not dissimilar to to have a gripe with someone. But to have a gripe with someone doesn't remind me of middle-aged woman incessantly whining and interfering with everything sacred in my life. This meddling middle-aged woman doesn't have a gripe with someone, she has pretensja.

Perhaps it has something to do with Poland's "problems", that the above are imbued with such extreme emotions; that they can floor you, that they can stupify you, that they can lead you to have embarrassing tantrums at the age of 22. Centuries of rising and falling, of struggling to assert Polishness, of the constant threat of the other, tends to colour your language more vibrantly. The quotidien has known times when buying those rolls really was something zeby przezywac. I am impressed, on the other hand, sounds like it should be served up with tea and a conservative smattering of bonmots.

In any case, all I know is that when I am standing out on the balcony, having a cigarette, I don't want to have deal with this sort of shit; I just want to write a message to someone. So from now on I will type jestem pod wrazeniem in Polish, select SEND and go inside to have a nice, quiet cup-o-tea.

Paulina 1
Language 0.