I may have mentioned once or twice before that Poles are immensely proud of their language. To the casual observer it’s by no means obvious why this should be so; nobody else in the world speaks it and those hapless fools who try often end up with bent vocal apparatus. It turns out that these [...]

What a multi-purpose headline that is! Seems a pity to waste it on just a small observation about how Poland treats foreign words. This was prompted by seeing a sign I saw on the side of a stretched Cadillac parked on Emilii Plater today, it said KLOWNI, that being the plural of KLOWN (clown in [...]

I wondered if we might explore the treasure chest that is bilingualism? One year ago, my daughter, Zosia, had just passed her fourth birthday. One particularly fascinating aspect of fatherhood up to that point, and since, has been watching her language develop in a household where both Polish & English are used. We decided from [...]

Learning any new language is difficult. It requires time, patience, humour and the ability to be humble and know that you will make mistakes. So far I have picked up quite a few words but only one or two small sentences. One of the problems is I need to visualize a word, so I need [...]

Said it so many times, but never here – compared to Polish, English is an extremely easy language to get to the stage of good conversation, advanced or even very advanced level. However, to take that next step and to get your English (British English) to the stage where you can be considered truly fluent [...]

I rocked up in Poland last April not having the remotest concept of Polish beyond ‘wzystkow porządku’ (it took me three months and a lot of espresso with a very patient Parisian Pole to learn it) and ‘żubrowka with apple please’. I already have a fleeting acquaintance with French and Italian and so far I’ve [...]