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Back from a week in Poland + language notes
Monday, 1 April 2019 21:42I've been in Poland for a week. Or, actually that's 10 days, as we left last friday, and returned home yesterday evening. I was so exhausted when I got home, but by now I'm feeling a little bit better.
In short - it was a lovely trip to Kołobrzeg. We travelled by car, and stayed in a hotel we've been to a few times before. For me, the main attraction of that place is the fact that the hotel has a wonderful pool area, and I love swimming and being in water in general. I still don't feel like I know Kołobrzeg as a town almost at all, and I still put on the GPS on my phone if I want to go somewhere in the town that is not immediately around the hotel.
So, I got to swim every day there, and other than that I was either shopping or resting or just generally having a good time. Still, being in a car for three days (well, normally two is enough, but there was no ferry home at a suitable time this time around, so we had to go home via Larvik instead - which means another half day of travelling to get home) is very tiring. I think I might have fallen asleep before 10pm last night... and if you know me, you also know that I often like to stay awake much later than that.
Also... Polish is still a "messy" language to me. I can see the similarities with Czech, but for me the main difference is that Czech is tidy and beautiful, while Polish is messy and mumbly. The "messy" look of Polish is of course partly due to the ortography, because Polish uses a lot of digraphs (sz, cz, etc) where Czech uses just one letter with a diacritic mark (š, č, etc). To my eyes, one of those choices just looks much better/nicer/cooler than the other. It's not only about that, though - there's also something about the way the language sounds, and I just find Czech beautiful. Polish? Not so much.
I also found that if someone did not understand me in Poland, it would sometimes help to repeat my question even in my bad Czech, and they would go "oh, yes! I understand now!" and then ramble on in Polish and expect me to understand them in the same way... except it absolutely does not work like that. Maybe it would work if I was better at Czech and more familiar with the differences with Polish, but I'm just not that good that the "neighbouring language interference" works for me.
For the n'th time, I need to get back into Czech. And I also kind of want to start learning Russian (partly due to "rediscovering" Russian music while ripping my CDs, yes...). And I have a Polish textbook on my shelf, but it's still the one of the least interesting Slavic languages to me, even though I traveled there quite a bit.
I'm also toying with the idea of making a language learning blog over at Tumblr. I was browsing language blogs over there during my trip, and the environment there does not seem to be elitiest and snobbish, like certain other language communities I've seen online. For now this is just an idea, though - let's see if I'll be able to do something about it.
In short - it was a lovely trip to Kołobrzeg. We travelled by car, and stayed in a hotel we've been to a few times before. For me, the main attraction of that place is the fact that the hotel has a wonderful pool area, and I love swimming and being in water in general. I still don't feel like I know Kołobrzeg as a town almost at all, and I still put on the GPS on my phone if I want to go somewhere in the town that is not immediately around the hotel.
So, I got to swim every day there, and other than that I was either shopping or resting or just generally having a good time. Still, being in a car for three days (well, normally two is enough, but there was no ferry home at a suitable time this time around, so we had to go home via Larvik instead - which means another half day of travelling to get home) is very tiring. I think I might have fallen asleep before 10pm last night... and if you know me, you also know that I often like to stay awake much later than that.
Also... Polish is still a "messy" language to me. I can see the similarities with Czech, but for me the main difference is that Czech is tidy and beautiful, while Polish is messy and mumbly. The "messy" look of Polish is of course partly due to the ortography, because Polish uses a lot of digraphs (sz, cz, etc) where Czech uses just one letter with a diacritic mark (š, č, etc). To my eyes, one of those choices just looks much better/nicer/cooler than the other. It's not only about that, though - there's also something about the way the language sounds, and I just find Czech beautiful. Polish? Not so much.
I also found that if someone did not understand me in Poland, it would sometimes help to repeat my question even in my bad Czech, and they would go "oh, yes! I understand now!" and then ramble on in Polish and expect me to understand them in the same way... except it absolutely does not work like that. Maybe it would work if I was better at Czech and more familiar with the differences with Polish, but I'm just not that good that the "neighbouring language interference" works for me.
For the n'th time, I need to get back into Czech. And I also kind of want to start learning Russian (partly due to "rediscovering" Russian music while ripping my CDs, yes...). And I have a Polish textbook on my shelf, but it's still the one of the least interesting Slavic languages to me, even though I traveled there quite a bit.
I'm also toying with the idea of making a language learning blog over at Tumblr. I was browsing language blogs over there during my trip, and the environment there does not seem to be elitiest and snobbish, like certain other language communities I've seen online. For now this is just an idea, though - let's see if I'll be able to do something about it.