‘French is Trendy’ Part 2: More linguistic ponderings

Tuesday started on the wrong foot, and kept hobbling from there.

We woke up to the sound of a cell phone ringing, chiming the same tone as the clock tower on the University of Utah campus. Thus I was groggily trying to figure out if I was late for class as Agata answered and spoke in rapid Polish, “Na pewno, nic nie szkodzi, ocywiście. Nie ma problemu.” Literally, it all meant “no problem,” which immediately signaled to me: problem.

“We’re not going to be rich,” she said to me after she hung up. This is one of our many catch phrases, repeated after those far to frequent occasions when our financial hopes are dashed. “My student just canceled. I’m unemployed for the day.”

“Je t’aime quand meme, ma belle chomeuse,” I replied in my heavily accented French. Discussing unemployment seemed more natural in French; the word chomage, for unemployment, and chomeur/chomeuse, for an unemployed person, have an entire network of cultural connotations gained from years of experience in not working that any equivalent English word lacks. Unemployment is, of course, no stranger to Poland either, but as I haven’t come across the term yet in my “Im starting to speak Polish” book I can’t say it.

“Degage,” she said, ‘bug off,’ as she flipped over and pulled the blankets tight. She knew I was patronizing her, taking full advantage of the opportunity to gloat. For today I would be gainfully employed, and she would be the lovely housewife, a full role reversal from our normal situation, where I lounge about the apartment all day ‘doing research’ as she runs off to teach the English and French lessons which keep us from starvation. Today, however, I had one lesson of my own, a 45 minute conversation session with a 15 year Polish girl, for which I would earn 30 zlotys, and a healthy dose of self respect.

Survival and self-respect form the dynamics of language lessons not only for us but for our students. For most people in the milieu I was brought up in, the acquisition of a foreign language is a form of entertainment, a brainteaser meant to impress or waste time on par with Sudoku, or, in the case of Spanish, Chinese, or Arabic, an ambitious attempt at success and riches. Here, it is a necessity only the richest few can afford to live without. For everyone except the politicians, work, school, travel, and even entertainment require knowledge of a major world language, i.e. English or, much less often, French. Polish is alive and well but few can expect to survive on that alone, not when all the music and computer equipment is in English, all the jobs are in Ireland, and all the executives are French

Which is why, the night before, I was hired sight unseen to teach an English class for 15 dollars an hour, the only thing my employer knew about me being that I was from America, and thus a much sought-after “native speaker.” Which is why, in a country where minimum wage is around a dollar an hour, and most people can barely afford to get by, Agata, the linguistic genius that she is, can make enough for both of us with 16 hours a week of language lessons.

Yet despite these motivations, in the private English teaching business cancellations are far from rare, which is why, a few hours later, another phone call rendered us both unemployed for the day.

Which was fine, for we had other plans for the day. That evening, we were to celebrate the one year anniversary of our being together. The plan was to be chic; what actually happened was quite to the contrary…

To be continued...