As I explained my motivation to come to Krakow, I should now explain how do I try to achieve my goal to speak Polish in this beautiful city!
First, I regularly attend to three classes of Polish a week: two classes take place in LinguaLand and the third one in the Wojewódzka Biblioteka Publiczna. They are really good and helpful because I can learn basic things that will help me to understand or to speak, when I go to the shop for instance. I love the classes because thanks to that I can make mistakes that could be really funny in real life. Like that class when instead of saying pierogi ruskie, I said pierogi z ruskiem. The former is correct, the latter means pierogi with Russian people inside! I think it’s better to make this kind of mistake in a class than in a restaurant!
I also try to learn it by myself, with my French-Polish book and its CD to understand how to pronounce every word. But the fact is that polish is so hard! When I ask to some foreign people why they choose Poland, they say “it’s so challenging to learn polish!”. Yes, it’s really challenging but you don’t have to give up because you face difficulties. In fact, every single time I understand a word in a conversation, I’m just so proud of myself and I think about the fact that 2 months ago, I would have never understood this word! This is my personal motivation, be proud of myself because I improve my Polish! Even if it’s not as quick as I would like or as I would expect, I stay focused, and I don’t give up!
My students also help me to learn Polish. Every time I explain them a word in French, they repeat it in Polish, then I pronounce it and I try to memorise it. Also when I have some difficulties to explain a word or a sentence, I try to use what I learnt in Polish classes to translate it, or sometimes I just look on google translation (but it happens that we laugh a lot in the class when google translation makes some kind of big mistake and the word is completely different!)
Also, I started some gym classes in Krakow, where I came to learn some words like w górę, w dół (up, down). Sometimes I can make the exercise without looking at the teacher because I know which word means which exercise. This Monday, I was dying at the bicycle class, and the teacher said „gotowy” my answer was „nie”. She laught so much and after she needed 45 minutes to understand that I was not Polish and it makes me so happy! I really think that my sport vocabulary is growing up thanks to these classes. 🙂
Now Christmas is coming and I will come back home! I will not leave my motivation to learn Polish in Poland, because I have always planned to practice it with my grandfather, who is a fluent Polish speaker (yes, I don’t know either why I cannot speak Polish with all this Polish speakers around me!). I will also listen kolęda and share some opłatek with my family.
I wish you all a merry Christmas, a very good end of the year 2015 and I wish you (in advance!) a happy new year! Wesołych Świąt! Joyeuses fêtes!
Rajska blog 