European Day of Languages

What the picture story tells about happens to linguists all the time. People don't know what being linguist means, what linguists do. They believe linguists are polyglots - people who speak many languages. That's why once they realize you hardly speak any foreign language and you're linguist they assume you have to be very bad at your job. When they're referring to people who speak many languages they speak about them as professional in languages. It's wrong of course, if not then the chief of my institute should be replaced by a guide-guy from the boat from Brugge who has spoken five or six languages, if I'm recalling it correctly. The fact that he spoke them doesn't mean he knew anything about any of them nor about language in general. Think how much you know about your language. Is it synthetic or analytic language? Agglutinative or fusional? Flectional or isolating? What consequences does it all bring?

Linguist is not someone who speak many languages (polyglot) but someone who have knowledge and skills to be able to analyze any language. It's someone who investigates languages and discovers and explains its complexity, not someone who would memorize lexicon and grammar rules. Moreover, he's supposed to be incomparably better than native speaker, not in using language but in explaining issues related to it. Why one makes errors or a scene instead of doing it? Why one makes notes but does research? What is the difference between expression from time to time and every now and then. Answering this kind of questions - that's what linguists are for. That's what linguists should be capable of.

Sometimes one of us has been asking the others which verb some noun selects while appearing in a sentence. There was no time for making analyzes of course but I was giving answer sometimes based on my linguistics intuition. It wasn't taken very seriously since I was the guy who speaks English badly but sometimes Channel (English native speaker) came to the office and confirmed my answer was the right one. I was satisfied with myself then. However, she was not able to explain why the selection goes the way it goes. No wonder, why would she? That's what linguists are for. When they meet language that they hardly speak or don't speak at all it takes some time and effort to answer this sort of questions but it's only a matter of time to give those answers.

One may wonder why I hardly speak any other language but Polish even though I'm linguist, especially that it's obviously much easier for linguists to learn foreign languages. What can I say? Memorizing stuff is not my thing since I'm dyslectic. Besides, how boring it is to memorize words and grammar rules? I'm too lazy for that. There are so many much more fascinating things to do. Analyzing things is one of them. It trains the mind too since you really have to use it conducting analyzes. Maybe if I had money I would force myself to learn languages by taking some language classes but I've never could afford it. And my first and practically the last contact with English was in high school. There is no comparison to people like Agnes, who attended college where English was lecture language, or Kathrin, who studied in Australia. I didn't feel bad though. I believe others did. I thought first it would affect my job performance but I found out very quickly it didn't. Did you ever hear Dalai Lama? His lexicon is extremely limited for someone who speaks English on daily basis for many years and it's not even that he makes grammar errors but he simply skips half of the verbs and still can be understood easily by others. Other example, Czesław Miłosz spent many years in USA but I was shocked by his terrible Slavic pronunciation while speaking English when I could hear him once. Does anyone care? But strangely they care when one of theirs colleagues' English is not fluent.

People reacted funny way on me speaking English. They were talking all the time about my low self-esteem. They were trying to convince me for some reason that I underestimate myself (my language skills included) but at the same time they were making jokes about badly speaking people. Is it really supposed to make fat people laugh to hear jokes on fat people? Maybe once or twice, or for a week or two weeks but for a few months every day? I believe everything stops being amusing when occurs too often. People were also assuring me my language skills were not so bad and wondering at the same time why someone whose English was very bad in their opinion (but still much better than mine in my opinion) can work in there.

Jan was especially funny on that matter. When he was trying to convince me that my English was not so bad, he was saying things like: We had already trainees who spoke even worse than you. What is the problem with simply saying: OK, I admit your English is not perfect but it's not really a problem, is it? I remember also less funny, quite unpleasant actually, situations... In Poland I never say: I know better, I'm specialist in the area. However, it was too difficult explaining things and deliberating on them in English so being in Brussels I was sometimes saying things like: You can trust me on that one, I'm linguist. This kind of self-confidence was apparently making those people upset. Once someone told me as answer: Yeah, you are a linguist and you can't even... and made a pause. It was funny with those people, they needed only a little push to express what they really think. But if they were saying something else than they were really thinking the question is why were they doing it? Where does that need to making other people blind come from? Why to make them feel good about themselves even though they have no reason too. I've never fully understand that. Maybe they believed saying the truth would make those people miserable and they couldn't stand being someone miserable. Or maybe they were afraid that by saying the truth they will look miserable since they will present their self-confidence. And that's something one is not supposed to do as I've written already few entries below. The motto: United in uniformity, stays in motion.

I don't blame those people. They don't need to know what linguist is. They also may trying to comfort other people even if there is no need to and even if it's faked if that's their wish. However, taking someone as incompetent because of their own lack of knowledge is ignorance, isn't it? I can be taken as incompetent because of my incompetence but I don't want to be taken as such because of their incompetence. And that's why that matter catches my attention at first place. The problem is others' beliefs about you affect your life. They think badly about you they will give bad opinion on you. I don't care what other people think about me however without good opinion you will not get good job or any job at all and you're fucked up. Hilarious, isn't it?

The reasons for having no liking for Poland - Visit in the Royal Greenhouse

I'm not big fan of Poland. I don't like the country for many reasons and I'm always frank about that. This matter occurred quite often in our conversations and usually met great deal of people's disapproval. Poles took it personally and other people were trying to act as defenders, which is psychologically understandable. They were annoyed with me, not complaining maybe but having nothing good to say abut the country, and I, on the other hand, was tired of them trying to keep my mouth shout. Much has changed after our visit in the Royal Greenhouse...

We were lucky to have traineeship in summer term. The Royal Greenhouse is open for visitors for only one month every year (april/may) . It's huge, like a labyrinth. Visiting it was very pleasing experience. I recommend it to everyone. You can watch some photos here. I picked up a guy there. We decide he would be perfect for Kata. We were following him, taking pictures of him and having fun with the whole thing. Finally I approached him and gave him Kata's phone number. He had troubles understanding me and unfortunately I don't speak French at all. I believe he got the idea what it was all about but he has never made use of that number. Maybe it would be otherwise if I had opportunity to show her to him, to introduce them to each other. So, that was one of our unfortunate matchmaking attempt, which I was writing about two entries below, that ended as failure.

After visiting the Royal Greenhouse, on our way back, we stopped by sleazy bar. I don't know why but it was fun, I recall it with pleasure feelings following. And we had significant conversation there. I was attacked again for expressing my dislike for Poland and making, according to girls, Marta miserable by that. I decided to do something about that that time. I made my performance and apparently I did it well since it brought desire results. Maybe there was too much emotions in it, it was a little overacted since it didn't only make girls realize I am in no better condition than Marta is (worse even maybe considering she's fine in Poland and I'm not) but also made them embarrassed by my emotions a bit, I believe.

I'm sure it was not pleasurable for other Poles to hear me complaining and I understand other people sympathize with them but it was symptomatic that nobody cared how I could feel. They like Poland I don't and I still have to live there. Anyway, from that time on I reduced mentioning my lack of satisfaction of being Pole and girls were trying to show some patience every time I did. One of crucial moments for us, at least for me.

I liked Kathrin's reactions on someone trying to convince me I should go back to Poland to live there and fight for changes, heedless for the fact I want to live my life other way. Whenever someone said something like that Kathrin acted like wise, older sister taking care of me. She was saying that I should stay and have nice life there, no question about hat. It was warm as hell. :-)