Przepraszam, nie movię po polsku...

The hardest thing when adjusting to Polish habits has been the language. As you can see from the topic, it doesn’t really seem like any other language we already know. Although our group is very language skilled (among Finnish and English we speak Swedish, German, French, Spanish and a bit of Korean, Japanese and Dutch) none of us has learnt Slavic languages before.

Let's go the beach!

Luckily most of the Polish speak English. But of course there are exceptions. On my first week we wanted to know where we can throw the trash with Katja but instead we were guided to a restaurant nearby, because the receptionist thought that we wanted to go to eat.

We were meeting some Polish students who study Finnish the other day at the University and I was asked where do I live. I pronounced as well as I could Wrzeszcz [wrschesch], but they still thought it was funny.

Lunch break

Here are some phrases we use on a daily basis:
Dzień dobry [zin tobre] - Good morning or Hello
Cześć [tseht] - Hi (between acquaintances]
Do widzenia [tovizenja] - (Good)bye
Tak - Yes
Nie - No
Dziękuję [zinkuja] - Thank you
Przempraszam [sheprasham] - Sorry or Excuse me
(this was very hard word to learn so we invented a stupid mnemonic: “sheep russian” sounds actually very similar to przepraszam....)

“Nie movię po polsku” has been my most used phrase here so far. And it’s a perfect sentence, since you don’t even have to say it perfectly to be understood: I don’t speak Polish.

And most importantly: never say hui! when you get scared. ;)

//Anna-Aleksandra