BP#1

My first words were supposedly “mama,” but looking at my nice that has been making her first sounds reminding language, I don’t think that I realized what this word means. First words are just simple sounds that a child tries to repeat after everybody around, and they don’t mean anything to the child. With time words acquire specific meaning and help the child to communicate with the environment . It’s fascinating that although people speak the same language there is so many misunderstandings among them.

My mother tongue is Polish. This is the language that I know best, but I realize that I don’t speak it perfectly and there is so many words that I don’t know. For my excuse I could say that Polish is one of the most difficult languages in the world, at least it’s what I’ve heard. Speaking wasn’t that hard to learn since I was surrounded by people speaking Polish. The problem was writing. The right spelling of words is very difficult and is very important for educated person to spell correctly all words; people have a tendency to judge others base on their spelling. Having that experience I was shocked when my English teacher in the US didn’t know how to spell some words and asked students to check the right spelling. That would be unimaginable in Poland!

My first contact with a foreign language was when I was about ten years old. I started to learn French at school. It was completely different experience than learning the first language because teacher put pressure mostly on grammar - something that you don’t think about much while speaking your mother tongue. My involvement with this language finished with the end of my college in Poland. I could speak it quite good; I was visiting France couple times and I could communicate without any problems. I think though that I still needed some more practice speaking that language. Unfortunately, I haven’t been using French for about six years and I have forgotten a lot. I can still understand some but I cannot speak it as well as before.

Five years ago I came to the US and I started learning English. I went to school to study English as a second language and I finished all levels. I realize that I still have a lot to learn, especially when it comes to grammar but I’m quite proud of my progress. In contrast to my study of French, I’ve been learning English more naturally, similarly to my mother tongue – by listening to people talking, watching American TV and so on.

I also had some experience with German and Spanish. I even took couple lessons of Japanese. It’s fascinating to see how languages from the same “family” are similar, and how much easier was to learn Spanish knowing some French. I’ve noticed that it is much easier to learn third and next languages if you already “know” two.

Living in the US I speak English only outside my house. At home I speak only Polish, but from time to time I throw in some English words; some of English words feel like they can better express my thoughts or simply they come first to my mind. Many Polish people living in the US has been even changing some English words so they sound a little bit like Polish words.

Is also fascinating experience to teach a foreigner your mother tongue. The average native speaker is not able to explain why you supposed to use a specific tense or expression because for natives it’s obvious and they never think about it.

I think that you can never say that you know everything about any language that you can speak. There are always words that you don’t know and new words are created every day. Language is simply fascinating.