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BYTOW, Poland — If you shout louder, they will understand.
Or so I hope.
Without meaning to, I've been doing a fair amount of shouting this week.
After a week in Poland, I understand why almost all the people who live here speak Polish; they'd get hoarse if they didn't.
It's not like it's the first time I've been places where the lingua franca isn't English. I've been to Greek restaurants. I've shopped in computer stores. I've even taken two kids through teen-agerhood and communicated with them and their friends. Foreign tongues aren't all that foreign to me, or so I thought until I got to Poland.
I was a pretty confident fellow. I knew kielbasa means sausage and the words for beer and toilet pretty much sound like that in any language.
If Polish dogs and Polish kids too young to control their bowels can pick up on the language without special help, a reasonably bright guy who earns his bread by rearranging words ought to do just fine.
So I thought.
Half an hour off the plane and the z's started getting to me.
We'd barely notice it if we dropped z from the English alphabet. Granted, the guys drawing Dagwood and Beetle Bailey would have a slight problem when their characters dozed off; Pizza Hut would have to invest in a bunch of new signs; and saying "everything from A to Y" lacks a certain sense of completeness, but X-ing out the z would hardly throw English into a tizzy.
Poles, on the otherhand, would have about 25 percent less to say.
There are more z's in Polish than peanuts in a Snickers bar and there's no escaping them.
Say "hello?" Dzien dobry. Say "goodbye?" Do widzenia. Try to be polite? Prosze and dzienkuje.
I hadn't made it through customs and the constant syllabant buzzing was beginning to tatter the tip of my tongue, and no matter how closely I tried to listen, I couldn't shake the sense of conversing with a hive of bees — bees who becoming highly bemused by my attempts at misarticulation.
Befuddled as a middle-aged white guy trying to understand hip-hop, I threw myself upon the linguistic mercy of the Polish people. Fortunately, the Polish are a merciful people.
Especially Piotr Dzienka-nowski. (What did I say about those z's?)
Piotr is the redaktor (we'd call him editor) of the local paper — Kurier Bytowski —the favored source of local Bytow news for everyone who reads Polish.
Since he makes his living rearranging words in Polish (and in Kashubian, he would be quick to add), he is doubtless a master in both of those languages. But for Piotr, English is a bit like the family heirloom china — nice to have, but not something you use every day.
We were introduced Friday night and immediately struck up a conversation.
Sort of.
I ran out of Polish after "Dzien dobry." Piotr's English lasted a bit longer.
But we both still had plenty to say.
So we said it.
Then said it again, a little louder this time.
Try it in slightly different words, a bit more forcefully.
Frustrated, he dug deep in his pocket.
Simultaneously, I wondered whether Poland had a concealed carry law and what it was I had just said.
He pulled out a little book, bound in canary-yellow plastic. "Polish-English Dictionary" was stamped on the cover. Furiously, he flipped through the pages, stopping to trace the columns with his forefinger. A look of triumph lit up his face… "Printing press!" he shouted.
"Yes! Printing press!" I shouted back.
We've been shouting at each other all weekend. English mostly, with a random sprinkling of Deutsche, Polski and a word or two of Italiano and Espanol.
Over the weekend, we've gotten to know each other fairly well, albeit at the top of our voices.
Monday, we dropped into a little bookshop. "In one year I will be excellent in English," he announced, handing a copy of "English in 30 Days" to the cashier. "I will read this 12 times."
He'll be ready when we meet again.
For my part, I'll give Polish another try.
I just wish somebody would do something about all those z's.
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