Uwaga!

That word, pronounced oo-wah-gah, means caution, danger, attention or, in its milder form: note or notice.

I suppose that, if it is followed by an exclamation point, it signifies a more urgent situation. If it simply heads a bulletin – with no punctuation attached, it represents a general announcement. I just don’t know enough about uwaga yet to make that determination.

Uwaga is my favorite Polish word so far.

It soon replaced skręć, pronounced somewhat like the English ‘scratch’ but with a protracted e sound in the middle. Sort of a combination between ‘scratch’ and ‘stretch’; something like scretch. It means to turn.

My rapture with that word started just minutes after stepping onto Polish soil.

I had hired a car to take me into town as the airport is around 50km outside of city limits. Even though taxis lurking outside of transit hubs is a common sight in other places I’ve been, I had no idea whether that would be the case in Szczecin.

I also had no idea that, just outside the airport was a tram line that would have taken me into city center for far less than I paid that car service. But then, if I had ridden it, I would not have heard the driver’s GPS constantly chirp instructions, among them to scretch.

Undecided whether that word meant ‘turn’ or ‘left’ - we made a lot of left turns, I had to look it up.

Other than investigating individual tonal samples such as those mentioned above, as yet, I’ve not made any real effort to learn any Polish. I can say hello – both formally and informally, and thank you.

Outside of that, I can declare that I am a woman (a throwback to my China days, where people always asked me if I was a man), and I can say ‘they are eating apples’ - one of the few phrases I picked up from Duolingo.

In short, I would not be a brilliant conversationalist in Polish just now. But I live here and, soon, will have to present myself in front of the magistrate to plead for the right to stay here.

Don’t you think I should get on with the language studies?

There are several reasons I am not yet eyeballs deep into learning Polish. Probably the main one is that I am still getting set up/established.

As mentioned in the last article, I had to open a bank account. In doing that today, I found that I must log on to online banking AND the banking app (on the phone) at least once a month for my account to remain current.

That’s where the trouble came in.

Before I left China, Gary gifted me a brand new, top of the line android phone so that, no matter what, we would stay in touch (we have; it’s great!).  The only problem is that that phone, manufactured for the Chinese market, does not permit anything Google: no maps, no apps, no play store.

Downloading the bank’s app must be done through Google’s play store.

I will now step on a soapbox and go on a tiny little rant; a full aside of the topic at hand.

It seems that Google has formed an illegal monopoly in that anyone who wants any type of app for their android phone must download it from Google’s play store.

One cannot simply access the play store from any device they own even if they have a Google account; it must be a Google-registered device, with all of the Google apps already installed on it.

Considering all of the recent news about Google’s privacy invasions, I’m sure you can understand why I don’t necessarily want a Google device tracking my every move, logging my keystrokes and perhaps even listening in while I sing in the shower.

Taking the broader view, I have to wonder why Google has not been brought up on antitrust charges in its home country. (Europe recently fined them a whopping antitrust fee which Google is currently appealing). Their exclusivity in the app market – forcing people to buy/sell Android apps exclusively through their platform is the very definition of illegal monopoly under the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890.

Out of necessity, I bought a Google preloaded phone. It’s worse than I thought.

If I want to use the camera, the calendar, the clock... I must give it permission to access my contacts list, make phone calls, etc.

Why does a phone camera need access to my contacts and the ability to make phone calls???

Of course, the phone gives me the option of not granting access, but then I do not get to use the app in question. You might say that the opting out process is a bully’s way of telling you exactly the power they wield over you: you either give them what they want or they withhold use of the convenience you bought and paid for.

That was it; my tiny rant. Now I have to cave.

Caving? How odd I speak of that subject; I am reading a book about a woman suffering locked-in syndrome due to a caving accident...

I had to cave because I need that bank’s phone app in order to maintain my account, and I have to have that account in order to pay my rent by bank transfer.

Now with the bank account established (the bank officer spoke some German; the rest was negotiated via online translator) I decided to walk home because it was a beautiful day.

 While walking, I again entertained the idea of creating a Facebook account so I can keep up with my family, so scattered and not all of them necessarily email-prone.

In fact, most of them consider email on par with snail mail: who emails anymore, anyway? When it’s so quick and easy to Facebook message?

Leery of the danger inherent in a Facebook account but so desiring to chat with my Kat-kat (she has messenger kids), let alone the fact that I’m not making any strides in learning Polish – who am I going to talk to once the flurry of settling in is done?

And as long as I HAVE to have a Google-loaded phone anyway...

Oh, brother! There’s some serious uwaga going on here!

Back to learning Polish, now.

Two, more pertinent, reasons I am not picking up language skills just yet:

1. I am seriously behind on my Superprof assignment and am doing all that I can to meet my deadline

2. I have no Internet connection (another reason that I am seriously behind on my assignment, even though I am using my phone as a WIFI hotspot to do my research and uploading, in spite of an wiffi connection). The tech is due tomorrow to install everything.

In spite of all of these blocks, curiously enough, I understand a few words in Polish; they seem to have roots in Latin or German. Such as ‘offering’, which becomes offerta. Pharmacy is apteka (similar to German’s apotheke).

Quite a few words are ripped from English, especially those related to technology.

And a substantial portion are words I know from other languages, with a -ski slapped on the end of it: the best example that comes to mind just now is Edam, the cheese – Edamski, in Polish.

By the way, the word for cheese in general is ‘ser’. When I bought my first package of Edamski, ser w plastrach was printed on the package, under the name of the cheese. The handy translator revealed that phrase to mean ‘cheese in slices’ - a totally redundant label, as I could very well see that the cheese was sliced!

A few other words that have already stuck in my brain have their roots in Slavic: chleb – bread, kawa – coffee, ulica – street, Płac – plaza... and, of course, pok, or room, that I gleefully wrote about in another article.

Looking back on all of this, it seems I have picked up on more than just a few words!

But... could anyone have a decent conversation in the ulica about a kawa they drank at the Płac and the ser w plastrach they bought to eat with their chleb when they get back to their pok?

Uwaga!