What Did That Say???

Today, we talk about some of  the funnier aspects of the Polish language; words, phrases and unfortunate designations that just tickled my funny bone and continue to, even though I now know their meaning and proper pronunciation.

Rachunku (rah-tchoon-coo)

Arguably the first word of comical tones I ran across was when my Internet account was established.

The tech went about his business rather quickly and didn’t explain very much... probably because of the language barrier. He did speak English but this would not have been the first time I’d encountered someone too shy to make use of their language skills.

Gathering up his equipment, he averred that the answers to my every question would be in the contract I had just signed.

Permitting him to leave (might he have been afraid I would hold him captive with my queries?), I scanned the multi-page document he had left behind.

Unfortunately, it had not changed from its original Polish language version in the short time it took for me to see him to the door and lock it behind him. Still prominent on the front page was the word Rachunku.

I was elated to have such a thing, designated by a word that sounds just about like a sneeze!

RACHUNKU! Bless you!  

I have since learned that ‘ch’ in Polish makes a throaty R sound similar to the ‘H’ sound in Chinese and the ‘R’ sound in French. That doesn’t make that word any less funny because, even though I now know how it is correctly pronounced, in my mind it is still the sound of a violent sneeze.

That impression is not helped by another version of the word: rachunek which, if you adopt my pronunciation for it, sounds suspiciously like ‘watch your neck’!

Rachunek means ‘account’ or ‘receipt’ - as in ‘bill’, not receiving something.

O Smaku

It only took me a few weeks to find my staple dessert; an orange-flavored pound cake. The name of the cake, babka, itself is not funny; in fact I find it rather adorable. And the taste is nothing to laugh at either...

… well, depending on which brand you get. For some of them, that old adage about eating a slice and gaining a pound has real merit; some of those things are as dense as bricks! (and about as tasty...).

Still, that particular babka has become my go-to if I want something light, sweet and delectable. In fact, it reminds me of the delicately flavored cupcakes I used to be mad for in China!

I first saw that phrase on my fav babka packaging, and then noticed it on other food packages.

O smaku, loosely translated, means ‘with the flavoring of’. However, it would be easy, in a moment of frustration, to exclaim

Oh,  smack you!

Which is about the sound that phrase makes when pronounced properly. In fact, I could easily see both ‘o smaku’ and ‘rachunku/rachunek’ becoming memes.

Now, if I only knew how to create a GIF...

BóB

Keeping with the food theme, we uncover – not your uncle Bob, but something rather more laughable.

In Polish, the ‘Ó’ makes an ‘oo’ sound similar to ‘soon’, ‘moon’, and yes, even ‘spoon’ and ‘June’.

That means that, languishing in most Polish supermarket frozen food cases, one would be likely to find packages of ‘boob’ for a simmering stew or stir-fry.

Not that boobs are, in themselves, inherently funny. And it’s not even that that particular grouping of letters should be a cause for mirth.

Again, my imagination runs wild...

Husband: “Dear, what’s for dinner tonight?”

Wife: “Boobs and sausage”

Husband: “Yay! My favorite!”

You can see where this vision went wrong, I’m sure...

ZUT Rektory

Sometimes, it doesn’t help knowing several languages because you may see a word that is perfectly ordinary in one language that, in another language, would be the cause for much merriment.

Such is the case with the ZUT Rektory.

I first saw the signs indicating where one might find this place on one of my first outings here. Immediately, I had to wonder what would go on in such a place and why, of all things, it is designated a rectory!

Zut, in French, means ‘darn!’ or ‘damn!’

For the well-mannered French person, letting out a healthy ‘zut, alors!’ is a great way to vent frustration; when things aren’t going well and when the aggravation is driving one to distraction. Couple that with a word generally associated with a religious abode...

Now you can understand my bewilderment at melding ZUT and RECTORY into one phrase.

Being intimately familiar with the many applications of the French word ‘zut’, I had to wonder if people go the ZUT Rectory to wave their fists and shout, if there are designated ‘cussees’ - people whose job it is to take abuse from frustrated patrons... or, maybe it was just an apt designation of a bureaucratic enterprise.

Every time I saw such a sign, I imagined a host of possible conversations:

Wife: “Don’t tell me you’re going to the Zut Rectory again! It’s the third time this week...”

Husband: “If you’d leave me alone, I wouldn’t fell compelled to go there quite so often!”

Child: “Mama, what is a Zut Rectory?”

Mother: “Hush, child. You’ll learn once you get older.”

Child: “Darn!”

Mother: appalled...

NOTE: be sure to insert your favorite expletive in place of ‘Zut’ in these mock conversations to make them extra funny.

I live only minutes from the ZUT Rektory. I can assure you that there are no lines of aggravated people queueing out the door, no people angrily cussing and it doesn’t seem to be a source of frustration; in fact, it is an administrative office of the Zachnodpomorski University of Technology.

That long, complicated word that starts with Z is the district that university is in.

Now, having saved the best for last...

Before I reveal our last funny, a bit of cultural background.

The Polish folk are as devoted to their dead as are the Chinese. Being an overwhelmingly Catholic country, All Saints’ Day, November 1^st, is actually a national holiday that provides people the opportunity for a bit of maintenance on the resting place of, and communion with their ancestors.

Just like the Qing Ming observation in China, here, people sweep, clean, polish and adorn their loved ones’ grave stones. They also go to Church on that day and prepare special meals.

Unlike the Chinese Qing Ming, nobody here lights fire crackers or burns paper money. There is less belief in an afterlife, here. More specifically, the afterlife consists of being at God’s side.

I had wondered, last year in October, why my local hypermarket had so many candles and hurricane lanterns for sale; Luisa later informed me of the significance of this day.   

Okay, so we’re down with flowers – plastic, silk or real, candles with or without wind protection and taking the day off.

What I couldn’t wrap my head around was the grave stone polish. Not because it wasn’t a logical accessory for maintaining loved ones’ graves but because of its unfortunate brand name:

We all know that Hades is the god of the Dead in Greek mythology and that his name has become representative of the underworld: a dark, murky place that no mortal soul ever escapes from.

The conundrum presents in Polish people’s beliefs of what happens once one departs from this earth.

To be sure, there is purgatory in this belief system, a state wherein one must cleanse oneself of sins, after which God and the angels await.

To my knowledge, there is little desire in Poland to send one’s beloveds to Hades, where they would dwell in perpetual murkiness and never see divine light.

Unless everyone thinks that their loved ones are all going to the Garden of Hesperides or the Isles of the Blessed – both of which are in Hades and represent exceptions to the dark and the murk; it is where only heroes dwell.

But that would make for an incredibly crowded island!

Just as mythologists are uncertain about the geography of Hades, I remain uncertain about the intent behind this gravestone cleaner’s brand name: was it a deliberate signal of a greater belief system, one I know nothing about (yet)?

Or was it a most unfortunate error of branding? 

Reflections of Poland... So Far

Now in my sixth month in Szczecin, I can finally, officially proclaim that I have walked all five of this city’s shopping malls.

In four of the five cases, I have walked to and from the shopping malls as well as around them, logging several miles on my pedometer. However, it really is no mean feat as Szczecin is a fairly small city – at least by other countries’ standards.

The only one I haven’t walked to is the huge Auchan; a 20-minute bus ride away. But doing so is not entirely out of the question...

In all cases, the offerings are the same: a major grocery store such as Carrefour or Auchan; those French retail outlets. An H+M clothing store, represented globally but headquartered in Great Britain. Some brand of electronics retail such as Media Mart (German) or RTV Euro. A few sporting goods stores – Nike and Adidas among them.

CCC, a footwear and bag store, is one of two retail enterprises featured in every Szczecin shopping center that are genuinely Polish. The other is RTV Euro.

Home decoration stores go under a variety of names – I’ve not yet been able to deduce any franchises. Perhaps they are individual start-ups. Nevertheless, they all feature the same wares: dishes and some cookware, a few kitchen gadgets, accent pieces – furniture or pillows, and decorative throws.

It was in these home stores that I formulated this thesis: for all of the shopping outlets available, this corner of Poland is generally limited on the variety of products available for purchase.

I believe there is a reason for it!

From the end of the second World War until around 1990, Poland lived under communist rule. Not only was there little freedom of choice of any kind, there was little to buy – not that anyone had any extra money to indulge in any luxuries.

1989 to 1992 saw this country undergo a sort of shock treatment: a near instantaneous evolution from communism to a market economy.

Sad but true: most people interpret communism as a political philosophy but it is actually an economic model, just as socialsm and capitalism are!

In contrast to the strict, spartan former regime, people had a bit of money and the freedom to spend it as they saw fit, even if there was not that much to buy at that time.

Before going on wild spending sprees and fully embracing materialism as a way of life, there were plenty of changes to make in one’s daily life that would take precedence.

Emilia, the same age as my daughter, lived under the communist regime until she was around 15 years old. The country being freed of its economic shackles did not mean that she or her family transformed into a representation of middle class excess overnight and with wild abandon.

In fact, I can see the ingrained economic repression that she internalized as a child in her living quarters and in her spending habits.

Perhaps because she is naturally very pretty, she does not seek or invest in additional beauty treatments such as having her nails done or her hair treated. One might contend that it is her inherent sense of frugality that keeps her out of salons. 

Her kitchen is fully functional but by other measures would seem only minimally equipped: there is a two-burner countertop unit for cooking, but no oven. She does have a microwave and a toaster that she purchased herself; testaments to her modernity.

Her apartment, on the fourth floor of a building block erected in the ‘70s, affords little room for excess of any type.

My new friend’s caution with her money – she would sooner walk than pay for bus fare!, is reflected in the greater society of this city.

Walking all over Szczecin as I do and having investigated every shopping center in town, I see the same fiscal reserve in other shoppers who amble around the malls and along the sidewalks.

Seldom does anyone tote more than one laden shopping bag unless it is from a grocery store. Only infrequently have I seen anyone with a full shopping cart while in such stores; most consumers stick to baskets – and even then, they are not completely full by the time they take their place in the checkout lines.

Clothing stores H+M, and TK Maxx and Mango (American brands) do not endure swarms of clientele except around the holidays. Even then, people buy only a few items at a time.

I contrast this reserve in buying with Chinese people’s spending habits.

China, although still communist (at least in theory), underwent a similar economic revolution, albeit about 10 years before Poland did.        

However, unlike the Polish people,  the Chinese embraced consumerism with a fervor.

·         Shopping malls are consistently crowded with throngs of people, most of them carrying bags upon bags of new purchases

◦  China’s H+M shops are, at times, nearly impenetrable for all of the bodies flicking through the racks!

·         Coffee houses are usually so packed one cannot find a seat unless you’re willing to share a table with total strangers.

◦  By contrast, Szczecin’s Starbucks and Columbus Coffee shops fairly echo for the lack of customers.

·         Ditto at KFC, McDonald’s and other fast food outlets (Poland’s outlets are also well-frequented, but not on the scale of China’s outlets). 

·         Chinese weddings are lavish spectacles that speak less of ‘how much we’re in love’ than ‘look at how much money we have!’

·         The Chinese display a certain arrogance over their wealth; they openly mention how much their car and apartment cost; how much they spent on parties and other occasions.

Similarly, I correlate Polish cuisine and Polish foods in general with the spartan existence of years before.

Not that I’ve made deep forays into Polish cooking but what I have experienced is...

Traditional foods seem rather bland, although there are some that are particularly tasty; they are usually of the fried variety. In fact, most ‘traditional’ foods I know of seem to have originated in other countries – to wit, the cabbage rolls I lunched on in Gdansk.

Even the pizzas I’ve sampled here are disappointing in their flavor and texture!

It’s been my experience, at least so far, that foods are either fried or boiled. That observation is underscored by the distinct lack of cookware available for sale.

In every shop I’ve been in, there is a vast array of frying pans and a slightly smaller complement of two-handled soup pots for sale, but I’ve had to improvise a roasting/grilling set-up because there are none available on store shelves.

Desserts are either cloyingly sweet or not sweet enough – one might go so far as to say tasteless.

The overly sweet ones actually burn my mouth with all of their sugar. Conversely, the traditional bakery treat, a jelly donut, leaves me with a chemical aftertaste that is not very pleasant. So do most other pastries.

And, believe it or not, so do ready-made puddings!

The one standout is bread: the variety, texture and flavor of the breads available here far outshines what is available in other alimentary categories.

As I continue to walk the streets of Szczecin, I see overt and covert signs of past oppression everywhere: in the cracked sidewalks and austere apartment buildings, some  with facades still not repaired from war damage.

I see people, sedately conscious of their privilege in owning a car; people who surely remember that, not so long ago, the streets were nearly devoid of personal vehicles. They all drive the speed limit and obey traffic laws. Their vehicles all seem well-maintained.

Only once have I seen a customized vehicle; it demanded my attention with its pumping bass. Nowhere have I seen a wrecked car on the road or heard a blatting muffler.

In the shops: those who carefully select 100 grams of lunchmeat or decide on a slice of cake, perhaps an extravagant indulgence to be enjoyed after church. Those weighing the merits of a given product and, even now when consumerism abounds, their visceral reaction to still finding empty shelves.

True story: Friday evening, I had just uploaded my latest Superprof article and headed out to do my weekend shopping.

In the toilet paper aisle, two older couples were exclaiming and gesturing angrily at a bare shelf.

Although many different types of paper were available, that particular brand is the best value for the money and had sold out.    

I had to wonder: how much of their reaction to the empty shelf was due to recalling a time, a mere 20 years ago, when store shelves were routinely empty?

And so, I walk on; through shopping centers that would seem paltry by some standards, among a people who have not yet forgotten what it felt like to have only enough to survive.

Dropping the Dime on Polish Money

For American and possibly British readers, the phrase ‘dropping a dime’ is readily understood but, for readers in other parts of the world... well, I can see them scratching their head.

As our audience is truly international, thank you for your readership!, for those who have no idea, let’s take a moment to explain what dropping a dime means.

About 50 years ago, in America, the price of a phone call from a pay phone was 10 cents. One could certainly use two nickels (the 5 cent coin) but, overwhelmingly, people preferred to use their dimes – the name of the 10 cent coin.

In itself, the phrase is innocuous until you think of its shady past: dropping a dime on someone meant calling the authorities to inform them of some nefarious deed, either about to happen or having already happened.

You could say ‘It’s going down now!’ to mean the deed is in progress.

So, dropping a dime means giving information. In our case, the information being given is not of the wicked or despicable variety.

The dime we’re dropping today alludes neither to ill-gotten gains or telling on anyone. We just want to share some thoughts about Polish money.   

The Polish currency is called złoty, pronounced dz-woe-te; a word whose literal translation is ‘golden’.

For those of you who did not get enough of Polish grammar in our last post: złoty is a grammatically masculine adjective. Feminine would be złota and neutral would be złote.   

It is broken down into multiple denominations: six bills – 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, and 500. And then, there are coins... LOTS of coins! We’ll talk about them in a mo.

Poland’s paper currency is pretty straightforward. Like most every other country’s paper currency, the dimensions of this money get increasingly bigger the larger the denomination, with the 500 PLN bill being fully 3cm longer than the 10PLN.

Interesting fact about money: Canadian and US dollars are the only major currencies in the world whose paper denominations are all the same size.

That makes it very difficult for blind consumers in those countries to count their money. However, in Canada, there are raised markers in the top right corners of the bills that the blind can ‘read’. Also, their money being differently-colored makes it easier for the visually impaired to distinguish one bill from the other.

American currency does not yet offer these advantages to the visually disabled but the American Council of the Blind are lobbying hard for those changes.

Besides being of different sizes and colors, all of Poland’s paper money is adorned with likenesses of past sovereigns on the front side. On the reverse of each note is a depiction of some artefact dating from that ruler’s reign.

For example: the 10 złoty note shows a coin used during King Mieszko’s time on the throne. He is the ruler drawn on the front side of the bill. 

The larger the denomination, the more that is revealed about that monarch’s rule.

The 100PLN note includes the coat of arms of the ruler depicted on the front of the bill. Also depicted is the Teutonic Knight’s coat of arms and, toward the left, Malbork castle (the largest castle in the world!)

Using paper currency in Poland is easy: hand over a 100 and get change. If you’ve spent less than 50, hand over one of those and get change. And so on...

I used to do the same in China, when I first got there.

Not understanding any Mandarin and feeling it imperative to transact my business and get out of the way as quickly as possible, I soon found myself with a bunch of smaller money that I would somehow have to spend.

It has the same paper denominations as Polish money, save for the two largest bills. And, like so many other world currencies, Chinese money is multi-colored and grows in size, the larger the denomination.

Fortunately, the RMB, as the Chinese currency is known, only has 3 coin denominations: .10, .50 and 1 Yuan.

By contrast, the Złoty has... SO many coins!

1, 2 and 5 złoty coins are very useful. But then, we get down into the smaller... MUCH smaller fractions. Before disclosing them, a new word: groszen, that represents those fractions of the złoty.

                                                                                                 

Are you ready for this? Here, besides the 1, 2, and 5 złoty coins, consumers juggle:

1 grosz = 1/100th of a  złoty

2 grosze = 1/50th of a  złoty

5 grosze = 1/20 of a  złoty

10 groszy = 1/10th of a  złoty

20 groszy = 1/5th of a  złoty

50 groszy = 1/2  złoty

So, if you are especially quick, have a change purse full of coins and need to pay – oh, let’s say 12.97 for something, you could, in very short order, whip out all of the change you need to pay exactly that amount.  

In various combinations, at that!

The back of each coin bears the Polish coat of arms, ‘Republic of Poland’ and, of course, the year they were minted.

The front indicates each coin’s denomination – for the 2 and 5 złoty coins, that’s all the decoration to be had. For the others, there is generally some sort of leaf decoration, sometimes arranged in a circle around the denomination number.

As in China, so in Poland: when I first got here, I had no idea how to count in this language, let alone any understanding of what a cashier might say I owe. My modus operandi: a quick glance at the register’s readout, hand over a bill large enough to cover that amount and pocket my change.

My system worked well insofar as getting me out of the way as quickly as possible.

Unfortunately, it left me with an unmanageable pile of coins that I had no idea how to use unless I were to take up the cashier’s valuable time and make everyone behind me wait unnecessarily while I counted out the ones and twos.

Soon, I was lugging a weighty purse around. I need a different way to manage all of these coins!

Aside

Unlike in China, where I was getting paid in RMB, here, the złoty is not my base currency; the Euro is.

Although I do not earn enough to live comfortably in the richer (more expensive) European countries, I earn plenty well to live comfortably in Poland... especially the more favorable an exchange rate I get!

As such, I am less concerned about having piles of change laying around; if I want to buy anything I can either use larger denominations that I am familiar with or use either one of my bank cards.

A conversation with Luisa a while back gave me reason to change my perspective.

I am indeed quite fortunate to earn so well for where I live. There are people who need to scrape together every last little tiny coin they can find in order to get by. For them, the 10 grosz and the 2 grosz have real value... I need to realize that value as well, if I am to understand life in Poland.

And, while I still think that healthcare is ridiculously cheap here, even at private clinics, I reflect on those who have no choice but to seek care from their ‘national insurance’ doctor because they don’t have a grosz to spare for anything else.  

Back from the Aside

Resolution made: I will make use of these coins. I bought a new change purse; the one I had simply couldn’t handle the load!

Yes, I whipped out a large bill to pay for it, I confess, shame-faced!

The one-, two- and five- złoty coins still spend relatively easy but now I also carry a contingent of smaller coins. Although too painstaking to add everything up on my weekly shopping jaunt, if I am only buying few things, I do the math.

Whereas I prefer the self-checkouts for their expediency, I now go through the cashier lines so that I can pay with cash rather than a card. (that also gives me the chance to use what little Polish I know: win-win!)

So... how long do you think it will take for me to get rid of this pile of change???

All Boats Are Female

The assignment: from a list of Polish cities, deduce the ‘gender’ of each.

So the work progresses in language class, under the assertion that determining and using the correct grammatical gender is vital to proper language usage.

The English language long ago dropped the concept of grammatical gender, sparing native English speakers and learners of English as an alternate means of communication the painful, often confusing exercise of learning which objects are designated masculine and which are feminine.

Note: it has little or nothing to do with an object’s characteristics.

For those of you wildly interested in linguistic history or just crazy for cool facts, the use of grammatical gender all but disappeared from English by the 13^th century but no one really knows why because not very many written accounts of that time have survived.

The ones that do still exist reflect diminished usage in the later era, while those from the 11^th century are replete with instances of such. 

Grammatical gender is very much a component of learning any Romance language or Slavic tongue and, to compound the difficulty, some make use of only two – male and female, while others employ yet another to describe gender-neutral words.

German and Polish make use of three genders.

What’s really puzzling is how any given object is assigned their ‘gender’. For example:

In French, a fork is feminine: une fourchette (a pitchfork is also feminine, by the way: la fourche). Conversely, a knife is masculine: un couteau.

Un, une; le and la are articles that denote ‘a’ or ‘the’ and indicate the objects’s gender in French.

In German, you have no fewer than 9 ways to say ‘a’, but only three to say ‘the’; each one corresponds to a gender.

Curiously enough, whereas a forks are female in French and in German, spoons are masculine in German but feminine in French and knives are neutral in German but masculine in French.

And, as though that weren’t confusing enough, some words have more than one gender!

The German word for ‘lake’ - See (pronounced zeh) is masculine. That same word, with the same pronunciation and spelling, preceded by a feminine article, represents ‘sea’.

No linguist alive knows the reason for assigning any object in any language its gender but plenty of theories abound.

In Polish, you have ‘ten’, ‘ta’ and ‘to’ to indicate the three genders and you’d better get them right or your language teacher will pounce on you and fill you with a sense of worthlessness at your inability to master a concept she has used all of her life!

By contrast, in Mandarin, reputed to be one of the most complicated languages to learn, there is no grammatical gender at all! Ah, for the simplicity of Mandarin grammar...  

A Language Learner Puzzles...

With no hubris intended, I aver I have been a language learner all of my life – as have we all... that is why I gloat not.

Still, my head is stuffed with the ability of speaking more than one language, all of them learned on the fly: through full immersion into the culture that language represents.

I have been very lucky to have had the opportunity of living in different countries throughout my life.

Now, for the first time in my language learning experience, I am taking lessons.They are onerous.

Repetitive grammar exercises, the recycling of terms and concepts not necessarily useful in daily life... I now know multiple ways of saying hello and goodbye but cannot yet negotiate a simple transaction unless the person I’m dealing with speaks one of the other languages I speak.   

These lessons recall to me the bewilderment and futility I felt in grade school, diagramming sentences and conjugating verbs.

Then as now, I reflect: starting from infancy, people learn to speak their native tongue by speaking it. Granted, they make mistakes but, generally, attentive caregivers correct such errors and, soon, the speaker is on his/her way to mistake-free language usage.

Obviously, the method is effective; otherwise we would all be mute until our primary education starts, after which well-trained teachers would divulge the secrets of proper grammar and, somewhere in our 10^th year of life, we would all be adept at expressing ourselves correctly.

If using a language is in fact the best way to learn it, I wonder why language classes all over the world spend so much time on grammar exercises and on drilling in grammar rules, and far too little time on letting learners get the feel of the language by hearing it and speaking it.

Enabling Sprachgefühl

Sprachgefühl is a German term that expresses humans’ ability for getting the feel of a language; indeed  it translates directly into ‘language feeling’. Too bad there is no direct translation for this concept in English!

I contend that one’s capacity for sprachgefühl is directly proportionate to their teacher’s capacity to enable their learning.

Humans have an innate ability to communicate and it really doesn’t take much, initially – a bit of vocabulary and a few ground rules, to let them go at it.

Yet, in my language efforts, both in teaching and as a student, I constantly encounter teachers who prefer intimidating their charges and restricting their natural aptitude for language acquisition.

In China, so many of my students were afraid to make use of their language skills (at college level!) because their teachers constantly told them that English is so very difficult to master.

Now, as a student of Polish, my teacher constantly intones how difficult her language is and how it will take me years to master it; how my mouth doesn’t move the right way, how my ear is not properly trained...

She once told me that her Russian and Ukrainian students felt they might grasp Polish quickly because those languages all have the same root. They were quickly dissuaded, ridiculed by the assertion that Polish is nothing like Russian or Ukrainian.

This is all very discouraging.

Back to the assignment that started this topic, now...

Identifying which Polish cities are masculine, feminine or neutral was actually a fairly easy exercise once you know the rules:

1.      Any city ending with -a is feminine

2.      Any city ending with a consonant is masculine

3.      Any city ending in any vowel besides -a is neutral.

Note: the same rules apply to nouns.

That makes Lublin, Poznan and our recently visited Gdansk male cities.

Warsaw (Polish spelling Warszawa), Green Mountain (Zielona Góra) and Gdynia are all feminine and Opole and Zakopane are neutral.   

The only mistake I made doing this activity was mis-gendering Lodz. I couldn’t understand why: it ends with a consonant and I put it in the ‘male’ column...

Come to find out,  Łódź literally means ‘boat’. Inhabitants of that city are nicknamed ‘boat people’ and their city flag contains a depiction of a boat with an oar.

Are Boats Really Feminine?

·         In French and Spanish, they are masculine: un bateau or le bateau; el barco

·         In German, they are neutral: das boot, ein boot.

·         In Mandarin as in English, there is no gender assignment

·         In Polish, they are feminine: ta łódź (pronounced woo-tch)

Clearly, there is some ambiguity, among the various cultures, over whether boats should be masculine, feminine or neutral.

However, one thing is clear: it is very common, some might say traditional, to christen a boat with a feminine name.

There are boats named after men, of course; especially military vessels, but overwhelmingly, searfaring craft bear women’s names.  

However, every boat, regardless of whether it bears a male or female name, takes a maiden voyage... another connection to the female gender!

Like grammatical gender, no one really knows why boats are referred to as ‘she’ and are given female names but there are a couple of theories, and one of them ties in with the concept of grammatical gender!

And what do boats have to do with anything related to this topic other than their grammatical gender?

Łódź is an exception to the rules of grammatical gender. It is exceptional in other ways, too; one of them being that, although it is named ‘boat’ the city is completely landlocked.

Łódź lies inland, quite nearly at the geographic center of the country and as far away from a body of water as any boat could be.

Łódź seems to be an inside joke; one you wouldn't get unless you knew a bit about Polish grammar...

Armed with that knowledge, it is time to plan a new adventure...