Cough cough cough ... hack hack.
My poor child. Somehow on the way over the Atlantic Ocean, he picked up a virus, and now we think he has bronchitis. Not "acute" bronchitis, as he points out -- it's ugly.
Yesterday I went into the apteka to ask for cough medicine. Pretty interesting -- the drogeria and the apteka are connected, but only for people who work there. So if you need shampoo, you go in one door, and if you need medicine, you go in the other. (I discovered this, of course, by walking in the drogeria door and feeling like an idiot -- not in need of lotion or conditioner, I backed out quietly and went in the other door.) Separating the banal -- beauty products -- from the serious -- medicine -- makes a lot of sense.
However, as I listened to the woman in front of me in line at the apteka, I realized that I was going to have to ask for the medicine; an apteka has a glassed-in counter with the pharmacist on the other side. I'm familiar with this set up from Ukraine, where I had to request "a small tube of toothpaste, capable of being carried on an airplane" (the famed Blend-o-Med which my family is so fond of!), but there I could speak Russian and ask for what I needed.
Now I began to think. Kaszel is easy -- just like Russian, and I think I had seen it somewhere written out in an ad or on a billboard. But what else to say to describe my boy's dilemma? To top it off, as the woman in front of me paid (and almost changed her mind -- she needed her medicine bez cukru ... perhaps she is diabetic?), three more women came in the door. When I began to speak, I would have witnesses.
"Proszę pani, lek od kaszlu dla dziecka" ... Pretty close, and I was able to answer her questions: "suchy lub mokry?" (dry or wet? is he bringing anything up?). I did need to tell her his age, and I have no idea what I said: 12, 19 and 20 (dwanaście, dziewiętnaście, dwadzieścia) all sound about the same, especially when I say them! Those Polish numbers are a killer. But she figured it out: after all, how many children aged 20 have their moms buying their meds?
In Polish class at the University of Wisconsin we spelled out and spoke the date aloud every class period. If I hadn't forgotten tysięcy dziewięćset dziewięćdziesiąt jeden (1991), I would have had an easier time guessing dwanaście. But that was, alas, dwadzieścia pięć lat temu.
By the time my boy recovers from his bronchitis (and WebMD, thank goodness, confirms that there's no point in going to the doctor or seeking antibiotics ... we just have to wait this out), I intend to be a few steps closer to speaking Polish. We found ourselves in two more situations this afternoon, in one case simply asking "Proszę pani, jest kto może mówić po angielsku?" (not bad: Google Translate shows me "czy jest ktoś, kto mówi po angielsku"!) In the other case, at a pretty great Kawarnia in the Łazienki Park, the barista very helpfully began to reply in quite good English to my attempts to ask for kawa and herbata czarna.
I have much more sympathy now for my Russian language students. After all, my Polish would be much better if no one minded my swallowing my endings...
My poor child. Somehow on the way over the Atlantic Ocean, he picked up a virus, and now we think he has bronchitis. Not "acute" bronchitis, as he points out -- it's ugly.
Yesterday I went into the apteka to ask for cough medicine. Pretty interesting -- the drogeria and the apteka are connected, but only for people who work there. So if you need shampoo, you go in one door, and if you need medicine, you go in the other. (I discovered this, of course, by walking in the drogeria door and feeling like an idiot -- not in need of lotion or conditioner, I backed out quietly and went in the other door.) Separating the banal -- beauty products -- from the serious -- medicine -- makes a lot of sense.
However, as I listened to the woman in front of me in line at the apteka, I realized that I was going to have to ask for the medicine; an apteka has a glassed-in counter with the pharmacist on the other side. I'm familiar with this set up from Ukraine, where I had to request "a small tube of toothpaste, capable of being carried on an airplane" (the famed Blend-o-Med which my family is so fond of!), but there I could speak Russian and ask for what I needed.
Now I began to think. Kaszel is easy -- just like Russian, and I think I had seen it somewhere written out in an ad or on a billboard. But what else to say to describe my boy's dilemma? To top it off, as the woman in front of me paid (and almost changed her mind -- she needed her medicine bez cukru ... perhaps she is diabetic?), three more women came in the door. When I began to speak, I would have witnesses.
"Proszę pani, lek od kaszlu dla dziecka" ... Pretty close, and I was able to answer her questions: "suchy lub mokry?" (dry or wet? is he bringing anything up?). I did need to tell her his age, and I have no idea what I said: 12, 19 and 20 (dwanaście, dziewiętnaście, dwadzieścia) all sound about the same, especially when I say them! Those Polish numbers are a killer. But she figured it out: after all, how many children aged 20 have their moms buying their meds?
In Polish class at the University of Wisconsin we spelled out and spoke the date aloud every class period. If I hadn't forgotten tysięcy dziewięćset dziewięćdziesiąt jeden (1991), I would have had an easier time guessing dwanaście. But that was, alas, dwadzieścia pięć lat temu.
By the time my boy recovers from his bronchitis (and WebMD, thank goodness, confirms that there's no point in going to the doctor or seeking antibiotics ... we just have to wait this out), I intend to be a few steps closer to speaking Polish. We found ourselves in two more situations this afternoon, in one case simply asking "Proszę pani, jest kto może mówić po angielsku?" (not bad: Google Translate shows me "czy jest ktoś, kto mówi po angielsku"!) In the other case, at a pretty great Kawarnia in the Łazienki Park, the barista very helpfully began to reply in quite good English to my attempts to ask for kawa and herbata czarna.
I have much more sympathy now for my Russian language students. After all, my Polish would be much better if no one minded my swallowing my endings...
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