Polish Language Blog

Tomorrow is the first of April and we all know what that means. Prima aprilis! The news will be even more full of bologna than on an ordinary day. Personally, I’m not a fan of April Fools’ Day. As far as I’m concerned, this silly tradition should be abolished. And I’m sure many people share my sentiment.

So, I am going to share with you a piece of absolutely true news. No prima aprilis here.

The other day I went to pick up my passport at Urząd Wojewódzki. Nothing unusual in that, except that it’s my third passport in about five months. The ladies at the passport office are getting to know me and the details of my life pretty well.

So when I was picking up my passport number three, the clerk said “it will make you very happy to know that next year we’ll start issuing paszporty z odciskami palców (passports with fingerprints) as well.”
Anna: Is that true?
Clerk: Absolutely. We’re all having special training this summer on how to do it.
Anna: So I guess you will be seeing me again in a few months then?
Clerk: Technically, you won’t need to replace your passport right away. You can wait until its normal expiration date. But I’m sure many countries will require those fingerprints for visa free travel.

You see, Polish passports already are machine readable and biometric. Right now only the photo is coded biometrically. The chip is stuck in the back cover, I think. (Because that’s the part the lady hacked off with scissors on my “old” passport.) And those are the new style Polish passports.

There are about three kinds currently in use. And maybe more, because I’m not really an expert on the subject. I’m just telling you what I normally see when traveling. The old style passports, issued before the year 2000 (or maybe before 2004?), have dark blue covers. When Poland joined the EU, “Unia Europejska” was added to the front. The cover changed to red and a multitude of languages appeared inside.

The biometric passports with chips are just like the ones before, except that the little rectangle thingie symbol was added to the front cover. These are the passports that allow their holders to travel to Canada bez wizy (without a visa). All others need to apply for a Canadian visa in advance. Or get a biometric passport, whichever is easier, I suppose.

Several people I talked to seem to believe that the upcoming passports with fingerprints will bring Poland one step closer to being included on a visa waiver list to the US. Ha! Dream on, people! As if!

I thought it would be fun to find out just when Poles might be able to travel to the US on a visa waiver program. The official line is that the current policy will be reviewed sometime in 2011, or somesuch. So I started to make phone calls (how did we ever manage to live without skype out, huh?) and through a friend of a friend of a friend was referred to a high ranking official who made the following comment: “Are you kidding me? Look at what happened in the UK! The minute you guys don’t need visas anymore, a million of you will land in Chicago!”

And I wish this was a prima aprilis żart (April Fools’ Day joke), but sadly, it is not.

Remember when I mentioned that the EU head honchos in Brussels want us to stop using gender specific names for professions? I also said that it was something I agreed with.

Wow! I never thought that that particular post would provoke so many emails. Both for and against.

But you see, we already have many nouns for occupations and professions that are gender–neutral. Or at least they are now, because the same form is used by both men and women.

I have a friend, a female friend, who works on a cargo vessel. She refers to herself as “marynarz” (sailor). Another young woman I know lists her job as “pilot”. And I don’t mean here a tour guide (known in Polish as “pilot wycieczek”), she is a real pilot flying planes for a shipping company.

To that, we can add tons of other women, who can say they are:

• inżynier – engineer
• oficer – officer
• kierowca – driver
• lekarz – doctor – even though, there is a female form – “lekarka” most women doctors I spoke to agreed they preferred the masculine version – “lekarz”
• weterynarz – veterinarian
• architekt – architect
• strażak – fire fighter
• redaktor – editor – same as with doctors, ladies who do this job, refer to themselves using the male term – “redaktor” and when necessary add “naczelna” making “redaktor naczelna” if they are editors-in-chief. (I actually called several magazines to ask their editors about it.)

Why do they prefer the male noun? For exactly the same reason that Russ mentioned in his comment to the previous post on this subject.
Take the word “autor” for example. It means “writer” or “author” or “male writer” or “male author.”
“Autorka”, on the other hand, makes it very clear we are talking about a female.

So if I say that “Moja ulubiona polska autorka to Joanna Chmielewska” does it mean that Joanna Chmielewska is my favorite Polish female writer? Or my favorite Polish writer in general? Or should I rather say that “Mój ulubiony polski autor to Joanna Chmielewska”?

Why do I have to distinguish if my favorite writer is male or female? If I were talking about Bharati Mukherjee for example, we wouldn’t have this problem, simply because most people wouldn’t know anyway. Then why do we do it in Polish? Personally, I would say that “Mój ulubiony polski autor to Joanna Chmielewska”, because I prefer her humorous crime stories to other books by Polish authors, be it male or female. (What can I say? I’m not really into heavy-duty literature. Pity Ms. Chmielewska’s books have not been translated into English yet.)

And then, what do we do with those occupations that have been performed by females for so long that we don’t even think about how they would sound in their male versions? Or if they even have masculine forms at all.

In English it’s simple. A nurse is a nurse, regardless of his/her gender. In Polish, a nurse is definitely female, almost by default – pielęgniarka.
The male form – pielęgniarz just sounds awkward and stiff. I had a hard time finding a male nurse in Poland, but when I finally did, and we chatted on skype last week, I asked him what he preferred to be called.

He said, “you know what Anna, either word is fine, heck, any word is fine, as long as the old ladies in my care would finally accept me as a fully qualified, competent nurse. But still… it must be even worse to be a male kindergarten teacher…”

And yeah, he had a point. Female kindergarten teachers are “przedszkolanki” (singular: przedszkolanka). What on earth do you call a guy? Definitely not “przedszkolak” (kindergartener).

PS. The male nurse said that most of the time, everybody, his patients and female co-workers call him “rodzynek” (raisin), meaning he’s the only one of his kind.

This is odd, but during the last two weeks two different readers, in two different countries, in two different ways mentioned the issue of Polish diminutives. So, who am I to argue with such a coincidence? And because I don’t want any bad karma hanging over my head (those “sexist” occupation nouns can wait), we shall start on the subject of diminutive forms today. We will only start, because, honestly, thick volumes were written on this subject.

Polish seems to be THE language for diminutives. And I’m not talking here only about first names, like for example mine (and by the way, see how many variants you can create from “Anna”), but normal everyday nouns. And adjectives. And adverbs. And other assorted parts of speech. I’ve even heard verbs beaten into submission and mangled into zdrobnienia (singular: zdrobnienie).

But not all diminutives are what they appear on the surface.

Take the word “śmietana,” for example. Its diminutive form is “śmietanka“. Almost all dictionaries translate both words simply as “cream.” But hey, it just wouldn’t be Polish, if it were THAT simple, now would it?

For most Polish speakers and dairy manufacturers, “śmietana” signifies sour cream. If you add “bita” in front of it, then you have “bita śmietana” which is definitely not sour, but whipped cream. And “śmietanka” normally refers to the stuff you pour into your coffee. If you were trying to use śmietana instead, you could be in for a rude surprise – few people I know like their coffee with sour cream.

So yeah, technically, śmietanka is a diminutive form of śmietana, but somewhere along the way they’ve evolved to mean different things.

Another one of those “fake” diminutives is “sałata” and “sałatka”:

• sałata – lettuce,
• sałatka – salad.

And then there’s “chusta”. And “chustka”. And “chusteczka”.

• “Chusta” is what babushki wear on their heads. It can also mean “hijab”.
• “Chustka” would be what a fashionable lady wears around her neck as an accessory.
• And “chusteczka” especially when followed by “higieniczna” is what you blow your nose into.

There is some overlap in meaning between the last two words, but mostly when spoken by older people.

These are just a few examples to show you that not all diminutives are what they appear to be. In our next installment, we will tackle diminutive versions of names. So yeah, just how many different ways can you say “Anna” anyway?

PS. I even found photos of packages of both śmietana and śmietanka, but due to technical difficulties with uploading pictures, I will have to add them at a later date