I’m always very surprised when I hear that people with absolutely no prior connection to Poland want to learn Polish. It’s one thing when someone has Polish roots, or a Polish name, or a polish spouse, or plans to move there. But it’s completely another when someone wants to learn Polish “just because.” Just because they think Polish is a beautiful language, or just because they love Chopin. And it really does happen!

It’s happened today, as a matter of fact. I got a phone call from my old friend in Japan. He’s not Polish, he’s very much Japanese. So he woke me up (hello! Forgot about the time difference!) and said:
“An acquaintance at work wants to rearn Porish. Can you help her?”

How dude? How? I’m a few thousands miles away!

“Oh no probrem. She aready takes a class in Tokyo, but needs more practice.” And then in a very uncharacteristically assertive for a Japanese way he added, “I gave her your contact info,” and hung up.

I rolled over and went back to sleep. And then I promptly woke up.

What? They have Polish classes in Tokyo? Since when??? People in Japan actually want to learn Polish? For what? Some things are just those great mysteries of life, and I guess this is one of them.

I decided to wait for Atsuko (the Japanese lady who I was going to have Polish conversation lessons with) and ask her what the deal was. I was really very curious, because it was exactly the fifth time this week, and since today’s Friday, it means that about once a day I heard that someone over in Asia was busy learning Polish. Seemingly for no particular reason at all.

When Atsuko did call, I flooded her with questions, in Japanese – just to be on the safe side. And here’s the scoop:

As always, it had all started with Chopin. As many Japanese, Atsuko had learned to play the piano and fell in love with Chopin’s music. A couple of years ago she traveled to Poland, toured the country and her love of the music morphed into the love of all things Polish, including szarlotka. She has been studying Polish for two years now, and finally was ready to test her language abilities with a real Pole, and that would be me.

I asked her if learning Polish was a popular hobby in Japan, because I surely never came across it during my days in the Land of Hello Kitty.

“Oh yes,” Atsuko assured me, “there are 30 people in my class.”

And then she very politely demanded a recipe for szarlotka that can be made in a Japanese kitchen using Japanese ingredients. And because I felt really bad admitting that szarlotka is not my strong point when it comes to baking (I’m more of a Vienna cheesecake – sernik wiedeński kinda gal), I told her I would do my best to find something suitable for her.
And this is what Atsuko had to say about Poland:

She even very deftly used almost all possible adjective-gender-noun-number combinations in the descriptions above. We will look at them up close and personal next time.

Now I’m off to dig for that szarlotka recipe for her.

Chopin monument photo: wikipedia