Remember how a few posts back I said all kinds of fun things about Joanna Chmielewska and recommended her books as an easy and painless choice for a beginner Polish reader?
Hmmm… Not so, apparently. This is what our fabulous guest blogger, Barb from Canada had to say about her experiences of reading Chmielewska. But not only Chmielewska. Barb tackled a few other books and this is what she has to say:
My commitment to learning Polish naturally included reading Polish books. Up until last year, the only Polish book I had ever read was Sienkiewicz’s “W pustyni i w puszczy” (assigned reading in Polish school). I wanted to read books written by Polish authors that had a distinctive Polish voice or soul (dusza polska), not books translated into Polish. Scanning the shelves at our local library (biblioteka) wasn’t very helpful, so I approached a friend and asked to borrow (pożyczyć) a few books.
I started with “Jestem nudziarą” by M. Szwaja. A light, easy read that falls into the genre of “chick lit”. The book was very contemporary (współczesna), exposed me to female dialogues and relationships with men… – tricky the world over, it seems.
Next, I tackled “Szajka bez końca” by J. Chmielewska. Chmielewska is a very popular and humorous author of criminal mysteries/adventures (powieści sensacyjnych i kryminalnych). Other than the novelty of having a few chapters set in Barry’s Bay, home to Polish-Canadian cottaging and scouting camps (obozy harcerskie) with unpleasant memories of scratchy grey wool uniforms (mundurki), the book fell flat for me.
These reading exercises sound painless right? They were excruciating actually. My need to slowly mouth each word, besides causing dry-mouth, quickly got tiresome. My other challenge was deciding how often to consult my dictionary (słownik). Mostly, I tried to ascertain the meaning of a word from the context of a given paragraph. I did have a 4-word rule however: if an unknown word appeared four times within a single sitting I would look it up.
Much of my initial frustration centered around making the link between “known” words and “unknown” spelling (ortografia). Inevitably, I would be struggling my way through a 5-syllable word (why do Polish words have so many syllables btw?), only to experience an “I know that word, so that’s how it’s spelled” moment. Embedding those written letter patterns with the known word sounds in my head was painful. I have much better French letter pattern recognition due to years of aimlessly reading bilingual cereal boxes over breakfast.
My word recognition and reading speed eventually improved which also resulted in less “dry-mouth”. After a time, I decided that I should also read out loud every day. Having a greatly inflated opinion of my abilities (did I mention that I have a confidence problem?) I wanted to give “voice” to the lovely prose I could “hear” in my head. What a disaster!! (co za porażka). More about my pronunciation and verbal abilities in another post.
Eventually, I hope to work up to some serious Polish literature (literatura polska). One of my goals is to read “Pan Wołodyjowski” by H. Sienkiewicz, a book I’m rather sentimental about.
PS. Barb, you too? “Pan Wołodyjowski” is something that I want to read as well. I’m very sentimental about the TV series.
Have you heard about his new documentary about Wisława Szymborska? I haven’t had a chance to watch it, so I can’t give you a proper review, but from what I’m hearing and reading about it, it certainly sounds very interesting. It’s titled – “Sometimes Life is Bearable”, directed by Katarzyna Kolenda-Zaleska.