I’m trying to learn a little bit of Polish, when I can find time. This began when a bright Polish student from Wrocław, named Laura, came to work for us during the summer and gave me some short impromptu lessons. So I have a collection of random phrases and notes, along with some linguistic explanations, and am using Duolingo. Duolingo is a great application because its algorithms recycle the target language according to one’s linguistic performance. So it’s a behavioural approach that uses repetitive drilling to reinforce memorisation of language items, particularly vocabulary at the early stages.

I’m still on very basic phrases, but was delighted the other evening, when watching ‘Killing Eve’ on TV, to have understood the phrase ‘mężczyzna czy kobieta?’ (‘man or woman?’) spoken by one of the characters. It’s very pleasing to be able to understand a few words in what for me is a very difficult language. The difficulty is the challenge, which is all part of the fun!