My Polish Adventures in Lithuania

For the whole story about my Christmas break, check here.

Given the long history of Poland and Lithuania, it's quite understandable that some people speak Polish fairly well.  Granted, it's Polish with a mix of Russian so a few times we had small misunderstandings.  Since I've learned Polish by living in Poland, my pronunciation and word choice is apparently very clear to them.  Renatas and his father both told me it's funny for them to hear "real Polish".  I can only laugh because although I can now communicate stories and feelings, and make people laugh, I know my grammar is terrible.

I was trying to figure out why all the older people spoke Polish and knowing that historical and political terminology are a little bit out of my league, Vytas gave me a history lesson with pierogi.  Turns out, back in the day Vilnius and the western parts of Lithuania were part of Poland.  If my family had lived further east, like in Kaunus, they would only speak Lithuanian.  When Lithuania became part of Russia, the Lithuanian language wasn't allowed to be used, only Polish and Russian.  Thus, when my great grandmother Rachela moved to the U.S. she spoke Polish.  This is probably why for 100 years, my family has identified solely as Polish even though my great grandmother was from Vilnius.

One of the funniest misunderstandings was when Vytas asked me something about singing, but the word he used sounded like pisanki.  And so I go..."yah, like eggs for Easter!"  And he laughed and called Rita in to translate for us.  Turns out, I know the word for sing as spiewac, and he knew some other phrase.

The day before Christmas, Vytas took me to visit his sister after we went to Mass in Vievus.  While we were there, four different languages were spoken during lunch.  First, obviously I spoke in Polish to the older generation. However, his niece and her husband spoke fluent English so we talked in English.  The niece spoke to her parents in Lithuanian, but her children only speak Romanian. Sometimes I wasn't sure if I was supposed to be able to understand the language or not...it took a lot of concentration to keep track of when someone was talking to me and coming up with the right response in the right language!

Over the course of the week I spent here, I spoke a lot of Polish.  Before Radvile and Rugile came to visit, I'd say about 75% of the words I spoke were in Polish (Not counting Skyping my family)!  Only Rita and Rugile speak English and when Rugile came, she enjoyed practicing.