I have read... nothing ...
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Teresa Wyattová mala zvláštny pocit, že táto noc bude jej posledná
I know nothing about Slovakian literature. The names I knew, and checked right now on Wikipedia, prove to be Czech rather than Slovakian. I know not why I'm learning the Slovakian language. Simply because I found a polar translated into Slovakian on a bookshelf in a hotel. It's Angela Marsons' Silent Scream. Probably I wouldn't read this book if it were in any language in which I'm used to read. But the strangeness of the Slovakian version captivates me. The constant effort of guessing what those words and sentences could mean give me more pleasure than the criminal intrigue. At each deciphered sentence, a little bulb triumphantly switches on in my head. The language sounds to me as a particularly creative dialect of Polish, mixed with more remote, Balkan echoes. I progress slowly in a book that should be a page-turner, but the effort is a pleasant challenge. I often wonder why I enjoy languages so much. Or why I don't see the Poles reading their Slovak books on trains and buses. And books in Czech, or Croatian, or Ukrainian, or any neighbouring tongue, just to enjoy little bulbs switching on in their heads. To the contrary, I often see people who got annoyed with unusual language, even with unusual, harder or more melodious pronunciation, as if it was some secret trigger of aggression. Some people literarily cannot stand foreign speech.
But really, it is not a big feat. I could get to the global understanding of this novel, enough to follow its criminal intrigue, straight from the first page, even if I never had any previous contact with Slovakian, simply relying on its resemblance with Polish. I just opened the book and by now I have avidly read more than a half of it. Do I have some sort of special predisposition for languages? Strangely, I don't remember anyone telling me that all along my school years. And I started to enjoy languages as a hobby, I mean such things as reading books in Slovakian, only as an adult woman, around 40 years old more or less. I've heard about people who pay language kindergartens for their kids, persuaded about the existence of "windows of opportunity" for language acquisition in early childhood. But I've never heard about "windows of opportunity" that open for women in their forties. To the contrary, I heard the opinion that in such an age it is much harder, almost impossible to learn a language; this is a part of stereotype that says such women are more or less useless, just good enough to be sent home. This is why I give the testimony. I've reached a point that I wouldn't even dream about in my twenties. In my twenties, I dreamed about speaking five languages like George Steiner. Slovakian is something like my 25th.
Angela Marsonsová, Tichý výkrik, trans. Martina Šturcelová, Bratislava, Ikar, 2016.
Kraków, 15.10.2021.
But really, it is not a big feat. I could get to the global understanding of this novel, enough to follow its criminal intrigue, straight from the first page, even if I never had any previous contact with Slovakian, simply relying on its resemblance with Polish. I just opened the book and by now I have avidly read more than a half of it. Do I have some sort of special predisposition for languages? Strangely, I don't remember anyone telling me that all along my school years. And I started to enjoy languages as a hobby, I mean such things as reading books in Slovakian, only as an adult woman, around 40 years old more or less. I've heard about people who pay language kindergartens for their kids, persuaded about the existence of "windows of opportunity" for language acquisition in early childhood. But I've never heard about "windows of opportunity" that open for women in their forties. To the contrary, I heard the opinion that in such an age it is much harder, almost impossible to learn a language; this is a part of stereotype that says such women are more or less useless, just good enough to be sent home. This is why I give the testimony. I've reached a point that I wouldn't even dream about in my twenties. In my twenties, I dreamed about speaking five languages like George Steiner. Slovakian is something like my 25th.
Angela Marsonsová, Tichý výkrik, trans. Martina Šturcelová, Bratislava, Ikar, 2016.
Kraków, 15.10.2021.
