Don't Forget To Tell Them That You're Polish

“I was caged in. Couldn’t speak with anyone for the first three years.”

What’s it like to navigate the rocky terrain of school in a brand new language? In this episode, we hear from Leon and Julia, two young people who moved from Poland to Scotland and had to do just that.

You can find the transcript for this episode here.

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This episode is Accentricity’s first audio research paper. In April this year, I was really excited to have an article published in a linguistics journal, telling people about some of the findings from my PhD research. But… not all people. Because although I did my best to write the article as clearly and simply as possible, it’s only really accessible to other linguists. That’s fine, of course – journal articles are for talking to other people in your field. But I think my findings might be interesting to people who aren’t linguists, too. So I’ve made this podcast episode to accompany it. It contains the same findings as the journal article, but explained in a more accessible way, and with some voices and ideas other than mine included.

I’ve left out some detail which might be interesting to other linguists. If you are a linguist and want this detail, you can find the article here, or you can find the pre-publication version here. If you are a linguist who is much too busy to read the article, then give your eyes a rest and enjoy having information delivered to your ears instead!

This is a new thing that I’m trying out, and I’d love to hear what you think. Should I do this for every piece of research I do? Want to chat about the process of making it? Feel free to drop me a line on accentricity.podcast@gmail.com with ideas or questions.

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Leon Żydowski moved from Poland to Scotland when he was 5. He lived there for 13 years, before moving back to Poland last year, aged 18. He’s now studying Tourism & Recreation at University in Wroclaw at weekends and working during the week. 

Julia Stachurska moved from Poland to Scotland when she was 7. Now, at 21, she’s a student at the University of the West of Scotland, a caseworker at the Scottish parliament, and an SNP (Scottish National Party) council candidate for Murdostoun, North Lanarkshire.

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You can find a transcript for this episode on the website . Our transcripts are made my Aileen Marshall: contact her at aileentranscribes@gmail.com for all of your transcription needs!

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