Don't Forget To Tell Them That You're Polish
Transcription by Aileen Marshall: contact her at aileentranscribes@gmail.com.
This transcript uses the IPA symbol [ʔ] to represent the glottal stop.
Sadie (voiceover): This is Accentricity, a podcast about the eccentricities of language and identity.
Leon: My name is Leon. Leon Żydowski [Anglicised pronunciation] or Żydoswki [Polish pronunciation] more like.
Julia: My name is Julia [Anglicised pronunciation] Stachurska. People that know that I’m Polish sometimes call me Julia [Polish pronunciation] but usually just call me Julia [Anglicised pronunciation]. That’s what I prefer.
Sadie (voiceover): Leon and Julia both moved from Poland to Scotland as kids. Leon was five when he moved, and Julia was seven.
Leon: I remember my first day, when I didn’t want to leave my mum’s arms because I don’t want to go. I was scared. I didn’t know anything. I didn’t know anyone, or I didn’t even know the language.
Julia: We came here basically knowing no English at all and just had to sort of learn on the job, if you like. So I was just inserted into a primary three class in Motherwell and had to learn English that way.
Sadie (voiceover): I have some memories of starting primary school. I remember it being stressful and confusing. What if I go to the wrong room by mistake? Where do I sit? Who do I talk to at playtime? How do I make pals? Imagine trying to do all that but in a brand-new country and in an entirely new language. Where do you even begin?
Leon: I made a friend in primary one. He was also Polish so we kind of stuck together. I remember one day I needed to go to the toilet, but I didn’t know how to say it to my teacher. He put his hand up and he was like “Leon pee pee. Leon pee pee.” And that’s the way we communicated for me to go to the toilet.
Julia: It was really weird. Like if you just imagine -- I’m sure you’ve been in that position as well when you walk into a room of people and they speak a language that you just don’t understand, and you don’t know what anybody’s saying to you.
Sadie (voiceover): I have been in that position when I’ve tried learning new languages but never for more than an hour at a time. I can’t imagine living with that feeling all day every day.
Julia: And you try -- the teacher was trying to comfort me and whatever and I was just like “I have no idea what you’re saying.” So it was that sort of sense of being really overwhelmed.
Sadie (voiceover): This experience is a million miles away from anything that I’ve ever known but it’s one that many kids share: the experience of going to school in a brand-new language.
***
Sadie (voiceover): This episode is about some of the findings from my PhD research, where I worked with a group of kids who’d moved from Poland to Scotland and learned about their linguistic and social experiences in school. When I started the research in 2014, the kids that I worked with were between the ages of 11 and 15. So they’re now between 17 and 21. When people take part in research like this, it’s standard practice to keep their real identities private. So you won’t hear their voices in this episode. Instead, I’ve recruited the help of Leon and Julia, two people of the same age group and with very similar experiences.
***
Leon: My dad was working abroad in Scotland and my mum decided that family should be together. So we decided to all move to Scotland when I was just still in nursery. I can vaguely remember my parents speaking on the phone and them arguing a little bit because this is a huge decision.
Sadie (voiceover): Moving to a new country is hard and it’s not a decision that anyone takes lightly.
Julia: We had to move because of my dad not really being up to the mark. It was a case of domestic abuse, which we speak about quite openly, and it was a necessary move.
Sadie (voiceover): Learning the new language before moving is often not possible. Luckily, young kids are often able to pick up new languages much faster than adults.
Julia: I was speaking to my mum before I hopped on here and she was like “I think you learned English in like three to four months” and I was like “that’s great”. So I do remember the first couple of weeks being really difficult, but I just had to -- I just had to pick English up because that was the only way I was going to move forward so -- so I did and just had to roll with it.
Leon: At the beginning I even have a video of me when I was, I think, six and I just stole my sister’s camera, and I was recording a video. I remember being behind the camera and showing my sister’s room from this little boy perspective. It’s so funny. And I’m trying to talk English.
[young Leon in video speaking]
Leon: And I’m saying like [sounds like] “masicama, masicama. Hello, lo, lo.” And I’m trying to say words that I don’t even know what I’m saying.
[young Leon in video speaking]
Leon: But there’s one moment where I show my face and I just go “hiya”.
[young Leon says “hiya”]
Leon: And “that’s Leon”.
[young Leon says “that’s Leon”]
Leon: And those were the only three words [laughs] that I understood from that whole video.
[Young Leon in video speaking]
Leon: In primary one I knew no English. Primary two/three, that’s when I started to start speaking English more. I think by the time I was in primary four I was quite good at English because that’s when my teachers started to tell me off for talking in class. [laughs] It was funny because my mum -- it was a parents evening and she got -- obviously she was talking to one of my teachers and -- it was the first year of primary four. My mum was so proud of me. That I was speaking whilst the teacher was speaking because I was trying to make friends, trying to express my feelings. But obviously I never had enough time during breaks. Always wanted to talk. I’ve always been a chatter. I’ve always liked to talk.
[Young Leon in video speaking]
Leon: I was never really in a group. I was always moving from one friendship to another friend group, and I was always speaking with everyone: the more popular kids, the kids that don’t really speak with anyone, and I was just here and there. So I feel like that might have been also because of the early days as I was caged in, couldn’t speak with anyone for the first three years.
Sadie (voiceover): When you’re a kid arriving in Scotland and starting school, there’s a lot to learn. There’s pressure to learn to use the kind of standard English that you find in textbooks. That’s what you’re being explicitly taught to use by your teachers and it’s the main language of your education, so it’s what you need to learn to use if you’re going to do well academically. But there’s also pressure to sound like a member of the local community and to fit in with the other kids linguistically. This means, for example, learning that to answer in the affirmative you can say yes, the standard English word, but you can also say aye, the Scots word. And on top of learning these alternative words, you also need to learn the rules of which word belongs where. If you say aye to your teacher in the classroom, they might think you’re being cheeky but if you stick with yes all the time, even in the playground, you could be marking yourself out as an outsider or even coming across as unfriendly.
Julia: They’d say “aye”, and they’d be like “yes”. Or “naw”, and they’d be like “no”.
Leon: Like “dug” instead of “dog” or “wean” instead of “child” or “kid”.
Julia: “I’m no daein that. I’m no daein” [laughs]. “I’m not doing that. I don’t want to do that.” “Toile[?]!” Toilet, “toile[?]”. People got corrected for saying “toile[?]”. They’re like “toile[t]”. It’s a toile[?], come on.
***
Sadie (voiceover): Learning a language is hard enough. Negotiating the complicated social landscape of school is hard enough. Leon and Julia had to do both at once.
Julia: In high school there was certain teachers that would correct the way you talk all the time but that probably comes from -- because they’re ready to apply for uni and go into real jobs. I feel like I’m going into the workforce.
Leon: As I got more comfortable with my Scots over the years, I started to use “aye” quite more often and obviously -- depending on the teacher -- but during class mostly formal. If it was a really nice teacher of mine, one that I can play with or have a chat with or just make fun of sometimes, we’d definitely just talk informally. But most teachers it was formal “yes”, some an informal “aye”.
Sadie (voiceover): Leon and Julia had to learn the linguistic rules of English: what order the words come in a sentence, how we mark the different tenses. But they also had to learn another set of rules: unwritten social rules that you don’t find in textbooks and that we rarely even talk about out loud.
Leon: I think it’s something that you don’t -- you’re not aware of when you’re learning a language. It’s just something that you grow into and don’t really think about it but you’re just there for the journey and along the way you can learn it.
Julia: Because I remember one thing very vividly, still when I was in primary three -- don’t know how this happened but it’s going to the teacher to -- you know how in primary school you used to go line up at the teacher’s desk for them to mark your work. Quite bizarre. Still don’t know why that happens.
Sadie (to Julia): Same in my classroom. I remember that, yep.
Julia: Do you know what I mean? Why is that a thing? [laughs] And I was like “aw Miss, here’s my jo[?]er.” And she was like “jotter”. And I was like “but everyone else says jo[?]er”. And that’s stuck in my head since because that was probably the first experience of me using a more Scottish accent or I wouldn’t say -- is jo[?]er a Scots word? Probably not but I said jo[?]er not jotter and she was correcting me. And I was like “oh, have I done something wrong? Have I learned a word wrong?” Turns out I didn’t. Turns out it was just the way I said it, but I found it quite interesting how that correction was made.
Sadie (to Julia): Do you remember how old you were at that point?
Julia: Seven.
Sadie (to Julia): Seven? So that’s when you’d really just arrived from Poland.
Julia: Yep, it was a couple of months in. I know it was primary three because I remember the teacher. [laughs] Like reflecting on it it’s really quite bizarre -- well not bizarre but really interesting that I picked up words with a Scots accent straight away.
Sadie (voiceover): If you’ve not heard the word before, a jo[?]er is an exercise book that you write in in school. Or a jotter. I can pronounce it as jotter, with a t in the middle, or as jo[?]er, with a glottal stop in the middle. So we’ll get back to Julia and Leon’s stories in just a minute but first I’m going to hit pause and give you a little mini lecture about the linguistics of the glottal stop.
***
Sadie (voiceover): I’ve mentioned the glottal stop on the podcast before. I don’t want anyone thinking it’s the only linguistic feature that matters: it’s just one that I happen to work on. But I do think it’s really interesting too. I think it’s interesting because it’s so misunderstood. Outside of linguistics it’s generally thought of as dropping your t’s but that’s not quite right.
It’s actually a consonant sound made when your vocal folds briefly come together to block the airflow and then release again. It’s a plosive sound like t and d and b and g but it’s a very underappreciated sound. We don’t have a letter for it in the alphabet and we mostly only pay attention to it when we’re telling kids that they shouldn’t use it. That it should be jotter, not jo[?]er. When we’re not complaining about it, we tend to just ignore it. The glottal stop shows up across the UK in all varieties of English and Scots, although some more than others.
There’s a pretty complicated pattern determining where it can and can’t show up. You can say jo[?]er instead of jotter or righ[?] now instead of right now, but you can’t say [?]ake instead of take or [?]iger instead of tiger. You probably won’t get g[?]r instead of guitar and depending on your particular local variety, you might not be able to say ta[?]oo or some[?]imes. Although sometimes you might. And I’m focusing on the places where it replaces t sounds, but it can show up in other parts of our speech as well.
If you’re a glottal stop user, you can have some fun playing around and seeing where yours show up. Once you start looking at patterns like these, it doesn’t really look like lazy people are just dropping their t’s because they can’t be bothered to say them properly. It looks a bit more complicated than that.
I think that the glottal stop plays a more important role in our lives than we usually give it credit for because when we look closely at when people do use the glottal stop, we quite often see social patterns starting to emerge. Where people will use a glottal stop in quite subtle and interesting ways to communicate something about who they are, or to align with what’s expected of them in certain situations, or to bring their speech patterns closer to the speech patterns of someone they’re talking to.
If you are a glottal stop user -- and you’ve probably clocked by now that I am -- think about when you’re more likely to say letter or water and when you’re more likely to say le[?]er and wa[?]er. You’re probably using your glottal stop to do important identity work but most of the time this is probably subconscious. Now that I’ve pointed it out to you, you won’t be able to stop thinking about it all day. So, you’re welcome.
***
Sadie (voiceover): So Julia started using the glottal stop when she’d only been in Scotland for a couple of months and immediately her teacher pointed it out to her as a mistake. But now she recognizes it for what it is. Not just a mistake but something socially meaningful that she can pick up and put down in different situations.
Julia: Because I’m quite active poli[?]ically -- I just done it there -- poli[?]ically.
Sadie (voiceover): See what I mean? Becoming aware of your glottal stop is the worst.
Julia: Because I’m quite active politically, when I’m giving a speech or something I try and pronounce every letter in a word but it’s that I sound proper for half a sentence and then sound like I’m fae Lanarkshire in the other half of a sentence. And people rip it into me for it. They do. They’re like “stop kidding on that you speak like that because you don’t.” And I was like “you’re right, I should just go up and speak like this.” Because it’s where I’m from and there’s no need to talk like this.
Leon: When I went for a job interview in Sco[?]land -- I said Sco[?]land right now. It’s something that I don’t really think about. It just sometimes happens, yeah.
Sadie (voiceover): Sorry Leon.
Leon: So I think when I went up to an interview it was something that I didn’t really think about because the person -- the manager of the store I was going to apply a job for -- he was really Scottish, and it seemed like he didn’t really care. So I kind of -- I sounded formal but the same time there was still a glo[?]al stop. Not a glottal. [laughs]
Sadie (voiceover): I recruited Leon and Julia to help with this episode because I wanted them to help me tell you this story. After all, it’s much more their story than it is mine. But it also gave me the chance to tell them about my research findings and get their opinions and interpretations. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to go back to the school where I did my PhD and tell the kids about what I’d found out, but Leon and Julia were the same age, at the same time, in the same part of the country. So I thought they might have some insights. I had a fairly clear idea of what I thought was going on, but I wanted to see what they thought.
Sadie (to Leon): I recorded a group of 14 people who are pretty much exactly the same age as you, but this was a few years ago. So they were in first year to fourth year at the time and they had all been born in Poland and were going to school in Glasgow. I also recorded some of their classmates who’d been born in Glasgow. And I recorded them speaking -- I put little -- I gave them little mics to wear and I recorded them in different social situations. So one of the situations was that my supervisor came in and did this very formal interview with them where she gave them this book to look at and then asked them questions about it. And then some of the -- sometimes they were in an after-school club and they were like running about, crazy, screaming, having a great time and chatting to their pals.
So I took these recordings and I analysed them, and I looked at a few different linguistic features. One of them was the glottal stop. I found that -- right -- the people who were born in Glasgow were -- they were adapting some of their speech between different situations, but they didn’t really change their use of the glottal stop. The Polish kids adapted their speech more than the Glaswegians between the different situations. Even actually some kids who hadn’t been in Scotland that long were adapting their speech more. So they were -- they had a bigger difference between their formal speech and their informal speech, and they were more likely to change whether or not they used a glottal stop between those different situations. Which is not what you’d expect because when people are dealing with this really complicated situation in a new language you would probably expect the kids who’d been doing that their whole lives to be better at it. You know “better” in inverted commas but that wasn’t the case. So does that surprise you or does that make sense to you?
Leon: Actually, it doesn’t surprise me. I think it might be because I am one of those people that knows how it works and how I grew up with it. Definitely if you ask anyone -- just any random person -- what do you think would happen? The logical answer would be the Glaswegian kids would adjust but the Polish kids would just speak the way they speak. But because of my own situation, I think we kind of just do it subconsciously. Just because that’s what we’ve been doing all our lives when it comes to learning a different language. Kind of had to adjust and understand every accent in that language. When it comes to changing that glottal -- glo[?]al to glottal -- I think it’s something that we just do automatically.
Sadie (voiceover): The technical term for what Leon’s talking about here is metalinguistic awareness. There’s a lot of research suggesting that people who are highly multilingual tend to have a higher level of awareness about language. They have to think about what language to use when, they have to translate between their different languages, and they have to pay attention to subtle differences in the sounds of each language. So with that they develop a heightened awareness of language in general.
This might explain why people who are already multilingual often find it easier to pick up additional languages. Leon’s suggesting that it might also help them to negotiate subtle pronunciation differences and their differing social meanings. I’m totally on board with Leon’s explanation about metalinguistic awareness which I think is probably a big part of what’s going on here.
I have another explanation too, which I think works alongside it. I think that for the Glaswegian kids in the study, the glottal stop is something that carries social meaning. There’s this one bit in one of the recordings I made where one of the Glaswegian kids tells me about getting into a fight with some other girls. I respond to this story by asking if she got into trouble for this. She says “no, because nobody seen it, and nobody believed her. Because I am Little Miss Perfect. I get let away with anything.” Her Little Miss Perfect voice is completely different from the voice she uses when talking about fighting and the switch is all in the glottal stop. Normally she uses a glottal stop at almost every opportunity but at this point she suddenly switches to little and get and let. It seems obvious to me as a listener that for her using t in little is a way of playing a character: a teacher’s pet who follows the rules, both the social ones and the linguistic ones. But for her it’s not as simple as saying li[?]le in the playground and little in the classroom. It’s more complicated than that. She can exploit the potential social meaning of little and li[?]le to play different characters and she can do it no matter what social situation she’s in. For her, little isn’t just for the classroom.
So I think that the Polish kids might be picking up on the glottal stop and the social meaning that exists in their new community, and then applying this social meaning in a more simplified way. I think they’re picking up on the fact that saying little instead of li[?]le has social meanings to do with classrooms, teachers, being good and following the rules, and then they’re subconsciously thinking something along the lines of “okay, so little is for the classroom and li[?]le is for the playground.” For the Glaswegian kids who’ve grown up with this language, they can afford to be a bit more playful and flexible. They can use the glottal stop to put on different characters. For people who are in the process of learning this language, they need to find safety in structure. So essentially, I’m suggesting that the Polish kids are playing it safe but if that’s the case, then it’s worth asking why playing it safe is so important to them? When we search for safety, it’s usually because we feel threatened in some way.
Julia: I just really find it interesting how kids from abroad that have came from other countries -- obviously you included Polish kids in your research -- feel they need to adapt. I just find that really quite fascinating actually but unsurprising, at all. Yeah.
Sadie (voiceover): When you live in the community you were born in, your social position is that bit more secure than if you’re a newcomer. A few of the Polish kids I worked with told me that speaking Polish and having a foreign accent are common sources of bullying at the school. Blending in socially means blending in linguistically and blending in is vital. Heightened pressure to align with different linguistic expectations in different situations might be what’s led to the heightened pattern we see in the Polish kids’ speech. The Glaswegian kids: they just don’t have to worry as much.
Julia: I think there was more pressure on me to fit in and I don’t think I ever did. Obviously, I spoke like this which is just the way I talk but, in a sense, have come from a different culture that was very apparent. And I experienced bullying all the way through primary school and high school as well and that was sort of a given. Like I was always the Polish kid and there was always bullying or slight, quite systemic racism I’d say. Like I don’t really hide away from that word. It was definitely there. There is -- there was always pressure to be your best because you had to be your best to be accepted. The need to adapt is something that just dooms on you and you just need to do it.
Sadie (voiceover): And of course, yes, this pressure to fit in is something that all school kids feel to some extent but for migrant kids that pressure is greater. It’s all of the pressure that I remember from my time at school but with extra layers added on.
Leon: A lot of immigrant jokes I guess you can say. So that’s kind of a normal thing. So there was a lot of “get back to your own country” or “we don’t want you here” or “Brexit means Brexit”. That was quite -- fairly recent [laughs] but it was something different for them and I was kind of -- as you can see it was an easy target for jokes. So I think they just done that subconsciously.
Julia: It was always like “aw, she’s Polish or whatever” and talking behind my back being like “aw, don’t want to be stuck with her. She’s Polish.” And it was sort of that kind of -- how does that make me different? I didn’t really understand when I was growing up. Obviously, I could understand it more in high school but in primary school I was sort of a wee bit confused by it because I mean it doesn’t make me any different. [laughs] You know what I mean? I mean I speak two languages that’s pretty cool but apart fae that I -- it was quite bizarre. School was actually quite hard because of that and I don’t know if other Polish kids have the same experiences. I didn’t actually have a lot of Polish friends.
Leon: Looking back now I know that I’m a bigger person than that and I knew that at the time as well, so it didn’t really faze me. I didn’t let it faze me, but I have had low moments because of me thinking that no one likes me, or that people just want to make fun of me. But now looking back I kind of understand where something would come from and where the confusion would come in, with people not understanding how it could make another person feel.
Sadie (voiceover): This kind of bullying is something that happens in schools, but it doesn’t stop at the school gates. It’s much bigger than that.
Julia: I think growing up in the west of Scotland, when there was an influx of migration, it was probably quite difficult for other kids in schools as well because they suddenly had to maybe adapt themselves to make it a little bit easier for us. Brexit intensified and brought in a culture of discrimination to the UK. And it did. You know the rise of the right is a thing. [laughs] It’s definitely a thing and it’s sort of accepted: the fact that immigrants = bad. That was the consensus when Brexit happened. The full agenda of stopping migration with Brexit became so ingrained in communities where I found when I was speaking Polish on the street people would just look at me. And I’m like “why are you doing that?” Where I could turn round and just speak as if I was one of them instantly.
Sadie (voiceover): For people like Leon, and Julia, and the kids I did my research with, it seems like language can be another source of pressure and another way to show that you’re playing along. Having a different accent to the other kids can single you out. It can make you visible and make you an easy target for bullying. So you have to be careful with your language. You have to conform to the linguistic expectations of the classroom and the playground, your teachers and your peers, working that bit harder, making sure to be your best at all times. So that surprising finding: that the Polish kids adapt their speech to different social contexts more than their Glaswegian classmates do. Maybe it isn’t so surprising after all.
***
Sadie (voiceover): Julia and Leon’s stories started in a very similar way, but they end quite differently. After 13 years in Scotland, Leon’s recently made the decision to move back to Poland where he plans to stay for the foreseeable future. He seems really happy there.
Leon: I just want to be myself and Poland is one place that I feel I can do that. Kind of feel like I can do me here and not really think about what other people think of me or if someone’s judging me or not. It’s I think -- I’m not sure why, I’m not sure -- maybe it’s people that I grew up with, or people that I used to hang out with. Maybe that has something to do with it. Or maybe it’s just feeling safer or more at home in one or the other country.
Sadie (voiceover): Julia’s feet are firmly planted in Scotland. She’s become involved in Scottish politics and is beginning to shape the future of what is now her country. But she’s still very much Polish too. She can be both.
Julia: I used to be really, really embarrassed of being Polish because of the stigma and the -- just the bullying and the racism that I’ve touched on. I used to be -- I didn’t used to want to say that I’m Polish. So from the ages of probably about 15 to 18, I’d say I’m Scottish. Whereas when I was getting a wee bit older, I embraced my Polish culture more. [laughs] There’s a few friends that genuinely just laugh at me because I introduce myself and I’m like “hi I’m Julia. I come fae Poland. I’m Polish.” And it’s always a thing that I say and they’re like “aw don’t forget to tell them that you’re Polish” and I’m like “I know” but it’s because I’m so proud of it now whereas before I wasn’t. It’s a shame because I missed out on some very crucial years of development where I didn’t embrace my Polish culture. Whereas now, I really do, and I’d say I’m Polish, but my home is Scotland. I’m a Polish migrant that has made Scotland their home.
***
Sadie (voiceover): I’m incredibly grateful to Julia and Leon for being so generous and open, and for being willing to talk to a complete stranger about things that are not easy to talk about. Thanks so much to both of you.
I also owe an enormous thanks to the 21 kids who took part in my PhD research. You were excellent and I had such a good time working with you.
Thanks also to everyone else who helped make the research happen: the teachers at the school, the Glasgow EAL service, the people who helped with the after-school club, the transcription team, and of course my supervisors Professor Jennifer Smith, Dr Evelyn Arizpe, Dr Clara Cohen, and Professor Jane Stuart-Smith.
Thanks to John McDiarmid for editing, to Seb Philp for the music, and to Martha Ryan for the admin.
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