A few minutes before five thirty a.m. this morning Pacific time, the Youtube interface indicates that there are two people waiting for the start of the live feed from the grotto at Lourdes for the Saturday recitation of the holy rosary in the Polish language.
I think how odd it is, that one of those two people, in the whole world, is a guy in his pajamas on his apartment porch in Scottsdale, Arizona, who is not Polish, who has not been to Poland in over thirty years, who barely speaks any of the language, and who is not even Catholic.
When the broadcast starts at five thirty, I see the small group of pilgrims huddled in front of the entrance of the opening in the rock. They have umbrellas. Inside the opening the priest in white robes comes up to the lectern. The feed cuts to a close up of him as he welcomes the pilgrims in the language they understand, and makes the sign of the cross and pronounces words that I understand: W imię Ojca i Syna i Ducha Świętego (vvee-MYEH noyt-SAH ee see-NAH ee doo-HA swen-TEH-go).
Over the next half hour I listen in the dark of my porch wearing the noise-canceling headphones that Apple gave me as a free bonus when I bought my last laptop two years ago. I had only begun using them in the last couple months (I had even thought of giving them away as a gift), but had discovered how wonderfully they work, especially for the close listening of languages one is trying to learn.
The Poles only get to do their rosary once a week at Lourdes, always on Saturday, and they make they most of it. The same cadre of priests, together with one woman who is probably a nun, tag team in the recitations, like a rap group. They speak quickly as if to make sure they will get through the whole thing in their allotted half hour of time before the next group of priests will the stage in the little cave opening.
For the first couple minutes, the priests words are ones I can only partially understand, mostly through context. He asks for our prayers for the intentions of various people he names. There is usually a "Dorota" in the group, a common woman's name. Or maybe it's the same Dorota every week. I can't tell. I have a good friend in Poland whom I met in 1985 in Athens, and he later married a woman named Dorota and had four children with her. I met her in 1990 when I visited them. I always think of her when the priest says that name.
Amidst the words I barely understand, suddenly the priest launches into the Apostle's Creed in Polish. I recognize it, and understand it line by line, but I cannot yet recite it. I make the most of it by echoing the last few words of each line that I hear. Slowly I will build up the competency to recite the whole thing from memory.
Then, as if by magic, comes words I know well by now from my drills. Ojcze nasz, któryś jest w niebie (OY-cheh nash. Kuh-TOOR-us yest vv NYEH-byeh). They roll out of the priest's mouth quickly. He has been reciting these same words from his earliest childhood no doubt, and they familiar to every Pole, just as the words of the Lord's Prayer are in English to me.
The minute I hear them, I try to speak them along with the priest at the same speed, without having to think about the next line, and getting each syllable right. I fumble over a few lines at the start, and have to catch up a half beat later, but I do well. There will be five more times to hear it and recite it during the next half hour, from the different speakers on stage as they take their turns, each seemingly outdoing each other in the fluidity at which they let it roll off their tongue. I will never be quite as good as they are, but I can almost match their speed at this point, when I am in the groove.
Much easier at this point is the Hail Mary itself, which comes in five sets of ten, with the the two stanzas recited in call and response fashion. Zdrowaś Maryjo, łaski pełna, Pan z Tobą
(ZDROH-vas mah-REE-oh, VAS-kees pay-OH-na pan STOH-boam.
At this point I am almost at native speed. With my headphones I relax and begin to listen to the priest or the nun in the recitation of the words while speaking them myself along with them. I hear my own pronunciation resonating in my skull while I hear theirs and my brain makes notes as to where I am not pronouncing the syllables the way they are, allowing fine tuning each time through. Their is a mental trick one can do, where one pretends that the words of the native speaker are actually coming out of one's own mouth, and at that instant, one can become aware of the way one's lips and tongue are not in the right positions to actually make those syllables that way.
It is in these moments of special consciousness that one can feel ones lips shifting subtly to make the syllables more correctly, to match the voice that one is attempting to reproduce, that is coming into one's ears. It must be connected to primal way we learn our native languages, because somehow it works. One knows this when one feels a strain on ones lips and facial muscles because they are now working in a new way that puts a strain on ones normal facial muscles. It is, I suppose, like being an athlete who is training, and who feels the limitations of one's leg muscles while running, but then shifts into a groove in which those muscles become activated in the way they should.
As I mentioned in the past, each language has its own demands on one's facial muscles that way, stretching them in a particular unique fashion.
Each priest in turns speaks also in a different register. I try to match it, in the same way one shifts keys while singing. When the woman takes her turn, I try to match her high feminine pitch as well. She is perhaps not a nun, but a lay helper, as her long blond hair is uncovered. She is tall and pretty, and I have a tiny crush on her in that pure way that is inspired by a common devotion to the Mother of God, the way boys have crushes on their elementary school teachers.
This week, however, I don't even notice her appearance, as I have kept my eyes closed the entire half hour, to focus on what I am hearing and speaking.
Her voice, however, is familiar to me. It is a refreshing drink of cool water after the gruff masculine recitation of the aged priest who took his turn just before her (see 23:00 in the video below). Anyone who thinks that Marian devotion is somehow demeaning to women is, to me, insane.
She is a good singe. A couple weeks ago she ended the Saturday half hour by singing what I later learned was a Polish hymn. It took some digging to find the words online, as I had to transliterate them from her singing by guessing at how to spell the words, so I could look them. The fact that I could successfully find the name of the hymn, with help from Google's auto correct of my spelling, was a little triumph in my language learning journey.
During the rosary, it is always a challenge to keeps one's mind focussed on the prayer itself. This is especially true when one is using it the way I am, to learn a language little by little. My mind wonders to what my Polish friend would think, if he heard me suddenly spit out the words of the Lord's Prayer or the Hail Mary in his own language. I could tell him I have learned it, via email, but such knowledge expressed that way doesn't have the impact it would, just hearing someone say it. He has never heard me speak his language. It would be fun to surprise him, just to see his reaction. I wonder if I will get the chance. Who knows when I will ever be in Europe again, or when he will come here.
No comments:
Post a Comment