Beginners Only
(A staff kitchen at a hospital in Kraków, ten past three in the morning.)
Filip: Ndeewo. I’ve been practising that one since Tuesday.
Chiamaka: Dzień dobry. I’ve been practising mine since January, so I’m winning.
Filip: Your accent is better than mine.
Chiamaka: Everyone’s accent is better than yours.
Filip: I know. Say something in Igbo. Slowly.
Chiamaka: No. You say something in Polish.
Filip: That’s not the deal. I speak your language, you speak mine.
Chiamaka: It’s a terrible deal. It took us forty minutes to plan a lunch on Monday.
Filip: It was a good lunch.
Chiamaka: It was a sandwich, Filip.
Filip: Look, you came here. You left everything and came here. The least I can do is meet you halfway.
Chiamaka: Halfway would be English and you know it.
Filip: English is the lazy way.
Chiamaka: English is the way we’d both be fluent by now.
Filip: Exactly. That’s why it’s lazy.
Chiamaka: You’re not a native speaker of anything except being difficult.
Filip: My pronunciation is getting better.
Chiamaka: Your pronunciation makes my mother laugh on the phone. She asks after you every week now.
Filip: See? Progress.
Chiamaka: It’s my mother tongue, Filip. I hear every single thing you do to it.
Filip: And I hear what you do to mine. You say my surname like a train door closing.
Chiamaka: Okay. New rule, then. Neither of us. Spanish.
Filip: You did a year of Spanish at school.
Chiamaka: And I’ve forgotten all of it. That’s the point. It’s fair.
(They try it. Both of them are beginners, and the sentences get very short.)
Chiamaka: I’m tired. The night was long. My back hurts.
Filip: I don’t like this job. I like the people here. Not the job.
Chiamaka: You’ve never said that to me before.
Filip: In Polish I know too many words. I can make anything sound fine.
Chiamaka: In Spanish I can only say what’s true. There isn’t another way to say it.
Filip: Same time tomorrow?
Chiamaka: Same time. Beginners only.