A new year of notes and embarrassing mistakes

Happy New Year! Szczęśliwego nowego roku!

It's a new year and a new blog.  I'm getting used to the layout and it would seem that for ease of finding my notes, I would be best putting them in pages rather than in blog posts.  So what shall I put in blog posts?  Perhaps rough notes made on the hoof?  Perhaps confessions of gaffs I make as I attempt to use Polish.

Gafa
The first gaff was in calling out a Polish surname.  I hadn't started to learn the language at this point and had only been given a few pointers.  All I had grasped was that sz was a bit like our sh and cz was a bit like our ch.  So, faced with the name Pycz, I confidently stride out to call it out.  What I know now, is that there is a very clear difference between shouting Pycz and Picz.  One will attract the attention of the barer of the name, the other will attract quite the wrong sort of attention.  Picz, I am reliably informed, is not at all polite.



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