George Savino was trying to teach Kinga Plonka to talk like an American. So he asked the Polish bookkeeper to read aloud from a Reader article about Velveeta and pornography.
“It’s not an important word, but you should say it right anyway. This is–what is this word?”
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Vel-vee-ta. Por-nog-ra-phy. Plonka must learn these words so she can achieve her ambition in this country: becoming a real estate agent. When she came to America three years ago, she knew a little English from college lessons in Poland but was embarrassed to speak it. She barely needed to. Plonka and her construction worker husband, Wojtek, settled on the northwest side, and she took a job at an insurance agency where all the bookkeepers speak Polish. But she didn’t want to be like some of her neighbors, who have lived in Chicago for 20 years and still shop at Polish grocery stores so they won’t have to speak English. The Americans she met looked down on Poles. In this land of immigrants, no one could tell by looking at her that she was from another country, but once she opened her mouth…
A friend told her about Savino. He teaches English as a second language at National-Louis University, but four years ago he began giving accent lessons in his Edgewater apartment. His former students include an Austrian stage actor who was tired of being typecast in Teutonic roles and a Vietnamese computer programmer who wanted to be understood by his colleagues.
“You put your tongue between your teeth and blow hard,” Savino lectured. “Make sure you’ve got air over your tongue, or you’re going to say ‘dere.’”
For the next month, Plonka had a lesson with Savino once a week and studied her English at home. Her long work hours and frequent migraine headaches made it difficult to concentrate on the exercises in her notebook, but she found other ways to practice: she and Wojtek saw My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and when Ameritech sent her an erroneous bill, she called the company to complain. An immigrant unsure of her English might have paid, but, Plonka explained, “they charge me twice, and this piss me off.” She also read Accident by Danielle Steel, a book she’d once enjoyed in Polish.
“Book. Book, book, book, book. I bought a book. Quo Vadis. That is the title in Polish. I don’t know what the title is in English. It is by a Polish author–Sinkiewicz.”
