"I am disturbed. I am deeply disturbed!"

I had a Polish teacher who used that expression quite a bit. She also liked to say, "Dih plot sickens!"

I miss her. She was from a very well-to-do family in (the) Ukraine and during the war her family was "resettled" in Russia. She never said where, but it always sounded like Siberia. After a year or so they were 'free' to work or do things that would earn them money. She opted to work part time in a lab, but spent more time in the library reading books in Russian. She had to become self-taught.

She was never totally clear about the languages that were used when she was growing up. Her mother was Viennese and her father was from the Ukrainian village. Although they were secular Jews, no one spoke Yiddish (or at least admitted to it). It seemed as if Polish was her language of fluency.

I had taught myself languages on my own. Most of the education came from books. Most of the books were quite outdated. I learned words that were in dictionaries from the 1920s (many modern day marvels didn't exist back then such as an autodial telephone). I also learned to read from print that had undergone changes. If a person has never attempted to do this without a computer, or tapes, or film, it is quite the effort. I never regretted it.