"--------," Tom said wordlessly.

People always ask me, "How do you get by? How do you communicate, how do you buy things, how do you live, if you can't speak Polish?" I usually tell them, somewhat defensively I admit, that by now I've mastered a great deal of vocabulary, foods, numbers, nouns, general phrases, etc., and even if I cannot precisely converse in Polish, neither am I totally ignorant of it. And this is indeed true. I also readily confess to relying on the kindness of strangers to be patient with the stupid American who doesn't understand things like, "You have to fill out this form," or "I'll bring it to your table," or "Has the 805 bus come yet?" Well, sometimes they help me, and sometimes I figure out what they said after they've given up trying to make me understand, but it all works out. However, what I've really been learning here is how little we actually need language for a lot of everyday encounters.
Don't get me wrong; I love language and have spent most of my life playing with it, poking at it, stretching and bending it in different ways. I believe it to be the single most important feature of humanity, the very essence of what makes us human, and precision in language, or lack thereof, one of the most consequential acts we can perform. There's many good reasons why peace treaties and trade negotiations break down over prepositions and commas, why some people perenially attempt to ban certain books and media, why Shakespeare continues to astonish and fascinate us hundreds of years after his death. Words have power, and well-chosen words can move us in any direction, to any purpose, which is why we must learn them and think carefully about what we say.
But not always, I'm learning. And not even most of the time. In fact, it seems, true comprehension of language is unnecessary surprisingly often.
An illustration: walking home from work the other day, I stopped at the crosswalk just before my block, where ul. Jagiellonska Ts into ul. Ostrogorska. It has a stoplight, and walk signals, since those cars turning from Ostrogorska onto Jagiellonska need to know when pedestrians will be in the crosswalk. These streets are only moderately busy: regular traffic, but high volume only during the evening rush hour when people are trying to get to Myslowice, the next town over. As I stood at the corner, waiting for the light, an older gentleman, shortish, slim, blue jeans jacket and tanned skin, arrived at the corner opposite. We stood there, not making eye contact, but looking at the other person as you are bound to do in these situations where you end up facing someone, as on the bus or train, waiting. The light changed, allowing the one car on Jagiellonska to move between us and turn onto Ostrogorska toward the center of Sosnowiec. Our walk light had not come on yet (actually, it wasn't going to; it has been broken for a week, but the beeping noise it makes for the blind or absentminded still worked), both of us looked both ways at the quiet streets, shrugged, and began to cross. As we passed, he looked me in the eye, grinned, spoke, and we both laughed.
Now, I have no idea what he said, precisely. Partly because of my Polish, partly because it was short and fast, and partly because he kind of mumbled. But it didn't matter. Not at all. What he said to me was quite clearly on the order of "What the hell, right?" Although likely a bit more polite than that. The point being that we both understood the situation, the ridiculousness of standing on a street corner in a residential neighborhood waiting for a light when the only car around had just disappeared heading away from us. It's a 50 zl fine for jaywalking, but were we really going to get busted here? No.
And this is what happens to me all the time, every day. I can't catch the actual words, but I find I don't need to. Someone asks the time and I tell them, not because I understood the words (though I can) but because it's obvious. Someone on the street asks me for money and I know what they want. Maybe I catch just one word in ten, but the other nine aren't truly needed, like when I'm ordering pizza, and they ask me if I want extra sauce. I only hear "sos" (sauce), and I know. And at work, in case any students read this, it's completely unnecessary to know Polish to be able to tell when you're talking about the lesson or gossiping about computer games or friends or whatnot. Believe me, I always know.
Of course there are many other situations that call for much more specific language skills, and then I go back to relying on friends and kind strangers. And dziekuje bardzo to all of them. But in answer to the question, "How do you live, how do you survive here, not knowing Polish?" I can honestly answer: "Quite well, thank you."