Language / Polish Language Pronunciation - Example Words and Phrases [178]


I'm an American who studied German in high school and college, and was shocked, after studying so much German vocabulary, that the Germans say "das Baby" and pronounce it as in English! :-)

Language / SZCZ and ŚĆ HARD TO EXPLAIN [19]

Maybe this sounds naive, but my impression was that ś and ć were more forward in the mouth, while sz and cz were deeper, further back. Same for ź vs. ż/rz. To my ear, Polish sz, cz, and rz are more similar to English sh, ch, and French j than are ś, ć, ź. However, I think sz, cz, rz have more "oomph" behind them -- that is, they are deeper, richer sounds than their English counterparts. The Polish ś, ć, ź, on the contrary, sound more "hissy." Although I'm not a native Polish speaker, I can hear this difference in the words siedem and osiem, for example, compared to sześć.

Can a native speaker confirm or refute this?

To help me make the distinction in pronunciation, at least between ć and cz, I think of ć as sort of analagous to Russian soft т, as in тепло (sorry to leave out those who don't know Russian). This seems logical, especially when you consider the masculine demonstrative adjectives 'ten' and 'ci' ('this' and 'these' in English). In Russian, these words are этот (sing.) and эти (pl.). In этот, the first т is hard, like the t in Polish 'ten'. In эти, the т becomes soft, because it's followed by и, and to my ear, it sounds rather like Polish 'ci'. Likewise, the Polish pronoun 'ty' becomes 'ciebie' in the dative, just like Russian ты (hard т) becomes тебе (soft т).

BTW, I believe Czech has a similar distinction. Compare 'ti' and 'ty' -- the vowel is pronounced the same, but the quality of the 't' is different.

Love / Gay Interracial Polish Dating [36]

ShelleyS, it's nice of you to refute the rubbish that Polonius3 is spouting off. But more to the point is that his remarks are simply out of line, and shouldn't be welcome on these forums.

Polonius3, people come to these forums because they have questions or topics that they want to discuss. There is no need to ostracize and dehumanize people for any reason. How would you like someone judging you this way? You're entitled to whatever opinion you wish, but you have no right to badmouth others. If you don't like gays, which you obviously don't, just don't say anything. It's not that we need to "tolerate" gays and lesbians; rather, it's that we need to stop tolerating hateful and demeaning treatment of others. Gays and lesbians are humans too, and deserve much more than our "tolerance."

Love / Gay Interracial Polish Dating [36]


I am a newcomer to these forums, and I have already discovered what he is like. I have also read a few other threads that were very unpleasant, and talk about inane things like how supposedly Poles hate Jews, and other nonsense. I know this is cyberspace and all, and everyone is "protected" by anonymity, but there are still rules. It says, right below the box I'm typing in, "Do not insult or harass others, play nicely!" and "Do not personally attack others to avoid temporary or permanent suspension." It would be nice if people followed these rules. They are rules not only for these forums, but also generally accepted principles of behavior. Would these hateful posters go to a cocktail party and start spouting off the things like they post here? I doubt it. Then again, people are getting increasingly bold these days.

For the most part, I have been enjoying these forums so far, but it would be nice to see the moderators (who are they?) taking action when people violate the rules.

Language / Are there any websites where I can see samples of Polish handwriting? [3]

These are both very nice and actually very helpful. Dziękuję. :-)