Abecadło (The alphabet)

An old little text taught to Polish kids

That's lyrics:

Abecadło

Abecadło z pieca spadło,
O ziemię się hukło,
Rozsypało się po kątach,
Strasznie się potłukło:
I - zgubiło kropeczkę,
H - złamało kładeczkę,
B - zbiło sobie brzuszki,
A - zwichnęło nóżki,
O - jak balon pękło,
aż się P przelękło.
T - daszek zgubiło,
L - do U wskoczyło,
S - się wyprostowało,
R - prawą nogę złamało,
W - stanęło do góry dnem
i udaje, że jest M.

and that's the song:

youtube.com/v/H52C93LG_tE

A a : u sound in fun
Ą ą : on sound in long or
: om sound in tom before 'b' or 'p'
B b : b sound in bat
C c : ts sound in bits
Ć ć : ch sound in cheek
D d : d sound in dog
E e : e sound in red
Ę ę : en sound in sense or
: em sound in gem before 'b' or 'p'
F f : f sound in far
G g : g sound in gap
H h : ch sound in loch (aspirated)
I i : i sound in fit
J j : y sound in yes
K k : k sound in kit
L l : l sound in lip
£ ł : w sound in wet (dark l)

M m : m sound in mat
N n : n sound in nut
Ń ń : ny sound like 'n' in onion
O o : o sound in hot
Ó ó : u sound in push
P p : p sound in pin
R r : r sound in rat (rolled)
S s : s sound in sun
Ś ś : sh sound in sheep
T t : t sound in top
U u : u sound in push
W w : v sound in vat
Y y : y sound in rhythm
Z z : z sound in zip
- ź : zh sound like 'g' in Niger (soft)
Ż ż : zh sound like 's' in treasure (hard)
Qq, Vv, Xx in foreign words only

Phonetic variations
ch : sounds like 'ch' in loch
ci : sounds like 'ch' in cheek
cz : sounds like 'ch' in chalk
dz : sounds like 'ds' in goods
dzi : sounds like 'du' in duke
dź : sounds like 'du' in duke
dż : sounds like 'j' in job

ni : sounds like 'n' in onion
rz : sounds like 's' in treasure
si : sounds like 'sh' in sheep
sz : sounds like 'sh' in shark
szcz : sounds like 'shch' in pushchair
zi : sounds like 'g' in Niger

what heppened to the murzynek and mleczko? :D

Wow, good memory plk123..

Murzynek Bambo w Afryce mieszka
czarna ma skore ten nasz kolezka...

...don't remember the words...but it started like that.

Murzynek Bambo w Afryce mieszka,

Czarną ma skórę ten nasz koleżka.

Uczy się pilnie przez całe ranki

Ze swej murzyńskiej pierwszej czytanki.

A gdy do domu ze szkoły wraca,

Psoci, figluje – to jego praca.

Aż mama krzyczy: „Bambo łobuzie!”,

A Bambo czarną nadyma buzię.

Mama powiada: „Napij się mleka”,

A on na drzewo mamie ucieka.

Mama powiada: „Chodź do kąpieli”,

A on się boi, że się wybieli.

Lecz mama kocha swojego synka,

Bo dobry chłopiec z tego Murzynka.

Szkoda, że Bambo czarny wesoły,

Nie chodzi razem z nami do szkoły.

Ah, more stuff to learn off ;) thanks guys

I found other Tuwim's poem for children (the famous and really great "Lokomotywa") translated to Latin :)

biblionetka.pl/art.asp?kom=tak&oid=0&aid=10754

Thank you for written this out - i'll start learning with how to say the letters right :-) It may help me to not completely kill the proper pronunciations

Thanks from me too..this is a valuable lesson in pronouncing the Polish alphabet and one that I'm definitely printing out. :)

I notice these letters are pronounced more like the way they are in Latin-derived languages like Spanish or Italian.
The tip of the tongue is just behind the front teeth - not further back in the mouth like in English.
When you say 'at the', the tongue for the 't' in 'at' is in Pole-position. Just stop before the 'th' bit.

For those who know a bit of French,
ą is like 'on' or 'om'.

This topic seems to cause some excitement, so here are some rules.

In general, as the last sound in a word , ą / ę are pronounced somewhat similar to French on/un in French garçon / Verdun. The difference is that in Polish they are more frontal than in French, and a little longer in duration.

ą, ę - Pronounce as [om], [em] before [ b], [b'], [p], [p'] example: dąb [d o m p]
ą, ę - Pronounce as [on], [en] before [d], [t], [dz], [c], [dż], [cz] example: kąt [k o n t]
ą, ę - Pronounce as [oń], [eń] before [dź], [ć] example: rżnąć [r ż n o ń ć]
ą, ę - Pronounce as [oŋ], [eŋ] before [g], [g'], [k], [k'] example: bąk [b o ŋ k]
ą, ę - Pronounce as [o], [e] before [ł], [l] example: wziął [w ź o ł]
ę - Pronounce as [eĩ] before [ś], [ź] example: więzić [w' e ĩ ź i ć]

...and at the end of a word it's just a bit nasal.

Always?
Usually?

In both Spanish and Polish d is roughly similar to English, except that in Spanish is sounds almost like English th in "those" if it appears between vowels. Also, in Spanish, d in final position is sometimes nearly silent. The cause is that the Spanish d in those position is rather a stop than the somewhat fricative th sound

The most striking difference between Polish and English sound t is that in the latter case it is a strong consonant and therefore has a fair amount of aspiration (burst) to it, mostly if it appears before vowels, but also in final positions. In Polish there is little to no aspiration.

According to a teacher of mine yek.me.uk/jassem03.html -Wiktor Jassem, there are only 3 sounds which are identical in both English and Polish (m,n, ŋ). All the other differ to a lesser or larger degree.


In the final positions they should be nasal, but often (incorrectly) they are pronounced as [om]/[em].

A Polish linguistic/cultural joke illustrates it by deliberate miss-spelling and (in speech), deliberate mispronunciation:

"Chamstwu nalezy siem przeciwstawiac godnosciom i kulturom osobistom"

Yes, similar, but Spanish and Polish are more similar.
From all the Polish I've heard, the tongue is held more horizontally and closer to the teeth than in English.

The aspiration thing was something I should have mentioned.


There are too many forms of English for such a statement.
I only have to travel a few miles to hear a different regional accent.
There are differences in pronunciation between generations, classes...

I'd be interested to know about the variety of forms within the Polish language.

Agreed.
In regards to UK English, RP is often used for comparative phonology, and that's what I had in mind too.


Polish has a lot of shades. Some are hard subtle, others significant enough to prove difficult for native Poles to understand. The differences are in the lexis rather than in individual sounds. Still, there may be subtle differences in some of the sounds. For instance in central Poland they will say psies [ps'ies] instead of pies. On the phonological level, the differences will be mainly in stress and intonation (sometimes in addition to differences in vocabulary).

The purest (literary) form of Polish was, at one time, regarded to be that spoken in Western Poland along the border with Germany.

There's abecadło audio available now ... :)

youtube.com/v/2K_yN5JgtKI

Here's original Polish version and English translation by Walter Whipple

Julian Tuwim-Lokomotywa

anikino.pl/dzieci.php?s=czytanki&id=33

oldpoetry.com/opoem/28472-Julian-Tuwim-The-Locomotive

z_darius said, "The purest (literary) form of Polish was, at one time, regarded to be that spoken in Western Poland along the border with Germany."

May I ask your source for that, and why do they say so?

The source ar electures by Jan Miodek, a Polish linguist en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Miodek I didn't stufy Polish so I wasn't a student of his, but his lectures were popular and free to attend. A real pleasure.

To make a long story short, the reason, as proposed by Miodek, was that after WW2 (due to forced migrations) the intermix of varius Polish regionalisms in Western Poland made all aware of their own. A tendency towards the avoidance of those local expressions, accents and styles created what he regarded correct Polish (pronounciation, style and, to a lesser degree, vocabulary). That tendency is much weaker in areas dominated by a certain dialect.