difficult English words for Polish speakers?

For me after 20 years of speaking English, I still once in a while have a problem with "o", "u" and "a" in words like:

map mop

hut hot hat

sheep, ship, ****, sheet

she sells seas shells by the sea shore

THEN and THAN

read this forum to see the confusion

What about difficult English words for English speakers, like:

• Colour and color
• Centre and Center
• Tap and Fawcet
• Grey and gray

Two nations divided by a common language

Mate that's what I was taught in school. So if it's incorrect, someone wasn't doing their job properly!!

I've also noticed English speakers leave out "the" in certain sentences. Like "She's in hospital" instead of "she's in the hospital" or "I play piano" instead of "I play the piano".

oh god, the one that gets my goat and any other dairy animals in the vacinity at the time is the <insert expletive of choice here> could care less.

That means you COULD be more worried, annoyed, bothered about something. I could NOT care less however, means there is no single topic that interests you less than the one you are talking about. How hard is that?

Oh and coming in a close second is write me. Write me what? A letter? A poem? What? I demand to know, you have to tell me!! But if you just want to say write me, then PLEASE for the love of god and all things English, use the little word to. :) Write to me.

Seriously, this is deliberate because the answer is not specific: "in hospital" is a predicament, not a location. "I play piano" is a statement of fact about accomplishment - any piano will do. I do some proof reading of translations from Polish and constantly knock out "the" or change it to "a" as necessary.

More obscure is the southern English phrase "going (up) to town" - this means London - which is a city.

I don't know how Poles get on with this phrase - but it kills the French:
"the synthesizer is over there".

Maybe not as bad as u may think:
" de syntisajza is ova dee"
More difficult for me is to remember to pronounce "th" correctly, but I find out that "quick English" is making it better ,but it's not working with "three" !! (usually I pronounce it as "free" or "tree"- and what a pain).

More specifically , going "up town" refers to going to the "West End" of London

thank you for pointing that out H... it winds me up stink as well... and could you please explain the difference between THEN and THAN which seems to cause endless confusion...

then = at that time: "...then we went to see..."

than = in comparison with: "..more than four...."

i'ts like in polish : "moze" and "morze" ,two different meaning

thanks ella :)

I find that my husband (from Poland) still finds it difficult to pronounciate the numbers "33 " even after being in an English speaking country for 24 years. His friends (who are Polish too) also find it hard to say "fifty" correctly. Oh well.

Words that my Polish Girlfriend finds difficult:

1. Let me get you a beer - you DESERVE it
2. Stop the bodybuilding, your physique is perfect
3. Here, have some money, I don't want it
4. Here, you have the remote control, lets watch Strongman/Boxing/Porno
5. Would you like me to strip?
6. I'm Sorry
7. It was my fault
8. You were right
9. Would you like your ice-creams?
10. Wanna play with my boobs for a while?

Man i have the same problem especially Number 5,10,3 and 4
How strange! I think its because there polish.

You are wise beyound your years my friend, wise indeed.

A workmate I'm helping to learn English picked up on Antidisestablishmentarianism amazingly quickly - in about an hour or so, and remembered it the next day. He said it was because I 'learned' him.

Ireland, Iceland, Island I spell all the same :(.

LOL - I bet every plane journey is an adventure then..... which country am I in?

Quoting: ola123
Ireland, Iceland, Island I spell all the same :(.

No they are not pronounced in the same way, Ireland (in Southern British RP, ie no rhotic r) is pronounced with an intrusive /j/ rendering it /aijələnd/ with three syllables

All the Polish people I know cannot pronounce "Squirrel"

what kills the French is 'South Station'

3, 33 yeah, these numbers annoy me a lot, at the worst, i happened to spit when saying 3

333, the number of the... half-beast - make a Pole read that out loud :), will sound half-hellish

I can't understand why you need different prounouciation for "to produce" and "a produce" (and similar verb/noun pairs), it just makes less sense than Polish "h"/"ch" or "ż/rz"

what's 'a produce'?

a product - don't think there is such a thing as a singular "produce"

a produce is a term for agricultural products (vegetables, fruit, meat) - but it's rather used in English, not American

This is what we call veggies-fruits in America 'produce'. It's used every day in our grocery stores. We do have produce departments too ;)

The produce is a collective noun. A country's produce is what a country produces.


To produce the stress is one the last syllable, uce, and in a produce, the stress falls on the first o of pro. Stress in Polish is quite easy as it almost always falls on the first syllable unlike in Russian where it moves all over the place.

Two more on the funny side here, i had some polish classmates who when they first started to learn english couldn't distinguish between these words, firstly there was 'sheet' which sounded always when they said it like 's**t'

The second one which sounded great when giving a powerpoint presentation was instead of 'theorist' they would say 'terrorist' which unfortunately for them made the whole room erupt into laughter. iI tried for a long time to teach them the difference in the two words and the way they are pronounced but for some reason it was very difficult for them.

I later found it was even worse for me to pronounce polish words than it ever was them speaking in English :)