ż ź dź dż sz cz ś ć - which give most problems to foreigners?

One seems to be harder the other softer is that what you mean?

... then after you have followed the steps in my previous post, round your lips as you pronounce that L. Now it is really 'dark'.

Is this kind of £ still used in Polish or should I try to stick to a straight English 'W' sound?

I think you should stick to English “w”

i really wonder what the hell some of you are smoking. hehe same freaking sound dudes and dudettes.

£ similar to the enlgish W but not exactly the same.. you are right there.. for sure.

Best way to hear the difference is to ask a native speaker to pronounce the words for you.
Give him/her few examples, and ask them to pronounce it slowly for you. You can always try this web page it’s a synthesized version of Polish language. Type a word like: Choose Polish language and press say it.

Środa
Sikorka
Szczotka
And listen carefully you will still hear the difference. Here’s the link
XXXX://oddcast.com/home/demos/tts/tts_example.php?sitepal

right.. there is a difference between all those as each one has a different letter there at the beginning.

btw. i am a native speaker. :)

Than type English word with “sh” sound and Polish word with “sz” sound and you will hear the difference.

of both?

Yes, that is true and you can still meet people in Poland who say bardzo ladne with a hard l as in the English word table.

So 23 years ago at least.

You may pronounce them the same way but they aren't the same.
Using International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA):
sh - ʃ
sz - ʂ

verify here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_language#Phonology and here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language#Consonants


I am hardly confused by the sounds of my native language :)
So.. as for ą is not always pronounced in the same way. The variations are (using IPA): [ɔ], [ɔm], [ɔn], [ɔŋ], [ɔɲ], [ɔj̃]. Verify here: URL or here: free.of.pl/g/grzegorj/gram/gram01.html

Likewise ę has a few variants of pronounciation.

You can check variations of some other sounds I mentioned above by seeing this (Polish) source: free.of.pl/g/grzegorj/gram/fonemy3.html


Just like in English, there are two version of £ in Polish. One is very similar to Dark L (as the second L in "little"), although it's usage is vanishing. It used to be used mostly in Eastern parts of Poland. Most of the time Polish L sounds as the initial L in "little". There is a subtle difference between Polish and English L but the difference is subtle enough to deserve complete neglect.

dariusz.. i think the sounds come accross differently to you and maybe others is because of the adjacent letters.. but the ą or ę or any of the others are constant. it's a clouding effect but in reality it is not. that's my opinion anyway. phonetics are there for those who do not know how to pronounce these things.. and yeah, it seems that they may sound different but once again, they are not. my 2.5c. :D


and that's impossible? to my sis both are native. :)

in my case i am native to one.. guess which one. :)

The sounds come across differently because the adjacent letters changed those sounds. I don't know of a term "clouding" effect in lingustics.


That I can't argue with.


Yes, it is helpful. And it can be also helpful for those who think they do. Phonetics and phonology are quite large areas of knowledge. Just think about it; why would Polonists study the phonology of their own language if the speak it well anyway :)


Did you read the links I posted?

Here is a quote from Polish wikipedia:

Hiperpoprawność, inaczej przesadna poprawność lub przesada poprawnościowa, to termin z zakresu językoznawstwa normatywnego, oznaczający zastępowanie form zgodnych z normą językową formami błędnymi, ale uznawanymi przez użytkownika języka za bardziej poprawne.

Przykładami błędów hiperpoprawności jest "literowa" wymowa ę oraz ą przed spółgłoskami zwartymi i zwarto-szczelinowymi np. ząb [zɔ̃p], [zɔɰ̃p] zamiast [zɔmp].

So as you see, they are not the same sounds, or to use the correct term, phonemes.

Going home now. Unless someone does it before that, I will translate this later.

that's not an offical term, it is mine but what i was saying is that the other letters effect the way one hears the vowels (in this case) but that doesn't necessarily mean that these vowels are actually pronounced differently. which i haven't been able to think of one solid example whrere they actually are. hmmm

Promised (rough) translations for those who find the above too difficult:

Hypercorrection, also known as exaggerated correctnes, is a term used in normative linguistics, denoting substitution of forms which follow the lingustic norms with incorrect forms that are nevertheless considered by the user to be correct.

Some examples of hypercorrection is a letter (literal) by letter pronounciation of ę and ą before bilabial plosives and affricates, for instance ząb [zɔ̃p], [zɔɰ̃p] zamiast [zɔmp].

These aren't things I am coming up as I go. Anybody who went through a Liceum (a type of secondary school in Poland) with the concentration on Humanities (profil humansityczny) had to spend some time on this, if I remember correctly in grade 3 (Grade 11 US equivalent), so one doesn't even have to have any particular linguistic background to know these things. Provided, of course, that one didn't doze off during classes ;)

Further about the way we pronounce ą and ę, most of us (native speakers of Polish) came across a little remark used in regards to those who try to pronounce ą and ę always as if the letters werein isolation: "coś taki ą i ę?" ("Why are you so ą and ę"), which is a short for something to the effect of: "why are you pronouncing words in such an artificial manner while sounding silly in the process?"


Actually, the reason why we hear sounds differently is because they are pronounced differently. I am not sure why you are confused by that. The sounds are clearly not always the way they are spelled out and I don't think you even need any special gift to hear the differences. I can only speculate that you may have a sort of linguistic expectation whereby you expect that a sound is present because you know how it is spelled, so you think you hear it in the exact way in which it is spelled.

It's similar to one of those examples of sentence in the English language where words are intentionally spelled incorrectly, and yet the reader has no problems with the understanding of the text. What makes it possible is the expectation of the meaning. We rarely read words letter by letter, but rather recognize shapes of words (hence ALL CAPS are so hard to read), so little misplacements of individual lettres is not critical in understanding of incorrectly spelled wrods. Of course, for that to occur we need a competent reader in a given language. Much like (what I believe to be true) the situation with you; you are a native speaker of Polish, aware of the spelling and superimposing that spelling on the sounds that are not there but you expect them to be.

EDIT: just realised how some simpel misspelings can show you what native speakers actually hear: zemby, tendy, £óć (jokingly spelled as Uć, or as Óć, the only "Polish" word spelled with Ó in initial position)

sure those may sound similar to the correct words but they don't sound exactly the same at all.. i think it is you that is hearing things and yes, people misspronounce words all the time.. and of course there are also different dialects etc.. but an ę is an ę no matter what you surround it with. i think this difference you speak of is a figment of some great imagination. :)

Sorry plk, but you are wrong. No need ot believe me though. Read the links I posted beofore. These are reputable sources.

I wonder if you can find even one supporting your claims (your own posts don't count :)

yeah, i am tone deaf and i can't read.

guys about ś and sz - maybe someone have mentioned it before - i just scanned this thread -
ś - is back palatal, back tongue touches somewhere beetwen back and middle palate, while the tip of tongue touches your lower teeth.
sz - back tongue is in low position while tip rolls and touches mid palate.

I hope this will help. If not, i can show it if someone lives in Leeds :]

A lot of the older generation, especially those who came from the 'East' often still speak always with a hard 'l' sound.

My God, why make the Polish Language so complicated and boring? Great big long complicated and difficult explanations of simple things yet the polish native speakers on this Forum spell oczu as oczów, póżniej as pużniej and uwierzyć as uwieżyć! There are many more examples that I can not think of now. The Polish native speakers want to work at their primary school spelling first of all before we delve in thirteenth century linguistic theory.

Your Polish is shi*t. Get over that and stop palying a master of linguistic because you are ver far away from that.

Somehow the two qualities do not go together for me.


As a matter of fact both are correct, and there is even a third form. In all:

oczów
oczu
ócz

I'll leave it to your investigative zeal to figure out the usage of each of the above.


You haven't been known for those faculties of the mind, so please, be careful and do not strain yourself.


When you master your own come back and we'll chat about Polish.

You really do think a lot of yourself. There is no such correct version of oczów. I was in Poland speaking in Polish before you were even born and I have lived in England for nearly fifty years. Who the hell are you to correct my English? Talk about the expression 'nos do góry' and 'muchy pod nosem'. Why is the concept of language so important now? Under Communism the Poles were all training to be teachers of Russian in state schools and HATED everything to do with England and the English. Now, you must be master of everything. Very very strange. You can see why Polish Communism failed as it went against the grain of human nature.


In that case in future you do all translation in to Polish and I will do the translations in to English. As your English is so poor you can not be expected to do everything, after all. Them, maybe everybody will be happy!

Wrong on both counts. You can verify the first here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_(grammatical_number)#The_dual_in_the_Slavic_languages

I feel I'm in a better position to correct your English than you are to correct all native speakers of Poilsh on this forum.


'nos do góry' - do you mean "zadzierac nosa"? and "muchy w nosie"?


Now? It always has been. I'll leave it to you again to do some research on Poland's struggle to keep the national language alive for the last 200 years.


You're your usual fool and a liar. I don't recall much hatred towards English. Not among the people I knew anyway. Otherwise why would I even bother with the language.


The only strange thing is that you, at your senior (senile?) age are such a complete fool, ignorant and as.shole. How did you manage that? I know a lot of Brits and I agree that you're not the only dumbfvck living in UK, but luckilly, you are a minority.


What does Polish communism has to do with anything here? Poland was never a communist country. For a few decades it was invaded and occupied by a communist country though.

But of course for you Poles are a simple minded people, interested in working with rivets and such :) Well, reading your posts, I think working with pretty much anything would be a serious strain on your mental faculties.

Well, we always just say 'nos do góry' in our house. Mind you, as we do not use Polish for official reasons, I imagine that quite a lot of bad slang has crept in over the years. Sometimes even my wife pulls me up over it as I leave the kitchen and go to the garage and I say 'ja do garażu' without even bothering with the verb at all! At the end of the day, it is just about communication and I am never using Polish in an official capacity, except of course for watching M jak Miłość twice a week-it is the only direct connection I am ever likely to have with that country.

Do you watch the current ones? I get TV Polonia off the web and they're showing episode 519 now.

As far as I know, we are six months behind Poland. We get two episodes a week. The first is shown twice on Saturday, the second is shown twice on Sunday with a repeat performance at lunch time on Monday should you miss it! I can not remember the episode number off hand but we are now at the point when Kinga and company have just moved from their flat in to a nice house. Please do not tell what happens next as it will spoil the excitement. I find it riveting!

Actually I find lots of Polish English speakers say 'f' instead of 'th' like instead of I think they will say I fink....just from my experiences

heh heh, as much as I would enjoy doing it (hehehe just kidding) I won't because I don't watch the current ones.

for me onlt dz and £
cuz i know russian and ż ź sz cz ś ć are there only dz hard to say Dzien dobry in russian it
"Dobry den"