Poles! How do you cope with English phonetics versus English spelling?

Many thanks, Osioł. I knew there were two more. I'm kicking myself for missing those but I've had a long day and the napper needs to wind down.

Nice one amigo :) :)

At (short/open 'a', cf. "cap", "dad" etc..)

fAther (broad 'ah-sound', neither like open 'at' or closed 'fAce' with a final 'e' lengthener)

tAll (long 'aw-sound')

etc........, each with that pesky single letter 'a' causing soooo many problems--:):):) LOL

Thankyou for sharing that

Very true, but such a mixture of Italian, Arabic, Latin and one or two others, it's quite a difficult language to get to grips with (believe me, I have tried).

The same with Polish, to read a sentence written in Polish is quite frightening to a non speaker...............!

True enough, Kitty! Though I've found that Polish shares with German and probably a number of other languages (both related as well as unrelated) the charactaristic of looking fearsomly difficult at first, but getting blissfully simple...the more one learns the rules. English however, although blissfully unencumbered by the inflective baggage of Polish and many others, has an equally frightful orthography/pronounciation gap, as stated often in this forum, plus becomes quite involved structurally if a person wishes to express themselves on a reasonable academic level, beyond a mere 'He said/She said' parody of a bad Hemingway short story. Frequently, what passes for English abroad is in fact a vulgar caricature of itself.

Too many times English becomes the international language of MIScommunication-::) LOL
Then again, any widely spoken tongue runs a similar risk of being manhandled by the masses.

Tru enuf.. :)

Gudd wun, Shellee-:):):)