Things Polish people who speak English language say

Last night my Polish friend phoned to say that he would be late, as he said the reason was that he was, “up his mother and would be five minutes late”, unfortunately missing the word “place”.

I explained to him later in the pub what he said and the poor guy was so embarrassed. :O)

There is a simple explanation for this mistake. There are two main differences between english 'p' and 'b':

Aspiration - english voiceless stop consonants (like t, k, p) are aspirated when they are word-initial or begin a stressed syllable so that 'Poland' is actually pronounced as 'Pholand' (where h marks a burst of air that accompanies pronounciation of said consonants). Polish consonants are never aspirated so that polish speakers often don't aspirate english consonants as proper pronounciation is rarely taught in our schools.

Voicing - Another difference between 'p' and 'b' is that the latter is voiced, whereas the former is voiceless. It must be remembered however that there are certain differences between voicing in respective language in that sense that voicing in polish, like in other slavic languages is much stronger that in english.

Whenever there is a pair of similar sounding words that differ only in the initial stop consonant like 'pen-ben' for example, slavic speakers use voicing exclusively to distinguish between both words, while english speakers (just like speakers of all other germanic languages if I'm not mistaken) prefer apiration over voicing so that every time they happen to hear a voiceless consonant pronounced without obligatory aspiration they sometimes take it as a voiced consonant. This is the main reason why 'Poland' pronounced by Poles sometimes sounds like 'Boland'.

the words for makeup in both Polish and Spanish are similar when pronounced correctly

maquillaje(spanish)
and
makijaż (polish)

Not knowing whether to say 'a' / 'an' or 'the'.
The definite and indefinite articles are often omitted, and I can understand why.

It's not always easy to explain which one to use, or if neither should be used.
You explain it logically, then five minutes later, you say:

'Going to the pub? Which one?'

Drinking is not the answer.

Arkady - if you are really interested in this type of stuff you could google " McGurk effect".

Dont know if its the same but you may find it interesting.

faculty.ucr.edu/~rosenblu/VSMcGurk.html

The McGurk effect seems to refer to a slightly different phenomenon but thanks for the link.

i actually noticed that the brittons pronounce can't as the other word themselves. it's totaly different then the way the yanks say it which is closer to 'kent' then anything else.


it should but in polish we don't say 'you' all the time.. the words themselves have a suffix, mostly, that signifies whom it refers to.


that may be the case but the number of consonants that tend to run together w/o any vowels does foreigners in. same goes for some of the letter combinations. "szcz" is hard for them to wrap their tongue around, for example


correct as the polish pronounciation of the vowels is constant as it is in spanish.. english is all over the place with all of the vowels. just look at all the different way of "a". in polish it's always the same "ah". it never ever changes.

Only occasionally for humourous effect.


As in the word 'student'?
It depends on what English you speak.

i've never heard it that way.. that's more of a latin thing not polish.. polish p and and english p are the same..


not from my experience.. that's how all my british and indian teachers always pronounced it..


come again? i am not following you there.

The lack of aspiration in Polish consonants leads the words 'Can' and 'Can't' to sound far too similar.
To distinguish between, I encourage all my szczudents to pronounce these words the English way.
This is also because I'm English and live in the southeast of England.

once again in polish you don't need all these different things that are necessary in english.. in polish "u mamy" means exactly "at mother's" and we, as in poles, know that means mom's place.


lol.. most yanks have issues with that one to as well as may and can.. there are many words like that in english that americans use incorrectly.

You're not hearing the difference between:

can't - long 'a' vowel - further back, close to the long American 'o' in 'gone'
c*nt - short, 'schwa' vowel - mid-central position.

i understand what you're saying but i listened hard and english do pronounce it closer to kunt then the yanks.. sure there is a slight difference but not really much.. heck, the yanks made fun of me as well brits for that word.. i never actually said kunt.. i always said it the brit way.

i have no polish accent btw. most think i am from NE US or MN or MI or sometime Canada; they never guess Poland or eastern eu. never.

i am still not really clear on this student thing you were trying to get at.. i have never heard it with an SH at the beginning nor a CZ anywhere in there.

Once again, I tell you: listen.

There is a difference in where your tongue is in your mouth.
There is a difference in how long you speak the vowel.
I find vowel differenciation in Polish a bit tricky at times.
To an English ear, the difference is big. Say it wrong and you're in trouble.


Many people in the part of the world where I live pronounce 'stu-' as 'sc-ch-u-'.
There is the same kind of slurring with 'str' which becomes 'sc-ch-r-'

shchring
shchupid
shchudent

It is not what most would call proper English - foreigners shouldn't really be learning it that way,
but it is there in some regional speak.

I was once told that the Polish barred L can't be pronounced by English speakers, even though all across the southeast of England, the letter L at the end of a word or before another consonant is pronounced by many people as a W (similar to the Polish barred L).

Many assumptions are made about English pronunciation which ignore the huge variety of forms of English.

ok i see, i don't think i have experienced some of these things much at all.. maybe only by asian folks.

the polish barred L is the english W

thanks donk

A little example:
Whistle, written Polish-style, would be £ysł.

The variety of English accents/dialects is relevent to this topic because so many Polish people in the UK learn so much English from the people they speak to an a daily basis. So you usually get a hybrid accent of Polish / American English (from films, TV, possibly from English lessons in Poland), Standard British English (as much as one exists), and local accented English.

hmmm. i am thinking £ysyl or £ysel would be the closest, no?

but you're so right about the accents etc.. polish has those too you know? if you've ever been in warsaw and then traveled to Zakopane or kaszuby you'd hear it immidiately.goo

If any second vowel, try U.

£ysuł.

i still don't see the second £. hmmm.. to me it's an L just like it's spelled, basically. this last way you wrote is exactly how an american friend of mine says that word but he has speach impedement.

can we say it like fresh [b]ch[b]eese ?
ive just began my polish studies, i find it very confusing but im getting there:)

yeah, if you run the words together.. there are many other combinations that many non natives have problems with.

also, i know im going to murder the polish language here, so ill write it in my best way possible because my spelling isnt good.

in the sentance czy pani movee po angielsku (i know i have spelt it wrong) some of my friends tell me i say czy pani and it means something like c*nt, is their any way to get past this?

i've noticed somthing like,

instead of somthing is -ed
they will use -y
or some other ending as such ^_^

best example of that...
"crowdy"
instead of
"crowded!" ;)

i have to admit...very cute ;)

looks ok to me.. czy as in chy or chee.. i can't think of anything bad in close proximity.. could be a slang thing though.

movee is actually mowi.. the o with the slash above it.

cipa?

close to a highly offensive word.

lol.. i see it now.. no kidding... so that means taylor needs to harden the czy (chy)

This sentence is: Czy pani mowi po angielsku
Your pronounciation: Ci pani mowi po angielsku

The initial part of your pronounciation sounds like "cipa" which is a polish word for "c*nt"

The reason why you pronounce it incorrectly is because you were probably told that english 'ch' like in 'chip' is an equivalent to polish 'cz'. It's not true though, just like english 'sh' like in 'ship' is not an equivalent of polish 'sz'.

English 'ch' is situated somewhere between polish 'ć' (ćwierć) and polish 'cz' (czwarty) and usually sounds a bit more like the former than the latter and that results in such confusion. The best way to get rid of it is to learn correct pronounciation of 'cz' from native speakers or good language tutorials.

I have met very few foreigners in my life that spoke polish so I might be wrong here but I would say that the lack of distinction between 'cz' and 'ć' (just like between 'sz' and 'ś' and so on...) is probably the most common mistake made by them. :)

v. good expenation arkady.

And this is _not_ true. The stress in foreign words, like physics, mathematics etc. is 1 syllable earlier (so it's matematyka, not matematyka). The same is with 'detachable/floating' (for the lack of terminology :) ) endings, like '-śmy', where the stress in the word with and without the suffix is the same (so byli -> byliśmy and not byliśmy).


Yeah... Try this: Trzy cytrzystki... ;)

I think I am quite proficient in the Polish language. However I can't say the word 'four', 'forty four' and so on. It's a nightmare!