Need advice on how to improve Polish language skills

In Polish language there are no such combiantions of letters.


The problems Poles have with spelling are:
- u or ó
- ż or rz
- ch or h
- ę or em
- ą or on or om
- in rare case: t or d
- in very rare cases ł or u

As mafketis said Poles have no problem with distinguish between sz, ś, cz, ć, ż, ź, dź, dż. For Polish ear all those sound are very different.
Only very little children have problems with short and long: ś or si, ć or ci, ń or ni, ź or zi, dź or dzi. But since they are shown this classic example: słońce v. słonice, no one should have problems with that.

In case you don't know it:
słoń-ce (sun) - 2 syllabes
sło-ni-ce (female elephants) - 3 syllabes


Of course there are some words which cause problems even to Poles. However declination of most words don't cause any problems to native Poles, even if they hear a word for first time.


That's strange theory.
I tell you it's not about memorization. There are some rules and patterns of declination. Of course they are very complicated but not a problem to learn it subconsiousely if you live surrounded by the language. Little children doesn't have problem with declination of most newly-heard words or neologisms... guess why? Because there are rules and logic within the Polish languege. Most Poles would have great problems to say what ending of a noun makes it declinated in a such and such pattern but they can give you examples of many similar words which are declinated in similar way with no problem!

I've heard that before, and others have mentioned it here. The Poles I talked to said the same thing. I tested it by putting together nonsensical combinations of these characters and the Poles could not tell the difference between ś and sz or ć and cz, nor could they tell the difference between ci and czi nor si and szi. I concluded Poles 'think' they can tell the difference, but they really can't, they just know the vocabulary so the know what word is being said. They deduce which one is being used from context.

Furthermore, I argue that if there is a building with some people inside and some people outside, and everyone hears, "Przyeść do wyjścia!" over a loudspeaker (which always garble the audio a bit), half the people outside would try to go inside the building, and half the people inside would try to exit.

How did you do that? Did you say it yourself? It might be the reason (I mean not only Polish ear but also Polish mouth is needed ;-) )

Cinek

Well, Chinese and Japanese inventions doesn't support your theory ;)

No, I didn't say it myself. I had one Pole read it to another Pole.

Are you sure they were Poles? Could you give an example of your "test"?


there is no such thing like czi or szi in Polish language!

how did you actually do it? if you tried to pronounce Polish sounds yourself I'm pretty sure some people could get confused

if Poles couldn't tell the difference btw sz and ś there would be no such discrimation in the language (either written or spoken)

The Polish people were just merciful to you...
I'm sorry, ranrod but I and my wife are laughing at you now. My wife has asked: "Does he say wieczność as wiećnoszcz?"

wyjścia, wejścia sounds pretty similar, it's only one letter difference "y" and "e"

Poles can pronounce czi or szi but it never is a part of Polish words (only some words directly taken from other languages like the Chineses qi/chi which is pronounced as czi in Polish

Japanese has alphabets. 2 as a matter of fact: Katakana and Hiragana. Kanji has chinese characters but not used as heavily as in Chinese. 300 is all you need to translate certain works.

The Chinese have invented a lot of amazing things, but i would expect a lot more progress and innovation from the more recent years, specially considering their great education.

Oh yeah? I wanna hear it!

I think there is very little in terms of conscious memorization when children learn to speak Polish - it is a completely different thing to learning to write (especially in Chinese) this thing actually requires a very conscious approach - but still I think it developes many faculties of mind and not inhibits

No Japanese have 3 alphabets. The most simple is earliest to learn. It's about signs describing syllabes. The second and third alphabet are purely pictograms difficult to learn and actually high schoolers straggle to learn it. You finish the high school and barely can read...

come hear my dear - I will tell you ;)

Yes, I know. You have the 'cz' and you have the 'i', so as an exercise I put them together as czi. Same for szi. At some point, instead of writing czi and szi, people started writing ci and si.

In Chinese, there are more variations of the 'cz' sound and 'sz'. There are 5 as a matter of fact, and I can hear them all. In Polish I think it's mental. People 'think' they do, but they're just pronouncing it different because there are different letters before and after them. For example, since there is no 'czi' in Polish, people thought that the 'ci' was different than 'ći' or 'czi', but when I made a list of these randomly assorted, no one could tell which one was which. As in:

1. ci
2. ći
3. ći
4. czi
5. ci
6. czi
7. czi
8. czi
9. ći
10.ci
The success rate was about as good as flipping a coin (3 sided coin, I guess).

I'm Polish and I can pronounce it different way than "ci" and "si" or "czy" and "szy". Not to mention that such combiantion of letters doesn't naturally exist in Polish language. Note Czingis-Han... proper spelling is also Czyngis-Han better describes the way it's readed.

I was taught to write it as Dżyngis-Chan at school, Marysiu ;-)

Another conbination of letter I don't understand. Ranrod since you think of yourself as a specialist in Polish language could you tell me what is the difference in pronouncing "ć" and "ci" (not to mention that there is no such thing like ći... if you think there is then it mean that you don't understand the whole idea of letters with accent above)


And in the times of my school there was Czyngis Chan, Antku :) In wiki both are correct but I made a mistake in Chan... that's right, you've red-handed me ;)

Example of "czi" in Polish:

Poplosie numel czista czidzieści czi ;-)))
I can bet Marysia can say it, I can.

"ći" is simply idiotic.
---
I must be far older than you, Marysiu ;-) Who says Polish does not change?

this is just not true - as is shown by many foreigners who managed to learn Polish - some speak it very good (many Russians are able to speek Polish with very little accent (but it is true that we share tonns in the field of grammar and vocabulary)

Norman Davies speaks Polish
youtube.com/watch?v=x22Alfgv0DY

Norman Davies is a British historian for whom Poland is a major field of interest

Not to digress too much, but Kanji is not an 'Alphabet'. Hiragana and Katakana are alphabets that both contains characters representing syllables that you put together to form sentences. Intermixed are Kanji characters. These are old Chinese pictographs (that China doesn't use anymore), where 1 pictograph represents a word and has a pronunciation associate with it. The pronunciation of a Kanji character can vary, but the symbol represents the same thing as the old Chinese character. Interesting side note, they don't use any spaces between their words, which is really awkward to look at. English/Spanish would be SO hard to read that way. Katakana is most often used to represent foreign words which are most commonly 20+ century words such as 'jet' and 'computer'. I spent some time in Japan as well :)

As to the other comment, wyjścia, wejścia sounds pretty similar, it's only one letter difference "y" and "e". Yes, the 'y' and the 'e' are extremely similar in certain words. I'm guessing those 2 get confused a lot in noisy environments. My test included also saying "Kwiaty" and "Kwiate" randomly 10 times and the Pole I tested also got it wrong 50% of the time.

;DDD
Ok, you're right, there is slight difference... But it's hard to prounounce

Truly. In 1986 I met a Polish-English couple in Masuria. She was British and could speak very good Polish, she only could not grab some idioms. Her husband told her:

"Suzi, zrób mi proszę herbatę, ale mocną jak siekiera".

After couple of minutes, Suzi appeared holding a cup of tea in her right hand and an axe in her left hand:
"Marek, proszę, oto herbata. Ale po co ci siekiera?!"

So you do some researches on Poles and Polish language? Is it a uni research?

I forgot to mention "w" and "f" is also kind of confusing due to the side effect of "soften" it after some consonants

You have the letter 'ć', right? and you have the letter, 'i', right? Put them together. Does it sound different than 'ci'?

ranrod, do you write "qeen"?
Give me an example of English word starting with Q and not followed by u...

Why do you write "qu" while simple "q" would b mor zen inaf? ;-)

No.

It sounds EXACTLY the same way. Ć = ci


qwerty... Just kidding ;)

you are contradicting yourself Marysiu

after all there is a difference between 'słońce' and 'słonice' as there is difference between - pardon my French - 'ćpa' and 'cipa' (the first is a one syllable word the other is a two syllable one)

Bingo! All the equivalent 'cz' sounds are pronounced EXACTLY the same way.

It seemed that way anyway, from my small sample group of a few people in Poland.
The poles I met had problems spelling them (on words I chose) and noticing the difference.

Maybe some of you guys do though. Hard to tell without voice.