Need advice on how to improve Polish language skills

in leszcz and teść, I'd expect the "eszcz" part to sound identical to the "eść", but I'm hearing they would not. The "eść" would sound 'softer', 'palatized' but I'm not sure what that means. The tongue is positioned differently?

Yes.

yes the tounge is in a different position/shape - actually I think you should play with all those 'hissing' 'whistling' and 'cracking' sounds (all possible that you can make - I'm pretty sure you can pronounce 'ś' and 'sh' afterwards

someone mentioned here before (in a different thread) that Polish especially spoken by women sounds like chirping of birds - if you learn how to imitate the chirping of birds you have learned much of Polish phonetics ;)

Crap. I went to a Polish dictionary with pronunciations and compared "leszcz" with "teść". The "eszcz' part of "leszcz" did sound different than the "eść" part of "teść". I can't believe it! How did I not notice this before? It was hard to tell in-person with my sample group. I guess I was asking for contrived nonsensical words which may have thrown off the results. I needed words that were analogous, such as the "eszcz" part of 'leszcz' compared to the "eść" part of 'teść'. damn. sorry everyone. :-\

Wow! I've just discovered what it's all about!

So imagine a guitar. When you play a guitar you have to push the strings on frets to make them shorter and therefore made them sound differently. The same thing you make with your tongue when you pronounce "cz", "ci" and English "ch". When pronouncing all this sounds you have to make a small gap between your tongue and the palatum for a short time almost touching palatum with tongue while exhaling the air from your mouth.

All the difference is what part of tongue you will use to make this gap:
When you pronounce cz you have to make a gap with a tip of your your tongue.
When you pronounce English ch you have to make a gap with the place just after the tip of your tongue.
When you pronounce ci you have to make a gap with the place of your tongue which is almost in the middle.

That's how I think it might work.

Ranrod, I indeed intend to help you with some recordings. Please return to this thread late the Polish time, then I will find some time.

or maybe I should say which is nearer to the middle of the tongue

The 'i' serves as a softening sign for the preceding consonant. It says 'prounounce the consonant which is before me softly': 'ci-a-s-t-k-o = ćastko'. If you have to pronounce the soft c, and a consonant or nothing else follows, you have to mark it with the mark of softness: ćpać, zięć.

The combination 'ci' followed by a vowel is pecular and defies the above rule. In the example "słońce-słonice", a consonant follows the group 'ni', so the 'i' here does serve as a softening sign [as the 'i' in ciastko' in which the 'ci' group is followed by a vowel] as well as it serves as an independent sound at the same time. So, the 'i' plays a double role here; it tells us to pronounce the preceding 'n' softly and we pronounce the sound 'i' itself as well. Indeed, to make life easier for the learners of Polish, the word should in fact have been written as 'słońice'.

oh well, I have just remembered one other source of problem in Polish ortography

words like dania and Dania - they look the same but are pronunced differently (dania - dishes (as in first dish - pierwsze danie, second dish-drugie danie - śniadanie also belongs here - but it is the excercise for our foreigner readers to figure where it comes from) and Dania=Danmark)

actually words like Dania (Hiszpania, mania, schizofrenia, kompania, kampania, Kampania, Szampania) are be pronounced as Dańja - such pronounciation is constistent with words like Francja, informacja, gracja, Grecja, Gruzja, Azja (in that that the 'j' is present) - it is also consistent with the pronounciation of Islandia, Bułgaria, Brazylia where also 'j' is present (represented by 'i')

Ziemowit you talk as if this "i" was changing the pronounciation of ć while it's not. The tongue steup is the same in both cases. "Ci" is pronounced longer in words because of the obvious fact that it makes a syllable. The softening effect describes only what the "i" makes with sounds: "c", "n", "z", "s".

"Ć", "ś", "ź", "ń" are already softened sounds.


Maybe it's regional because I pronounce Dania exactly the same way as dania.

Congratulations! This was just a small step for you and one giant leap for your Polish skills ;-)

But anytime you feel unsure about the pronuntiation, ivona.com will always help you. Try it. It's really good!

Cinek

In my view this is not the case. In most cases 'ci' doesn't make a syllable : in 'ciast-ko', 'cio-cia', 'cie-mię-ga', 'cias-ny', it is the vowel after 'ci' that makes a syllable; I've bolded this vowel out. In other words, you could have spelled the above words as ća-stko, ćo-ća, će-mią-ga, ća-sny and you would have exactly the same syllables without having any 'ci' in them.

On the other hand, the group 'ci' followed by a consonant does make a syllable since it has 'i' pronounced as 'i' as well as the 'i' softens the preceding consonant [called it the double role of 'i' in my previous post] : the word 'ci-si' has two such syllables. You could have written it as 'ći-śi', for example; it is only a matter of the writing standard set in the past ages that we spell them this way rather than the other way today.

Hello!
I think, I know someone who might be able to help you with your language problems! He is an American who learnt Polish from scratch. I must say he speaks beautifully! Truth to be told, my jaw dropped when I heard him for the first time! His language blog is called "Linguatrek" (it's available in English, as well as Polish).

Send him the message that you posted on the forum, I'm certain that he will give you some useful advice!

Take care!

So it makes a syllable in companionship with an additional volvel.
My point is that if you say that "ci" makes a separate syllable it would be easy and an intuitive way to understand when in Polish language "ci" is used and how to pronounce it (like a separate syllable, contraty to "ć"). While you boys complicated it so much...

I'll answet to a page 1 post :)


Yes, it's very confusing, but keep in mind you encounter all such cases at the age 2-5 already and your mind remembers a lot of that stuff. Little children make a lot of mistakes - they're just constantly corrected until they get it right. Again, by the time when formal education starts they have problems only with a bunch of examples (eg. poszedłem and poszłem :))

It is amusing to see that you have mostly problems with noun declension as verb conjugation is also in Spanish and can also be quite irregular, yet I don't think you consider it something that slows children's progress down. Language is a tool that is used throughout a person's life and it's better to make the learning curve slightly higher, but keep it powerful, flexible and prone to subtleties that make our life and conversations often so interesting. :)

One example in Spanish that I'm sure you're aware of and is quite basic are verbs ser and estar - all other languages I know simply use one verb for it (PL - być, EN - to be, GE - sein, FR -e^tre) and so on. Every foreigner who study Spanish must wonder why they Spanish would complicate their life that way. Yet I'm sure for you it's very intuitive and you never make mistakes with that verb. Another interesting example, but one that would cause problems only to English speaking people is the words saber and conocer. English only use to know for it, so when they learn mainland European languages, they have to encounter some difficulties, at least initially. And so on and so on.

I'm sure you noticed that Polish doesn't have definite and indefinite articles - when we start studying Germanic or Roman languages, it's a HUGE barrier for us as the concept is totally alien.

Anyway, you have to practice, then practice and finally practice a little more. Also, at least attempt to think in Polish and don't mind that the sentences aren't correct initially - eventually you'll just "feel" the language. The beginnings are always the most frustrating when you study a language, when the sooner you jump into the deep water, the better!

Well, people only use a very small percentage of their brain-power, and seeing as Poles (according
to your theory) are forced to use more of it for memorization and acquisition of certain language patterns,
and they still manage to score very good in other skills tests, then I guess we can safely conclude that
an average Pole uses more of his brain-power than your average Spaniard or Swede ;-)

humans aren't designed to use any more of it :)

Bollocks.

we may be using only 10 percent of our brains...
scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=people-only-use-10-percent-of-brain

Great link!

Some of you have mentioned that Polish students don't score low as compared to, say, British students. I'm sure that's true as those tests mostly test memorized material and procedures, which Polish students get a lot more practice on, since their language requires so much more of it. Chinese students always score very high as well, for the same reason. Memory gets a lot more exercise in those languages.

In the fields of creativity and innovation (which are super-hard to test), If we compare the number of new ideas and innovative art coming out of Poland per capita, would people be surprised if it proved to be low? It seems to me that when your thinking (driven by language) is so memory-driven that it would be hard to think outside the box.

I'm happy you put a link to support me, I'm somewhat unhappy that you put such a misleading title to the link.


Seriously, just drop this theory.

You're over analyzing the polish language. All this focus on the technicalities ofthe language are confusing you (and me!!).

Many years ago when I was learning French I started by doing what you're doing - grammar. I felt like i wasn't getting anywhere so I switched over to conversation classes. Then I really started learning the language. Try it.

Sorry, I don't mean to offend you. It's an important question for me though. My significant-other (SO) is Polish, which is why I'm learning, and she was saying she wants our kids to learn Polish, so I'm wondering if that would become a detriment of some sort to the child. I'm a little worried about it.

ranrod

Man, you sound like a mad scientist who tries to prove some pre-conceived notions about an old Anglo-Saxon supremacy over anyone in the field. I thought you were looking for a truth - apparently I was mistaken. I am sorry I was trying to help you. You do not care for the truth - you care for your old "Rule Britannia" sh1t!

The fact is, my dear man, there is a lot of innovations coming from your perceived low graded Central Europe. The little guys from Poland perennially bit you up, the Brits, in most of the international competitions requiring usage of the grey matter. Let me give you some examples:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACM_International_Collegiate_Programming_Contest

2006 World Finals


The World Finals - Winners - Top institutions
- University of Warsaw - 2007.
- University of Warsaw - 2003.

Don't you even get me started... because this is my field of expertise, after all. Whatever you want to prove has very little scientific context and content. I can go on quoting you to death how wrong you are. Objectively, kids are good all over the world and your notion of perceived supremacy of the British stock does no hold any water whatsoever.

No, they wouldn't. Poland don't like a risk and don't like to invest in new ideas... that might be the reason.

I don't think also that Poles are better in memorization than other nations. Polish educational system teach knowledge not practilcal skills or independent thinking. That's the reason Poles score better scores in knowledge tests (if it's true).


Do you really think that British person would make such a blunder in the thread title? :) Calm down ranrod is just impressed with Polish language complexity so much that he can't believe that someone can use it intuively form the earliest age ;)


Oh, someone already has corrected it :)

It may be so, but you missed some of the points I was trying to make. Winning programming contests requires plenty of creativity and independent thinking, not just knowledge. Let me start with this:


propilotmag.com/archives/2010/Sept%2010/A1_education_p1.html

Gold medals awarded at the International Olympiad in Informatics (1999-2009)

wired.com/magazine/2010/11/mf_algorithmolympics/

And here is something more recent:

Students from Poland win the Cup of the Head of the Republic of Karelia


The thing is, many of those bright kids could not find appropriate employment in Poland. Two or three of so-called TopCoders (see topcoder.com) went to work in USA. Some work in Poland for American companies located in USA (outsourcing).

• 
  Gold medals awarded at the International Olympiad in Informatics (1999-2009)
  

Yes but those kids/students are naturally brillliant or have a real deal of luck to find eager teachers who conducted them. Polish school system deosn't encourage independent thinking or develope creativity. That's my experience.

Population of Poland + Russia = 180M
Population of the USA = 300M

Number of gold medalists 45:18

I added up Poland and Russia as the languages are ultimately similar in terms of grammar structures, declension etc. Unless you suggest that the probability of natural born geniuses is that much higher in Slavic countries, you can clearly see that the language does not slow down creativity or independent thinking.

There are things to improve in the education system, though.

ranrod


Have you read this article? Speaking in tongues.

There is no blunder in the threat title. You would know this if you read the original post. My point was that English is a lot more forgiving of errors in speaking and writing than Polish. The misspelling in the title showed this. Often you're actually considered MORE cool if you speak English wrong.

And you are right, it is hard to believe that ANYONE at any age can speak Polish intuitively; though obviously they do.

Goury, that link was cute - Thanks!