ch - antychryst - chłeb

Okay, so I am getting slowly used to pronouncing Polish words (poorly :P ) but now I am confused. Generally the one thing about Polish is that as hard as it is to pronounce most words (and even hard to pick them up when other people pronounce them) they pretty much read as they are wrote.

Now I was just going back over Janusz's videos and the words antychryst and anarchia struck me as odd because the ch sounds is pronounced like a "k" rather than a "wh" sound.

Is there a common rule around this that i can follow that will help me with this.. ie (rch is rk and chr is kr, the rest is wh) or is it a matter of having to come across this stumbling block on a case by case basis?

lol I just read the heading and have no idea why I put ł instead of l in chleb, other than I had been up all night going through word list after word list and just got myself totally messed up...

Still not sure about the whole CH sound though... :(
Especially after seeing chrystus pronounced with a "wh" sound... sheesh I am going to go nuts on this :(

???
Use your headphones to listen to that and try listen well... AnarKia or antyKryst would sound rather 'slangy' or 'dialect'-ish, at least to me.

In Polish 'ch' is always pronounced 'h' and never 'k' . If you hear something else then it is definitely a language error or just poor quality audio.

Cinek

Just to confirm...
Is it my hearing that is wrong or is that saying a "k" sound.



everytime I hear
anarchia and antychryst it sounds like a k to me..

Yeah I thought this right up until today.. perhaps it is just my hearing or something... check out the video if you get the chance and see if it just me.. in which case I better get my ears checked :P

But.. I notice the ch 'wh' sound and have heard it in many words.. arrghhh :( :P

And now.. I cannot even decide if it is a wh or a k.. sheesh I need some sleep... when you cannot tell a k from a h something is really wrong ...

Chleb is not even a Polish word or a slavonic at all. It comes from the Anglo-Saxon word loaf.

I hear clearly 'h' not 'k' here. Maybe soemthing's wrong with your speakers? Are you using headphones or loudspeakers? Try with another ones.

Cinek

It is an h sound but h and ch sound the same in Polish.

which is strange- because 'Ch' in latin (at least in vulgar) was always prounounced like 'k' (see all modern romanian languages)- and in some early translations of Scriptura 'Chrystus' was translated to 'Krestos' or 'Krejstos' (and 'krystianizm').

and apart from it- difference between pronounciation of 'caritas' and 'charytatywny' is strange, because the second word is derivated from the first one :~

cinek
In Czech the h sound is an h sound but in Polish it is more gutural like the German loch but it is not a harsh sound.

Blimey antichrist bread....dough of the devil...!

Do you mean that Polish h sound is not a h sound ? So what is it? How much h sound in h sound is needed so it can be a h sound ?

Cinek

cinek
It is technically not the English h sound but more like the Russian ch. There is also a distinction in Dutch between the gutural g and the soft sch version, which in this case, is more like the Polish 'h' sound.

Michal


it does not come from the Anglo-Saxon loaf -
Slavic chleb and English loaf come from the same Germanic word - it was accepted in Slavic (proto Slavic) through the contact with Gothic settlers that made their way from Baltic Coast (Gdańsk area) down south to the Black Sea - it was pretty probable Slavs (proto Slavs back then) didn't make bread as we know it now (with the use of 'zakwas' or yeast) and just learned to make it through the contact with the Gothic people.


must be the influence of Greek missionary activity - see Cyryl and Metody in Polish wiki and then open the English counterpart of the article