Polish regional accents?

But not much more. All in all, Poland is far more homogenous linguistically than German, English or Italian. It's more homogenous than Czech spoken over a far smaller area. The upside for learners is that you don't have to deal with dialect or accents the way that German or or English learners do. The downside is that communication doesn't take much to break down. I hear so little non-standard Polish that when I do hear something non-standard it's harder for me to deal with.


In some ways there is, but it's not so much language based. Polish people are simply more hierarchical than British or Irish people.

They're also more prescriptivist with less tolerance for 'mistakes'. A construction like 'innit?' could never gain ground in Poland because most Poles aspire to speak standard Polish (unlike many British or Irish who are happy with and/or proud of non-standard features).

LOL - he is not claiming to "know better". You are missing his point somewhat - but in other ways making it.

BTW thanks all - and Mafketis in particular - for your input.

Merged: Are there any regions in Polska today, which still speak with the pre-war accent?

Are there any regions in Polska today, which still speak with the pre-war accent?

I simply adore it.. especially in songs sung by Eugeniusz Bodo and Mieczysław Fogg, for instance. It was obviously influenced strongly by Russian, but sounded soo much more pleasant than today's Polish. :P

My mother was taught to speak it that way by her Belorussian mother back when was younger and living in Zabłudów, but she unfortunately adapted the modern accent upon moving to Gdańsk in the 80's, before she had us. :(

Hmm, maybe some primitive Polish tribes hidden in Białowieska Jungle Forest, without access to the radio and TV, still keep old traditions.... ):):):)

Seriously, I don`t think so.

lol funny... NOT.

and why change the title, mods?

this was strictly out of sheer curiosity =P

It's very, very, very rare. But in my region (North-East, Suwalszczyzna) some older people use something which could be called in the past "artistic language". They don't use normal "ł" like in modern language but they use something between "l" and "ł". But it is probably the only thing that has been left from pre-war times. My grandma used it for her whole life and she died just 2 years ago. She was taught this way, but she was 89 years old, so when modern times came, she was already a very mature woman. You can mostly hear this from people who are in their 80s now and were living in Suwalszczyzna or Podlasie for their whole life.

you know, I'm actually curious as to which point of time following the war, did the accent actually change, or start changing, and how it became nation-spread.

I mean, with the pronunciation of hard/soft ł, and letter 'y' from yj/i in words. Also, they used to pronounce 'cz' as 'sz' in many words, primarily in cases where cz was proceeded by 'ł'.

Think yourself lucky that the thread didn't go straight to the bin.

Two things that you should know about creating threads..

1. polishforums.com/thread-title.html - here

and

2.rule #10 polishforums.com/rules-privacy-tos/

It's very hard to say, but I think this could change right after WWII. My parents were born in 1960 and 1959 respectivelly and I am pretty sure they were taught modern Polish (of course not as modern as now) since they were in primary school. I will visit them tommorow, so if I don't forget, I will ask them :)

Actually, this characteristic pronunciation in Polish movies before the war wasn’t the pronunciation of the majority of Poles. It is called kresowa pronunciation (Kresy part of Ukraine and Belarus that were a part of Poland before the war). Kresowa pronunciation was the only allowed and acceptable pronunciation in movies and on stage (why?? don't no). Some actors, not from Kresy, had to learn it. This pronunciation was the only allowed and mandatory to learn by all students of the Polish Film and Theatre School until the sixties, but later abonded as, I guess, less and less Poles spoke like that naturally (Kresy not longer Polish).


Interestingly, Eugeniusz Bodo wasn’t Polish. He was born in Geneva and was a Swiss citizen. I believe he learned Polish later in his childhood (not sure about it). Being officially a Swiss citizen didn’t save him from the Soviets during the war. He was arrested by the Russians and transported to a gulag in Siberia where he died from hunger before the war ended.

Zazulka observed:


Exactly right. The change from the old pronunciation of ł to the modern one (like English w) predates WWII (or WWI?). The use of stage (or kresowa) pronunciation in certain contexts was very artificial (when did it die out completely? I've heard language learning tapes form the 60's that still have it) though movies from the 50's mostly sound more realistic. Anyway the artificial maintenance of the sound created the impression that it was the general pronunciation but it wasn't.

Here is an example:

According to Wikipedia (confirmed by other sources):

What my dad told me today was that they have never been taught to use this "old" language at schools, however they had teachers who used that version of languages (older teachers, born at the beginning of 20th century). So in 1960s - it surely wasn't existing as normal language.

We shouldn`t blow the problem out of its proper proportions. Let`s be frank - the pre-war Polish isn`t much different than the contemporary one. We can perfectly understand what they sing.

Does Marta have an accent and what kind is it?

I think that she has, I have heard someone talking like her before,

Merged: Accents in Poland -- regional and class differences?

Do Polish people speak with different accents if they come from different classes, even if they're from the same place?

For example, if two people were from Warsaw, and one of them was working class and the other was middle class, would their accents be different?

In England, working class people talk with a regional accent (so if they're form Manchester, they have a "Manchester accent", if they're from London, they have a "London", or "cockney", accent). Middle class people, however, usually just have a "standard accent", called "Received pronunciation", no matter where they're from in the country. They could live in Newcastle in the north or London in the south and have the same "posh" accent.

This is generalising a bit – some middle-class people do have a regional accent; but mostly (especially those who are upper-middle class), middle class people don't have a regional accent.

Is the same true in Poland, or is it that if two people came from Warsaw, they would have the same accent regardless of what class they came from?

And if Polish people do have the same accent even if they're of a different class, how do you tell what class people are from? Do you have to use more subtle cues like job, clothing, car, etc.?

Please note I'm talking about accent (how words are pronounced), not dialect (what words are said)!!

Thanks very much. :)

there haven't been such things as classes in Poland mostly, there were educated and less educated people, less educated people tend to have some regional accents but these are getting weaker and weaker in Poland except for a couple of areas

btw there are areas in Poland (and vast ones) that don;t have any regional accent where all younger generations speak standard Polish

Interesting. Was there a difference in classes before the Second World War (and if so, was there any difference in accent between the classes?), or has Poland not had classes for a long time?

yes, there were classes before the war, and regional accents were strong among simple people, educated people and higher classes strived to speak standard Polish

I agree with most what you said, with some exceptions: educated people from the Borderlands (Wilno, Lwów, etc) spoke with strong "singing" accent, dark L, voice H, etc.


Of course, classes existed. There were peasants - both poor and wealthy. Impoverished petty gentry, often speaking different dialect and accent than the local peasants even though their lifestyle was not that different. Landowners, speaking "the received Polish". Industry workers, often former peasants, who spoke their own village dialects.

Most dialects had their characteristic accents, the way how some vowels were spoken, the way how some clusters of consonants were pronounced, the way where the word and sentence stress was put. A typical example of it is a so-called mazurzenie. So you cannot talk about accents without talking about dialects, because they are strongly connected. Here is a nice website about Polish dialects, unfortunately in Polish only, gwarypolskie.uw.edu.pl

But you can at least look at some pictures there and listen to various examples of regional dialects.

Educated Jews spoke good Polish, small town Jews spoke strange Polish (if any at all), using wrong declensions, and wrong syntax.

In this fragment of the old movie "Włóczęgi" (Tramps), you can hear traditional eastern accent from Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine).

Yea, being surrounded by Eastern Slavs for generations had an effect on the way they talked. I remember hearing a Polish highlander speak to me for the first time in a thick accent, I barely understood what he was saying.

A friend from Lwow sounded just like that. He wasn't old - he'd be 46 now.

There are still accents - it's easy to tell he difference between a Poznan person and a Warsaw person.

You know the square root of fkuc all about English accents.


This is more than generalizing a bit; it's nonsense.

There are generally two accents in any one place educated and not so well educated.

" 'Standard pronunciation' is a dialect with an army and a navy."

Thanks so much for your help, everyone -- especially boletus; that post was really helpful, thank you.
Of course, boletus, I thought it was more than likely that classes existed pre-war; but you do every so often hear of countries that although have class distinctions, do not have the same stigma, accent, and attitude differences that go with with it -- Switzerland is supposedly like that (although that might just be Mary Shelley's hyperbole) -- and after gumishu's response I thought it possible that Poland might be included in that list, but thanks for setting me straight.

Also, naturally, I do appreciate that accent and dialect go hand-in-hand -- but I just wanted to make it clear that my question focussed more on accent than dialect. Differences in dialect are not quite so important to me as accent, so I didn't want them to be the focus of my question.

And finally, teflcat -- I don't know where you're from or what accent you have, but I am English, I am middle class, I do have an RP accent, and I have middle class friends all around the country who have exactly the same RP accent as me, regardless of where they live. So I do know a bit about what I'm saying. :3

London.


forty-five years of education have modified my London accent. I'd call it educated home counties, 1980 with remnants of south London when very relaxed.


So you have, for example, a friend in Tyneside who has


as a friend from, say, Cornwall. Try Q-tips. What you call RP has changed over the decades, anyway. Listen to BBC announcers from the 1950s and those of today. The term is virtually meaningless.


I beg to differ, based on what you have said.

any of you chaps picked up a twang from living in PL? ive had so many Brits ask me if i'm South African or Australian. I found myself talking slower and more pronounced to the average Pole and i guess it had a permanent impact.