Polish words that sound funny?

Here is what sounds funny to me: Prosze Pana, czy Pan bylby upszejmy...

...and the English translation: I am asking you if the Lord would be comforted...

Even the almighty google chokes up on this kind of crap.

Well actually the translation is "Excuse me, sir, would you be so kind (as to)..."

But someone who isn't Polish (and doesn't know the language and depends on googletranslate) can't be expected to know that

Did I say I am not Polish?

I don't depend on google translator because I never translate English into the lesser languages.

But when google screws up like that, that is the only proof I need that there is something terribly wrong with the Polish language and the people who created that abomination. Don't feel bad, though, since German is just as bad with those words that seem to go on forever.

See, here, in the crude and rude "America", we don't spend as much time on the meaningless front-end pleasantries as on the message itself. We just say it.

Not in those words, it's just painfully obvious everytime you write anything about Poland or Polish...

Maf, if you throw out the coma in front of "czy", the actual google translation would run: "I am asking you if you would be kind". The "Proszę Pana" phrase is completely neglected in this version without the coma.

Google Translate is not bad at all in translations from Polish to English and the more a text is scietific (scientific to some degree, I am not talking of those 'terribly' scietific texts), the better translation you get. Also, the GT is quite well in translating from German to Polish, and very often almost as good as from German to English.

You mean like this?
https://polishforums.com/language/words-sound-funny-49893/2/#msg1646433

I am probably violating the forum rules by re-posting, but your selective retention makes it irresistable. In fact, I wrote the above in response to you, and are still at it without a comment.

So, here is my question, which, hopefully and forever, will put me being Polish to a well-deserved rest: Can a person who was not born and raised in Poland write something like this? My bet is that even you couldn't. And then those documents like my diploma, birth certificate, and the US passport. If I post that last one which says that I was born in Warsaw, Poland, will you and others finally stfu about my ethnicity or are you going to claim that it's a photoshopped fake?

Literal translation from any language word-for-word into another, particularly from an unrelated language group, will usually yield amusing results:-)

For instance "Psiakrew, bydlo"! = (idiomatic) G-d damit!! vs. (literally) "Dog's blood, cattle!"
etc....

Merged:

Polish words that sound nice pronounced in English?

What are some Polish words that sound nice if the reader read them like English words?

" Mummy look at this foka!!!" watching seals at the zoo.

Or: Mummy, look at that other foka.

When I talk amongst friends or family around Anglos their ears perk up when they hear 'byc' as the polish 'be' or 'to be' sounds just like b1tch

It does if you pronounce it wrongly ;) Now don't start foaming at the mouth, I'm just teasing. Although there is a grain of truth in what I say. The 'y' sound in być is not the same as English 'i'. It's one of those uniquely Polish sounds, very subtle but it makes the difference between the native speaker and the foreigner - though of course there are foreigners who pronounce it correctly.

On a related topic, when I first met Mr Atch we went out one evening with a work colleague of his and his wife (both spoke some English) and I noticed that when the guys were chatting in Polish, Mr Atch seemed to use the word 'tomek' a lot so I asked him 'what's that word, you use it all the time'. You can guess the answer of course. Mr Atch chortled merrily 'it's my friend's name, Tomek, informal for Tomasz'. He'd introduced him as Tom but for some reason I didn't make the connection. My razor sharp intellect must have been blunted by 'lerv' :))

On a related, if not identical note, Dirk, I might have mentioned here once a while back that in order to grasp the pronunciation of the Polish word "pelny", I tried imagining how a standard R P (Received Pronunciation), educated British English native speaker would say the English word "pony".

It worked and I've been told that I correctly pronounce similar words with those letter combinations.

And the winner of the most funny polish words when translated to english is ......

Śmigus-dyngus in englistan = shwingus dingus

now beat that.

Yep, that's sure up there, allright.

Thats a good one dolno. Forgot about that one.

@Atch
Wtf are you talking about? Byc and b1tch are pronounced identically. Ask anyone who speaks polish and English. Both have the same ch sound, tch in b1tch and c with a line over it in byc and the b1 in b1tch and by in byc have the same pronunciation... kind of like the bi in bid or bill or bicker, not bi in bite or bisexual or bile. There is no other way to pronounce either... except maybe English b1tch which some say beotch, biatch, etc. Byc' = b1tch

And pelny sounds nothing like pony... The el sounds closer the ell in fell but still a tad different due to the l with a line through it.

Polish is pronounced exactly how it's spelled. It's not like English where letters have multiple sounds and there's tons of exception. In that sense polish is more like Latin or Spanish or even Czechy or Slovak

No really, English 'ch' (or 'tch') is somewhere between ć and cz, and my pronunciation of final ch in English is definitely apical (using the point of the tongue more like cz) while ć requires the tongue to be more flattened.

You really are so rude. And you're quite wrong Adrian. They are not pronounced identically. Perhaps one of our native Polish speakers here will confirm.

I attended Polish classes, I didn't just pick it up from the ether, so I was taught how to pronounce the sounds, although Mr Atch had already taught me the alphabet and is incredibly fussy over the sounds. He told me, 'your sounds must be clear and precise, especially the endings of words, otherwise you'll sound as if you come from 'the village' :D

The 'y' in być is pronounced in exactly the same way as it would be in for example 'jogurt pitny' and that 'y' is most definitely not an 'i' sound. Here's how it sounds:

Pick the video up at 3:00.

youtube.com/watch?v=_RIB15ZjuYo

I don't want to sound like a superior b*tch but maybe it's because I have taught reading for so many years which involves teaching phonics that I'm aware of the subtle differences in sounds. Young children often don't hear any difference between the 'o' and 'u' sounds in English, cut and cot for example, which is why they have difficulty even with simple phonetic spellings.


I know where you're coming from Lyzko. The vowel sound in RP pronunication of 'pony' is the closet English equivalent one can get to the 'ł' sound in pełny. There are many sounds in Polish which have no direct equivalent in English, the nearest we can manage is an approximation. What you're saying makes sense.

no ***** and być are not pronounced identically - for the reasons mentioned above by Atch and mafketis - and yes I am native Polish

Hey, Atch, you wanted to say "is not pronounced ..." in the above sentence of yours, didn't you? The question of 'y' vs. 'i' in Polish should really be inspected in the light of the soft vs. hard consonants. A hard one will be followed by 'y', whereas the matching soft one will be followed by 'i'. For 'być' you have its phonetic counterpart in "bić". The word 'pitny' would have its hard counterpart in 'pytny' (even if the latter does not exist in Polish), so it is the 'y' in 'pytny' that would be equal to 'y' in 'być'.

Not really, unless its spoken with an American accent.

Hi Ziem. What I meant was that to my ears anyway, the 'y' at the end of 'jogurt pitny' has the same sound as the 'y' in 'być'. There is only one way to pronounce 'y' in Polish as far as I'm aware.


Ok, this is getting confusing! Are we talking about Polish 'i' or English 'i'. Polish 'i' is pronounced as the English sound 'ee' as in beet. English 'i' is pronounced as in 'bit'. But Polish 'y' doesn't have a direct equivalent in English, the nearest equivalent is 'i' but it's not identical. I see that Gumi and Ironside agree that ''być' is not pronounced the same as 'b*tch' - I'm not clear what your view is? Do you consider that 'być' is identical to 'b*tch'?


I'm not following you Ziem. Bić would sound roughly like the English 'beach' so how can it be the same as 'być'?

Isn't this fun :))


You mean like the guy in Nie Lubię Poniedziałku? :))

my speculation... być and bić differ not just in the vowel (roughly like b*tch and beach) but also in initial consonant.
There is a distinction between hard (roughly: normal) and soft (pronounced together with a short y sound) consonants*
This used to be more important in Polish phonology than it is now but it still is reflected in pronunciation in a number of ways

hard consonants tend to be more fortis (pronounced with more tension in the neck muscles) and soft consonants tend to be more lenis (with more relaxed muscles)

It's my idea (backed up by some linguists) that originally być and bić differed mainly in the initial consonant and the vowel difference was due to the difference in consonant. In modern Polish the main difference has shifted to the vowels but the consonant difference is still there (more audible in some speakers and/or regions than in others)

*a similar distinction occurs in Irish with broad and slender consonants, thing of soft consonants as being slender (though the broad consonants have no real equivalent in Polish)

This is a good one when at the zoo

foka kąt (cont)

mamama there is a seal in the corner

I'm sorry, I thought you were talking about the vowel 'i' rather than about the final 'y' in 'pitny'. In my view the final 'y' is a much easier concept than the 'y' in the middle of the word. As a weaker sound, it shouldn't be much of a problem for foreigh speakers of Polish.


No, I don't. But I think it is pretty similar. It is the 'ć' and 'tch' that make the real difference here.


This is indeed very likely. Unfortunately, we have no recordings of medieval Polish, but in Russian the initial consonant is typically stronger than in Polish.

@Dirk, the reverse works of course as well.

For example,"y" in Polish is NEVER pronounced as "ee" in American English, because Poles typically cannot process the sound, i.e. there remains the perennial disconnect between grapheme (what the letter looks like) vs. "phoneme" (what the letter SOUNDS like!) Poles hear only short or open rather than long or closed vowels, unlike in German, to name but a language with both short and long vowels.

Brits can pronounce that Polish "y"-sound, because they tend to aspirate certain letters before a "y", e.g. the first name "B-E-T-T-Y" (beddie or beddee in US English), pronounced in British English "B-E-T-T-I-I" with an aspirated "t-sound" followed by an almost muffled short "i-sound".

Just did. And here's my confirmation as a polish speaker that byc and b1tch are pronounced the same, or at least to 99.9% of polish speakers


The y in byc sounds just like the y in byk or byl or brudny and therefore the same as the I in b1tch... unless ur husband is a goral or speaking in some.weird dialect he doesn't know wtf he's talking about.

You really think a person hearing byc or b1tch will know the difference? I highly doubt it... byc = b1tch.. But sure go argue bout it some more smdh

In English we have a word 'cheaper'...something is cheaper than something else. That word does sound strange in Polish though.

not as pronounced by Americans (thank you R!)


you =/= 99.9 % of Polish speakers... you probably have a Polish American accent that maybe merges cz and ć

I'm not sure if that's a feature but I remember years ago a native speaker of American Polish didn't think there was a difference between ś and sz ("It's just 'sh'"

Most definitely not. Same with rz/z* and z' or s' and sz


Do you speak write and read polish? Are you polish born and raised? All of the above? Because I am.

Speaking of 'cheap' reminds of a similar sounding polish word that can describe several people here - cipy or singlular cipa. I.e. mafketis jest cipa.