Polish words that sound funny?

yeah, not native but I do (since I live here) and I often translate academic Polish into English


defensive?

Polish speakers (in Poland) tell me that the English ch sounds somewhere between ć and cz, while you say it sounds like ć.... who should I believe?

Both are correct. Ch falls in between a softer cz and harder c', imo closer to the c'. Its not like sz and s' which sound very different. I cant think of any examplr where cz wouldnt sound like ch but softer like in czarny the ch isnt as pronounced. But the tch in b1tch most definitely sounds just like the c' in byc'. It depends on the word. Same as c'pac' which both c' have a stronger more pronounced ch sound.


I'll take that as a no.

Also this thread is about polish words that SOUND funny, not intricate linguistics, and i doubt anyone here has an bachelor's let alone a PhD in linguistics or polish language anyway. We don't even have a single true native speaker here as every polish speaker here it's either their 2nd/3rd etc language and the few people who's language it is their 1st don't speak it as their primary day to day language and use English. Even amongst corporate types in Poland more and more people are using English in their roles than polish but atleast they still communicate with family and friends in polish. Everyone's experience is based off hearsay - I heard, my husband told this, polish people told me that, etc. If you want to discuss the linguistics of the polish language I'm sure there's a thread for that.

This thread is for discussing words like foka, byc, cipa, etc etc and how they sound funny. No one cares about dissecting the linguistics of foka's or byc's or cipy

Let people have their simple pleasures...there are words in Polish that sound funny to an Englishman, and words in English that sound funny to a Pole.

Once a Pole asked me in English (out of context, naturally!), whether my translation firm was "cheaper", but of course, he pronounced the word the same as "chipper", and so I replied jokingly, "Oh my, yes. We're always in a good mood when we come to work!"

He didn't get it, but nonetheless became a client once I explained the joke:-)

whatevs.... I'm perfectly okay with my identity (American living in Poland) why aren't you happy with yours?

That's the one thing you pick up on? Not the explanation to the question you asked regarding of c' and cz vs ch and how it differs from s' and sz?

Whoever said I'm not? I'm perfectly happy with who I am and my. I truly feel blessed and quite frankly lucky to be a Pole. If i were german french etc id be ashamed that my countrymen allowed an invasion to destroy our country and discard our thousand yesr old culture.

Oh and fyi notice when you say the cz in czarny, czuwaj, czlowiek, etc your cheeks and tongue especially the tip are in different spots and hence comes out ever so slightly different than say c'pac', c'ipa, and of course byc'. But notice though that your tongue makes the same motion when you say English ch as in b1tch in English and byc's in polish, but not czarny or czlowiek. Therefore the c' in the case of byc' and tch in b1tch similar, same with the rest of the word as by is same as in byk, byl, bydlo, etc and b1tch, bill, bid, biscuit, etc. Furthermore, the polish saying for English chips as in potato chips would be pronounced c'ipsy, not czipsy and most would spell it either c'ipsy or chipsy if they also knew english. Making me right, you and atch wrong.

Would a native polish speaker please stand up? I want to hear what they say (Crickets....)

Być nad B**ch couldn't be mistaken and don't sound very much alike. At least no to the point Dirk says.
And I definitely never heard anyone say c'ipsy. That is ridiculous. Why would they? The word Chipsy is very common now.
(Polish born and raised with B.A. in linguistic ). Sadly no Ph.D

To english speakers (esp if they don't know Polish) they sound very much alike or identical. Polish speakers would probably hear the English word more as bycz


As you would know if you lived in Poland, the normal spelling is 'chipsy' but if one were to write in Polish orthography it would be czipsy (analagous with the old sometimes spellings dżin (gin) and dżinsy (jeans)

sjp.pwn.pl/poradnia/haslo/chipsy-i-czipsy;3760.html


A Pol-Am who lives in the US and sometimes visits Poland and likes to daydream about living there. Nothing to be defensive about (I sometimes daydream about living somewhere else too)

You've admitted yourself on this forum that you speak Polish with an American accent not to mention your errors in grammar and construction so I wouldn't accept your word as a Pol-Am on any aspect of the Polish language. You are not Polish, you're Polish-American and there's a big difference.


Three native speakers already answered you. Ziemowit, Gumishu and Ironside are all born and raised in Poland.


Do you remember saying this?


You really think Ziemowit and Gumishu go round speaking English all day?? You're the one who speaks English most of the time and have done pretty much all your life since the age of seven. Btw you're wrong about corporate types. They speak Polish amongst themselves at work and only use English when communicating with foreign clients or the occasional co-worker. The majority of staff in Polish companies (even American or UK owned corporations) are Polish and they don't speak English with each other in the work place, they speak Polish.

Very true. It's similar with the difference between 'kasza, Kasia' -many foreigners can't tell the difference. However the difference is there and I'm almost sure that even a foreigner wouldn't think byc is b**ch. It's way too soft... But then I'm not an English native speaker so it's not my place to say. As to Polish native speakers we definately hear the difference and wouldn't take one for the other.

Like me! If I listen with my linguist ears I can sometimes hear a difference but with my everyday ears they sound the same, but its possible to understand Polish perfectly well without hearing that particular difference (or ż-ź cz-ć, dż-dź) there aren't that many times where not hearing the difference leads to confusion...

True. The only situation would be shopping.
My very clear (even by Polish standards) pronunciation messes up my spoken English.It's like a big neon sigh 'foreigner' as soon as I open my mouth

Whereas I could agree with your previous opinion that the 'y' in być and b1tch may sound almost identical, I think this one is utterly wrong.

If I tried to use the pronounciation of "b1tch" to replace the original pronounciation of "być", I'm sure that 99,9 % of my compatriots here in Poland would have thought I had a speech impediment.


This seems a very far-fetched conclusion.


'Conundrum' sounds funny to me. 'Zakopane' sounded posh and original to some English people who once came to visit Poland.

When I first started learning Polish I thought I was saying the 'sz' 'si' etc correctly but every time Mr Atch would pick me up on them and tell me they were wrong 'nie sz, si' over and over again. I'm a lot better now as far as saying them correctly goes, but I still struggle to hear the difference when people are speaking, especially if they talk quickly. I think as long as you can hear the difference when they're spoken in isolation and as long as you're saying them properly yourself you don't need to worry about whether you can hear them in normal conversation.


Do you mean you end up with the 'goooood marn-een-g' vibe?? It's the vowel sounds combined with the very precise enunciation that does it. In English we run a lot of sounds together but in Polish you speak each sound separately plus our vowel sounds are often quite vague. I'm talking about standard pronuncation of course, not counting the huge range of regional accents.


And for some reason the word 'piosenkarka' cracks me up, really have no idea why!

#MeToo. Even if it it is very much assimilated by now, I am pretty sure this word did not exist before 1939. Perhaps they were using "pieśniarka" instead.

What about 'psycholożka' or 'socjolożka'? Anyway, those seem more awkward than 'lekarka', for example. "Ministra" is the newest invention which brought a lot of laughter.

felczer!

The first time I came across that word I burst out laughing for 10 minutes.... (in American English 'feltch' refers to a disgusting sexual act that I'm fairly sure, at least I hope, that no one has ever actually done).

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feldsher

Something like that :) The policeman from Allo Allo comes to mind :)
When my mom (who never learnt English) saw a video I send her she said: 'You know, like you said, one can hear you are Polish. When Mick speaks English it's all soft but when you speak it's harder'

Any given word in a foreign language will doubtless sound "funny" to somebody from another language group, no matter how fluent they are!

This is why often when speaking to a non-native speaker in a language not their mother tongue, one might on occasion experience odd or cross-culturally "tilt" reactions to certain words, whereby either the interlocutor has to stifle a chortle or quite the opposite, all of a sudden, appears inexplicably serious, when in fact the gist of the conversation is anything but what is perceived by the foreigner:-)

I was also born and raised in poland with polish being my first language. Doesnt mean that i know polish to the extent of a dude whos lived there his entire life and gone through every level of school in poland, which unless im mistaken no one here has. Have they all continually lived in Poland for atleast half their lives and speak polish daily? Have they attended grade school, high school and university all in poland? Is polish still their first language and the one they speak primarily? If no then id rather listen to someone who meets that criteria, like my polish family and friends who lived there their whole lives.

Nometheless it doesn't take a person who meets all those criteria and is a native polish speaker to understand that byc' and b1tch sound identical. Furthermore, an English accent in polish pronounces certain vowels especially when next to an r differently, not consonants. Just because I'm a Pol am doesn't mean I can't tell the difference between c' and cz, which I've pointed out above how they differ but both habe a slightly different ch sound.

And on that note, personally I hope i never lose my English accent in polish. That alone has gets me plenty of attention from the fairer sex who tell me 'ale fajny masz akcent' but also 'plynnie mowisz po polsku'


Seeing as citizenship, genes and place of birth generally are the determining factors of a person's ethnicity id say you're so full of sh1t that your eyes are brown

That's been used a long time. Polish is flexible where you can add endings to words to make them sound cuter/smaller or to apply to a gender. I.e. ksiazka and ksiazeczka, Michal vs Michalek...


Piosenkarka lekarka farmaceutka or even listonosz vs listonoszka etc are used but generally I think psycholog would still be used for the femine. Still though many people don't change genders for certain roles. I've heard struz but never struzka for example or rolnik but never rolnika for.feminie

You are mistaken


stróż


rolniczka

You weren't raised in Poland. You left when you were seven.


Yes for my husband. Yes for Ziemowit. Yes for Gumishu. Yes for Ironside up to finishing his education. Don't know how soon after that he left Poland but his English though fluent, is by no means at native speaker level, which yours is, because you experienced total immersion whilst still a young child. Also yes for Jaskier who is a Polish native speaker and has BA in Polish linguistics.

When you were here as Adrian K9 you said the following:

"although I can speak, read, and write Polish very well I'm not a native."

and here's the full text of the quote which the Mods trimmed in my previous post :

"The Polish spoken in the US is much more Americanized in a way than the Polish in Poland. I don't have much contact with Polish people aside from my parents and a few friends and even then we usually speak English - except for with my dad who doesn't know English that well but even then we use Polish intermingled with English."

So to have you lecturing Ziemowit, Gumi, Ironside and now Jaskier on the finer points of their native language and claiming that they aren't proper native speakers - it's laughable really. Oh and of course my husband also speaks some sort of weird dialect according to you. Yes they're all wrong and know less about the correct pronunication of words in their own native tongue than you, the Pol-Am who has lived most of his life in America, mostly speaks English and even when you DO speak Polish it's 'Americanized'.

I was just reading back on this thread and noticed the above, dirk what are you thinking to be so rude to a woman, I know its old fashioned but still very relative to being a Polish gentleman , we just don't do this, I know things have changed in Poland since my parents left but being chivalrous is an important trait for any Polish man, it kind of sets us apart from the regular thug males that seem to be prevalent nowadays.

I don't see eye to eye with Atch on some matters , and yes she can be a bit cutting with some of her replies which is just part of the banter here.

Just lighten up a bit, click your heels and give her hand a kiss.

Anyway its only my point of view and I am just an old git before my time who is way out of touch with modern ways.

Wrong. I did it. From 'Ala ma kota' through ''Litwo, ojczyzno moja' to 'Z zebranych danych wynika...'


No, they really don't. Not at all .

He can't even argue like a Pole, he argues like a dumb American teenager losing his temper and resorting to personal abuse.... Polish people in Poland (where dumb pointless arguments are the national sport) don't do that (except mabye for elementy who hang out in front of stores drinking by 8.00 in the morning)

I need to hire you as a secretary. If you can keep track of everything I wrote years ago on a forum for free im sure you'll do wonders organizing our filing cabinets if paid.

But no sh1t Sherlock, I wrote the same thing above that even though I was born and raised in poland, like other members, doesn't make me a native speaker:


Maybe focus a little more on comprehension instead of pronunciation...


It's an internet forum.... Besides I don't know atch from Adam. For all i know atch could be a man pretending to be a woman, then we'd all feel really stupid. And saying a person is full of sh1t isn't being that rude it's a pretty common phrase, calling a woman names like b1tch or **** is. Besides, considering she appears to have written several things indicating she's one of those female equality types she can get use to be treating like a man would. That's what they want afterall...


Not at all huh? IPA ponunciation shows otherwise, that they're nearly identical. You must not know either polish or English if claim those two words don't sound like each other 'at all'

en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/by%C4%87
Pronunciation
IPA(key): /bɨt͡ɕ/

Kind of like you ma-w-dupie-kutas? You should be the last person to say that as you regularly start with personal attacks whenever you don't like the opinion of a poster. If j were going for personal abuse I would've said somrthing a lot different and itd hilarious. As in the past some people would get all butthurt while others pm with headlines like lol, rofl, lmao, etc...



Bit of a contradiction... tell me maf, since you're an expert on this topic, despite not even being a pole, how exactly do poles argue? I need to learn from the expert so that in the future no one can accuse me of not arguing like a pole.

read it and weep

en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/*****
Pronunciation
/bɪt͡ʃ/

Right, I don't see how the two 'don't sound like each other at all'

forvo.com/word/by%C4%87
Sounds just like b1tch

Ill agree to disagree just so now you can share your knowledge on how a pole is supposed to argue.