Common pitfalls for Poles learning English

are you having a laugh?

I bet you that you couldn't pronounce many place names properly.

oh yes i could ! my polish might not be that great, but my english is relatively ok lol! how much do you want to bet? please also stay on topic or my thread will be binned, and i want to hear from other posters!!

My wife, who was born and raised in Poland, learned English in her teens. Her pronunciation is nigh impeccable. She does tend to over-pronounce, at times, however. She'll say thurmo-meeter for thermometer, for instance. This could have to do with her crash course in English during her time in Wales, since I'm not sure how the Welsh pronounce such things. She'll also extend the "u" in a word, or the "oo" in foot, so that it rhymes with "root". She doesn't have any problems with "sh" sounds, like many Poles have. If you'll notice, many English-speaking Poles will say "fank you", or "somefing". I think, as easy as that sound is for us, it doesn't exist in Polish, and as we know, certain sounds are very difficult to learn past a certain developmental age.

it is quite simple why there is such problems. It is that the tongue is placed differently when pronouncing words. It is much easier for those in the Slavic languages to learn similar and the same with english- solely based on tongue placement. The TH sound for Poles is so difficult because they need to learn how to place their tongue properly. Of course I am talking about those who are learning a second language later on in life as opposed to learning from childhood. My kids and husband can switch back and forth from Polish to English with no noticeable difference where as I have a difficult time with the z sounds and people know I am foreign when I speak Polish.

I want to bet (as long as you counting American names as English)!


If you will notice all non native speakers not only Poles have problems with th sound.How is "fank you" any worse than "senk you" or "somefing" any worse than "somesing" (I heard that from Dutch person)?


How can you even know that if you are not native speakers of any of mentioned languages?I seriously doubt he does.


Don't know about poles but as a Pole I find English pretty easy.Don't know about English in UK but in the US accent is the key.Put accent on wrong sylabe and they won't have a clue what you are talking about.

In England when you don't say "the" before weekend they also have no clue what you mean, that always made me laugh

yes he does. my lodger is far from stupid. he learned russian and german in poland.he worked in italy and portugal and picked up both languages.dont know to what degree, but i cant see the point in him lying.this is why i cant understand how hard it is for him to pick up english.on a daily basis i give him new words to learn. sometimes he remembers,sometimes not. my opinion is that he has been put off by the grammar as well.its totally opposite to polish grammar.i think he is scared of learning and is worried he will make mistakes.however, i have explained that if he wants to stay in the uk, he needs to learn english.

I did not say he is,or did I?


And so have I but I am not claiming to be fluent in any of them because I am not yet I could easily convince you that I am as you have no clue.What I am saying is that there is no way for you to know wheter someone is fluent or not in the language you don't speak at at least intermediate level.


See the point is that IF he's FLUENT in German he should have no problems with learning English as it's much easier to become FLUENT in English than it is in German.


And?I spent 2 months in Paris, picked up some French words and can even put together few sentences in French but does it make me fluent in French?Hell no!

Oh,and guess what, I am not even fluent in English even though I live among Americans (including my 2 American ex wifes) in the US for the last 7 years.

Yes they can!


This is quite common.

No they can't! " Mr Sean St John -Mainwaring from Shrewsbury * " would probably agree with me... ;)
How is a Pole meant to know when,in one part of England no one will bat an eye if he says " Fink" or "Fanks" instead of "think" or "thanks"? Or when in one town no one bothers with "the",in the next town down the road people use "t' " and the next its clear "the's" all round? or dropped 'aitches?

Basically,tell Poles to just chill out,dont worry about speaking English with a strong accent,nobody cares,we are so used to hundreds of different accents it doesnt really matter :)

* Mister Shawn Sindzęn manner ing from shrowsbury. or somfink lahk that,innit ;)

Because English takes words from more than one language.


So you actually thought those people from the Melton district of Leicestershire really hunted Beavers, did you?

Pitfalls, among the commonest in my experience, are look-alike, sound-alike words, i,e homomyns/-phones, e.g. "whine" - "wine", "would" - "wood" etc.....

They exist in many languages, including Polish, yet with far less frequency.

For the English spelling, I just had to accept that I have to lern both how to pronounce the word, and how to write it down, that these two cannot be figured out from each other. When I accepted that, my problems with spelling disappeared.

What I find really iritating, are the two past tenses. What person, in his right mind, needs two different past tenses? The past is the past. End of a disscusion. Yes, I know the theory. And I can, more or less, put it into use, when writing something. But while I talk, I can hardly stop mid-sentence, and ponder if that past happening, I just want to mention, has any influence on the presence, or maybe not.

Similarly, articles "the", "a"... I know the theory. But the very concept is alien to me, and I tend to play hit or miss with these.

more than two. but it doesn't matter. treat the past as one time, but with different aspects. same for present.

i belong to the school that says there are only two tenses: present and past.

i find it odd that most Poles don't seem to have problems with English spelling.

Wroclaw, while stating that my spelling troubles ended, I have meat relatively speaking :) Example: I do hear the difference between "man" and "men", but I'm unable to faithfully reproduce any of these sounds.

Tenses are to Polish English learners much as aspects are for foreigners, i.e. English speakers, learning Polish.

The difference between THirty and Forty seem to be as hard for Polish speakers as getting to hear what the hell sounds different between the Polish E and Y (for me).

I'm Polish and it's a piece of p1ss for me, some Poles might have a problem to say 'th' just like Spanish or speakers of any language where 'th' is absent.


Those are two completely different vowel sounds.

Generally Poles learning English have problems with articles (a, an, the).
Any reproduction of sounds (vowels and consonants) depends on how anyone has learned the language and in which locality. English words are pronounced differently in all parts of England - but that is normal. So if a Pole or anyone else was taught by a native from Liverpool or Birmingham or Cornwall - (who had a pronounced accent) his pronunciation of certain words will be different. What matters is that the correct/appropriate word is used at the time.

I notice that Poles are not taught to say 'please' when asking for payment if they are serving in a shop/bar/airport. Its just 10zl - but no please and that really annoys me. They have not been taught this.

I prefer this that way, if I think about it "please" makes the feel that someone is demanding something from me, paying the money in this case, I prefer just to hear the amount of money that are the items I chose worth.

What I don't like in England is people not saying "smacznego" - "enjoy your meal" in the canteens in work places, how hard is it to say it just to be polite? cultural difference I guess.

If an English person does not say 'please' after naming a price, we would think that he has no manners.

If a Polish person does not say 'smacznego' (bon appétit) when coming to the canteen where everybody is eating, we would think that he has no manners.

Exactly, cultural difference. In the UK there is no tradition of saying something like that. When UK MacDonalds staff were ordered to utter the imperative "Enjoy your meal" they were reluctant to do so, and British customers also felt uncomfortable being told what to do. It is simply not impolite not to say smacznego or whatever for Brits.


I think you're on your own there.

There is actually 38 million of us in Poland who don't mind lack of "please"

Absolutely! Culture differences matter a lot when speaking any foreign language. Sometimes grammar and vocabulary are correct but natives do not express themselves the same way in a same situation.

Speaking foreign languages is NOT just learning grammar and vocabulary but it is also to understand cultural context, target language speakers' mentality.

That's why (one example among so many) our "ProfessionalTeacher" claiming to be so great at English shall never have priority over qualified native English speaking teachers. Students need and want the "real' thing...

Of course, this goes for ALL languages.

I thought you were in the UK.

I'm in Poland on a regular basis.

Then I guess the old saying 'When in Rome, do as the Romans do' is a good one.

Absolutely